Adventures In Kite Flying

On Sunday afternoon, we decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and took the kids to the park.  It was super windy and a perfect day for flying kites.

Shawn got the kite up and passed it off to Em. 

After a few minutes, Em was afraid she was going to drop the handle so she passed it off to me.  I was holding Evan, so trying to maneuver a kite too wasn't exactly easy, so I passed it off to Shawn. 

And then this is what happens.  Shawn let go of it and it ended up in the middle of the pond.

But at least now I could get a cute pic of my little guy.  :)

We patiently waited for our kite to float over to the other side of the pond.

And Shawn was able to rescue it.

Only for him to get it out and it gets stuck in a tree.  Sigh.

Evan enjoyed his mum mums while we watched Shawn wrestle with this kite.

Yay!  Finally the kite is back and Em and Shawn can fly it again.

And of course you can't go to the park without a stop at the playground.

Peeking out from his behind his shade on the walk back home.

First Tooth

I've been trying to get a picture showing off Evan's first tooth (or rather teeth) and I finally caught one this weekend. 

And because it's hard for me to post just 1 picture of this cutie, here are a few more.  :)

He so badly wants to be able to crawl!

Conversations With Emily

Last night I was home solo with the kids (Shawn met friends for dinner) and I had just gotten Evan out of the bath and was getting him dressed in his room.  I asked Em if she could grab his pacifier that I had forgotten in the bathroom.  She ran in and grabbed it and brought it into his room, but instead of her handing it to me or him, she puts it on his nightstand across the room. 

Me: "Hey Em, did you get his paci?"

Em: "Yeah, it's over there (pointing to the nightstand)."

Me: "Can you bring it to him?"

Em: "Um, nope.  I'm too busy singing."

 

Yum Yum Yum

Evan LOVES mum mum's.  He can eat 3-4 in a sitting if we let him.  It's still the only table food that he likes, so we give them to him often in order to keep him happy while we're eating.

Puffs are still hit or miss.

He's still a huge fan of the mesh feeder.  This time he had mango, strawberries and blueberries.

Sibling Love

Mohawk

Daddy had some fun with gel on Sunday.  Who doesn't love a baby boy with a mohawk?  Haha.  I'm thinking he looks pretty handsome.  :)

Even though Em doesn't have crazy hair like her brother, I still had to post a pic of my sweet girl too.

Watch And Wait

I took Evan back to the dr. this afternoon to make sure his ear infection has finally cleared up.  We got good news and bad news.  The good news is that the infection is gone.  YAY!  The bad news is that both ears still have fluid in them, which means they could easily get infected again.  At this point, we're going to hold off on tubes and watch and wait to see if he gets any more.  If he does, we have the choice to try shots to clear the infection and drain the fluid or get tubes put in.  The dr. is really hoping he can make it to Spring time though, as that's usually when colds start to decrease and therefore, the ear infections should hopefully stay away.  Unfortunately for us, the dr. said that it's not unusual for a baby's first winter in daycare, to end up with 1 ear infection a month.  While I'm glad it's not usual, it still sucks!  Let's just hope he can make it until Spring and we can keep him ears clear!

Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

I'm warning you now, this is a super long post!  I just want to remember the story behind these pictures.  :)

I took off 2 Wednesdays ago to get pictures taken of the kids.  Let me start off by saying I had rescheduled pictures 3 times already over the last few weeks.  Once because the weather was bad, once because Evan had an eye infection and once because Emily had a fever blister.  As a result of all the rescheduling, Evan's 6 month pictures turned into 7.5 month pictures.  But oh well, we were all set to go on Wednesday morning.

