Doermann Family Blog

2010-01-04T19:14:00.000-08:00

Pearl came into the bathroom while I was getting ready one day. On the counter was a Q-tip I had used to clean off the previous day's eye makeup. She took one look at it and, totally grossed out, cried, "Oh Mommy! You got yucky ears!"

Family Photos

2009-12-07T21:11:00.001-08:00

Greg traded skills with a co-worker (her photography, for Greg's photoshop knowledge) and we were able to take family pictures! Now we can put up pictures that have Mona in them. I haven't printed a single picture with her in it! Isn't that shameful?

Notice how I'm holding Mona's hand. Does anyone else's baby always hold their arms straight out?

I think this is my favorite. I wish Mona were smiling huge, but I still love it.

If this sweet picture of Pearl was the only one that had turned out, I would still be so happy with them. Glad it wasn't, but still, I cherish this one. She looks so old and oh so sweet.

I do love my Mona too. I love gummy smiles. She was so good the whole time!

2009-12-07T21:11:00.000-08:00

I just love this one.

I feel a little bittersweet about finally looking like an adult. It's good, right? Cause I'm not sure. I found a grey hair last month. Premature greying runs in my family, but I didn't cry. I whined and moped, and I saved it for a day, but I'm past that.

There's Mona with her hand out. At least she's happy!

Look at our two girls! We love them. Thanks Jen for such cute dresses. I love those too.

2009-12-07T20:57:00.000-08:00

I had been looking forward to Thanksgiving for SO LONG. First, my parents came out to Utah early, and it was so much fun to have them. Then we caravaned down to Arizona. On the second day of travel. Pearl was in the car with my parents and threw up twice, but never really acted sick, just disturbed she had vomited all over herself and had to be changed and wiped down while it was freezing outside (I'd like to congratulate my Dad for keeping it in himself. I'm sure Grandpa Daines would be proud). Because she hadn't acted sick, I assumed it was car sickness. However, that night she started running a fever. I felt bad because she'd played with all her cousins that day. Oops. The next one to get sick was me at 2:30 Thanksgiving morning. Kind of ruined the day for me.

I did manage to get myself presentable to take family pictures. Where would I be without this sibling picture or the memory of how much my brother didn't want to be there taking it with us?

The next day the trip was pretty much ruined for everyone else. My Dad, Jennifer and Collin all got the stomach flu. Also on Friday, Rebecca, Natalie and Pearl started losing their voice. (At least Rebecca was the source of that germ though. Wouldn't I feel awful if we'd brought ALL of it?) By the time we were driving into Provo Saturday night, Pearl was so sick with cough, congestion and fever, Greg just dropped me off at the ER. And then Mona and Greg got it, and then me.

Even if we did share too many germs, I loved being with family and wouldn't have missed it for anything! I wish we lived closer to cousins! Pearl talks about them all the time.

She likes to use the word Fa'anunu for everything.
Sometimes it replaces words she doesn't know, as in "Get me that Fa'anunu."
Sometimes she just rhymes with it: "Fa'anunu ba'anunu sa'anunu"
Other times it's an insult: "You Fa'anunu head."

I asked her, "Do you like to say Fa'anunu" and her response was, "That's a silly Fa'anunu."
Three years is a strange age.

Halloween

2009-12-07T20:45:00.000-08:00

Here we are the night before Halloween dressed as witches and a warlock. Our neighbor, who helped us out a lot this summer with gardening advice, invited us to her party. Notice our headstone... our tomatoes reached 7 ft. this summer. We had them tied to huge stakes, our gutters, porch light, anything we could think of to keep them from falling over. Our little backyard was so overgrown.

Our neighborhood had a little carnival on Halloween. Mona's dressed like a candy corn today. She spits so bad she needed two costumes. I had the hardest time choosing costumes this year, because I'm pretty sure it's my last with Pearl. She seemed excited about a witch, but it took A LOT of convincing (and tears, mine and hers) to get her to keep the hat and cape on.

