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!!