Our day started off very early Wednesday!  Evan was up and crying at 3:45 am that morning.  I'd say that's pretty much when my day began, as I'm not counting the very little sleep I got between then and 5:30 when Evan gets up normally.  Emily also decided she was super excited about our day at home and woke up around 6:00.   Shawn headed off to work and I was home alone with both kids.  This is when the fun began!  I fed Evan his first bottle of the day and lucky me, it was one that he threw up.  Only he didn't throw up on me, but all over himself, his playmat, and several toys that were in the vacinity (incl. stuffed animals). Oh boy.  So I started my first load of laundy for the day.  By now it was around 8:00 and since our pictures were supposed to be at 10:00, I hopped in the shower.  I put Evan in the excersaucer in our bathroom and set Em up in the gameroom with a movie.  I was about to get out of the shower when Evan started crying.  As soon as I got out, I knew why.  He had a dirty diaper.  It stunk.  So I went to go pick him up and guess what, it was a huge blowout.  All over his clothes and the excersaucer seat.  Yay!  So off I went to change him and start my second load of laundry for the day.  After I finished getting ready we all headed downstairs.  It was around 9:00 now.  I happened to check my email and saw that the photographer emailed me.  She said to call her because it was raining.  All I'm thinking is "you've got to be kidding me?"  So I start to call her and as I'm doing that, I open our back door to look outside.  Only I forgot that the alarm was set.  The alarm starts blaring in the house.  We recently switched alarm companies and we can no longer just disable the alarm.  I could turn it off, but I knew the alarm company would be calling to see if they needed to send someone out.  So I'm on the phone with the photographer (on my cell phone), when Shawn starts calling the house phone.  I tell the photographer to hold and answer it quickly telling him I'll call him back.  Now I'm back talking to the photographer and I see that the alarm company is calling my cell phone.  I ask her to hold yet again and switch over to tell the alarm company to ignore the alarm.  So finally I'm done with the alarm situation and can focus again on the photographer.  She says it's raining pretty hard as she's driving.  She asks if I want to try that afternoon instead.  I tell her the kids have a dr's appt. scheduled for 12:20 that afternoon (yes, I planned pictures and dr appts all in the same day), but maybe we could do it after that.  She asks me to call her on the way to the dr. appt so we could see what the weather was looking like.  I hung up and was super disappointed. I had just gotten both kids and myself all ready and now we weren't doing pictures.  I spent the next 20-30 minutes thinking we would be lucky if we got any pictures taken that day.  I decided to go outside again (I turned the alarm totally off now) and see how it looked.  At that point, it was still cloudy, but there was no rain.  I decided we should just try then, so we could get them done.  It was 9:30 and I called the photographer back.  I said the rain stopped and I'd like to try again.  She agreed to meet me at 10:30.  I loaded the kids up around 10:00 and off we went.  Of course it started raining on me as we were driving, but luckily it was short lived.  By the time we arrived, it was totally clear.  I was soo happy!  I thought pictures were going to go perfect.  Wrong!

Evan had taken an hour nap before we left and had a full bottle as well.  I thought there was no way he wouldn't be happy.  Apparently, he didn't have a long enough nap and was not into taking pictures at all!  He cried almost the entire time.  And as much as I bribed Emily, she really just wanted to do her own thing and not listen.  I had brought 2 outfits for them and I didn't plan well.  I should have put them in my favorite outfits first, but instead I did it the other way.  As a result, I'm pretty sure we got 2 pictures of Evan in the second outfit.  :(  Oh well.  After an hour, I was so done with pictures.  The photographer and I had sung, danced, you name it, all trying to get Evan to smile and stop crying.  I was convinced there were not going to be any good pictures.  :(  I even called Shawn when we left and told him I had very low expectations about the pictures.   I figured these darn pictures were just not meant to be.

