In case you forgot what we looked like...

It's been way too long since I've posted any pictures of the kids.  So I thought I'd take care of it right away this morning before it once again got lost in my list of things to do either here at homem or at the office.  So much has been happening around here, but I've been finding it hard to piece together a coherent sentence, much less a blog post, given our current state of sleeping affairs with the Little Lady.  She and I have had a talk....and if she doesn't shape up, she's going to have to look for some other sleeping (or should we say screaming) quarters for the night time hours.  Her recent shenanigans (for the past month) have made me realize why it was that I never pulled all-nighters in college.  I'm just plain BAD at not getting any rest.  Lauren, my sweet daughter, couldn't possibly care less.

Not to belabor the point, but I'll give you the example of last night.  (And I should warn you that it was a relatively......oh how loosely I'm about to use this word.....good one by Lauren's standards.)  She was sleepy and ready for bed at 8:00.  She was actually asleep and in her bed at 10:10.  At 11:11 she was calling for me.  I let her go because she wasn't crying, just saying "Mama" over and over again about 300 times.  At that point she got ticked, and I had to go in lest she wake her brother.  I was with her until 1:30 when she finally went back to sleep.  She was awake again at 2:30 and I was with her until 4:00.  My alarm rings at 5:00, and this morning I promptly turned it right back off and reset it for 5:45 or else I thought I might cry.  I'm not looking for pity...only to record this state of my life when I start to miss the "baby days" again and get the crazy idea that we should add a third of these little munchkins to the Dugan family.  HA!

Anyway...on to the pictures.

Remember Joshua?  Well, he seems to be growing up so fast we can't even believe it.  He's beginning to read, and I just can't tell you how proud I am of him.  He can sound out a lot of words (short ones and he's really only learned to sound out words with short vowel sounds in them, but at just barely 4 it's impressive).  I had the chance to visit school with him on Friday for our turn at Parent Visitation Days and it was awesome to watch the kids learn.  I can totally see the rush that teachers get when the kids finally "get it".  His writing is really taking off, too.  He sat this weekend and wrote all of his friends' names on their Valentine's Day cards and then signed his name to them as well.  He spends most of his days lately coloring and drawing, especially anything with Superheros.

 Here's a peek at Lauren last night at supper.  She had napped through her lunch and then was so famished at dinner that she literally devoured a tray full of pasta and sauce, bread, and then put the polishing touches on my chicken pot pie.  She then ate an ice cream sandwich....seriously.  And then polished off her dinner with a bowl full of strawberries.  Geesh.  No wonder we're just about into 18 month clothes!

Much to my dismay, Lauren has recently learned to scale the chairs to our pub table.  It's not a good thing since it's quite a long way down to a very hard floor if she should slip or tumble.  Her reputation of being the family monkey absolutely continues.

A quieter moment captured.  They're few and far between with her.



 Joshua in his favorite spot on the chair and a half, with Lauren trying to cramp his style and annoy the daylights out of him.  Bless his heart, he's gotten pretty patient with her.  She's relentless.

And for Lauren's final trick, I thought I would show evidence that she has also learned how to climb up AND DOWN the stairs.  Here she is at the top half of our two level staircase.  She has yet to tumble down them but we're always right with her when she's exploring.  I guess it's a good thing that she's learning, especially since there's no physical way to mount a gate on the steps at the new house.

And, to end the most disjointed post ever, I thought I should update you on Joshua's allergy situation.  He went last week to the lab for his annual blood testing and we are awaiting the results.  He was such a brave boy...not so much as a flinch or a tear when they did the test.  They're testing this year for all of the nuts (I was amazed at how many different tests there were) so that we have an idea if his allergy is really limited to peanuts or not.  If it is, it might widen the variety of foods he can eat and narrow down the things I need to be paranoid about.  His appointment at the allergist isn't until next week, so I don't know if we'll get a call when the results are in or whether they'll wait to talk to us about it when we see the doctor.  My prayer is that they ALL come back negative.  (Wouldn't that be something?)

I'll see if I can keep up the blog posts this week.  Hope you have a great one!!

Joshua-isms

Please forgive the lack of posts over the past few weeks.  I don't know what my excuse is other than that I just haven't gotten to "blog" on the to-do list in recent days.  And I'll ask forgiveness up front for not having any new photos to post here today either.  There are many on the camera, but being that I didn't even get to write a blog entry in a while, I think it's a safe assumption that digging for the USB cord and waiting the sweet forever to download photos wasn't happening lately either.

But, don't worry.  I have good "Joshua-ism" material for today that I think may be worth the wait.  There are 3 different occasions lately that made me laugh at our little buddy and the way his little mind works.  When the third one happened yesterday, a lightbulb went off in my mind that these are totally blog worthy, not because anyone really cares, but mostly because I don't want to forget them.

