Fun Raising

In the 8 years that I've had my job, I've been lucky enough to sideswipe the political obligations that come with an election year. Tonight was the first time that I turned in my ticket to attend a judiciary fundraiser. Due to the circumstance, I actually wanted to go.

The most lovely part of the event was that it was family-friendly and my kids were requested to come along. Let's hear it for not having to ditch my kids at home with a babysitter. Yeah!

It's fair to say that we actually enjoyed our evening and everyone was on good behavior. Even my husband. (Just joking Honey!) When we got home, I thought it was high time to get some pictures of all of us looking a little more put together. Proof that we can clean up pretty-alright. Alright.

When Lincoln isn't doing this:

He'd much rather be doing this:

Hey, wouldn't we all?

Expensive Dirt

Totally off the subject of kids and family and good stuff... I want to rant about ignorance. Just for tonight. Trust me, you're eyes would wobble right out of their sockets and sizzle onto your keyboard if I even attempted to delve into any more than this.

So I live in Ohio. February is winter in Ohio. Winter brings snow, slush, slop, salt and dirt onto our roadways. If you're driving in Ohio in winter, one might be inclined to think that their vehicle may be susceptible to this slush, slop, dirt and salt splattering onto one's vehicle. Easy to figure out, right?

There is a particular non-blog-reading individual who shall remain nameless that complains incessantly that her car is just "so dirty." Day after day, "Oh, my car is just so dirty!" Whatever will she do with a dirty Ohio car in February? Poor thing.

Well, this same individual has taken her car through the car wash approximately three times within the past 10 days in temperatures under 20 degrees to get her car clean. Do you know what this means? Is having some salt and slop cleaned off your car for the distance that it takes her to get back on the road and into her driveway really worth risking your windshield cracking in the freezing cold temperatures? Let's not forget the fact that she will probably have to wait until the spring thaw to get her doors unfrozen. And unless you don't plan on driving that car until May, is 3 times in 10 days even practical? And is she judging me on my slush and slop and salt covered vehicle because I am entirely too practical to waste my money on a 5 minute shiny car?

Does anyone else's face crunch up in disbelief or is it just me?

My practical-frugal self believes that your winter coat and gloves are much easier to wash than a 25,000 pound salt magnet. But who asked me? Deal.

Enough Fluff Update

It's been a while since I've noted some recent breaking news developments with both Elaina and Lincoln. So, let's get to it.

As for Miss Lullabelle (aka: Elaina), Eric and I were just about our wits end with trying to get this child potty trained as of last week. There were times where she would be doing so well and tell us when she needed to potty. Following that was the "I will only potty if I am forced to" stage. And then there were those times when she would wet her pull-up and think that a sappy "Sorry Mommy" with mournful eyes would be enough to cover her lapse in getting to the potty.

Urg. Can you say: frustrating?With yesterday's post, you can see that she has made a substantial turn around in her feelings toward excrement. Today was another successful dry-pull-up day and my hope that we'll have another uneventful weekend ahead of us for her to spend some more time in panties. Do you even know how much this excites me? Let me tell you, the day that I only have to cover one butt in diapers and Lincoln no longer is dependent on formula, we will be rolling on the dough! Well, not really, but c'mon, that's about $50 a month back in our pockets. Okay, so this post isn't about frugal, old me rejoicing in saving money. No.

How about Lincoln. I'm just happy to have his stinky little butt to diaper and his hungry little belly to feed. You really can't put a price tag on that, now can you?

Mr. Lincoln is now a crawling maniac. And like his big sis, crawling and cruising happened within only a few days of each other. He pulls himself up onto everything and has developed a great fondness for standing and taking in the sights from his almost 25 inch prospective. He continues to be a very serious and cautious little guy and loves to flip over the edges of area rugs to see what surprises may await him. While I don't so much know what triggered his passion for flooring, I feel that it's safe to say that his carpet flipping and edge raising have revealed no great surprises as of yet. He keeps trying. Currently Lincoln is working on learning to wave bye-bye and play pat-a-cake. Often times we take him by the hand with his arms raised and walk him around. While doing this, I almost get the sense that he doesn't even need me acting as his training wheels, but he won't let go. Lately, Lincoln has decided he doesn't so much even care for baby food. One evening, he cried every time I tried to feed him a bite of baby food and was only happy when I offered him bites of rice from my plate. For several meals now, I have been made to (as directed by the Yeller) place a solid food item, such as a morsel of bread atop his baby food in order for it to be accepted. This would be an easy deal if the aforementioned child would grow more than 4 teeth to let me know that he's not going to choke and die on the food he hollers for. From my plate. And let it be known that this is the same kiddo who still is happy as a lark to allow someone else to hold his bottle while he's drinking. Goofball.

