Life – Nelsons

Perception Of Time

Posted on February 14, 2015 by Jordan

This post will probably be more interesting if you know my brother…

Hannah has, as expected, been building her language skills by leaps and bounds as we move into the new year. One of the things she is starting to understand is that events have happened in the past, and that things are going to happen in the future, as in beyond today.

Her catch-all phrase for things that happened in the past is “last week” and her catch-all for things in the future is “next week.” It seems a fairly reasonable shorthand given how much is an unknown to her at this point. It is also the *exact same* system my brother uses to describe things in the future and past.

I suppose it’s possible they compared notes last time they were together, so I should be careful assuming she arrived at it independently, but I still find it rather amazing!

Speaking of things that were “next week” she was really excited for her Valentines party at school:

As you can see, each of her classmates was slated to receive a card with a sticker applied by hand! There was considerable excitement 🙂

-Jordan

Big Girl Bed

Posted on January 13, 2015 by Jordan

We converted Hannah’s crib into a “big girl bed” a little over a month ago. As you can probably see from the picture, she was rather excited by the change! So excited, in fact, that she invited most of her “friends” to play in the bed too.

The first few nights went pretty well. I don’t think she even realized she could get out of bed once the lights were off, and she was sleeping all night. As the days went on (or I guess I should say as the nights went on) she figured out she could get out of bed when she woke up. This let to us having a cute little visitor Saturday morning… a first for everyone.

Indulge a bit of a tangent for a moment here. Someone commented to me a while back that one of the many joys in raising kids was that you got to see them have first experience over and over. Every day is full of opportunities for your child to have “the best day of her life” only to look forward to another day full of new discoveries. When Hannah walked into our bedroom I realized that raising kids also provides an entire category (if I can call it that) of new experiences for myself that I wouldn’t have were it not for being a parent.

So, back to the story. Sleeping is going ok, but it appears she might be starting to get her canine teeth, and Christmas travel is upon us. Christmas was fun for everyone, but it was a LOT of stimulation for Hannah. By the time we got home I don’t think she knew which way was up, let alone what a normal day or night might be like.

Somewhere in there, she also figured out she could carry her little step-stool around and turn on lights. Previously it had just been something to stand on while she brushed her teeth. Now it has become a gateway to the power of light and darkness!

Having set the stage, I will now recount one of the first work-nights at home post-Christmas. Heather and I were kind of dragging as our bodies reluctantly adjusted back to a more normal early to bed, early to rise kind of schedule, and were probably sleeping more soundly than we normally would.

<approximately 2AM> I am woken up by a loud *CLUNK*. The first thing I notice is that there is light streaming into our room. The second thing I notice is that Hannah is climbing the step-stool she has just slammed down below our light switch. Some quick investigation showed that Hannah had turned on every single light on the floor, except the ones in our room prior to heading in. She had also started up her toy coffee maker. I suspect she felt sure she had a great start on a new day.

We are now a few weeks past that memorable night, and things are starting to be normal again. Along with providing a number of firsts, we may have learned a little about the implications of turning a toddler loose in the house 🙂

-Jordan

A Day In The Life

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Jordan

So just a few updates…

It’s funny how often I think “I should work up a post about this” and then decide it would be too much work.

I also really wanted to avoid this becoming the Hannah blog.

I have come to realize a few things. One, there are things happening day to day that I would really like to remember, and this seems like a great place to save them. Two, Hannah is the person in our family undergoing the most change day to day, so she ends up being the most interesting thing to talk about.

That said, what do I want to write down today?

Hannah moved up to a bigger size of pajamas recently. They feature a button-up top. Her only other garment that opens in the front like that is a coat, so now every night she happily dons her “night-night coat”

She was up early enough to ‘help’ me pack lunches a few days ago, and started to feel left out that mommy and daddy each had a box with goodies in them but there wasn’t one for Hannah. I got her a bag, and she proceeded to load six Clementine oranges into it. Probably would have made for an odd lunch, but I had one proud little girl.

-Jordan

Meal Plan

Posted on August 3, 2014 by Jordan

One of the many benefits of having a wife who is not only on board with the Dave Ramsey plan, but also a spread sheet enthusiast is that we have historical records of our budget (both planned and actual) going back almost to when we got married.

This means that we aren’t saying “boy it seems that we are spending more on food these days” we are saying “our food spending is %50 higher than it was two years ago!”

I have seen some numbers on the actual rate of increase in food prices, and while they are non trivial, they do not explain the change in our budget. So then the question is, how much of that came from adding Hannah, how much came from changing what kinds of food we buy, and how much is the actual price changing on us?

Surprisingly, it’s hard to know. We don’t have any real records of what individual items we were buying, or what meals we were eating over that time. While it would be wonderful to keep those kinds of records, it starts to seem more than a little silly to devote much time to it right now, given the other things vying for our time.

What I can do is post the meal plan I worked up for the week. I have gotten much more disciplined about doing a full week’s plan now that swinging by the store to grab that one thing we forgot about is a major pain. We don’t always end up making everything on the plan, but it at least gives a good framework to build a shopping list from.

