Stuffed Animal Madness

As I was cleaning up Elsie's toys one night I realized she has a LOT of stuffed animals. So I started counting. We got up to 20, this is not counting furry friends in the car, under the couch, inside the refrigerator. You get the idea...they pop up everywhere! Sören thought this must be a typical amount of critters for a toddler to have so I called my sister to ask how my friends of the stuffed variety my nephew has. Her answer was "Maybe 5 at the most, why?"

Why?! Becuase for some reason the amount of stuffed animals Elsie has collected is driving me crazy, and we haven't bought her ONE! I was at least hoping my sisiter was in the same boat of annoyance as me. So as I stumble over another stuffed dog I wonder why I'm so heartless in the area of stuffed animals and fear that this blog post will lead cruel relatives to buy Elsie more stuffed animals just to drive me crazy. Be warned...any more stuffed animals into the Erickson house will find a new home at a garage sale or charity pick-up :)

Anywho...here's a picture of Elsie with a few of her friends.

Happy Reading

Here's our little bookworm reading to some of her best friends, Elmo and Piggy. Recently Elsie has become much more attached to her stuffed friends. We learned the hard way that it's NOT OK to throw her baby doll across the room when cleaning up. The anger and fear in Elsie's face when she saw her beloved doll fly across the room was hilarious. By hilarious I mean trying really hard to not let Elsie know we are laughing while acting very concerned about the head injury Bobble (Elsie speak for the doll, who we call Lupita) had sustained from the random act of violence that happened in the Erickson household.

Do the Elsie

The hot new dance craze, sure to take the world by storm:

The Picture Says It All

Elsie is proud to announce that she will be a BIG sister in late July. I (Anne) am finally enjoying food again and am having lots of fun living a nauseous-free life.

Christmas Fun

Well, we made it through several gift openings, lots of travels in the car, and our house is a bit smaller with the addition of Elsie's HUGE new toys. It seems relatives love to buy toddlers big toys. This year's haul includes oversized stuffed animals, a Dora couch and an indoor/outdoor slide. I'm not complaining about the fact that Elsie is spoiled just making a new a new parent observation and wondering if our cute/cozy (MN nice word for small) house can keep up with Elsie! Of course her favorite thing to play with was dad's Gatorade mix stocking stuffer, see picture below.

In this next picture I like to think Elsie is looking excitedley at all her gifts waiting to be opened. In reality she is looking happliy at the fireplace saying "hot hot!"

We were lucky to get a visit from Santa, a.k.a Uncle Matt. As it turns out, all Santas are kind of scary, even those of the "uncle" variety.

Snow is fun, right?

Well, trying to be good Minnesota parents, we bundled Elsie up and went out to have some fun in the snow! Not sure if we got to the fun part, but we did get outside. We quickly learned that 5 minutes outside takes at least 20 minutes: at least 5 minutes getting all our gear on, 5 minutes picking Elsie up each time she fell down, 3 minutes trying to take a picture, and of course lots of time to bring in a crying baby who lost her gloves but does NOT want to come back inside. Oh, how I envy those moms in warm-weather states right now.

Father Daughter Bonding

Here's how Soren and Elsie spend some quality time on Sunday afternoons. Elsie in a basket and they are both looking very interested in something. I bet they are listening to their wondeful mom/wife...

Nope, it's the game.