Tommy's new bed!

It's taking us a while to finish up Tommy's room, but I finally bought his comforter today, so I decided to take pictures. Of course, no room is ever "finished" so this is a picture of Tommy's bed.

Well, I thought I had the cutest kids....

So, when I looked at everyone's blogs, I kept thinking that "man, my kids are cuter than yours!" But, as I scanned through baby pictures of Tommy, I realized that even the cutest of kids can take some REALLY bad photos!

Sad News

On Sunday, we learned that Ella Mae and Manuel won't be joining us for Christmas. Manuel is in the hospital with some sleep-related issues and won't be strong enough to make the trip up here. We love them very much, and we will miss them this Christmas!

Our SUPER busy Saturday!

Danny and I decided that Tommy needed a room makeover because he wasn't sleeping in his room! We chose a new color and decided to take down his toddler bed and buy him a big boy bed. We bought the bed at Ikea on Friday night, and prepped the room so I could paint Saturday morning. I started painting Saturday and discovered that the blue that was already on his walls bled through the light brown that I was painting! We also had to paint over the inside walls around the window. Who paints that? Apparently the previous owner did, so we had to take down the blinds and paint all of that section too, unless we wanted a brown room with a blue window area! So, already the job was getting harder. Danny was so wonderful and decided to clean up the kitchen while I painted. After he did the dishes, he went to run the disposal but the disposal just hummed and didn't run! After a couple of seconds the humming stopped and we started smelling a faint burning smell. Danny opened up the cabinet under the sink and the disposal was smoking a little! Danny took Anna to Home Depot and they bought a new disposal ($80! Yikes!) and Danny spent the next hour installing it. After that was all said and done, it was around 4:30. I had finished Tommy's room, which was a complete miracle, and it was time to go to the Ward Christmas Party. We would have skipped it, except we were playing in the "Nauvoo Band" and Danny was directing it! The party was really good, except I didn't get to play much because I was chasing Tommy all over the building! Poor Anna didn't get to do much either because I was busy chasing Tommy and Danny was leading the band. We were so exhausted when we got home, but the house was a disaster! We spent about an hour cleaning the house, and another hour moving Tommy's furniture into his room and setting up his new bed. It was a long, and fruitful day, but hopefully we don't have another one like this for a long time!

Snow!

So, my kids officially do not like snow! Tommy didn't go outside today until I went to pick up Anna and he cried the entire time! Anna couldn't wait to get into the snow when she got home from school, but she was outside for a total of 3 minutes until she came in and professed, "I don't want it to ever snow again! It's too cold!"

Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!

Wow! Snow in November! I LOVE days like this because they don't happen very often! We had a ton of rain last night and were disapointed to wake up to a wet day, instead of a winter wonderland of ice and snow like they promised last night on the news! But, the snow finally came around 11am, and hopefully we'll get more! This picture was taken at noon, and I'll post more when we get more accumulation.

Some Pictures From the Parade

Anna's class sitting in the median watching the parade and chanting, "USA! USA! USA!"
The front of the parade with the first graders leading it off.

The cool biker guys.

Anna posing for me, with her friend Jose Antonio in the background.

Patriotic Parade

On Friday, November 10, Anna's school had a Patriotic Parade, and it was really fun! They had all the parents, grandparents or any relative who are firemen, policemen, paramedics, or armed forces come march in the parade in full uniform. It was neat to see the pride in the kids' faces as they marched with them! They had a motorcycle brigade, 3 police cars, a firetruck, a float with war vets, several cars with various school officials, 3 motorcycle cops, and all the children in the school marched in between. All the kids wore red, white, and blue and had made flags or banners to wave. The Kindergardeners got to watch all of the parade from the street, and joined in at the end. Papaw's name was also put on the Wall of Rememberance with other members of the armed forces that have passed. We had a lot of fun and we look forward to the parade next year!

