The Snyder Family

Christmas Morning

2012-01-01T19:52:00.000-08:00

Christmas was so much fun this year, both kids are at an age where opening presents is a fun thing. Fiona was way into hearing about Santa and Jesus and all other Christmas things in between. We found a church a few months ago that we have really been enjoying so we had planned to go to the 6pm Christmas Eve service but Fiona didn't nap (I think she may be about to drop her nap because she only took one in a full week. She has now been sick for 3 days so she has slept a lot this weekend) she was so grouchy by 4pm that we were just afraid of how she would do during the service. So we changed our plans and ate dinner early and went to bed early, after getting new Christmas eve Jammies. In the morning everyone's moods had improved greatly. I made cinnamon rolls the night before and popped them in the oven while we opened presents. JR's mom, Bindy, came up around 8:10 so she got to see the kids opening most of their presents.

James with his band in a box maracas:

Getting the hang of it, with some help:

She didn't need any convincing to start opening presents:

New board game (has anyone seen the new Candy Land board? Talk about overstimulation!)

Santa brought puppets!

Latches board/puzzle, one of the favorites of the day:

My favorite picture of the morning, Fiona's puppet tickling James, he can't stand it, ticklish boy!

The aftermath:

Santa brought Just Dance Kids 2 for our Wii, JR was tired of getting his butt kicked so he changed into better dance clothes (I still beat him):

Playing with Grandma, can you tell? I totally failed at taking pictures after the initial ones. Once Bindy got here I was too busy talking and opening toy packages. Mama B, you need to come back soon so I can get pictures. Sorry!

Fiona's solar powered LED lit bamboo wood dollhouse, it's a hit with everyone:

The people must have been eating on the patio, with the Duplo Cars Car. She set this up herself, I though it was super cute.

As you can see the furniture gets moved around a lot, as I'm typing this there are two kids in the crib on the roof with an alligator. Good times!

Still here, still no motivation (well, some, because I've just created a post!!)

2011-12-07T22:29:00.001-08:00

Harold with his purple crayon (which apparently only about 20% of the population know this story, who knew?!)

Kitty cat

Looking at these pictures make me realize how bad he needed a hair cut. I cut his hair, didn't do too bad, hopefully I can perfect my skills before he's old enough for his friends to make fun of him. :) (Pics later)

Looks fun, but she was trying to run away from me so I couldn't get her picture. Hahaha, turned out to be a great picture!

Warmer fall day...long gone.

Love this toy!

"Mommy, I think you should get off of the trike." "Oh, why can't I ride it?" "I'm afraid you might break it."

Sorry I've been absent, I saw that I still have blog hits so that motivated me to keep posting. Thanks to anyone who is still here. JR got a promotion and with that he accepted a different shift, 9am-6pm which in actuality means he gets home on average around 7:30pm every night. Sucks, but hopefully he can switch back soon. The end of the day my computer time is Facebook or Babycenter (very little thinking!), but I've been wasting too much time there, I need to make an effort to blog much more!

Spray, squirt, pour, and splash!

2011-09-06T12:35:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I found the Play at Home Mom blog, it has changed our house in a huge way. One of their main focuses is giving your kids freedom to be creative and to learn through play. I've never been afraid of the kids getting messy, but this is totally letting go (as you saw in the previous post). I saw this idea on their blog and I knew Fiona would love all the different pouring, spraying, squirting etc. She also really loves mixing colors.

The Play at Home Moms (PAHMs) set up an invitation and just let the kids at it without any instruction, this part is really hard! So here is the invitation that I set up while the kids were napping. Different bottles from around the house, each with water and different color food coloring. This was also really fun for me as I was playing with my manual photography skills.

This is what she started with, she actually looked at me for approval when she started to pour, I just nodded and after that she went with it. Oscar wanted to see what was going on but with one pour of water he was out.

Pour:

Squirt:

Shake:

Drip:

James wasn't into it yet, sticks were much more fun:

Love the concentration!

She was frustrated with the dropper because she was trying to shake the water out, so I showed her how to squeeze it.

Airplane:

After about 15 minutes she finally discovered the sprayer, a favorite after that.

James joined in.

Peek-a-Boo!

Oh, I can spray James with this!

F.J. the bartender

I brought a nectarine out to share, but James wouldn't let go of it. Nomnomnom...

I have a lot more from our activities from the PAHM blog that I'll post (maybe a bunch in one post), but the ideas and projects I have used have all been so much fun. I've also really loosened up with letting Fiona make choices and giving her more freedom and her behavior has improved so much, it's been great.

Wordless Wednesday- "finger" painting

2011-08-31T21:25:00.000-07:00

Wedding Pictures

2011-08-26T11:26:00.000-07:00

There were two things about our wedding that I was disappointed about, well three but the third was that I wish I had someone record our first dance. We spent a lot of time learning it, we laughed the whole time and nailed it. That was an after the fact thought, not something we didn't feel like we got what we paid for. The DJ is the first-he implied the whole time that it would be him DJing, then his wife showed up to the reception, she played music that was on our do not play list, didn't get the guests involved, announced our fake bouquet toss, etc.
Then, the photographer, not the pictures he took but the fact that every time we met with him we owed more money from hidden costs. At the wedding he got into it with my 80 year old Granddad for taking pictures over his shoulder, and was rude to my Dad, the one who paid him. He designed this gorgeous coffee table book for us and it cost a months worth of rent at the time, on top of the $2000 credit we had from the initial payment. When we went to look at the book and our pictures I was pregnant with Fiona and we couldn't spend that kind of money. I kept wanting to go back and just get our copyright and a disk of our pictures, but I was afraid we couldn't afford that even. Fast forward to the first of March, I took a photography class (which was awesome!) from a local wedding photographer and he showed slides of pictures that made me nearly cry, mainly because we don't have any pictures from our wedding. So I searched for our photographer and couldn't find anything. I finally remembered his last name and found him on Facebook and found out he is no longer in business (shocker!). Long story short, we bought our pictures, all of them on a DVD and the coffee table book he used for his display. So I can now share them and print them and even print the book he designed for us (different than the display one we have).

Here a a few of my favorites:

Details:

Neither of us had living Grandmothers at the time of our wedding so I wore a piece of jewelry from each of them. My maternal grandma's (clip-on!) earrings, my paternal grandmothers emerald ring, and JR's maternal grandma's diamond ring.

The People:

Side note: Fr. Rossiter was the priest for all of my sacraments after baptism, he was also the priest for countless number of Friday Mass while I was in school and Sunday's with my family. I learned how to be an "alter girl" with him and did the St Patrick's day parade several years with him. Ironically, James was born on his birthday last year and Fr. Rossiter died the next day. Sad to lose such a big part of my life, but cool that James' has a link to him.

Party:

SO Very frustrated with Blogger right now! I upgraded the photo "thing" and then my pictures would show up in the original form (usually just not rotated), so I started using Picasa and I can't drag pictures farther than what I can see in the window, there were also some parts I couldn't type. I was thinking that it was because I'm using Google Chrome and a lot of things don't work right with it yet, but Blogger and Picasa are by Google so you'd think that wouldn't be the problem. I might try in IE or Firefox to be sure though.

Anyone else having issues? It's actually why I stopped blogging for a while b/c so many of my pics are rotated.

Walking boy!

2011-08-24T12:08:00.000-07:00

I have lots to update on, I have been so out of the blogger world that it's hard to get back in, ya know? I will make it a priority though, I still need to figure out the picture rotate thing though so give me a bit.

Here is our update though:
James is walking full time now, he just stopped crawling about three days ago. He started taking steps the week of his birthday but would only walk when we "made" him. Two weeks ago we were playing outside and he crawled up to the sidewalk and turned and looked at me (b/c I had been teaching him that it was hot), I said "hot", then he said "hot", looked back at it then back at me one more time, stood up, walked across the sidewalk then proceeded to crawl on the porch. Booger! He just wasn't ready I guess. This weekend we had company over and he started walking the majority of the time on Friday and as of yesterday he was walking about 95% of the time.

Go back and check out the first video of Fiona walking ;-)

Fiona is doing great, I have fallen in love with a new blog that has given us so many fun, messy things to do (more on that later). In an effort to make bedtime easier I started letting her stay up and hour after James at naptime so we get some time together. We are both really enjoying that!!

I have lots to catch up on but her is a birthday party preview. My Dad got Fiona a rock for her birthday:

Back with more soon, can't wait to catch up on everyone else too!!

Birthday boy

2011-06-25T21:46:00.000-07:00

My Baby will be 1 tomorrow! Bittersweet, this year has been such a mix of things but hopfully we take all the good with us. I ♥ this baby!!

Damn, I'll fix these later--it's late and we have a big day tomorrow!! Here's the James face, just turn your head sideways.

Big (skinny) boy!! Standing but not quite walking yet.

Life lately.

2011-06-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

Things have been quite crazy around here lately. Fiona is acting the way we expected she might when we brought James home, I wonder if it's because James can now get into everything-everything that used to just be hers. If she is left alone for too long she is getting into something she isn't supposed to:

(I never used powder on the kids as babies because it's bad for there lungs when they inhale it. I'm pretty sure she inhaled the amount she probably would have in her baby years in this one sitting)

Bedtime struggles are the biggest issue right now, she will.not. stay in bed, we've tried bribing/rewarding her, spanking (totally not what I want to use as discipline method), taking things out of her room, taking away her TV watching privileges, long calm bedtime routine, no naps, etc. Nothing works and she is going to sleep at about 10pm every night when she goes to bed between 7 and 8p. I know this is some sort of phase, but with each one of these, I question my parenting skills since I'm the onedoing most of the discipline. Add in James' cranky but and most days I want to go back to work. :)

On that note, since I quit work to stay home with the kids it has been our plan that once James turned one we would look into a part time work/daycare option-good for everyone involved. I want to do something fun like work at Trader Joe's when it opens.

Flat diapers and Handwashing challenge -Day 1

2011-05-23T20:48:00.000-07:00

There's this blogger that read an article about people reusing disposable diapers after they dry or letting baby sit in a wet diaper for longer. YUCK, but I guess people don't realize they have other options.

A lot of people are turned off from cloth diapering because the initial start up cost is quite substantial, but the blogger challenged her readers to do a flats and handwashing challenge.

We usually use at least one flat diaper a day, some days that's what I use all day. They are super thin but can be folded to added thickness to the wet zone. James is a super pee'er and they still work great for him. The hardest thing about using flats right now is that James fights anything that makes him sit/lay still (diaper changes, car seat, stroller...) and my favorite way for James to wear a flat is in the Origami fold, so I didn't sign up for the challenge right away. Then last week I started pad folding the flat and sticking it in a cover, then all I have to do with James is lay him on it and snap the cover.

So, I picked up a big bucket from the bakery department at Price Chopper (for free, just asked and he seemed happy to get rid of one) for hand washing. Some people are using a plunger with holes poked in it for cleaning, but honestly, I scrape poop in the toilet and wipe butts all day, as long as I clean of the dirty diapers in the toilet-what I have to do even when using the washer, I'm not that upset about hand washing- I also haven't washed yet ;).
This is a video of how to put a flat on when it is folded with the origami fold. It is from a few months ago when James didn't realize he could escape diaper changes, I miss those days.

So here is the run down of what we are using:
-One dozen, Green Mountain Diapers organic unbleached flats $25 +shipping
-2 Flips seconds (seconds are second quality diapers/covers that diaper makers sell at a reduced price because of some sort of cosmetic flaw-I have never been able to find issues with the CottonBabies seconds, so I stock up on these when they sell them) $9 each free shipping
-1 Fluffy's diapers cover from etsy $10 +shipping
-1 Woollybottoms wool cover that I got used for $15 including shipping
Just over 75 dollars to diaper from birth to potty training. Huge savings.

I also have some Swaddlebees flats that I'm using because I didn't want to get bored, they have polka dots and giraffes, but obviously these aren't required.

This is pretty cheap way to go, but it can be done cheaper. We have organic flats because they were out of stock of the "regular"ones, so that would be cheaper. I also picked up some flour sack towels from Target because these are supposed to be a good option for people on a very tight budget and I wanted to test this out. (So far the flower sack towels aren't working great for James, I'm going to try to double them up on him tomorrow though.) They cost about a dollar a piece so they could be one of the cheaper ways to go about diapering, but if you have to double up it might not be worth the savings. Another option that we have tried is to use a flannel receiving blanket for flats, this actually works really well, but it seems to keep the skin wetter than the other flats; however, I have bought 5 packs of these blankets at 1/2 price day at a consignment sale for $1!! You could also buy a yard of fleece from walmart to wick moisture away from baby's skin.

I'll keep blogging about this throughout the week-also have a Fiona update, we've been having some struggles lately.

Not a bad idea.

2011-05-10T10:58:00.000-07:00

This is JR and I's chat today during naptime (Oscar, who is supposed to be an indoor cat, got in a fight with the neighbors cat. I was telling JR about cleaning all of his wounds):

clare: He's alright, he kept laying down and the kids would bug him so he went and slept on the changing table. When I took him off to put James in bed he was limping pretty bad on the leg that has the hurt pad-I think just from not using it. He's acting okay, just sore. He's curled up in my lap now.

Sent at 12:37 on Tuesday

jr.snyder: just read the text - i vote we take him to your parents

clare: for what?

jr.snyder: cuz he's a pain in the ass

clare: Well then you would go too???

And James?

Fiona?

Hmm, this could be relaxing...anyone who is a pain in the ass shall go to my parents house. I like it, you're a thinker. :)

jr.snyder: Don't forget Aksel...

clare: Oh, heck yeah, he'd be the first to go.

Olive and I would live like the old days, no tv, no people.

jr.snyder: But what would you do with yourself - lonely ol' Clare all by herself.

clare: Good question.. I'd come visit you guys ;)

We are alive

2011-05-01T20:21:00.000-07:00

I'm having some serious issues with Blogger so I'm not moving this picture or adding the others I wanted to add. I just wanted to get an update up.

Here's my parents and the kids a couple of weeks ago.

I'm in a blog rut. Update on everyone, in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1..........

