Our family holiday photo

Happy Holidays!

The Smoke Detector

One week in October, the firemen came to Alli's school to talk about fire safety.  They taught them how to 'Stop, Drop, and Roll', told them about smoke detectors, even told them to go home and talk to the family about planning evacuation and meeting places.  When I asked Alli about it that night, she didn't say much.  She did say something about smoke being in her room and I told her that it wasn't, and that the firemen were just saying "if" there were smoke, this is what you would need to do.  Well, so much for the fire lesson.

Then 3 nights later, I woke up in the middle of the night to a fire detector chirping that the battery needed to be replaced.  (Why does that always happen in the middle of the night?)  Anyway, I thought if Alli could sleep through it, wherever it was, maybe we could just deal with it in the morning.  Well, that didn't happen cause about 30 seconds later she woke up crying.  I went into her room and realized why.  The smoke detector that was mad was the one in her room.  So, I just picked her up and told her she could sleep in our room until we fixed it in the morning.  All seemed fine.....until the next morning.

We fixed the battery, but Alli was scared of it.  She was scared of the smoke detector, scared of her room, scared to go anywhere in the house by herself.  We've had several conversations with her about the smoke detector and how it was our friend, how it protected us, and how it was happy and there was no smoke.  Didn't help.  For the last week, we've had a horrible time at bedtime.  She's scared in her room, so she stays awake.  And if we do get her to fall asleep by rubbing her back, she inevitably wakes up about 5 minutes after we've left and starts screaming.  Our next step was to try to set her up in our spare bedroom, but that wound up failing as well.  I finally relented and we started putting her to bed in our bedroom and that did the trick.  Ugh.  So, crowded once again in our bed, but at least we were getting a fairly good night sleep.  Until this weekend.  For some reason, she started wetting the bed and not waking up!  I woke up both times to find *myself* a little wet and realizing it was from her.  Yuck!!!!  And changing a King size bed in the middle of the night take much longer than changing a twin!!!  That was it - I told her last night at 3:30am that she was no longer allowed to sleep in our room.

So, now we had to figure out how to get her to make peace with the smoke detector (or smoke protector as she calls it, even though she's scared of it).  We decided to cover it with paper.  So Alli drew a smiley face on a sheet of blue paper, and I climbed up a ladder and fastened it to the ceiling around the smoke detector.  I made sure the paper did not actually touch the smoke detector, nor blocked smoke from being able to reach it.  Then Alli said we needed more paper.  Uh oh.  So she got another sheet and I just hung it from one side so it just dangled down.  Then another sheet the same way, and then finally one more.  She said that it was good and it made her happy.  Well, okay.  Time to give it a whirl!

Tonight we put her in her bed and didn't say a word about the smoke detector.  She didn't either.  Kim rubbed her back until she fell asleep, and now suddenly, we think we have a normal night!  Keep your fingers crossed!!!

Moved to a new site

As much as I would love to keep this blog going, anyone that checks in periodically has probably realized that I'm not doing a very good job. And Kim, being the computer geek that he is, decided he wanted to try a new blog service and now is contributing to posts. (Not sure why a new blog service changes why/how you blog, but apparently it does.)

Anyway, he has posted a few pics of Alli on this new blog, so I recommend going to our new site: http://http://www.guerrettefamily.us/

We'll see you there!

Alli getting a trim

Alli is so cute every time she gets a haircut that I have to take a few photos with whatever camera I have with me. For her first haircut, I brought the big boy (Nikon D700). This time I only had my iPhone 4, but it was good enough.

New doctor, new dentist

 

We're having bad luck with most of our family's chosen medical professionals lately.

