We’re at the ER with Robbie right now, waiting for the medicine they gave him to kick in. We got here around 7 PM after he started having a pretty bad reaction to something. It’s now 9 PM and we’re hoping the redness and hives start clearing up instead of getting worse, as they have been.
Josie’s with Helene’s parents and we’re hoping to be leaving soon.
Hope everyone had a great Christmas!
Just putting the finishing touches on Christmas Eve and wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!
We’re going to the 5:30 church service with Helene’s mom and dad, then we’ll stop and have dinner before coming home.
The it will be off to bed for the kids and for mom and dad too! If Josie has figured anything out about Christmas she’ll have us up even earlier than usual. 
Hope everyone has a great Christmas!
In an attempt to upstage his sister, Robbie got his first visit to the ER last night. He had tried earlier this year to get a ride in an ambulance by getting his leg wedged between two posts in his crib but only got to visit with the firemen who came out to free him. But yesterday he managed to achieve his ultimate goal.
Helene was holding his right hand while walking him out of the living room, and away from the Christmas tree. After a couple of steps he noticed what she was doing and, deciding that he didn’t want to go any further, he attempted to drop to the floor with Helene still holding his hand.
Long story short he ended up with a condition called Nursemaids Elbow, where when he dropped his elbow popped slightly out of joint and a ligament slid into the space. This made his arm painful to move and also made picking anything up or holding anything extremely difficult.
So after talking with the advice nurse we went into the emergency room where the doctor came in, listened to what happened and after telling us what it was he just popped things back into the right places.
Robbie cried for a couple of minutes and then was pretty much back to normal. By the time we stopped for dinner a half hour later he was eating with both hands again and picking up his milk without any problems.
So now the score is:
Josie – 1 ER visit
Robbie – 1 Fireman visit, 1 ER visit
Let’s hope it stays that way for a long, long time.
Just want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!
We woke to the surprise of a water leak in our ceiling between the kitchen and living room. The contractor that did the remodel is going to come over tomorrow morning to look into it. For now it’s an occassional drip, drip into a bucket. Fortunately it’s not a burst pipe or anything too serious. Hopefully it can be addressed tomorrow morning with minimal fuss and mess.
We’re celebrating Thanksgiving with Helene’s family today, then back to our normal schedule tomorrow. Hope everyone has a great day!
We finally learned the secret to parenting! Let the child think they have all the power while you hold the extension cord. Why didn’t anyone tell us this sooner? 
We have been successful for two days with our new approach to mealtime with Josie. Instead of getting mad and punishing her for not eating, we now tell her it’s her choice whether she eats or not. There are no longer snacks between meals (since she was using that as her meal). There has been no shouting, ultimatums, or punishment. It’s much calmer and much less stressful. I’ve known this is what needed to be done for quite some time but I just couldn’t bear the thought of her going without a meal since she’s so petite. She’s chosen to skip meals before when it was more like a punishment and I worried constantly about her health. Usually she would come back half an hour later and say she wanted to eat but occasionally she didn’t. Two days of success shows we’re on the right track. Let’s hope it keeps going!
On a side note, Robbie is now in full toddle mode. He walks probably 75% of the time now and would rather stand back up than take off crawling when he falls. I guess we have a walking boy now! He’s losing his “Franken-Robbie” walk though. He’s much steadier than he was last week. He still high steps which is very cute.
Robbie had his 1st birthday on Friday, May 7. He had a very fun birthday party that evening with both sets of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. His sister and his parents were there too. (Sorry I’m so late in writing about it.) His grandpa and grandma (Steve’s parents) flew out especially to celebrate with him. We had a very nice visit with them and both kids were just thrilled to have them around for the week. We had the party at my parents’ house since they have the swimming pool and because my kitchen is still not completed from our remodel that was started in January. So much for a 6-8 week project. We’ll explain all of that as well as the addition we’re putting on our house in a future post. We are in the middle of the addition right now so there’s not much to report on except that so far it’s going much more smoothly than the kitchen, perhaps because none of it is through Lowe’s (where we got our cabinets).
