Giggling Over the Kids

So Den and I, at 9pm are pretty much comatose. However, Eddie had a 1.5 hour nap today and is raring to go up in his room. Josie now has what he's been battling most of the week-- a 102+ degree fever, plus she is teething. Eddie now has a frog in his throat, but seems to be past the fever. It was no surprise that Josie woke tonight (we're not sure if she was aided by Eddie or not). We had Eddie's monitor on to see if he is winding down. Then we hear the baby start screaming. We hear Eddie yell, 'oh the baby' and hear his footsteps run towards his door. The letter 'E' on his door slams back against the door and we flip on the video monitor to watch the reunion (not enough time to do anything, so we may as well get some entertainment).

He goes running in her room and she starts squealing in delight and he is laughing. I hope this type of relationship continues. Meanwhile we are cracking up, listening to him try and comfort her. It was quite cute actually. Unfortunately he was not sucessful, so off we go.

I've now got a whole que of photos lined up to upload (and haven't even finished FLA yet), so hopefully I can pop those up over the weekend.

Blog Posts Swirling in my Head

I have a zillion posts running around my head, asking to be written. From Josie's 10 months (now almost 11) update, Eddie turning 3, preschool drama, soft playroom efforts, new books of friends, and just little fun things about the kids. I do plan to post. I have 3 night meetings this week though, so we'll see how it all goes.

I do miss posting as frequently as I used to...

Couple more FLA posts

At the rate I'm going, I'll have all the FLA pictures posted by summer...guess I'm trying to post too many pictures. :)

I love this picture because if you look closely, I'm not hunchbacked, but have Josie on my back. The buildings I'm photographing make up our hotel. It was about 7am.

Focus on the sunglasses...
We visited a little park called Flamingo Gardens. On 78-speed, yet everyone was good natured about it.
Here's everyone on the little train ride. Kind of a waste of a ride as we couldn't understand a word the driver was saying and he kept stopping short of what he was talking about so that we were looking at the giant grapefruits when he had moved onto the lemon trees.

These photos are about a month old--can you tell?

For daddy...

I really hope I get the chance this week to do Josie's 10 month update before it is eclipsed by both her brother's THIRD year update and her moving on to 11 months.

Den is out west right now. Poor guy left Sunday night. We took him to the airport at 5pm and his plane sat for 3 hours before taking off at 9pm due to the storms. He didn't get to his ultimate destination until 5am our time--so essentially an all nighter. Then he had to be up the next day for meetings all day. This would be classified as the un-glamorous part of travel.

I tried to post yesterday, but blogger wasn't taking pictures. Really making me think harder about making the switch to wordpress--it's now free and far more user friendly -- kind of like blogger :)

Notice Eddie's shoes? They grew--that's what he says anyway. He's just about outgrown his crocs (his beloved Mickey crocs no less) and his very first pair of crocs were this color. He's worn them all winter long. Basically refuses to wear any other shoes. But then he has some fat feet, so I can't blame him.

Here Josie is playing her usual kid sister role of pestering her brother. I need to figure out how to deal with that better, but that's another post. Den gets home tomorrow night.

More FLA photos

As we recover from the ice storm, pictures of FLA seemed approrpriate. A friend commented that my blog is very much like a scrapbook--this is good, as I'm still working on the scrapbook from our trip to Alaska 1.5 years ago and stopped in my tracks on Eddie's baby book at about 4 months of age. And of course Josie ain't got nothing.

She loved this mirror, which was actually the closet door. When we first walked in the room, we thought the place was huge and then realized it was a mirror. Eddie was not so lucky. The first night, when we were all exhausted. He went running down the hall and slammed right into the mirror--like a bird that hits a clear window. We were trying to make him feel better while stiffling our laughs.

