Thursday, December 31, 2009

Adios, 2009, and Sayonara to the First Ten Years of the 2000's.

How about 2009? The kids turned three and one, and we all moved into a new home. Here's looking forward to a better 2010. Cheers.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

The Princess & "The Princess and the Frog"

I took Danica to see her third movie in a movie theater last Saturday. Naturally, it was The Princess and the Frog. We'd taken her to Cars when she was about six months old and to Wall-E shortly after Colin was born, but this is the first time she'd had the patience to sit through an entire movie (or most of the movie). She wasn't totally hyped to see the movie because I hadn't shown her much of it and we hadn't talked about it a lot, which is not to say she did not want to see the movie. I think I was more excited to take her, but it was still a good time.

We went to an 11:30 am show, which was probably a little late, since she hadn't slept well the night before. In retrospect, the 10:30 show we missed might've been better. It was a pretty good day to go to the movies since it was in the 50's temperature-wise and raining cats & dogs. When we went to get in the car, I was a little concerned because it was coming down hard, but after a quick run back inside to pick up some snacks, the rain had stopped. Guess that was a sign to go through with it.

I wanted her to get a little bit of a movie experience, so I bought her some M&M's and a Sprite, thinking she might have some. M&M's yes, Sprite no (but I think she just wasn't thirsty). We got into the moderately-packed theater and found some seats in the middle near the top. She just kinda sat and took it all in, which was pretty cute. She didn't want to take off her jacket for a couple of minutes, sitting straight up on the edge of her seat, clutching her bag of M&M's.

We got there just a little bit early since I have a thing about getting to movies on time and not wanting to struggle to find a seat. You never realize how much crap is shown before you even see a preview until you wait with your child. She didn't take her eyes off the screen and she wasn't restless, I just wanted to get to the movie. She sat perfectly still, even through all the previews, with occasional smiles and comments regarding some of the previews she saw (favs were Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel and Toy Story 3). Once the movie began, she cuddled up next to me, holding my arm.

She sat through a good portion of it, either in her seat or in my lap. The M&M's and the bag of Cheerios and fruit bar I brought along helped out. I'll play critic for a second and say that it was an average Disney movie – not bad, but not groundbreaking. It took a while to get to the frog part, some parts in the middle were a bit slow, and there weren't a lot of “wow” moments. Consequently, she started to get happy legs about two-thirds of the way in, but she was good the rest of the way, staying quite and watching the movie despite standing up or bouncing her legs on her seat. She liked the movie, except the parts with the “bad man. He makes monster shadows.” Kind of her standard answer, liking most movies, but pointing out the antagonist as the part she could do without.

After the movie ended, she did ask if we were going to see Alvin and the Chipmunks, so I guess she did like the movie experience. I took her to see the giant Alvin and the Chipmunks statues they had out in the lobby, but she didn't want to take a picture with them, given that (her words), “They're not real.” She did end up snapping a photo of them, despite my offer for her to take a picture of me with them if she would let me take one of her.

We had lunch at Panera afterward, even though I knew she was getting tired. She did eat most of her grilled cheese and of course had all of her yogurt and milk. Hoping we'll have a chance to do it again, but my year of free movie tickets is up at the end of January and there are few kids' movies out after Christmas. Glad she's getting to the age when we can start doing things but still small enough for her to enjoy doing them with us.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

So We're Back... Hopefully

I figure six months off is long enough... It's been hectic, given the move over the summer, travel, getting through fall sports seasons, and now getting the winter sports underway. To put is bluntly, it's been hell.

The kids have grown so much over the past six months, I'm not even sure where to begin. Colin is beginning to grow into his attitude - starting to exhibit some of his sister's traits, so you know they're brother and sister. His big things right now are that he's extremely whiny when he wakes up, wanting to be held (only if you're standing up, of course), and he's only good for (maybe) one meal a day. Guess his growth spurt is over.

We are starting to see evidence that the second child picks up certain things faster than the first, as Colin's vocabulary is much more advanced that his sister's was at one-and-a-half. Of course, he doesn't pronounce things so well, but he's constantly adding new words. Prominent ones are “wah-why” (water), “bah-bye” (bar, as in fruit bar – though he does say “bye”), “siz-zee” (sissy, as in Danica), “wha et guh?” (where'd it go), “dey iz!” (there it is), and he has picked up “Santa.” He, of course, can say thank you and please as well. There are more, but I can't think of them right now.

