Ah to be old...

I just remembered a rather funny moment that I had that I just do not want to forget. On a side note, it is almost scary how easily I forget things lately...

This past Thanksgiving we decided to head back to WI to join the Jamiesons. We have not been up there in a few years so it was interesting to see how some people changed! The Jamieson side of the family typically celebrates over the turkey and being somewhere in the 90s, my Uncle Ed's father George was also there. George grew up in Chicago all of his life and is what I have always imagined a 90 year old man who grew up in Chicago all of his life to be like. Loud, opinionated and very, very interesting. He has told us of some interesting stories about Chicago from when he was growing up. You know, the good old times. Anyway, George is beginning to show his years. His wife died recently and I believe the last time we attended Thanksgiving she was still alive. For the most part, he sat in a chair, drinking his wine that had added gelatin to it so he could not aspirate the wine. Talking with him is still interesting, you just find yourself repeating yourself a lot and even after the third time, you are not sure if the message was ever received.

Dinner was taking a LONG time to come. The turkey was not ready and the smell was killing us all. It was pretty quiet. I was feeding Ellis a sippy cup of Pediasure to tide him over to the big meal. All of sudden, George says, "I am so hungry, I could eat a skunk's asshole." That was by far the funniest thing I have heard in a LONG time. Good thing Clara was not around, I never really want her to reference any animals asshole when she is hungry but oh my goodness was it the perfect thing to hear at the moment. I am not sure if George is going to be around the next time we attend a Jamieson function but I will always remember that skunks asshole!

Get going girl!

I am seriously lacking motivation right now. I have lots to do and I even had the smartness to write those things down so I would not forget anything. And all I want to do is sit on my ass and surf the internet. But alas, I have cookies to bake, sauce to make and a room to find under Christmas explosion for guests to sleep.

The stomach flu's a B*TCH!

Seriously, that stomach flu was awful. I know it sounds awful, and it is about as bad as you think it is going to be. Now times it by four! Clara got it first. She got it on a Thursday night right around 11 o'clock. She started throwing up and it scared the heck out of her. At first, she would scream as loud as she could before she threw up but by the end of it, she was so exhausted (mostly because she had been throwing up for hours and it was about 3 AM in the morning), she would just moan, I would arise from a fitful sleep and I would throw her head over her pretty pink garbage can that had quickly turned into her barf bucket. She was pretty pathetic all weekend. Just laying around not drinking or eating anything but by Monday she was much better. Ellis and I so far had not been sick so I naively thought we were in the clear. That following Thursday, Ellis woke up right around the same time and started throwing up. The poor thing did not even know what to do with himself. He just had ducky, all covered in barf, up to his face for comfort. It was really quite sad. I brought him downstairs thinking I had a similar night ahead of me. It got ugly quick. It just seems so much more serious when it is a baby throwing up. At one point he got too lethargic and odd for my taste so off to the ER we went. We got there around 11 and there we stayed until about 5:30! Clara was with us because we had no where else to take her and she was such a champ. She stayed up all night with us. I ended up getting sick myself at the ER around 1 in the morning so Ellis and I were laying on the "bed", both with IVs entangled together asleep while Matt and Clara were in the hallway. It was all very pathetic. They gave us antinausea medication and IVs to replenish all the fluids we lost. Almost a week later and Ellis is still not quite right. As a matter of fact, he has been so crabby, I almost want to put ear plugs in. Matt ended up getting sick starting Saturday night, so officially, we all got it! It has been a lovely couple of weeks!

Pile of butt

I have learned over the last couple of years to actually believe the crazy things that come out of Clara's mouth. Most of the time she is right and is stating something so obvious that I just miss it in my day to day-ness. We were coming out of the library and she said, "Hey Mommy, Look at that pile of butt." Now I was in a rush trying to meet someone, so I almost didn't take the time to find out what the heck she was talking about! I asked her what she was talking about and she said, "Over there, right over there, there is a pile of butt!" Sure enough, across the street they were doing construction and there were two huge piles of sand next to each other. There it was, that huge pile of butt that I almost missed unless Clara did not point it out to me. I almost wet myself laughing...

