4 years at 5363 Judge

Eric and I moved into 5363 Judge four years ago today! I remember it being a similar day, cold and dreary but with a little less wind!! SO WINDY TODAY! It has been a good 4 years. I completed my Ironman, we have 2 beautiful children, and Eric is now part owner of The Planning Center. Time literally has flown by. We love our neighborhood and location and don't plan on leaving 5363 Judge anytime soon. The kids and I have been enjoying the indoors today. I snagged a few pictures. Kennon is feeling a little under the weather. Not sure if he is getting more teeth (he has 2 now on the bottom) or if his normal cough is turning back into a cold. No drainage from his ears so far so that is good. He will be 9 months on Friday!! He is getting so big. Eyes are still blue blue and his hair is getting thicker but still light brown, although I think it is getting darker. He is generally doing well sleeping through the night, taking good naps at home during the day. He is a really happy baby when he is well and he has this grin that stretches from ear to ear and is infectious! A couple of the pictures sort of give you the idea that he is not feeling all that well. I did manage to get one smile I think. Maddox is obsessed with socks.....anybody's she can get her hands (or feet :) on. She loves to steal Kennon's right off of his feet and put them on hers. She had 3 socks on one foot this afternoon...one of Kennon's and two of her own, different colors of course, which make it all the more fun. She loves to 'check her toes for fuzzies' as she calls it, pulling her feet right up to her face and spreading her toes apart. We can't make it through a diaper change without that 'job'. She says the funniest things and is soooo analyzing and learning learning learning. Last week when the garbage man came by our house she yelled out 'Mom he's dumping out my poopy'. I had to laugh!! That was EXACTLY what he was doing. Then yesterday she said 'Mommy I make you happy by going pee pee in the potty'. I said 'You sure do Maddox'. Unfortunately she doesn't do that yet!! But, you can see she totally gets the concept. When Kennon is fussing she usually yells from across the room 'It's ok Kennon I'm right here'. Or sometimes it's 'Kennon what is the problem?'. (Hmmmm I wonder where she got that one??? oooops!) So everyday is an interesting day. In fact just today she was saying 'That's so interesting'. I can't remember what she was referring to but I"m sure it was. Most things ARE interesting to a 2 year old (including deciding to give Play Dough a taste). Maddox is dancing in a couple of the pictures. Since it has been so windy we have been doing indoor stuff including listening to kids CDs and building blanket tents! We are having a big party here Friday evening. I am having my co workers to the house for a get together. We have been slowly getting everything ready. Can't do it too early or it will get destroyed again by the Little People! Maddox is looking forward to the company and has been telling everybody about the event. I hope it lives up to her expectations :) Well, going to upload the photos.

Quick Update

So the last entry I posted was all about how healthy we were generally feeling. Well the KARMA Gods must have been reading my post because about 24 hours after I posted it I got the worst stomach bug I have ever had and didn't get rid of it for about 5 days!! Luckily thanks to massive amounts of Lysol and good hand washing neither of the kids, OR ERIC, got it. Thank goodness. We are back to feeling pretty healthy, although Kennon has a cold and Maddox with her normal cough. Kennon did get a tooth last weekend. So I'm not sure if his runny nose is from that, and he is getting another one, or he just has a cold. He is still in great humor though and has been sleeping through the night!! YIPPY. We met with Dr. Anderson last Monday when his cold seemed to be at its worst and luckily his ears looked good. Dr. Anderson said that his continued ear infections ARE NOT probably due to allergies ( which is not what I had expected since we have STILL been having so many issues post the tubes). Research shows that the infections are just due to the upper respiratory infections ( colds). He wants us to use the drops at the first sign of drainage, when and if it occurs again, and to call the new ENT we are signed up with if the drainage doesn't stop after 3 days. He said that maybe the ENT will need to flush out his ears if he gets another infection. But, so far despite his runny nose his ears haven't indicated an infection!! PHEW!!! The pictures I uploaded are from various outings with the kids, all from my Iphone. Last night we were in the nursery at church so I was able to get some cute ones of them in the snack table!! You can see Maddox is keeping her snacks at a FAR distance from Kennon. He is SOOOOO into anything that is hers and anything he can get his hands on. He devours puffs the second you put them down in front of him. He is just like a little vacuum scooping them up and he has finally figured out how to use his thumb and his index finger to grasp them to get them into his mouth more efficiently. Maddox loves to feed him puffs and he knows it too. Anytime she gets up on the bench next to his high chair his little eyes light up in anticipation of her feeding him puffs. She just puts them right into his mouth which cuts out the 'work' he has to do to feed himself. They are developing quite the little relationship. She knows just the kind of silly faces/noises she can make to get him to laugh. She also knows just how close to get her head to his hands to allow him to pull her hair so she can yell out 'Mooooommmm Kennon is pulling my hair'!! She is also very quick to discipline him. He has started gnawing on the table while he is sitting in his high chair, it is just the right height. She, very motherly, will say from her own high chair across the table 'No, Kennon we don't do that!'. It is super cute right now and I have to smile, but something tells me Kennon isn't going to buy it in the future. She is going to be a great big sister. Enjoy the pictures and keep wishing us healthy days!! Poor Eric has really been missing a lot of work lately! We are headed to the Sleep Number store this afternoon. Eric and I are in desperate need of a new mattress. We went yesterday to learn about the beds and Maddox schmoozed all the workers. They loved her!! She kept telling EVERYBODY 'We are going to get burritos'. Next to the Sleep Number store is Chipotle, which is her FAVORITE!! She was so excited and actually did a pretty good job entertaining herself without tearing the Sleep Number store apart. They have these little stations set up around the store with Legos for kids Maddox's size. But, I honestly think she was happier just socializing with all the adults rather than playing with the 'kid toys'. She is NOT SHY! The loved her and the guy we were working with actually said to bring her back again today to help us decide??? Wonder if he'll think that today?? I thought we'd just go and get one....!! HAH!! There are like 10 different kinds and they want to tell you about each of them etc... Which before kids I would have been happy to hear about. But, now with the kiddos running about the store I kinda just want them to give me the Reader's Digest version and give us a bed!! We'll see how today goes. I hear Kennon up in his crib playing! He just woke up from his nap. So nice to have him wake up and just play instead of cry. Since he was an infant he would just cry when he woke up. Lately he is finally starting to wake up just plain happy!! He's gonna turn into a good baby yet!!