He does do a funny “Woody” and “Buzz” from Toy Story - “Whou-y” and “Buh.” I just picked up a hat with the two of them on it that he loves. He'll point at it and say, “Whou-y. Buh. Whou-y. Buh... Buh. Whou-y.” Gotta love marketing.

Danica's growing up into a little girl, so much so I forget that she's only three. She does come up with something hilarious to say every day. She's really noticing the world around her and formulating her own thoughts. My favorite recent one about a commercial for Zales Jewelers. The story was relayed to me by Kindra:

The commercial features a couple with a sleeping baby in front of a Christmas tree. When Danica saw it, she commented, “Mommy, that's Baby Jesus.” Kindra burst out laughing, and Danica quickly backpedaled, “Maybe it's not.” Kindra assures me that she only laughed because it caught her off guard.

The Girl's also got a pretty decent imagination, but still has trouble articulating. She loves for you to play “games” with her, which usually involve you taking control of a My Little Pony or Disney princess figurine and her telling you what to do. “You want to play _____ with me?” is the invitation to twenty minutes of the same thing over and over. It's a lot more draining after a while than you think it might be, but it's still cute.

One thing that Kindra and I are very happy with is that Danica's starting to listen to our commands better. She can be a real sweetheart most of the time. It's nice to be able to ask her to do something or tell her that she needs to finish her food and have her actually listen. Of course, she's been a good girl her whole life, but it's nice to be able to reason with her a little bit now.

I know there's more, but I'm gonna kill myself trying to write it all down now. Regardless, both kids are happy and healthy, which is all we can hope for.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Too Funny

Kindra was just putting Danica down for a nap, and The Girl was stalling and saying she was hungry:

K: "You just ate. You can have something when you wake up."

D: "But, Mom, when we were at the old house and I said I was hungry, you gave me a piece of cheese."

***

A couple of days ago, Kindra had to drop the kids off at her friend Christy's so that she could go back to work for some parent-teacher conferences. Cheyenne & Brett, who are the children of our first daycare provider, Danielle, were going to watch all four kids. Kindra asked Danica if she remembered who Cheyenne & Brett were. She replied:

"Yeah, remember when Cheyenne's mommy watched me, and I sweeped [slept] on her couch?"

That was a YEAR ago. Crazy.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Earthquakes and Popsicles

So the kids had their first earthquake experience last night, a 4.7 quake centered near Inglewood around 8:30 p.m. last night. Colin, of course, slept right through it. Danica, however, had this question after we told her it was just the earth shaking:

"Mommy, is the earth shaking because it's cold? Like popsicles?"

Kindra ended up telling her that the earth was warm now, so it stopped shaking.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

T-Minus Holy Cow!

I can’t believe we’re less than two weeks away from Colin’s first birthday and a little over two weeks away from Danica’s third birthday. It’s so weird…

Friday, April 3, 2009

Goings On

I can’t believe it’s April already. I just realized at the end of the day last Saturday that Colin turned 11 months old. Today, Danica added another month to her count, and now both our kids are less than one month shy of another birthday. Crazy!

So many things have happened over the last month, it’s hard to keep track of the goings on. I’ve been out of commission for about five weeks because of work. Both Kindra and I were stretched pretty thin from the middle of February when winter championships start through March and the end of basketball season (we still are as we actively recover from that stretch of time). I was working crazy hours, and she, of course, was taking care of the kiddies.

Anyway, I know that a lot’s gone on, so I’m trying to catch up in my own mind. I guess I’ll start with the most recent first:

The House

It’s coming along nicely. We just had a meeting with the job supervisor last Wednesday so he could give us the rundown on the framing, wiring, and plumbing. The short of it all: it’s all there. Insulation went in last Thursday/Friday, and I snapped a few photos on Sunday, which was kind of surreal.