Who's got a silly crawl?

Ellis has this super silly crawl. It is so hard to describe so I will try and get it on video before he stops doing it. I think it comes from him pushing cars around all the time. He uses one hand and one leg to crawl. The other leg he sort of scoots behind him. It makes for dirty pants! Ellis signed help for the first time tonight! I have showed him a few times how to do it, but not very consistently or very often. And he did it tonight when I asked him if he needed help (without signing) when he could not reach a toy. He excitedly signed help and did it all night (mostly because I got so excited I am sure) for everything.

Daddy Car!

All Ellis says is "DADDY CAR!". First thing in the morning, pointing at anything in the room, "DADDY CAR!". Pumpkins are "DADDY CAR!". He says it pretty well, and says it all day long. It is car cute. Sometimes, it's just "CAR!" and a point. But most of the time it is the whole thing. Ellis is still crawling and crawling FAST. He really has no sign of walking, mostly because I am sure he crawls so well. Hopefully he does it soon, though I am sure once he does, I'll miss crawling :)

When I was putting him down to sleep tonight, he basically frenched kissed me. I kissed him on his neck, because that ALWAYS makes him laugh. He was laughing so hard and he grabbed my face and went in for the kill. It was very wet and gross but it made me laugh! Normally he keeps those double hand pull in kiss for Daddy!

Clara is going through a nap transition. For a while, she was not napping at all and was playing happily in her room. I am not sure what changed that. Possibly the time change or the weather, but all of a sudden she is napping again. This sounds like a good thing but actually night have been bad because of it. She either stays up late or wakes up in the middle of the night to talk to Kitty. Today, I kept her up while Julie and Anthony came over. She did OK during the day but she gave Matt a hard time when he was putting her down this evening. "I can't go to sleep!" with that whiney voice, as she is rubbing her eyes. Tough life for those 3 year olds.

Shortest trip to the ER

So Ellis had his first trip to the ER today. About a week ago, Ellis ate a toy(I think). Anyway, long story short on the toy, if he did not pass it (and that terminology is very benign, it does not indicate that I had to sift through poop for a week) that they were going to do Xrays. Forward to me taking him to the hospital today. So the xray tech told me to walk away from the table because they were going to do the xray and SHE walked away from the table and SPLAT, Ellis fell off the table and landed on the floor on his back. I do not lie when I say it was the worst sound I have ever heard in my whole life. He immediately started screaming. My heart bled for him. We ended in the ER (on their bill) and had him checked out. He is supposedly fine, I have to keep an eye on him (including waking him up every two hours tonight) to make sure he does not have a concussion. It was horrible. I was in the ER/hospital for hours today! I guess it is the safest place to fall if you are going to!

The turd that turned the day

Today started off like any other day. On the heels of a rather bad evening, I had high hopes for a normal day. No tantrums, no mishaps, no ridiculous-ness over simple things. Alas, I was proved to be wrong!

It started with exciting news at first. Ellis is breaking his first upper tooth. His first tooth broke last Wednesday. He has been super crabby over it, lots of drama and excitement. But finally, TEETH! Since it's Tuesday, and I am crazy, it is grocery store day so we headed over to Target because I had a gift to return. In the midst of getting lost in the toy and Halloween aisles, I lost my grocery list, which took me half an hour to make the night before. Whatever, I winged it and actually did a good job of getting everything that I needed! I get to the register and realize IMMEDIATELY that I forgot my wallet at home (I left it in my purse when I went to EXTREME scrapbooking - something I was an hour late to because I was in the shower before I remembered I needed to be there!). I had to drive home and back again with wallet the second time to pay for my spoils. In the middle of that, Ellis fell asleep in the car so I carried him in the sling completely asleep as I paid for my groceries. Thank goodness for small favors!

