Cherry Creek

The kids and I are taking it easy today. I usually spend all day on Fridays doing chores if we are at home. But today I decided both the kids and I needed a fun day together. Noelle helped me bake some banana bread for a friend this morning and then we did have to run to Target real quick. When we got home we went for a walk/bike ride to the trail right behind our apartment. Part of Cherry Creek runs along it and I felt it was warm enough to let the kids go down by it and play around. They had sooo much fun!! Noelle thought it was great fun to play in the mud and sling it into the water. Both of their shoes came away covered in mud! I can't wait until the water gets warmer so they can wade in it and splash around. We had a wonderful morning together and hopefully we will have a great afternoon too!

She is such a tom-boy.

He is all about sticks, the bigger the better!

Happy 2nd Birthday Noelle!!

Today is Noelle's 2nd birthday! We had a small party for her on Sunday. Her theme was Dora The Explorer, her favorite cartoon. She got a new baby stroller, a Belle doll, and lots of clothes. We are very thankful for all the clothes and can't wait to see her in them. Thank you to everyone who helped us celebrate. We gave her the presents from us tonight, a dress and Leap Frog Fridge Phonics, and a card she recieved in the mail from Grandma Sandi.

This is my favorite picture, she looks so grown up!

What a Thursday!

We had a very busy, and not at all what was planned, Thursday. Noelle had her 2 year well check scheduled for 8:30am. I ended up taking Adam in at the same time to be seen because his skin is still very dry, it has been peeling and flaking since about Christmas. The appointments went well. Our big concerns with Noelle are her clumsiness and how she doesn't sleep. The Dr. wants us to try emptying her room of all toys, books, anything she can play with and put a gate in the doorway and then ignore her. We have avoided this in the past since the kids share a room. So for right now Adam is napping in our room and starting in our room for bed, then Justin moves him to his own bed when he is ready for bed. I figured Noelle would sleep on the floor every time but she has actually fallen asleep in her bed all 3 times so far. I will say that it was after 9pm when she finally gave up and went to sleep last night (she goes down at 7:30). Also she is a climber so I started with a little wooden gate, it wasn't tall enough. I switched to a taller gate, well it happens to have a perfect foothold for climbing on both sides. So what I ended up with was stacking the two, looks very silly but serves the purpose.


The doctor thinks Adam's skin dryness is very weird given the steps we have been taking to help it. He gets lotioned twice a day with Eucerine, he is using Dove liquid soap in the shower, we are running a humidifier in the bedroom, he takes an omega 3 supplement, gets plenty of B vitamins, and drinks as much as we can get him to (which is still only about 20 ounces a day, he is NOT a drinker). She is not really concerned just thinks it is weird and unnessesary for him to be sooo dry that he is covered in white flakes and is peeling around his neck and underarms (which is how we feel too). We are trying hydrocortisone on the peeling and red spots and it seems to be working. Most likely I will be taking him to be re-tested on his allergies though in case his is having trouble with something in that area.

The bigger Adam news is that he ended up in the ER yesterday as well. He got a scratch on his arm that is only about 1 to 1-1/2 inches long, not deep and barely bled. He was so concerned about it bleeding though that he pretty much passed out and had a little convulsion from the anxiety of it. It only lasted about 5 seconds total and was just weird. At first I thought he was just being a silly boy and throwing himself off the toilet lid, everyone knows how boys can be! But his eyes were dilated, his lips white and he was nauseous. I called the nurse and they said if I really thought he did pass out then I had to take him in. So we went to Parker Adventist, which has a Children's Hospital in it, instead of the zoo as planned. He is fine and the kids got to watch The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and eat PBJ at the hospital. Now we just hope it doesn't happen again. I get light headed and dizzy very easy and Justin has fainted several times over the years. Oh the wonderful things we wish we didn't pass down to our children!!

The kids have still been playing very well together this week. Not surprisingly, considering the number of doctors they have seen recently, their favorite toy this week has been the doctor kit. Here are just a couple cute pics of them playing this morning!