Our closing date is June 17, which happens to also be Kindra’s last day of school for the year. It works out nicely, because I wanted to have some time to be able to pack up and move out of the apartment, get sorta settled at the house, and still have some time to clean the apartment.

Danica

The Girl’s doing well. She’s getting better at being potty trained. There have been a couple of times that we’ve been out of the house and she’s said she had to go: the other day, we were at the doctor’s office and she said she had to go. I was there by myself with her and Colin, so I was a little apprehensive about hauling our little family into the bathroom because I thought we were close to going in to see the doctor, so I told her to wait for a minute.

Eventually, she told me she had to go, got up from the table we were sitting at and wandered into the bathroom. By the time I got in there, she’d pulled down her pants and was trying to figure out how to get up on the toilet they had in there. (FYI, Danica’s forgone going on the little training potty we have and is now just using the regular toilet. It’s a little disgusting in that she has to hold onto the toilet seat as she goes, but she refuses to pee anywhere else). Anyway, that went well, and because we were at the doctor’s office and waited an hour for a five-minute consult, she had time to do it again.

She’s also started to talk to herself as she plays, by which I mean I think she’s making up play scenarios. This morning, she brought a book over for me to read to her, but then ended up reading it herself (a.k.a. she’d memorized the words and was saying them aloud) after I had to hold her off for a minute. She’s always doing something that astounds me as she becomes more and more of a little girl.

Oh, and she’s also into puzzles now. We have three, 24-piece puzzles we picked up for her that she can do on her own and really gets a kick out of. The first puzzle we bought for her, a Disney princess puzzle, she needed some help figuring the entire process out. By the time we’d bought her a third puzzle (a “Cars” puzzle), she was able to do it from start to finish with very little help. Actually, I think if the puzzle picture were a little more defined (a line drawing as opposed to a dark movie still-frame), she probably could’ve done it without any help at all.

Colin

The Boy had a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday as a follow-up to the ear infection he’d developed about three weeks ago. Both Danica and Colin had been on antibiotics for their infections (Danica’s developed first, of course), but they really weren’t working for Colin. In fact, the doctor had prescribed a light antibiotic, then a stronger one prior to Kindra taking him in a third time. He had to have three shots over three days to clear the infection up. He’s currently fine, though both he and his sister had been nursing a persistent cough for the past couple of weeks.

Colin dropped his “worm” crawling about a month-and-a-half ago, and now only crawls normally. There was a transition period where he would do both, but he’s dropped his old habits. He constantly reminds me how fast he can be by darting down the hallway and into the bathroom or our bedroom.

If you’ll recall, Colin used to do tricks like wave and clap on command, but he seems to have lost those. About the only thing he will do now is give high-fives. I’m not completely sure why he finds them so amusing.

I’m sure there’s more, but I can’t think right now. We’ve all got a little more free time on our hands, so updates should appear more regularly. Kindra’s on Spring Break next week, which I’m sure will lead to some interesting stories.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

News Flash

Last night, Kindra was out on the couch watching some TV when she heard somebody walk into the bathroom, pee, flush the toilet, and then walk out of the bathroom – all without turning the light on. A little while later, she heard the same thing, walked into the bathroom, flipped on the light, and found Danica on the toilet:

“I going potty, Mommy.”

Did I mention that Danica did all this while Dad was lying down with her, trying to get her to go to sleep? Sorry, I have a tough time staying awake when I put The Girl to bed.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Watch What You Say

I was going out yesterday to go do some shopping at Costco while Kindra stayed home with the kids (The Girl had just woken up, Colin was sleeping) when Danica asked me where I was headed. Thinking I was being cute while attempting to keep her from coming with me, I told her I was going to get a bear.

The Girl (eyes wide): “A big bear?”

Dad: “Maybe.”

TG (a little worried): “I don’t like big bears. I want a little bear.”

D: “I’ll see what I can do.”

TG: “I just like little bears.” (Holds up thumb and forefinger showing just how small a bear).

I thought it was pretty funny, especially since she reminded me to get her a little bear as I was leaving the apartment. It got funnier when I received this text message from Kindra as I was driving:

You’d better come home with a little bear! Daddy going to bring me a wittle bear! I going to show my bear my apron. Is it a talking bear? I going to feed my bear my applesauce.

