Thursday, July 23, 2009

Picture time!

Here are pictures of our trip to Ocean City, MD in June.




Here are pics of Alyson's 2nd Birthday Party, 6/21/09 -- Dora the Explorer theme!

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

2am rambles...

Ugh.... here it is, 2am and I'm STILL awake. I'm so extremely worn out by this sinus cold I have, but I can't seem to fall asleep. My eyes hurt, my ears ache, my throat is scratchy... and it sucks. No one should get sick in the summertime!!

Anyway, since I'm wide awake, I figured I might as well attempt to stay updated with my blog. I really need to update this with pictures from Aly's birthday, vacation, etc... I started a post with pictures last week, but when I went to preview my post, the pics were all screwed up, so I just saved it as a draft and haven't gotten back to it.

Anyway, here are the updates from the past week or so...

Starting with yesterday... we had a little scare where our boxer Cody was concerned. He and Lucy were napping in the living room while I talked on the phone with my mom... then I see Cody get up and start walking around, only he couldn't keep his balance for anything. I immediately called Russ to come home, luckily he was just next door in his office. I started saying Cody's name and he was just ZONED and wouldn't respond to me, and his pupils were all dilated. He'd try to lift his back legs and it seemed like he was sorta stomping around at one point, only he didn't have the strength in his legs to keep from wobbling around. I held onto him and he was trembling, poor thing. He got himself up on the couch and stayed there for a few minutes, while I called the vet and explained what was going on. They said we could bring him right in... thank God we only live a few minutes from the vet. So Russ opened the door to the basement where we keep the dogs' leashes, and Cody LEAPT off the couch, like nothing was even wrong!! The whole episode only lasted 5 minutes or so!

Since Alyson was napping, Russ took Cody by himself to the vet. He said Cody was still kinda weak and wouldn't jump out of the Navigator like he usually does... Russ had to lift him down (and he's about 90 pounds!) The vet said that more than likely it was a mild seizure. They checked his temp (their temp will increase during a seizure) and ended up drawing a CBC to check for any abnormalities where his labs are concerned. They said we'd find out the results by Wednesday, but the vet called us this afternoon and said everything was fine. He said just to keep an eye on Cody and that if he has another episode like that within the next 2-6 weeks, they can put him on medicine if need be. So we'll see. I'm just praying this was just a one-time thing and he won't have that happen again! He's back to his same ornery energetic self today, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed :-)

(cough cough sniffle sniffle, sneeze.... this cold sucks.....)

Anyway, so that was the excitement of the past few days. In other news... I'm trying to potty train Alyson. That's going really well. *rolls eyes*(Sense the SERIOUS SARCASM.) I just don't get it. Alyson knows when she goes to the bathroom and will occasionally look at me and go "poo" or "pee pee!" She knows how to put her potty seat on our toilet, she knows to take her pants/diaper off, and she even knows to get toilet paper... but she won't do a darn thing once she gets on the toilet. I guess she's *almost* ready but not quite there yet. I just don't want to MAKE her sit on the toilet and then have her not want to go on it at all because she associates it with me forcing her to do it, ya know?! *sigh* And what sucks is that now she's in the "I want to take my diaper off ALL THE TIME" stage. I brought out her big girl undies and she was all excited so I figured she'd want to keep them on, but no. They came right off too, within about 2 minutes. So that's our adventures in potty training for now... fun fun.

Well, I really need to try and get some sleep now... Alyson doesn't get the fact that mommy isn't feeling well and would love to sleep in for a change. She'll be up at her usual 8am or so, I'm sure... so that gives me less than six hours of sleep.

Nighty night!

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Updates, good and not-so-good

Wow, it's been awhile since I've posted... as usual. A lot's been going on, so I'll try to give the short version of updates.

Most recently...
4th of July was awesome... we spent the day out on the boat on the good ol' Ohio River. The weather was beautiful, blue skies and sunny. We went out to dinner with friends, then back down to the boat to watch the fireworks on the river... good times! Aly went to my Grandma's with my mom and dad to watch the fireworks. My Gram lives close to where the fireworks are let off, so everyone usually goes over there and watches them from the backyard. I wasn't sure how Aly would do with being REALLY close to the fireworks, so I figured I'd wait til next year to take her with us. Come to find out, she LOVED the fireworks and just stared in awe at the sky, going "Woah! Wow wow!" when the big ones let off. Too cute.

