Climbing

I always joked that I will keep Maleah in her crib until she's 5 years old based on Connor's experience transitioning out of his crib. I am really not looking forward to the toddler bed phase but it might be closer that I'd like. Following her nap this afternoon, Maleah climbed out of her crib (without incident). I'm thinking of leaving the side of her crib down so she can get out freely so it sets up for a smoother transition into the toddler bed.

My baby is growing up, soon we will be away from everything that resembles the baby phase. This breaks my heart a little to see all these phases put behind her, but life moves on. :)

Maleah's speech

Maleah's speech therapist was here this evening and evaluated Maleah's speech by using the Receptive and Expressive One Word. Both scores show Age expressive of 1 yr 7 months. This indicates that receptive and expressive vocabulary is behind by about 8 months.

We all know that she is starting to come alive with her speech, it's just a matter of time before she drives her mother nuts with her jabbering. Some day I'll wonder what the fuss was all about. :) Until then, I'll try not to worry myself too much and enjoy the "silence".

I-80 accident

While the kids were at daycare this morning, I decided to venture to Clarion for some winter bargains and to buy some paint samples for my bedroom walls. When I left home, it was starting to snow but not enough to keep me at home. I usually feel confident driving on winter roads. When I came out of the mall, there were about 2 inches of snow in really less than 1/2 hour. It had traffic creeping in Clarion. The roads seemed to be clearing so I headed home on the interstate. I came upon this mess within minutes of it happening. This was at the Corsica exit. Luckily this was west bound and I was traveling east bound. After seeing a pile up like this, and cars slid off the road trying to avoid hitting each other, it put the fear of god in me, I'll tell you. From the Corsica exit to the Brookville exit, it was a sheet of ice. I was never so glad to be off the interstate safe and sound. I went and picked up the kids and didn't venture out the rest of the day. (photo taken by Randy Bartley)

Trapped

Someday I'm going to look back on this blog and have a laugh at all the really insignificant things in life... just like the spring that broke on my garage door that trapped me inside the house and kept my kids at daycare a couple extra hours today... Hmmm I wish that would happen more often. ;-)

Thanks Mom for coming to our rescue. It was nice having you come up and visit for a few hours with us. :)

Oh mom, by the way... my upset stomach turned out to be a 24 hour bug. It lasted all night long and into the next day. I just felt nauseous off and on all day. Thank God I wasn't as sick as the kids. I hope you didn't get it.

"real" dinosaurs

We bought tickets for Connor to see Walking With Dinosaurs at the Brice Jordan Center in State College on Saturday, March 22. He is going to loose his mind when he sees these dinosaurs walk into the arena! Brian and I will be keeping this a total surprise, he will know nothing about it until he sees them face to face. Oh I can't wait, he is going to be excited beyond belief!

Check out the website www.dinosaurlive.com it's really going to be fascinating!

Ready or Not

MALEAH is ready to potty train. See how I capitalized Maleah?? I'd still be dragging my feet if it wasn't for her initiation.

This morning Maleah came to me with her diaper off saying "I pee". Now when she says that, I have no idea if she did or if she has too. So I took her to the bathroom and she peed for me. For the heck of it, I asked her if she wanted to wear her brother's underwear rather than a diaper and she wanted to. I told her that she had to be very careful not to pee in them or her brother would be upset.

2 hours went by and she had not peed in them. After about 6 times of asking her if she needed to pee and each time I got a response of no, I decided she better at least try. She still wouldn't pee for me but she did poop. :) We were leaving for Dubois and I didn't want her to wear underwear so I put a diaper on her fully expecting her to pee in them.

At Dubois, we bought 2 pkgs of princess underwear for her so she is all set to hit this head on. When she got home, I immediately took her diaper off to find that she didn't pee while we were away for that 3 hours. She sat on the toilet and peed for me once again.

She has done exceptionally well so far. She knows not to pee on her princesses or they will be sad. She has been playing with her new underwear for the last hour. The last I saw, she took them to her bed because they wanted to sleep.

Wish us luck, I hope this is a smooth transition. I have a few weeks to work with her before going to Cancun, then it's Arleen's turn.

Wardrobe

Maleah has a new wardrobe thanks to Aunt "teen teen". JCPenny has awesome winter clearance sales going on this week. Justine paid just $1.17 for each item at the register. Holy cow!! We are heading to Dubois for new phones today, so I'm going to hit their JCPenny's to stock up on 3T clothing. I love when bargains like this are found. This is one of her new outfits that she has on.

