My funny family

This is what Joe made me for Mother's Day, and I just had to share it. I think it is so funny.The idea here is that I am the only "normal" one in the family. It makes me laugh every time I see it. I love that Joe thinks about gifts and doesn't just go buy whatever. I had a very nice mother's day. I will have to post the pictures of the gifts my sister and I made for the mothers in our lives this year, but I haven't downloaded them yet. I will do that soon!

Alice crawls now. She has quickly figured out how to get around and gets up on her hands and knees too. She hasn't quite figured out how to make that work yet, but it won't be long. She also has a second tooth, and will probably have more before long. Eli has a pretty loose tooth, but it hasn't come out yet. I find it funny that he doesn't wiggle it and play with it more. I remember having loose teeth as a kid and constantly wiggling them and trying to help them want to come out. I wonder if he will loose it before school is out in a couple of weeks. Simon got in to preschool. They seem to be excited for him to come. We will see how that goes come fall. In the meantime, we are looking forward to a trip to Washington DC to see my parents in a couple of weeks, can't wait!

Alice has a Tooth

Alice has finally gotten a tooth! I am not really sure why I am so excited about it, but I seem to be. Maybe because it Alice has been teething for 3 months so it feels like some kind of accomplishment. It hasn't made her stop drooling, in fact it seems worse. Maybe because more are coming. Although it does make me sad to think her toothless grin will be gone soon. Oh my baby is getting so big. I already miss the little tiny cuddly baby. Now she rolls and turns and twists all over. No real crawling yet, but she certainly gets around. And is very good at sitting too.

Yesterday my boys got to go ice skating for their first time. Their cousins who take lessons invited them for a buddy day. They both thought it was lots of fun, which was helped by the fact they each had an instructor helping them not fall down. Simon threw a fit when it was time to leave. We may have to try to find a time to go back sooner than later. Thanks cousins!

Simon had a "developmental screening" for preschool. He did very well and all the teachers/testers thought he was pretty fun. He gets so excited about things. Yesterday, we went out to dinner. When we walked into the restaurant, Simon exclaimed, "Wow look at this!" Another man who was waiting for a table really got a kick out of that. He said he wished he could get so excited about things. Simon is a character.

Just for Fun

When Simon was little I took a picture of him in an outfit that I had a picture of Eli in, and then set the two photos side by side for a comparison. We all thought they looked a lot alike. My mom suggested I do the same with Alice. So I found the outfit (actually my sister found it) and took Alice's picture in it. Here are the results.





I actually think they all look very different, although still very alike. Eli and Simon were 4 and 5 months old, Alice is 7 months, so I guess she is definitely the smallest of the 3.

Spring Time

I guess we have been busy since my last post. Spring break came and went, Alice is sick again, Joe is out of town, soccer season started, and today is Easter!

My parents came for spring break and we had lots of fun. We went to Denver to the Children's Museum, which the kids thought was lots of fun. It is different than I remember as a kid, but I guess that is not too surprising since it has been 20+ years! Here are my kids having fun there. Simon loved the little grocery store and being able to push the cart around.

Eli being dressed up as a rabbitAnd they had a little baby area for those not big enough to play in the other parts. Alice had fun rolling around.

Then we went to Casa Bonita. By the time we came out, the snow storm that had been predicted had hit full force! It was a crazy slushy mess and took us 3 hours to get home. I am just glad we actually got home! We are not looking to repeat that adventure again anytime soon. We also fed the ducks and geese at the park, went bowling, to Chuck E Cheese, and saw How to Train Your Dragon (fun movie!) during the week. Here is my dad playing air hockey at Chuck E. Cheese. It was a fun-filled time. Except Alice got sick again. She seemed to have recovered from her first respiratory illness and her ears were clearing up, but then she got a fever again. So I took her to the doctor thinking maybe the ear infection had come back. The doctor said her ears looked fine, but she had a cold and has been wheezing again. More nebulizer treatments. I hope she gets over this soon. She has not been sleeping well and I hope she will go back to sleeping better once she is all well!