Healthy......!!!!

As I write this I can say that both kids are healthy! YIPPY! Eric and I, on the other hand seem to have the Kcare cough?? But, there is no time for parents to be sick so we are both trying to ignore it. Kennon has been so happy since he has been feeling well since about Friday last week. The prednisone certainly did the trick of getting his lungs cleared out and we only had to use the antibiotic drops in his ears for about 7 days and that seemed to take care of the infection....NO SYSTEMIC ANTIBIOTICS THIS GO AROUND!!! We have an appointment for Kennon on Monday for Dr. Anderson to look at his ears and make sure the infection is gone. We are also going to make a 'plan of attack' for what we are going to do in the future if these ears of his keep getting infected. Dr. Anderson if really a wonderful Dr. The kids and I just got home from our monthly playgroup. I am so proud of Maddox. She is such a great kid.....so friendly with the other moms and kids and she is really a good sharer, although needs a little prompting at times. The only time she gave me a fit today was when we went to leave. She wanted to stay and play! We had a great weekend this past weekend. Both Eric and I got our long runs in for the 1/2 marathon training and we got to go to church for the first time without kids. Our Dr. friends were chaperoning the nursery so we thought we'd go ahead and leave BOTH Kennon and Maddox and NOT just Maddox. Tony is doing a series on 'Raising Amazing Kids', so it was nice to be able to pay attention instead of worrying about what object I was going to try to entertain Kennon with in the service. Then Sunday we got up early, packed the kids up and headed down to Muscatine. Our church is opening a new 'branch' in Muscatine and we volunteered in the nursery down there. We met some new people and Maddox got to play in the nursery with a couple of boys her age. Then after church we met Grandpa Jim and Grandma Jean for lunch at Applebees. Both kids did such a good job at the restaurant despite it being nap time. We kept feeding Kennon puffs and Maddox had the grandparents to entertain her. It was great to see them. Then we hurried home for quick naps for both the kids because it was off to a Superbowl Party at the neighbors. Maddox and Kennon were AGAIN so good. They were both happy the entire time and Maddox even busted a moved during the Madonna half time show with the other little girls that were at the party. It was super fun. Eric and I were sad to leave. I got to chat with the moms and Eric finally got to have some 'man' time with the neighbors getting to know them. The Stegemans have this great finished basement with the play area right near the adult area so you can have a nice adult conversation but still have your eye on the little people!! This is the same type of plan for our basement too so Eric and I were nice to see it does work out well. I'm sure you all got the cute picture of Maddox at HyVee on Monday pushing her cart around. I have to say it was definitely one of my favorite 'MOM' moments. I have known about these carts for a while but figured it would not be keen to show up on a busy Saturday morning or when the store was crowded for Maddox to try her hand at 'shopping'. And boy was that a good decision. She was a crazy lady with that cart. She would get so busy running, or looking at people, saying HI to people, looking at stuff on the shelves or just looking down at her feet that she would plow into anything that happened to be in her path. I thought is was really cute and we got a lot of nice comments about how she was helping mom!! She ended up with a LARGE can of black beans, a jar of applesauce, bananas, oranges, deli turkey and deli cheese in her cart. But, let's just say that was all that made it up to the check out!! There were PLENTY of other items that she wanted to put in her cart. Funny how all the yummy sugary cereal is about 3 feet off the ground, perfect for little hands. I loved the experience watching her. She was SO HAPPY!! Kennon liked having his OWN SPACE in my cart so it was good for all. Lately Maddox is very intrigued with the car wash. We have this cool one that puts pink, blue and yellow soap on your car. So ANY TIME ( despite the rainy weather) that we get in the car Maddox yells 'I wanna go to the WASH CAR'. I have corrected her many times that is is 'CAR WASH' but she doesn't seem to get it and really it just puts a smile on my face to hear her say it that way so I'm just letting it be for now. There will be plenty of time in my life to correct her but for now I'm just taking it in. Kennon is figuring out his stance for crawling. He can just start to get his knees under him to get in position. I think it won't be too long. He is such a happy baby when he is happy. Maddox, Kennon and Eric have got a routine going with fun playtime after dinner while I clean up. All's I can hear from the sink is lots of laughter and giggles. Music to my ears!! The kids are at such fun ages. Take care for now and keep wishing us healthy days. I'm headed down for a quick treadmill run while the kids are taking their naps. Both kids asleep at the same time....a mama's dream!!