Ribbons

2009-12-07T20:36:00.000-08:00

Recently I got together with an old roommate of mine who's still around Provo, and found out she is doing the cutest stuff with ribbons. I love these funky striped pants, and I wanted a fun shirt to go with them, so she embellished this purple onesie for me. I had her do several shirts for Pearl (brown, tourquoise, and pink in the little girl section), and even one for me (black Gap shirt)! She has several designs--even an airplane and a lion for boys. I LOVE them! Check out her blog...http://2the9sshop.blogspot.com/

Happy Birthday to Pearl

2009-12-07T20:28:00.000-08:00

Pearl's birthday was such a fun day. She actually gets the concept of opening presents now. It was so fun to watch her that she had opened all her presents before we even had breakfast. So, doing a birthday on a budget went extremely well. Build-a-bear gave her $5 store credit, plus they sent me a coupon for a free animal. Our new mattress was late in coming so the store sent us a gift card to cold stone, and we let Pearl pick out her very own cake. Naturally she went for the one with berries on it: Raspberry Cheesecake. It was delicious.

On the Sunday after her birthday we had a party at Greg's parents. We drove up after church and Pearl fell asleep on the way.

Alayne and Andrea bought Pearl a really fun play food set. She plays with it EVERY day. By the way, this is Uncle Alex. He came home from his mision in July. It didn't take long for Pearl to warm up to him. They always play so cute and read lots of stories. Shortly after he came home, the Harry Potter movie came out. Alayne and Alex came over and watched the girls so Greg and I could go out and see it. Pearl still says, "Member Alex came over and you and Daddy went to Harry Potter? Do that again."

The forgotten child

2009-12-07T20:18:00.000-08:00

I feel like I haven't posted much about Ramona. What can I say, she's a pretty happy, easy baby. She sleeps decently. She eats great. She has a fantastic giggle. I feel like her being so good is making up for her spitting up. She is the worst. Well, Pearl was awful, and if I eat onions, Ramona is definitely worse than she was. However, if I don't, it's very manageable. With Pearl it was never manageable.

Mona is very mobile- started crawling at 5 months, pulled to stand at 6 months and started walking along furniture at 7 months.

This is a rare shot. Mona lying still, on her back.

This is a typical face for mona. She likes to spit. She blows for a bit, then giggles, smiles and blows some more.

17 Stitches

2009-12-07T20:07:00.000-08:00

On Labor Day Weekend we got a new mattress. YEAH! Greg's parents were kind enough to watch the girls while we picked one out. When we got home they decided we got such a good deal, they wanted one too. So, Greg and Pearl went back to the store with them. When Greg told Pearl it was time to go, she ran to go get her baby doll, but fell and whacked a box spring on her way down. There was blood everywhere and Greg, who is the calm one during a crisis, was kind of panicking. Luckily there was an EMT in the store and she assessed the situation, calmed everyone down, and then they rushed Pearl to Emergency. When I got there she was calm, but Grandma, Pearl and Greg all had blood everywhere!

17 stitches later, this is what it looked like.

It's healed really well. Pearl is great about reminding me to put on her Mederma and sunscreen. We kept a bandaid on for about two weeks. This picture is doing double duty. Pearl is potty training and really likes her panties. She likes to wear them all at the same time.

Paris in the Fall

2009-12-07T19:58:00.000-08:00

This is the house where my mom spent most of her summers. This fall we took a one day trip up to Paris, ID (north side of Bear Lake). The house is so run down. I'd love to see it fixed up some day...

I have no clue what this machine does. It was scary walking across the field to it because we passed an animal skull on the way, and when I was little and came to this house there were little black snakes all over.

Summer Fun

2009-12-07T19:53:00.000-08:00

Saturday evening, the night before Father's day, Greg was on the phone with my mom helping her with some computer issues, and he kept teasing her about us coming out there. It was not nice because I had been feeling so homesick lately. Within about five minutes of him hanging up, we'd made up our minds and were packing our bags. Less than two hours later we were on the road. The girls slept nearly the entire way. At one point Pearl started talking in her sleep, "I see those pink shoes. You get them for me Daddy?" Not even two and dreaming about shoes!

At about 8 am we pulled into Celeste court and surprised my mom. Then we hurried and got ready for church where we surprised my dad. It was a fun Father's day treat. Almost as fun was answering the phone when my sisters called... "What are YOU doing there?"

Prior to our trip, my mom sent Pearl a card with blackberry smudges on it, saying she wished Pearl could be there eating berries with her. It's been years since I've been home during blackberry season. I ate some everyday and took tons home with me. We brought plums home too, but the day after we got back, Pearl took a bite out of each one then put it back in the bowl. That was not a happy moment.

