Today was the big day for Analise to have tubes put in her ears.  She’s been a champ!  We were out of the house at 5:35 am and back home by 7:30am.  Wow!  (It helps that the outpatient surgery center is 5 minutes from our house!)  We took Analise in her pj’s, and she played right up until they took her back.  She had a new little Dora doll that she took with her to show everyone.  We didn’t hear her fuss at all! 

The doctor checked in with us after about 10 minutes, and he said everything went well.  They suctioned out a lot of thick fluid in one ear, but there was no sign of lingering infection.  They brought her back to snuggle in my lap less than 20 minutes later.  She was sleepy, but not at all grumpy.  She actually wanted to stay in "her room", she called it… probably because she knew once we got home my attention would be a little more divided to Josiah. 

But we headed out with a quick stop at McD’s.  She’s been resting with movies and PBS shows on the couch this morning, as have I.  Josiah has a terrible cold and cough, so he’s really snuggly, too, but I’m trying to make sure Analise gets all the "mommy moments" she needs today.  She’s asleep in the bedroom now, and Josiah is playing.  It’s a juggling act!  Thanks for all the prayers! Analise was a champ!

I’m sure many of you will check in on Monday morning, pleasantly surprised to find a whole slew of new posts from us. I’m trying to make up for my silence!

Remember this photo? Yes, a big day in the house as Analise learned how fun scissors were. I forgot to mention that when she first used them, I gave them to her and didn’t hear a SINGLE word from her for an hour as she snipped shred after shred. I had to "cut her off" (hehe!) to go to bed, and the first thing she said upon waking was, "Mommy, I want to cut more." Goodness.

Well, here was the photo from last night:

(suspense…)

(!!!!!)

I was finishing up Josiah’s bath, while Brian was supervising Analise’s pre-bedtime playing. He was a bit distracted and when he turned back to Analise he found her soft curls amongst the paper clippings. He said, "WHAT’S THAT? ANALISE! YOUR HAIR!" I came running with Josiah, Analise burst into tears, mostly because I think Brian surprised her. I couldn’t decide whether to comfort her or check out her hair! It’s not so bad. One piece is bang-length in the front, and the others are underneath on the side. Her hair is pretty layered, anyway, so you really won’t notice anything but the front one, and it still pulls back into a clip. (I did have to recreate this photo… the scene got interrupted quite frantically!)

It’s been a good weekend, in spite of terrible sleep again. We had a great Parent’s Night Out on Friday. Since Brian and I had been together a couple times recently, he graciously offered to let me do some shopping at Kohl’s while he hung out at the coffeeshop. I got several GREAT deals on a things for me and the kiddos. Yesterday, Brian rode with his team in the morning and worked at church all afternoon. Today was the usual teach-Sunday-School/lunch-at-Toones/afternoon-nap routine. Then I headed back to church for a baptism celebration. Brian and the kids went to his parents so he could watch the Tour of California bike race on the Versus TV network. He’s pretty excited that there’s great cycling going on in the US that he can keep tabs on, at least this week. Oh – and head’s up for our CA friends… Tuesday the race is going from Santa Rosa to Winters to Davis to Woodland to end in Sacramento. You’ve got world class cycling right down the road! Enjoy it for us!

Hope everyone’s had a good weekend!

Analise and Josiah are so funny together. A couple weeks ago, they looked so cute together on Sunday, I decided to try to take some pictures of them together, since there are so few. Below, you’ll see why I PAY a photographer for pictures of my kids together! Thank goodness for Portrait Innovations!

Josiah loved being on the couch, so he wanted to squirm away and crawl.

Oh yes, I forgot… a cracked lip from falling while crawling.

Almost a cute hugging moment!

Analise has learned that Josiah likes being tickled, though she usually ends up laying on top of him,
which he eventually finds uncomfortable!

Here are a couple photos with our love…

The party at Analise’s school… Her best friend, Jacob is the little blond on the left.

I went outside this morning to take our recycleables up to the street, and I saw that there were little white granules of something gently resting on the lid of the recycle bin. Could it be? No, impossible. Yes, it was snow! I ran back inside to get Kristine and Analise (it was too cold for Josiah) to show them the snow not even realizing that it was actually still snowing! Now, we’re not talking about a tremendous amount (maybe one tiny snow flake every 3-5 seconds) — but hey, we’ll take what we can get. I think Analise was too cold to be excited, but Kristine shared in the "I can’t believe it’s snowing" feeling that it’s easy to catch onto here in the South.

As I was biking to school, it did get a bit heavier with small snow flakes starting to accumulate on my fleece jacket. So I think it is safe to say, we had an "accumulating" snowfall. The only other place I saw any accumulation was on the a couple patches of ice on the bridge over Shades Creek. I’ve included pictures below of both my glove and jacket (the arrows indicate the accumulated snowflakes) and also the ice. Note the snow flakes covering the ice.