Our dentist retired and passed his business off to another dentist. The new dentist seems very nice and knowledgeable. And, our dental hygienist, Mary, who is wonderful, now works for the new dentist. That said, there are three reasons we're leaving: 

1. Proximity While the new dentist is no farther from work, he's still west of work.  We live northeast of work.

2. Insurance The old dentist took my dental insurance.  Surprisingly, the new dentist does not.

3. Security Our old dentist was old school; he kept paper records. The new dentist keeps electronic records. The one time I did go to the new dentist, I was impressed by the fact that there was a computer in every examination room. Each computer has access to a central server with patient data on it. After the cleaning and examination, I asked Mary to click on the red shield with 'x' on it in the Windows XP system tray. (*Hint*: a red sheild with the 'x' indicates that Windows thinks something is wrong with you computer's security.) When she clicked on it, a security status window popped up indicating that Automatic Updates were disabled, the Firewall was turned off, and no Anti-virus program was found. WTF! I then asked if the computer had access to the internet.  (*Note*: even without internet access, having an unprotected computer access patient records is very bad.) Mary wasn't entirely sure, so we clicked on Internet Explorer and the default msn.com webpage loaded with the day's recent news headlines.  Holy ---- Batman!  I won't go on with the details of me warning them about this and their assurance that their hired IT help said it was ok (can you say HIPPA violation?).  Let's just say, we will be asking that they share our records with our new dentist, once we get one, and that they promptly delete our records. I'll also be grilling the new dentist about his or her computer security fairly thoroughly.

Our family doctor and pediatrician, on the other hand, has excellent computer security practices.  Each doctor and nurse practitioner has a laptop the carry to the examination rooms that is locked down.  And, like the dentist, we really like the people in the doctor's office.  The problem we have with them can be summed up in one word: availability.  They seem to have taken on more patients then they can handle, and their methods of communication are limited to one: phone.  When we call the office, we always get voicemail.  Callbacks take a long time, and often feel rushed, probably because they have so many callbacks in their queue.  Recently, we had an experience that was the final straw that broke the camel's back.  Jenny called on a Tuesday during business hours to schedule an appointment for a chickenpox vaccination for Alli (the school requires it now).  She left a message, as usual.  After two days of not hearing anything, I called back on that Thursday after hours and left another message.  That was a couple of weeks ago.  We still haven't heard back.

 

Alli's 3rd Birthday

I can't believe Alli is 3. It's just amazing how fast the time goes. She's growing like a weed - getting tall, staying thin, and developing the most amazing personality.

Her party was a lot of fun. She chose Dora invitations, so we just went with the theme. I planned a really cool explorer mission, which turned out really cool but not quite the way I envisioned it.

The plan was to have "Swiper" swipe the presents and hide them behind the saguaro tree. The older siblings had fun helping me accomplish this part of the party.

Then we told Alli and the kids that Swiper took her presents and we needed their help to follow the map and get them back. Alli started crying because Swiper took her presents. We showed her the map and told her that everyone was going to help get them back, but she was sad. Oh no!! (Worst trauma ever Mom!!!) We showed the kids the map (see attached) and had them memorize the adventure, just like on Dora. Well, that was the plan... but all the kids were so excited that they just ran to the first stop - the duck pond.

The duck pond was a big blow-up pool with plastic ducks in it. All the kids picked a duck and then it was just the luck of the draw - if your number was called, you were out. Last one got a prize. This game actually executed the way I thought it might. Alli wound up being the winner. She was still upset out her presents being missing, and now overwhelmed by all the commotion. (Nice job Mom!!)

The second stop was "puzzle bridge", which was really a hopscotch path across our grass area made from foam puzzle letter squares. (You know the ones.) Some of the letters were missing and the kids had to go find them before we could cross the bridge. I didn't even have time to explain - most of the kids (especially the older siblings) just went looking for letters and filling in the puzzle. The little ones again were overwhelmed (mostly Alli and Cali), the only 2 girls younger than 4. The bridge was complete when I barely got that and everyone was hop-scothing across. (This was overwhelming for Mommy!!)

After we crossed the brige, I made everyone stop because we needed supplies to go to the "wilds" of our backyard - back by the cactus. We had Alli take off her backpack and we had a game where the kids reached in and tried to guess what they were pulling out. There were prizes. Well, that didn't really work. We had kids reaching in and pulling things out so fact (I doubt any of them closed their eyes)... Hands all over - totally out of control. And poor Alli - completely overwhelmed again. After we got everything out, we put it all back in the backpack, put the backpack back on Alli, and went to the cactus to find her gifts.

