and it wasn't over

After Evie was sick Tuesday, Hannah and I got it Thursday. We also managed to give the stomach bug to our friends we saw Thursday at the park. Nathan and Lori both got it yesterday. Ironically, I am the only one who didn't throw up. Lori I think definitely had it the worse. Hannah seemed absolutely fine besides the "spit up" it's amazing how aware she is of her body functions. She managed to get to a bucket to spit up every time and would throw up and got right back to whatever she was playing like nothing happened. That along with Evie waking up at 4:45 am yesterday and wanting to eat and not going back to sleep until 7 am, Hannah waking up at 7:20 and Evie only taking an hour nap made for a very long day to say the least. Well that's it for now. I'm going to nap while I can!

Sick again...

We were finally all healthy, after going through well over 700 tissues were were finally healthy again and getting back into routine....that is until Evie slept until 9:20 yesterday morning (8 am is normal wake time) and when I went in to get her she was covered in the previous nights dinner. Apparently she has a problem if she doesn't have a diaper on but not if she's thrown up all over the crib and everything is covered in it, because it was not fresh. She seemed fine when I got her up, so I figured she just ate too much or something weird and we continued as normal. At nap time she again slept for an unusually long period and I her some faint whining from her room so I went in and found her mostly asleep still and again covered in throw up. We put her on the BRAT diet and she seems to be fine today, but definitely not a fun day for anyone.

Swing Set Part II

Lori has been working on the swing set since Monday, she didn't get much done yesterday because of the raining, and today we decided we should water seal the parts before putting anymore up. Here are some pictures with the progress.

Early on in the process

Monday close to the end of the day

I took this tonight, as I forgot to take any earlier. All the wood laying out has been sealed and what you can't see is there is one level of flooring now on frame as well.

I give up

Today Evie figured out how to get her sheet off her mattress, she also discovered there is a baby under the sheet (the large mattress sticker has a picture of a baby on it). Which encourages her to pull the sheet up all the more because she wants to see the baby. Ah, the joys of an active toddler. I think she started going for the sheet because she had a onsie on and couldn't get to the snaps on it very well to take the diaper off :-) So at this point after an hour plus of trying to get her to nap I have given up. Neither of the girls napped today. :-p

Swing Set

We bought a swing set Friday! Yay!! A friend with a truck helped Nathan pick it up yesterday and I took inventory and grouped all the parts. Lori spent the weekend in Austin, but is coming back to put it together for us! By the end of the week we should have a swing set in our backyard! I can't wait, I know the girls will love it and our house is setup perfect for it with windows all along the back, so I can do things inside and still watch them.
I've decided I want to be a packaging engineer when I grow up. Because they take this:

And fit it into four boxes like the ones below. It'd be like playing tetris all day! :-)

Redecorating

We're not really redecorating, but we've had a few visitors besides Lori this week, when she showed up on Tuesday she came with two friends who spent the night, then Thursday night another one of her friends came in town for work and spent the night. For the Thursday night guest we put a mattress in the playroom. When Hannah came down Friday morning she said "Mommy, they play room is redecorated!" I've left the mattress down for them to have a little fun on :-)

Getting dressed....

I mentioned a few posts ago that Hannah was getting dressed on her own. Well this was a true statement the processed involved micromanagement and much protest. All of that has changed as of last Thursday (2/11). I asked Hannah to go upstairs and get dressed, I figured it was worth a try and when she complained and called for help I'd go up there. She said she wanted to finish reading and then would do it. Ok, not a problem, I was feeding Evie anyway. She finishes and runs up the stairs, and was back fully clothed, including socks in less than five minutes. No complaining, no help she had done it! I was so excited!! I told her what a good job she had done and how proud I was of her. The next day I ask her to go up and get dressed again, she said "ok, but don't say anything" that means I can't say good job or even acknowledge that she did anything! Once she's doing something on her own she doesn't want you to say a word about it, that's just how life is and we go on (with constant reminders not to say anything "mommy, I need to poop. but don't say anything" :-) )

backhoe

Yesterday I learn that Evie knows not only how to say backhoe, but she also knows what it is. We were walking into the bank and she starts pointing and saying "backhoe, backhoe" and I look and sure enough there's a backhoe digging up dirt. I'd thought she had said this before from the back seat, but it's hard to tell what she's looking at, so I was never sure if she understood what she was talking about. But she does. How many almost 16 month old girls know what a backhoe is? I'm not sure why, but both my girls have a thing for construction equipment.