After the successful morning of pictures, I got Analise a quick doctor’s visit to check out her ears. Her behavior has just been uncharacteristically grumpy and fussy, and her sleep has been BAD. Sure enough, another double ear infection. We’re going to see the ENT next week and schedule the procedure to have tubes put in. Poor girl… I can tell she’s already feeling better now that she’s on antibiotics for the 5th time in 9 weeks. Whew! Our doctor’s son had tubes put in not too long ago, and he said it made a world of difference. I’m ready. He reminded me that one of the main reasons to do this is that her hearing is really compromised with all the fluid that has built up. Ah… that would explain the obedience problems partly… she’s really not hearing me! And I know that her waking with screams and tears at 4am has to be related to this. Finally, this morning, she slept until 7. (Unfortunately, Josiah didn’t, and he was up twice between midnight and 5am.) Then to top off the morning, Brian woke me at 6:30 curled in a ball saying his stomach hurt! He cancelled his 8am class because he was in pain, but after a little gas medicine, he seems to be feeling fine. Whew! I’m glad it’s not something more serious!

We had a birthday party for a friend of Analise’s at Chuck E. Cheese this morning. Analise had a good time, and Josiah rode around taking it all in from his backpack view. It was prime nap-time for him, so we were ready to leave a little early, but we still got to enjoy plenty of games, play time, pizza and cake. Fun!

Yeah for Friday! I’ll be back later to tell you Brian’s dramatic computer disaster/recovery story later… I’m sure you can’t wait to hear!

Whew… it was hard work getting these pictures taken! (Above is one of the final ones we came home with. I got a CD with my photo package, so I’ll include some of the other not-quite-good-enough photos below.) We canceled last week due to illness, and I was tempted to this morning when Analise was a grouch. I’m glad we got it done. Josiah, my normally cheerful smiley one, would hardly crack a smile for us, while Analise, who’s hard to catch even LOOKING at the camera, was in her full cheerful smiley beauty.

We didn’t have many to choose from with the two of them together, but I did get the top one above. I also got a couple sheets of the two individual photos above. I’ve had these two outfits since Josiah was 3 months old, and Analise’s since before he was born, just waiting for the right opportunity. I think they look very cute!

This one was one of the other choices for thw two together. Poor Josiah looks like he’s had enough of it all!

I got a double exposure enlargement of these two profile shots. Not the best of Josiah, but the final of both looks nice.

After a change of outfits, Josiah cheered up a bit. Or maybe it was because we let him stand up? Either way, he smiled a little bit and we got one that worked of just him and his sweet smiley self.

I got several sheets of this photo, too. Finally, smiley boy I know!

This is all the photos we’ll try to have taken until birthday time in June. Our photo place does a pretty good job of getting the kiddos to sit still and smile. This session was worth it, I think!

I’m so thrilled Tuesday is here.  Analise has been a bit of a grump lately, and she didn’t go to school on Thursday because she said she didn’t feel well.  Thankfully today she was good enough to go, even though she cried for a bit.  I think it’s just a stage she’s in… to not want to do things, even things she normally loves to do.  What a stage… I hope we get past it soon.  She’s been a bear during the night, too, waking up at 4:30 wanting to come to our bed.  We’re really trying to break the come-to-bed-with-mom-and-dad phase, just because we REALLY need some decent sleep.  But she’s throwing serious crying fits at that crazy early hour wanting to get up.  We placated her this morning – at 5am – by turning on her music, giving her some books, though the only light was her nightlight, and closing her door.  We told her she could get up when the sun came up.  I went back to sleep while Brian got up and worked some.  I guess she played pretty well in her crib, talking and chattering the whole time.  At about 6:30, she gleefully yelled, "It’s morning – the sun is up!" and Brian rescued her, while I stole another half hour of sleep.

Josiah, on the other hand, is my new sleep champ!  He slept from 8pm Sunday night until 7am yesterday morning.  WOOHOO!  Last night, he skipped his "nightcap" feeding at 11pm, and slept until 2am.  He was only in bed with us for half an hour to eat, and there was not even a peep from him when I put him back in his own bed to sleep, not in the swing, like we’ve been doing.  He slept until 7am this morning after that.  YEAH!!!  We’re making progress on one front of the sleep battle!

It could be that Analise still has a lingering ear infection.  If it sounds like I’m paranoid, it’s only because these out-of-character behavior times have more often than not corresponded with ear infections.  I’ll give it until Wednesday, and then we may be back at the doctor checking.  We need to start allocating more $$ in our monthly budget for doctor’s copays…

Anyway,  Josiah and I just got back from dropping Analise off at school and grocery shopping.  He’s asleep, and I’ve got BBQ pork in the slow-cooker for dinner.  I hope I can get something accomplished today… Yeah for Tuesday!