Tommy the chef

Here's Tommy's Halloween costume. I decided to make him a chef, or a little baker as Anna calls him, so I could incorporate his beloved spoon into his costume. This is about the best picture I could get of him that night! He was a little hyped up on candy, as you can see in his hand, and the excitement of Halloween in general made it almost impossible for him to stand still. This was taken on our front porch where he was entranced with our super-cool, fiberoptic cat that would light up and move (thanks mom!).

Anna's Halloween Costume

This year I decided to buy Anna's costume instead of make it. So, we talked about what she wanted to be for Halloween, and she said she wanted to be Cinderella, then changed her mind, and wanted to be Aurora, and changed her mind AGAIN, and ended up wanting to be every Disney princess or Fairytopia, or anything that was pink or sparkly! I ended up taking her to Toys R Us and it took her only about 5 minutes to decide on this Fairytopia outfit. Gosh, I wonder why?

Never a dull moment...

So, I left Tommy and Anna alone in the living room while I went to my room to do some work. I wasn't in there long before Anna burst in yelling "Tommy took off his diaper!" This has happened many times before, so I went searching for the naked kid. I found him running around in circles in the living room happy with his newfound freedom. I quickly diapered his bottom and went searching for the old diaper, but I couldn't find it anywhere! I glanced into the kitchen and saw the diaper, face-down in all it's poopy glory, on the kitchen counter! Ahh....the joys of motherhood!

Here's a box picture, finally.

Rainy Day Fun

This weekend is Anna's Fall Break, and since it's been raining, we haven't been able to go outside and do a lot of playing. So, I pulled out some boxes, and the kids had a great time! Tommy loved hide in the box and pop out laughing like a maniac, and both liked to climb in and around the boxes, pretending they were all sorts of different things. There's nothing like empty boxes to stir imaginations! (I'll post pictures as soon as Blogger lets me!)

Tommy's ECI Review

Last Monday, Tommy had his one-year ECI review. They evaluated him in five different categories: cognitive, communication, social, emotional, and adaptive behaviors. He scored at 29 months or above in each category (he's 27 months), except in communication, and he scored only at 21 months! Yikes. So, he is continuing with ECI. Now that he's 2 he has been assigned a real speech therapist. We just had an Early Childhood Specialist, who's main job is not really speech therapy; she just deals with minor developmental cases. She was great with Tommy, and we made some progress, but I'm glad to have an actual speech therapist now. When Tommy was being evaluated, the speech therapist was able to tell me so many more things about Tommy's development than our ECS ever did. I hope we can now make a lot of progress with Tommy's speech!

Another Interesting Discovery

I was pruning trees and bushes Saturday morning, and freaked out when I first found this guy because I picked him up with my other branches! He blended in perfectly! We looked him up in our bug book, and we think he will become a sphinx moth. You can't really tell by the pictures, but he was pretty big. He was more than 3 inches long, and about 1/2 inch wide. Isn't he so cool?

YUCK!!

On Conference Sunday, mom gave me these beautiful lantanas to plant in my front yard. They were in a vase of water, so they needed to be put in the ground as soon as I could get them there. As soon as we got home, I went straight to the yard to plant them. It was almost 8pm, so it was getting dark. I got the first one in the ground with no problem, but when I went to plant the second one, I smelled something really bad. Almost as if something had died. I thought that it was probably just a little bunny that crawled under a bush and died, so I continued to plant the lantana. As soon as I finished planting it, I decided to look for the reason for the awful smell, and looked just to the right of me. And there it was. GROSS!!! It was a large, white bird! It was less than 2 feet from where I was planting the lantana!
I could barely see it because it was so dark outside! YUCK! Danny got to take it to the trash can, lucky guy!

Anna lost her tooth today!

Anna was eating her lunch today at school when she lost her tooth! She didn't cry, even when she was sent to the nurse's office to get cleaned up. The nurse gave her a cute tooth holder that she could wear as a necklace, and her teacher gave her the special "I lost a tooth" bag. Each student who loses a tooth gets to take home the bag and fill out a special page in a scrapbook about how and when they lost their tooth. They also write about what they think the Tooth Fairy will do with the tooth. Anna said that she thinks the tooth fairy will turn the teeth into daisies. Hmmm...interesting. The bag also has silly books about teeth and the Tooth Fairy. Anna has also discovered that she has ANOTHER loose tooth! She's growing up so fast! Oh, and her face is dirty in the close-up picture because she just finished her snack. She didn't get to finish her lunch at school, so she came home starving!

