The comings and goings of the fab four

To my dear sweet friend Angie on the birth of her son Quinn on Thursday! Angie was my best friend in the 1st & 2nd grade when we lived in Atlanta. We were “reunited”, thanks to the Internet in 2004. Come to find out that we were both librarians (or librarians in progress), and there were a few other funny little coincidences. So anyway, congrats to Angie & Chris!!!

Today Rebecca, Sydney and Isaac came over for a little afternoon relief – the girls were off dressing up in Lydia’s room, and the boys were in the “playroom” around the train table. Miles was grunting and kind of growling, but we didn’t realize that he was growling AT Isaac who has newfound mobility, and can go wherever he wants (i.e. get too close to Miles’ goods). So a few minutes later we hear a clonk, and Isaac breaks out into hysterical cries. We go in, and Isaac has a nice little compact cut/bruise/goose egg on his forehead, and Miles has a train toy in his hand. A few minutes later you can see 3 additional swollen goose eggs on Isaac’s head where the other 3 wheels had hit is poor little sweet baby head. I was a little mortified. Miles is very territorial and is not afraid to assert himself. I am pretty sure that his lack of speech is leading to frustration and aggression in the form of hitting. Aaagh! I refuse to raise a bully, but don’t quite know how to deal with an aggressive 1 1/2 year old!

Please keep my friend Amy in your prayers – she went into preterm labor and is at Duke. She is a little less than 24 weeks pregnant with their second baby boy. I’m thinking of you and praying for you Amy! Also keep her little man Andrew in your prayers, that he understands why mommy is living at the hospital for a little while!

I asked Lydia what she wanted for lunch – she had been at camp all morning, so we were going to eat lunch and go to bed. She says she doesn’t want lunch, she just wants to go to sleep. I said, okay, no food? You don’t want anything? She said, no, I just want to go to sleep. She goes in her room, I turn on the noise machine and music, and she crawls in bed and GOES TO SLEEP. What in the world!? Then I layed Miles down, and HE went to sleep, without a peep or a scream, or anything. Incredible. Children are amazing. Now I am going to catch up on my housefrau duties.

We have had one horrific morning, and an only slightly improved afternoon. I think it must have been the grandparents hangover coupled with a few other things – it all intersected today into a big gobbledygook of a day. Baaagh! Tomorrow will be better. So I’d like to take this opportunity to focus on the cute and fantastic things my darling children are doing, as well as some random tidbits from our downtime.

I just gave Miles a bowl of macaroni and cheese. He blew on it, ate a piece and then said, “mmmmm!”.

Miles has an amazing sense of balance – he can stand up on my back and walk a few steps up my back – he learned this from watching Lydia, but it really shows how good his balance is.

My children are in love with the movie, “Cars”. I bought them each some matchbox cars from the movie – Lydia got Sally & Lightning, and Miles got Doc. They LOVE these cars and have been carrying them around everywhere they go.

I have slowly started feeding Miles eggs, and he has been fine with them. He loves them and ate about 3 eggs for breakfast this morning. I know that I made two whole eggs & three whites, and he ate more than I did. He wanted more after he finished.

Miles has cut at least A molar, more are on their way. He still only has 4 top teeth and 2 on the bottom.

Miles got another ear infection last week. I took him in on Thursday and they gave him zithromax. Consequently, I had started giving him soy milk again about a week before this. So the entire time he didn’t drink any soy milk, he got ZERO ear infections, and as soon as I started giving it to him again, he got another infection. So in case you’re wondering, I DO think there’s a correlation. So he’s drinking hemp milk now. Yes, I tried rice & goat’s milk, but he doesn’t like them, and I’m scared to try the nut milks until we have allergy testing done. I can’t remember if I mentioned it after the ENT appointment, but she gave me orders for the IGC allergy testing, and I want the IGG, which is more thorough, so I’m going to wait until his 18 month appointment to get orders from the crunch doctor and then get them both tested at the same time. And then I’ll probably give them both copious amounts of candy. But it will be okay.

I joined a new gym today, and I am excited because it is the same gym that Rebecca goes to, so the kids can all play together when we are working out!

I also emailed a realtor today to get things rolling on the move. I KNOW we still have 8 months, but if we want to do new construction, we need to decide probably within the next 2-3 months, so I wanted to find someone, so when I got up in July, or we go up in Sept we’ll be established.

My family was in town this past weekend and we had SUCH a fantastic time. We went to the beach on Friday, and then hung out all day Saturday – that type of thing. I went out with my sister & some of her friends on Saturday night and had a great time. Mom and Dad took Lydia to the pool on Sunday… just a chill but fun filled weekend. Robert went to Myrtle Beach and played golf with about 20 guys – college friends and other people. He had a great time too.

Miles is still not saying much, but I think everyone this weekend agrees he’s right on the cusp. He is so chitty chatty all the time.

I know there’s nothing much about Lydia, she is really full of backtalk right now, but is sweet sometimes too. It’s about 50/50. I think this is the toughest age yet for us. I don’t know, though, it’s easy to black out the colicky newborn that didn’t sleep phase. This too shall pass.

