Easter 2009

Happy Easter!
What a wonderful day to celebrate. We had a fantastic day going to church and celebrating Jesus rising from the dead! It was a great service! Doug was in a drama, and Danika was so excited to see him on stage. And then we got to sit together and sing and worship...it was fantastic.

Then we went out to Doug's Uncle Brad's house for Easter dinner with family. It was great to see everyone and we had a wonderful time. Uncle Brad hid some eggs for Danika to find...and she was excited to hunt for them. It was her first Easter Egg hunt and she did pretty good. :) However, she had JUST woke up from a nap, so her mood was a little fragile, as you will see in a minute.

Here she is searching and finding some eggs:

Here's our little family....I'm hiding my enormous belly under my coat and Danika. :)


And here is an example of Danika's mood. Danika LOVES her Papa...she adores him and being with him. But she was DONE with pictures...so when we kept trying to get a "good one", she had about enough and started to scream. :) Sorry Papa!




Anyway...that was our day. Hope your family had a wonderful celebration as well!

Love - The Bierer's (Doug, Andrea, Danika & Baby #2)

Poor Martin...

Here in the Bierer household, we have one family pet...a wonderful cat named Martin, whom we affectionately call Marty. I have written about Martin before...acknowledging openly that this cat only loves Doug...he hates me...and hates Danika even more. But, I don't think I've ever written about what a wonderful, patient, enduring cat he is. :) This cat puts up with so much....and he is so good to our little girl, even when he doesn't like her.

I thought I should illustrate with pictures.

This is Danika and "her" Marty. Anytime she manages to get close enough to touch him, she screams with delight. And on the rare occasions he lets her pet him, she inevitably is overcome with love for "MY KITTY" as she calls him, that this is what happens:



The funny part is this cat puts up with all of it. Sure...he looks for his first opportunity to run and hide under a piece of furniture, but he never hisses, scratches, or even begins to hurt her at anytime...he just lays there and puts up with it until she lets go long enough for him to escape. I really do love having an animal that is so wonderful with our kiddo. And I can't even begin to tell you what joy he brings to her little life. :)




As you can tell by these pictures, he was in an exceptionally patient mood that day. :)

So after I snapped the above pictures, I turned around at the mirror and was curling my hair and applying makeup. Behind me, Danika is on the bed "loving" Martin and chattering non-stop about her little adventure. She was saying things like,
"My kitty."
"I love you, Marty."
"Nice Marty."
"I LIKE the Kitty!"

I was happy to keep getting ready since she was obviously occupied. But after a while, all I heard was the last phrase....over and over and over....getting higher and higher pitched and more excited. I started to wonder why she "LIKED the kitty" so much....so I put down my curling iron and turned around....and this is what I saw:


Danika was saying "I RIDE the kitty!" and she was sitting squarely on that poor cat's back and jumping up and down for all she was worth. All that was missing was the saddle. Poor Martin! Danika was just thrilled...and I confess that it was hilarious. :) She kept "riding" the kitty for a little while longer....and eventually after I stopped laughing I rescued him. He was none the worse for wear, but happy to be out of the clutches of our two year old. ;)

What a great cat.

Marty- I love you, too!

I'm tired.

All the time. I feel as if I could drift off and snooze any minute. I'm blaming this on pregnancy. It seems like a good excuse. :)

We have had lots going on here...so for now I'll just type what comes to mind and catch up as we go.

Danika has been healthy for a couple weeks, so that is a major accomplishment. If we can manage to ALL wake up without fevers tomorrow, it will be the one of the few recent Easter Sunday's that we haven't been sick in bed. Last year, Doug and I were both sick with the stomach flu and Danika went to church with Dana and Susan while we stayed in bed. We are hoping tomorrow does not repeat that performance.

Speaking of performance, Doug has been quite the drama guy at church lately. :) Currently he is "Peter" in a series of dramas that coincides with our sermon series on Peter. He has been practicing a ton, and I know that he has worked really hard on all of this. Yesterday at the Good Friday service it was clear that all his hard work has paid off....he was awesome. The whole service was awesome actually. It brought tears to my eyes at many different points. It was just very cool to be there and just really made you focus on the price Christ paid for us.