Joe went to Kentucky/Indiana to help out his brother. His other brother, my sister's husband, went too. So we have been trying to survive the week alone. This has included soccer practice, no school on Friday, and soccer game on Saturday, and dyeing eggs for Easter. I am glad yesterday it wasn't cold or windy during the soccer game. The kids have been enjoying some Easter goodies today, and I have been enjoying General Conference. I am glad I didn't have to get up and get the kids all ready and to church all by myself. Being able to watch Conference on the internet is great!

Alice is a mover these days. She doesn't actually crawl, but has figured out how to roll and turn and wiggle enough to move around. It won't be long til she is really on the move. She is working on sitting. And she has been learning to like solid food. She seems to like most things so far, and really likes sippy cups. She isn't that great at getting water out, but likes trying!

Hope everyone has a happy Easter and takes the time to express gratitude for our Savior and his resurrection!

What is Hypoxia?

I will tell you what hypoxia is: It is a lack of oxygen, as in the lungs not using the oxygen breathed in efficiently enough. This is what Alice had last weekend, and thus spent 3 days in the hospital. A little scary. Here is the whole tale:

On Monday the 1st, I took Alice in for her 6 month check up. They said she looked good and she had her immunizations. On Tuesday, she had a low grade fever. I thought it was probably from the shots. She also was developing a little cold, stuffy/runny nose and cough. Simon had something similar, so I thought it was just a cold. She continued having a low fever til Friday. I thought that seemed like a long time, so I called just to check with the doctor. They said that was normal and it sounded like she had the same cold that lots of kids were having. Friday afternoon her fever went up to 102. That night I put Alice to bed, but she kept waking up, she seemed uncomfortable and at about 10pm she sounded like she was wheezing and it looked to me that she was retracting (the skin sucking in around her collar bones when she breathed). So I put a call in to the nurses line, got a call back, they said I should take her to the ER. So we went to the ER at 11:30pm. The doctor listened to her, she had chest x-rays done, they swabbed her nose to test for RSV and flu. They gave her an albuterol breathing treatment. Around 1:30am they decided we could go home with the plan to get a nebulizer to help her breath. The doctor thought she might be developing a little pneumonia, but she could probably fight it off. Just before they were about to discharge us, they took Alice's vital signs again and her pulse-ox (measure of the oxygen in her blood) was only at 82%. They didn't like that. So they decided she should stay so they could put her on oxygen and watch her and give her breathing treatments. The hospital was apparently so busy that night that had no available rooms. (We do live in a small town, so of course the hospital is small too.) We got a room in the ICU, which I think turned out to be a good thing. We didn't have to share and the nurses were always right there. We had to stay until Monday around lunch time before Alice was able to keep her oxygen at 95% by herself.
I am grateful it was the weekend and Joe was able to be home with the kids. He did take Monday off, and that was a teacher work-day, so it worked out alright. I didn't get much sleep of course (I think Friday night I had a total of 2 1/2 hours). And Alice's was constantly interrupted by breathing treatments (every 4 hours) and adjusting her oxygen tube and listening to her, and her least favorite part of having all the snot sucked out of her nose! Yuck! but that was very necessary to helping her breathe better. Now she is home and doing very well. Wednesday we went to the doctor for a follow-up visit and found that she had double ear infections. Poor girl. But she seems to be mending well. She hasn't needed breathing treatments today and she is back to her happy self. She never really was that unhappy even in the hospital. Bored of being trapped in the same room, but not really all that cranky. All the nurses loved her and thought she was so cute and of course she is!
We are glad we are past all that. Her official diagnosis was bronchiolitis and hypoxia. They said it was not pneumonia and the test came back negative for RSV, but her pediatrician is pretty sure that is probably what she had anyway. It is a bad year for it and going around a lot. I am glad she kept eating and didn't have to have an IV! Now I've got her cold but am on the mend too. I sure hope we don't have to spend any more nights in the hospital. The nurses were all very nice, but it sure isn't very comfortable, and of course I want my kids to be healthy!