And about this Little Guy's schedule. While we're entering that exciting stage of "mooching solid foods," his schedule has become slightly out of whack too. We try to see that he's getting his fill at dinnertime of both baby food and a fair amount of food-food without overfeeding him and more importantly, not starving the kid. Through all of this, I can pretty much swear that Lincoln is going through his latest growing spurt. He requires a late afternoon nap that we interrupt no longer than one hour through and he's been waking several times after we put him down at 9:00. He'll chug another bottle even if it's only 2 hours later. This isn't typical of him and our hope is that this too shall pass.

And while I'm on the subject of growing... Lincoln is currently growing out of his 12 month clothes (at 9 months old), Elaina has grown out of 3/4 of the shoes she owns and my hair is going to begin to grow like crazy since I just got it cut last Tuesday. And the fact that I like it.... it's going to grow like wildfire. My life.

All aboard the weekend P-Train

And yet another cold, snowy winter weekend in the north. Blah. Blah. Blah. Same yucky weather, different day.

So, what did make my weekend happy? Um, having fun with my kids of course!

Eric and I went into the weekend without a single plan or commitment and just wanted to be lazy and rest. Okay, so maybe the "lazy" part doesn't so much happen. Well, really we didn't so much as rest either. But you know what I mean. Aside from doing a TS show for a friend of mine in town on Friday evening, Eric and I had the weekend to call our own.

We called up some friends and made last minute arrangements to join them out for dinner. Troy and Jenni have been our friends since before we were married and even though we don't see each other as much as we'd like, we can easily pick up from exactly where we left off. It seems as though dinner plans aren't the most practical for Jenni and myself since we would rather jabber along with each other over eating our food. Kind of like two teenagers who can't get off the phone for a minute to go to the bathroom. That's us. She's great! Also, Troy and Jenni are parents to bio-siblings which they adopted as toddlers. Though Tyler and Olivia are young teenagers (or almost) they just swoon over our kids. Each kid wanted to sit next to a kid at the dinner table. So cute. And that was our 3 hour dinner.

Other than that, Sunday brought a full day at home and a full day (with exception of nap time) of Elaina wearing big-girl panties! Hooray! She did great! Not a single accident all day and she actually seemed like she was getting the whole "dry panties and no diaper" pitch we've been presenting to her for nearly a year now. Hallelujah! Oh, and she even kept her pull-up dry all of Saturday night while we went to dinner and did some shopping afterward. She was excited to use her portable, fold-up potty seat and went every time. My heart be still.

Stay tuned for more TMI on the Potty Train!

read

I've done lots of chronoligical updating... read until you find a repeat!

I didn't do this for nothin'!

The Girls and The Boys

Since I'm just a wee bit behind here on blogging and picture posting, I wanted to share some goodies from last week.

Even though I am a severe "planner" it was purely coincidence that Eric and Lincoln ended up in the same (looking) orange shirt. I had dressed Lincoln in the morning with his new orangy spring polo layered atop a long sleeved white shirt. Circumstance happen and he ended up coming home from the sitter's house, minus the white under shirt. I'm seeing smeared baby food along the sleeves. Nancy usually will launder any (severely) soiled clothes at her house and send the kids home in back up clothes. It just happened to be Eric's bowling night which produced his tangerine league shirt.