James was doing better, then got another ear infection, blah! We went to the walk in clinic (our ped does walk-in clinic every morning, even Saturdays-It has been great for us) three times in 7 days. The doctor we saw the last time said if he gets another ear infection before summer he will have to get tubes now. Our pediatrician wanted us to make to fall/winter before we got them, I think that's the best plan, but not sure if we'll make it. At this point we know tubes are inevitable, the question now is when. I think he may have another or not gotten over the last one, should know for sure in the next few days. Poor guy, can't get a break still.

He started actually crawling the weekend of his 9 month birthday and then that Monday started pulling up, on everything!! No he is cruising and pushing around anything he can move. I can't keep him out of stuff, he's a total nut.

This was about a month ago but it may have been the funniest thing I have seen in a long time. This is some "as seen on TV" dish cover with a thick plastic layer in the center that you push on "any size dish to save your leftovers" He was trying to chew on the inside plastic, awesome:

Fiona is well, and hilarious she says the funniest stuff, my favorite example:

She was playing with her card from her birthday last year and she asked where we got her card. JR said we got it from the store and then she said, "Did James go with you?"

Me: "Yes, he was still in my tummy."

Fiona: "Did you eat him?" Bwahahahah, I'm still laughing about that. She was totally serious too!

She learned how to wink:

I had baby fever bad! Go ahead, say it...hell, I'll say it with you: "Clare, you are crazy!!" I just posted about this poor little dude who has cried for so much of his first 9 months, we have a tiny house full of chaos and I want another baby!? I even made a proposal to JR with all the reasons we should have another baby now. No go from the other half so I guess I'll bug him again in a couple of months-he's talking a couple of years...or never. Really, a couple of years is a better idea.

*I started this post a couple of weeks ago, and now that James is having issues again-my baby fever is GONE. I know if we have another baby it will be like this again and as terribly sad as it makes me, I really don't know if we can handle it again. I'm sure I'll forget when things get better and want another baby, but I really want to make sure I clearly remember this time.*

I've been reading my ass off lately-not sure why, but I'm glad to be back to books. I read my b-day book in four days (Two Kisses for Maddy) loved it, I've read the blog from very early on so I was familiar with the story but the book was still great.

JR is good, he finally got on the golf course a couple of weeks ago so that made him pretty giddy for a few days.

Last Sunday we celebrated two years of sobriety for him, I got him a 2 year coin to replace his 24 hour one that he has carried in his wallet for 2 years. I was comparing the two and said, "gosh, this one is so much lighter/cheaper looking." He looked at me and said, "yeah, I bet the give a lot of these out." I didn't even think of that.

Other than that it's school and work for him, he has finals this week so he will get a little break from school coming up too. I can't wait, these three nights of single mommy is wearing on me.

I have lots to catch up on...I'll be back, really. :)

James

2011-03-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

This guy has had a rough start. JR and I were talking the other night about how we feel bad for calling him high maintenance, but he has been, mainly because he has been in pain. He had reflux/colic/dairy intolerance from the beginning, got his first two teeth early. Between 6 and 7 months we took him off the reflux meds, he was doing well for a week or two then got an ear infection. After three weeks we took him in to recheck his ears to find out the infection didn't clear up so he started another antibiotic, that worked very well. Within days of being on the new antibiotic we could see his top teeth through the gums, he got 3 teeth in one week. He just broke his fourth tooth on the top and then his third on the bottom. Now he has another double ear infection (this one has caused blisters on his eardrums-ouch).
I try not to be too negative about it because there are way worse things that could be going on with him. But we really have only been able to enjoy him in these small bursts. When he is feeling good he is the sweetest, most cuddly, giggle bucket-with that awesome fluffy blond hair and bright blue eyes. Thankfully, when I talk about him or think about him that's what I picture, but in the evenings when JR and I are passing him back and fourth so I can cook dinner, it stinks and makes me jealous of people with "easy" babies. (Fiona was no easy baby herself which helps too, knowing what she has turned into gives us that to look forward to with this guy.)

My parents are trying to plan a trip to Colorado this summer and it is stressing me out, the logistics of the trip don't work for us. JR and I were talking about it the other day and I actually broke down in tears (if you know me, you know I don't cry very often) because the plan is to go the week before James' birthday. Neither kid travels well and neither sleep well away from home. Knowing how hard James is, I know that if we do this he will be a mess for his birthday. So, yeah, these plans are still up in the air.

I try not to talk about how difficult he is because I don't want people to remember that about him as a baby, but I think it has made it harder on me. Even just writing this and having a good cry with JR about it made me feel better. I know that things will keep getting better at this point, reflux babies really start to get relief around 11 months so it's in reach, and really, things are better than they have been. This current ear infection I doubted my decision to take him in because he was doing pretty well.

Good thing he is cute though, right?

What's up with us?

2011-03-16T21:06:00.000-07:00

Lately we have just been trying to end our day with smiles, and most days we do.

The time change messed Fiona up big time, but today was finally a bit better. She is a drawing machine, she has markers and pens everywhere and draws faces and pictures everywhere. Thankfully, only one wall drawing, so far.

Her picture of Daddy:

Her new thing is writing letters, (See the Fona in blue?)

Her babies are still a favorite, not sure we'll let her babysit anytime soon though.

James can't get a break, he got 5 teeth in the last month, the first 3 were in one week. He's also super attached to me, so if I'm more than 2 feet away his mommy alarm goes off. So he's been a bit grumpy (my nickname for him is groucher-roucher) but when he is feeling good his personality is really starting to show through, funny, silly, cuddly boy!

This makes all the fussing worth it:

Check out those top teeth (He now has 3 bottom teeth and 4 top teeth)

We have been enjoying the warm up the last couple of days. Fiona "helped" me start our garden yesterday:
James observed, he tries to eat the grass and dirt when we are outside so I had to keep him contained while we planted seeds, he was cool with it though:
JR got a new job that he started last week, he is very happy with it! It added some time to his commute but it's worth it for him to be happy and doing what he is going to school for. He applied for the job in December, had a phone interview and a test then never heard anything until a couple of weeks ago. He had an interview on a Tuesday, a job offer on Wednesday and started working there 10 days later.
So yeah, that's us! We have a super busy weekend ahead of us, and of course St. Patrick's day tomorrow, hopefully back with more soon.

Cloth Diapers

2011-03-10T11:49:00.001-08:00

We started our cloth diapering journey when Fiona was about 2 months old, I wanted to save money and we were dealing with a lot of diaper rash on her. I got a few diapers to try and it didn't work for us. Fiona got a different rash (found out later she is allergic/sensitive to the material we tried) and we were starting daycare and didn't know if we could find someone willing to use cloth diapers.

Shortly after Fiona's first birthday, after a lot more research, I decided to give it a go again. JR was not wanting to try it this time, so I bought a handful to try. This time it worked much better, JR took a while to warm up to it, but last week he wrote a persuasive essay about cloth diapering. :)

I love using cloth diapers! I love that I don't have to worry about running out of diapers and going to buy some at the store. I love that I don't have to take out giant bags of nasty diapers every day or two. I love that I'm not putting weird chemicals on the kids butts. I love how cute some of the prints are.

It's not all glorious, there is dumping solids, we have a diaper sprayer that is hooked into the plumbing on the toilet, that helps. I do have to wash diapers every two days, and double rinse. I have to "strip" diapers once every couple of months because detergent build up can decrease absorbency and make diapers get ammonia build up.

I'm active in the Babycenter Community and people are always showing off their diaper stashes. I got sucked in this time, so I put James in flats for about a day and washed and put away all of our diapers to take pictures of our stash. Ours doesn't come close to some of the others on there, but it works for us, we have plenty of diapers, and a lot of variety. Ironically, my favorite diapers to use are flats, ya know, the diapers that our grandmas used. They cost about 18-24 dollars a dozen, most of the cute diapers I have retail for $18-$25 each, so it makes me laugh that I have all these fancy diapers but use the cheap, old fashion diapers most often. Here they all are- I listed all the brands so if you don't plan to cloth diaper, don't worry about reading all of it-just look at the fun prints. :)

Here's our whole stash all put away (not including Fiona's diapers):
The very top is extra inserts and liners. All of our covers on the shelf, top left is PUL (waterproof material) covers, top right is wool and fleece snap on covers. Middle shelf is wool, pants, shorts and footies on the left and soakers (pull up cover) on the right. The bottom is diaper overflow.
Our fitteds: fitteds are made out of a very absorbent material, usually the middle has extra layers to keep the bulk down, these all have cute prints on the outside, but don't have a waterproof layer. The top row is all night time diapers (Holden's Landing, Firefly, Green Sprouts, Rainshine design, Pooligan's for Hooligans). The three middle rows are Bagshot Row Bamboo (BSRB) diapers, obviously my favorite fitted. The 5th row down are three Pooligan's fitteds. The last row are Bububebe, I actually have two more of these on the way.
All-in-ones (Aio), pocket diapers and All-in-2 (Ai2): Top row, 4 Kawaii minky bamboo pocket diapers, 2 Fishnoodles Ai2, 2 Cozybunz Ai2. Second row 7 Bumgenius organic/elemental AiO. Middle row, Click-a-Doos Ai2 (a cute print on the outside with a waterproof material hidden inside), dinosaurs, sock monkeys, bees, earth. 4th row down is my hodge-podge row: 2 Pooligan's Ai2 (Ooga Boga's and KU prints), TnT shamrock Ai2, Cloth Reverie hedgehogs Ai2, Full Tilt Robins Ai2. The bottom row is all Bagshot Row Bamboo Hybrid Ai2 (stars, zoo animals, Peter Pan, Thomas, Pirates, Cat in the Hat, and Hedgehogs-also have a guitar one on the way).
Boring fitteds and Prefolds, the hemp ones on the top right are awesome (again, my favorites are the boring ones):
Fiona only wears one diaper at night so here is her little stash, we actually usually only use the Nana's Bottoms AIO's (the colored ones on the bottom) and some of the fitteds in the above pics (they are onesize fits most over 8 or 10lbs).
I didn't take pictures of the flats because there isn't much to them and most of them were dirty. Just imagine a plain white absorbent blanket. Fiona actually calls them blanket diapers.

"Hey Mom, are you done taking pictures of my diapers-this rug burn sucks."

Clare, where did you go?

2011-02-17T20:37:00.000-08:00

Busy, stressed, tired, enjoying a revived hobby and warm weather.

JR has class three nights a week and a weekend class this semester-every other weekend for 6 weeks, it is really wearing on us. Add a teething baby, and a toddler bed transition and by the end of the day my house is a disaster and I just want to sit.
A week and a half ago, after Fiona's nap, I made a crib tent by throwing a blanket over the top. I had to do something so I set James on her floor with a toy ran out of the room. On my way back I ran into Fiona in the hallway, she had climbed over the edge and dropped down! Shit -pardon my french, but I knew the transition would be hard, I was right. A trip to Target and "some" assembly and she had a super cute toddler bed.It took about a week of us being very consistent and some bribery (which I'm trying to get rid of) and she is now sleeping pretty well in her bed.

During this time James had just started getting his top teeth, one night he woke up every 1.5-2 hours and it took Fiona 2 hours to stay in bed. Ahh-craziness!
Teeth (and squash boogers-sorry):
Now things are getting much better, JR has this weekend off then his last weekend class next week so we'll go back to the normal amount of crazy.
Enough negativity... I got a DSLR camera, I'm still beyond stoked!! I love photography and have missed it so much since my high school classes. I still made attempts at taking pictures, but a point and shoot just doesn't cut it. Thankfully the kids are too little to complain about the ridiculous number of pictures I take, because I love it.
We have had a beautiful last couple of days. It's crazy how getting outside changes your mood so much, everyone was happy today, James even got his 6 months shots this morning (very delayed, thanks to the ear infections-which actually cleared up really well, finally)!
Yesterday, Fiona hopped on her trike and rode like it's nothing, last year she had the concept but didn't seem to have the coordination.
Fuzzy head! The wind isn't blowing much here, his hair just stands straight up in the back: Melt my ♥ on Valentine's day why doncha?

Ever since the blizzard (see last post) Fiona uses the window as a dry erase board. It's been a great pastime for her and it cleans up easily.
Today, James sat in grass for the first time:
It was a bit windy though. I know beggars can't be choosers but I'll take less wind on our next 74 degree day-James agrees: I took these pictures because ~~I take pictures of everything now~~ of how cute this looked, but when I looked at them later I noticed that the kids are holding their feet so similar, yet they change in every picture. Back sooner next time, I miss bloggy-land when I'm away!

Blizzard!!!

2011-02-01T19:42:00.001-08:00

This has been so cool to watch! I didn't start documenting until 10:30 but here are the hourly-ish pictures!
JR shoveled, which I am thankful for, but it messed up my tire reference point. Tomorrow I'll get another pic, there is probably 2 more inches now.
( BTW, I hate my neighbors van out there, I can't complain much now though because he actually has 2 big white vans, 2 broken down cars, 3 working vehicles, a Bobcat, and a forklift-so one in the street shouldn't be a big deal, but still. The city we live in is kind of snooty too, so I'm surprised they put up with it. )

It was much nicer once JR got home from work, then I didn't have to worry about anyone out in this mess. Except Aksel, who has no brain and he LOVES snow so he stayed outside all morning, then would bang on the door to invite me to throw his tennis ball. Uh, no thanks buddy!See the birds tail sticking out from the back of the feeder? The cardinals were out there during a lot of the day.

We had to find some fun things to do today, even though the snow doesn't change much for us, James is having a hell of a time getting his top teeth and Fiona gets needy when James does. So I pulled out the 5lb bag of rice tub, add funnels, measuring cups, a whisk, a Cookie Monster, an Elmo, and a ladle=40 full minutes of entertainment!

A bath in the afternoon, killed some time too. I told Fiona "Pose so I don't have to edit for the blog", what a good girl!

Sidenote: JR was in class all weekend so he hasn't seen the kids much since the weekend before. He got Fiona when she woke up from nap and she said: "Daddy, are you going to stay home with Fiona all.day.long?!" She actually says this every morning but she was so excited that he said yes. Then, after dinner JR said what was your favorite part about today and she said "you." Melt my heart...and his!

My kind of snow play!!

2011-01-28T11:23:00.000-08:00

I love snow, I think it's beautiful. The way everything sounds and smells when it's snowing is so peaceful. However, I don't like to get in snow, I don't own boots or snow pants or any good gloves, I hate that people drive like idiots when the roads are slick. Really, I just like to look at snow from my warm cozy house.
But yesterday was good for playing in the snow. It was 45 degrees when we went out, the snow was melting but because there was so much there was still plenty to play in!