After that, we got home and I was going to make lunch. Clara always pushes away (even though I tell her not to) everything that is in front of her "space" at the table. This time, it was my cup of old coffee which she proceeded to spill ALL over the recipes I had on the desk and herself, her chair, the toys that had gathered underneath the table and everything else within a five foot radius of the incident. After cleaning that up, Clara dropped a honey dew on her chair and proceeded to grind her new crocs into the melon into a mushy pile of gooey green goodness. My lord, and it wasn't even 1 o'clock yet!

But... all of a sudden, out of no where, Clara asked to sit on the potty and I threw her on thinking she would spend her usual hour in there reading book (and I do not exaggerate) but within minutes she told me she peed on the potty. Or so that is what I thought that she said. I went in there to clean her up and there was a TURD in the TOILET! I was so excited. That turd totally made my day. Sure, spill coffee everywhere, drive an extra 20 minutes so I can then buy my lukewarm milk. But poop in that potty missy and I am on CLOUD NINE!

Well isn't that a coincidence?

So Ellis got diagnosed with having the Thalassemia trait. Good news! He is not anemic and he will just have to worry about this later on in life, when he is having his own kids. It was the best case scenario out of all the things that it could have been! I have a few more questions for the doctor when we head back to check his weight but they can wait until then. It is so odd that Cherie tested negative for it and it was Gary that was the carrier in the case of Nate's Thalassemia. If we decide to have another baby, we will get tested but until then, it is a mystery!

What is that?

I have this ridiculous irrational fear that Ellis will fall out of the crib. I have no idea why. He is certainly not tall enough to do it but I often imagine that he has accomplished this impossible feat while I am ignoring him or sleeping. This morning was no different. I was asleep and ignoring the fact that he was awake. Sometimes it works. Sometimes he falls asleep to 9:30 (I have my kids ridiculously sleep trained). This morning he was making this weird noise. At least I eventually convinced myself it was coming from him. It sounded like a scratching. Now we have two cats so that noise is not an uncommon noise but I was fairly certain it was coming from the monitors and since the kids' doors are routinely closed, I did not think it was that. I heard it through my dream, rolled over, opened an eye and thought that I was imagining the noise. But it was SO persistent! Eventually it freaked me out enough that I got out of bed and saw what the culprit was. My son, of course. He was laying on his back and had his two legs up against the wall. He was wearing footy pajamas and was dragging his feet up and down the wall. He was very content doing it that when I walked into the room, instead of popping up like a jack in the box like he normally does, he continued with his odd noise because it was amusing him so. What a silly little kid!

Do your best, now do better!

I try to do well by my kids. I think about the best way to do things, I get angry with myself when I don't think before I do things, I feel guilty when they have a rogue cookie or when they have to have juice because all the other kids are even though I did my best to not even let her KNOW what juice was for close to three years. And then some bad news.

I took Ellis to his one year doctor appointment. He seemed healthy to me and felt like it would be a regular appointment. We would be out of there with the usual painful waiting which that I even thought I would avoid since I made an early appointment so I could leave Clara with Matt.

The first thing they do when you get there is they weigh and measure them. Right away, a problem. Ellis only weighed 17 lbs and 7 ounces, not even on the chart for a 12 month old. So all the food worries that I had with him, the worries that I actually succesfully talked myself out of were actually validated. He was not eating enough. He is SUCH a hard baby to feed. Most meals end in tears and frustration on both our parts. Clara was such a good eater compared to him and I am such a strong believer in giving them a myriad of GOOD foods. I just don't want a kid that will only eat two things that are BAD for them. Ellis really wants to be that child. New things don't fly. Something he likes the day before he is angry at the next. It is a constant battle and I never know if he is getting enough food. The doctor said it is nothing too bad to worry about, that most nursing babies drop in weight a little after the ninth month, and actually Clara did. But then the blood tests came back and he was severely anemic. I need to find out what the number was. They are sending his blood in for a number of tests and I am anxious to hear what the results are. I am trying not to be nervous about it, I am trying not to be scared by it, because we do not know what is wrong, if anything and it might be minor and fixable. One thought that came up was that it was thalassemia, which Nate has. I hope it is minor and then again, it is nothing to worry about. I hugged that baby so hard all day. I followed him around and stuffed him so full of food he pooped three times. I just look at him and nothing seems wrong. He is so happy, so full of life that I can't even imagine that there is anything wrong with him. But I have to remember, even if there is, he is still the SAME little boy that fills my heart with joy and love as he was the second before we found out any of this. I just have to stuff him full of iron-clad foods, fatty foods to beef him up and love him even that much more...