Judging from this picture, it looks as thought they're planning their outfits for the next day.
I could squeeze them both into little, pulpy-orange pieces! Those are MY boys!
And how about the snow which has been making an almost daily appearance? I longed to let Elaina experience her first sled ride at my expense. Let me tell you, if you want something to make you feel about 25 years older than you are, try suiting up in snowpants and layers and a ski coat and running a 30 pound child on a sled through the snow. (Pant. Pant. Pant!) Holy moly. But we did it! Elaina's first sled ride found us at the playground and laying on the ground making snow angels and sliding down the slide. I probably won't get into her semi-tantrum when I told her we had to go home. The child's tears were nearly freezing to her berry red cheeks and our noses began to run off of our faces. The almost 30 minutes was plenty for us both. It's Daddy's turn next time.

Made Into the Maid

What I wouldn't give to have someone else do the chores I hate.

Vaccuuming. Dusting. Cleaning bathrooms. These dirty little jobs that are so completely necessary but take up so much of my time that I would rather be playing with my kids.
A maid for this family however, is highly unlikely. Actually, more of an absolute, positive NO. Quite honestly, I'm too cheap to shell out the money to have a stranger come in to poke around in my mess. And so, I clean.

This day was going to be different though. In talking with Eric yesterday afternoon, I asked if he reminded the sitter that the kids wouldn't be coming on Monday due to us having the day off work for President's Day. He said that she was going to have only one of the other kids and she would be more than happy to take them for the day. I think he didn't even have all of the words out of his mouth beofre I began to drool with excitement over 7 hours of uninterrupted cleaning time. Once I confirmed with Nancy that the kids were going to her house in the morning, I dumped all of my worries of getting laundry done and some other random chores and enjoyed all of Sunday playing with my kids. I even let Elaina get out her Play-Doh and play until she said she was done. Monday was going to be all mine. My work day. And Eric's. The kids would be getting plenty of attention and I was making more time for them later by having an opportunity to get some meaningful work done. A win-win situation if you ask me.

We woke with noise coming from our children rather than alarm clocks on Monday morning and didn't have an ounce of rush in us to get them out the door. Like usual. Eric dropped the kids off and brought back a delicious, warm cup of cappuccino for me to start my day. I changed my clothes and jumped right into work mode. I started upstairs in the kids' bedrooms sorting through closets and dresser drawers. Earlier in the morning, I came to the conclusion that Elaina has outgrown nearly every pair of shoes that she owns. I dug through their inventory of bigger-sized clothes to discover that we need to go shoe shopping.

My cleaning spree had begun. In fact, I spent most of my day just upstairs tackling one project after another. I'm talking about dusting, vaccuuming floors, ceiling fans and window sills. Changing sheets, 78 loads of laundry (approx.) and cleaning bathrooms. Total damage: 3 super sparkling bedrooms, 1 so-so bedroom, 1 sparkling clean bathroom and tub, 1 acceptably clean bathroom and 1 just plain ugly bathroom. All of our floors were dog- hair free for approximately .08 seconds and without kid crumbs for a record setting 3 hours.
Here's some evidence of my work. Mostly inspired as the fruit of my labor. Partly inspired by Tracy's virtual home tour, and the added benefit of my kids being able to see what their rooms looked like when they were little. (I have no idea what my kid-room ever looked like, but I know it was never anything like this.)

Check out Elaina's room. Now, didO I really have to tell you that this was Elaina's room?

And for Lincoln's room:

And finally, our hallway which isn't new, but I just really want to show off my one and only creative use of patterning paint shades.

Oh, and I would be remiss if I left out our new stained doors that I think are beautiful! Eric finished hanging the last one today! Our upstairs remodel is one room shy of being perfectly complete! We'll get there.

Okay, so who wants to come over for some dessert. That's on tomorrow's agenda!

Butterflies and Buffets

This weekend brought a relaxing visit from my parents. We didn't have a single plan other than to sit around and enjoy each other's company and play with my little curtain climbers. Well, that's not entirely true. There's hardly a time where either my mom or myself decide we better go shopping for nothing that we need. Hey, she's my mom, what can I say. (Oh, except that Elaina asks if we can go shopping now.) (Oops.)