Heh.

And no, I did not show up with a little bear. I almost went to Target to get her one, but had too many other errands to run. When I got home, Danica asked where her bear was, but I told her I couldn’t get one, and she dropped the whole subject. *Whew.*

I know… I dodged at HUGE bullet. It’s kinda strange, because she’s been super sensitive recently and will cry at the drop of a hat. Double *whew.*

Thursday, March 26, 2009

It's Just a Flesh Wound

Okay, let’s get this out there because I knew a lot of you would be asking about this photo:

I really just wanted to get a shot of Colin because he’s turned into a TV zombie, just like his sister and father (totally our fault, and I feel like a crappy parent for letting it happen, but that’s another story). Anyway, it wasn’t until after I posted the photo that I even remembered he had a bandage on his arm, so here’s the story to put an end to most of the questions...

We’re not quite sure how it happened, but Colin ended up scraping/bruising the crook of his elbow. We think it’s from him trying to reach between the bars of his crib to touch the clock radio we have on the end of the couch in his room, but aren’t quite sure. Regardless, it got relatively bad so we slapped some Neosporin on it and covered it up. He’s fine now.

The bandage is a little out of proportion for him, but we needed something that would stay on. It’s the same size as one of the ones you would use to cover up a large scrape on your knee. Personally, the first time Kindra put it on him, I thought he looked tough - like he was wearing an elbow pad. Heh.

Oh, and to point out the one you guys didn’t catch, he has a band-aid on his left ankle because he’s had an usual case of eczema that gets irritated and cracked for a long time. We’ve asked our pediatrician about it, but she insists it’s just eczema, but we’ve been treating it with Neosporin. We’ll be consulting another doctor soon about it.

* * *

In other more amusing Colin news, he hasn’t picked up that much sign language as of yet, but he has developed his own sign over the last couple of weeks. If he’s going to do something that he shouldn’t be doing, and you call to him to tell him “no,” he’ll look at you, hold out his hand palm up and wave it back-and-forth. It’s his acknowledgement that he knows you’re telling him to stop doing what he’s doing, but most of the time he just does his little judo-chop/pseudo-wave, and then returns to what he was doing.

Friday, March 6, 2009

In Sickness and In Health

Unfortunately, we’re in the sickness… Danica’s been fighting what seems to be a sinus infection for about three weeks, and Colin seems to have picked it up over the past few days. We took Danica to the doctor a couple of weeks ago to get her checked out and were given a prescription for an antibiotic. It was a mild drug, so it didn’t quite do the job (obviously).



Fortunately, we had an appointment scheduled for Colin yesterday, so we took them both in to get them looked at. We have a new prescription for a stronger antibiotic, so hopefully that will knock the darn thing out.

* * *

Colin had his regular check-up yesterday as well, measuring in at 29¼ inches and 20 pounds, 6 ounces (rough estimate, since he wouldn’t sit still on the scale). He’s on the big side for his age (barely), which is a bit surprising, though Danica was the same way. As for his weight, he’s leaned out a little and so is on the low side.

His weight drop is most likely due to the fact that he doesn’t eat baby food anymore. Ever since he got a taste of “real” food, he won’t eat the baby stuff anymore. Danica was exactly the same way. *sigh*

The Boy’s picked up some tricks over the past couple of weeks. He waves at pretty much everybody, will clap when you tell him, “Good job!”, and has learned to throw his hands up over his head when you tell him he’s “soooo big!” His mobility’s increased as well – though he still tends to do the worm to get around, he’s picked up actual crawling in the past week or so, and will pull himself up on the couch and scoot around.

He’s really into exploring new things, which is a nice way of saying that he doesn’t like to play with his toys for very long by himself. He’ll usually end up crawling out of the living room area and down our hallway or into our kitchen to see what’s going on. However, it is fun to see him try to put Lego blocks together or see how things fit inside other things. It’s also a nuisance to have him poking around with the DVD player all the time. At least he isn’t into the DVD boxes like Danica was.

