The Girls' Room

Alli had mentioned she wanted to share a room with Natalie a while ago.  I kept quizzing her on it, to make sure if we switched the rooms, she wouldn't change her mind.  

This vacation, we did it - switched the rooms.  We went a lot of items from the green room to the curb to donate to the Upward Foundation, who was kind enough to send a truck.  We got rid of the bed to Stacy (our hair stylist), and then it was a matter of tearing down the house and moving it, as well as go through both closets.  So, it took a couple of days (and I have to say, I still have some work to do with the stuff we have for the green room.)  But the switch has been made - toys in the green room, sleep stuff in the girls' room.  Here are some pics.  I guess we need to work on the wall stuff again...

By the way, we have the card table set up on our green room (game room) now so the family can play games together.  We are trying to use it quite often!

Christmas

This year's Christmas was different.  Not because of the newborn factor, but because of mommy being so sick!!  Yes, Christmas was the worst day of this sickness for me.  It was all I could do to stay awake and try to put a smile on my face while Alli was opening gifts.  We had many "pauses" in the Christmas morning gift opening.  And Alli was patient through all of them.

Natalie loved all her gifts (not that she can even tell that she loved them!)  Alli also loved all her gifts, and has now played with all of them!

Christmas dinner with the neighbors was just Alli and Daddy.  Natalie and I stayed home as she was still a bit sick too.  Never got the fever (knock on wood).  We are still watching and waiting, just to make sure.  This bug is just awful!


So, projects for the rest of vacation:  Switch the bedrooms around, get Alli to Gymnastics day camp, do some clothes shopping for mommy and daddy before going back to work.  I think we should be able to tackle it all...

The Clapper

I can't believe all us girls are sick, again!  (And I'm not sure how Daddy keeps bypassing it!)  Alli was sent home from school on Monday with a 102 degree fever.  It stayed at 102/103 until Tuesday night, when it broke around 10pm with lots of sweats and chills.  (Poor thing.)  I just got the nasal/chest congestion part - no fever.  Alli has all of the above.  So, her last week of school before Christmas vacation was spent at home sick.  Poor thing.

And now Natalie is congested.  I made a new rule that with every diaper change, we have to suction her nose as well.  And I check for fever regularly.  I'm hoping it goes through her system quickly - I hate sick babies - too scary!  But she still smiles like crazy, including when she is getting her nose suctioned!  Hilarious!!

So, about The Clapper...  Last weekend we went to a Christmas party with a White Elephant gift exchange.  I came home with "The Clapper".  You remember from the 80's commercials:  "Clap on. {clap clap}  Clap off. {clap clap}  Clap on, clap off....  The Clapper!"  So, I figured out a great place for this little device - attached to a lamp in Alli's room that she can't reach.  So I plugged it in, tried it out, and then showed it to her.  She was thrilled!

Ok.  Now fast forward to last night, and her coughing fit.  Can you see where this is going?  I went to check on her after she had been in bed for a little, since she had been coughing so much and she said "Mom.  I coughed 2 times and my light came on, so I had to clap it off!"  hahaha  I thought that was pretty funny.  And it was.  Until after she fell asleep and she was coughing in her sleep and her lamp kept turning on!  Ok, that's pretty funny too.  Kim turned the lamp off so it would keep turning on through the night.

Oh the joys of sick kids!

Our First Gingerbread House

Ok, I have a confession.  I've never actually made a gingerbread house before.  I know!  Right!?!?  Seems like everyone does on the holidays, but I've never.  And then I was asked to help out in Alli's class because one of the parents donated some gingerbread trains and they needed adult helpers for the building.  Oh boy.  So, I had my first shot of building this stuff at the school.  Not bad - got some tips of how to do it with little kids, had some good ideas, figured out some ways to keep it cleaner...

But Alli didn't get a turn to build one because she went to the other preschool in the afternoon.  So we decided to get her a gingerbread house for home and we would build it together.  (Of course, after we purchased it, we found that she really *was* going to get a turn with the gingerbread train, just later in the week.)

So we planned to build today!  And, we had an unexpected friend over, so we had 2 helpers with the gingerbread house.

Here's Gage and Alli showing off their work:

And a better view of the finished house.  (Gage decorated the left side and back.  Alli decorated the right side and front.  Mommy built the house and added the "snow".)

Natalie's 2 Month Checkup

We finally did it.  We decided to try a different doctor's office for our pediatrician.  We just couldn't handle the disorganization of the Fountain Hills pediatrician anymore.  It's probably because the practice is concentrating too much on the "beauty treatments".

Anyway, we went to North Scottsdale Pediatrics and were put in to our patient room within 5 minutes, and got seen by the doctor about 5 minutes later.  In fact, the whole appointment took about 40 minutes - which was typically just our wait time in the lobby in Fountain Hills!!

Natalie is doing great.  She's growing just right.  Her measurements our SOOO different than Alli:

Weight:  12.6 lbs (84th percentile)
Height:  23-1/2 inches (87th percentile)
Head Circumference:  42nd percentile (the chart says 38-1/2, but I'm not sure what units.  cm?)


The doctor was very nice, and we talked about the vaccines a lot, which is a hot topic for me.  Poor Natalie was just born the wrong time of year, so she's getting more vaccines than Alli at a younger age. It's just that it's cold and flu season, so everything has a chance of carrying a strain of meningitis   Ugh. The doctor actually agreed with the choices of vaccines I opted to postpone, except the pneumoncoccol, which can sometimes cause bacterial meningitis.  Granted, when I looked it up after we left the office (and after Natalie was vaccinated), 70% of the cases come from developing countries, which means very small risk of Natalie getting anything.  Oh well.  She will get the same vaccines for the 4 month and 6 month visits, and then we will revisit the vaccine schedule and see what others we will delay...

Preschool!

Last night, we put Alli to bed.  About 10 minutes later, she came out to "check on us".  We told her to go back to bed, so she did.  Before we went to bed ourselves, we went in to kiss her.  We found out what she was doing within that 10 minutes of her coming to "check on us".  Here's the pick of what we found:

And today was Natalie's official 2 month birthday.  She spent the morning in Alli's preschool class.  Here's a pick from preschool, where Alli got to share her little sister with the class by telling them about her.  You can't really tell by this picture, but they are wearing matching shirts.  Alli's says "big sister alli" and Natalie's says "little sister Natalie".  :)

(Sorry the picture is blurry.)