Well, I wish
this was our afternoon. In reality it was only about 5 minutes.
The rest was spent with Lex running around like a wild man (I
realized he hasn’t been out of the house in many, many days!),
Eve trying to keep up with him, and me trying to settle them
both down so she wouldn’t throw up! Although I had little
success settling them (except when I turned the TV on!) we were
more lucky with the throw up, or lack thereof. She had no
appetite all day, which is unusual for her, but she managed to
keep down the Ginger Ale and a few crackers. She also took a 4
1/2 hr nap (!!!!) and went to bed easily tonight. I’m going to
call today a success and try for more activity and less TV
tomorrow :)

We’ve had good fortune in the “sick baby”
department with both kids and last night made me really aware
and appreciative of that! Eve was a bit cranky for most of
yesterday and I assumed she was tired from the day before. She
took an early nap and I prepared her (both of them… ok, all
of us!) for an early bedtime. At 6:30pm I carried her upstairs
for bed and she threw up all over me, herself, the carpet at
the top of the stairs, the bathroom, the bathtub, etc. Lex came
up to see what was going on and started gagging a bit. I
immediately sent him back downstairs! She threw up several more
times that night and ended up falling asleep on my lap, bucket
in her lap, while Alan and I watched TV in the dark. I couldn’t
get her settled in bed because every time she started crying
she’d throw up. So falling asleep to The Daily Show seemed like
a good alternative. She threw up two more times during the
night and twice more this morning. After the first two
stomach-emptying episodes, the rest have been fairly mild.

She’s such a trooper though! She’s a
little shaken each time and ends up clamy and ghostly white,
but after a minute she recovers and is her old happy self
again. I don’t think she cried once during the whole thing
(except when I tried to put her to bed!) I spent this morning
trying to keep her still so her stomach wouldn’t get jostled.
We watched a lot of TV today! Lex is pretty happy :) I feel bad
for him though because I’ve pretty much ignored him since 6:30
last night. He gagged twice when he came to “check on Eve” and
saw throw up, and apparently decided he no longer needed to
check on Eve :) Smart boy!

Now she is
sleeping (super easy and early nap!), he’s having his quiet
time and I am hoping for a calmer afternoon.

Julie and Molly came up to visit this
week. We had a fun little visit. Lex no longer likes to bathe
with Eve (really he no longer likes baths at all, but when
forced to take one he chooses to do so without Eve), so we
decided to put Molly in with Eve instead. Eve was a little
resistant at first, insisting it was her bath and
her toys,
but after a minute she started handing Molly toys, one at a
time, and eventually even turned around to look at Molly. I
think they both had fun.

Eve seems to have forgotten
that she was potty training. She went from being really good at
it to just not caring. Not only does she no longer tell me when
she has to go, but she stopped telling me when she DID go!
After a few yucky surprises I stuck her back in diapers for a
few days. I know she’s still really young and I keep telling
myself that this could take awhile, but I was secretly excited
to not have to buy diapers any more :) Oh well. I bought her
some new potty treats (yes, I bribe her with candy) and maybe
that will help. Or not, we’ll see.

We went to a birthday party today at the
local gymnastics place. It was fun. Lex was excited about it
all day, but when the time came I had to tempt him with the
idea of birthday cake to actually get him out the door. They
both had fun, in their own ways. Here is a funny picture of Eve
and our friend Ezra sharing a chair. They sat next to each
other eating pizza, but when the cake came Eve took front and
center! (really Ezra
didn’t want any cake, but you’d never know it from this
picture)

Potty training is such a funny process.
Eve does really well, most of the time. She has accidents on
occasion and I can usually understand why (we’re in the grocery
store with tons of stuff going on, for example). Yesterday she
even choose to nap in her bed with underwear on (her option
each day is that or the pack-n-play with a diaper). She had a
good nap and woke up dry! I was amazed. She’s in the bed again
with underwear napping now, so we’ll see how she does this
time.

Then other times she seems to
forget that she’s potty training. I was trying to cook dinner
the other night and she peed her pants three times! Each time I
put her on the toilet and she peed more. The second time I was
surprised and by the third time I couldn’t even fathom where
all this pee was coming from! Sometimes she gets really upset
when she has an accident and other times she doesn’t seem to
care. This morning she walked into the bathroom where I was
doing laundry and said “I pooped in underwear.” All casual
like, no big deal. Sure enough she did and it was messy (good
thing I was doing laundry!)

You gotta be
cool about it, but sometimes I find myself wondering what’s
going on in her head. Maybe she did just forget about the potty
thing, or was distracted and it snuck up on her, or whatever. I
usually end up just saying “Oh, Eve.” and she shakes her head
and says “No pee underwear” (a little self reminder) and we
clean things up. It’s a funny process.

