Big Sister News

So, at the end of the last post, I mentioned that there was more news to share. Well, as you can see by the title of this post, and Violet's shirt, this is good news! We are getting ready to welcome baby #2 into the Talsma household! This baby's estimated arrival date is June 15, just before my birthday, and just (hopefully) after school is out for the summer. We had our first doctor's appointment last week, and he said that everything looked good, so we decided to go ahead and share the news with our extended family of blog followers.

Things are going alright for me; I seem to have a bigger case of morning sickness this time that is not just limited to the morning, and I'm tired, but that is to be expected. Violet is being a wonderful big sister--reading books to the baby and saying good morning to him/her every morning by talking and waving. It is the cutest thing! It was also so sweet this morning--it was not a good morning food wise for me, and she came up to my belly and told the baby to stop making mommy's tummy feel sick, and to "please be nice to my mommy".

By the way, we found out about this in the midst of all our challenges the last month. It was both a bright spot, and made the whole financial issue that much bigger. But, we are truly excited to be in the process of having another baby, and I am anxiously awaiting the end of the next couple of weeks to hopefully kick this morning sickness!

Time to catch up

It has been a long while since I've posted, and my sincere apologies for that. After we got all of our issues taken care of, we just became very busy, and the blog posts got put to the back burner. So, what has been happening since October 21--

Halloween:
This year, Violet wanted to be Winnie-the-Pooh. We thought for sure we were going to have a little monkey this year, given her obsession with Curious George, but that was not the case. She was very adamant about being Winnie the Pooh, so that is what she was. Violet got to go Trick-or Treating twice--once a week early in the Big Rapids Fall Festival/Costume parade, and once on Halloween night.

Violet ready to march in the parade--
with M&M's of course!

The parade was a bit of a joke--it was Big Rapids 1st year of doing it, and it could have been done better, but I'm not volunteering! It was more designed for people wanting to dress up their dogs, and older kids, and not real appropriate for the under 4 set. Violet, of course, wanted to do everything that the big kids were doing, and had a very hard time understanding why I wouldn't let her try to climb on the unsupervised inflatables that they had in the middle of the street. I did eventually let her climb through the one that was supposed to be meant for littler people, but since it was misty, the rubber was wet and slick, and she couldn't climb up the stairs inside it! And, consequently, got stuck. One of my dear kindergarten students tried her best to help her, but I ended up having to go through this thing and hoist her up and out. She had much more fun in the trampoline one, until some crazy kid decided to try to jump clear across the thing and land on her. Tough life lessons, I guess, but I was starting to get very annoyed at how little supervision was going on at this, so we decided to pack it up and go.

Violet going down the inflatable
big slide with a nice older girl willing
to help her up the steps!

Violet in the inflatable

trampoline, pre-accident

She had a blast trick-or-treating with her Daddy--I stayed home to pass out candy as we get a lot of school kids who would be disappointed if they didn't see at least one of us. I guess they went about 4 blocks down and back up before Violet decided that was enough. She walked the whole time, and Ben said she said Trick or Treat at every house and said thank-you. YAY!

Violet's 1st stop

On her way to get
more candy!

General Fall Fun:

Another thing we've been having a blast with is the abundance of leaves in our yard. Violet loves jumping in the leaves, and it's really unfortunate that we haven't had a lot of dry fall days. Despite that, we managed to have one good, warm Saturday afternoon that we got to spend outside raking a big pile of leaves for her to play in. Notice in this video how she briefly panics for a moment, but eventually gets herself out:

Another thing she did this fall was climb her first tree. Her father put the idea in her head by climbing up first, and she thought it was quite silly. But then she decided that she wanted to be like the letters in Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and climb to the top of the coconut tree herself! Here is a picture of her and Daddy in the "coconut" tree:

I think that wraps up the fall/Halloween news pretty well. And, I'm at the limit of Violet being able to entertain herself in her playroom! More news to come!