Splash Pad

Today Emma finally woke up without a fever and it stayed away the whole day! To celebrate we headed out to the mall play land and much to Emma's excitement they had turned on the jets in the splash pad next to the play land. Now Emma has a long history with the splash pad and it's not a history of fun. For the last 3 summers Emma has always been excited by the water but as soon as she got near it, she would freak out, refuse to get wet, and generally end up walking around watching all the other kids play in the water. So today when she asked to go play in the water I immediately said sure because I knew what would happen. Much to my surprise, she got up to the water and started putting her feet in. After about 10 minutes she was dripping wet and I was wishing I had a towel. Knowing Emma's history I also assumed Josh would want nothing to do with the water but I keep forgetting how different he is from her. Within 5 minutes he was right there getting wet with his big sister, he didn't love being splashed by the other kids but he was fascinated with the jets.







It was fun watching them play and I learned three things today. Number 1, never assume anything about your kids. Number 2, keep a towel in the car and Number 3, the splash pad will be seeing us a lot this summer.

Just Another Manic Monday

Today is the second Monday in a row that Emma has been sick. She has an ear infection and is on antibiotics but for some reason her fever is just not going away. This is not just a little fever either, I'm talking 103-105 fever. Those are numbers that just scare me. We have already switched medications once, been to the Urgent Care, called the nurse on call, and gotten a personal call from her doctor this morning. Turns out that this is not uncommon and some fevers are just persistent. What? Am I the only one that thinks this is not normal? Poor Emma is miserable and I am trying my best to understand that her severe mood swings are all because she feels icky. I know that I have a very small patience level and I find myself saying a prayer every five minutes to please not snap at her to quit whining. I think God and I need to have another heart to heart because I feel like a failure right now. My mom suggested we make cookies this afternoon to take her mind off everything so we are going to try that. Hopefully chocolate chip will provide the strength I desperately need right now!

First steps

Josh finally took his first steps yesterday without holding on to a chair, couch, or wall! This could be a new record for our children as Emma was over 16 months when she finally stated walking. I don't think I am going to hold my breath because I remember writing about how he was scooting on his hands and knees at 8 months and it would be any day before he crawled, well 2 months later he finally got around to it. Guess we will see what our big bubba does!

Flashback Friday

I know this was just 14 months ago but I can't believe how little Josh was, I thought for sure he would be our peanut baby. Turned out to be more like our walnut baby!

Tough day

Yesterday was a really hard day for the kids and I. Emma has been sick again and has been running a fever of 103 plus since Saturday. I took her in to see the doctor on Monday and the poor girl has another ear infection. Yesterday she was just in a defiant mood, I said one thing and she did the opposite. She yelled, threw things, cried, talked back, refused to eat, the list goes on and on. Unfortunately I forgot to remember that she is only 3 and feels like junk right now. I know I was awful to her and as I put her to bed last night I couldn't help but be disappointed with myself. I promised her that I would try harder today if she would too. After talking to both my mom and Eric last night and crying a lot, I knew I needed to change my approach with her. Emma is definitely my child and has the strongest will, we tend to butt heads and often I feel we are in a battle of wills. I am proud to say that today was a much better day and I am so glad that my daughter has a forgiving heart. I was greeted with a big hug and an I love you when I got home from work and that was really all I needed to know, to know that we would be okay.

Who goes there

Last week we went to Red Robin for dinner and as we headed to the car we got stopped by an old friend we hadn't seen in sometime. After talking to him and his family for a bit we turned to get in the car and saw this little guy sitting directly in front of us.

I was so excited I had to take a picture! I have never seen an owl so close before nor have I ever seen one not in a cage at the zoo. Emma was pretty excited about it too and everyday she asks me if I remember when we saw the owl at Red Robin.

Ice cream

On Thursday Eric got home from work early and we headed out with the kids to play and run a few errands. Our last errand and Emma's favorite was a trip to Water N Ice. We had promised her a scoop of ice cream if she could be helpful with Josh and have good behavior while we were out. Of course she followed through and selected her favorite scoop, Cotton Candy. Talk about disgusting! This stuff looks unnatural, its pink, purple, and blue and tastes nothing like cotton candy. Emma loves it though and by the time she finished up she looked more like The Joker then Emma.

Day 1

I remember my mom saying to me when I was little that time goes faster as you get older and I remember thinking she was crazy. Now that I am older, I definitely understand! Two weeks have gone by since Easter already and I haven't posted once. Work is very busy for me right now and when the kids go to bed, I am still working on evaluations and reports for my students. I will admit it's not as bad as when I taught 4th grade and had 32 students in my room but for 2 months at the end of the school year it does get crazy. So my goal for this week is to blog everyday and get caught up with all the stuff I have been wanting to write about. Maybe if I put it out there, I will really follow through!

Easter

I cannot believe that Easter has come and gone so soon. Feels like we just had Ash Wednesday and now here we are at the middle of April. I am very proud to say that I only forgot about meat on one Friday and to my defense we were traveling back from California that day. It also happened to be the feast of St. Joseph and the bishops had given a dispensation which I didn't know at the time but it does make me feel better. I also am proud to say that the kids were both meatless every Friday during Lent too (except the one), it was actually much easier than I thought because they both love anything with cheese so I saved mac and cheese, grilled cheese and quesadillas for Fridays.

On Easter morning we headed to our soon to be church location. Right before Emma was born, we moved to a new house about twenty minutes from St. Timothy. The drive was no big deal until she came along and we found our new parish which is about 10 minutes from our house and with a newborn, 10 minutes is a big deal. Right now our church meets in a K-8 school cafeteria while our permanent location (about 5 minutes from the house) is being built. Obviously because we have no building yet, mass was outside. The weather was sunny and beautiful. Emma loved sitting on her lawn chair and playing with the gravel for most of mass and Josh did remarkably well in his stroller and only had a meltdown at the end of mass.

After naps, both families came over and we ate outside, had an egg hunt, and just enjoyed the company. It was a wonderful, relaxing day.

Flashback Friday

One of my high school girlfriends does a weekly post on her blog called Flashback Friday. I love seeing pictures of her girls when they were little because this friend and I lost touch for some time and I never got to see her daughters as babies. Now another mutual friend of ours has started doing the same thing and I love seeing pictures of her son when he was little. Plus, who doesn't love looking at baby pictures of any kid, they are just too adorable!

So I have caved and decided I will steal the idea too! I am trying to come up with a different title for my posts to try and be a little less of a copy cat. Guess we will see next week if I come up with something because right now, I have nothing.

This is one of my favorite photos of Emma. We were in the bathroom together as I was getting ready for the day when the phone rang. I stepped out of the bathroom and into my room to answer. It was my mom so I decided to sit down and talk for a minute, I knew that Emma was within seeing distance and that there was nothing she could harm herself with. When I got off the phone, this is what I walked in to see.



The little turkey had gotten my make-up bag and decided to doll herself up! I just had to laugh and ran to get my camera. She was so proud of her make-up and was happy to let me take pictures. I was really impressed at how well an almost 22 month old could put lipstick and mascara on and knew at that moment that I had a girly girl on my hands. Emma now has her own make-up bag where she keeps her lip gloss, powder, nail polish, and body sparkles to put on when I put my make-up on in the morning. Can't wait for this one to hit her teenage years!