* * *

The house is coming up on Week 8 since we started talking about it, about Week 6 since they said they were going to lay the foundation. It’s got a frame up, which took about a week-and-a-half, and is pretty crazy to see in person. And though it is exciting, please stop being so excited for us, because we have to wait it out for a few months before we can move in.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

If You're Happy and You Know It

I know there hasn’t been much update on Colin, but I think it’s because things come fast and furious with the growing boy. It’s also a little that we’ve seen the changes before, and our reactions are more, “Oh, wow. You can do that, too?” as opposed to “OH, WOW. YOU CAN DO THAT!?!” This is not to say that we aren’t happy to see Colin doing some of the things that he does now, because we are.

So what’s new? The Boy’s nine months old now, which is amazing to us. Kindra and I were looking at some old photos and video, when we started watching this:



The video was shot just a couple of days before we had Colin; it was unbelievable that she could barely get out “Wa-wa” for “Wall-E” back then. How is that so much time could have passed, and so much could change with the kiddies without us even realizing the leaps we’ve made as a family?

Colin’s got his two bottom front teeth in and has taken a couple of playful (and not so playful) bites out of our fingers. Of course, those teeth have been around since roughly December 29th, so that’s not big news. However, he has started to get his top front teeth, which may or may not have been bothering him over the past few weeks.

I’m pretty sure they were bothering him two weeks ago when we first noticed them, but the past couple of nights, he’s not been sleeping well. Usually, we’d put him to bed around 6:30 p.m., and he’d be out for the night. Recently, though, he’s been getting up crying and/or screaming at least a couple of times a night and not because Danica’s woken him up. (Oh yeah, did I mention that we moved them back in together (sorta)? More on that later…) We’re hoping he’s not taking after his sister’s sleeping habits.

One habit Colin does have from his sister is that it’s next to impossible to get him to eat baby food anymore. Danica was the same way – introduce “real” food and the ability to self-feed, and that baby food crap is out the window. Problem is, there’s only a limited number of items he can gum down, so Kindra has to force him by giving him some food to eat himself, and then shoveling some baby food into his mouth between bites. He also used to love Cheerios, but now, if there’s something else available, he’ll ignore those.

As far as mobility is concerned, Colin’s started to want to stand more and can pull himself up onto things of a certain height. Heck, it was weird to us that one day he just decided to be able to go from being on his stomach to sitting up. He still does the worm to get around, and I don’t think he’ll ever pick up actually crawling. I guess it’s mostly because I haven’t shown him what it is like I did with Danica.

He’s still happy and smiley, but has begun to develop a bit of stranger anxiety. We just had my two cousins come by, and while he stared at them when they came in, he decided to burst into tears when it appeared that they were going to be staying for a while. One of my cousins, Tsu-Heng, swears that he cries whenever he looks at her (possibly true: he cried when he was having a bottle, and I handed him to her so he was facing me, and he started to bawl).

In just the last couple of days, he’s picked up waving and clapping; I think he learned to wave consistently on Sunday or Monday. This morning, in fact, we were having breakfast when I asked him to wave, and he promptly shook his hand at me. It took him a while, but after I asked him to clap, he did that, too. He gets a kick out of it because he knows he can manipulate us into waving back at him. He also gets a kick out of seeing his hand wave, as he’ll be waving, notice his hand is doing it, and then stare at it as he continues to wave. I’ll get some video of it soon.

Our little newborn boy has been replaced by a little baby boy. I know, I know… time to work on another one. Um… don’t count on it (unless they change child labor laws, or we win the lottery).

Monday, February 9, 2009

Urine-Nation!

By now most of you have heard that Danica’s been peeing on the potty fairly regularly for about a week and a half. It really got started the last week of January, but has been building for a while. It was a year ago that this picture was taken:

01-26-08_0948.jpg

That was way back when she started to figure out when she needed to pee. Unfortunately, we didn’t take advantage since we felt she was 1) too young to pull down her pants by herself and 2) we were worried she might regress when Colin was born. We tried potty training her a couple of months later, but that didn’t work so well (obviously). Regardless, Danica’s always been the type to do things on her own time, so I think that we really just figured it would happen when it happened.

