Sick

Last we spoke, Bella had strep throat. Thursday night of that week, I had a bad sore throat, luckily it was not strep but I still required antibiotics. Tuesday of this week, Jacob woke up with a fever. The fever got worse and worse. By Tuesday night it was 103.7. We took him in and they said it was just a virus. No meds. Wednesday night his fever was back up in the high 103's. Thursday it was back to the doctor, where we find out that he has pneumonia. Oh and he started throwing up. It was just once, probably too much medicine on an empty tummy. Thursday night the dog woke up at 1:30 AM and threw up EVERYWHERE. Yeah. So it's been a rough week. For good news, Bella has stopped biting. Her potty training has sort of taken a backslide, I think she can only exert so much self control at once! So between Jacob, Bella and the dog - there's been a lot of laundry being done around here. I think Jacob is on the mend, but he still coughs terribly and is running a slight fever. Although it is lovely outdoors, we have been mostly inside watching movies, trying to keep him from over exerting himself. He missed trick or treating at the old folk's home and on Monday he will miss going to Old McDonald's farm too. And out trip to Dewberrry farms of course isn't happening either. Luckily he doesn't know about any of those activities that he is missing! Ramble, ramble. I think we are going to go out for a drive, just get out of the house for a bit.

P.S

OK, the last post was kind of a downer. Sorry about that. I did want to jump back on and just say that over all we has a great weekend. Friday night all four of went to see Where the Wild Things Are. (mini review: It was beautiful and poignant and very very sad and plotless and did I mention SAD? and I don't mean "sad" like in the way where I am being sarcastic, I mean like you want to go home and bawl your eyes out at the hopelessness of life and the human condition when it is over. Like Leaving Las Vegas only with Luckdragons or something) OK, but it was still the first time to ever go out to the movies as a whole family and that part was way cool, like being a family with slightly older kids sort of opens the door to a whole new dynamic of hitting the food court and a movie on Friday nights. And I got to "people watch" my own family while they sat all in a row eating pretzels, very cute. Saturday Jacob went on his first extended bike ride with his Dad, by extended I mean like 30 minutes and leaving our culdesac and actually going off to other parts of our village. Cool. Saturday afternoon we went to a birthday party. Sunday we slept way in (as in didn't make it church and we go to the 11 o clock service for Pete's sake!) and decorated our yard for Halloween and rode more bikes, and made cookies and played with marbles and it was a great, great weekend.

All About Bella

I had a girl and Bella was her name since she turned two, she's never been the same Oh I love my Bella, oh Bella oh where can she be? In case I haven't bragged enough on her in the past - Bella was an easy baby. She ate well, she slept, she was never clingy, she has always been bright, happy go lucky. She could go anywhere,all day and be fine. She could eat or nap a bit early or a bit late if needed. Flexible. She was a flexible child. To be perfectly honest, I always kind of felt that I was owed a flexible one, for all his wonderfulness, flexible is not a word I would use for dear Jacob. He was, and remains my "schedule" baby. OK, so what happened? When Bella turned two, like literally within a few weeks, she has become demanding, upset, furious. In short, a perfectly normal two year old! She has cried more in the past two months than in the whole rest of her life combined, and I am not exagerating. So, this past week she had strep throat. And she has been crawling out of her crib so we have her sleeping on the floor until the extra part to turn her bed into a toddler bed arrives. (For some reason it takes 3 to 4 weeks for it to be made and arrive. I was like what? Do they have to grow the tree or something?) So it may be that she isn't sleeping all that great, on the floor, with a sore throat. And all that vocabulary I've mentioned? Well, it has been replaced with unintelligible whining. If you ask her a question she makes this whining grunting sound that sounds like "Nyah" and if she does speak it is to say "Stop it!". Oh she still has moments of bright happy sweetness. Just now, at the end of a super long day of crying and whining and "stop it!" she says, "Night Night Mommy, I love you!" and it just refreshes my soul. Dear Lord, Bless all the children and the parents tonight. And keep me thankful and patient. Amen

Family Portraits

Last time I blogged, Jacob's tooth was just barely hanging in there. I was hoping it would stay in for our family portraits on last Saturday, but it was not to be. The night before, we went to Fiesta Azteca for dinner. While biting into his tortilla, Jacob's tooth came popping out! He was a little upset because it bled, but also kind of excited. Will and I looked at each other and laughed, and then Will says, oops, guess we should have had mashed potatoes instead! You would have to know Jacob's personality to know why we are very low key on things like the Tooth Fairy. Totally new concepts are not his idea of a good time. He had a lot of questions before finally conceding "Well, OK but she better not wake me up!". He didn't like the idea of his tooth being under his pillow so we put it on his nightstand where we assured him she would find it no problem. The next day we had our family pictures taken. I feel they came out really well, although our person didn't seem to get the lighting quite as nice as the last time we went.

Got to love the outtakes:

In his own time

Jacob does things when he is good and ready and not a moment before. He rode his new birthday bike a few times, but it was fairly tentative. He couldn't get the hang of pedaling, you know how you sort of tilt your foot to angle the pedal the right way so that you are putting downward and forward pressure on the pedal? Well, he couldn't get it, like he wanted to move his feet up and down instead of elliptically. So he would get on but go really slow, and you know how it is, the slower you go the less you can steer and the more you wobble. So he would wobble, and then he took a couple of spills and didn't want to try again for a few days. Today I just casually mentioned, "Hey want to ride your bike?" and he says "Yeah!" then walks over to it, gets on and just takes off and rides non stop at warp speed for the next half hour. It was so neat. There is nothing in the world as awesome as seeing the look of pure joy and freedom on your child's face when they take on something really new and master it. His wiggly tooth is still hanging in there, getting looser by the day. The new tooth is coming up behind it, so he looking like a shark right now with sort of a double row of teeth. I hurried to schedule new family portraits this weekend because I really wanted one more set of him with baby teeth still all in. Somehow it just seems like a big deal to me, like once they get snaggly toothed and then they get those big grownup teeth and they really aren't toddlers anymore. I'm always wistful about milestones, excited, but a little taken aback by how fast time goes by when you are raising little ones. The other night we were at the mall (getting shirts for our picture) and Jacob got tired and asked me to carry him. I did, for a bit, just because I still can, you know?