Week In Review

Now that it is summer, it seems like we are always busy busy busy. We try to spend as much time as possible outside. I am already dreading winter and those long awful evenings being stuck inside. Pax's t-ball got cancelled again Monday due to wet fields, he has yet to have a practice!! Poor kid keeps asking to play baseball too. I went ahead and signed him up for gymnastics for Monday nights also. He will have gymnastics from 5-5:30 then t-ball from 6-6:45. Yes I realize that's a lot for a 2 1/2 year old for one night, but that kid has so much energy that he can handle it. His gymnastics class is all boys and it's the Just 3's class (even though Pax is still 2) which means that I don't need to be in the class with him anymore!!! Last week was his first week and he did so good without me in there with him. I swear kids are always worse for their parents than for other people. When he was in Just 2's, I spent most the class chasing him and telling him to listen, this past week he did everything Miss Jamie asked and sat nicely and waited his turn!! Punk

This week was also my first week in my new position at work, Youth and Family Coordinator. I am so excited about this new venture and can't wait to bring some fresh ideas and programs to our Y. Not to brag or anything but we have an awesome facility!! I am excited to get an active older adult (that's Y speak for senior citizens) group together and do fun stuff with them like games in the lobby, day trips and eventually weekend trips. We have some pretty fun older members, they may be old but they are younger at heart and more fit than a lot of middle aged people I know!! Another thing I will be focusing on is establishing a teen leadership program and more teen opportunities at the Y. I am excited to work with this age group as well, we are going to plan some fun things for these kids to do and hopefully keep them out of trouble :) I will also be in charge of birthday parties and our preschool program that we have. Phew, it will be a lot of change for me and I am sure I will make mistakes along the way, but I am ready!! Everyone at work is really excited for me and made me feel very welcome at my first staff meeting on Friday. I got pretty lost cause they kept throwing out all these numbers and terms that I didn't understand but I will learn fast I hope. If not, I will just sit in the meetings every week with a dumb grin on my face and yell out things like "I love lamp!!" (it's from Anchorman for those of you who didn't get that at all).

On Friday, the kids and I went to the Relay for Life here in town to show support for Josh's Mom who is an 8 year survivor of breast cancer!! It was very special to be there for her and to see all these cancer survivors. It was SO HOT outside, but there isn't anywhere else we would have rather been, then right there with her. We watched her as she walked the survivor lap, then we got to get on the track and walk with her for the team lap. I am not sure why I decided to do almost all the pics in black and white, but I like it that way. The theme for the relay was hawaiin so Deb's team was called the Heavenly Hawaiins, hence the angel wings.

Survivor lap.

These are the people who are the longest cancer survivors, how cute is the old lady in the middle?

They passed the banner down the line, this the 5-9 year survivors.

This is their team lap. We got to walk with them.

At 10 pm they put glow sticks in all the bags that lined the whole track. They were dedicated to the survivors and the people who passed away from cancer. We didn't stay for that, but I am sure it would have been awesome to see. This is Deb's bag.

Sunday Funday

After all the drama at the beginning of the weekend, we managed to end the weekend on a good note. Harper slept pretty well all night, and only needed one breathing treatment really early this morning. She has been fever free since yesterday afternoon (Saturday) and was all smiles when she woke up today, jabberin away as I changed her diaper and fed her. The breathing treatments seem to be working and her cough sounds a million times better!!






Here comes Buddy...

Here lick my hand then I will stick it in my mouth, my Mom totally loves this (yuck yuck yuck)!!

She loves him though and squeals whenever he comes around.

I was up all night with an awful migraine, my whole head was pounding and every noise and light made me want to throw up. I finally fell asleep sometime after 3 am only to be up at 4:30 to give Harper her treatment. Needless to say I was exhausted this morning and the headache wasn't AS bad but still not pleasant. Josh really wanted to take Pax to Wichita to do something fun so I sucked it up and we all headed out to the big city :) We ate lunch at Cheddar's.........um yummo!!! Then we went to the bowling alley and played a couple games. This was Pax's first time bowling and he loved it, however he is still grasping the concept of waiting your turn and didn't understand why he couldn't bowl whenever he wanted to.........sorry buddy Mommy and Daddy wanna have some fun too. I ended up beating Josh both games. HE will say he let me win but I know better, he was totally bringin his A game today and failed miserably :) Then we played some arcade games, again I totally kicked Josh's butt in skee-ball. Poor Pax had to just stand there and watch us while we played heated game after heated game (can you picture it) BUT he did get a ton of tickets out of it and got to get himself an airplane (a tiny little cheap thing that ACTUALLY cost us about 10 bucks in game tokens!!!). Harper did great, she just hung out in her stroller and watched us and then eventually fell asleep. I am so glad to see her almost back to her normal self.