Sabotaged

Sabotage is a word from Nathan that Hannah has picked up on. She actually used it in proper context yesterday. We were at WalMart and she was in the back of the cart stacking all the food as I put it in and we had stopped so I could grab something so she was able to get a nice pile going. I started moving again and I heard "Sabotage, sabotage" coming from the back of the cart as her pile fell down :-)

Lori Du!!!!!!!

Lori Du called at 5:30 pm and was at my house by 7:30 pm. So we'll be having some fun with her the next few days and may even get a swing set up!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Daddy got his girls balloons and roses for valentine's day. Evie LOVES balloons right now, the gifts were given after nap, so the rest of the evening we got to here...well I'll just let you hear it too...

Over and over and over and over again all night!

Rain Boots

It's been raining for a week plus here. Yesterday it was finally nice, so I took the girls to splash in the puddles and we all were wearing our rain boots!

Walking the dogs

We got our dress up clothes out on Friday and the girls had a blast. Hannah had her two puppies out and figured out what to use for a leash to take them for a walk. I wasn't fast enough to get a good picture of Evie with her loads of necklaces and sunglasses.

job update

For those of you wondering Nathan is enjoying his new job and new challenges. It's a definite change being in a small company, but fun. The current question we've been fielding regularly is does the proposed budget changes to NASA effect him? In theory, yes, the program he is working on is scheduled to be cut at the end of the fiscal year (October), however, everyone says just wait and see. So we're waiting, and we'll see. Just because the program is cut doesn't mean he'll lose his job. Paragon just won a new contract, which is good new is this one goes away. The other thing is even though the budget calls for an entire program to be cut, the over all NASA budget does increase. Which means money is still out there. Right now we're just waiting to see what happens.

who said kids can't undo snaps?

One of the big arguments for getting cloth diapers with snaps is that they are much more difficult for kids to take off. If your kid happens to be one of those kids who doesn't like diapers. Well today I had Evie in overalls that had a snap opening on the legs for diaper changes. I will admit they aren't the best snaps ever, but they are snaps. Anyway, I put Evie down for a nap today, which she didn't take, I think because she slept in until 9:30 and she normally gets up at 8, but she was playing quietly, so I figured some quiet time was good for all of us. I went in after Hannah woke up (who only took a 45 minute nap) and found Evie had completely unsnapped her pants, taken her diaper off and even managed to get the insert out of the diaper. See if I ever leave her to play quietly again!

"not yet my son, not yet"

Hannah was running after Evie saying this over and over and over again. I said "what's that from?" she asked "what do you mean?" "what book is that from?" "Berenstain Bears Bike Lesson" said without hesitation. I was impressed she was able to pull up the book title so fast. She quotes a lot of books, not surprising, some totally out of context, like this example. It's pretty funny sometimes, but I wasn't sure she knew what she was doing and could tell me where it came from.

Cookies

I made valentines day cookies for Nathan's co-workers. He's been taking pictures and sending it out to the entire company of what he's brought in, so I figured I'd post a picture here because the cookies look pretty. :-)

A visitor

Yesterday we had a visitor in our house.

A lizard! It was very small and very slow, I think because it's cold here for this time of year. Hannah loved being able to look at it and touch it.

Two sick kids....

The girls have had a cold for over two weeks now, not so fun. Yesterday they both started exhibiting new symptoms, Hannah started throwing up and Evie wasn't content at all. She was crying if I held her and crying when she was down, she was crying so much Hannah asked why she was crying. So this morning, after waking up with Hannah at 5 am, being up for an hour with her and then having Evie wake up at 6 am and not go back to sleep (she normally doesn't wake up until 8) I took them both to the doctor. Evie has an ear infection and Hannah has a sinus infection. They are both on antibiotics now. I caught the cold a week after them, so I've been sick as well, which makes it extra fun, I think I'm getting better at this point (I hope). So someday soon maybe we'll all be healthy! I would like to report that Hannah did MUCH better at the doctor, she got on the scale with no crying, let the doctor look at her and only started crying when he unzipped her jacket, once I assured her he wasn't going to take it off she was good. No kicking, no screaming, just a little crying. I'll take that over her physical visit any day!

