Baby Angelina!

Sarah took a tumble in the house this evening and landed on her face on the stairs. We had a bloody mess to clean up, and she now has a nice fat lip to show for it! It actually looks much worse in person than in the pictures...guess it didn't photograph well. We think she looks a little like Angelina, especially since she's all dressed up in her "evening gowns" (aka Disnesy princess constumes). She milked it for all it was worth though...had a Chick-fil-a milkshake for dinner!

March Updates

It appears as though I have defaulted to monthly blogging rather than anything more frequent than that, so here goes with our March updates:

The House:
Ahhh, sweet success! Things are finally underway! Construction began March 17th, and during the first week and a half we have footers dug and poured and the foundation is in. Trusses are scheduled to be delivered to our property on Monday (March 30th), with framing beginning next week. If everything stays on schedule, we should be closing sometime during the second half of July. Here are a few pics of the progress that has been made so far.

Day 1: We have footers and our building permit!

Week 1: Foundation (view looking at front steps)

Week 1: Foundation (view looking at garage)

Sarah:
This month has been busy for Sarah, but that has become rather routine recently. At the beginning of the month, our family joined the church we have been attending since we moved to Cary (Kirk of Kildaire Presbyterian). At this time, we also had Sarah baptized into the church. It was so nice of all our family to be there to share in this special time with us. Sarah did great and didn't freak out when standing in front of the congregation or when getting sprinkled during her actual baptism.

Sarah in her baptism dress

The three of us outside the church

Lehtinen and Bagwell families

Preschool is going great for her. She really likes her teachers and most of her classmates, and she is learning so much! Still no success at the potty training since we had our potty boot-camp at the end of February. She had great success that weekend, but has remained uninterested since. She keeps informing us that she's not ready and that she'll learn soon. If you ask her when she's gonna learn to use the potty, she answers with, "Soon. I not quite ready yet." So we have decided to be patient a little longer and let her indicate to us when she is ready. She knows what she needs to do, and I guess she'll do it when she is ready and not a minute before!

Last week she developed pinkeye in both eyes, so we have been recovering from that this week. Sadly, I think I have it now, so I guess we'll just pass the eye drops around the family!

We are signed up to begin parent-toddler swimming lessons after Easter. Hopefully this will be a positive experience for Sarah and we will be able to continue with additional swimming lessons after this first set of classes is complete. I think it will be harder for me than for her. I am a tad overprotective and I have a fear of letting her go completely underwater. I have to keep telling myself that she will not drown in a controlled setting!

Allison and Duane:
Things are about the same for us. We are finally getting excited about building the house and moving soon. We have been in a holding pattern for so long now, not knowing when things would get started or how long we would be stuck in this apartment, so we are glad that things are finally underway and the end is in sight!

Our jobs are both good. Duane is always busy, and my work goes in cycles. Some weeks I am swamped and other weeks I have nothing to do. After a couple of weeks of nothing to do, I think I am finally getting fairly busy again, so that will certainly help pass the time at work each day! With several of our friends and family members getting laid off during these tough economic times, we both feel blessed to have jobs that seem stable.

We celebrated my 32nd birthday last weekend...boy, am I getting old! I took a vacation day from work on Friday with the plans to have a "me" day of haircut, shopping, and a girl movie. I made it through the haircut and some of the shopping, but then received the phone call from daycare about Sarah's pinkeye, so my afternoon was cut short. Oh well, still nice to have a day off from work! Sarah and Duane took me out for dinner, and they gave me two nice gifts (digital photo frame for my office at work, and a nice new rain jacket). We are planning to have a delayed birthday celebration/get-together with some of our Winston-Salem friends next weekend.

Guess that's all the news from here. We have had quite a bit of rain recently, which has led to some LONG weekend of being cooped up inside. We've made the best of it though, and have managed to get out a bit. Last night we took Sarah to Barnes and Noble for kid's storytime. There was a special appearance by her favorite storybook character, Curious George. So I'll close with some pictures from that. More updates to come in April!

Sarah waiting for storytime at the bookstore

Sarah even got to meet Curious George

At last...Sarah Singing the "Baby Bumblebee Song"

Update While I Should Be Working...