Here's Pearl watching Papa Eric work in his garage. She liked to watch him but she thought it was really "nosy" (noisy)

A few weeks later, we met the Fa'anunus in Mt. Rushmore for the Fourth of July and my birthday! We had a really great time, but it started out kind of "fortunately/unfortunately"

Fortunately, we had a beautiful drive through the black hills.
Unfortunately, we got in too late to see the fireworks at Mr. Rushmore.
Fortunately, there was such dense fog nobody saw them and we didn't end up wasting our entire day waiting to see nothing
Unfortunately, all that dense fog was a storm and it poured and we were sleeping in tents and one of the tents flooded.
Fortunatel,y the tent that didn't flood slept as many as 9.
Unfortunately, we had 11 (including a pack 'n' play)
Fortunately, Pearl talks in her sleep and "berries, yeah I like berries" will never be forgotten.

One of the highlights of the trip was going to Bear Country. Abby rode in the car with us, and, because we went through the park at about a mile an hour, she was driving with Greg when a bear stood on our car!!!

Here's the armpit and belly of the bear. I tried to get a better shot but at the moment it was low priority.

It was a very fun summer!

Backing up your computer

2009-06-15T22:24:00.000-07:00

In the past few years, I have helped my family (several times) "try" and recover lost files. I have also lost things a couple of times on my own box. The biggest disaster was my dad's hard drive about a year and a half ago. He had all of his digital pictures on it (not backed up) and the drive decided it was finished. Well, needless to say he paid about $1,500 to get the pictures back and some of them were damaged. I personally have TONS of pictures, videos, etc on my drives and I was trying to back them all up via DVD and then have a copy at my house, my parents house. I also had them on an external drive, my iPod, and then favorites on Picasa. Well... needless to say... 30+ GB of pictures sure does use a lot of DVD's and hard drive space... especially with 10x redundancy!

I attended a Ruby Users group meeting at Mozy a couple of months ago and then decided to look them up. This was about the time they were advertising hard with their commercials. I thought "Unlimited space for 5 bucks, impossible." I decided to give it a try for a month to see if it was true. Well, I am now backing up about 500 GB for 5 dollars a month... yes, that's right 5 dollars a month.

Features I love:

Unlimited (yes, unlimited) space
You have a Mozy drive that contains all the files that are on the Mozy server
Quick restore
Can be scheduled (for the middle of the night)
You can throttle the speed of the uploads

Where Mozy need some work:

Well, lets face it indexing that many files takes some time...
Mozy can take up a good chunk of CPU and memory during a backup.

My parents have already used Mozy a few times to backup accidentally deleted files. Mozy keeps deleted files for 30 days... so you have a bit of time just in case.

Anyways, this link will give you a 10% discount on the service. I would give it a try. That 1500 bucks would have paid for about 25 years of the service... well worth it in my mind.

Dr. Pearl

2009-06-10T20:57:00.000-07:00

Mona is congested and has thrush... good thing she has Pearl to take care of her. Pearl doesn't just play doctor, she plays "Dr. Berry", our family doctor.

The girl who never grows

2009-06-10T17:01:00.000-07:00

Yes, you're seeing it right... they're wearing the same clothes. The sad thing is, I think Mona will grow out of them first! Pearl makes all sorts of strange discoveries while Mom is busy nursing Mona... how to open the back door, where Mom keeps the marshmallows and, today, that she fits in Mona's clothes.

Hogle Zoo

2009-06-06T18:53:00.000-07:00

Aunt Andrea took Pearl to the Zoo. Pearl had so much fun. She was talking for days about different animals, the animal playground, and anything she could remember.

Note to Andrea: Pearl wants to know when you're going to take her out again!

Baby Mona

2009-05-05T08:02:00.001-07:00

Ramona was born at 7:20 pm on Sunday, March 29th. According to Navajo legend, she revels in nudity and is bonny, blithe, happy and gay (If you've never been to Grandma Daines' house. don't expect that to make sense). She was 8 lbs and 19 inches long.

For now, she mostly goes by Mona. Also, Pearl is no longer "Baby Pearl." Sad but true, life goes on and now we have Baby Mona. The "baby" in front of their names helps people distinguish between them and all the grandma's with whom they share names. If you feel you need to youthanize Pearl's name still, call her "Pearly." That's what we do.

Pearl adores her sister! She was kind of in shock when she first got to the hospital, but it didn't take long for her to warm up. While I was being transferred to recovery, Mona was getting her bath and all that stuff. Pearl went to watch then came back to my room. The whole time she kept saying she wanted to go back and see her sister. She's pretty gentle with her and very helpful. I think having my parents here for the first two weeks was helpful not only to me, but for Pearl. She got loads of attention!