5 minute chocolate cake

Yes it's real, it only takes five minutes and it's chocolate. The recipe needs a little work, but we're planning on perfecting it, since it only takes five minutes to make AND cook it.
Check it out at: http://www.desktopcookbook.com/recipe.asp?ID=29882

How did we find such a wonderful recipe you ask? While, I was working on completing one of the items on "Nathan's Todo List" from his old job. He was given a list of 10 tasks to do before leaving, it was a pretty funny list, so I figured I'd share.
In order of difficulty:
10. World Hunger - self explanatory
9. World Peace - self explanatory
8. Buffalo Bills - Create winning team structure, such that not only go to the Super Bowl, but win a Super Bowl.
7. Chicago Cubs - Convert Karyn to an Astros' fan
6. Aggies - Convert Stephen and Eric to Aggies fans, can't we all just get along (see #9)
5. Cookies - Train team members to bake (edible) cookies, aka crack (and bring them into work) This is the one I was working on, putting my recipes into a cookbook on the web to send to his co-workers, hopefully anything I make and put pictures of I'll link to the recipe in my cookbook online :-)
4. Fix SARJ - self explanatory (this was the last project Nathan was working on, fixing a broken part of the space station)
3. TRASYS/SINDA - this one I'm not going to bother to type out, because you probably wouldn't get it.
2. Robert (person who created the list) - Build tool to convert 'what Robert says' to 'what Robert wants'
1. Ryne - develop a cure for his cough (inside joke)

Astronaut

We had lent the zebra out to a friend and just got it back tonight. Hannah was playing around with it and put the drum (and she had sunglasses on at first, but I wasn't fast enough with the camera) on her head and said "look, I'm an astronaut on my space shuttle"

What letter does that start with?

It's hard to blog about the new things Hannah is learning and doing because a lot of them are just such subtle changes like speech improvement and vocabulary growth. Or things that I aren't that exciting to the general reader, like she's able to dress and undress herself now (VERY exciting for her parents, but do you really care?). But her most recent question, and ability to answer it on her own I figured I'd blog about. Tonight in the bath she said "what letter does tea start with?" as she was pretending to drink tea in the tub, I said "t-t-t-tea" and she said "T" she went on to ask about several other letters and the only word she got wrong was cold, where she said K first instead of C, but C was her second guess. Not bad for three years old. We have also been working on counting, and she can get up to 29, but has a little trouble with 13, 14 and 15.
That's are recent excitement with Hannah. I realized last week that she doesn't technically officially start kindergarten until Sept 2012, so I figured I'm off to a pretty good start and don't have to worry about any formal learning for awhile still :-)

The new tricks I can do

Evie discovered yesterday she can move chairs. They are relatively easy to move on our title floors, and since almost our entire first floor is title it means she can move them anywhere she wants. The kicker is, while discovering this ability she also was able to put that with the fact that she can then climb on the chair, thus making everything and anything she wants accessible to her. Oh the joy, how do you child proof against that? :-)

Random pictures from January

I have a bunch of random pictures I've been meaning to post. So here they are.

Foot wear

Last week I bought three new pairs of foot wear. This almost doubles my currently owned footwear collection. However the footwear I bought I think will actually get use. Oh yeah and it was less than $50 for all three pairs! I got slippers, which are great, because I had been using my tevas around the house on our cold title floors. I got rubber boots, so I can go rescue my girls in deep water :-) And I got a pair of shoes to go with the new dress I got for the show my parents gave me tickets to for my birthday. The show was great, thanks for asking. We saw the Screwtape Letters (which is going to be in Austin next weekend if you were wondering). It was put on by the Fellowship for the Performing Arts which is a Christian theatre group and was very well done.

Hello?

Evie LOVES the phone. She puts everything and anything up to her ear and says "Hello." As a good mother I've started taking pictures of this, I know I haven't even gotten half the objects she's done it with, but that's ok... For your enjoyment.