Tommy's New Bed

Tommy has a new bed! ( Thanks to mom, and her dead-beat renter.) He was getting out of his crib every night and coming into my room, so Danny and I decided the crib needed to go! Besides, we didn't want him to hurt himself climbing out of his crib in the middle of the night. So, the first night with his new bed, we stayed up and did the SuperNanny thing and put him back into his bed everytime he got out. Well, that didn't work too great because we were up until 1:30am putting him back in his bed, and he wasn't slowing down! So, we decided to take turns with Tommy in his room, sitting next to his bed. That didn't work out too great either, because he would wake up and cry everytime we moved, thinking we were leaving him! It was a miserable night, but it was Friday night, so we didn't have to worry about school the next day. Saturday night was a little better, and so was Sunday night, but he just wasn't happy in his bed! He would get out of his bed crying and come try to sleep on the couch! By Tuesday night, he wasn't waking up in the middle of the night crying, but we would find him on the couch each morning! Finally this morning we didn't find him on the couch! He was asleep in his bed! He did wake up at one point last night, but he went right back to sleep when I put him in his bed! Growing up his hard for kids AND parents!

Anna's Dance Class and more

Anna is taking dance from a friend of mine who lives out in Wylie. She teaches out of her home, and only charges $20 a month! Anna's dance class is Friday at 4:30 and it seems to be a great end to a busy week of school for her. Anna is now in her 3rd week of dance class and she loves it! She dances around the house, and loves the fact that she's now a real ballerina.

Anna also has her first loose tooth! I can't believe she's growing up so fast! I'll let you know when she finally loses it! She's also doing better with her alphabet. She is required to know all of the letters, upper and lower case, so it's been dificult, but everyday she makes some improvement.

(In the second picture, you can see Tommy with his notorious spoon!)

Nothing much

Well, there's not much going on right now. Anna is struggling a little in school to learn her letters. She knows 3/4 of the alphabet, but struggles with R, K, U, V, E, F, G mostly. I can understand because R and K look so much alike, as well as U,V, and E, F. We have to go over each letter every night, so she can finally master all the letters. She gets frustrated, but she is making improvement. Our goal is to have her reading by Christmas.

Tommy has decided that he doesn't like to sleep alone, and that I am the ONLY person in the world that he can sleep with. He did this Monday night, and refused to sleep at all unless I was with him, and again last night. It makes it harder that he can get out of his crib now. I'm hoping that this is a phase and soon he will stop waking up at 2 in the morning wanting mommy! I'm not quite sure what to do about this. I can't let him cry it out, because he can get out of his bed and hunt me down, and a dark house is not a safe place for a toddler. Any ideas? I kid you not, I had only about 4 hours of sleep last night because of Tommy! It sucks.

That's it for now, I'll post some charming pictures of my kids as soon as I find some more extra time!

Just Stuff

So, Anna is really liking school. She did great the first week, but we are still struggling to get into a good routine. She wakes up around 7, but she plops in front of the TV to watch cartoons, and doesn't really want to start getting ready. So, by 7:45 I'm rushing to get Tommy AND Anna ready to walk out the door by 8. We live really close to the school, but we have to leave before 8:10, to get her to school before the 8:20 bell sounds. (we walk) When she gets home from school, she is REALLY grumpy! She will take orders from no one! She's just so tired of following instructions all day that when she gets home, she just wants to relax. So, now she comes home, and has to go straight to her room, or the office, to play alone, until she can handle following orders. That has been working best for all of us. She gets the alone time she desperately needs, and we don't have to hear her screaming at us.

More first day pictures

My little girl is growing up!

Anna's first day of school!