I think of lots of fun and exciting things
to blog about during the day, but then I always forget them by
the time I get to my computer. As part of my efforts to stay
sane I’ve started turning off the computer during the day and
only turning it on when they are napping or at night. It keeps
us all a bit happier, and that’s important in these long winter
days! So I have nothing exciting to tell you tonight, but here
area few photos.

This is what we do for fun in our house. Climb up,
wiggle around, climb down. Good times! Sometimes Lex brings his
blanket up with him and waves it around. Then he tells me how
his blanket is just like the wind :) But today it was just
climbing.

Time for teeth! (his haircut looks particularly
silly in this picture)

After good naps from both kids we are
having a late, and silly, evening. Lex wanted to turn off all
the lights in the house and play with the wind-up flashlight
that Alan got him a few weeks ago, so after bath we cleaned the
living room and read stories by flashlight light. It was silly.
And Lex keeps repeating a line from Toy Story 2 (he watched a
bit this morning) and cracking himself up, which in turn cracks
the rest of us up. Alan snuck up on us in the dark while we
were reading stories and scared everyone. Eve grabbed the
flashlight and became a warrior, pointing the light and giving
a very impressive battle cry! Plain silliness all around!

I seem to have lost my quotes bar down the
side (I’ll see about finding it again someday), but here’s a
good one from this morning. “Mom, I love you when you are
making me food,” said Lex as I made him oatmeal for breakfast.
I guess I know my place in his heart. I kissed him on the head
and told him that I love him always.

We went swimming at the Splash Park today.
It was fun, eventually. I’ve been trying for almost a week to
get Lex to go, but he kept saying “no thank you. I’ll tell you
when I want to go.” So yesterday morning he announced that he
was ready go to! Unfortunately, for him, I had playdate plans
for the day and swimming was not an option. So this morning he
said it would be ok to go, so we did.

The experience started out a bit rocky. The check-in desk
was crowded and we had to wait awhile. At one point Eve started
to walk away and I asked Lex to take her hand and bring her
back over to me. Two seconds later I’m filling out a form,
she’s screaming, and Lex is dragging her, by the mitten
attached to her jacket, across the floor, flat on her back.
Meanwhile a bus with 30+ kids unloads and everyone clamors for
the pool. Then we finally get to the locker room and I get Eve
and I changed and Lex decides he does not want to swim. No way,
no how. So we went out to the pool with me and Eve in bathing
suits and Lex in his PJs (footy ones even!). He got comfortable
on a bench where he could see me and I could see him and I took
Eve over to the Splash Park pool. This place is really cool!
The Splash Park pool is 1ft deep all the way around and has a
huge playground-like structure in the middle with a twisty
slide, fountains, and lots of things to do. I dipped Eve’s feet
in to the nice warm water and she wailed!! “Go home now, just
want to play at home now!” Sigh. So we went back to the bench
with Lex and I started wondering if they offered refunds for
the day pass (I had just paid $17 for this experience!)

So we sat and watched for awhile, which is
really what I think he needed. Between the sounds of the water
fountains, the kids screaming, the bright colors and warm air,
I think he had a pretty strong case of sensory overload. Eve
too, I’m sure, but I think her main problem was that it was nap
time and I was asking her to play hard instead. So we sat and
watched. Lex kept telling me that he wanted to watch me and Eve
play in the water, and I kept saying Eve did not want to play.
After awhile he decided to put on his bathing suit and show Eve
how to play in the water :) He came up with this idea on his
own. We got him dressed and made our way back into the pool. He
LOVED it! She cried a bit, but I slowly eased her in by sitting
on the edge, then in just a bit, etc. I told her could splash
and kick and make a big mess… just what I always tell her not
to do in the bathtub :)

After awhile
they were both in and having a blast. I was happy that I didn’t
waste $17! I could go on and on with details of their silly
antics, but I think I’ll stop now. They are supposed to post
the swim lesson schedule the first week of March and are
planning to start lessons on the 16th. I hope, hope, hope I can
get something that works for us, timing wise.

Rose came to visit with Bone this weekend.
Always a good time. The kids are so funny because they get so
excited and want to play with him, but he’s still pretty nippy
so the kids mostly just run around him and throw toys and dog
biscuits at him. I think they probably exhaust the poor dog!
After a day or two he’s ready to get back to Rosy’s quiet house
:) Can’t say I blame him!!

Lex and Bone playing on the
stairs.

This picture cracks me up! They torture Bone by
getting as close to him as the can, but not close enough that
he can get them. I think they were all having fun
here.