Audriana's Big Speech

Grandma and Grandpa Anderson are in town for spring break.  Audriana delivered a big speech to share with her adoring grandparents :)

Happy Birthday, Grandpa!

On March 14th, Grandpa Te celebrated his birthday in Minnesota.  We were sorry that we couldn't be there to help cheer on the party, but we were definitely thinking about him on our drive down to Seattle on Saturday!  Happy Birthday...we love you!

Audriana laughing at her daddy...

To satisfy all of Audriana's fans, here is a bonus footage of her giggling at her daddy's skiing story. Warning: Her giggles are contagious...

Giggly, Happy Baby....

Bjorn came home from a day of skiing at Steven's Pass today and shared some skiing stories with his baby girl.  As you can tell from the video, Audriana was very tickled by her daddy's story-telling.  Enjoy!

St. Patrick's Day Weekend in Seattle!

(From top to bottom:  Audriana enjoying her hotel room on the Seattle Waterfront; Audriana and Daddy at the Seattle Aquarium; Audriana and Daddy at Pike's Market on our way to the Crumpet Shop; Audriana on the way home...tuckered out!)

To celebrate St. Patrick's Day Weekend, Bjorn's Squadron had a overnight social function in Seattle.  We decided it would be a great opportunity to introduce Audriana to city life in the great Pacific NW.  We took her to the Seattle Aquarium.  I am still not sure who was more fascinated with the exhibits...baby or daddy.  In the evening,  in true Anderson form, we introduced her to yet another beer drinking establishment.  On Sunday morning, we took her to see Pike's Market to try some tasty treats at the Crumpet Shop and at Piroshky's.  As you can see in the last picture,  she was a tired little puppy by the end of the weekend!

Audriana the Ardvark!

Ever since Audriana was days old, she and her daddy would play anteater.  Bjorn would have her straddle his arm and they would go "hunting" for ants in our house (we really don't have ants in our house)...with Scout running scared silly from them.  The last time she did this with her daddy, she fell asleep in his arms.  So much for the hunt...

Wanna buy a house, anyone??

We are selling our house!  It looks like a storm ripped through our neighborhood, but really it was the all due to the handy work of Bjorn, with the assistance of Audriana and myself, of course.  We are getting ready to put our house on the market.  So we thought that it might be good idea to start pruning our yard a bit.  As you can see, it got a little out of hand.  But at least the yard looks decent!  

Audriana meets her friends...

Since Audriana was 7 weeks old, we have been getting together for a playgroup with two other new moms.  However, we always keep our babies either in their car seats, carrier or joggers when we are out and none of the girls have actually "met" each other.  So we thought that it would be a good idea for the babies to actually meet.  We put them on their stomachs and poof! all three babies were like over-turned turtles :)  From the top view, I will let you surmise which is Audriana....

Our trip to Whistler, BC

For Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday, we decided to take our first family trip abroad (sans Scout)...to Canada!  

As some of you may know, Bjorn is an avid Cross-Country skier and well, I can pretty much go along with that because its pretty slow (as in, there is no skiing down a massive hill and breaking any bones).  But because this was our first time at Whistler, we decided to try our hand at snow-shoeing.  So we rented snow-shoes here in town and brought the necessary apparel to bundle Audriana up underneath Bjorn's jacket.  It was suppose to be a fun-take-it-easy-enjoy-the-scenary trip around A trail.  Unfortunately, it did not turn out that way. 

Snow-shoeing was a blast...for the first 2 hours.  It was after hour 3 that I decided Bjorn tricked me into going snow-shoeing.  Because we (he) were in such a hurry to get on the snow-shoe trail, we (me) did not get the opportunity to look at a map to check out what the different trails were.  As it turns out, my husband took us on a 3.5 -hour, 7k death march.  We got lost because Bjorn thought that the orange trail would be the "easy" trail.  It was not.  In fact, it was the LONGEST trail.  

At anyrate, it makes for a great story and we hope to take another trip soon!  

Bath time!