The mall that we like the most has a great (and new) (and clean) children's play area which Elaina loves and Lincoln was able to explore for the first time. It was so nice to see both kids enjoy the same experience in the same setting in such different ways. With Lincoln being the professional crawler and stander-upper that he is, he thought he was hot stuff getting around all on his own. As for Elaina, she already knows the lay of the land and made friends like it was her job. We looked to catch glimpses of her flitting throughout the play area like a social butterfly.This mall also has the greatest Chinese Buffet restaurant ever. I've made mention before that buffets are the way to go for us to accommodate the very strict menu selections of Picky Pickerson. This restaurant offered Picky Pick pizza, garlic bread, chocolate pudding and ice cream. It's like they knew she was coming. And Little Man Lincoln ate his first full meal made up entirely of table food. No baby food fixin's for this 9 month old. He ate three types of pudding, some dough from a dinner roll and a full medley of other tantalizing soft foods. Yum! He was pretty good about raking in his own food supply by hand with intermitten spoonful helpings from myself and grandma across the table.

There's really no need to report on my 7 trips to the buffet for myself alone. Nope. Scratch that information.

Anyhow, our weekend was great, our shopping trip was fun and my parents were such a help for me to get some things caught up around the house without fully neglecting my children. Thanks for a great weekend visit Mom and Dad.

My heart goes out to thee

Here's a little sampling of Valentine's hilghlites from our house. Hoping everyone enjoyed the day with those you love!

l

Thanks to everyone who sent cards for the kids and to Aunt Kate and Uncle Greg.... WOW! What great gifts to spoil our kids! Thank you for your consideration and generosity for such cool stuff!

We enjoyed our Valentine's day by going out for dinner at our favorite local pizza shop and having a lazy-family-evening all together. I loved every minute of it!

And just because... How about that husband of mine declaring Elaina's potty time for the world to hear? And how about her whiny, quick retort declaring "I don't wanna..." Guess you could probably make that out for yourself. Things only got better once both kids got fed and certain butts made it onto the potty.

Video Games

I've been promising my parents clips of Lincoln crawling now for about as long as he's been crawling. Although our lighting is somewhat dim, here's the main attraction.

I was on the phone the other night and heard Lincoln just bubbling with cooey baby laughter that was totally infectious. As I peeked in to see what my boys were up to, I witnessed the following. I think that this was approximately Lincoln's 76th round of toss-the-tot and he was finally growing a little bit tired. But only a little.

And welcome to Saturday morning at our house. Kids still all jammied up and the big one licking the little one on the head. What more can I say?

Her father taught her how to dance.

Picture Tuesday

Well lookey here... my old friend, Blogger returned from it's little function-strike now allowing me the ability to post pictures. Sure hope that I do my own proofreading since spell check still doesn't seem to be a working part of their contract. Hmmph.

Let's see, I'm just about a week behind in pictures and have a few fun ones I've wanted to share. First up, we have my sick darling daughter on her first day of her miserable flu. I took this only to show you that this was just about all she did the entire day. Poor thing was so frail and weak that she could hardly sit up. Let me just tell you how helpless I felt as I could only have her puke bowl ready when she was. Yeah, that was a bad day.

The following day, after Elaina had gotten some meds in her, she prepared a tea party with her very favorite guest, Lumberjack Linc. He seemed to be disappointed that there was no real food in any of the bowls but pretended with an open mouth anyhow. Just in case. Elaina loves her baby lumberjack brother. So, you know all of the not-so-cute-hand-me-down-clothes that you sometimes get from family or friends? Yeah, um, save some in each size. Over the course of this sickness with both kids, I did more laundry than a hotel and changed no less than 5 Lincoln outfits in a day. When the kids yak or blow out a not-so-cute-hand-me-down garment, it's just a little easier to take than the ultra-cute-froo-froo-paid-real-money-for-outfit that you bought in a real store. Just sayin'. Oh, and that's also the reason that Elaina's outfit doesn't match.

Now. Really. This next picture makes me smile, laugh and cringe all at the same time as Lincoln really seems to fit the roll of a beefy, heavy equipment operator working on a construction site. All he needs is a beat up, old John Deere hat and a thermos and he's set!

(To Lincoln: You can be anything you want to Baby. Just run it passed your mommy first, mmkay?

Finally, the price you pay for being the little brother. Big Sister made this little nest for Lincoln and really thought it would be a good place for him to take a nap. I don't know about him, but I totally would have gotten some beauty rest in that mountain of pillows and warmth. Just don't think I would have fit in quite as snuggly.