James stayed bundled up the whole time since he is sick-plus I learned from Fiona's first snow experience that babies don't care much for snow. Pretty sure his tooth will be in by the end of the weekend, my kids rarely drool. Fiona made snow angels: "We" built a snowperson:
with chalk for eyes and mouth and a bowl for a hat:
Fiona rolled in the snow:
Then, she ate snow:
and more, for like 5 minutes she stood eating snow:
All that craziness and James looked the same at the end of our adventure, minus the drool which I'm sure was in my hood by then:

7 month old James

2011-01-26T20:50:00.000-08:00

My baby is 7 months old today! This age is so much fun, it is the time I was waiting for when we were going through all the colicky nights. James has changed into such a sweet happy baby. He is eating food twice a day most days and sleeping long blocks at night, usually 6-7 hour blocks (he did have an 11.5 hour night, but he was sick) and 1.5-3 hour long nap. He loves watching Fiona play and lights up whenever he sees her. He has been sitting well, unsupported for about 2 weeks now, though it's just been this last week he got to a point that I will leave him without a pillow behind him. He says "ma", "ba", and "ga" and combines all three. This past weekend he became mobile-yikes!

Did you hear Fiona in the the end of the video say "I was playing with those."? Goofy girl.
James started out all the way across the room near the couch got to the train tracks and turned to play with the Magnadoodle, which he pulled over on his head, then turned around and headed back for the train tracks again.
He had an ear infection at his 6 month "well" child checkup so we skipped shots and made a follow up appointment for Feb 1st to make sure his ears are cleared up and catch up on vaccines. He has another cold now with croup-which sounds awful, but hasn't seemed to bother him much. I'm anxious to see if this cold brings on an ear infection, and if so, how long we wait to have the conversation about tubes. Our pediatrician is not the same one that we had when Fiona was having all of the ear infections, the "new" one is great...his wife also happens to be the NP at the ENT's office.
James' favorite things at 7 months are:
-Eating-solids and nursing
-watching Fiona do anything
-Jumping in his doorway jumper of the exersaucer
-chewing on things he's not supposed to-plastic bags, newspaper
-banging on things to make noise.
-he still only has the two bottom teeth, but I think I can feel the top ones coming through. Check out the slobber bomb in this picture:

Fiona-Jo

2011-01-25T18:47:00.000-08:00

I try not to brag much about my kids, well at least not to people who have kids around their ages. Now, grandparents, kid-less friends, etc is a different story. I have been on the opposite end of bragging and I hate it, my kids have been on the late end of average for a lot of their physical milestones and when someones child is doing something sooner than yours, it sucks! Thankfully I now brush it off, since I know my kids eventually hit their milestones-and truly they do everything before any medical professional worries.
But I'm proud. When we decided I would quit my job to stay home with the kids, we were both (along with other people around us) worried about keeping Fiona on the track she was on. She was thriving at her school, learning so much, and talking so well. Fiona's first couple of weeks home with me I tried to sit down with her and have teaching sessions, that was a huge fail- too much structure for a 2 year old. Eventually I started teaching her through our everyday happenings, we point out letters in books, shapes while we are driving, numbers in the grocery store, we count everything, etc. Here is the reward (I spent half a day uploading this since it's 3 minutes long-but it's worth it):

We were missing "A" but she's got that one too.

Here's the rest of the Fiona scoop (James is tomorrow):
-She has been without a naptime diaper for about 2 months, still in diapers at night but that's fine by me because she is still in her crib. She has had a few dry morning diapers and woke up a couple of nights to go potty.
-She is eating all kinds of food. Yesterday I was finishing my lunch, a Caesar salad, when she woke up from nap. Usually I don't eat anything with eggs in it when I'm around her, but she has never eaten a piece of lettuce or spinach (except in the smoothies we have every couple of days now) in her life. But she asked for a bite, I told her it had eggs in it so she couldn't but I would make her a salad if she wanted. So, I took a tiny bowl, cut up some red leaf lettuce, added black beans (because I had them on my salad), and a tiny bit of creamy Italian dressing. She gobbled it up, then gobbled up a second bowl-why yes, she is my child.
She also wants what James eats now, I made squash for him last week and she said "I don't like squash". I was feeding some to James and I had my bowl of squash sitting next to me and she asked to taste it, then ate half while I was feeding James.
Two nights ago she snarfed squash, couscous and mahi mahi, she did call the mahi mahi chicken but that's fine with me.
-Everyday is so much fun with her; she makes me laugh and blows my mind with her memory or something she learns.

George & Jack

2011-01-12T20:47:00.000-08:00

This video:

Makes my kids do this:
Fiona says "I want to watch Jack and George again." All.day.long. Today she even clicked the mouse and played it herself while I was changing James. I gotta say, it's so much better than some of the kids shows on TV these days.

Christmas

2011-01-08T18:52:00.000-08:00

X-mas post notes: 1)This is a long post, go grab a cup of coffee, or read in parts. Sorry, I finally sat down and just wanted to get it done so I can catch up. 2)Fiona does wear clothes, she just knows how to take them off...and she does, and I don't fight that battle anymore. This post cracked me up because it's all over the course of a week and I think four different days she is missing clothing. Here it goes...

We got our tree for free this year-we have a fake one, but I hate it! We didn't have extra money in the budget for a real tree so I was going to settle. The Saturday before Christmas, we were going to put it up I ran to Target to pick up Fiona's Christmas present, our regular Target didn't have it so I went to a different one. On the way home I saw people cleaning up a tree lot with tons of trees set out on the curb. They were done with the tree lot and the trees were free. I was so stoked I walked in the house and ~~flopped around like a fish~~ danced in the entryway.

As soon as Fiona woke up we got started decorating. She wanted to do the star first: I went to get pasta for dinner while JR and Fiona decorated (James was sleeping): The result, not bad at all: My favorite presents: The timing was perfect because JR's mom came on Sunday to do Christmas. The kids enjoyed her company and the gifts of course.

Fiona liked opening the first couple of presents then she wanted everyone else to open:We finished the day with pizza, it was nice to have one Christmas a week early because we were able to relax and enjoy the day.

Christmas Eve was really nice this year. Last year I worked until 4:30 (even though our office closed at noon), so JR and Fiona were home together. This year JR was off work the 23rd and 24th, it was like having a weekend before all the holiday madness started. We started a couple of Christmas eve traditions this year, baking (vegan) sugar cookies for Santa, Decorating after nap:

homemade sweet potato fries and slow cooker ribs for dinner, and getting to open one present-Christmas jammies.

Santa came and has his own wrapping paper-a smart idea until the kids are older and more snoopy: The kids slept in, my favorite Christmas present. I made blackberry cinnamon rolls the night before so I was able to get them in the oven before we got Fiona up. We asked Fiona if she knew what today was and she said "Santa's coming over today?"

Fiona helped James open his gift from Santa ♥

Again, Fiona opened a few present and then wanted me to open the rest while she played: Presents waiting to be opened: The aftermath, I love it: My favorite things for the kids were a couple handmade items that I bought from my friends.

A KU Pooligan's diaper from my friend Ange:
And a few custom knit items from my my friend Amanda at A beautiful Skye,

Matching Pom pom hats:

A hat and longies (wool pants used as a diaper cover) set: My favorite toy for Fiona, Melissa and Doug magnetic dress up dolls. These are so cute. I was peeved that the girl only came with dresses, skirts, shirts, etc. while the boy comes with fireman, policeman, super hero, etc. That is why I bought both sets, and I'm happy to say the girl has been a firefighter, police officer, construction worker, pirate and a super hero. The boy has also worn the dresses.

Breakfast-delicious, we will be eating this often:

Then, off to Nana a Chief's house. We got there at 11:30 and both kids rely on 12pm naps, it was hectic! Neither of the big kids had much interest in opening presents so they were running around crazy, the babies were fussy, the adults were loud. Good times!
Family picture first-me, JR, Fiona, Mom/Nana, Dexter, Tina, Dad/Chief, James, Joe and Jonas:

My Granddad:

The big kids while we were opening presents, it's fun to see these two interact now:

We went home for naps while the gang ate so when we came back we got everything back out and Jonas snacked with Fiona:

We got some Christmas money from my parents, we were just going to put it in the bank but then decided to actually spend it on something for us.
Since I'm breastfeeding I usually only have one cup of coffee a day, JR usually drinks coffee at work so we waste a lot of half pots of coffee and I like my coffee stronger than him. We talked about getting a Keurig before but never had the extra "luxury" money, then the week before Christmas I saw one at the grocery store for $70 so we knew right away what to do with our Christmas money. We are in love with this thing! The cups can get expensive but we are good coffee snobs anyway so throwing a half pot of good coffee away cost us more.
We also got a Wii fit, good fun too! So if I go missing you might look for me in front of the TV on the Wii Fit drinking some delicious coffee!

Pre-Christmas post update

2010-12-29T03:43:00.000-08:00

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! Ours was good, lots of fun with Fiona this year and exciting for another first for James.

Sleeping training has been going well, James was sleeping 4-7 hour blocks (9 hours on Christmas!). We have hit a bump in the road, I think it's tummy issues, which has made me a bit soft thinking he may be in pain. Now, I'm just not sure what the deal is. He is awake and crying like it's the first night of sleep training, and it's 5:30 in the morning. He ate at 4:30, back to bed @4:45, was quite for 25 minutes, fussed so I tried to burp him, put him back down and he hasn't gone back to sleep yet. He seems to be settling down though, now that I'm wide awake.

Fiona is doing well she has a bit of cabin fever so we went to the park yesterday. It was 44 degrees, almost comfortable while lightly bundled. We played for about 30 minutes and then her lip was quivering so we called it a day.

I'll post our Christmas update soon since James is now sleeping and I'm still awake.

I heart sleep training : )

2010-12-16T10:58:00.000-08:00

Ah, I got 6 straight hours of sleep last night, along with 2.5 hours before that! James did really well, the third night there is still supposed to be some crying, but there wasn't. I put him to bed at 6p, he slept until 9:30p I fed him, even though my book says not to feed them unless it's been 4-6 hours-it was close enough for me. He went back to sleep and woke up at 1:30, I fed him again and was kind of bummed thinking we were might continue with a 3.5 hour cycle. But no, he woke up cooing at 7:20am!! I can't even express how I feel today. James has been great too, he has stayed awake for 2 two hour blocks, he was happy and played on the floor with Fiona and I, and he enjoyed listening to me read a ton of books. He even sat happily in the exersaucer while I made lunch for Fiona-usually he is a mess by this time.
He current has been asleep for 1.5, which may come to an abrupt end if his squealing sister keeps up (she is playing in her crib during nap time-time to sleep train her again).

Because I feel like I have to balance the spotlight: Crazy Fiona in her wool pants, they are supposed to serve as a diaper cover, but I put them on her a lot because I think they are the cutest things ever-I want some for me.
I thought about apologizing for the messy clothes pile behind her, but really, we always have a clothes pile on our couch. So I'm not apologizing because it'll probably show up in other pictures too.

Thanks Casey and Jennifer, I needed the encouragement the other night!

Sleep training sucks!!

2010-12-15T18:40:00.000-08:00

My kids as babies have been difficult, sweet, cuddly, beautiful...but difficult. Both cried for the first 3 months of life, obviously not the entire time, but it felt that way. Always at night and sometimes during the day, then once they outgrow that they have sleep issues.
Fiona slept through the night (6 or 7 hours) at 7 weeks, then around 4 months started going to sleep okay initially then waking every 30-40 minutes for 3-4 hours.
James' record was 6 hours, and that happened once. This past week he was waking up every 2-3 hours. He was sick on Sunday, 103 degree temperature and made us realize he is probably going to get sick like Fiona, always scary high fevers. So last night after 24 hours of no fever, with a sleep deprived Mama (who has too short of a fuse), I decided it was time to start sleep training. I hate it, but it worked for Fiona who still, most of the time, lays down and goes to sleep when it's time to. I thought I would use a more gentle approach and do the "fading" method or Ferber method, where you go in after 5 minutes, then 10, then 15 or 20, etc. That worked okay last night but tonight it just pissed him off more.
So far it's been different then with Fiona b/c he keeps going to sleep and waking back up 30-4o minutes later. She cried off and on for longer periods of time and then crashed. Hopefully this is the worst night and then I'll get to be the fun loving, patient Mommy I need to be. Not to mention James is obviously tired most times, so this will help him too. I remember after we did this with Fiona her personality really started to show more. Okay, I feel better. James was crying again and JR is at a final so I had to do something to take my mind off, but now he's sleeping and after writing/reading this I, again, feel like we are doing the right thing.

I can't post with out pictures so here are some from our walk last week (before it was 10 degrees out every day). Like sister, like brother-I hope these two can be really close growing up, I know there will be plenty of fights, but in the long run I pray they can be friends.
As we were walking Fiona said "Mommy, a huuuge Christmas tree!...but, it doesn't have lights."

And from our Chirstmas card photo shoot: I wasn't going to do Christmas cards this year but found a good deal so I ordered them yesterday. They might not be received until after Christmas but it shouldn't be more then a couple of days after.

More Talent: sorting colors

2010-12-11T21:00:00.001-08:00

While I was getting James ready for bed tonight (JR was at the KU game), Fiona apparently started practicing her sorting skills....

In the cats water dish, nice!
See, all the yellow now in the water bowl:

Talent (catch up post)

2010-12-06T10:53:00.000-08:00

Fiona can pee like Aksel-she seriously started doing this herself, it took us a little while to figure out what she was doing:
She can eat sushi with chop sticks:
As of yesterday, James can sit with support (don't mind the blood on his nose-going to the doctor tomorrow to get him checked out-thinking it's just dry air):

Thanksgiving weekend!

2010-12-03T15:58:00.000-08:00

When JR and I got married we chose to do Thanksgiving with his family, Christmas morning at home-just us, and Christmas with my family. Then we could do fake days with the other family if needed.
This year it was hard to figure out Thanksgiving, our kids fall apart in the car during a 20 minute trip, so traveling was questionable. We usually go to Topeka for JR's extended family's Thanksgiving dinner, but we weren't sure of the details. JR's Mom invited us to come see her in Americus, about 2 hours away, she was willing to work around our driving/sleep schedule too. So three days before Thanksgiving we finally decided to go south to see her and Shawn.