Josh showed him how to do it the first few times, then he DID NOT want our help!!

Happy girl just sitting and watching us.

Doin it on his own.

Not even kidding, it took about 5 minutes for that stupid ball to get all the way down the lane!

Please notice the score, I won both games!! Not to gloat or anything but....ok totally gloating!! And I must say, Pax did pretty good holding his own for being his first time, not that the bumpers had ANYTHING to do with that, right?

It was a fun way to end a weekend that started out pretty scary. I am glad it wasn't a total bust and Pax was able to have some fun after all. He still asked for Auntie Sarah when he woke up this morning :( We will have to make another trip there soon, but this time I will make sure the kids are 100% healthy and there is no rain in the forecast!!!

Our ruined weekend...

Yesterday I packed the kiddos up and headed to KC to stay with my sister and go to a baby shower today for a good college friend of mine. Well that was the plan at least, but I should know by now that NOTHING goes as planned when you have kids AND live in Kansas. Warning: this is a pretty lengthy post, can't say I didn't warn ya :)

Harper has had a cough for a few days now and yesterday (Friday) it did start to sound pretty croupy (for those who don't know what that means it sounds more like a hoarse barking than a cough). She didn't have any other symptoms so I didn't think too much of it and went ahead and went to KC. Well once we got there she had gotten worse and was now wheezing. After googling croup, my sister and Mom and I decided she was not bad enough to need medical attention. She was eating fine, acting fine, laughing, playing, etc. She slept pretty good that night, coughed a lot but stayed asleep. She started crying at 6 am so I went to get her and she was burning up!!! Her wheezing was a lot worse as was her cough. I decided to try to feed her....bad idea!!! The formula only made her cough worse and she started gasping for air and couldn't get a good breath in. I ran upstairs and woke up my sister and we both decided she needed to see a doctor ASAP!! I threw some clothes on while Sarah googled the closest hospital then I ended up having to take her car and cell phone cause I couldn't find my stupid car keys and my phone was about to die (go figure right?) I went to Childrens Mercy first only to see a sign outside that said no emergency care.....SERIOUSLY!!! So I turned around and headed back up the street to Menorah hospital. They were so great and got us right in. She was still wheezing pretty bad and coughing but she was also smiling away at all the nurses who came in to help her. Her fever was at 102.3 and they could tell she was pretty sick. They went ahead and gave her a breathing treatment which consisted of me holding an oxygen mask in front of her face so she could breathe it in, a steroid shot in her leg for her lungs, and tylenol (in her bottom) to help with the fever. She also had to have a tube put down her nose for drainage and to check for RSV, THEN a chest x-ray (which ended up being clear). Poor baby girl was so exhausted too and would just fall asleep in my arms when someone else would come in to poke or prod her. Then she would start crying these big ol' tears that just broke my heart. There is nothing worse than seeing your child sick and upset, makes me tear up just thinking about it again. After 2 hours they discharged us, there is not a whole lot you can do for croup, breathing treatments, cool mist vaporizers and tylenol is about it. I decided we should probably go ahead and go back to El Dorado, Josh hated that we were all the way in KC and he couldn't be there with his little girl. Soooo.....we're going to head back to El Dorado right? WRONG! Mother nature decided to dump gallons of rain on KC for the next few hours. So we hang out at Sarah and Derek's and wait for it to clear up, all the while I am stressed that I am going to have to drive in bad weather again, that Harper is going to wheeze/cough and cry the whole way home and Pax would cry too cause we had to leave and he didn't get to swim. We left after lunch and contrary to my fears I didn't drive in rain that long, and the kids slept almost the whole way home. I feel so awful that I missed my friends shower (Amy if you're reading this I hope it was great and I am sad I didn't make it, I really wanted to see you and your baby bump) but if felt so good to get home plus we have a neublizer here so I have been able to give her a couple breathing treatments and that is helping a lot. She has still been pretty fussy and I can tell she still doesn't feel good, but her breathing is sounding better so that makes me feel A LOT better!! I am hoping the night goes well and we all get some sleep. I am so exhausted I can barely keep my eyes open to type this. So needless to say, our weekend of swimming, possibly the zoo, a baby shower and spending time with my family turned into a trip to the ER and lots of rain...............such is life.