Lots of exciting news

Adam has wanted Batman pj's ALL winter, well technically since the end of last winter when he outgrew his old hand-me-down pair. I went ahead and got him a pair today and he was SOO excited when they were waiting on his bedroom floor for him after bath. It feels good to make someone that happy, definitely worth the $10.

Now that that's done onto the more exciting news that Adam is officially reading. We started working on it at home a month or so ago and he has really caught on quickly. He does really well at "Hop On Pop" and also read a phonics book called "Clifford Can" tonight. The "k" sound is one of the sounds he is working on in speech therapy right now so he also got a lot of that practice in since he is supposed to be working on using it appropriately in sentences instead of in single words now. He is so proud of himself when he sounds out a word and gets what it is really supposed to be on his own. We think he is going to be a reader just like his mommy and daddy are.

So I complain a LOT about how much Adam and Noelle fight like typical siblings, or worse. I have been really excited this last week or so that they are starting to do more playing together instead fighting. It seems that Adam is always asking Noelle if she wants to play this or that with him, usually it is sword fighting. Yesterday they played Hide and Seek for AN HOUR AND 15 MINS. With no fighting at all, and Noelle actually got how to play even. She would come stand by me when it was her turn to count and repeat the numbers 1-10 after me then say "here I come". It was so precious to see. I also helped her find some more challenging spots to hide so that it was still fun for Adam. It is actually amazing how many great hiding places there are in a little apartment (their tiny size probally helps that).

My last bit of exciting news is that we put in an offer for a house Friday night. We gave them 2 weeks to counter, accept, or decline so wish us luck! It is actually a duplex (the offer is for only one side of it) and located about a mile or less south of where we are now, still off Jordan Road. It is a 3 bedroom, 1 1/2 bath, has some hardwood floors and a 2 car attached garage. It does have a perfect sized backyard, enough for the kids to play in but no so much that there would be a ton of upkeep. We hope to have the offer accepted and close on 2/24/09 since we have to be out of our apartment on the 28th. Please wish us luck and keep us in your thoughts and prayers that everything goes smoothly!!

Update on Noelle

She went to the dentist this morning and he pulled the tooth. Justin said he actually seemed put out that the hospital didn't recommend getting it taken care of immediately on Saturday. I'm just happy they pulled it. Of course she will have no tooth there until she is like 7 or 8 maybe. The dentist also thinks the other front tooth might be damaged at the root so we are to watch it very carefully for it to change color or for an abscess to develop on the gum. She is on a soft food diet for about a week, also can not suck on a straw or sippy cup. She finally ate tonight about 7pm, which she had not done since breakfast on Saturday morning. She wanted water at bed so I gave her a few syringes of it and then told her if she wanted more she had to learn to use an open cup. About a half hour or more later she did drink 2-3 ounces of water from an open cup for Justin, YAY! So she is doing well and it could have been way worse. (I keep trying not to think about all the toothless pics she will have in the coming years. If she ends up losing the other front tooth I would definitely be talking to the dentist about some dentures, ugh.)

I couldn't get a real good pic of the tooth, but you can see that the part below the reddish section was the visible tooth. Can you believe how much tooth was above it?! I think Justin said the dentist told him it wasn't even actually loose!

She was being a stinker about letting me take her picture.