We packed up with Nate, JR's brother, and headed out at about 8:30am. The kids did really well in the car on the way down, Fiona stayed entertained by looking out the window until about half way through. I brought a bunch of books and the magnadoodle so those kept her busy until we got there. James took a good nap and the chewed on my hands or his toys the rest of the way.

The day went well James took a great nap (made me realize we need curtains in our/his room), Fiona totally skipped her nap, everyone got to catch up and hangout. Grandma let Fiona make a pudding pie, with help from uncle Nate.

Dinner was fabulous, thanks Shawn and Bindy!
Fiona entertained everyone during dinner:

Grandma, James, and JR:

J.R.'s brothers,Drew and Nate, and Bindy's boyfriend, Shawn, on the end:

We packed up and headed out at about 345 in order to minimize the car time when James hit his fussy time, after 5 or 530. Both kids crashed once we got on the highway.
Sorry this is sideways, I still haven't figured out how to turn videos, just turn you head-it's worth the neckache. This is one down side of sucking your fingers:

We only had about 20 minutes of James fussing on the way home. I crawled in the backseat and tried to keep him calm, he never got to the fully out scream, so I call the trip a success!

On Saturday J.R. went to a wedding in Topeka, so I took the kids to my parents house for leftover turkey dinner. It's always hectic when it's just the kids and I, so I didn't take pictures once we got inside.
But of course I have pictures of the kids in the car, for two reasons: 1) I finally turned Fiona forward facing in my car and James got moved to her old covertable seat (b/c my car is so old it doesn't have the top anchor and the seat we had for Fiona couldn't ride forward with out it, and my belt on one side doesn't lock right so I couldn't get the base for James' seat to stay tight for more then one trip -the seat he is in now has built in locking clips). and 2) because of my craftiness, I made Fiona's "babylegs" out of $1 target socks and I made James' pirate blanket. JR fixed my sewing machine...again.

We had a good time with both families, lots of good food and great company!!

The incredible un-edible egg

2010-12-01T14:46:00.000-08:00

Fiona started eating scrambled egg yolks before her first birthday, after she turned one, scrambled eggs were one of her favorite foods. Then last January or so she stopped eating them-didn't think much of it because she actually got really picky at the time. In march we went to Culver's and got dinner and custard. Shortly after dinner Fiona broke out in hives all over her face and neck and a few on her belly. We couldn't figure out what caused it,
that was probably the third time she had ever had fast food, so we wondered if it was the oil they fried the food in.
In June I made eggs in a basket for dinner one night. Fiona took two bites and broke out in hives all over her tummy, neck, and face. It still took some research to figure out that egg was the common food. Did you know there is raw egg in Culver's custard?

At Fiona's 2 year WCC the pediatrician was very clear that an egg allergy can be life threatening and we needed to completely avoid eggs until we saw an allergist.

So, in the end of September we took her to the allergist and he verified that she is allergic to eggs, the skin test ranked 4+, the highest rating. We also found out she has a mild wheat allergy (ranked 2, not enough to avoid), which explains the almost constant bumpy rash around her mouth, and the terrible eczema she has had every winter on the back of her neck.
We were too panicked to take pictures of the egg reaction but this is the wheat rash:

He prescribe an Epi pen for her because egg allergies can have an anaphylaxis reaction (throat close, tongue swelling, etc). It seems her allergy is mild because she was eating eggs with no reaction for so long, but every exposure can cause a different reaction.

It is very likely she will outgrow the allergies, the allergist thought possibly by next year! Kind of frustrating still; you hear all the information about how breastfed babies have fewer allergies and fewer ear infections, etc. And here we are, I nursed Fiona until 16 months and we have/had both, I guess I have to think of how much worse it might have been right? :)

On top of all that, I am dairy free because James has a dairy intolerance. Both the allergy diagnosis and the initial discovery of the dairy intolerence came in the same month so I was in a serious cooking rut...until I was referred to Peas and Thank you (Thanks Stephanie), not only is she a great cook but she is hilarious, and super nice! I have found great cookie, waffle, pancakes, etc recipes with no eggs and no milk!

That was one hell of a catch up post, I have more vegan cooking updates but that was a lot for one post. If you are still here thanks!

Hello!!

2010-11-12T08:22:00.000-08:00

Sorry I have been such a blog slacker!! A brief update:

Fiona is doing well and getting smarter everyday. She is learning her letters and numbers just through our everyday activities. She consistently recognizes P, B, E, F, W, K, O, C, sometimes N, J,and a few others. She also knows 2, 4, 0 for some reason too.
James has 2 freaking teeth, What? He's 4.5 months, that's 6 MONTHS sooner then Fiona got her first teeth. Crazy, huh?

Home life is fun, we have really enjoyed an awesome fall, lots of warm weather and sunshine.

I've got a ton to post so hopefully I can get back on the ball and play catch up! Until then, some recent pictures:
Pre haircut (I was calling her Justin Beiber before the haircut):
Post haircut (this is the next day, left the camera in the car, it's not our new favorite picture setting):
James conned me out of a Christmas present by getting teeth the day before it came in the mail, Sophie the giraffe. He loves it, it must feel really good on his teeth.

The day after his second tooth came through:

Baby Giggles on camera

2010-10-05T11:30:00.000-07:00

James has a cold and can't breath out of his nose at night, so I really tired today. But, this makes waking up every two hours last night totally worth it!!

What happens if you sit still too long in our house...

2010-10-04T21:04:00.000-07:00

Old friends, new friends and somewhere in between.

2010-10-01T13:14:00.000-07:00

When we moved here last year I was sure I was having Sarah withdraws. We have been friends for 4 years (can you believe that, Sarah?), we worked together after she came back to work from staying home with Paisley for a while. She had a baby, I love kids, and I was planning a wedding, something Sarah loves. After that, we just clicked, we call anytime of day to get opinions on sick/hurt kids, we call when we find a great deal at Target, when we're upset, happy, have a new niece or nephew,etc. When you are friends with a co-worker you spend more time together then you do your own family at some points, so not working together or living in the same town sucks.

Before JR and I got married (not sure when exactly, but I wasn't pregnant yet so we either weren't married or we had been married for less then 2 months), Sarah and I took a break and walked to McDonalds. We both had drinks and ice cream cones, the wind was blowing my hair in my face so I was holding it back with my arm, holding my ice cream in the air. I asked Sarah if she was embarrassed to walk with me and she said she wasn't and started walking the same way. I'm sure we looked ridiculous...but we were in downtown Topeka, so it's likely no one noticed. Anywho, so Sarah said "You know this means if I get pregnant you have to get pregnant when I do." I said "yeah right, we have to wait a few years" Ha Ha, funny to think back to that now. Long story short, I get pregnant with Fiona, she waits a year or so then gets pregnant with Ryder, about a month after that I found out I was pregnant with James, so when I told her I sent her a text message titled "remember that time we were walking back from McDonald's?..." and inside was a picture of the positive pregnancy test.
So our children are destined to be friends...or at least we will force them to be, right? So far things are looking good though.
A couple of weeks ago Sarah came to town to visit family, we were long overdue for a get together. Before she left for home we had them over for an impromptu BBQ, it was a blast!
The girls played really well together especially considering the 2.5 year age gap and that Fiona stayed up an hour past her bedtime.
The boys...well, they already have a lot in common, sleeping, drooling, hair loss... I'm telling ya, they're best buds.

The whole gang:
I can't wait until they are able to move closer!

The coolest place ever!!

2010-09-27T19:34:00.001-07:00

Saturday was the Smithsonian national museum day, free admission to select museums around the country. Wonderscope was one of the museums in the area participating, so we decided to check it out.
It was so stinkin fun!!

It is in an old school building and each room is set up with a different theme/activity.
We arrived right when the museum opened and walked in with 4 or 5 other families, most of them stopped at the first room so we started farther down in the climbing and play room for kids 2 and under. So much fun!

There is a clear panel here, Fiona is looking at JR underneath.
It was practically impossible to get her to leave this room, but I knew which room would get her out...water play, she loves playing in water-as long as it doesn't get in her ears-we play in water buckets/pans every time we go outside! They also had aquariums with lizards, snakes and turtles in the front of the room. :

Next up Legos, another one of Fiona's current loves:This stuff is all made of Legos, the door of the fridge, the toilet, mirror, etc...

My favorite:

Also in the lego room they had the Amazing airways, a vacuum tube that you could put scarves in and watch them fly through the tubes and shoot out. You could also change the direction of the tubes by flipping vents closed.
Fiona wasn't sure about it at first, but after some convincing we got her to sit with JR and try to catch the scarves. It's a bit loud at first because I am putting the scarves in the tube, but listen to her laugh when the scarves come out!! ♥ :

We went to two more rooms and back to the first room before leaving but I didn't get as many pictures because we were nearing naptime. Even if we paid $18 instead of $4 (museum day gave two free entries, so we only paid for Fiona), it would have been well worth the money. We will certainly be going back, it sounds like they change their exhibits every so often.

And because he was in the wrap the whole trip, a picture of James on his 3 month birthday!!
It's still early, but I think he is in the 16.6% of our kids that will have blue eyes, Fiona's were obviously turning brown by this point:

Spoke too soon and the Irish fest

2010-09-07T20:44:00.000-07:00

I don't know what's going on with James, but it seems like he is getting worse now. He has been crying more the last 4 nights. It's terrible, I can't tell if he is worse than Fiona was because I didn't blog about it, I felt bad complaining about her. And our minds totally blocked that time. It sucks to wish away a stage of James' babyhood, but I've had enough. I know I'll miss this age but I'm ready to be there, where I have forgotten how awful this is and how sweet his first smiles were. Okay there I blogged about it, so I have a reference point next time (ha, good thing JR doesn't read the blog-he says we are done for sure. Two fussy babies, gives us a pretty good chance of another fussy one, he doesn't want to take the risk).

This weekend we went to the Irish Festival at Crown center, two years ago this was our first big trip and outing with Fiona. When Fiona was born my parents brought this shirt to the hospital for her, so she wore it to the festival:

She could still wear it last year too:
No, I didn't squeeze her into it this year, it's James' turn to wear it:
Fiona loved the fountains this year,

I didn't think she would so I didn't bring a change of clothes, oops!

Her shoes were soaked so we took them off and literally poured them out, she spent the rest of the festival on JR's shoulders.
Our family picture, even though you can't see James, we know he's under the hat.

RELIEF!!

2010-09-01T11:39:00.001-07:00

Sorry I have been away, I haven't even been reading blogs let alone writing them. Little man has been having a terrible time lately! We went to his 2 month check up last Friday and after discussing the fact that the Zantac wasn't bringing much relief for James, our pediatrician recommended switching him to over the counter Prevacid. The first few days were terrible (JR had to come home on his lunch on Monday so I could have a small break!), the next couple were okay, but.....today has been great (it's day 6 on the new med, doc said give it five days). James woke up smiling took his meds, napped, ate, smiled, slept, ate, smiled, and is sleeping now-not in my arms!! Notice the lack of crying in his day, amazing!Fiona is doing much better now too. I started using some different positive reinforcement techniques, things she can see rather than just words- stickers, a magnet chart, hand smileys, etc and her behavior has gotten much better. She is two though, so we still have our moments. The past week and a half we were having some sleep issues with her also, but we think a night light has solved the problem. We have only used it for 2 nights, but those two have been great.

Things are looking up, let me get my house back in order and I'll be back blogworld!

Jack Johnson concert

2010-08-18T18:03:00.000-07:00

This spring my Facebook status said something like: "If Jack Johnson comes to KC every year I give birth then we will be having lots of children, good thing JR doesn't check FB very often". Totally true!

We went and saw Jack in August of 08 when Fiona was three weeks old, she was colicky and we needed the break. We went and saw him again on Monday, this time we are dealing with similar issues, plus a feisty 2 year old. We really need the break this time too! Thankfully my parents watched the kids for us. Fiona was in bed and I got James settled down before we left, they actually were good, except Fiona woke up and my Mom couldn't stand leaving her to cry back to sleep so she was up when we got home. No big deal-Chief got some serious cuddle time in with her and she slept late for us.

The show was awesome, we both really like Jack Johnson's chill music and both of our kids know his music. He is fabulous in concert too.

I drank half a beer, it wasn't as good as I remembered:

Jack and I (he is one of my two "if he came to our door and swept me off my feet. I would go" guys. Does everyone have those people?):

There was a lot of pot smoking around us, we look like we got a bit too close...I promise we didn't

The lady in the background singing with Jack is Paula Fuga, they sing "Country Road", she has a great voice and they have a whistling duet in the song-so cute!

Please ignore my glasses and air dried hair! I usually have a ponytail holder on my wrist, but for some reason didn't that night, and I only wear my glasses to see long distance at night (so really driving and concerts).

Fiona's last day at daycare

2010-08-03T20:40:00.000-07:00

* current day update below*

We paid for the month of July at Fiona's daycare so that I could get adjusted to life with James before diving in with both kids at home. Last Friday was her last day.
We were blessed to find her "school", I found it on google (because why wouldn't you search for someone to trust with your child's life on google?) when we were having issues with the first K.C. daycare. We got totally lucky, Fiona has done great at her school, making it that much harder to pull her out. It was bittersweet dropping her off on her last day.
She is now the oldest in her class so I was a little concerned about her being held back being with the younger kids, although they did get a lot of one on one time. Plus, I have always wanted to stay home with my children, I'm just feeling intimidated by the little smarty she has become and trying to keep up with her educational needs.
Her main teacher, who has taken care of her for the past year, was gone the last two days so Fiona was in a different classroom. She knows and loves all the staff there so it wasn't an issue for her but I was sad she wasn't going to get to say good bye to her teacher.
On Tuesday I found out her main teacher was no longer at the school (thankfully we now have contact on FB). I knew, after hearing that, that is was time for Fiona to be home with me. She would have still done great with the other staff, but that was my "sign" to know we are doing the right thing.
Her last day: This is the good-bye poster they made for her:We will still visit her school, we have a goodbye present we are making that we need to take, and they have mass once a month that we'll probably go to now and then. When we need daycare again we will definitely consider going back there.

