Sickness, sickness...GO AWAY!

I've lost track of how many prescriptions my family has had filled this month.  It's way, way too many!  I've started a collection of the colored rings that Target puts on prescription bottles, a different color for each family member, in hopes that I can think of some creative craft to do with them.  We certainly have enough of them!  The infection that just won't leave our house has caused Maverick to need to use a nebulizer.  I'm trying to look on the bright side and remember that we are getting to do this at home, and not in the PICU at Wake Med (where our last experience with this was, with Brighton)

Still, this is no fun.  Not to mention that Maverick was also put on a steroid which is making sleep and naps almost near non-exsistant.  This too shall pass...

Moms of Girls...

Just a thought....a guess, perhaps.  Since I have yet to experience what it's like to have a little girl, I can only imagine.  Although I was a tomboy and never really liked Barbies and dolls, I'm thinking that moms of girls don't find those items in positions such as these:

This is Anakin Skywalker who was placed here and remained on the drawer in our kitchen for a few days.  Lovely decorating, isn't it?

Adventures with Elliot

Chandler was more than excited when the class elephant, Elliot got to come home with him on Friday of last week.  Elliot gets to stay with us for one whole week and we get the burden privilege of documenting his stay with us in pictures and writing up a summary of his stay with us to place in the class book.  Normally I would love this sort of assignment, but with the sick children and being sick myself, this task STILL remains in my to-do pile.  Someday....

Anyways, there are pictures of Elliot at Yogurt Mountain, playing firefighter, looking at the rain, and more...   Here are some highlights:

Chandler had an MRI at Duke Children's hospital today.  It was part of a research study and he loved it.  The above is a picture of the "practice" machine to get Chandler acquainted with how it would be and sound.  He did great!  He got to watch a movie while they took pictures of his brain.  We will have these mailed to us in a few weeks.  Chandler got to pick out two prizes for his great work and he was nice enough to share one with Brighton.  I'm so proud of him!

Here Elliot practices his architectural skills as he reviews plans for our new house.

Elliot and Chandler hanging out on the trampoline.

Here's the lincoln log farmhouse that Mommy Elliot built.

Over the weekend it was haircuts for the big boys.  Chandler decided Elliot needed a trim too.  We did have a fun time with all our adventures with Elliot and hopefully he had fun too!

Here we go again...

It seems like the renovation process was off to a good start and then came to a grinding halt when we realized there was a major problem in our plans.  Unfortunately, our architect had mis-calculated where our house sat on our property and the design we had settled on would not fit within the set back lines.

Back to square one.  We were more than frustrated.  The architect was frustrated.  Luckily we are back to heading in a good direction.  We now have two plans ("D" and "E") that we are making some tweaks to, getting a price from a contractor, and then we will make a decision from there.

Plan D

 The above plan, "D" is currently our favorite.  Although it will offer less square footage, it has a two-car garage.  We are hopeful that this plan can be in our budget.  We will be modifying this plan to rearrange the "mud/laundry" room configuration and also switching the location of the master bath and closet.  We are hoping to add a door from the master bath directly to the outside since we most often need the bathroom when we are swimming/hot-tubbing.

Plan E

Plan "E" is our plan without a garage.  It is more square footage, and has 5 bedrooms for our growing family.  This plan will be modified to make the "mud/laundry" room larger, and possibly moving the 1/2 bath.

We can't wait to see the tweaked versions and get some quotes to see which direction we end up heading.

Mr. Grump

Like I mentioned earlier, we are constantly (it seems) sick around here.  Chandler had a fever starting on Sunday of this week and Brighton started the fever on Thursday.  Today he stayed home from preschool. He's a little tougher than Chandler when it comes to being sick, but can still be quite the grump.  Notice the scab under his chin?  That's from a tumble at the indoor playground earlier this week.

Brighton enjoyed watching more than his fair share of cartoons today and also got to see a movie in the car.  If we ever move or add on to our house, we plan for the big boys to keep sharing a room, but maybe a larger one where we can un-bunk the beds.  I had been looking for some "sports-theme" bedding for some time now, but hadn't found any that I liked and was in our budget.  Thank you Craig's List!  I scored this bedding (two sets) for the boys today for about $100 and I was quite pleased.  They are from Pottery Barn Kids, and barely used.  

Now, if we can only get the renovation process underway we can actually use them!

Maverick is 10 months!

Wow!  The time is flying by....my little guy is 10 months old!  Maverick weighed in at 18 lbs 7 oz and is 28.5" long.  He still just has four teeth but is starting to eat more and more "finger foods" and less of the baby stuff.  He has tried small pieces of chicken and also hamburger.  He really likes rice, especially spanish rice.

It seems that our family hasn't been well since about Christmas.  The doctor thinks Maverick had a mild case of RSV and he's had a runny nose/cough for awhile now and is finally on an antibiotic.  He's still napping like normal, 2x/day and sleeping about 12 hours at night.