Today is Anna's first day of school! It took her a long time to get to sleep last night, so I was worried that she would be sleepy and grumpy this morning, but she woke up with a smile on her face, and was excited to go to school. She was ready in 15 minutes! That includes breakfast and brushing her teeth! We walked to school, which is only 1/2 a mile away, and got there about 10 minutes later. (Tommy is a slow walker, and likes to take detours.) Anna was great. She went straight to her classroom, found her seat, and started on her first assignment of the day, which was to draw a picture of herself, or someone she knows, and put her name on it. Tommy was a pain, though. He threw himself on the ground and screamed and cried because he couldn't play with the stuff in Anna's classroom, and he REALLY wanted to go to the playground. I didn't get to say good-bye to Anna because of Tommy, but she had given me about a million hugs and kisses before we left for school, and while we were walking to school! I did okay, too. I didn't have time to cry because I was dealing with Tommy. I am a little worried about Anna and how her first day will go, and if she misses me. We'll see when I pick her up at 3:20.

Mr. Cool

Tommy loves to wear his sunglasses, even when he's eating his mac and cheese! We call him Mr. Cool although he looks super cheesy.

Anna's Birthday Party

Anna's birthday party went really well! Anna invited 9 girls, but I had 7 of them RSVP, and only 5 of them showed up! It was nice to have a small party, though. These girls are quite loud and VERY silly, so it seemed like there was more than 6 of them! Mandie was so great to come and help; I don't know if I could have done it without her! We had finger foods for lunch: chicken nuggets, apple slices, and carrot sticks, and we didn't have a cake, instead we had cupcakes. The girls loved the food, and it was easy for me to clean up! The jewlery boxes were a bigger hit than the jewlery, I think, but we all had a great time!
(Don't you just love Anna's super-cheesy smile?)

Happy Birthday Anna!

Yeah! Today is Anna's birthday! Too bad she has Strep! Yep, that's right, Tommy gave Anna an early birthday present! I checked her temperature yesterday morning and she was fine, but after lunch she suddenly had a fever of more than 101 degrees. I got an appointment with my favorite doctor just an hour later, and it makes a HUGE difference! She still has a fever this morning, but hopefully it will break soon, so she can enjoy her birthday. Tomorrow is her party and she is so excited! I hope it all turns out well!

Strep...again.

Well, it's official. Tommy has Strep for the third time this year. He also has an awful cold to go on top of that! That is why he was so grumpy on Sunday. He had no symptoms whatsoever, just a cough and sneezing, which indicated that he has a yucky cold, but he was SUPER cranky, so I took him to the doctor. (FYI-NEVER go to Dr. Stanton in Plano! He's awful!) There are 5 doctors in the office that I take Tommy to, and his regular doctor wasn't there this morning, so I took the first available appointment and it was with Dr. Stanton. He did a Strep culture just because it's policy when there is a little redness on the throat, and it was positive. Yuck. I will disinfecting my house for the millionth time tomorrow!

Kindergarden Pre-Screen

So, Danny and I were worried about Anna's Kindergarden Pre-Screen because they were going to ask about tying shoes, upper and lower case letters of the alphabet, and recognizing numbers. As it turns out, they didn't ask about tying shoes, and Anna did really good with her counting and letter identifying! Her teacher is really nice, and said that Anna will not be starting out behind the rest of her classmates. She is one of the youngest in the entire Kindergarden, though. There is only one other kid who has a birthday in August. Anna is really excited about school starting, and thought it was neat that her school teacher looks a lot like her Primary teacher!

What do you think?

New light

Old light
We bought a new light fixture to replace our kitchen light that goes over the sink. Our previous one was ugly (as you can see in the second picture) and didn't put out much light. We bought this one at Ikea and spent only $25! We found similar ones at Home Depot for twice the price! So, what do you think?

Anna's party invitation

Here's Anna's birthday party invitation. It turned out really cute! I blurred out my address and phone number, just in case you were wondering what was going on there! Anna didn't like having her picture on the invite, but she's SO cute!