I had to reformat my computer yesterday (twice, because the second thing after the antivirus that I installed was a virus from a fake Mozilla site), so I have no pictures on here and can’t download them until I download picasa, so it may be a few days… but we’ll be back to normal soon!

Out with the Eric & Kerri

Pam, Caroline & Alex come to play

Dressing up

However, our computer is still in the hospital, so we’re gimping along (or I am, I should say…). I am hoping those lunatics will have it ready by tomorrow, and that it actually works. I have tons and tons of pictures to upload from the last week.

The Macy family visited from Texas last week. They came in and ate lunch with us on Monday on their way to Crescent Beach for a few days, then returned to our house to spend Thurs-Sun. We had a FANTASTIC time, and it really, REALLY reminded me how much I miss everyone in Texas. We were so amazingly blessed to have met all of the awesome people that we did. So anyway, it’s great that most people have blogs, and send pictures, but it doesn’t beat catching up in person. I feel updated on everything going on now. So that’s great. Nathan and Miles had a great time. I think Nathan might have picked up a few of Miles’ bad habits, though – climbing, balancing in unsafe places, etc, etc, etc… We were hoping that Miles would pick up on some of Nathan’s tricks, such as using words and an abundance of signs (he even signs “please”!!!), but it doesn’t look like it quite caught on.

I think Robert had a very happy Father’s Day – Kerri & Eric made us a delish lunch of steaks, potatoes and asparagus, and brownies – and I bought Robert 4 “Rocky” movies, which he was very excited about, I think he swapped between those and golf all afternoon/evening.

Monday was Robert’s 31st birthday, so we made a (delicious chocolate chip) cheesecake (thankyouverymuch) and spent the day trying to get back into the swing of things. It really felt like a vacation while the Macy’s were here. We haven’t known what was going on with our friends, so we haven’t been doing much this week – we got some piddly little errands run – like the safety switch part for the Explorer that will keep it from spontaneously blowing up, as well as a recalled part on my Honda, so that the seatbelt will work. Great news! We have gotten to play with the Linvilles twice, and Pam, Alex and Caroline came over yesterday morning. Tomorrow night my family comes in, we are so excited! Robert is going on a boys golf weekend in Myrtle Beach with some of his SAM friends, and he is super excited about that. Rightfully so. It’s exciting that we’re starting to get to do fun things again as individuals. We know that it will be much easier to get away once we move back to NC, too. I think that we will feel much more normal when we can actually get away once or twice a year by ourselves – we’ll probably look back and wonder how in the world we survived with barely any down time. It will feel like a sweet reward!

Okay , pictures will hopefully return tomorrow…

However, our computer is still in the hospital, so we’re gimping along (or I am, I should say…). I am hoping those lunatics will have it ready by tomorrow, and that it actually works. I have tons and tons of pictures to upload from the last week.

The Macy family visited from Texas last week. They came in and ate lunch with us on Monday on their way to Crescent Beach for a few days, then returned to our house to spend Thurs-Sun. We had a FANTASTIC time, and it really, REALLY reminded me how much I miss everyone in Texas. We were so amazingly blessed to have met all of the awesome people that we did. So anyway, it’s great that most people have blogs, and send pictures, but it doesn’t beat catching up in person. I feel updated on everything going on now. So that’s great. Nathan and Miles had a great time. I think Nathan might have picked up a few of Miles’ bad habits, though – climbing, balancing in unsafe places, etc, etc, etc… We were hoping that Miles would pick up on some of Nathan’s tricks, such as using words and an abundance of signs (he even signs “please”!!!), but it doesn’t look like it quite caught on.

I think Robert had a very happy Father’s Day – Kerri & Eric made us a delish lunch of steaks, potatoes and asparagus, and brownies – and I bought Robert 4 “Rocky” movies, which he was very excited about, I think he swapped between those and golf all afternoon/evening.

Monday was Robert’s 31st birthday, so we made a (delicious chocolate chip) cheesecake (thankyouverymuch) and spent the day trying to get back into the swing of things. It really felt like a vacation while the Macy’s were here. We haven’t known what was going on with our friends, so we haven’t been doing much this week – we got some piddly little errands run – like the safety switch part for the Explorer that will keep it from spontaneously blowing up, as well as a recalled part on my Honda, so that the seatbelt will work. Great news! We have gotten to play with the Linvilles twice, and Pam, Alex and Caroline came over yesterday morning. Tomorrow night my family comes in, we are so excited! Robert is going on a boys golf weekend in Myrtle Beach with some of his SAM friends, and he is super excited about that. Rightfully so. It’s exciting that we’re starting to get to do fun things again as individuals. We know that it will be much easier to get away once we move back to NC, too. I think that we will feel much more normal when we can actually get away once or twice a year by ourselves – we’ll probably look back and wonder how in the world we survived with barely any down time. It will feel like a sweet reward!

Okay , pictures will hopefully return tomorrow…

I’ll just post pictures:

Beach trip toay