Today:
Day 3 at home was...trying, I sent JR a text at 11:30 saying I was thinking of retiring from this job, but by the end of the day I was worried I would be fired from this job. The day started okay, then Fiona ATE my deodorant while I was trying to get James to stop crying, two feet away from her, (thank God I have gotten crunchy with my cosmetics and use an all natural deodorant), we did go for a walk after telling Fiona 1000 times to put her underwear on, lunch was fairly successful. After nap I finally got brave enough to take both kids in public alone, and we went to the grocery store. We were getting ready to make dinner when the deodorant started to go through Fiona's system and causing a newly potty trained little girl some issues (right as we were coming up on 1 week accident free), the second one was so bad I just threw her in the tub and rinsed her with a cup. I turned the water on in the middle (the temp I use for my shower) ran my hand under it for a while then started pouring water on her, the second cup I poured she started crying "Hot, Mommy, hot!". What was I thinking?! Obviously it wasn't that hot, but her bathwater is usually somewhat cool.
At the end of the day she still sat on my lap while I read her a story and hugged and kissed me before bed-we did make vegan cookies after dinner, that might have helped. Day 4 has to be better, thankfully it's going to be "nice" aka not 110 degrees, so we will have some other options for activities.

Survived day 1

2010-08-02T18:33:00.000-07:00

7:50 JR leaves for work: Fiona and James finish breakfast.
8:10 I make coffee and my breakfast
8:20 Potty/get dressedCoffee and chalk (click the picture to read my mug, love it! My friend Rita gave it to me as a going a way present from my old, old job last year, I think of her every time I use it-a lot)
9:00 Move to the backyard b/c the "scary trucks" were working out front
9:20 Have a dance party in the kitchen because James is crying and needed bouncing/rocking/dancing.

9:41 stamp and seal birthday thank you's
9:54 Read a book to Fiona while I feed James

10:05 Fold laundry, Fiona folds baby wipes:
10:15: potty break

10:20 Playdough orange then purple
10:23 Change James' diaper
10:25 Change James' diaper, again
10:30 String beads
10:50 Fiona does nothing (repeated warnings not to throw beads, no markers)
11:00-11:35 I attempt to make lunch, both kids crying some bubble blowing, lunch for Fiona.
11:35 Fiona time-out for attempting to swat James
11:40 Potty
11:45 get ready for nap
11:59 BOTH KIDS napping!!
12:00-1:20pm lunch and computer time for me. Clean up from the morning, start diaper laundry.
1:20 Fiona awake/potty
1:30 call Daddy and sing "People take pictures, people take pictures" (we listened to Jack Johnson on repeat all day) (Yes, she is in James' car seat, I've learned to pick my battles and she hasn't exceed max weight. The chair on top of the chair was for the purpose of vacuuming. )
1:35 pick up living room
2:00 Feed James while Fiona messes up freshly picked up living room.
2:07 Fiona takes her clothes off and says "going streaking" (After bath when she runs out of the bathroom we say "We're going streaking, across the quad and into the gymnasium", she has obviously picked up on the quote. Name that movie).
2:20 Pick up living room again while wearing James
3:30 vacuum Fiona hides on the chair b/c the "vacuum is scary"3:00 potty break
3:05 huge meltdown
3:20 bunny crackers snack
Coloring with markers

4:00 Play with Memory cards, stacking/sorter, and other random toys
4:20 Makes James smile!!!!
4:38 Fiona plays in her room, I cook dinner while wearing James:

5:15 JR home!!!

I survived the first day as a stay at home mom or as Sass would say SAHM. The 10:45 to nap time gap will be hard, but I'm feeling much more confident today. We'll see what tomorrow holds.

Sweet Baby James

2010-07-30T09:55:00.001-07:00

James is 5 weeks old tomorrow, he is starting to have longer awake times more often. He weighs 11lbs and is fitting very well in his 0-3 month clothes. These are pictures of him during his first week, when my Mom had to go buy some newborn size clothes because we mostly had 0-3 month and he swam in them. Here he is yesterday 4 weeks later, 3.5lbs heavier, and much more alert:

We are struggling to get his reflux under control. Wednesday he cried most of the evening, the exact way Fiona used to cry everyday(!) when we were told she had colic. (I have been feeling so terrible when we see Baby J's reflux get bad because it's the way Fiona acted the first 3 months of her life. I wish I would have pushed harder to get her reflux medicine before 5 months, especially knowing how much pain she was probably in, ugh poor baby). The doctor adjusted his Zantac yesterday, the research I've done makes me think we'll need to switch medicine soon, but so far the adjustment has helped.

2 years old, B-day and Party!

2010-07-28T11:16:00.000-07:00

Fiona turned 2 last Friday, I can't believe what a big girl she is! We told her on Thursday night that when she woke up in the morning it would be her birthday. That morning when we came in to get her I said do you know what today is she said "I two in July!", so she had some understanding of a birthday.

That morning we let her open a few small things from us, she loved the Elmo card, books and flip-flops.

Nana and Chief had us over for dinner to celebrate that night, Nana made birthday cookies:

We did a Dr Seuss birthday party on Saturday ( I'll have to put the kids Seuss shirts back on and get a picture of them since I totally slacked on pictures). We had lots of family and friends come and celebrate Fiona's birthday and welcome James. Thankfully the rain held off long enough for the kids to swim for a little while.
Fiona loved playing with her cousin Jonas and friend Paisley:
Paisley pointed out that the slide could fit over the pool so we moved it and made a water slide. Fiona, who was scared of the water a couple of months ago, loved it. When it started to thunder we took the kids in for cake and presents. My Mom made an awesome Dr Seuss cake.

This isn't great picture of anyone in particular, but it shows how full our small house was and most of the kids/babies that we had at the party (I think the only kids missing from this picture are my two kiddos and my 2nd cousin Brayden):Tina (sister-in-law), Sarah (best friend), and I all have boys about a month apart, we were wanting to get pictures of them together but this is the closest we got, Sarah and Ryder (May 21) James (June 26) and I, Dexter (April 23) and Tina:

We had such a great time, it was so much fun to see everyone!

HI

2010-07-21T08:42:00.000-07:00

Oy, we've been busy! Mostly just getting used to our new family of four.

I resigned from my job on Monday, I will work a few hours here and there this week and next week, then, I will be a stay at home Mom. I am actually looking for a work from home job and have a couple of leads so far. In January I will be going to school to become a massage therapist, something I have wanted to do for a long time. Lots going on for us!

Long update on the kids:
I got a woven wrap to wear James...and Fiona actually loves to go for walks in it too! I love it, these are my colors, and I have found a lot of different carries to do that are super comfy and put James right to sleep.

This carry was hard to do because James was fussin and squirmy, but as soon as I got one piece of the wrap around him snug he was sound asleep and I was able to finish.

Every time I have the wrap Fiona says "go for a walk, Mommy?", so on Sundays I wrap her up and walk to the gas station for a newspaper. She gets cozy in the wrap also,here she has her fingers in her mouth and her belly, relaxed:

We struggle with washing Fiona's hair, she has never liked having water on her face, but since she got the tubes in her ears it has become much more difficult (sometimes when kids have tubes it is actually painful to get water in the ear). Lately we have made hair washing more fun by giving her spikes and then bringing the big mirror in for her to see. Here are a couple of the styles that JR gave her last night:

James finally lost his cord stump after 2 weeks and a couple of days. Thank goodness because his cloth diapers rubbed the cord and I was not going to buy disposables with all the cloth diapers in our house. He also really needed a bath, he was stinky:

James has been a good baby so far, he sleeps a lot and has a couple of awake periods a day. We did get him medicine for acid reflux and it has helped lots. He was so grunty and fussy after he ate which we recognized as reflux symptoms from when Fiona was a baby. He also had some scary gagging/coughing/choking episodes that have improved quite a bit with the medicine. He is growing so fast! Big boy!
A conversation with an almost 2 year old:

I love the way she says freckle and find it so funny that she picked up the "two in July" phrase!

My "Baby" girl.

2010-07-06T12:32:00.000-07:00

I still see Fiona as our baby. Having James in the house makes me realize how much of a kid Fiona has become. However, this weekend she really seemed like a little girl.
-She started wearing underwear(and using my eyelash curler):We got her a potty a few weeks ago just to get her used to it, the weekend we got the potty she was airing out a rash and came in and said "Mom, I peed". I asked her to show me where so I could clean it up and there were only like four drops on the floor, I took her to the potty and she peed. Then the day before James was born she used the potty all day (what terrible timing for her to be ready to potty train). This weekend she did pretty well with only a couple of accidents, even a dry trip to the grocery store and a dry nap (if she feels like she has a diaper on then she will pee-the booster seat is one place she pees every time), tomorrow she will wear underwear to daycare. I can't believe it, I was planning to start potty training her in the fall, I'm not complaining about not having 2 in diapers for more then a few weeks though.
-If you've been reading long you know that we choose to extended rearface Fiona in her carseat. The AAP came out with new guidelines last year stating kids are safer rearfacing until age 2. Fiona will be 2 in three weeks so when JR went to install James' seat base and had to move Fiona so we decided we could turn her around. She is still RFing in my car b/c I said to age 2 and she still has room in her seat in my car, the seat in JR's car she is outgrowing the RFing height.
-You may have noticed Fiona's hair lately too, the mullet is back. So, we took Fiona to Sheer Madness (a kids salon) for her first real haircut. She did great and got a super cute haircut:

That's the update on my "baby" girl, I can't believe how fast she has grown up.

Welcome James Anthony!

2010-06-29T07:54:00.001-07:00

James Anthony Snyder was born on Saturday June 26th at 7:14pm.

Saturday morning I woke up with contractions about 10 minutes apart, I got up and started moving around to try and get things really going. They pretty much stopped for about 3 hours, I was bummed thinking this wasn't it. Then about 11:00am they came back, again about 10 minutes apart. From 11 on they were getting closer, sometimes 3.5 minutes apart, other times 6 minutes apart. The contractions weren't that painful so I wanted to wait to go to the hospital, I hate the hospital and wanted to spend the least amount of time there. When Fiona got up from her nap we called my Mom to come get her and I got in the shower. Finally about 3:30, after my Mom kept saying "are you timing these?", we decided to head to the hospital. I could hardly tell Fiona goodbye because I was crying, it was really hard leaving her knowing what we were about to do to her world, plus I've only spent 2 nights away from her.
When we got to the hospital I was 2.5 centimeters dilated, I thought about going without an epidural because of the reaction Fiona and I had to it during labor with her. But, I was having 4 contractions on top of each other and thought I had a long way to go, so I got the epidural at 5:30p. The nurse checked me after that and I was already to a 5. The epidural was great this time, my blood pressure didn't drop, James' heart rate stayed normal, I didn't get the shakes, they didn't give me a catheter, all around much better. Oh, and it worked the whole time!
At 6:15 I was almost dilated to a 7. The doctor walked in just before 7p, broke my water, and had me push 4 times. James was looking up so he wasn't moving much, the doctor turned him (really glad I had the epi for that) and with one push he was out. The first thing I said was "He's tiny!", she laid him on my belly which was cool because with Fiona they took her right away since there was meconium in her waters. There was meconium in James' waters also but she still put him on me for a second.
We still hadn't decided on a name but we only had to look at him for a few minutes to decide, he is James, it fits perfectly!
James weighed 7lbs 11oz, 19.5 inches long, he was born at 7:14 (J.R had the closest guess at 7:12) only 3 hours after we got to the hospital. He nursed right away, then cluster fed for his first few hours. Fiona came up to visit on Sunday morning, she loved "baby James".
We got out of the hospital after 26 hours! We were both doing well and he passed his jaundice test (the last test they do @ 24 hours). We got home about 9:30 on Sunday night so Fiona was already in bed, but she loved seeing him in the morning. I feel great, a smaller baby makes for a easy recovery! He is nursing well and sleeping 2-3 hour blocks. Fiona loves "baby James" and is doing pretty well so far.

Due date update and another Craigslist steal

2010-06-24T19:58:00.000-07:00

Today was my due date (well, one of them, the due date on my chart is tomorrow), and there is nothing going on. This time around I was expecting to go past due, so it's a bit easier to deal with. Also, Fiona has Hand Foot and Mouth disease so she needs to get over that before this baby comes. We thought she was over it, but had a blister show up in her mouth today, and a rash around the outside of her mouth. She hasn't been feeling well for about a week, so we thought she was past it.
Last Saturday we went to City Market in the morning, by naptime there was a storm coming in. We have been so leery of storms since all the trees in our hood seem to fall, so we let Fiona nap with us. I say it every time, but Fiona never sleeps with us, so it was nice to get some cuddles in. I couldn't sleep so I took pictures, don't they look comfy?

This was after they'd been napping for awhile:

I got another Craigslist steal, a slide and fort toy for $20, plus a turtle sandbox for $10!! They are both in great condition and I *think* Fiona likes them:

"Cheese":

Yep, that's a ponytail my friends, she'll leave one in for a little while now. I hate the ponytail because it makes her look like a little girl!!

Speaking of little girl, Fiona talks all.the.time, and we can understand her most of the time. She rarely calls herself Ona anymore, which I loved. Listen to how clearly she can say her name (I ran our of memory at the end so it's cut short).:

This really isn't blogworthy...but it freaked me out! Look, I put the baby's carseat in today and now my backseat is full of kids, well at least their seats. After I put them in I couldn't believe it. I know, weird, but it's me!

Crafty mama and a much needed update!

2010-06-16T17:42:00.000-07:00

Hi, I'm back (for now), we have been busy trying to get ready for baby!! (See older dates for more updates-I'm going to keep adding more also)

We got most things ready this weekend. The "baby" is nameless until we see him, we have three names picked out but we aren't sharing them until we decide. I think we are now ready for him to get here though, bassinet is set up, clothes are washed, (cloth) diapers are prepped/washed, we have the carseat bases (but haven't put them in yet), stroller, pacifiers boiled, etc.

The last big thing I wanted to do before the baby got here was to make a carrier like a Mei Tai, but I haven't really done much with my sewing machine since I got it. A couple months ago I started doing some small projects to get some practice and this weekend I decided to just dive in. The first day was awful, I screwed up my bobbin tension and the machine kept getting jammed. Plus, it's made out of a heavy canvas and it is requires extra stitching so it's sturdy to hold a heavy toddler. JR took this picture b/c of how crazy mad I was at the sewing machine (I was ready to put it on the curb). My Mom even came over to try and help: This picture doesn't even come close to summing up what was going on-I was sweating like crazy and cussing up a storm! After JR documented my struggle, he actually fixed my machine!!! Two days later I have this:
It's comfortable even at 39 weeks pregnant, Fiona loved it she kept saying "I'm comfy, go on walk?".