Tomorrow is half-a-dozen-video day! Ooh, I know you can't wait!

Mom's Antidote

When we woke up this morning, I peeled myself out of bed to take an inventory of the family. With all of the nast that I won't even bother to mention ONE MORE TIME, it looked like everyone was actually (dare I say?) better. I was spared from what could have been the flu and felt mostly decent.

After the kids got their naps, we loaded up and headed out for a family date. No real intentions, just some shopping and killing some time being out of the house. Just in case you know me, I can shop pretty easily, just about anywhere. We found some goods at just about every store we went to and even began to do some research shopping for 2 new car seats which we'll be moving Elaina into very soon. Lincoln is outgrowing his infant carrier at the speed of light and will have to have a new (rear-facing) seat soon enough. Our thought is to buy two new seats for Elaina with enough growing room to make them her last and Lincoln can move into her current car seats. Car seat shopping is hard. If anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to hear from you.

One of the main goals of our shopping trip tonight was to find a pair of these (in chocolate). I know, I know. Aren't they kinda ugly? Well, not terribly ugly, but so not-cute. I have found myself making no sacrifices for fashion as a mom of two and have jumped on board the ugly-footwear-train. Crocs, I big-squishy-ugly-color-love you. Does anyone else feel the same way? I know I'm not the only one. You see them everywhere. Guys, girls, kids. Everyone, including little, old me have found true love in Crocs. Back when I was a Crocs virgin, I half- heartedly ordered these (in chocolate), waiting to see why everyone loves them. Mmm, my love for them was instant. I wear them every single night (with socks) (I'm a dork) when I come home from work and every single night, I lust over the furry lined ones to keep my feet warm. And since I'm too cheap to pay almost $10 to ship them from the Crocs website, I have been scouring the web and retail stores to find them in stock. Apparently, every other big-foot size 9 woman wants these for their very own too. They have been sold out most everywhere. So, last night after an unsuccessful mall search, and over a dozen sold out websites, I found them! I really found them! Only $4 to ship them and their on their way over to make out with my tootsies! Really, I have never been so pathetic over shoes. I'll be sure to let you know when my mail-order affair arrives. Can you tell I'm just a little excited. Sure beats the heck outta the flu!

Change of plans

And yes, this week was a train wreck of ailments and could the timing of a Tastefully Simple conference be any worse?

No.

I had registered to attend a training conference for my little side job for this weekend. The training was actually being held on Friday and Saturday, but I had only intended on participating on Saturday. I was actually looking forward to it. My plan was to drive down after work on Friday and stay with my brother and S-I-L overnight to be closer to the site of the conference. By Friday afternoon, I had developed the closest thing to a migraine I have ever had. Because I felt completely nauseous, I couldn't decide if it was migraine-sick or flu- sick. Regardless, I cancelled my plans with Greg and Kate and forfeited my registration for the conference. Really, who wanted a flu-infecting machine within 10 feet of them anyhow? I forgot to mention that the other reason that Eric stayed home with the kids on Friday is because the babysitter had ironically, come down with the flu. Hmmm.

Thanks for the offer of a weekend raincheck Greg and Kate! I'll look forward to seeing you guys when we can all have some fun and not worry about gambling with the flu.

On how our week got worse.

And yes, we thought that each of the kids nearly drained their gastro systems in the past 48 hours that they could very well have been emptied by Wednesday. Nope.

We made the decision to take the kids to the sitter's house on Wednesday, assuming that they were on the mend. Nancy later reported that Lincoln was particularly fussy and that he had more than 3 blowouts and his bottom was now a burning hue of raw. Elaina, on the other hand, was greeting by her fan club of her 2-4 year old friends at the sitter's house. It was quite adorable to see that all of the kids had genuinely missed her and glad to see she wasn't sick anymore. Go ahead.... "Aaawwww!" Me too.

Wednesday evening, I thought Lincoln had had his last diaper explosion until he started again around 7:00. At one point in the evening, Elaina was crying because Mommy wasn't able to tend to her every whim, Lincoln was crying because he hurt all over, I was crying because I couldn't do much for either kid and I was fearing that Lincoln was going to end up in the emergency room if his explosive poo didn't subside. To make matters worse, Eric was bowling and the whole bitter anger issue over his little hobby was rearing it's ugly, ugly head in an evil way. I'm still hoping that his bowling "commitment" won't be an issue after this year's longest season in the history of bowling.