#1
Right after Christmas, K4 at Meadowbrook must have really been working on their Christmas carols.  Each day it seemed that Joshua was coming home singing a different carol.  We're really noticing that he's a singer...seems to like to sing whenever he's coloring, taking a bath, doing anything that he thinks you're not paying attention to him.  His ability to carry a tune has increased somewhat, although we're still not ready to audition for Carnegie Hall just yet.  But I digress.  The kids were in the tub when Joshua asked if he could sing "O Come All Ye Faithful" for me.  He did great...until he got to the line about "born the King of Angels".  His variation......"born the King of England".  HA!

#2
The first week back to school after New Years, Joshua had a substitute teacher.  She was there all week.  On Wednesday I asked Joshua what the substitute's name was.  To which he replied that he had no idea.  Later, while we were getting the kids tubbed, he suddlenly proclaimed that he knew what his teacher's name was.  "I think it's......Mrs. Sippy."  Get it?  Her name was actually Mrs. Benfer, in case you're wondering.

#3
And finally, yesterday on the way to church, Joshua asked if Bear could come along with us.  When we parked the car he asked if Bear could come into church with us.  I told him that I thought it would be best if Bear waited for us in the car so we didn't forget him.  I suggested that perhaps Bear might enjoy the peace and quiet of the car.  Joshua replied, "I think that will work well.  He fell asleep on the ride here anyway."

What a kid.  I can't tell you how much I'm loving his 4 year old little mind.  It's going a million miles an hour most of the time.  But just to ask him what he's thinking is the joy of my day.

Parenting Lesson 2011.1

I had a few good ideas about blog posts for today.  One of them centered around my thoughts about my goals for 2011.  I'm not saying it's a resolution, but just something I'd like to work toward.  But...as life would have it, that wasn't in the cards.

I even thought about just recounting a few things from the weekend.  Like how we un-decked our halls so quickly after having gotten them decked in the first place, or how I enjoyed cleaning the new house over the weekend (sound like a nutcase, don't I?).  But, that wasn't meant to be either.

Instead, I will tell you about the parenting lesson I learned this morning.  Isn't it amazing how our kids are constantly teaching US something when we're trying so desperately to teach THEM how to be good little people and grow up to be responsible, productive members of society?  Well this morning was one of those moments.

Joshua has been so excited to go back to school after his Christmas vacation....er, I mean break.  You see, he was quick to point out to my mom on the phone the other night that it's not vacation when you stay home.  "Vacation is when you go to the beach or something," said our wise four year old.  But he had been talking about how he was anxious to see his friends, and he was actually counting down to the return of school this morning much the same as he had about Santa's arrival on Christmas Eve.  That should be odd except I was the exact same way when I was younger and before the dread of things like Physics and Calculus ruined my positive opinions about school.  I went in to his room to wake him up at 0-dark-thirty this morning, and he started to cough.  That coughing soon turned into gagging, and a little bit of throwing up.  I figured it was a yucky gunk from the cold thing that we've all been fighting with all of our might.  He ate some breakfast and wasn't quite his normal chipper self, but he was still talking about school and I kept battling with myself.  Do I send him?  I figured that if I didn't, it would have just been a fluke thing and he'd be home when he really wanted to be in school....and isn't that what I pay for each month?  And what are the chances that he's going to get to school and end up barfing all over himself and the poor, unsuspecting little child next to him....or worse, the whole POD of unsuspecting adorable little ones?  Back and forth I went about the whole thing, but in the end, when his jelly toast and milk stayed down for the 20 minutes after he finished eating it, I figured it was all systems go.  But as soon as they pulled out of the driveway, I got a feeling that this wasn't going to end well.

Evidently it wasn't the getting-to-school-and-getting-sick thing that did us in.  It was that the chances of him barfing in Daddy's truck were VERY good.  Soon after their departure to school, I saw the truck turn back into the house.  Then came Daddy's mad dash for a roll of paper towels.  And when I got to the truck to view the carnage, I have to tell you, it wasn't good.

Joshua spent his day at home today resting and watching probably a billion and one superhero cartoons on TV.  Doesn't sound like a bad day if the spewing wasn't an issue.

And so parenting lesson 2011.1 is recorded.  Follow your gut when it comes to puking.

The end.

And to help remove the throwing up images from your mind, here are a few pictures from the weekend.  You're welcome.

Joshua in one of his favorite positions, lounging on the chair-and-a-half and watching a Superhero show.  Lauren is rooting through his toys without her pants.  Again.  I don't understand it.

And here's Joshua's OTHER favorite spot in the house, at the island playing with things that Lauren can't reach.  I have to give him points for creative problem solving.

And one to giggle about.  This was Lauren's hair-do when she woke up on Saturday morning.  I have to admit that I left it that way for a while because I thought she was adorable.   It was fitting of her normally wild attitude.