Pearl talks all the time about how much she doesn't like sharing (for example, she's good and asks for jelly beans and I give them to her and then she informs me "I not has to share my jelly beans! It my jelly beans" However, she often follows a statement like that with "I share my room with Mona. I share my toys (pronounced toes) with Mona." I wish I could write the way Pearl speaks. She has the greatest intonations and she annunciates every letter so well. We love listening to her.

Mona sleeps fantastic!!! The first night she did 8 hrs, the second night was pretty horrid, apparently that's when their digestive system kicks in and can cause some indigestion. Other than that though, she goes to bed around 10, sometime as late as 11. and rarely wakes up earlier than 4:30, but usually not until after 6 am. Kind of nice.

Before any moms get to jealous, let me tell you, she is just making up for how disgusting she is. I don't know how she's gained so much weight already (10 lbs at 5 weeks), because she doesn't seem to keep much down. I have nearly 30 burp cloths and still have to do a baby load at least twice a week or we're using dish towels and wash cloths with her. She always smells like sour milk, even though I am always wiping up her sticky face, neck and hands and changing her clothes (good thing we have lots). It's so bad some days I think I would rather have a baby who slept less than one who spit up this much. Not that I have a choice or would give up my Mona. I spent a fortune on some pills that may or may not help yesterday, so we'll see.

Labor and Delivery

2009-05-05T07:25:00.000-07:00

Labor and delivery were amazing! Greg and I took hypnobirthing classes, and they helped us to look forward to labor and delivery rather than view it as a necessary evil. Hypnobirthers believe in going into deep relaxation and having pain-free births. Those who get an epidural are probably the only ones who truly experience a pain-free birth, but it was pretty remarkable to come close to that through relaxation. One of the affirmations I was supposed to repeat to myself was: "I will turn my birthing over to my baby and my body." That gave me the giggles, but it really worked! While it was not exactly pain-free, I can honestly say it was not that bad. It was really different to not be so consumed by pain (Pearl was induced that it was just so intense and unlike anything that my body had ever done, that it was not that great an experience) that I could focus on nothing else.

I had been having braxton hicks for nearly 4 days at pretty regular intervals, but when I woke up Sunday morning I had my first real contraction. I knew it because it was all in my back, just like the with Pearl. The picture is of me at about 10 am, a few hours into labor. My body took lots of breaks while laboring, so I kept doubting I was actually in labor, which is why by the time I actually got to the hospital I was dialated to a 6.5 and having 60 sec contractions, 90 sec apart. It went pretty fast from there, and probably would've gone even faster had my water broke earlier. She was born about an hour and a half after I was admitted.

The whole process felt instinctive and natural. The most amazing part of all was delivery. I know it generally goes much faster the second time, but I really didn't think it would go from 45 min. of pushing with pearl, to just a few minutes of relaxed breathing for Ramona. Instead of "pushing" her out, I did these things called "J" breaths and she pretty much just slid out. I swear it's true. I had been skeptical of the hypnobirther's delivery method, but when I did my first "J" breath (hard to explain how that works), I got this huge silly grin, IN THE MIDDLE OF DELIVERY, because I knew Ramona would be here any second and that it was going to be easy! My body recovered quickly too! I had my doubts and reservations, but I LOVE the hypnobirthing method.

Nap Time

2009-03-28T19:12:00.000-07:00

Greg will put start cartoons with Pearl and then end up falling asleep. They are so cute as the cuddle in bed. If only I could take naps.

Gravel in the road...

2009-03-22T18:41:00.000-07:00

Well, I laid my scooter down the second day I had it. Great. Luckily I had my helmet, gloves, jacket, jeans, and everything. The ugly part was that I did a face plant into the road...

So here is the story:

I usually go a certain route to work. I altered it to take a few side roads with the scooter. It worked great going to work. I followed a friend home on his scooter (he just lives a couple of blocks away) and then I took a semi ghetto road home that crosses some rail road tracks and what not. Well, right after I cross the tracks and dodge some pot holes I start going into a pretty sharp turn. I slowed down to about 15 mph (a 25 road) and then once the car in front of me was on the turn I noticed that there was gravel half way into the road. I tried slowing even further and taking a wider turn. There were cars in the other lane so I couldn't cross into the oncoming traffic to get around it. So I started slowing down thinking I was on my front brakes... well checking after it was my back breaks! So, long story short my bike swung around and literally threw me into the ground. I had a helmet on with a face mask. My chin hit first, then my face shield, nose and mouth/tooth hit the ground. I broke the fall partially with my hand, but I also got road rash on my stomach, knee and ankle.