With my anxiety soaring and the flu virus rampant in our house, I started with some symptoms of my own. We all stayed home on Thursday, with me going to work just for a few hours in the afternoon. Eric later reported that Lincoln had been consuming fluids, both formula and minimal pedialyte and still wasn't peeing it out. My fear over his 3 days of diarrhea and potential kidney damage got the best of me and I called the pediatrician at 10 pm for her to put my mind at ease to be able to get any sleep that night. She didn't seem overly concerned because he wasn't running a fever and his disposition hadn't changed. She wanted to follow up with him in the morning.

Finally, (still with me here?) on Friday, Eric stayed home with the kids again since I have effectively depleted all of my sick time at work and he still has loads of unused hours. Upon Lincoln's appointment with the doctor, she determined that Lincoln had developed an ear infection which caused him not much interest in sucking from a bottle and indirectly led him to become somewhat lactose intolerant for the time being. She suggested having him drink from a cup which he promptly downed 2 ounces of water right in her office to Eric's surprise. Guess we never would have thought of that.

And there you have it. Our nasty week of ill. We made it through and we're all over the hump of feeling better. I didn't even mention how after cleaing up kid puke and poop for 2 days, Keegan decided to unload some of his stomach gunk for me to clean up too. What a family I have. I can always count on everyone pitching in. Or throwing up. Whatever the case may be. Yep, I'm a lucky girl.

Hit

You may want to grab your can of Lysol before proceeding to read any further.

Go ahead, I'll wait. This is gonna be a little gross too.

It's possible that all of the germs and nast that have plagued our house for the past two days could potentially leak out over my computer monitor to yours and it's better to be safe than sorry.

So, about this nast and infestation of germs... The kids' babysitter, Nancy, called me at work on Monday morning to tell me that Elaina had thrown up. She thought maybe it was a random and isolated incident and don't worry, she just wanted me to know. Thirty minutes pass and another call, another throw up. This time I turn in my sick slip to leave work to pick up my sick baby and my Lincoln. I walk in to find Elaina sleeping soundly in Nancy's arms and dressed in her 4th outift of the day because she had soiled the previous three.

We barely make it in the door at our house and Elaina is puking again. I made her a nest in her little bed in the living room which will be her refuge for the day. From noon on, Elaina proceeds to throw up everything that goes in her. We had no luck with water, pedailite or even Sprite. Worried about dehydration before it's too late, I call the pediatricians office to see what else they can offer. It turns out that they were just as concerned and called in a suppositry to the pharmacy. The suppository was to suppress her nausea and allow her then to be able to keep water and food down to be absorbed. The timing was great as Eric was able to pick it up on his way home from work and prevented me from packing up the kids, including the thrower-upper and driving to the drug store.

Within 2 hours of her medication (which she was surprisingly good about allowing) she began to drink and keep down a water- pedialite mixture and was beginning to actually sit up for longer than 3 minutes. At no point did she run a fever and we put potty training on the side much of the day (since she was practically a limp noodle already) to get a good wet-diaper count. Even in her sickness, her eyes perked up when let her know that she was going to get to eat a popsicle for dinner tonight. It was to be the second popsicle of the day and this one, she managed to keep down.

As for me, I started to get a splitting headache about the middle of the day and my trusty, old Alleve was barely making a dent in the pain. I prepared dinner for Eric and myself and had to let him enjoy it without me since I had no appetite and no choice, but to lie down. Eric took his shift with the kids for the next two hours and got both kids tucked into bed. I peeled myself out of bed and just as I sat down to catch up on some blogs, I hear Lincoln upstairs begin to scream and cry. He had just gotten sick all over himself. Eric got him into the bathtub while I changed his bedding and thought myself to be so smart to have registered for 2 crib mattress pad covers back when Elaina was born.