Random ramblings

Who hates tax time? Lots of people I am sure. But not me. It always means money coming back to us, at least it has so far that we've been married. This year is no exception. Yeah for tax returns! Now Joe can go to the dentist, and we are planning to go to D.C. to see my parents in the spring. Maybe we can do some more home improvements as well. Of course, I would really like a new bed too. Hmmm....how far can we make it stretch??? Sure we should probably put it all in savings, or invest it or something, but someone has to stimulate the economy, so why not us?

Simon told me my shirt is "pretty pink" today. What a sweetheart!

I love ticklish children. They are more fun than non-ticklish ones. Eli and Simon are very ticklish, and love being tickled. Alice is ticklish, but she is not sure if she likes it yet. It is amusing to me though.

Alice is eating food. She has likes rice cereal and has tried sweet potatoes. She definitely thinks she should eat dinner when we do. Now she can sit in her high chair by the table, and we have dinner all together. Of course, that means there is one more child for me to help during dinner, so my food is never hot when it finally makes it to my mouth. Such is the life of a mother.

I love it when Eli and Simon play together. Usually it involves chasing or throwing things (soft things like stuffed animals or shirts) at each other, and is pretty noisy, but it warms my heart to see them having fun with each other. The other day Simon told me Eli is his best friend. So cute. I love how Simon is exploring language and learning how to express himself. He knows his favorite color is green, he loves the letters H and K (I don't know why), and the word Kangaroo. This is a fun age (I try to remember that during the moments when its not).

I love dessert. I know I shouldn't eat it everyday, but it is so hard not to. When I don't have ice cream or something, I make dessert. I often tell myself I will be sorry later, you know "a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips" and all that, but I am not deterred. Maybe I will get a grip on myself after I stop nursing. For now, I feel like I deserve extra sweetness at the end of the day. And that is just the way it is.

We love LA

We went to Southern California last weekend to visit relatives: grandmas, grandpa, aunt, uncles, and cousin. It was a lot of fun, and we were spoiled. We even got sunny blue skies, and no rain while we were there. It wasn't warm enough for a swim in the ocean, but we did visit the beach. Here are some pictures of our fun time.

My Gramps, Nana, and Uncle Kevin took us to Universal Studios. We had lots of fun seeing cool shows, including one about animal actors that the kids thought was great. We met lots of characters, and Simon was so excited to see them. And they thought he was hoot. And they all wanted to say hi to Alice too. Eli was kind of shy around the characters, but he did ride the virtual roller coaster with Gramps, Joe and I. And I think he kind of liked it. I know I did!

Then we went to Pacific Park at the pier in Santa Monica with my Aunt Kara, Grammy, and cousin Kelly. We walked to the end of the pier, rode the ferris wheel, played games in the midway and won animals (Eli won his all by himself!), rode the carousel, went through the little aquarium, and picked up shells on the beach. We put our feet in the water too, which was very cold! And then Eli fell down in the water and got half of himself wet. It was rather amusing.

We also went with Gramps and Nana to Travel Town, a place in Griffith park that has trains the kids could climb on. And a little train we all rode on.

We had a nice family dinner with everyone that night. Everyone was so nice to the kids. Simon found a buddy in Uncle Kevin, and Kelly. Alice was such a good girl and let everyone hold her and shared lots of smiles. We had a fabulous time. Thanks to all my family for hosting us and showing us such a fun time!

And Alice learned how to rollover last week. So here she is on her stomach, she got there all by hereself. It took her several tries to get her arms out from under herself, but now she seems to have the hang of it. She also rolled from her stomach to her back again once, but hasn't done it since. She will be mobile in no time though!