We finished up pictures around 11:30 and as I mentioned previously I had a dr. appt scheduled for both kids at 12:20.  It was to re-check Evan's ears (he had just finished antibiotics for an ear infection) and to ask about the ezcema on Em's hands.  We rush home just long enough for me to feed Evan a bottle and then we're back out the door.  We got to the dr. and got called back pretty quickly.  Once the nurse left the room and we were waiting for the dr. to come in, Em announces that she has to go to the bathroom.  Seriously?  She just went at home 10 minutes ago.  But with a 3 year old, when they gotta go, there's no holding it.  So I picked Evan up and off we went to the bathroom.  Here I am trying to lift Em up onto the toilet while I'm holding Evan. Finally we make it back to the room and the dr. finally comes in.  She looked at Em's hands first and then started looking at Evan's ears.  Right away she said that his right ear was still infected.  Ugh!  I guess that explains why he cried so much during our pictures.  I was beyond frustrated with his ear still being infected.  We got his 4th prescription for an antibiotic in just 3 months and off we went.  Oh, I forgot to mention that as the dr. was looking at Evan, she mentioned that Emily seemed very happy today.  I think that was a nice way of saying "she's bouncing off the walls."  And to be honest, I didn't even care that she was running all over the room. 

We left the dr's office around 1:00 and Evan had fallen asleep in his carseat.  I decided to go ahead and just drop the prescriptions off at Walgreens since he was asleep.  We got to the pharmacy and I hand over the prescriptions.  I ask them if they could please add flavor to each one.  The guy helping me proceeded to tell me that they couldn't add flavor until I picked the prescriptions up.  I couldn't believe it.  So now when I come to pick them back up, I would have to wait yet again for them to add flavor??  I was so over this day by now and I won't lie, I got a tad frustrated with the guy.  Here I am with 2 kids in the car waiting to drop them off and now I'd have to wait yet again when I pick them up.  I didn't win the argument, so I headed home knowing I'd be waiting later that day. 

We got home around 1:30 and both Em and I were starving.  I fixed lunch and then brought Em upstairs to take a nap.  Evan was passed out in his swing.  I actually thought I might get a nap in too.  What was I thinking?  Emily played her naptime game.  She came out every 20 minutes telling me she had slept, only for me to send her back to her room.  After about an hour and a half I gave up and just had her come out.

Our day did get a little better from there.  Evan had woken up too, so we went outside to play.  Did I mention that the afternoon turned out to be perfect weather?  We played for about an hour before heading back inside.  Shawn was about to be home and I needed to get Em ready for gymnastics.  I never get to take her to gymnastics because she goes at 5:30 on Wednesdays.  Normally I'm not home in time.  But since I took off today, I got to take her.  She did soo well in gymnastics.  I was excited I finally got to see her.  After class, her and I (Shawn and Evan had stayed at home) went to Walgreens to pick the prescriptions up.  Again, I had to tell them I needed flavor added to them and we ended up waiting about 15 min.  I was so ready for this day to be over!  I got home and Shawn told me that Evan had screamed the entire hour and a half that we were gone.  Nice.  Luckily it wasn't too long before the kids were in bed and this day was over! 

Let me just say, I love spending time with my kids and I don't take it for granted, but it was just one of those days where nothing was going right!  I give soo much credit to stay at home mom's!  Especially ones with more than 1 little one.  I don't know how they do it on a daily basis!  I was soo worn out by the end of the day. 

So back to the pictures.  . . It usually takes the photographer around 2 weeks to get our pictures to us, but I got a text from her the next day saying she couldn't wait to see our pictures, so she started editing them that day.  I laughed because it was probably because she was worried she didn't get any decent pictures either.  But later she text me again saying these were our best pics yet (we've used her 6 times before) and that she would have the proofs to me that day.  I was so excited, although I still wasn't getting my hopes up.  I didn't want to be disappointed.  I waited all day and just before I left work she sent them to me.  I was shocked!  She was right.  They turned out awesome!  Let's just say, she worked magic because I don't know how she got so many good shots!  Take a look for youself.   You would never know by looking at these, how that day really was.  :)

Look at how long this boys eyelashes are!  Can you say jealous?

And just because these 2 pictures really did capture what my day was like, I had to post these too.