Harper 6 months

Harper is now 6 months, that's half a year of her life over and half a year of her life left before she is 1!!!!!!!! It's unreal, it's going to go so fast and I don't want it to. I want time to slow down and her to stay my baby forever. But she won't, before I know it she is going to be a teenager, rolling her eyes at me because I am SOOO uncool, telling me to leave her alone and slamming doors in my face. So I guess I should enjoy this time while I can, when she looks at me and grins so big like I am totally the COOLEST person in the world (I know I'm not, but she doesn't know that!!) The next few months are going to be full of lots of firsts, crawling, teeth, standing, walking......aaaaahhh what happened to my little tiny baby?!?!? This month there were some firsts also. Eating baby food everyday, sitting up, shorter naps (yeah I'm not diggin this one), sleeping longer stretches at night (TOTALLY diggin this one) AND her first time in a pool (she did great, loved it, think she is going to be a little fishy like her brother)!! She is still such an easy goin little gal. She loves being outside, I put her in her stroller and we sit on the driveway FOREVER and watch Pax ride bikes. It's a great way to pass an evening when it's just the kiddos and I.

What Harper is doing at 6 months of age:

1. Sitting up unassisted for long stretches of time....then she gets distracted and reaches for a toy and BOOM down she goes

2. Eats babyfood 3 times a day:
Breakfast=rice cereal mixed with pear juice (helps constipation) also has some fruit usually bananas or applesauce
Lunch= a vegetable, loves squash and sweet potatoes
Dinner= vegetable and a fruit
In between all that she is eating 4 oz of formula about every 3 hours except in the evenings and at night she goes longer. She still gets up around 4 am for a feeding but has also skipped that feeding a few times and went all the way to 6 am. She goes back to bed after eating and sleeps until 7:00-7:30. The doctor says it's totally normal for her to get up once a night to eat until she is 9 months. Honestly I still don't mind that much cause she goes right back down and if she doesn't we just put her in her crib and she talks and plays until she finally puts herself back to sleep. Don't get me wrong, I will love it when she sleeps ALL night but she is a growin girl and I guess she just still needs that bottle.

3. She pretty much cat naps all day but she does have a pretty nice late afternoon/early evening nap everyday. She goes to bed between 8 and 8:30 each night and is pretty grumpy if it's any later than that.

4. She is only on formula now, I am done nursing(yeah!!!!!) It took a little over a month to wean her off and she did just fine. I thought I would miss it a little bit but honestly I don't. It was great for the 6 months I did it, but it is so liberating to not have my entire day revolve around nursing and pumping!!! I am especially enjoying the extra hour of sleep every morning since I don't have to get up and nurse then pump before I start getting ready for work. A friend of mine wants me to start running with her in the morning but I told her I am going to enjoy this sleeping thing for a while then I would do it (MAYBE Brandi, don't get too excited I am still scared to run with a pro like you).

5. She has turned into a crazy position sleeper. She refuses to sleep on her back now and sleeps on her tummy and side and ALL OVER HER BED!! She is in a new position/spot everytime I check on her. She is just like her brother.

6. She is giving kisses now, if you kiss her on her cheek she turns her mouth to you and grabs your face and gives you a full on kiss, slobber and all!!! Nice :)

Oh and a big ol' first is that she got her first dog....actually it's the first dog for our entire family. We have had Buddy for almost a week and he is already testing our patience and sometimes I feel like I have 3 kids. But he is also only a year old so still somewhat a puppy and honestly is a good dog for the most part. Not so much the other day since he got out of his kennel while we were at work and got into trash and had it strewn all over our house (including dirty diapers). He also ate a pan of homeade bread I had on the stove, got into his dog treats and ate that entire bag, pooped twice in kitchen, peed twice in living room, slept in both Pax's bed and our bed (the pillows were all messed up that's how we knew) got on the furniture (a big no-no) and who else knows what he did while we were gone but he obviously had quite the hayday.. He is so lucky Josh came home first and cleaned it up cause this lady here would have had a FREAK OUT if I came home to that. I have scrubbed my carpet and febreezed like crazy and have pretty much decided Harper may never crawl or walk since I might not ever allow her on the contaminated carpet (yes I know that's dramatic but GROSS!!) He has been very mellow all night, I think he feels bad for what he did and probably also has tummy ache after all the stuff he ate!!! Stupid dog, but I do love him.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that she is teething so she drools and chews on her hands constantly!!