I made it reversible so JR has a side that doesn't have flowers, I dragged him to the fabric store this past weekend to pick a dad friendly print, this is his side.
Fiona loves riding on our backs to go on walks so now we have another carrier to use, it will also be perfect to use with the baby too!

I'm pretty excited about my first big sewing project and now I'm ready to find another!!

Memorial Day weekend

2010-06-01T20:42:00.000-07:00

We enjoyed a fun weekend full of family! Saturday we enjoyed BBQ with my parents and friends of theirs with a little girl a few weeks younger then Fiona. The girls had a blast playing in a bowl of water on the patio (no pictures-totally slacking!).

Sunday we went to my cousin Philip's house for another BBQ, it was so much fun to have all of my cousins on my Mom's side together. Most of us have kids now and they are all close in age, it's weird (that we are all grown up), but fun.

My Uncle Rusty had water balloons for the kids to play with, they were a hit:
Fiona loved them, even after a couple popped on her. This is my new favorite dress of hers, it's a hand-me-down from Paisley- when Sarah gave it to me I remember thinking how long it would be before she ever wore it, and here we are.

This is my oldest cousin Casey and his son Aiden filling up water balloons:

Fiona doesn't love the water, after she got her tubes, water in her ears really bothers her. She also doesn't like having water splash her. JR was a water baby and I was scared of the water when I was little, I don't want her to have this fear (there are a lot of my fears I don't want her to have actually).

So on Memorial day we went to take Fiona swimming at my parents pool<---this didn't go well. My parents are the youngest people in their complex, some of the people who live there have nothing to do other then make crazy rules. When we showed up at the pool a woman there said "oh, is she potty trained?" My Mom told her she wasn't and the lady pointed out on the pool rules that non potty trained kids can't swim. What?! Really?! What age do kids stop peeing in a pool... 6, 12, 25? She had a swim diaper on which I almost skipped because they don't hold pee and Fiona does her other business at the same time everyday and we were past that time. We headed back to my parents place and Fiona was crying at this point "swimming pool, swimming?"
We figured we would go check our city pool, it was definitely a better idea anyway. They have a huge wading pool that made it easy to get Fiona used to the water. She was scared to death at first-like cling to me with her arms and legs scared.

Before you become a parent people tell you that you will feel love that you haven't felt before or pain when your child is in pain. But no one told me about how proud you will feel when you see your child accomplish something. We were at the pool for just over an hour and Fiona went from not even wanting to get her pinky toe wet, to walking back and forth in water up to her chest. She did great and loved it! And writing this 3 weeks later I still feel that proud feeling I had that day! We will for sure go back this summer to keep her comfortable with the water.

We reenacted her swimming experience at home the next week, I was afraid to bring my camera to the city pool so now I have "documentation" of her first swimming experience. The water was super cold and she still loved it.

"Cheese":

Flower girl -Nate and Steph's wedding.

2010-05-30T19:13:00.000-07:00

JR's brother, Nathan, got married to Stephanie at the end of May. They asked Fiona to be one of their flower girls and she happily obliged. Thankfully Nate and Steph are understanding of Fiona's need for her scheduled sleep (perhaps b/c they have seen the result of her not getting a nap/bedtime ;-)) so we came to the wedding after naptime and left at bedtime. This made for a successful day!!
I don't have action pictures b/c I was trying to figure out if she would need to be escorted up the aisle. Stephanie was super laid back about the role of the kids, JR was the Best man and the Mom of the other flower girl and ring bearer was the Maid of honor. To keep things easy JR took Fiona up the aisle and Steph's sister (Mom of the other kids) took the other two up the aisle, it worked out for the best because between the grass, the long dress, and new shoes, Fiona kept tripping. It was a beautiful wedding and everything went smooth. We were so happy to be a part of it all and happy to officially welcome Stephanie to the family!

Here are the pictures I do have:

Pre-wedding fruity cheerios for a snack:

I love these two people so much, aren't they beautiful?:

This is before the rehearsal dinner. I rarely wear heels but as soon as I got them out Fiona started wearing them around the house:
We normally see Nate and Stephanie about once a week. Between all the wedding "things" we saw them several times during that week and Fiona loves her uncle Nate. That whole next week Fiona talked about "Unca Nate", she was really happy to see him the next weekend after they got back from their honeymoon!

Nameless Baby update

2010-05-26T08:01:00.000-07:00

About 4 months ago we decided we would name this baby James Anthony, but the last couple weeks we have both started second guessing the name. I had been questioning it for a while, but JR kept saying "I like James". However, now he is rethinking it also.

There are a couple of reasons we aren't settled on it, some are silly and some are legit.
-We don't like the nickname Jim or Jimmy
-There are A LOT of James', with a sister named Fiona it seems like would should pick something a little less popular. Actually, the first time I suggested a different name to JR was when I had a customer named James, who's ID said "offender" on it (registered sex offenders in KS have to have it printed on their license).
-I can't stand the way James sounds plural, I think it sounds weird "Those are James' shoes."<--Doesn't that sound weird?
-We chose the name very quickly, I had a list already typed up when we found out we were having a boy, JR rejected all of the names except James, so it was decided. I feel like we didn't give it much thought.
So, here we are with just over 4 weeks to go, me with the baby name books and websites, JR with the constant rejection of the names I pick (and no suggestions at that-grr).

I guess since we are being indecisive "Mr. Nameless" has started to do the same. At my 34 week appointment he was breech after being head down since 30 weeks. The next day, I'm 90% sure he flipped back to head down, then this past Saturday I'm pretty sure his head was back at the top. After a couple days of doing yoga, and laying upside down on the ironing board propped up on the couch(<--I'm sure this is quite a site to see)...I *think* he is back to head down now, but I just can't tell for sure anymore. We have a sonogram scheduled on Friday to check his position. Then talk about the plan from there. I am praying that he is/stays head down, I hate the hospital and would like to stay 24 hours, the mininum requirement for a "normal" healthy birth. If a c-section is the safest way to get him here then I am okay with that, but will still try to keep him head down!

I will update on Friday after the appointment. Also, if our Microsoft programs straighten up then I'll post picture of our beautiful flower girl from this weekend!

Bubbles, in a toddlers eyes

2010-05-18T20:06:00.000-07:00

Fiona loves to play outside, she loves bubbles, and loves flowers. A few weeks ago she started picking up dandelions that had already turned in to seeds and started saying "bubbles". At first I thought she was just confused, but really if you look at them:

And think about what you do with them:

She's exactly right! I love this age and the way their minds work and learn.

Someone is watching over us

2010-05-13T20:11:00.000-07:00

Remember this incident exactly two weeks ago? Would you believe me if I told you a similar thing happened last night? Seriously, what are the odds?

Last night I went to bed after the meteorologist said the storm that was coming only had a risk of high winds. As I was laying in bed falling asleep I heard the wind start blowing and then almost immediately I heard a cracking/crunching followed by a HUGE crash. I knew right away that a tree had fallen on the back of the house...where Fiona's room is!! She wasn't crying so it made opening her door that much scarier but I ran in to find she was still asleep. The tree missed her window and bedroom by 2 or 3 feet. We are blessed, I already know this but this is one more reason to be thankful for what we have.

This is Fiona's window:

In the post from the last fallen tree you can see this tree in the side, it's the one holding up the hammock:

We had live powerlines outside Fiona's window so we brought her to our bed, she squirreled around for an hour, this kid seriously only sleeps in her crib. When she finally went to sleep we realized she sleeps like her mother, all over the place, she doesn't lie still at all. We were very tired this morning and still didn't have power so we woke up late. I had to find non-heated breakfast for Fiona since we were late getting her to school she would miss breakfast. I tried to quickly open the refrigerator and grab a yogurt without letting much cool air out. Well, when the door flew open last night's leftover spaghetti sauce flew out and all over the three of us. It was just the cherry on top, but we needed the laugh. You can see also see sauce on the floor and wall, poor girl looked so confused:

Our day was crazy with the power company, the landlords, the tree people, Aksel having to go out on the leash...ugh, I'm glad it's over! Our landlords are great though so they are working quickly to get things taken care of, the leaking roof, the fence, the tree etc.

Visit to L&D and Birthday Garden

2010-05-06T18:00:00.000-07:00

I had planned to post this yesterday but I had a stomach bug. I got so dehydrated from being unable to keep anything down from 1pm to 3am, that I was having Braxton Hicks regularly between 4 and 20 minutes apart, I was also dizzy and had a rapid pulse. So I went in to labor and delivery this morning to get IV fluids to stop my contractions. Within about 10 minutes of the end of the 1 liter fluid bag my contractions had stopped and I was feeling much better. James was fine the whole time, it's amazing how the body protects that baby so well in there, even when the Mama is not doing well.

Okay, so here's the scoop on the garden:
For the last three years I have gotten a vegetable garden for my birthday. Last year we moved before we harvested anything though. This year we don't have the room for a big garden and the yard here is much nicer so we decided to make a square foot garden on our patio. Fiona and I planted seeds inside a few weeks ago so the plants were ready to go in the ground by this weekend.

JR got the lumber and we started working on it after we put Fiona to bed on Sunday. Aksel was a great "helper" through the whole thing, you can tell he needs more attention. He cleaned up the extra wood pieces for us, JR finally took this piece of 2x8 when Aksel was actually eating pieces of wood. Have I ever mentioned how bright our dog is?

Here is the completed box after we screwed the bottom piece on, note again the helpful dog: Then Aksel spread the soil around for us, until it got so full he was just throwing the dirt out:

And the completed project:

We made sure to protect it from our "helper".

We planted zucchini, tomatoes, carrots, green bell peppers, cucumbers, and spinach--well, only one or the spinach plants came up so far so we're waiting and hoping for more. I can't wait until this summer to have fresh garden veggies!!

Outdoor weekend

2010-05-04T16:00:00.000-07:00

The weather was nice this weekend so we took advantage of it and enjoyed a lot of time outside. Saturday we went to the zoo with Sarah, Paisley and Toby. Sarah is due to have a little boy at the end of May, I'm sure we were quite the site to see! JR left the camera at work the day before so I didn't have it until we stopped to pick it up on the way home. Sarah put up some pictures from our adventures on her blog though, check them out. But I do have proof of how worn out Fiona was after our morning at the zoo: After she was relaxed enough her fingers fell out of her mouth, but she didn't take her other fingers out of her belly button-silly girl:

We ALL napped until 3pm!! That was a 3 hour nap for Fiona, she hasn't done that in a long time.

Saturday afternoon we were supposed to celebrate my birthday but we after our long naps JR had to mow our ~~jungle~~ yard (well, the front and half of the back). By the time we were all cleaned up and ready to go there was a 30 minute wait at Jack Stack BBQ, which would have left us with about 45 minutes to eat before Fiona's bedtime. So, we postponed our birthday celebration until Sunday.

Sunday morning after Fiona ate breakfast she said, "All done, outside", how could I resist that? So we played for a while in the ~~jungle~~ backyard.

Watching the neighbor's dogs: And jumping:

After a very short nap for Fiona she was ready to roll again. It worked out okay b/c we were able to go to a very early dinner after JR finished mowing. She was a bit ~~of a brat~~ unpleasant at dinner, I really don't know if people around us noticed as much as it felt like they did--you know as a parent you feel like your child(ren) are the worst kids anyone has seen when actually others might not notice them? She is working on her eye teeth (finally) so I think she is having some pain associated with that. While JR went and got the supplies for my garden (details in the next post) I intended to share a popsicle with Fiona...Well, that turned in to "Ona's popsicle", her first ever!

This is her at the start saying "poppickles":

I love this picture, even with ketchup on her face and poppickles juice running down her hand:

Thankfully it's fruit juice popsicle so it's main ingredient is apple juice, but I still used a serious amount of Shout on this dress.

She dropped the end of the popsicle on the ground and picked it back up and ate it...JR is helping her get grass clippings out of her mouth. Fiber, right?

This adventure took her straight to the bathtub afterwards. When she went to bed JR, Aksel and I built my garden (I'll post the garden pictures tomorrow).

Out with a bang!

2010-05-02T19:48:00.000-07:00

I turned 28 on Thursday, overall a good day. After work JR, Fiona and I met my Dad for burgers at BRGR (my Mom had to work late). It was a fun celebration--good food, good company.

The excitement started after we went to bed...that sounds wrong, get your minds out of the gutters. It was super windy when we went to sleep and then at 11:55pm all three of us woke up to a LOUD crash and the sound of the power going out. Our next door neighbor's tree split in half and fell, taking out the power line, among other things. We called 911 because of the live wires down. The firefighters came and looked at the wires then left, I guess because there was no fire and no immediate danger. We got back in to bed just after 1am, at 3am three KCPL bucket trucks showed up. The next three hours we slept off and on with the sounds of chainsaws and workers yelling in the back yard. As soon as we got up we checked out the damage in the daylight, wow!
This is about 6:30 in the morning and raining a little bit so these pictures are a bit fuzzy.

The tree took out the other neighbors shed, the fence between them, two of the back fences, and some of the branches from the tree in the next yard over.

The workers got the lines back up and the power back on sometime at 10am. We lost some of the items in our fridge but everything else was okay. We were very thankful that the tree was on the other side of the yard.
It was a very tired day on Friday, but that evening I got to go to a Mom's night out event with Casey from the Starnes Family blog-It was so much fun to meet her in real life. I can't wait for us to get together again.

Not my skin

2010-04-27T20:14:00.001-07:00

Fiona has her Daddy's skin for sure, lucky girl!

Now that the weather is nice the kids spend a lot of time outside at daycare. Fiona wears her Robeez almost every day-they are comfy, summery, and aren't open toe, so she doesn't get wood chips stuck in her toes. Cute yeah?

They wear sunscreen but must not think to put it on their feet. So, when you take her shoes off, you have this: Do you know how long it would take me and my Irish skin a tan like that? A loooong time! Guess this shows some of the Native American roots from JR.