Anyway, back to the birthday boy. We took him in for his checkup the following week and he was 29.5 inches tall (50th percentile) and weighed 18 pounds 10 ounces (3rd percentile). Looks like we have another skinny kid. The nice thing with Robbie, though, is that he will eat almost anything we put in front of him. In fact, right around his birthday, he decided he was not going to eat any more baby food and wouldn’t even eat the toddler food (like Gerber Graduates) that we had bought for him. If it wasn’t the same thing that we were eating then he didn’t want it. In some ways this is much easier since we don’t have to buy special food for him or make something different. In other ways it’s more difficult because I have to remember that whatever we are having is something that can be cut up into small pieces and doesn’t contain peanuts or shellfish (two things he can’t have until he’s two years old). Overall I’d rather he not fight us on eating big people food like Josie still does at times.
So far there is definitely a difference in raising a boy than a girl (besides the obvious). Robbie is much more active. Josie was content to sit in one spot and play or read. Robbie is all over the place. We were playing in the yard the other day and he crawled over to the slide but instead of going to the ladder (even when I helped him) he insisted on trying to climb up the slide. He has at least 5 words but definitely doesn’t gain new ones as quickly as Josie did. His babbling has exploded recently. This is all stuff I learned in school but it’s interesting to see it first hand. He loves blocks, balls, and playing peek-a-boo and patty-cake. He has officially taken his first steps but, like his sister, he refuses to walk if he thinks anyone is watching. It took a trip to Disneyland to finally get her interested in walking. Hopefully we won’t have to wait that long for him since we’re not going any time soon.
As for Josie, she is very excited about starting preschool in September. She loves to help me cook in the kitchen which also seems to encourage her to eat what she’s being served. We still struggle with feeding issues with her and the last time she was weighed she was still around the 3rd-5th percentile. She is perhaps the world’s slowest eater. She is very interested in learning to read and write and recently started drawing pictures of her family which vaguely resembled people. I was pretty excited to see that. She has quite a few imaginary friends who come to visit. They are always characters from Disney animated movies. For instance, when we have “Ariel Josie” in the house, then naturally her friends Prince Eric, Flounder, and Sebastian are around. She has full conversations with them and invites them to eat with us, complete with their own chairs and plates at the table.
That’s pretty much the run down of life right now. We’ll get some info about our remodel and addition up soon. And I’ll add pictures to this post as soon as I have time to sit at Steve’s computer and weed through them all. I at least wanted to get something written since I’m already so late.
Josie had her third birthday on Monday, March 15. She is every bit a grown up 3 year old. We took her for her first “big girl” haircut the Tuesday before. I had trimmed her bangs before but we had never had her hair officially cut. She loves her new hair do. On Sunday the 14th we had a big family party for her at my parents’ house. She had a Tinker Bell party complete with a cake I made for her. She had a great time playing with her cousins. She loves swimming so we had a little pool party after the main party and also took Robbie swimming for the first time at her party.
Josie's birthday cake
Blowing out the candles
Robbie's first swim
Our swim party
Josie's new fairy bed
Grammy and I took the kids to the park for a special birthday picnic for Josie on Monday. She had a great time running around and playing on the toys. Robbie got to experience the playground swings for the first time and he loved them. By the time we left Josie had gotten brave enough to go down the big slide and climb up the chain ladder by herself. We took her out for a special birthday dinner at the Spaghetti Factory that night. Grammy was able to join us which made Josie very happy.
Birthday picnic
Josie sliding
Robbie swinging
Kids swinging
Josie's spaghetti dinner
At her check up last week she had actually grown! She is now 27.2 pounds and 35.5 inches. That puts her in the 10th percentile for both height and weight. That means she grew from the 3rd percentile in weight last year to the 10th!! We were very happy with this news. It looks like forcing her for the last year to eat has finally paid off. We’ve had many nights of screaming or being sent to bed over the last year while we battled with her to get her to eat. Now, she will actually eat small amounts of food while at a restaurant and eat a small serving of whatever we’re having for dinner at home. It may seem trivial, but it’s a big victory for us. Her doctor was very impressed with how verbal she is. As we say, she talks in monologues. She was able to answer all the safety questions as well as count and sing most of her ABCs for the doctor.