What can I say? Things are a bit slow for me at work today, and likely the rest of this week, so I thought I would take advantage of the situation and update the Lehtinen Family Blog!

Progress on the house...none. Okay, so maybe a little progress, but nothing substantial. This has frustrated us quite a bit the past few weeks (and months), but I dare say I think we are finally getting somewhere! The contract and purchase agreements are signed, we have written the check for our deposit and builder's fees, and as best as we can tell they have done nothing. For weeks, the mountain of dirt has remained on our lot and has not moved. We decided they must be moving the dirt by the handful, rather than using modern equipment. But alas, last week progress was made and the lot is now leveled. And even more exciting is the fact that we actually had our groundbreaking meeting with the construction supervisor today. Definite progress toward getting things started and finished. After some tense moments regarding the removal of pine trees from the back of our lot, we finally came to an agreement with the supervisor, the trees are scheduled to be removed, and construction should start around February 27. Eighteen weeks later, we should be done. So I really have no new pictures to post, since things pretty much look the same. Didn't have the camera handy today, but I'll try to take a picture of the level lot next time we are over there and post it for you to see. The changes that have occurred since the last picture are not impressive. I'm holding onto the hope that we'll actually move in before Sarah goes to college!

Sarah is great. Constantly challenging us and keeping us on our toes. She loves her preschool and is learning so much. EXCEPT for how to use the potty. Yes folks, we are still fighting the good fight with that one. I think we have decided that this Saturday is the day that we stay home and attempt the potty training again. I'll let you know how it goes...keep your fingers crossed and say a prayer for us that we all 3 survive the day!

Otherwise, she is beginning to develop quite the imagination. Besides there being a tiger in the toilet (see previous blog post), we also have a dinosaur that lives in the time-out corner (hence prohibiting her from remaining in the corner because the dinosaur will surely eat her alive if she stays there), a lady that lives on the time-out stairs (we moved the time-out spot in an effort to avoid the aforementioned dinosaur), and ladybugs that live in her bed at night (obviously a tactic used to get out of going to bed each night). So we certainly have a lively house!

This past weekend we traveled to Anderson, SC so Mimi and Papa Bagwell could take us all to the circus. Sarah had been talking nonstop about the circus for weeks, and had decided what circus animal each person was going to ride. Daddy would ride the tiger, Mommy would ride the elephant, Papa would ride the "rebas" (zebras), and Mimi would ride the elephants also. What was Sarah to ride? The polar bear, of course! Because every circus definitely has a polar bear in their menagerie! Luckily, once we got there, she was so mesmerized by the elephants, horses, "rebas", and tigers that she didn't notice that polar bears were not part of the act. Whew...close call on that one!

No big upcoming plans. We're planning to actually stay in town for a few weekends now. Hopefully we will conquer the potty training during that time. We also have Sarah's baptism and our joining of the church coming up in early March. Otherwise, no events on the horizon.

Hope you are all happy and healthy!

Two is a Funny Age!

A few funny things from Sarah lately:

1- We are working on potty training, and it's not going so well. She won't stay on the potty for more than 5 seconds. She wants to wear a pull-up even though she doesn't really have any desire to actually start using the potty. Tonight, she was sitting on her potty, and she kept jumping up and saying "There's a tiger in there!!!" Not sure where that came from, but convincing her that there is no tiger in the toilet has become our new challenge.

2- Sarah LOVES to sing! She has mastered her ABCs, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," "Row Row Row Your Boat," and a few others. I have been working with her on some of the simple preschool church songs like "Jesus Loves Me." So now, at night when we sing songs before bed, she says, "Sing Jeezy mommy, sing Jeezy." I'm sure Jesus would be thrilled to know that he is interchangeable with a rapper!
She's also still hung up on the Christmas songs. According to her, the lyrics to "Jingle Bells" go something like this:
"Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way. Oh a farmer..."
She just sings that over and over. The song ends after "farmer" and we start all over again. We're hoping that the Valentine's Day unit will begin soon at her preschool so that we can get her mind off of Christmas...she has a LONG time to wait for Santa to come again!