What else to talk about that's been going on recently... Oh. We just got back from vacation last week... we spent some time in Ocean City, MD with friends of ours and their 3 kids. We stayed right on the boardwalk which was awesome! Lots of nightlife. Not that we could really enjoy it with 4 kids ages 4 and under, but it was still nice to sit out on the balcony late at night and enjoy some 'adult beverages.' haha But yeah, like I said-- 4 kids ages 4, going on 3, 2, and 18 months. Mass chaos all around! haha It was definitely a good time though. The beach was beautiful, and the weather cooperated the whole time we were there. Which was only 4 days, but long enough to get somewhat relaxed. (Before making the 8-hr trip home...fun fun.) I miss it! Russ, Aly and I are heading to the Outer Banks in September, so now I have THAT beach to look forward to :-)

As for Alyson, she's doing great. We had a Dora the Explorer birthday party for her on the 21st of June. She had a BLAST! We had a pinata in the shape of a #2, and all the kids loved it. The weather cooperated for that too, which was great because there were 30-some people there and the house would have been kinda crowded if it decided to rain!

Aly's 2-yr checkup at the pediatrician went well... she's 36 inches tall and weighs 34 pounds... higher than 100th percentile! My baby is off the charts. No wonder everyone always asks me if she's 3. She's gonna be a tall one. I figure I'm 5'5 and Russ is 6 ft, so she'll probably end up somewhere in between. She's just growing like a weed, and is into something new everyday. SO curious!!! Her latest antic was to flood our upstairs bathroom. Yeah... that was fun. You see, she always goes up the stairs and plays in her room, that's just an everyday thing. So i didn't think anything of it when she went up there the other day. Well, she had gone into the bathroom and decided to stick a bunch of baby wipes into the toilet and keep flushing and flushing and flushing. That toilet is pretty quiet so I didn't hear all this going on, I thought she was just playing in her room. But when the water started spilling onto the floor, I heard THAT. I thought she had turned the shower on, but no. I got to the top of the steps and saw water all over the floor about to head onto the hallway carpet!!! I had to turn the water off to the toilet and figure out what the heck she did. She was just laughing and laughing at the water falling onto the floor. Mommy, on the other hand, was NOT laughing. Ugh... eventually I got the situation under control, but not until after the extra water decided to drip down to the main floor by way of the counter over the stove, and then down to the basement. It basically made a path all the way down the house. NOT fun. I'm hoping we don't have anything like that happen ever again. I hope she got the toilet-plugging out of her system.

And we're thinking of having ANOTHER child?? haha

Yes, you read that right... we're officially "trying." Well, not TRYING trying, but we have the "if it happens it happens" attitude for now. We're not trying to prevent anything from happening. I was totally excited at the end of May to find out I was pregnant, only to have my excitement cut short by a miscarriage a week later. It was pretty crushing, because it is totally amazing how quickly you can come to embrace and love a child that you've never even met yet (and who is virtually the size of a pencil tip.) At first, I was surprised (because we weren't really expecting it and were actively house hunting at the time.) Then in the next breath I was TOTALLY excited, and Russ was too. To top it off, 2 days later my cousin/best friend found out SHE was pregnant, so we'd literally have been due days apart.

I knew to be cautious in the first weeks, but I still found myself planning for the future and how we'd redecorate our spare bedroom to make it the baby's room... it's just sad. But I know everything happens for a reason, even if we can't figure out what that reason is right now. The good thing about this whole situation, though, is that it really made us get our priorities in order and think about the future more. It REALLY brought my husband onboard where having another child is concerned. It was pretty much the furthest thing from his mind even a month ago, now he is all for trying. For now, we're putting our house-hunting on hold to focus on other things, like paying off bills!! My husband is in the process of putting up a huge building/garage on 10 acres he bought for his business, so that's taking up time and money. He's just running out of room where his garage is now, and his business is expanding, so that takes top priority over us buying a new house right now.

So now we're taking things day by day, and are excited to bring a new baby into this world when God decides to bless us with another one :-) Fingers crossed!

Well, I know there's still a lot to update on, but I need to get some things done around the house before Aly wakes up from her nap. Hope everyone (who still reads this or occasionally checks up on me) is doing well. Take care :-)