Our daycare provider had been working on potty training Danica a little bit, which mostly involved sitting her on the potty without much to show for it. She ended up just slapping some underwear on The Girl, sans pants, to see what would happen. Turns out, Danica was worried enough about peeing in them that she ended up actually going to the bathroom on the toilet a week ago Wednesday.

Kindra and I were pretty excited about it, so when I was home with Danica on Thursday, I tried the same thing. It’s worked out pretty well ever since. We only put her in panties when we’re home and when she’s not napping, since we’re a little too chicken to try otherwise. She’s started to come around and ask to pee even if she is wearing a diaper sometimes (though it hasn’t happened outside of the home), so we’re able to put pants on her over her underwear.

The only drawback of the whole thing is that we were giving treats to Danica (fruit snacks or M&M’s) whenever she peed in the toilet, including small amounts when. Sooooo… as you can imagine, this has turned into a bit of a fiasco now, as Danica pees about a teaspoon at a time now in order to maximize on the amount of pure sugar she can weasel out of us. Typical.

Hopefully, we’ll get her out of diapers altogether by the summer, but we’re pretty happy about where we’re at now. It’s been good living the in the urine-nation (though we still pretty much reside in the state of confusion).

When It Rains, It Doesn’t Pour

If you’ve been following along on the Flickr site, you know that we’re waiting on the house that we purchased to be built. We took our first family photo in front of the lot four weeks ago:

Four weeks later, it pretty much looks the same, but with a fence around it. You can keep up by going here. I had a meeting with the construction supervisor last Wednesday, and they had the lot trenched, framed, and ready to go to pour the foundation, which was supposed to be done last Friday once they got all the requisite inspections done.

Unfortunately, we’ve had a characteristically bipolar winter, where the weather oscillates between summer temps in the 80’s and wet, rainy weather. Guess where we’re at now. So no, when it rained on Friday, they did not pour. The worse news is that it’s supposed to rain this week as well, on-and-off. Still, they might be able to sneak it in.

The supervisor actually called me on Friday to keep me in the loop, so I’ll say that at least the communication has been good, and hopefully, he’ll let me know what their plans are. He said that framing should take three-to-four weeks, including getting most of the electrical in (the houses next to ours were framed in about that time, so I know he’s not full of it), at which time we’ll have a framing walk-through. Just thought you’d like to hear what the next target date is after the foundation gets done.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Happy Birthday Halfway Around the World

Happy birthday to Danica’s friend Hazel, who is currently living in Indonesia with her parents, Martha and Greg, and her three brothers, Gavin, Paul, and gestating baby (due later this year). We’ll see them all when they return Stateside at the end of February, which will be the first time we’ve seen them since October 2007.

You can read more about them in my blog from back then.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Ego Trip

So, as most of you know, my shot of the kids watching Obama’s inauguration got a decent amount of fun pub via the Flickrblog. It was the second photo featured in their “We watched” entry about the inauguration. Quite frankly, I really liked a few of the other photos in there:

Obama Inauguration by calculat0r.

Inauguration Party - Obama takes the Oath of Office by bluheron.

Day 20 / 365 by odeamon.

Regardless, our photo was so popular that day that it made the front page of Flickr’s Explore, a page dedicated to what Flickr calls the “most interesting” photos of the day. Here’s a shot, if you haven’t seen it:

It’s the first time any of my photos has hit the front page, since your photo has to be pretty popular that day to be shown there. The formula for a winning photo is a mystery of photo quality, subject, views, comments, favorites, and dumb luck. I was just happy because I got the shot I wanted for the kids, and people who saw the picture understood what I wanted them to get out of the shot.

Anyway, the photo also made the front page of Yahoo! Italia as part of their Barack Obama coverage:

Some of you have been wondering how it got there. Well, turns out that one of the people who saw my photo was Flickr member Angela:-), who happens to work for Flickr (which is owned by Yahoo! in case you didn’t know). She e-mailed me and asked if she could use the photo of the kids on Yahoo! Italia, so of course I said yes.

Now before you all tell me that we need some kind of compensation, my photos are posted under a Creative Commons license that allows for non-commercial use as long as I’m given credit for the photo. All in all, the photo was up there for about a day. I’ve gotta say, it’s fun seeing our photos out there in the public.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

For Them

So they'll have a memory of one of the biggest days in American history.