I thought he would be crawling by now since earlier this month he starting "crawling" backwards, but no such luck.  He really loves to play with his brothers and stand up at the couch or his music table.  He's babbling, "Da da, ba ba, and occasionally ma ma"  He started signing "more" just before New Years, and does that whether eating or playing now.  We really need to work on teaching him more signs because he picks it up so fast.

I better start thinking about first b-day plans because it will be here before I can blink!

Grand Plans

The boys got matching sweaters from my Aunt Judy for Christmas.  We've had the intention of taking some nice pictures with them in the sweaters and just haven't gotten to it yet.  I joked with Derek that he needed to do that before the boys outgrew them.  We decided that Saturday we'd at least try.  Of course it was FREEZING outside and Maverick had a cold.  Probably not the best combination, but I do think Derek got a few shots.  Near the end of our 15 minute shoot, Maverick was done!  We wanted a cute shot of him in his new wagon, but he wasn't having one bit of it.

Lately it seems like I go and go and go at full steam with the boys all day.  I barely get the necessities done, dishes, laundry, meals....but there is so much more I'd like to do.  I always resolve to do a million things once the boys are in bed.  Funny thing is, once there are in bed I usually sit down for a few minutes (to rest) and the next thing I know, I'm ready for bed and I've done nothing!  I'm so mad at myself, because I really do want to get somethings done.  Maybe if there was more time between their bedtime and mine (usually about 1 hour!) or if I wasn't so tired.  I always say, maybe tomorrow.  Too bad tomorrow is always like yesterday.

The End of Naptime??

Is it the end?  Please say it isn't so.  My middle son, Brighton is just over three years old.  He still takes an afternoon nap of about 1-1.5 hours.  He loves his nap.  This summer when we would ask if he wanted to skip his nap that day he'd usually reply, "No, I'm tired....I'm going to go take my nap!"

Well the past two days it's been another story.  He has happily read books with me like normal and then I usually hear him talking/singing for a few minutes (maybe even 15) before he conks out.  Well, after 1 hour of singing/talking I figured he wasn't going to nap, so I got him up.  The next day I left the lamp on for him and gave him some more books to read figuring he was transitioning out of nap time into "quiet time"  He's still a little loud for "quiet time" but again he didn't nap.  

Unfortunately this make for one tired, cranky boy in the afternoon.  On the third day, no nap....this is how I found him:

So hopefully, he's still got a few more naps left in him until he can go all day and keep in a good mood!

Bad girl!

Random picture I found of Katie from summer '11

For Christmas, the big boys got M&M tubes with a plastic ornament on top.  Chandler's has been long gone (aka in the trash) for weeks now, but Brighton lovingly takes his everywhere.  It goes outside, to preschool, in the car, on walks with us, and he even sleeps with it.  Well I don't remember exactly when this happened but we were playing in the boys' room and when we came back into the great room I saw Katie lying down with Yellow M&M between her front paws.  She was chewing off his feet.  Katie hardly ever messes with anything that's not hers, but I guess the chocolate smell still remained on it.

I thought Brighton would be devastated and this would cause an unprecedented amount of crying.  No, he simply picked it up (what was left as I had already gotten all the smaller pieces) and said, "oh well, I'm throwing it in the trash"  Crisis averted!

Meanwhile, Chandler has heard me telling Katie, "Bad Girl!" when I caught her in the act and he was now reprimanding her with his own punishment.  He told her that he she was bad and he was not going to pet her at quiet time, in a matter-of-fact way.  It was so cute how he said it.  See, Chandler has "quiet time" in my room where he reads books after lunch and listens to them on tape and often Katie will be in there with him.  Well, apparently, he will go and sit with her and pet her (I didn't know he did this) and that day there was to be no petting for her!

Silly Boys

Today the boys were just hanging out and all being in a real good mood.  Chandler enjoyed putting his hat on Maverick and playing peek-a-boo.  I just love it when everybody gets along.  It doesn't happen all the time, so I certainly cherish it when it does!

Trip to the Dentist

Today was Brighton's first real check-up at the dentist.  He had been as a baby a few times, but this was his first dental cleaning and x-rays.  He did great!  He was super excited about all his "loot" (toothbrush/paste, floss, sticker, and bouncy ball).

Chandler had another check-up as well and no more cavities!  He still needs one filled, but we'll have that done at another appointment.  The fluoride treatment is really helping his teeth.  He had fun dressing up like a dentist with Dr. Kornstein.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  We spent New Year's Eve at First Night Raleigh.  Derek and I hadn't been there since before we were married.  We all had a good time.  It was especially nice since the weather was unseasonably warm.  The theme was "Paris" and the boys enjoyed listening to the accordion music.

Here Maverick and I are paused during the parade.  Maverick loved looking at all the puppets and people as we walked in the parade.  Chandler and Brighton were especially happy to be a part of the parade instead of just walking in it.

The night ended with a fireworks display at 7 p.m. after the acorn drop for the kids.  I was really impressed with the fireworks and so were the boys.

New Years day we had Grandma, Nanny, and my Aunt, Uncle, and cousin, Jenny and her daughter, Chloe come over for a fun evening.  We had "snacky" foods, opened some gifts, and had fun dancing in bubbles.  Welcome 2012!