Fun Day

On Tuesday before K came down with pneumonia, he and A were off from school, so we took advantage of a day together and went to the kids museum with a buddy. We had a great time! K is really into maps right now, so the weather maps in the new weather exhibit were a big hit. EB really took it all in this time, and managed to show me just how big she's getting by throwing her first "fall down face first on the floor kicking her legs and pounding her fists and fake crying" tantrum when a little boy dared encroach on her precious steering wheel. Oh, we have some work to do on that! But despite the few sharing difficulties, we had a very fun day together, and as the weather gets colder I'm thinking EB and I will spend much more time hanging out there.

Sick days

I am not quick to take my kids to the doctor - I think experience has taught me that it's usually "some virus that's going around. S/he'll be feeling better in a few days." Poor K has been coughing for a while. A few more days, he'll get better... A few days has gone on for quite some time, and finally the fever, headache, tiredness and general grumpiness set it and we headed to the doctor this morning. Pneumonia!!!! I feel bad for not taking him before, but the new symptoms just set in this week, so perhaps it all came on very quickly. Anyway, the instructions from the dr. are to stay home and rest for a while, and the instructions from kindergarden are to stay home, rest and watch lots of cartoons. He's slogging on the couch watching Noggin, so mission accomplished!

Here he is at Marbles earlier in the week. Am I a great mom or what - dragging my sick kid to the museum to give himself a check-up? (to my credit, he had the cough, but not the other symptoms yet). Wonder if he could hear all the fluid in his lungs with the toy stethescope?

Keeping House

OK, so this is so typical of my housekeeping (ahem - can you even call it that?). I came home from a morning out with the kids, went upstairs to put EB down for her nap and came across a half eaten banana smooshed into the carpet on the stairs, brown bruised peel and all. I'm blaming that on both me and EB - EB for the smooshing, me for letting her wander around eating a banana. I grabbed the carpet spray and soaked the spots, dropped EB in bed, and found a nice new yellow sponge in the cabinet. I'm scrubbing, I'm scrubbing, and I'm seeing nice bright yellow spots appear on the stairs. Cheap bleeding sponges... So typical. I grabbed my next favorite cleaning tool - an old cloth diaper - and started in on the new spots with that. Not working. Then kindergarden homework and wrapping a birthday present distracted me, and the yellow spots are still there. At least the banana is up, but now I have nice yellow spots to mark the poor banana's demise. The carpet guy is coming Monday to do the basement. How badly do I want him to do the upstairs, too? And the picture has nothing to do with the post. Just thought it was funny. I still think K should get a mohawk, but maybe I'll start working on convincing A? (kidding)

It's Fall Y'all!

Funny Things About Miss EB

I remember very little about Ad at this age, except that we had just moved here, she had lots of ear infections, she cried constantly, had to be carried everywhere, loved lollipops, and was enrolled in preschool as soon as the application became available! So, I just wanted to record a few things I want to remember about EB (that I'm sure I will tell Ad she did, too, when she's older and asking...).

1. When I change her diaper, no matter what the content, as soon as I take it off she says "ewwww."

2. If her high chair tray is not perfectly clean she shakes her head back and forth and says "yuck - yuck"

3. She now insists on wearing socks with shoes and takes it upon herself to get socks out of her cabinet. She always brings me 2 pairs because she has 2 feet!

4. She finally loves to look at books - Elmo books are her favorite, and she can say "Emo," "Zoe," "Co-Co" (Grover), and "buh-buh" (Big Bird). She's also into literature about cows and ducks.

5. She likes to wear her bee costume. She brings it to me nodding her head yes and saying "bee? bee?" (she always nods her head yes when she's asking for something, just in case I don't know what the answer should be).

6. She likes to shampoo her own hair and dump the bucket of water over her own head. Works for me!

7. She's into accessories. She is currently wearing a Dora baseball cap and a bumble bee antenna headband, and she usually wants a necklace or two.

8. She loves ground meat - chili, meatballs, meat sauce, etc. And it seems the spicier the better! She will eat no other meat except the occasional nugget.

9. She loves her baby doll. She carries her everywhere, brings me diapers to change her, rocks her, and feeds her a bottle. She named her baby Bob.

10. She is still stuck on Mommy and screams when I leave her sight.

11. She likes to color with markers - sometimes on paper, most times on the hardwood floor. Her mom has not yet learned to keep the markers off the kids' drawing table and in a high cabinet.

12. She prefers all her beverages to come from a prepackaged bag with attached straw.

13. She still can't drink from a sippy cup.

14. You can stop her in her tracks by saying "shake it, EB, shake it." She immediately starts dancing.

15. She loves to drum. I often find her in there sitting on the drum throne going to town on the drum set. She is also learning to beat box! Too funny. K beat boxes when he's making up new rhythms, and she is such a copycat. So many times I've seen them sitting on the steps together beatboxing. K gets a kick out of it.

16. She just brought me a juice bag, nodding her head yes, confirming points 5 and 12.
*added a few days later
17. She started saying thank you on her own this week! She uses it all the time.
18. She is stringing two words together at a time.
19. She threw her first fall-down-on-the-floor-face-first-kicking-and-screaming tantrum at Marbles today. She also shoved a little boy who dared to move in on her steering wheel...
20. She likes to hold her finger over the fish bowl to make the beta fish jump.

Happy Birthday Fondu, Happy Birthday Fondu...

Happy Birthday Dear Geof, Happy Birthday Fondu!

This year I decided that instead of the usual birthday cake, I would make chocolate fondu. Geof and I have made this many times, but the kids had never tried it. It was a big hit! They loved using skewers, even though we had to do a lot of fishing in the chocolate for lost pieces of cake, strawberries, pineapple, pretzels and marshmallows. They made quick work of the platter! Even Ellary got into it using a chopstick. So easy, I'm thinking this is our new family birthdy cake!

(yes, that is a somewhat disturbing picture of Geof, but I forgot to take a good picture of him on his own birthday - kids covered in chocolate were too cute!)

Halloween Pages

Trying to get caught up on a little scrapbooking this morning. Here are a few more pictures from Halloween.