Locomotion advancements

She walks! Watch out world.

She is all about walking now. And each day she improves dramatically.

Thursday


Friday

Moustaches

Grandpa's Moustache (Picnic at the Natural Bridge on the Rogue River)

Marshall's Moustache (Poor Marshall. Mom and I were cracking up and he had no clue what was going on. He looked like a latin dancer. Thank you Oreos.)

Josie's Full on Beard (Ms. Independence likes to use the spoon all by herself. And by "likes" I mean, screeches until you give her the spoon.)

We're Clear!

Last Wednesday we went to the dermatologist and she cleared us! We're all done with this awful business and can get back to normal......of course I am a bit neurotic now and am examing the kids constantly. Every time I ask Marshall to show me something on his skin, he screams, "No! Go Away!"

Anyway, like I said, we were cleared on Wednesday and on the road to Ashland on Thursday. I needed to get out of town for a little bit. So I and everyone else we know can forget that May and most of June ever happened and we can come back to something somewhat normal. The kids are loving the extra time with the grandparents and so am I! Vacation is fabulous!

Hide and Seek!

Marshall's new favorite game is Hide and Seek......except he doesn't stay in one place well anymore. He's always running around before Josie and I can go find him. And when Josie and I hide, he sees us, but pretends he doesn't and then runs to another part of the house to keep the game going.

Here they are hiding together.

Hop Chalk....

"Mom, can we go play hop chalk?"

"1..2..3..4..5..6..7..8..9..10! Now let's go all the way to 100!"

(Momma and Marshall ran out of patience at 50....and I am such a dorky school teacher I wouldn't just write 100 like M wanted me to. He has to get the concept that there are lots of numbers in between 20 (the upper limits of his counting) and 100, gosh darn it! :))

Gratitude Friday

I think that I most need to do Gratitude Fridays on the days when I am feeling the most sorry for myself. (I don't want to talk about it because I think I already put a little too much information out there for the public. Let's just say it's not pleasant and we are going on week five of quarantine......)

Anyway, today I am grateful for

- our house's location: Okay, I know this is like a broken record...so I won't say Edmonds. But the actual location of our house is great. We were able to walk Nalu to his vet appointment today. And while it was a long one, an ice cream for the walk home made it totally doable for a 3.5 year old.

-Pizza Fridays: Today Heather, Eric, Marshall, Josie, Lenora, and I continued the tradition of eating pizza on Fridays. (Using leftover spaghetti sauce from pasta on Tuesday.....it's a fabulous tradition.) I was too tired to make a yeast dough today, so Heather showed me a great milk dough from Williams-Sonoma that was delicious and didn't require rising....which enabled me to watch the America's Next Top Model marathon on Bravo this afternoon in peace.

-my daughter sleeping in my arms: Josie woke up this afternoon about halfway through her nap and just was not pleased about being awake, but yet wasn't willing to go back to bed. So since I was just watching the ANTM marathon anyway, I held her while she sleep. And I can't believe I used to complain about this. I was trying to hold Marshall the way I hold Josie while she sleeps the other day and it totally drove the point home even further that she won't be this little forever. M's big old head took up most of the baby holding space. Sigh.....

-realizing what I am capable of: Occasionally, I realize that I can handle way more than I think I can.....doesn't mean I don't have my moments, but still, this too shall pass.

-cozy beds and jammies- Because right now that's pretty much all I can think about.....

-homecomings: Will and I have a "joke" that I always have to punish him a bit for being away when he comes home. (I put joke in quotes because it's not a joke at all. It's totally true. We always get into some dumb argument within 12 hours of him returning from a trip.) But he's been traveling a bit during the past couple of weeks and I think I might be over that. I miss him, but at least with this job, he's pretty much always home by the weekend (so far :)). I am so happy that he will be coming home tonight. And this weekend we will go on a MUCH NEEDED date night! Yippee! Wine bar in Edmonds!

-the grand scheme of things (and my friend Eric): I am so thankful that Eric and Heather are here through all these shenanigans.....for my sanity. Eric especially has the uncanny knack of knowing just what to say when I am feeling low. There are lots of things that are incredibly worse than this and we will just keep on doing what we need to until it's over. Yes, it's disrupted our life, but in the grand scheme of things, this is nothing. Tonight we even came to the conclusion that I should be glad that it's only sca.....wait, I said I wasn't going to talk about that. (I have always had a hard time keeping my mouth shut.)

Well, that was a pretty difficult Gratitude entry to write. I felt like I was kind of stretching to compose a decent list. But it was a very valuable exercise. Now, I think I am going to put my jammies on and go to bed....at 8:30....because I can. :)

Owls!

Look HOOO's in our backyard all the time. (I am the funniest person I know.)

On a side note, they are really helping us meet all our neighbors! The owls are quite the attraction here at Yost Park.

There are four owls. A momma, a daddy, and two babies. And they are out in the daytime a lot. (Apparently, I have a lot to learn about owls, because I thought they were supposed to be asleep during the day.) We see them all the time. It's so cute. Now whenever we are walking through the park, Josie throws her head back and says, "OWWWWWW......"

Gratitude Friday...on Sunday

Today (as well as two days ago) I am thankful for:

- My extra extra extra clean house. (And that's all I have to say about that)

- My husband who does things that he absolutely hates to do (like fold baby laundry) just to make my life easier. (On a side note, it must be totally genetic, because, if I could fold baby laundry and nothing else, I would be in heaven.)