The Lunar Pull????

I'm sure you are wondering about the title to this post but I have to say I can't figure out any reason for Maddox's behavior in the last 72 hours! She is being such an ANGEL. We haven't seen really any crying, stomping her feet, or tantrums since the weekend. We are most definitely praising the positive behavior!! It's a miracle, or maybe just a high point along the road of the terrible twos but we'll take it. She is SOOOOO pleasant, happy, helping out with Kennon, and extremely delightful. Tonight after dinner Kennon was fussing a little on his activity mat ( he has kind of gotten into a 'I want to be held' mode having been sick since early January). Maddox was kind enough to put down her newly baked brownie to go over to Kennon and say 'It's ok Kennon, I"ll be right back'. I mean how much cuter can you get than that!! In the car on the way home from HyVee tonight she said 'I see a hexagon' as we apparently passed a stop sign in the parking lot. I had to stop and think to myself where the heck she would have seen a hexagon so I asked her 'Where did you see it?' and she waved her little arm 'behind us Mom'. I remembered we had passed a stop sign, but had to stop and think about it and remembered that stop signs are octagons. So I asked her what color the hexagon was and she said 'Red'. So she was surely talking about the stop sign. I didn't have the heart to tell her it was actually an octagon. I was just happy she was analyzing her surroundings and thinking out loud. She says so many things now and just in the last month she is definitely doing more critical thinking. So we don't care if it is the moon or just an 'UP' side to the terrible twos that we have been experiencing for the last MANY months but we will take it. We have been enjoying the extremely warm weather. Yesterday Eric took both kids for a wagon ride. Who would have thought a wagon ride on January 31st. I even took Kennon out for a solo BOB run in SHORTS yesterday too. (well me in shorts, Kennon bundled up in the stroller). We found a couple of pairs of Maddox's sunglasses. She was quick to put the small pair on Kennon. We definitely need to find Kennon some BOY glasses. She was putting her bracelets on him today. But, he was very quick to pull them off!! AND!!! He rolled over tonight, FINALLY. He went from front to back which is the 'correct' way to go first. He is definitely behind on that task as far as the developmental chart is concerned but he is not really going in the correct order with things seeing as how he has been sitting up so well since early December. In fact I think he is very close to crawling. He can almost get his legs up underneath him and then I think once that happens he'll be on his way. He is SO into everything and if whatever he wants happens to be just a little bit away from him he'll lunge for it until he nabs it with his little hands. We had to take him back to Dr. Anderson's on Monday. The inhaler just wasn't helping his cough. Dr. Anderson gave us 5 days of prednisone to help clear the yucky from his bronchioles to actually allow the inhaler to work. We kept him home yesterday from Kindercare but he is doing better so we are all systems go tomorrow (finally!......despite a little pink eye on Maddox's part....but that is minor compared to what we've been dealing with and I started her on the drops already.....so we are sending them both) The prednisone helps his eczema so he has beautiful baby skin right now!! He has been sort of sleeping lately, having a bad coughing stretch that wakes him from about 10pm to 1am but then he seems to fall deeply asleep with no coughs sleeping till 8am this morning. We talked to Dr. Anderson about his ears and he looked at them of course on Monday. He unfortunately has another infection (number 6 total, number 2 post the tubes). But, it seems that we have a good handle on this one with the antibiotic drops. They actually didn't have any drainage that I could visibly see today. Dr. Anderson is going to have us see a different ENT than the one who put the tubes in so we are hoping to get a little better service, and communication to aid in Kennon's not so straight forward case. Dr. Anderson wants to see us back after Kennon gets through this cold stuff to check his ears and ensure that infection is gone. Maybe, we can hope this will be the last infection for a while. I never could get the video uploaded. I'll have to try again when I have some time. Today the day went so fast. I think with Maddox behaving so well we have the opportunity to do so many fun things during the day, instead of spending all my energy and time managing her naughty behavior, before I knew it it was time to get dinner in the oven. I looked around at the house and decided the that gremlins must have multiplied the disaster that was present in the morning because it looked like a tornado had hit the first floor. But, we definitely had a good day topped off with Maddox and I making homemade pizza and brownies for dinner. She is quite the little baker. The disaster will wait another day!