Over the next hour, Lincoln got sick 3 more times. Eric made me aware that his stomach was turning and he wasn't feeling good. And I wondered what far-off island paradise I could catch a plane to at midnight. Oh, here's the best part I forgot to mention. Eric was actually scheduled to teach a training class for work tonight and wasn't expected to be home until after 10:00. It got cancelled. Can you believe the luck? The timing? Thank God for small, in this case, big favors! I told Eric that if I was home alone with both of these vomit machines, I mean, children, I would have beat him for not being there to help. He would have had to pick me off the floor first, but I would have beat him nonetheless.

Much of the night was a blur as I bounced from one crying, sick child's room to the next and finally ended with Lincoln and I waking up together on the sofa downstairs. Eric woke next to Elaina in her bed next to her latest throw-up. And then we both called off work.

So here we are. Today. The very long end of a very long today. Elaina was able to take in fluids and began to eat just before noon. Everything stayed down. (2 suppositories later, mind you) Lincoln got his vomiting out of the way last night and saved his diarrhea for today. Approximately 5 rounds. And both kids began to feel better. My poor sick husband drug himself from bed mid- afternoon and helped as much as he could despite feeling like he'd been run over by a truck. As for me, I realized that I was the only one who had gotten the flu shot and stayed immune to the plague. Last season, Lincoln had croup and colds and snot too much to throw in another shot and Eric hardly ever gets sick and I guess that I just put too much faith in Elaina just being lucky not to get it that I never drug her in for a shot either. At the start of flu season, 2008, I think it's safe to say that we'll be making it a family affair to go get our flu shots together! This sucked!

(And by the way, my spell check isn't working either and I'm not even able to load any pictures now. Sounds like the my computer is infected. Hope everyone else is staying healthy!)

Cutie Crawler

It's happened.

Lincoln-Dinkin-Do is a full fledged crawler!

Since last Thursday when Lincoln made his first crawling attempt, exactly one week passed until he got the full motion of his crawl this past Thursday evening. Oh, and can I just tell you how cute it is to see him go? I don't know what it is or how to explain it but I marvel at him crawling. Maybe it's because it's a whole new segment in his life. Another "first" that he has achieved and a milestone in his development. Or maybe it's because he is so stinkin' cute getting around on his hands and knees while he lifts his chin upward to flash those big blue eyes and rosey cheeks. My boy.

Being that one whole week has also passed since Lincoln burned his finger, I just wanted to report that the blistered skin has since peeled off and the bright red, raw, exposed skin has finally toned down with some healthier tone and color. His fingertip, near his cuticle is still a little scabbed and tender, but on the whole, I'm pleased that it has healed so nicely and without infection.

Can you even believe that there is even one more grand slam update on my little Lincoln? How about 2 new teeth? Oh. My. Cute. Much of Thursday (his first crawling night) he was fussy, clingy and irritated. I noticed immediately upon coming home from work because he was so much out of his norm. He looked a little more slobbery and upset and I knew right away to look for some new teeth. Imagine my surprise when I felt and saw one little crown of his top right tooth and a trace amount the pearly dot which is about to make way through his gums providing his top left tooth. Needless to say, Lincoln's next two days pretty much consisted of Tylenol, teething tablets and much rest to keep the crankies at bay.

Just so this whole post isn't all about my favorite boy in the whole world, I'll give you a little update on Elaina's potty training. It stinks. Potty training in general stinks and having an otherwise bright, communicative daughter relapse when she was doing so great, stinks even more. That alone is the most frustrating by far. She's been wearing pull-ups throughout the day and I know our sitter is a great motivator to get her to take potty breaks. She can do do both "duties" in her throne and we've been going strong on reinforcement and the calendar/sticker reward method. When she has an accident, Eric and I express our disappointment (only briefly, not dwelling) and move on reminding her that she can do it and it's easy and she must try harder next time to keep her pull-up dry. So now what? We make her sit on the potty often and even when she says she doesn't want to, she still has success. But today, she even dropped a load in her pull-up 15 minutes after Eric tried to get her in the bathroom. I'm trying to let her do this at her own pace, but I'm beginning to wonder if her "pace" will get more lax and careless if we're not doing something we should be doing. Any suggestions?

*Oh yeah, and we have the little girl potty books about Prudence and Hannah and the stickers and the reward destination and the pep talks and... what am I missing?

What are we missing?