Noelle's ER visit

Noelle had her first ER visit today. She fell down and hit a front tooth on the corner of a leg on the kitchen table. I will add that the 1 tooth is the only thing that hit, she has no other marks on her face. Justin was home alone with the kids and called 911 immediately because it started gushing blood. The paramedics came and told him to go ahead and take her to Children's Hospital @ Parker Adventist which is right down the street from us. Since it was not life threatening we avoided an ambulance bill by taking her in by car instead of ambulance. The ER checked out her gums and the bone above her top teeth and pretty much told Justin to take her to the dentist on Monday. Since they did not have a dentist on staff they consulted a dentist at the main Children's Hospital who asked questions to the doctor at Parker. So she has not actually seen a dentist yet. I am a little torqued about that. I went ahead and put a call into our dentist tonight and they have yet to return the call, also really annoying. She is holding up well considering how much pain she is in. She normally drinks from a straw cup or sippy but can't now because of the pressure it puts on the tooth. I have been giving her Pedialyte using a medicine syringe, which she likes because she LOVES medicine so she thinks she is getting a lot of medicine! She also can not eat any solid food and doesn't really want to try eating any liquid like foods yet. I feel so sorry for her, but she has been such a trooper! We have known for a while that she was going to be our ER kid, she is a walking disaster!!

Nice pretty teeth before she fell.

Not so pretty anymore.
And kinda gross actually!

(Please excuse the blood around her mouth, there was no way I was going near her with a washcloth and accidentally bumping her tooth.)

Just a few pics

Busy Holiday

It feels as if we fell off the face of the Earth these last couple of weeks. We have been so busy between the holidays, family in town, and looking at houses. We had a wonderful Christmas and really enjoyed our day with Justin and I's families. I took the kids out for a visit with Grandma Sandi the following day and had a great time. The kids received everything they wanted for Christmas and have loved playing with all their gifts. Noelle got a baby care center, babies, tea set, dollhouse, and a doctors kit, among other things. Adam got Go, Diego, Go for the Wii, a huge Nerf dart shooter, remote controlled truck, Mosquito, race car track, and a Leapster, plus a few more things. We all love the Wii, which was our big family gift instead of smaller gifts for everyone. (The kids only got their Santa gift and stockings from us.) Thank you to everyone for all the wonderful gifts!!

We have been out on 4 occasions in the last week to look at townhouses and duplexes in the Englewood, Parker, and Aurora area. We have found 2 duplexes that we like and hope to move on them in the next week. They are both in Aurora at about E-470 and Smoky Hill Road. I worked in the area back before we had Adam and loved it, it would also keep us in the Cherry Creek School district. Please wish us luck in our search! We gave the apartment complex our 60 day notice so we really do need to find something soon.

Justin and I have both been off work since Christmas eve and it has been really nice, but I think we are all ready to get back into our regular routines of work and school. We have finally reached that point of getting on each others nerves from being together all the time. I work up North tomorrow but don't actually got back to work until Tuesday, Justin and Adam head back to work/school on Monday.

The kids have each had some weird health stuff going on. About a week ago Adam's skin started peeling around his neck and underarms (as if he had been sunburned, which he has NEVER been). Very odd. They told us to Aquaphor the area and lotion him real good, but that we would need to bring him in if it was still doing it on Friday. Fortunately it stopped after we did the Aquaphor at night and Eucerine morning and night every day. When Noelle got up Friday morning she had a rash covering her entire chest, back, and neck. It seemed odd, but minor so I didn't really pay any attention to it. When Justin checked on her at nap time she had undressed herself, as she usually does, and he noticed that it was way worse, more hive like and inflamed. I was just going to give her some Benadryl and send her back to bed, but since it was Friday I figured I better call the doctor just in case so we didn't end up in the ER or urgent care Saturday. Well, they always want to see a rash in person of course. They had an open appointment in 45 minutes so we got her dressed and I took her in. They did a strep test, which came out negative but has a 5% chance of being wrong. The doctor thinks she has something called Pityriasis Rosea. Sounds more intimidating than it is. Doctors don't know exactly what causes it but they think it's viral and you can't do anything about it. It will last about 3-4 weeks or more, but is NOT contagious. Fortunately it doesn't seem to be itchy for her so it doesn't bother her any. I switched her back to Aveeno lotion and have been applying it more than usual with the hope that it won't get itchy. Poor kid.

I do have some pictures but will have to wait to post them. Justin got a new computer and has the Internet hooked up to it so I don't have Internet on the computer my pics are on right now. I will try to switch some pics over in the next few days to post.