Zoo

2010-04-18T19:37:00.000-07:00

I got an e-mail last week giving information about the goings on at the zoo this weekend. One event was the cheetah run, it sounded like something we would enjoy. I asked my parents if they wanted to join us, of course they did.
It was actually a little chilly compared to the rest of the week, but it was sunny and beautiful.
Fiona has become quite the stinker and when you have a camera and try to get her to say cheese she says "no" and turns away. This was the best picture I could get while we waited in line. I got an early birthday present from my parents, a zoo membership, awesome! We'll get good use out of it this next year, I am so excited!
The cheetah event started at 10:30am but we got there early to get a good spot. Nana held our spot while I went to the bathroom (a frequent stop for me lately) and Chief, JR, and Fiona walked around a little bit. We stood for about ten minutes waiting even after killing time. Fiona started getting really antsy just before the cheetahs came out, but we still forced a picture:
I'm glad we went, it was really cool to see the cheetahs. Here they are coming around the first corner, really the best picture I got of them, but still exciting: Nana was our tour guide so without thinking she took us on the exact same route as our last trip. I looked at the map and realized we have only seen 1/3 of the zoo. It's hard since we keep Fiona's sleep schedule, we sometimes stretch out 30 minutes but we are home in time for nap and bed. We have lots of zoo to see and now have the means to do it.
We went to see the gorillas and monkeys, so we had to walk the wobbly bridge. I can't tell for sure what Fiona thought of it.

The zoo was celebrating Earth day so Fiona wore her "I wear cloth to save the earth" shirt-love it!

The sea lions are a lot of fun, Fiona doesn't like them much, too loud and splashy I think. She will watch them for a while and then starts holding tighter and laying her head down.

Lots of fun, can't wait to check out more of the zoo this summer! Thanks again M&D!

Evening walks

2010-04-12T19:03:00.001-07:00

Since the weather has been nice we have been trying to take regular walks. It's harder now because Fiona never adjusted very well to the 730p bedtime, we kind of play it by ear on whether we do bedtime at 7 or 730p. Either way she isn't going to sleep very easily. Yesterday we put her to bed at 630p and she went right to sleep, I had to wake her up at 725am today. We can't realistically put her to bed at 630 during the week so we'll just work with the 7p bedtime. I am wondering if she has hit a sleep regression due to learning how to talk and be a "kid" etc. Any ideas?
Wow, way off topic, back to the walks: Today we took a usual route and saw a Cozy Coupe in a trash pile, so we went by to check it out right as the lady came out of the garage. We asked her if she was throwing it away and she said, "yep, take it...take this too." She grabbed another outdoor ride-on toy. They were dirty and the Cozy is missing a steering wheel but otherwise look great, she said her kids had outgrown them so they were just taking up space. So, we dragged a wild dog, a jogging stroller, a cozy coupe and a ride on toy a few blocks back to our house. We can order the replacement steering wheel and sticker for $15. It was well worth it, Fiona loves it: She got to push it around the yard:
Then, after Daddy taught her to put her feet up, she got to ride around the yard:

And because it's only fair since I did a few with Fiona, a pregnancy picture with James. 29.5 weeks measuring over 30, can you tell?

Busy Easter Weekend

2010-04-07T18:14:00.000-07:00

We had so much fun Easter weekend visiting family, family visiting us, eating good food, etc.
Dustin, JR's twin brother, just got off the USS Nimitz so on Saturday family got together at Aunt Teri's to celebrate. JR was really excited to see Dustin, as was everyone, but they definitely have a bond only twins share.

Fiona had a blast seeing everyone, she loved seeing baby Cale, every time she saw him she got really close to him and said "baby". I think she'll be a great big sister! I didn't have my camera on Saturday so the pictures I have I stole from Facebook.

This is Fiona with Sean, her Grandma's boyfriend.

And enjoying sometime with her Daddy.

On Easter we had a BBQ potluck at our house. It was Bindy and Sean (JR's Mom and boyfriend), all three of JR's brothers, Dustin, Nathan, and Drew, with their SO's, Kera and Stephanie (Drew's girlfriend couldn't make it). My parents stopped by for a visit also.

It was like Christmas for Fiona, she got a tricycle, clothes, chalk, a coloring book, crayons, shoes and more from Grandma. She loved the trike and actually did really well with her attempts to peddle.

Grandma and Sean brought their puppy with them too and Fiona and Aksel loved her (you can kind of see her in the cage in the background).

Dustin and Kera got her bubbles, a headband, some candy, clothes and more. She actually wore the bunny ears for a while. The bubbles were a huge hit, I think she blew bubbles for over 30 minutes after we ate. We have to hide them in the house otherwise she says "Outside, bubbles", we played with them more on Monday evening.

It's rare to have all four of the boys together so it's always a great opportunity to get a picture of everyone. In age order (probably not intentional), JR, Dustin, Nate, and Drew.
The boys with their Mom:

Fiona was so tired and by 6pm that I gave her a bath, she cried the whole time I think that started when her skinned knees got wet and then was downhill from there. After bath she said good night to everyone and was in bed. Everyone cleaned up the kitchen while I gave her a bath which helped tremendously! Thanks again you guys!!!

Overall a great weekend!

I think being on the go so much made my cold turn into an upper-respiratory infection, but I have an antibiotic now and am doing much better. I passed my glucose test on Monday and baby James is measuring a week ahead, but healthy...another big baby I guess.

Prepping for Baby

2010-03-31T10:25:00.000-07:00

We are preparing for our newest arrival coming in June, or if he is on his Sister's watch he'll be here the beginning of July. I feel bad b/c we haven't done much to prepare, we have all of Fiona's old gear so we really have only had to buy clothes and diapers (we didn't switch Fiona to cloth until she was older).

First we had to decide on a name and since there was only one name that both of us liked, we chose the name James. It's a name I have loved since I was too old to play with dolls but still wanted to. I saved my money to buy a porcelain doll when I was 12ish and I named him James. It's a family name, my great grandpa on my Dad's side was James. We also want to honor my Dad and use his middle name, Anthony, as James' middle name-it sounds nice together, so there you have it.

We haven't done much to prepare Fiona, I don't think she'll understand the concept of a baby in my belly before he is born so we just talk about babies a lot and tell her to be gentle. She loves babies and I think she'll be great with her baby brother.

We have slowly got most of the things we need for baby James. I got most of his clothes from a consignment sale, I picked up some clearance winter items too. Babies R Us had a trade in event where you could bring in old equipment and get 20% a new item. The infant carseat we used with Fiona was recalled so we decided to trade it in instead of getting the piece to fix the handle. Well, the Wednesday before we were going to the trade in I went to Target to pick up some things and wandered, as usual, through the baby section and I found this:

A stroller that converts from a double stroller to a sit and stand stroller. I couldn't figure out if we should get a sit and stand or a double-this solved the dilema. I don't think Fiona will be ready for the stand part of the stroller right away but probably within 6 months she would be. AND, I couldn't pass it up for the price:Can you read that? A $170 stroller for $42!! I think it was last seasons color but it's still compatible with the same brand of carseat. That weekend we got the carseat to go with it for 20% off!
Now we just have to get a few more little things and then we'll be ready for James to be here!

A boy, really?

2010-03-27T12:17:00.000-07:00

After the time change a couple of weeks ago we ended up moving Fiona's bedtime to 7:30, she just couldn't adjust to the light at bedtime. Since she stays up a bit later we are able to do somethings in the evenings, we took Aksel for a walk two nights ago and last night we went to dinner at Salty Iguana. We still have to rush a little bit but it has worked alright for us.

At the restaraunt last night Fiona was called a boy twice. That hasn't happened for a long time, and I thought she looked really girly last night. You decided:She is even wearing an amber teething necklace, they are unisex but I was worried about the extra one I bought for baby boy being too girly, guess not.

And a tickle picture, just because.

Last Saturday

2010-03-25T19:52:00.000-07:00

...We watched our basketball season end. KU lost to N. Iowa, they played like they had several times this year (not to their full potential) but couldn't pull it off.

But...Fiona was decked out and ready to wave wheat! I ordered her a KU diaper , her brother has a matching one (my favorite diaper maker does mostly custom orders). Can't wait to see them both wear them next fall.I love this picture. Now that she is almost two, I think she looks funny still missing her eye teeth. No signs of them coming in yet!
Now we are cheering for K-State, but that is tiring!

Welcome Spring...

2010-03-20T11:24:00.001-07:00

Today is the first day of spring, can't you tell? This was this morning, about 2 or 3 inches ago.

Chatter box

2010-03-10T19:22:00.000-08:00

It seems like Fiona says a new word every few seconds. Every once in a while she surprises us when she says a big word. I barely caught her saying dinosaur in this video, it's the very first thing she says. Then after several more words I had JR prompt her to start saying "right there", I think she sounds southern when she says it!

Spring has sprung...

2010-03-08T19:16:00.000-08:00

...well it's working on it. It hit 63 degrees today and was in the upper 50's most of the weekend, awesome. Just in time because I really won't be able to squeeze my belly into my coat much longer.
Fiona had a mild stomach bug Thursday night and was awake throwing up 4 times between 1am and 3am, then Friday she didn't eat well but that's all we saw of the bug. By Friday afternoon Fiona and I were getting stir crazy so we went for a walk. She had so much fun trying to pick up as many pine cones as her little hands could hold.
She ran some of the way and then stopped to look at everything, such a fun age!

On Sunday we went to a nearby park to play and burn off some energy. Well, we rushed out the door and didn't bring her a jacket, it was a bit chilly still. We'll try this outing again when the weather is nice! Here is our one picture from the outing. Notice the barrette, JR finally got Fiona to keep it in her hair, she even wore one to school today (not all day, but it's a step).

Stay tuned for talking videos, our little punkin is turning into quite the chatter box!

Visit from Grandma (like three or more weeks ago)

2010-02-23T18:23:00.000-08:00

A few weeks a go JR's Mom, Bindy, came to visit. She was able to spend the whole day, it was cold and snowy so we just hung out at the house and had pizza.

Fiona had Grandma read some of her favorite books (while JR fixed her computer):

Uncle Nate and Aunt Steph came over too, Nate and Fiona:

While they were here Fiona learned how to climb up the back of the couch...and JUMP off! Crazy kid, thankfully she has only done it once since then!!

By the time Bindy left, Fiona was saying Grandma! Now that she lives closer it will be nice to see her more, hopefully even easier when the weather gets warmer.

It's a BOY!!

2010-02-06T17:05:00.000-08:00

We had our 20 week ultrasound on Friday. The US tech asked first thing if we want to know what we are having, we both said "yes please!!" The tech put the wand on my belly and right away said "It's a boy!" and looking at this picture you can see why it was so easy to tell. He was very cooperative. The sono tech was able to get all the measurement, she said everything looks great, a very healthy baby boy. She was trying to get a profile picture for us but he literally folded himself in half, he had his feet over the top of his head and then went to sleep.
We are now playing the name game, for most people this is fun, but not for us. We have a very different taste in names. I had a list of names ready and JR vetoed all but a couple, the couple non-vetoed names didn't even get a maybe, just not a "no". We will share the name when we decide, even though it might not be for a while.
When we were pregnant with Fiona we chose Jackson as our boy name but that name is SO popular now that we can't use it. We want a name that is not in the top 100. We are open to suggestions, so share your favorite names!

I am behind on blogging, JR's Mom came to visit us two weeks ago I have some fun pictures from that visit. I'll add soon, promise!

18 months old

2010-01-25T19:21:00.000-08:00

On Saturday Fiona hit the 18 month mark, a year and a half old, amazing! She is changing so much and her words increase and get clearer all the time, it's amazing how much we can interact with her now.

She had her tubes checked on Friday morning, they looked great! That afternoon I got called to pick her up from daycare because she had a 103.8 temp. It's getting frustrating that she is sick all the time, we had her tubes put in to help with the ear infections but I think they gave me a false hope of making everything better. It makes me nervous how sick she has been. Her doctor isn't worried, he said this is the year of a child's life that they will be sick all the time. Last year she was in a home daycare and was still breastfed, this year, a center and she only has her own immune system keeping her healthy. The doctor thinks she had hand, foot, and mouth disease because she had a couple of sores in her mouth but didn't have any symptoms other than drooling (she didn't even drool when she was teething), loss of appetite, and fever. She was okayed to go back to school tomorrow, so we'll see if we can get a full four days in this week. My Mom said I was sick all the time until the age of two so perhaps she is the same way, it just sucks!

Okay, enough complaining, on to the 18 month "W"CC ("Well" child check). The doctor said Fiona is doing great. She, not surprisingly, passed the autism check and her stats were fine with him (45% weight and 55% for height). He kept saying, "she is very active", that made me laugh, she really would not sit/stand still for him. He was very impressed with her "parroting", she was messing with his stool and I said "that's the doctors stool", she said "doctor". It's always a proud moment when you feel your child impressed the doctor. We are supposed to keep an eye on the eczema/rash/healing chicken pox(?) stuff, and to continue to offer her healthy foods (even if she wouldn't touch anything green), other then that we will continue as usual.

When we got home from the appointment Fiona called Chief to wish him a happy 60th birthday, we had to leave a message, but hopefully he enjoyed the message! Hope you had a great birthday Dad!!

I said most of her words are getting clearer, but some are just too funny to correct. Listen to her say banana. Also, you hear her name the one color she knows most of time, other colors are hit and miss.

Normal!

2010-01-19T18:43:00.001-08:00

Today was the first "normal" day we have had in a while. Fiona went back to school and I went back to work. Everything went great except a small tumble at school, and a comment from her teacher about Fiona starting to test her boundaries. She has been testing us for a few weeks and I hoped it wouldn't carry over to daycare. Her teacher said it's typical of the age, not just from being home for two weeks.

After talking back and forth between the surgery center and the doctors office last week they finally said they would do her surgery even with chicken pox. So, she had her tubes put in last Friday, the procedure went great. We took Fiona back, signed some papers, talked to the doctor and the anesthesiologist, and waited a bit. They said to bring her in her jammies and bring her blankie or binky. Well, Fiona doesn't really have either. She sucks her first two fingers on her left hand (upside down) and she puts her right finger in her belly button. Actually she now has to sleep with her footie jammies unzipped-when we start zipping she says "beddy"=belly:

We decided to bring her in two piece jammies so we didn't have to explain the unzipped pajamas! Here she is waiting with her comfort "pieces":The doctor put her in one of those ride on cars with the handle, so she was totally happy when she went back for the surgery. I cried, I was scared, but I think I did a pretty good job not letting her sense my nervousness because she did great. We waited for about ten minutes and the doctor came out and told us everything went great and they would bring us back when she woke up. Five more minutes and we got to go get her, she was crying but settled down after some Kix and water.