One of the little girls found the gift she was giving to Alli and said "that's mine" and Alli started crying again. Oh my. A little too much stimulation for a 3 year old I guess. But we all carried the presents back and the kids decided Alli should open the gifts in the duck pond.

The duck pond went from having the kids nicely spread through it patiently holding their presents to all crowded in one end trying to get Alli to open their gift. No parental intervention (cause mom was trying to coordinate and write gifts down as they were flying out of bags). Again - overwhelming.

So, this whole part, which I thought would take an hour, lasted 20 minutes. Oops! haha I guess Mommy needs some help in the party planning department. But the goodie bags had toys for the kids to play with so we broke those out and everyone blew bubbles and then played with squirt guns, and most of the kids wound up in the pool.

It was fun to just have everyone run around and play.

And Alli still talks about Swiper taking her presents. I gave her the map (with another to put in her baby box.)

Alli Has Her Ducks In a Row, Really

Alli's New Bike, Helmet, & Bell

Alli's New Bike

Alli got a big girl bike this weekend because she had no poppy accidents for a whole week. She will be the first to tell you that she got her bike because she poops in the toilet! We are very proud if her. And she kicked butt on the bike!!

Sorry about the bad image quality. Mommy took the picture with her camera phone...

New Years 2011

This year, we went to Mike and Jen Searle's to celebrate New Years. They have 3 sons, the youngest comes into Alli's class at Tutor Time, so all day we kept saying "we are going to Matthew's house tonight". Well, besides the Searle's, there were a whole slew of other families, so we had about 16 kids and about 16 adults. With all the commotion, Alli managed to stay awake til 11:30pm!!! She probably would have made it to midnight if Daddy didn't lay down with her to get her to go to sleep. (Mommy would have passed out herself doing that!)

We left the party around 2am and got ourselves back home in our own cozy beds. Alli did a good job sleeping in til 10:30. Yippee!!! So we had a very slow start on new year's day, but it was soooo nice to sleep in. We decided around 4pm to go out for a burger and call it dinner, so we went to a local restaurant and ordered. Alli wanted to wear underwear all day, but since she made no attempt at going to the toilet, I brought only pull-ups and a change of pants, just in case. And sure enough, she wet them almost as soon as we had ordered. So, I took her to the bathroom and there started the worst temper tantrum I think we've seen. We wound up leaving the restaurant and getting our food to go. We got home and wrestled with the tantrum until she fell asleep crying. She woke up 30 minutes later yelling again and crying and the trantrum continued. Finally, after 2-1/2 hours of this fit, she stopped and made peace with mommy, whose only sin had been bringing a pull-up to the restaurant, and then making the decision to leave the restaurant when we couldn't get her to stop crying. Bad mommy! ;)

So January 2nd officially started potty training again. We set a timer and every 30 minutes it would go off. If she went potty once and couldn't go 30 minutes later, we said it was okay. She did pretty good, except when mommy spent too much time picking up the house and not enough time watching Alli. I happened upon a puddle by the sliding door at one point, not knowing when it was created. Ugh. And then the poop. I'm not sure when or if this child will *ever* sit on a toilet and poop. :( Ok, one thing at a time.

We told Alli that if she went accident-free (poop and pee) for a whole week, she would get a new bike. (Ok, we've been storing this bike, which is a hand-me-down from Reegan, for 6 months already. I was just dying to get it out of the closet!!)

Day two was not quite as good on the potty front. She didn't want to sit on the toilet, not for stickers, not for the bike, and not for the timer. When she pooped her pants it turned into a tantrum because mommy changed her by the toilet and not the changing table. At least this time, we made peace within 20 minutes. Whew! So, today is still day #2 while I'm writing this, and we're about 50% of the time when the timer goes off that she'll sit on the toilet. I just changed the timer to go off every hour now instead of 30 minutes. But she just peed while playing under the kitchen table, so not sure any of this is working! :)