For those of you who keep up on Susan (Doug's Mom) and her health stuff, she has been getting some test results that have the doctors confused and frustrated right now, so we are waiting for more tests this week to see if they can make any sense of all of it. As always, we appreciate your prayers...she is the best "Mimi" in the world, and we much prefer life when it is moving in a direction that cancer is less of a concern, not more of one. But, as she often reminds us, we trust a God who loves us more than we can imagine and always has a plan for us. So...we rest in that and wait.

April always brings with it's beauty and green the terrible spring allergy season that affects me so much. It was even worse when I was pregnant with Danika, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I'm going through it again. But I am still so thrilled to be seeing sunshine and grass! Come on summer!

That's all for now.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Easter. God and His amazing gift of salvation...I never get over how incredible it all is. Happy Easter!

It's a boy....we think.....

Well...Friday was the big 20 week sonogram....we were excited and hoping that they would be able to tell us if it was a girl or boy....

The baby was extremely uncooperative. He stayed in a tough position the whole time and it was pretty hard for the sonogram tech to even get the measurements needed. We got a few "glimpses" of the necessary area....and it sure looks like a boy. But, that baby just wouldn't hold still and let us get a really good look. So...it's still pretty up in the air.

But, in our home, we are now referring to the baby as "he" and trying to come up with boy names. :) They said I will have to have another sonogram in a month to measure the stuff they couldn't see Friday, so we should have another shot at a "for sure" answer. :) We will keep you posted.

Danika's First Haircut - 3-1-09

March 1, 2009
Well...it took her so long to GROW any hair that we didn't really need to cut it. But, we finally took her in for her first real haircut. We went to one of the shops with the little tractor-chair for her to sit in and a tv to watch. She was SO good...and so excited to get to watch veggie tales while it happened. :)







The finished product was great. :) What a fun "first"! :)

Let there be light.

It's amazing how much difference a little sunshine makes. The last few days it has been wonderfully warm for this time of year and we have actually been exposed to REAL SUNSHINE. In Erie, PA in February, this is a miracle. An act of God to keep people like me from jumping out of a 2nd story window. The bleak, gray, cold months in the dead of winter are always the hardest for me. I find it so depressing...but a little sunshine goes a LONG way in making me feel better about just about everything in life.

So.....thank you , God, for the pretty sunshine and the warm air...this little child is very, very grateful.

What immune system?

Well...the sickness in our house is NEVER going to end. I'm sure of it. And my sanity is quickly running out...the two are definitely related. We had TWO days of relative good health in our house last week. That's right - TWO.

Danika had to stay home from daycare on Friday because she was sick AGAIN. Yes...that's right...I'm not making this up....sick for the second time within a WEEK! Only healthy for a few days before something struck again. This time it is a really runny/stuffy nose and a bad case of the runs. A really bad case...poor child has had enough, don't you think? I feel so bad for her. The poor little thing only weighed 23-24 lbs when the flu stuff hit last week, and now she is down to 22lbs. She can't afford to lose ANY weight! She was getting out of the tub last night and Doug looked at her, and then looked at me. I glanced at her little body with the big head, big belly and skinny little arms and legs....and then Doug said, "Gollum. She looks like Gollum from the Lord of the Rings". I had to laugh out loud...he was right.

So...lest you think I'm a terrible mom, I took her to the doctor. They are sufficiently concerned (as am I) that she is continuing to get sick over and over again. It is a little worrisome that she is averaging at least one illness a week as of late, and last week she was able to squeeze two in. It doesn't appear to be the same thing each time...the symptoms are always different than whatever she had last. And they are worried about the weight loss. Like I said, she can't afford it.

The doc put her on an antibiotic and said if she gets sick again within the next 4 weeks, we have to go get blood work and stool samples done to start figuring out what is wrong. So I'm praying the antibiotic works!

Just wanted to keep you posted. Danika was kind enough to share part of her illness, so now Doug and I both have drippy stuffy noses. It's no fun, but at least we all match. :) We are just hoping she keeps the other half of her weekend sickness to herself. :) So far, so good.