***UPDATE: 11:55 am, January 20, 2009***

The kids made the Flickr blog! This is the second time Danica's been on it. The first was way back with this photo (which, by the way, has been unseated as my most interesting photo by the second photo above).

Friday, January 16, 2009

Contingency Plan (via xkcd.com)

Why didn't I think of this before?

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

A Little Dizzy

Girl: "Mommy go in my room and see if it's moving."

Mom: "Why is it moving?"

Girl: "Because I was twirling."

Friday, January 9, 2009

Inevitability

Okay, so you all were right - I spoke too soon regarding Danica's illness. Mom developed it last night around 11:00. I'm dreading Colin developing the symptoms while I await the inevitable.

Curse you all for not agreeing with me that it was food poisoning. I've mailed a letter from all of us to your homes. Open it. Smell it. Join us.

Resistance is futile.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Danica Update

The Girl heaved a total of five times last night, in case you were keeping count. She slept pretty fitfully, which would mean that Kindra slept pretty fitfully. I stayed home with Danica today – even though we were fairly sure she was fine, Kindra wanted to play it safe. Besides, we wouldn’t want someone to take their kid to daycare if there was a remote possibility he or she was sick.

Danica was pretty grumpy this morning. It probably wasn’t helped by the fact that I wouldn’t give her much beyond some homemade Pedialyte (water, a little salt, some sugar, and Jell-O powder for flavoring). I’d gone out last night to purchase a few supplies – ginger ale, 7Up, saltines, and actual Pedialyte (oddly enough, I couldn’t find children’s Pepto Bismol chewables). It didn’t really matter, since she didn’t want any of it. She eventually held enough liquid down that I gave her a small amount of Chex cereal. You know she wasn’t feeling well when she wouldn’t eat the second small bowl I gave her.

She spent the morning on the couch, but she couldn’t decide on any of her DVDs to watch. Just exhausted, I suppose. She just wanted to curl up and sit with me. Her mild fever persisted, but we think it’s okay.

She ended up passing out at 11:30 on the couch which was amazing in and of itself, since she never falls asleep anywhere but in the car seat or in her bed. She woke up when Kindra came home around noon, but fell back asleep as I held her on the couch. All in all, I think she took about a three hour nap today.

She seems fine now, and she’ll be at home with me tomorrow so we’ll be able to see how she’s doing.

* * *

On a side note, Kindra planned on taking Colin to our daycare provider today just in case Danica was actually sick and not dealing with some kind of food poisoning. I heard her phone’s extensive ring indicating a text message on her way out, but really thought nothing of it. She gets halfway there, reads the text, and calls me (on her speakerphone, so as not to break the California law restricting phone calls while driving).

It turns out that our daycare provider and her family all have the stomach flu, so they were closed for the day. It was too late to turn back and come home, and I couldn’t drive out to pick up Colin because she had Danica’s car seat (Parenting Lesson #1,357: Don’t let your wife drive off with the car seat – you might need it). Everything worked out because Kindra was able to call our old daycare provider, and she watched Colin until Kindra could leave work.

*Sigh* Rain… pours… hurricane… whatever. And since you’re wondering if Danica has the stomach flu… I doubt it. That would mean that Colin and Kindra would probably be sick right now, too, and they’re not (*knock wood*).

* * *

One last funny vomiting story (that doesn’t begin with, “This one time, when I was hammered…”):

Kindra had just changed into some more comfortable clothes and sat down with Colin to feed him lunch. We’d given him some Cheerios as a dessert when he starts to choke on one. Kindra tilts his head forward to try and scoop the thing out when… Yup, you guessed it. Lunch redux. All over the tray, a little on the chair, some on the floor, and of course, some on Kindra. Heh.

Honestly, I think we both found it a bit amusing. Colin was fine, and we sent him off to his nap with a bottle. It was just the second time he’d done that, but his timing couldn’t have been better.

Quickies

I pretty much never get the good stories, so here are a couple relayed by Kindra:

Kindra lowered Colin’s crib earlier today since we plan on putting him back in it and reclaiming our room. Long story short, he’s been sleeping in the pack-and-play in our room while Danica sleeps (or doesn’t sleep, as it were) in her room. Mom usually has to sleep in Danica’s room while Dad sleeps out on the couch (which is almost a preference sometimes – but that’s another story).