I’ll leave you with one last cute picture. Robbie had his first ice cream cone the day after Josie’s birthday. As you can see, he really enjoyed it.
Robbie's ice cream cone
Steve’s parents visited over Thanksgiving and we all went up to Seattle, WA for the weekend. On Saturday we went to Apple Cup, the annual football game between the University of Washington (Go Huskies!) and Washington State University (Skin those Cougars!). In case you hadn’t guessed, it’s a bit of rivalry between the two schools.
It was a great game and UW won with a score of 30 to 0. That’s the first time UW has skunked WSU since 1964!
On Sunday we went into downtown Seattle and visited the Space Needle. Josie really enjoyed the ride up to the top and was very unhappy that we weren’t going right back down, and back up, and back down.
We had a picture taken before we headed up. It’s not too bad, although Robbie is almost invisible beneath his hat and with the baby carrier covering up a big part of his face.
Family Visit to the Space Needle, Seattle WA
We found out that Santa is at the top of the Space Needle in his rocket sled. Robbie got to sit with him first and he really seemed to enjoy himself.
Robbie visits with Santa at the Space Needle
Josie joined Robbie with Santa, but she wasn’t quite as thrilled. We think it’s because she was really over tired and starting to come down with a cold. But we still got a picture of the two of them with Santa.
Robbie & Josie visit with Santa at the Space Needle
More pictures and stuff about the visit will be posted later. We just wanted to get this up now.
From the too cute to not share department, we present Josie and Robbie modeling the latest in children’s eyewear. I was working in the garage yesterday when I walked in and found Robbie laying on his mat looking like this.
Robbie's new glasses
I then noticed Josie had on her pair and realized she dressed her brother up.
Josie and Robbie's glasses
It appears she is learning to share! It’s either that or that they are both preparing for the inevitable fact that they will have to wear glasses at some point. With their genes it’s pretty much a given.
For those that are wondering, they are Mr. Potato Head glasses.
The Clark County Fair happens at the beginning of August every year. We went for the first time when Josie was a baby and had so much fun that we’ve made sure to go back every year. This was Robbie’s first trip to the fair and I think he enjoyed it as well as a 3 month old can.
Robbie's 1st fair
Josie got to meet and pet several animals that she’s never seen up close before. Here she is with a calf that was being shown:
Calf
Here she got to pet a baby goat:
Baby Goat
Here is a bunny that was on display:
Bunny
And here she is with “Freddy the Fire Engine”. Ok, Freddy isn’t really an animal but he certainly had personality. He could move around, blink, and run his siren. She was convinced he was “Thomas” as in the train and she was actually rather scared of him although we all thought he was cute. He even squirted water on us, which on that hot day felt really good. To this day, she will occasionally talk about “Thomas” (or sometimes she calls him Freddy) and how he scared her and squirted water on her.
Freddy the Fire Engine
The last thing we did was go in the exhibition hall to see what had been entered in the competition. I entered a couple of things I crocheted this year just to see what they’d say about them. I actually won first prizes on the hat and bib I made for Robbie. I was going to enter the booties also but that morning when I was sewing the buttons on I realized I had forgotten to make a buttonhole in one of them. Oops! But the bonnet and bib were well received.
Blue Ribbons
And here is a picture from Robbie’s baptism that shows the blanket I made for him before he was born. It is a set with a hat and booties also but the booties were too small for his big feet and when he wore the bonnet home from the hospital everyone thought he was a girl so I told him I wouldn’t make him wear it again. But the blanket was something special that I made for him to come home in and also to use at his baptism. I decided not to enter it in the fair, although I’m very proud of it, because I was worried that there was a chance it wouldn’t come back to me or could be damaged while on display.
Robbie's blanket
And finally, a picture showing one of Josie’s favorite hobbies right now. She is really enjoying building “castles” whether out of blocks or Legos or even Tinkertoys.
Josie's castle
Well, it only took me 2 months to write this post so you can probably expect to see our mid-September trip to Leavenworth, WA, around November. I’ll try to do better though!