This Ergo carrier has turned out to be fabulous--well, this is the borrowed one.
G'ma and G'pa sit with Eddie on the river cruise we took with some of our FLA cousins. The hands are to hide his face from the camera.
Here is cousin Sami--she and her dad had some quality time with Josie on the boat. Notice here that Sami is in long pants and long sleeves and my daughter is in no sleeves. That is the difference in a child born and raised in south FLA and one not. :)

Here are g'parents Wisc. with the kids after the cruise--was fun to see all the houses along the water and hear the stories.

Enjoy the photos.

Brace Yourself

First the pictures, because I wrote the text first. I think I still owe a 10 month update and it's coming...
Eddie loves playing with his leapfrog click start computer and is getting quite good with the mouse. J is eating chunkier foods.



A friend and I agonized over wether to get this adorable pink sweater--and I'm so glad we did. She looks so cute in it--wish I had clothes that hip.
Den decided to give the ergo a shot and he really liked it. I bought a used one recently and it doesn't seem to be working out as well as the other I borrowed. I"ll give it one more shot and then give up and buy new.

This last picture of the smiling Eddie is after he worked hard to stack all that stuff on top of the fire truck. I was just shocked he wanted his photo taken.

Brace Yourself is what I wrote in an email before I told Den his car had a flat tire. My life feels like a Country/Western song right about now. Den is out of town. He'll be gone til Monday. Fortunately I've imported G'parents Ohio since he'll be gone over the weekend. From Oct. to now, he traveled only one week in December. That's more time at home than since I met him--and it's been nice. He's already got a trip scheduled one week after he returns.







I decided to drive his car on Wednesday. Trying to get the car as close to the curb as possible in front of our house I manage to gauge the sidewall of the tire--mind you the car has about 1000 miles on it. I don't even have the door open and I can hear the air leaking out. Went flat in less than 10 minutes. This is the kind of crazy thing Den does, not me. :)

My Thurs. was so crazy, I literately had no time to have the spare put on, so our car sat in front of the house with a big 'ole flat, if I leave it too long like that, the neighbors will probably worry I'll put it on blocks next in the front yard.


Josie wakes up Thurs. morning with a rash in her diaper area that was spreading all over her body. After killing an hour with the doctor, turns out she is allergic to penacillion/amoxicillian/augmentan--that whole family of drugs. Apparently sulfa drugs are commonly used when thee is an allergy to penecillian--I'm allergic to sulfa--sure hope she isn't allergic to that too. So I guess it's okay that right after I gave her a dose of amoxicillian this morning I dropped the bottle and pick sticky stuff spilled not only in a puddle at my feet, but reminded me of the blood-splatter tests I learned about in another life--it left pink 10 feet from the place of impact.

You know you're at the peds office a lot when the staff knows you. I can't imagine families of 5 kids.

Also on Thurs. We heard back from the first of about 6-8 preschools we are considering for Eddie--we're number 28 on the waitlist. No, that's not a typo. Too bad because I really liked that one. Went to another open house Thurs. They wanted an $80 non-refundable application fee. I'm tempted not to apply on principal alone--$80!!! How much processing is involved to tell me that I'm on the waitlist? Too bad because it seemed like an interesting option.

On Friday went to yet another preschool open house. This one sounded more promising. There were more openings in Eddie's age group than any other school we've considered, and if I get there at 5am on the day of registration, we have a really good shot of getting in and at least I would know. But wait, there's more....

Friday I decide to clean Josie's high chair and run the parts through the dishwasher. By dinner time I'd forgotten to put the straps back on. While I was getting carry out, G'ma Ohio was feeding Josie. Well, after she got a bib. Problem was Josie managed to 'jump' out of the chair while g'ma was getting the bib. That's how Eddie described it. We're not sure if she hit her head or not because Eddie is the only one who saw her fall. I was remarkably calm, after all, Ed had fallen 32 inches from our bed a couple times and this was only 26 inches and we kinda think she fell on her bum.

Either way, doctor's office instructed me to wake her every 2 hours until I went to bed and then every 4 hours after that--for two nights in a row. Ugh. Talk about establishing bad sleeping habits. Oh well.