-My new housemates: I totally know now why people live in communes. It's so nice to have another family to share dinners with and who can take the baby monitor for me when I need to run out really quick to the grocery store. And they like to drink wine at dinner. You like wine? I like wine! Kismet! They have also be super super understanding about all of shenanigans going on in this house right now. (And that's all I have to say about that.)

-My little boy: He is just growing up so much every day...and I just love what he is growing into. He's fascinated by the millions of caterpillars surrounding our house right now and puts at least a couple into his bug box daily. Each one has a name...or at least an identity. Right now they are Squiggles and Squiggles' Momma. His imagination is OUTRAGEOUS! He's going to write wonderful stories to woo the ladies just like his Daddy. :)

-My little girl: She is such a little imp. She is climbing on EVERYTHING now and when she gets there she looks up and giggles like "Look at me! I'm a daredevil!" And she has 7 teeth. There is nothing cuter than an odd number of teeth.

-Edmonds: Of course. But everytime we walk around downtown Will and I remind each other how blessed we really are. Will took Marshall to the Edmonds Theater today (one of the last independent movie theaters on the West Coast) to see "Up." They didn't make it through the whole thing. Apparently there was an angry mob of dogs that made Marshall go beserker. But he really enjoyed the popcorn. :) Josie and I walked home from downtown after the boys when into the movie. I loved it....even the enormous hill at the end. :)

-Clean sheets, clean jammies, and fresh from bath skin...

Oh, I have to stop now because that last one made me realize how delightful it would be to go read a book in bed right now. TTFN! (Marshall and I are reading Winnie-ther-Pooh again.)

Cloth Diaper Giveaway!

You know me! I love a giveaway. And I would love some new pocket cloth diapers. They are a lot easier than using the prefolds and wraps. But I am cheap. (You also knew that.) I am considering making some of my own, but until that happens, I would love to get some for free. Come on! Big Money, big money! No Whammies! Momma needs new lime and mandarin cloth diapers!

Might as well get this over with....

Not blogging tends to perpetuate itself. Once you realize how long it's been, especially if you've had a week like I've had, it becomes more and more daunting to attempt to write. Mostly because I am tired and I know I will end up rambling on and there's a lot of stuff that's happened. But I think it's like a band-aid....I just need to rip it off and get on with the show.

Memorial Weekend was fabulous. We got a lot of stuff done (including cutting down a Cherry tree that was WAY bigger than we thought it would be before we started cutting.....it was very close to the house and I have an irrational fear of mice.) We even had a beautiful picnic on the Stillaguamish (that is DEFINITELY not how you spell that) River. See look how nice it was. So relaxing....like the calm before the storm.




However, on Monday night, the "bug bites" on Marshall's belly got worse. "Ah ha!," we thought. "Now Marshall has the chicken pox too. Shows you how effective that vaccine is. Oh well... it could be worse."

And turns out it really could be.

So when we brought the kids in on Wednesday (I wanted to give it time so some good blisters could form for the scrape test for the pox), it turns out that Josie's test came back negative for chicken pox and all the other scary rash viruses they test for. So we got another "random virus" diagnosis. Then we got home and found out that 4 other children from preschool had a rash too. Theirs seemed a lot less dramatic, but, still, I was not happy. So I went for a second opinion. Thursday's doctor said SCABIES....without a doubt. Actually seemed very annoyed when I even asked whether there was a test to confirm it. (Which there is...but this doctor insisted it wasn't necessary.) To be fair, by Thursday, Josie's was really flaring up and she was so itchy and it really did look like it might be scabies. But Marshall's was fading away.

So Thursday night, we dosed ourselves scabicidal lotion (and as I rubbed scabicide all over my husband, I thought to myself, What has my marriage become?) and washed everything that could be washed in hot water. (Gratitude Friday: My awesome husband took charge and took two HUGE garbage bags of laundry to a place that washed and folded it for me.) SCABIES...let's pause for a moment. HOW GROSS IS THAT? I mean, I can see it with Marshall. I tell him all the time that little boys are gross. :) But my beautiful baby girl? UGH....but at least, it was a problem that could be fixed.

Except that it wasn't. Literally, after all that we did, no scabies could have survived. Yet on Sunday, Marshall's spots were back and out of control and Josie was getting new ones up onto her face. (By this morning, she had a few on her lips.) So Will and I drove ourselves nuts yesterday. No scabies. Fleas? But why don't we have any bites? Mystery bugs from the backyard? Allergy to some mysterious substance in our new home? AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! (BTW- The internet is the WORST ever when you have an unidentifiable rash. Dust mites? Bed bugs? Atopic dermatitis?)

So we went back to our old doctor this morning, who confirmed that she really really didn't think it was scabies. (Gratitude Monday: Now I have a really really clean house......or had, temporarily.) Dermatologist tomorrow morning.

And in the midst of ALL this, Eric, Heather, and Lenora moved in downstairs. And they are being so nice about it, but really, all I can think about is that we could be giving this adorable precious baby these ugly hives. I put a stop to all contact between upstairs and downstairs children today. Since adults do not seem to be affected (knock on wood.....I will totally wake up tomorrow with red spots all over my belly now....), they are the only ones who can have contact.

AHHH! Let's just look at some pictures of how cute my kids are to make it all better.

She totally loves this tractor.

They were giving each other blowfishes through the glass, but I couldn't get the camera fast enough.

Josie's new favorite thing to do.

Wait, I'm sorry. This is her new favorite thing to do.


Deep breath in....deep breath out......this too shall pass......