Anyway, Danica’s had a habit of climbing into the crib since it’s right next to the couch in her room. She just hops up on the couch arm and scampers into the crib. She hadn’t had trouble getting in and out because the mattress was set for a newborn and she’s become fairly adept at it. In fact, she’s put her own dolls to sleep in it:


So after Kindra lowered the mattress, Danica climbed into it to play. A couple of minutes later, Kindra heard: “Mommy! This crib too big! I stuck!”

Typical. The reason we’re in this whole sleeping nightmare is because she figured out how to climb out a year ago…

* * *

Danica was helping Mom out this afternoon while Dad went to work for a bit and was actually being helpful, so Mom told her she was Mommy’s favorite girl. Danica stared at Kindra hard, went into her room and slammed the door shut.

“No I not! I Daddy’s favorite girl!”

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Firsts

As you all know, there are good firsts and there are bad firsts. Today is one of those days where we’ve had one of each, so I guess we’ll go with the bad first first and the good first second.

Bad First

Here’s my tweet on the subject:

The Girl just hurled. Fortunately, she was in Mom’s lap and most of it went in her blankie.

Kindra was holding Danica on her lap getting ready for bed when I came over to the couch to kiss Danica goodnight. The Girl had been saying that her tummy felt bad, which we really didn’t think too much of since she’s said the same thing before. Kindra figured she’d just picked it up from one of the girls at daycare, and even though I knew she hadn’t had any sugar or candy, I just thought that she’d maybe eaten too much of her dinner.

Unfortunately, neither of those were the case. As we were in the process of explaining to Danica that going to bed would help her feel better, she decided that regurgitating everything she’d had since lunch would probably expedite the process. It was quite a bit of blueberries, mango, noodles, and meatballs which Kindra and I both had the good fortune to watch come up. Several times.

She’s done it thrice more since then. The first time, I’d gone to put her clothes and blankie in the wash, and when I came back, I found Mom and Girl on the floor in the bathroom. Apparently, she said that her tummy didn’t feel good, and Mom had the good sense to take her to the toilet. Mom lifted the lid, held her hair, and she just leaned over and cleaned whatever was left out.

The second time, they were lying in Danica’s bed to go to sleep while I was out getting set to write this blog. I hear Kindra calling for me, so I go into Danica’s room and find the two of them hovering over the trash can. I grabbed the can and got what hair Kindra didn’t get out of Danica’s face and got the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen The Girl give me as she heaved up a couple of more ounces of liquid. She just curled up with Mom on the couch in her room and tried to keep her eyes open (sheesh, even exhausted, she doesn’t want to sleep).

About half-an-hour later, I went to go swap the laundry, and when I got back… Mom caught most of it this time, since it was just the small amount of liquid she’d tried to drink. You know The Girl’s sick when she actually asks to lie down in her bed. Poor girl.

We’re hoping it’s just some bad food and not something that the rest of us can catch. One of the mango slices she’d eaten at lunch wasn’t the best, so we’re looking to that as the culprit. In the interest of full disclosure, she seems to have developed a very mild fever, but don’t panic because it’s really low. She’s been sleeping on-and-off, so it’s gonna be a long night.

Good First

On the bright side (or not so bright side, depending on how you look at it), Colin did this today for the first time:

Sorry I don’t have a better picture of it. He just happened to do it while Kindra was out of the room, and he looked a little wobbly, so I didn’t want to run, have him turn his head and fall down.

I’d seen him playing with the DVD tray cover on the DVD player there earlier in the day (which, btw, Danica did incessantly when she was his age), but I never in my wildest thoughts he’d pull himself up. He’d also been pushing himself up onto all fours, but it seemed like this would be a little further off because I’d actually tried getting him to pull himself up on me.

Guess this means his days of doing the worm (or butterfly stroke, if you prefer) to get around are nearly over. Danica walked just after her first birthday, but it looks like we’ll be hearing the pitter-patter of this guy’s little feet in a month or so. Dang it.