3- Otherwise, she has just become very assertive and opinionated. When we ask her to do something, she will hold up a hand and say, "Wait a minute, wait just a minute." Then, a few minutes later, she will say, "Okay, I ready." A variation of this is when we tell her it is time to wind down and get ready for bed. She'll stop in her tracks and say, "Five more minutes!" in an effort to bargain with us and postpone the inevitable.

I'm sure there are plenty of other funny stories that I am just forgetting about as I type this. In the meantime, I will close with a video of Sarah's rendition of one verse of the "Baby Bumble-bee" song, followed by some other tunes you may or may not recognize! ENJOY!
(Technical difficulties with the video uploading...I'll try again later.)

We Wish You a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Again, in true Allison fashion, I have been delinquent at updating the blog. So much has happened since I last blogged that I am not sure where to begin. So here it all is, in no particular (or chronological) order:

1- Just before my last day of work for 2008, I found out that I passed the exam I took back in early November! What a relief! So I now have my RAC (Regulatory Affairs Certification), which hopefully will hold some good weight in my new career once I can gain some practical experience to go along with the certification. If you are REALLY curious, and want to know what this all means, you can click on the following link:
http://www.raps.org/personifyebusiness/Certification/AboutRAC/tabid/233/Default.aspx

2- We received some more exciting news just before we headed out of town to celebrate Christmas with our families: our lot has been released! Of course, this all happened just as we and our realtor were about to be on vacation for a few days, so we have been really anxious to get things moving. We are all set to meet with our realtor tomorrow morning to go over things again, come up with our negotiating strategy, and come up with a list of additional upgrades we want in the house above what is standard. Hopefully, we will be able to sit down with the builders later this week or over the weekend to officially write the contract, sign everything, give them some money, and get started with construction. We are hoping to be under construction by the end of January!

3- The weeks leading up to Christmas were full of excitement, despite the fact that we were cramped up in the townhouse, with no Christmas tree (no room in the inn, so to speak), and really no other Christmas decorations either. It seemed sorta non-Christmasy to us. So we tried to get Sarah out to a lot of events to allow her to really experience Christmas. We went to the Apex Christmas parade in early December, we spent lots of evenings riding around looking at Christmas lights and decorations, we attempted to visit Santa at the mall (didn't go so well), we took a ride on the Santa Train in Durham, and Sarah had a Christmas party at her preschool. Since we were going to be in Charlotte on Christmas Eve, Santa made a special trip to Sarah's house earlier in the week. She baked cookies for Santa, and went to bed very willingly in anticipation of the presents Santa would deliver. She was super-excited the next morning to come downstairs to a new art easel and lots of art supplies, a new pair of Dora sunglasses, some new clothes for Emily (her bunny from Build-a-Bear), and a clothes armoire for storing Emily's expanding wardrobe! And of course, her visits to both sets of grandparents also resulted in lots of new toys and books to entertain her. She has really had a good time playing with everything!

We have all enjoyed some time off from work and preschool...how nice to have a break from the normal busy routine! We were all 3 off last week for Christmas, and we are off again this week as well. Sarah and I have enjoyed sleeping in until 8:00 each morning, so next week will be a rude awakening for us!

Hope you are all well and that you had a very merry Christmas with family and friends. We wish you all a safe, happy and healthy 2009! I'll post again in the New Year!

Long Time, No Post!

Hello everyone! Sorry if it seems like we have fallen off the face of the earth, but I assure you that we are all here and doing well. We have been incredibly busy the last month or so; hence, my delinquency in updating the blog.

Work is going well for both me and Duane. I did take my regulatory affairs certification exam at the beginning of November. Despite the months of studying, it was still an insanely difficult exam, and I feel as though nothing I studied actually showed up on the exam. So that was frustrating and a bit scary as well. It will be 8-10 weeks before I get the results back, so I am just trying to put it out of my mind for the time being...I can't change the outcome at this point, so there is no need to be stressed. Please keep your fingers crossed that I passed...I don't know if I have it in me to retake the exam, and it is a certification that I really do need for my new career. Now that the exam is over, I have had lots of time to do "real" work, and let me assure you, I have been busy, busy, busy! Duane continues to impress everyone at his job. He has gotten a lot accomplished in a short time, and as a result, he gets roped into giving a presentation about once a week. But he is really enjoying what he is doing, so that makes the presentations seem not so bad (most of the time).