Pukies

I've come to the conclusion, that it's easier to be at work taking care of teeth than it is being home taking care of (sick) kids... I thought we were safe, Maleah showed no signs of getting Connor's 3 day stomach bug until 10:30 last night. What a mess! I ended up sleeping beside her crib and offered her the puke basin every 20 minutes for close to 3 hours... I felt so helpless. Today she mostly laid on the couch but she is keeping down her water and some toast that I gave her. I wish she would eat a little bit more, but as long as she is taking water I won't worry too much. I'm being very careful to not contract this, so we will see.

At the vet

I think my experience dropping off Diesel at the vet was more traumatic than his actual neuter procedure. I fully expected to take my dog into the receptionist, drop him off and leave. Instead, they took me back to a room where they started taking his medical history and asked various questions. Wait a minute here, I saw they had my name down as Sheena Smith, the last I knew I wasn't Sheena...

So I said, hey if this is going to take much longer, I have to go out to my vehicle and get my daughter. When I came back in, the correct record had been retrieved and they could see we were up to date on all his vaccines.

Now the pain in the rear starts. She started into saying while Diesel is here, these are the other services we could offer him... Ear chip implantation, nail trimming, teeth cleaning etc... No, I'm here to get him neutered, I stated. Ok, may we do blood work on him before he goes under anesthesia to be sure he doesn't have an underlying medical condition? No, I just want my dog neutered... Would you like us to contact you if during the procedure, additional treatment needs done? Well, like what might be needed during surgery? If it's a life or death situation, yeah save him, don't let him die. 20 minutes after stepping foot into the building, I was finally leaving. I thought it was going to be a quick in, quick out...

They called a while ago and said Diesel did wonderful during his surgery and that we could pick him up tonight at 5:40. The only thing painful tonight was the bill. I should have asked ahead of time for the cost. I expected $75 or $100, but when it came in at $234.00 I was floored! We may go back to Drummond's, I'll drive the inconvenient half hour.

My morning

I was really looking forward to this morning knowing that I had a few hours to myself to catch up on some house chores, light errands, and relaxation while the kids were in daycare. What I wasn't planning on was what Diesel had in store for me when I got home...

First I have to say, thank you Donna for the yummy chocolate gobs, we enjoyed the 3 that Connor, Maleah and I had this morning. Diesel ate the rest of them while I was dropping the kids off at daycare. Damn Dog!!

I was gone for about an hour so I'm sure he pulled the tray off the counter as soon as I left. I called the vet right away knowing he just consumed a large amount of chocolate and they advised me what to do. I had to make him puke up that chocolate! I didn't know pouring 1 1/2 TBSP of salt down a dogs throat would make him vomit, but after about 3 minutes, all that nasty chocolate (or cocoa) was out of his system. Not only was he vomiting outside, he had the runs too. He was in sad shape for awhile. There were a few times where he gave me the pathetic look of "what the hell did you just do to me." But he is doing fine now. I don't think he learned his lesson though, I caught him out in the kitchen a while ago sniffing the air where the gobs were.

If he didn't have a bad enough day today, it gets worse tomorrow. He gets neutered. ;-)

Off work for awhile

Today was my last day of work until February 18th. That's 5 weeks!!! My boss is off to enjoy his winter break in Cancun. Brian and I will be joining him in Cancun the week of Feb. 9-16th. I'm really going to enjoy my time off. I've decided to keep the kids in daycare 2 hours each morning to keep them in routine and that will give me a mental break. I have painting to do in the house, so that's what I'll be focusing on.

"Trees"

We found out tonight while eating Chinese food that Maleah likes "trees". Trees in Maleah's language = broccoli. Brian and I were amazed while we watched her eat these.

Of course, Connor had to show us that he liked "trees" too. :-)

Early B-Day Present

We have been wanting to get Connor his own 4 wheeler to ride around our yard so we thought we would get him one for his birthday this year. This 4 wheeler came a little early with the help from "Uncle Dave". Brian's boss gave us his kids outgrown 4 wheeler. How nice is that!!! Connor has been having a blast riding it.

We wanted to wait until the end of February before giving it to him, but he found it out in his Dad's garage so the suprise was blown. I think it would have killed Brian to have to wait until his birthday to give this to him.

Connor is having a great time on it. I'm glad we can turn down the speed because that thing can fly!!

Hair

While catching up with Sheri on the phone, Connor and Maleah played quietly for a while in their bedrooms, or at least I thought... Never trust kids when they are quiet or this could happen. I asked Connor why in the world would he do this (used dads clippers) to his hair and he replied "my hair was getting too long." Jerri left the top a little longer to "hide" his bare spot. KIDS!!!