Here are some recent pictures that I took.  The bath time, I had Bjorn snap because Audriana was looking so cute!

From Week One to Week Eight!

New Grandparents.

The Day We Welcomed Audriana

Bjorn returned from his deployment early in preparation for Audriana's birth.  Over deployment, Sopanha sent him a few books based on recommendations of some of our friends who have been through this themselves.  Bjorn definitely read up on it and was a great birthing coach (more on that later...).   Because of Bjorn's early arrival from deployment, we got to celebrate Thanksgiving together.  It was wonderful.  

From the onset, Sopanha's due date kept fluctuating.  So when December rolled around, we were ready.  We had several false alarms.  Sopanha's parents flew in with the hopes that Baby Anderson would have made an appearance by that time.  Unfortunately, that was not the case.  Finally on the morning of December 11th, Sopanha decided that we should go to the family birthing center.   It sorta felt like it could be labor pains and we were past our due date.  When we got to the hospital, Sopanha was only 1.5 cm dialated.  Since we were past our due date, the nurse suggested that we go for an hour walk around the hospital and come back.  We did that and there was no change.   We were both disappointed.  Coincidentally, we had a midwife appointment that day.  When we went to see our midwife, Mary, in a matter of 30 minutes, Sopanha had dilated to 4 cm and her water broke.  After that, the real contractions began and it was no joke!  Mary told us that we should continue walking, as first pregnancies generally take quite a while before the actual delivery.  

We decided to walk to the hospital (it was right next door to the clinic).  Unfortunately, Sopanha ended up needing to be wheelchaired next door.  We got to the Family Birthing Center at 3:00pm.  Audriana was born at 6:59pm.  So contrary to our Mary's expectation, Audriana was a speedy delivery!  We barely had time to get Sopanha admitted to the hospital in between contractions.  While Sopanha was about 7 months along, she decided that she would try to do the delivery drug-free.  When we got to the hospital on December 11, Sopanha declared that drugs were her friends and insisted on their presence immediately.  Unfortunately, the epidural never took and Audriana was delivered au natural.  

Bjorn was an awesome coach!  He read up on "The Birthing Partner."  He was so good about helping her breathe through contractions and the nurses were extremely impressed with him.  They even asked if he learned his coaching skills through a birthing class.  He causally told them that he just read a book on it.  They swooned and he smiled smugly (okay, Sopanha isn't really sure that that happened since she was busy with contractions, but she did recall that there was a vague smugness to Bjorn's voice).  

Our beautiful little girl was born with a head full of hair, blue-gray eyes, and red pouty-lips.  She weighed in at 6 lbs. 14 oz. and 19.5 inches.  We instantly fell in love with her!  

How we found out we were expecting!

In February 2008, we decided to take a pre-deployment vacation Thailand since Bjorn was going to be going on his second deployment later that summer.  We bought tickets in March and began planning our trip out there.  We would leave the States in mid-April and return at the end of the month.  We planned on seeing Sopanha's uncle in Bangkok, island hopping and perhaps a short excursion to Cambodia.  It would be the honeymoon we never had.  

In the meantime, Sopanha began job hunting.  She landed several offers, but accepted a position at criminal law / employment law firm in Bellingham.  Sopanha was set to start her first day a week before we would leave for Thailand.   The weekend before her first day, we found out that Sopanha was pregnant!  We actually did not think this was going to happen and took the pregnancy test on a whim.  When Bjorn saw the two blue lines, were we ever excitedly surprised!   Sopanha ended up being pretty sick on our trip to Thailand.  Since Sopanha had never had morning sickness before, we weren't sure if it was due to the pregnancy or simply because we were eating foods that her system was not used to.

At anyrate, we were pretty lucky when our OB ordered an ultrasound right away before our trip to Thailand....and we got another upon our return from Thailand.  We got to see our little peanut LOTS during the first trimester.    It wasn't until Sopanha was 13 weeks along that we told all of our family and friends over a PowerPoint slideshow.  Hopefully, we'll be able to post that slideshow in a little bit.

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