In other news, we are making progress on our pursuit for a house here in Cary. We continue to be in love with one neighborhood and particular floorplan in that neighborhood, and we keep coming back to it no matter how much we look elsewhere. So a couple of weekends ago we took the plunge and put down a deposit to reserve a lot in the neighborhood. We selected our lot and paid our deposit...now all we have to do is wait until the city releases the lots to the builders, and we will be all set to officially go under contract and begin construction. They anticipated that the lots would be released before Thanksgiving, but it doesn't look like that is going to be the case. Which works out fine for us, since we have our lease at the townhouse until the end of July. We would love to close on the new house in early June, take our time moving in and unpacking as much as we can on our own, and then have the movers come at the end to move all the big furniture. While we wait for the lots to be released, we have been busy with several banks and mortgage companies, "shopping" for the company that is going to work with us the most and give us the best interest rate and incentives. I am sure once construction starts, we will get more anxious and impatient. But for now we are just happy knowing that the end is in sight, and it makes it so much easier to face spending the winter months in this townhouse.

So, in case you are curious about the details of the house, here's a quick summary: It's 3300 square feet on 0.24 acres (which is a pretty large lot for the Raleigh area). Downstairs is the formal dining room, the office, a large family room, an eat-in kitchen, the laundry room, a full bathroom and the master suite. Upstairs is the bonus room, 3 bedrooms, and 2 full bathrooms. So it's PLENTY of space for the 3 of us, Mr. Winston, and any subsequent Little Lehtinens that may one day be added to our family (no plans for that anytime in the immediate future). Here are a couple of pics:

This is a cut-off picture of the model home. We will be building this same house.

This is a picture of our lot of dirt. It's a nice flat lot (the mound at the back will be leveled).

As for Sarah, which is really why everyone reads this blog anyway, she is doing great! She talks all the time, and we can carry on complete conversations with her now. It is so nice to be able to understand everything she says, and for her to be able to communicate things with us rather than having to guess what's going on all the time like you do when they are infants. She's a real little person now! She has been extremely healthy since we have moved here...she has her first little cold now, but nothing that gets her down. So we are so fortunate in that respect. We are still battling with the whole potty training issue. She can basically change her diaper on her own, but she refuses to do anything on the potty. Today she spent the morning in "big girl panties", and sitting on the potty, but no progress. She just peed all over herself and the floor each time, and Duane and I ran ourselves ragged wiping it all up. So we are on a break for now, as she is clearly not quite ready to do this. We will keep trying, but we are not forcing the issue...no point in all 3 of us getting frustrated and still not accomplishing our goal! As a quick re-cap, in October we did take her to a pumpkin farm for the day one Saturday and she had a blast. And she really got the hang of trick-or-treating at Halloween as well. Since we don't really live in a neighborhood, we took her to trick-or-treat at the mall. The stores were giving out candy and stickers, and there was a kid's music group there and a magician there for entertainment. So it was a good time. We re-used the bumblebee costume from last year since it still fit her...it was funny to see how much more grown-up she looked this year compared to last year. We do have pictures from the pumpkin patch and Halloween that we have not downloaded yet (slack, I know). I'll update this post with the pictures once we get them downloaded on the computer.

We are looking forward to a little break from the norm next week. We will be visiting all the family and enjoying lots of yummy food! We will be headed to SC on Wednesday morning to visit Mimi and Papa and Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Marisa. Mimi and I will do our usual Black Friday shopping, and then Friday afternoon we will head to Charlotte to visit with Grammy and Paka, Aunt Kristin, Uncle Mike, Madison and Brady. Hopefully our friends Jennie and Julia will be able to fit in a visit with us as well! We'll be heading back to Cary Sunday morning so we can get ready for a week back at work and school!

Hard to believe that the Holidays are already here. Hope you are all doing well and are taking time to enjoy the season. I won't promise to update soon, as I would just be setting myself up for failure with that promise. But I will TRY to squeeze in another post before Christmas!