By the time we got home she literally was the same kid she was the day before! The ear drops were the hardest part once we got home, but we even survived that. All in all it went great and I hope we made the right decision.

The shirt Fiona is wearing in the above picture is from Uncle Dustin and Aunt Kera. We wanted to show Dustin (JR's twin brother) that we are missing him and can't wait for him to get back on land! Hi Dustin!!

Chicken Pox?!?!

2010-01-09T10:19:00.000-08:00

The last couple of days Fiona has had about 9 bumps all over her body that look like bug bites. JR kept saying she has chicken pox, and I kept telling him that she has had the Varicella (chicken pox) vaccine and she hasn't been exposed to them. Yesterday she has was digging at them and they started to look like blisters so we took her to the pediatrician today, we got to see the head doctor of the office and he said (after getting a second opinion) that Fiona has "atypical chicken pox", meaning not very bad and after getting vaccinated. She is contagious through Tuesday, so we were instucted to lay low (not hard, considering it's 5 degrees out). We can give her Zyrtec if she seems uncomfortable and treat her with hydrocortisone cream. Hopefully this won't push back her surgery for tubes this Friday but will find out on Monday, otherwise the only thing we will do different is not give her the Varicella booster when she is 5.

Weird, huh?

Snow day X2 (maybe 3)

2010-01-07T07:37:00.000-08:00

Fiona's daycare uses KC, K public and catholic schools for their snow day schedule and they have been out for two days! Yesterday we just played around the house and watched the snow, but today is a cleaning day. Fiona has had a rash around her face, neck and back so I am rewashing all of her clothes in Dreft (which we haven't used for months) and double rinsing everything. Plus our house stinks, maybe it's my pregnancy nose or just not having been able to get any fresh air in lately but I think it's awful (and of course JR can't smell it).

So, I started another load of laundry and started picking up and sorting toys in Fiona's room. She helped me throw her clean jammies in the jammie drawer, the only one she can reach, and then she wandered out of her room. I kept working until I heard rustling plastic and came to find this: What you can't see is all the salt and crumbs for the bottom of the pretzel bag all over the floor.

Now that she's had a snack (and I've swept the kitchen floor), she is quietly stacking peek-a-blocks in my water glass, I'm getting back to work. Please share your ideas on keeping an almost 18 month old busy, she doesn't watch TV (she doesn't care for it much and we don't encourage it).

The haircut results

2010-01-03T18:11:00.000-08:00

Alright so even after everyone voted to cut Fiona's hair I was still not sure. Then this weekend every time I looked at her hair I couldn't help but notice how stringy and unkempt (I linked the definition to that word b/c I had no idea, I thought it was unkept, but that's not a word) it was looking. JR and I decided we would take Fiona to Sheer Madness, a place the Sarah took Paisley for her first haircut. I called this morning to find out that they had moved and were a 25-30 minute drive from us and the closer one isn't open on Sunday. I asked my Mom about the lady who cuts her hair, being as that I have had one haircut since we moved here and that was at Regis. After a lot of discussing of the options, my Mom's experience cutting my hair when I was young had me convinced that that was the best option.

Here is the before picture as a reminder that if I hated it, it would be better then this:

This is the first round, I think my Mom was nervous to cut too much so she was overly cautious and didn't cut enough at first.
Fiona was not sitting still, she has had a bad cold and a fever for the last 4 days so I think she had a bit of cabin fever. I took over b/c she was sitting still when my Mom was playing with her, so I cut a bit more off the back. This is the best picture I got, we just cut some of the stray hairs off the front because I don't want her to have bangs-so the back and sides are the only difference. I cut a little bit more during her bath tonight to get some of the stray hairs and make it all even. I'll get a better picture tomorrow.

Good-bye 2009

2009-12-31T17:19:00.000-08:00

Hope everyone is safe tonight. JR and I are going all out, WII and Canada Dry green tea ginger ale (Thanks Joe)! I always love having a reason to use our wedding toasting glasses from Kari!! Plus, if we were at a party we would look like we were really drinkers.

Christmas Weekend

2009-12-28T17:29:00.000-08:00

JR and Fiona got to stay home and enjoy Christmas Eve day. I still haven't figured it out, but I had to work until 4:30 when our office closed at noon. It started freezing rain at 3pm so we skipped Christmas eve mass and just enjoyed dinner at home. Fiona wore her new Christmas jammies:

Notice the two big Target wrapped presents behind her, more on those later.

Then Santa came(love how all our ornaments are all at the top of our trees, can you guess why?):

By that time it was snowing hard. Aksel loves snow, he went outside and we couldn't get him to come back inside for about ten minutes and he looked like this:

Fiona had a blast opening presents this year, especially compared to last years interest in chewing on all of her presents:

Fiona got two big presents, the kitchen and the Rody-love this thing!:

This is what Santa brought JR and I:...actually Santa brought us 2, by way of Target.com. So, we debated all weekend if we should do the right thing, send it back or sell or donate it. We decided we would call Target and tell them they sent us 2 and charged us for one. The guy said "Wait, let me get this right? We sent you two, charged you for one, and you're calling to let us know?" Yep, go ahead make us feel stupid!

Nah, glad we did the right thing.

I got my dream and got a VERY white Christmas, 10 inches of white Christmas actually!!! It was beautiful and made us very thankful to have a four wheel drive vehicle.

We were able to get to Nana and Chief's for Christmas breakfast. Fiona loved her dancing robot (and her baby-not pictured):

Thankfully the roads were clear enough on Saturday for Kari and her boyfriend, Alan to make it to KC (from Topeka). We got to hang out all day, they came to Saturday's Christmas dinner and then we played WII, Cranium (Kari and I won By the way!), and Apples to Apples. We had such an awesome time that I only took one picture while they were here-and only Kari's leg is in the picture. I'll have to get KJ to send me the pictures she took.

Okay, there is more to our weekend but I didn't use my camera during Saturday's visit from Nate and Stephanie. I also didn't even bring my camera to Christmas dinner with the whole gang-so I'll have to get pictures from Tina and my Mom. JR had to work part of the weekend but overall it was a great weekend with lots of great people!

Fiona and Santa

2009-12-22T17:42:00.000-08:00

Fiona got to see Santa and Mrs. Claus on Saturday night. My parents support the UMKC basketball teams so they got invited to a dinner and Santa meeting, and they got to bring us! I wasn't sure what Fiona would think so I wasn't going to go to a mall and stand in line to see the man in the red suit. She did great!

We just brought her in and set her on his lap and she looked at us mostly,

then after she was done "talking" to him she sat on my lap and looked at him crazy!

She didn't nap well that day so when we got home she was out, I love looking at her when she sleeps!

To cut or not to cut?

2009-12-19T10:55:00.000-08:00

I have been trying to decide for a while now if we should cut Fiona's hair. She has a mullet, we know this, even though some people think we don't and like to tell us. She won't wear a ponytail for more then 10 seconds because she pulls the rubber band out. But it's not like we can give her a cute girl hair cut because the front is so short. If we cut the back off she won't have a mullet anymore but she'll have a boy haircut. So, do we wait and let it grow a bit more until we can maybe do a cute bob? Or do we cut the back off and hope it grows fast?

Here is a side view:

Maybe it's because I'm her Mom but I think this picture makes it look worse then in real life:

Here is what it looks like normally from the front:

Dear Santa,

2009-12-16T11:03:00.000-08:00

Dear Santa,

This year I have been a very good girl.
I have helped Daddy do the dishes:

I always wear my hat and gloves when it's cold outside:

I play nice with others:

I am gentle around the Christmas tree:

But, I am tired of playing with baby dolls, cats, and the dog. What I really want is a brother or sister to play with!!

Even if I have to wait until June 25th 2010!!

Thanks Santa, for the early Christmas present!

Love, Fiona

So, this explains a bit better as to where I have been lately. Mostly laying on the couch or running to the bathroom. My "morning" sickness was much worse this time until I weaned Fiona right at 16 months (which went really well). I also got Zofran this time to help with the nausea, I figured out towards the end that if I didn't need it before 2pm I would take it by that time to keep from getting sick that night. I am feeling really good now, not sleeping great, but nothing to complain much about. JR and Fiona have been great, even if JR pretends to be annoyed when I ask him for something-he does it and I don't think he minds that much, except for all the dirty diapers. We had to go back to disposable diapers for a while until I'm able to wash the cloth again, shouldn't be much longer. Fiona has also been able to eat lots of processed foods that I normally wouldn't allow, but it came down to what's easy. We'll get back to eating better soon, already been better this week.

Thanks Sarah for help with the creative ideas!!

Broken record

2009-12-14T19:00:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday when I picked Fiona up from daycare her teacher said she had a low grade temp and was tugging her right ear. We had just finished the antibiotic on Tuesday for the ear infection in her left ear. Naturally I thought no way can she have an ear infection. I had planned to wait it out and send her to school on Friday, but she didn't sleep at all that night. She was awake every 45 minutes or so from 9p to 3a. So, I packed her up first thing in the morning and we went to the doctor. Sure enough, another ear infection. Thankfully we are set up to see an ENT to talk about what's going on and what our options are, probably tubes in her ears.

Here is my sleepy little punky.

We started using a bigger blanket for her and it works much better to keep her covered and warm. I think it makes her look even more like the little girl she is becoming.

Christmas...Halloween, whatever.

2009-12-12T11:01:00.000-08:00

So, I'm back to the blog again and obviously way behind.

Fiona was a witch for Halloween, I didn't like the idea b/c I think a witch is supposed to be scary and I didn't want Fiona to have a scary costume...but when my Mom bought Fiona a witch hat and she wore it all over the house-I couldn't resist!! So I made her a skirt, put an orange diaper on her, used the Halloween shirt I got at a garage sale, and she was a super cute, not scary witch.

See for yourself:

ALIVE! Sick, but alive.

2009-12-09T07:57:00.000-08:00

Hi all-I'm back, again. We have had a killer start to cold/flu season this year. Since my last post Fiona has had two more ear infections, a couple of colds, she had stomach flu last Wednesday night, and JR and I both had it Monday night. The stomach virus was so bad that Fiona's school closed on Friday b/c so many teachers were out sick and so the remaining staff could disinfect the building. About half the kids had the virus, thankfully it was a bit shorter then normal-about 12 hours. We now have to take Fiona to see an ENT doctor to talk about getting tubes in her ears, she has had 5 ear infections since last January, the doctor said 6 in a year is when they usually do tubes and she is on her way to that.

We got a couple inches of snow last night, but not enough to cancel our daily activities. Daycare goes by the KS public and catholic schools, all the KC-K schools are open. It's way to cold to take Fiona out to play in the snow, but I might try to get some pictures of her in in tonight.

We got our Chistmas tree up this weekend (no ornaments yet-still haven't found that box), so I'll get some pictures up of Fiona with the tree.

I hope all is well with everyone as we approach the holidays!!

Dancin'

2009-10-27T20:12:00.000-07:00

Fiona's "Dora Car" plays a catchy song that we started dancing to when she plays it. Well, she caught on and now dances when we ask her to, I love it.

Helper

2009-10-17T11:56:00.000-07:00

See, doesn't she look like she is making things easier?

Back from my "blog-block"

2009-10-15T18:51:00.000-07:00

This is the ~~third~~ fifth time I have worked on this blog, hopefully I can finish it and completely overcome by bloggy block. I have been SO unmotivated to blog, don't know why, just not feeling up to it. I actually started this post two weeks ago, so I hope I can get back into the swing of things. I have been on Babycenter a lot talking to some of my internet "friends", as sad as it is, I think the time I am spending talking to them is making up for not having many friends around. I think I am just working on adjusting to our new life. Our regular everyday life is back to normal, but my work life is different. I used to spend 8 hours a day with my friends at work, some of the people I was closest to. I like the people I work with now but I don't have people I could talk to throughout the day, I had about five people like that at SOS office. Anyway, so that is probably why I haven't been blogging much!

But the reason I didn't blog last week is because Fiona had another ear infection. After 6 days of a temp between 101.4 and 104.3, 2 trips to the doctor, tw0 calls to the doctor, and several sleepless nights, we found out she had an ear infection in her right ear and almost and ear infection in the left. Poor girl, she was such a trooper considering how miserable she probably felt!

So, here is my original blog that I have started a million times:

Two weeks ago (probably three weeks ago now) I read this on my bloggy friend, Casey's blog. We love playing outside, but I made it a point to be outside as much as possible. On Saturday I moved Fiona's nap up a bit earlier because we went to my cousin, Jennifer's baby shower (I forgot my camera of course). We were planning on hanging out with Nana, Chief, Joe, Tina, and Jonas, but when I went to load Fiona in the car she had four meltdowns between the door and the car. We changed our plans and I took Fiona back inside and put her to bed. She hadn't even eaten dinner, but I don't think she would make it through a meal. She went to bed at 5:50pm and didn't wake up until 8:30 am!! We have a tradition on Sunday to have a big breakfast and Fiona was starving so I made eggs, pancakes, and bacon. She ate 4 pancakes, 2 scrambled eggs, a couple of bites of bacon (she couldn't really chew it) and a handful of cut up blueberries!! Then we got our Sunday gear on and went to play outside.

Playing with her Little People school bus.
She wasn't sure about the blowing leaves, it was cracking me up!!

Her teepee, she loves crawling through this thing. She crawls under the "wall" and peeks out the window a cracks up. I'm glad I returned to that garage sale (twice) and decided to buy it.

Smart Girl

2009-09-29T18:55:00.000-07:00

Fiona was super cranky today so I gave her asparagus while I cooked the rest of dinner. Apparently she didn't like it.

Sorry, I was laughing through this whole video so it's shaky.

She has seen us feed Aksel before but I have only seen her do it once. Now we know she only feeds Aksel food she doesn't like-which isn't that many things. It cracks me up when she spits the asparagus out and makes that face, then she looks all guilty when I ask her why she isn't eating it.