Monday: Grill Burgers
Tuesday: Cabbage Skillet with ham
Wednesday: Carnitas
Thursday: Pesto chicken and pasta
Friday: Chicken and quina
Saturday: Stir-Fry

I would like to actually include links and or post recipes for the things that aren’t obvious like burgers, and in some fantasy world where I can spend 10 hours a week on this, I would do cost per serving breakdowns as well. Here in the world of actual time constraints I think I will be happy with just getting the plan posted, and hope that it comes in handy down the road when I am trying to figure out if our eating habits are what is impacting the monthly budget 🙂

-Jordan

July 2014

Posted on July 28, 2014 by Jordan

Wow, so that goal of a post a week seems pretty darn lofty at this point.

So, anyway we have been doing a lot of things just not necessarily blog worthy things.

If I had to write down a few things I wanted to remember though:

Hannah going into total meltdown when she was informed she couldn’t simultaneously wear two pairs of shoes
Hannah going into a total melt down when Mom opted not to wear the shoes that Hannah picked out for her
Hannah going into total meltdown when Dad opted not to put on the socks Hannah picked out for him, before donning sandals for a trip to the pool

Beyond getting to see what the terrible twos are all about, Heather and I have both kind of settled into our jobs here in KC. Heather is much more of a senior team member, and has gotten to do some training (perhaps more than she wanted to all in one go). I have stayed busy, but it’s been good. I managed about a week to do a deep dive into housekeeping on an existing project that was BADLY in need of some attention. I am amazed how satisfying the results of that effort have been.

And to close, another trip to the park:

-Jordan

18 Months

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Jordan

Hannah is just over 18 months old now.

As I was loading some things into the car tonight before an outing to the park, she was playing in the front yard. When she saw the people walking a few hundred yards down the hill and immediately started loudly saying “hi! hi! hi!” and waving, I realize we are on the brink of a new era with her.

I have a feeling it’s going to be a lot of fun, and probably fast paced 🙂

-Jordan

Unpacked!

Posted on May 12, 2014 by Jordan

Well, it took roughly six weeks, but we have unpacked *ALL* of the boxes from the move.

I have to give most of the credit for that to Heather, I was ready to just kind of ignore the last 10% of the boxes, but she somehow found the energy to keep pushing until everything was unpacked.

That isn’t to say there isn’t some post-move related work still to do… organizing and whatnot, but hey, it’s more progress than I was hoping for at this point.

On a related note, having a house is more work than the condo was. The whole yard thing, while very nice for a toddler adds a substantial amount to the total time per week required to maintain a household. I won’t say I have fully adjusted to that change yet.

It does provide opportunities for things like this though:

It’s hard to complain about that! 🙂

-Jordan

Another First

Posted on April 18, 2014 by Jordan

We got our first Amazon order that came with its own shipping pallet

Side note, you can see that our garage isn’t really organized yet… not even close

Back on topic, we now have a treadmill! It ended up being the heaviest thing I have had to lift in the entire moving process, but last night Heather and I managed to get it down into the basement and setup.

It would be difficult to overstate how happy Heather was to have a treadmill… walking is a big part of her stress management process, and being able to do that while staying close to Hannah is a big deal.

-Jordan

Notes From The Move

Posted on April 14, 2014 by Jordan

We are in KC!

It’s funny how often I think “this could probably be worked up into a blog post” but excess time and energy have been hard to find over the past week or seven.

That being said, I decided to sit down and share a few observations:

We discovered a new game, it’s called “What box did the bottles wind up in?” it is not a fun game. Just to paint the picture, it’s Saturday night, we have spent the entire day trying to unpack enough stuff to live in the house that night, and somewhere along the way we lost the one bottle we had held back from the packing process. (side note, hold back more than one bottle). Hannah only does one bottle at this point, but it’s a big part of her bedtime routine, and getting her settled is pretty important to us getting any sleep. About an hour before bedtime we realized we didn’t have a bottle and shifted our priorities to unpacking “kitchen” boxes, knowing that one of them would contain the treasure. An hour and a half later I and I have abandon trying to put anything away and am just tearing the top open on each kitchen box and trying to unload just enough to see what’s in there (not bottles). At this point there is only one box left in the kitchen, so better late than never right? I open that one and find a single infant bottle. I walked into the next room to share the um… news with Heather and was confronted with an entire wall of boxes marked “kitchen” yay! Hannah got to eat a NASCAR style bedtime bottle where the pit crew frantically reloaded a tiny bottle before she got knocked out of her grove.

When we started gearing up to put our house on the market, we followed the standard advice and packed up lots of clothes and other closet items to de-clutter the house. Given that the weather was something like 14 below zero then, packing all my shorts into a box seemed like a good idea. A month or two, and one move later, it’s getting kind of warm (or was) and *all* my shorts are somewhere in a box marked “garage.” This was perhaps a mistake.

Having a 15 month old is not a force multiplier. Hannah can somehow keep both of us tied up if she is properly motivated. She is really starting to feel at home in the new hose, and that helps a lot, but the first few days were really interesting.

The movers helpfully wrote “MBR” on lots of boxes. I may have been a little out of it anyway, but it did take me a minute to realize I wasn’t looking at a box of master boot records.

Speaking of boxes… I have a couple more to take care of before bed, so I guess I will call this post done. 🙂

-Jordan