So I jumped up, looked at my bike, then got on and started riding. A police man had just pulled someone over and waved me over. He said he could check me out. He thought someone had hit me. I pulled over and thought he would just check me out after he finished with the speeder. About 2 min later a fire truck and ambulance come around the corner. They pull me in the truck and check me out. Nothing was really wrong, so they let me go.

When I got home Pearl came running to give me a hug and stopped right in the tracks. I was pretty late for dinner and so Lizzy was a bit upset. It didn't help when she found out I had actually laid my bike
down. She wasn't too excited about the bike in the first place.

The bike is ok (for the most part). Just a few scratches and the tail light broke off. I fixed the tail light, and the rest of the damage should only cost around $150 to fix.

The thing I was most worried about was my tooth. It hit the gravel hard. If you take a close look you will see that it actually cracked my tooth a little and left some gravel in my tooth. My teeth were VERY sensitive for several days after. The dentist buffed the gravel out the next day and he said that I could loose the tooth, but it looked good and I should leave it to see what happens. He said it was unlikely that it would die.

This was all really great timing too... Three days before Ramona's birthday! Yea! Now I'll be ugly in the pictures.

New Moped

2009-03-18T18:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been dying to get a moped. Mostly because:
1. We've only had 1 car for 5 years
2. It get's 90 miles to the gallon
3. It's only 1000 dollars!

I bought it from a friend for $1100 and it has under 1000 miles on it, it is in perfect condition. It also came with a helmet, leather gloves, an extra face mask, a cover, a net for carrying things, and some cleaning stuff for wiping it down. It is a milano, which has the BEST pickup. They usually go for about $1900 new. He just bought it like 4-5 months ago from a close friend or family so... I am pretty happy with the deal.

Better Belly Shots

2009-02-22T18:42:00.000-08:00

The lone, side picture didn't quite give the full effect. With Pearl I still carried it all out front, but it was a little more evenly distributed around my midsection. I'm a month away and STILL it is ALL out front and center. It's not even really a basketball shape because I don't think it's wide enough on the sides. I don't really consider myself "lucky" or "cute" because:

MY BACK KILLS!
It's just making new and uglier stretch marks in the front
Is anyone really cute in their last month of pregnancy? Irrelevant at this point, says me.

Maybe I should have Greg take a bird's eye view. It is really a strange belly. Good guesses so far on date and weight. (see comments on this post.)

Pearl loves hoodies and pockets

2009-02-21T19:37:00.000-08:00

If it has a hood, Pearl is wearing it...

If it has pockets, her hands are in them.

Belly Shot

2009-02-21T19:34:00.000-08:00

As you can see it sticks straight out. Great for my back. Though I do believe it is smaller than last time. My due date is the 24th. Pearl was 7 lbs 14 oz and, though I went into labor the day after my due date, it was slow and not progressing very well, so I was induced. Is that enough info to make a guess on Ramona's weight and date of arrival? Winner will receive blog recognition.

Mom's guess:
7 lbs 6 oz. and March 28th.

Pearl finally takes a Bottle!

2009-02-20T19:27:00.000-08:00

She never wanted one as a baby, but now that we talk about Ramona Pearl wants to be treated like a baby. She came up to me and said "Feed me bottle like a baby, Daddy."

Fire Safety

2009-01-28T20:20:00.000-08:00

Having recently suffered some trauma due to fire, I’ve put together a list of a few things that are highly flammable that some of us may not be aware of:

Paint fumes: Yeah, I knew they were too, but I didn't realize just how flammable the FUMES are
Flour: many people might assume that because baking soda puts out grease fires, so does flour, NOT SO! Flour will turn a small grease fire into 2nd and 3rd degree burns and possibly even death, very quickly. All those little particles everywhere, including the ones that you breathe in down your nose and throat, those can all burn! NO FLOUR! Two more things: sugar is flammable and never use water on a grease fire. Really gross things can happen to your skin if you do this.
Unleaded gasoline: poor cousin Kevin. When used properly, diesel is great for burning things, NOT unleaded.

So, be aware. Read warning labels.