Ridiculous things

- Clara sticking her fingers up her nostrils and saying "These are my ankles"
- Ellis ohhing at EVERYTHING
- Clara saying, "My pee makes you happy?"
- Ellis sticking his finger in Clara's belly button over and over again SO seriously
- Clara having to take every "nap" naked
- Ellis crying anytime I leave his vision
- Clara trying to poop on the potty
- Ellis eating ANY meal
- Clara and her love for her kitty
- Ellis and her fear of pumpkins

Oh!

Ellis has this great surprised look on his face when he sees something new or something he wants. It is often associated with this "Oh!" noise, it is surprised and I love it. He loves to touch things. He will be in your arms and reach left and right to touch things. Even things that are WELL out of reach, like the light 8 feet high. It is very cute and annoying at the same time.

I'm addicted

I am fairly certain that I have an addictive personality. I am not exactly going to list the things that I have been addicted to in the past, but trust me, there's a list. In my "more mature" years, the types of things that I am addicted to have changed. For example, my current addiction is Old English Almond Scented Wood Spray. You know the stuff that conditions wood and makes it shiny AND makes it smell good. I can't stop using this stuff, I want everything that is wooden to be doused in this stuff. I can't stop myself. I smelled it on my hands earlier and I took a good long sniff. I was slightly embarrassed and turned my head the other way when I did it (you know, to hide if from my two year old and baby) but I did it anyway. Twice. Nothing like making wood nice and shiny... and it smells good too!

You can dance if you want to!

You can dance, you can dance. She did it! She went to class and she went in and loosely followed the instructor. Most of the time she sort of watched from a distance. There were a few girls there that took the summer session and they were SO cute following the teacher. The kids seemed to like the tap part the best because it's LOUD! She was so adorable all dolled up. Here are the kids dancing! Props to the teacher, I don't think I could be that perky... EVER!

Dance it up baby!

Clara starts her dance class tomorrow. I am really very excited about it. I would wager that I am more excited than she is :). We will see how it goes. Half of me wishes that she would be starting school this week too because I think getting out of the house would be a good thing for her, but I probably just need to sign her up for another class besides dance. We just need to figure out this baby sitter situation! Any good sitters out there? HELP!

Are we probe-less?

All of a sudden it occurred to me that Ellis is no longer probing. He used to explore the world through his two pointer fingers as he probed his way around any object. All of a sudden he is no longer doing that! How sad that you can't be there for the last probe. That he can't tell you that this is the final time that I will make this sound, or make this strange gesture so you better PAY ATTENTION!

ABC Adventures

These are hilarious. Clara loved to watch them over and over again. I thought it was rather funny how similar Ellis and Clara looked once their hair and other extremities were removed!

Clara's Adventure

Ellis' Adventure (or Ellis's Adventure as they seemed fit to make it)

Let's get this party started

So I have two blogs now. This one and the other one which serves the purpose of making it into my scrapbooking. On top of that, I have this neat little black notebook that I use to write down day to day notes of what we did and minor and major events so I can look back at my dates for scrapbooking. Is that too much? Probably. I suppose the goal of this one is more random, some thoughts and cute things that the kids too. Less formal than the other blog and more for ME. Imagine that! Doing something for ME?!?!?!