Saturday was a little better after such crazy Wed., Thurs. and Fridays. Only 48 hours till Den gets home and then another 7 days before he leaves again.

Florida photos part 1 of many

First--thanks to everyone who assured us that we had not cemented Eddie's future as a social deviant. It sure made us both feel better to have all the various perspectives to get a reality check. Now I'll just have to find something else to freak out about...


At the end of January, we went to Florida, along with G'ma and G'pa Wisc. It was a great trip--so good that we're looking to do it again next year.

We stayed at this FABULOUS place called High Noon Resort. There were a lot of retirees there but even more repeat guests. People were booking their next year's stay as they were checking out and several people commented on how we were lucky to have gotten in at the last minute booking in December.

It is in a cute little place called Lauderdale by the Sea, just north of Fort Lauderdale. I suppose I should be careful about telling too many people about it, so shh.
By the time we booked they only had oceanfront rooms left, so that's what we took. We had a one-bedroom suite with a full kitchen and two baths. Our room couldn't have been more than 20 yards from the beach--even tho G'pa Wisc and Den were the only ones who went in the ocean--it was just too cold.

Gparents Wisc. took a regular hotel room at the same place and commuted through the sand to get to our place.

We commandeered this table by the pool several times, enjoying lots of watermelon, puffs and cheer-nos (cheerios).
Check this guy out! Den got a bunch of cool pictures of him.



I have a similar picture of Eddie with the watermelon when he was a little bit older.
I have several more pictures of the trip to post, but blogger doesn't like more than 4 or 5 at a time...

Kicked out of Gymnastics Class

Another computer hiccup is delaying the posting of Florida pictures and pictures of Josie being 10 months.

But, I can tell you that I took Eddie to his first gymnastics class today and the teacher asked us to leave. I'm not kidding. It's the kind where the kids separate from the parents and it was geared for ages 3 and up (Eddie will be 3 in 3 weeks, so I thought I was okay). He refused to follow the teacher's instructions, wandered all over the gym, wanted to play with what he wanted to play with (which included the balls). She spent half the time chasing him around before calling me down (you watch in a balcony) to take him. Mind you, he didn't seem to mind that I'd left him in the class and was content running his own show.

She basically said that it wasn't working out and essentially he wasn't welcome in the class if he couldn't follow instruction.

Den and I are pretty traumatized. Mostly because he's almost 3 and people ask who his friends are and he doesn't really have any. The friends he has are the kids of our friends whom he sees sporadically. We don't do playgroups--ever. I've tried, but something always came up and it never seems to work. I've wanted to. He's never really taken any classes. He took one class in the fall of 2006, while he went to his one year of preschool. I always thought the classes were a waste and then when he was old enough to take them, we had Josie and a lot of classes have a 'no sibling' rule, so it makes it a little difficult.

As you may recall, I pulled him out of preschool (still feel that was a good decision) last fall and then signed him up for classes this spring (they had all started by mid fall). He is now in parent/child art, swim and now switched over to parent and child gymnastics class. Ugh. The last thing we want is an anit-social child, but while he interacts well one on one, he really has trouble in groups of large people. Den and I are trying not to freak, but here we thought we were doing so well in all aspects of his life and that one thing that everyone talks about: socialization, we have the cute bubbly kid who just wants his mommy, daddy, g'parents Ohio and Wisc. and Cookie. That is his world and that's it. He'll do okay in smaller groups of people and I'm fine that he might not ever like crowds, but I'd like him to at least be able to function in groups of people and certainly listen to instruction.

Thing is, he is perfectly capable, but doesn't want to. Really makes me call into question my heretofor attitude that if he didn't want to do something that was fine. No more. Not sure how to proceed on that one, but it seems like something has to change.

When we left the class, he didn't want to leave, so hopefully he'll like the parent child class and by the fall be ready to take the class he was just kicked out of.

Josie will be taking gymnastics or some class this fall at 18 months of age!