Last Thursday we got a bunch of frames from DI and some white spray paint and I was going to finally put up some family pictures in our stairway. I've been looking forward to doing this project since I saw it in a decorating book two years ago. I finally had all the supplies, a great location, but by the time we got home it started drizzling. The forecast predicted rain for a week (didn't happen, but I didn't know that then) Well, I was pouting and was determined to find a way to spray paint anyway. So, I got a huge box, lined the bottom with my frames, put it in the corner of our kitchen, and, despite his telling me I should just be patient and not rush projects, blah blah blah, Greg helped me spray paint them.

Now, we lit a few candles, and I was going to leave them burning at a distance so the paint fumes wouldn't get too strong (You know, for the baby). For some dumb reason though, after Greg was done spraying, I decided to bring my candle closer, and I'm just sort of waving it closer and closer to the top of the box when BOOM! A Huge ball of fire surrounded me (fortunately I shut my eyes, but Greg was watching) I ducked and ran to the other side of the kitchen. As quickly as it had come, the fire was gone. No black on my ceiling. The cardboard was untouched, the frames were fine. Greg hurries over, making sure fire is out on his way, and then takes one look at me and says "YOUR HAIR!! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO YOUR HAIR!!!" Well, I was already shook up, but that pretty much did it for me.

I burst into tears and ran upstairs to see just what had happened to my hair. Initially it appeared I had lost TONS. It just looked like a frizzy mess of burnt hair. IT was that, but that was just the top layer. When I touched it, gobs were coming off in my hands, and it smelled so bad. Greg helped me wash it (after I realized my hand was on fire, figuratively at this point, and couldn't wash my own hair). After I got out of the shower we realized it wasn’t quite so bad as it had seemed. I lost a good amount around my part and the front of my hair, but not all the way to the scalp. Thus, it just looks like my hair is thinning. So my hair is worse than usual, but I console myself with the fact that it wasn't my best asset to begin with. The sorriest loss, are my eyelashes. The top lashes, as you can tell from the close up, are shorter than the bottom ones. Don’t my eyebrows look nice and trim! I think I might keep them this way… but maybe with scissors next time.

Also, we have access to the attic from the ceiling space in between ours and Pearl's room (the bedrooms are upstairs and around a few corners from where the blast was) and apparently the force or change in pressure , could be that those are the same thing (Greg explained the physics of it to me at the time, but I was more concerned about my hair and hand at that point) ...caused the little door to pop open, and I'm assuming fly up and break when it landed all crooked in the spot where it used to lie nice and flat.

Apparently it takes about 4 hours for the unbelievable pain from a 2nd degree burn to stop. So, it was a pretty long night for me. My forehead, as you can see in the pictures didn't suffer too much. Just some small 1st degree patches all over my face. I didn't even realize that had happened until two days later when I had red, sensitive patches everywhere. BUT MY HAND!!! Labor was the worst experience of my life, but it was a different kind of pain. This though, the 4 hour burning, was so horrible. I mean, I sobbed, and I am not one to cry in pain—at least not as an adult. So, embarrassing as it is to admit how stupid I am at times, if my mistake can prevent someone else from such an experience... it's worth sharing.

Pearl lets in a stray cat... twice

2008-12-13T12:11:00.000-08:00

So, we came home one evening and there were a bunch of kitties right outside our door (not that uncommon). Pearl refused to come inside because she wanted to pet the kitties (also, not that uncommon). So, we let her stay on the porch trying to get the kitties to let her hug and kiss them. The door was barely open so we could keep an eye on her. After a few minutes she decides to come in, so I shut the door and go back to making dinner. A few seconds later Greg comes in the room and says "Why is there a cat in the house?" No wonder why Pearl willingly came inside! She was sitting on the floor just loving that cat. Naturally it wasn't allowed to stay for long, and Pearl of course went right outside with it. This time we shut the door. Pearl opened it herself, and went up the stairs with it (which are out of my sight from the kitchen) DISGUSTING!!!! But she loved it. Too bad everyone's allerigic and they have hair and are gross and annoying, otherwise we might be pursuaded to get her one for Christmas. No way though. A good percentage of Pearl's day is spent talking about, looking for, staring at and chasing kitties. It's just as bad with dogs, but there are less of those in our neighborhood.