Anna's Birthday Party

Anna will have her first ever birthday party on Aug. 5th! It will be from 10-noon and we will serve a light lunch. I would love to have anyone's ideas for what to serve 5-year-old girls for lunch! If Anna had her way, we'd have noodles, but not at her party! We are also making jewlery, and I need some creative things to do with these girls. Ideas? I've never done anything like this before! Oh, and if anyone wants to come help me with these girls, I would love to have you!

Fireworks Picnic

Since last year, when we went to the Concerts in the Garden Fireworks Picnic, Anna has asked me when we would go back. She places it in the same category as Christmas and birthdays! She was so excited to go again this year and we all had a great time! It was just me and Anna because Tommy is still too wild to go. Anna enjoyed playing with the babies and LOVED the fireworks! It was fun spending time with family and friends, and we look forward to doing this again next year!

Another great picture

Here is a great picture of Tommy and his uncle Mike sharing a package of Skittles on the couch, and watching World Cup Soccer. Anna is under that white blanket that you see next to them. She was sick and very grumpy.

Sharing Time

This is a great picture of Tommy and Manuel. Every morning, at the end of his breakfast, Manuel would have some fruit, and every morning Tommy would come up to him and want some. So, Manuel sat him on his lap on this particular morning and they shared. I'm not sure who enjoyed it more!

Wedding and more

Well, yesterday was the wedding and it was wonderful! I would like to thank mom for going to the temple and watching my kids while Gabby and Brian were being sealed. She was a great help! The reception was held at a beautiful hall with some pretty good food and a FANTASTIC wedding cake! Danny gave the groom's cake (cheese cake) 2 thumbs up! When the music started, Tommy ran to the dance floor and started shaking his little booty! He was a hit! And you can probably guess that Tommy is doing MUCH better! It was obviously a bacterial infection! Anna also had a great time on the dance floor, but she tired pretty quickly. She woke up with a fever this morning! She was REALLY grumpy for the pictures yesterday, and now we know why! She got started on her antibiotics this morning, so we should see some improvement soon! We had a great time, and didn't get home until after midnight! We are so happy for Gabby and Brian!

Another Trip to E-Care

Yesterday, Tommy started running a fever at about 11am. We monitored it all day until 9pm when it spiked to almost 103 degrees! So, we decided we needed to take him to our local E-Care Emergency Clinic. Anna was SO good! She stayed at home with abuela and didn't freak out once! She acted so mature! We don't know exactly what is wrong with Tommy, though. He has a very sore throat, but the culture came back negative for Strep. It could be viral, but the doctor didn't want to take any chances, so Tommy is on a Z-pack for the next three days to treat anything that could be bacterial. The Strep culture could have been premature, and show a false negative, so we're not taking any chances. If it's bacterial, he'll be better by the wedding, if it's viral, he will be sick for the next 7-10 days!

Check-ups and Inlaws

So, Tommy had his 2-year-old check-up yesterday and the doctor said, as Tommy was climbing up the exam table, "well, he certainly is a healthy one, isn't he?" He is a whopping 26 pounds now, and only 2 inches shy of 3 feet tall. He's only in the 50th percentile, though. She checked out his head where he got his staple and said it healed great.

In other news, Manuel got in safely yesterday afternoon, and Ella Mae and Nydia will arrive at dinnertime tonight. They are all very excited about the wedding, of course, and looking forward to spending time with all of the family. It's great that Noel and his family are here!

The things toddlers do...

When I was putting away laundry the other day, a pair of Anna's panties fell out of the basket on the way to her room. Well, Tommy grabbed them and decided to put them on his head! I am SO glad that they were clean!

Tommy's Birthday

Yesterday was Tommy's 2nd birthday, and we decided to celebrate it by going to the aquarium. We went cheap and went to the one at Fair Park, and the kids loved it! Tommy would point to the fish and say "WOW!" Anna's favorite part were the pregnant sea horses. There was a tank full of them! They also have a room where they do all the fish breeding and you can look in and see all of the baby fish. They had a tank right in front of the window that was full of tiny jelly fish that were no bigger than a thumb nail! We had a great time!