Festival of Trees

2008-12-07T19:03:00.000-08:00

Pearl and Grandma at the Festival of Trees. It's a charity event for Primary Children's Hospital where people decorate trees, wreaths, etc and they are sold at auction. Pearl was such a good sport... there were hundreds of beautiful trees that Pearl could only look at. She loved the bear and dog themed trees the most.

Cheese

2008-11-21T18:56:00.000-08:00

Never turn your back on Pearl and a block of cheese.

Mess making is hard work...

2008-11-17T14:55:00.000-08:00

Pearl loves to destroy her room every day during nap time. She pulls out all her toys, books, stuffed animals and plays with them and then usually crashes right in the middle of them.

Halloween

2008-11-01T18:48:00.000-07:00

Pearl on Halloween! We had a neighborhood carnival then went trick-or-treating. Pearl LOVED her costume and all the candy.

Oktoberfest

2008-09-30T22:08:00.000-07:00

Oma got Pearl a new dress when we went to Oktoberfest at Snowbird this year. She was so proud of it and flaunted around as though she was the prettiest thing in the world.

Doermann Family Vacation

2008-07-29T17:45:00.000-07:00

We took a vacation with the Doermann side this week. We went up to Jordanelle State Park near Park City, UT. The first night was a bit scary with lightning all around us for a couple of hours. One even hit the lake about 100 yards from us.

It was Pearl's first time sleeping in a tent... and she had a great time. The first night she spent two hours running all around the tent squealing with delight while we tried to sleep.

We had a fun time boating as well. I tried to wakeboard and kneeboard as much as Tyler... and in the morning I was too sore to do anything... It was awful, I felt like an old man. I did seem to get more air than him though... and he kept falling (see slide show). It was fun to see him continue to crash and burn.

Grandma's Shower

2008-01-13T17:09:00.000-08:00

The other day Pearl found Grandma's shower... and can't leave it alone now! She runs inside and starts making faces at us through the glass. She thinks its so funny. She laughs even harder when we do it back.

Pearl in the Snow

2008-01-13T17:07:00.000-08:00

Pearl loves the snow. She pounds on the door and squeals when we open it for her to go outside. She is a very happy baby and has loved being so close to so much family.

Playing with the Cousins

2007-11-07T08:50:00.000-08:00

Pearl is having fun playing with her cousins. Even though she isn't used to so many children around, she enjoys observing them.

Fall Weather

2007-11-02T16:09:00.000-07:00

It's 65 degrees in the bay area, so we had to bundle up our little So Cal baby.

Happy Halloween!

2007-10-31T21:32:00.000-07:00

Pearl is a butterfly for Halloween this year. Lizzy spent hours looking for the perfect wings, and when she couldn't find them she gave up and bought some white ones and painted them. Greg didn't believe they would turn out. As you can see, he was dead wrong. We went trick or treating, and then spent some time at the Grows house for a spook alley, halloween games, and halloween songs.

Pearl Goes to the Doctor

2007-10-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

She just had a check-up and she weighs 17 lbs 10 oz and is 30 inches long. This puts her in the 5% for weight and the 80% for length. We were sad to say goodbye to her pediatrician. He has been there since the beginning and has always been very concerned about Pearl.

In the bath today she said "Duck, quack, quack, quack" several times while holding up a rubber ducky. It was thrilling!

Ebay forever

2007-10-23T21:29:00.000-07:00

Lizzy discovered ebay this weekend. She won these boots after losing a similar pair earlier today. She's one of those horrible people that comes out of nowhere, bids and wins in the last few seconds. It's the most exciting afternoon she's had in awhile. Too bad we didn't get video of her after she won.

Happy Birthday Pearl

2007-10-21T22:40:00.000-07:00

She doesn't do well with chocolate, so Lizzy made her a pineapple upside down cake for her first birthday cake. Greg decorated the appartment with balloons. Pearl enjoyed watching Dad pop them more than she enjoyed watching him make them! Laurel and Troy Castagna came over for the small birthday party.

Pearl's Birthday

2007-10-21T21:19:00.000-07:00

Today Pearl celebrated her first birthday! Greg made all sorts of balloon animals for her. This one is Elmo.

Pearl with Her Balloon- VIDEO

2007-10-16T06:52:00.000-07:00

Ok, so Pearl learned how to bounce the balloon off her hand and was so excited she kept squealing with delight. This is a video of her playing with the balloon.

This is one of our all-time favorite clips of Pearl.

2007-10-14T21:18:00.000-07:00

Pearl likes to chuck things