New Things

the monkeys have achieved new things today!! today for the first time Caleb and Sadie walked to the playground- there and back. this was a big step for Caleb who prefers to ride in his stroller over walking any day.

over the weekend, Sadie mastered climbing the ladder to the slide and today she also mastered climbing up the rope ladder at the playground. i was very impressed with her. she seems to love finding new physical challenges and mastering them. each time she made it to the top, we had to clap and cheer for her. even Caleb cheered on his little sister.

you'd think that such a busy morning would wear them out but while Sadie is happily sleeping upstairs, Caleb is singing and dancing in the kitchen. it could be a loooong afternoon.

Poison Control

With 2 kids under 3 yrs old, I think it was inevitable that we would have to make a call to poison control eventually. Yesterday was the day for it.

I was putting away some clothes in my room while Caleb and Sadie were playing in his room. Sadie came into my room a couple of times but didn't seem interested in what I was doing so she left pretty quick. I was just about finished when she came into my room a final time and I noticed that her mouth was green and she was chewing on something. I ran over to see that she had found a tube of paint and had been chewing on it. I took her into the bathroom, grabbed a washcloth and started trying to wipe out her mouth. She cleaned up fairly quickly and certainly didn't seem upset by the situation. I examined the tube more closely. It was kid friendly water color paint and I couldn't figure out how she had gotten anything out. The tube still appeared to be closed. Then I looked in the box where I had these extra art supplies and discovered that it was empty. I went back to Caleb's room and discovered another paint tube on the floor and this one had a big squirt of green paint oozing out the bottom along with tons of teeth marks. This tube was oil paint and I started getting concerned.

After talking with Andy briefly, we thought it would be best to check with poison control. Oil paints can have some nasty stuff in them to create the pigment.

I called and talked to a really nice woman who assured me, after getting the details, that Sadie would be fine. Neither one of us thought that she could have eaten more than a toothpaste sized amount and after giving the woman the ingredients she was sure that Sadie would be alright.

And for the concerned grandparents and relatives, I've made sure that my paints are either put up out of their reach or they've been pitched. No more paint eating for Sadie.

What I heard this morning

sometime around 7 (didn't have my glasses to see the time) we heard caleb come out of his room. he's been coming out and then going downstairs to play so one of us has to get up and watch him. this morning, he was just sitting outside his door. andy got up to check on him and this is what i heard...

andy- "Caleb, are you alright?"
caleb- "Yes, I found my belly button"


another funny note-

caleb has been calling us "sir daddy and sir mommy" thanks to a Bob the Builder book. it's kind of cute and a little weird but that's our boy :-)

Caleb and Sadie Book Picks!!

Hi there. As most of you probably know, we love reading in this family. So as part of our encouragement for others, we thought we would start recommending great, fun, read-together books. I'm starting out the recommendations tonight, while the monkeys sleep, but hopefully Caleb and Sadie will be able to offer their on thoughts on their books in the future.

Sadie's Picks:

Jazz Baby by Lisa Wheeler and R. Gregory Christie
It's a cute little rhyming book with fun illustrations about a family putting baby to bed. We found this book in the library way back in January and we borrow it just about every visit. It's fun to read and easy to memorize (which can be really helpful when you need a distraction without having a book- reciting books from memory has saved us in the middle of the night and on long car trips).

Monkey and Me by Emily Gravett
Another rhyming book with animals! Yeah! We just found this last week and almost immediately Sadie started requesting "monkey". This story is a really quick read (great for bedtime) and the kids love saying the animal names when we read it. I love the illustrations and at the end we practice being quiet and saying "ssshh" because the little girl is sleeping.

Caleb's Picks:

I Ain't Gonna Paint No More! by Karen Beaumont and David Caltrow
Alright, as a mother who happens to also be an artist, I love this book almost as much as Caleb! I think it's hysterical- from the words to the illustrations. This book was also recently discovered at the library and Caleb has already started singing it all the time (we walked through Target today singing it together). It's to the tune of It Ain't Gonna Rain No More and of course, it's about a little boy getting in trouble with his paints. My opinion on this book may change when Caleb discovers paint but right now, I think it's too cute and funny to put down.


Alright, that's all I have for you tonight! Hope you enjoy these as much as we have.

Sadie Baby

just a couple of cute updates...

we were doing a little GF (gluten free) shopping at Whole Foods this morning- Caleb in the basket of the cart and Sadie walking. i was trying to get her to keep up with us calling her name, she was admiring the ice cream cases. Caleb decided to help and as i pushed the cart, he started calling out very loudly, "Saaaaa-diieeeee baaaaa-byyyyy." it was very cute.

we've been noticing Sadie is trying to sing songs. she's really been working on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and it's so cute to hear. she doesn't quite have all the words but you pick them up here and there. she's also tried ABC's. i have to try to get in on video but more and more she doesn't like to perform.

At the Doctor's again and again and again

once again, it appears that our house has contracted some kind of disease. this all started two weeks ago, at the end of G'ma J from NJ's visit. Caleb developed a fever, 102 fever and it freaked me out a little bit. i'm just not used to my kids being sick like that. for them, a high fever is 101 and that is pretty rare. there didn't seem to be other symptoms and the fever wouldn't go down even with tylenol. and of course, this all happened after the dr's office closed. we made some calls later that night and the nurse recommended we get him seen on Sat. so we did. the verdict was a cold and we started seeing the coughing and runny nose hit.

a few days later, Sadie started with the fever and the coughing. her coughing was so bad one night that we didn't get any sleep. i thought i would call the dr's and ask if she was old enough for a little bit of cough medicine. they told me to bring her in. so back to the dr's we went and again they said it's just a cold. (that was last thursday)

Caleb's cold seemed to be getting better. we didn't really have any fever and he was sleeping through the night. then yesterday...

we were playing outside in the sun and i happened to notice that Caleb was shivering. it was almost lunch time so i brought him in and checked his temp. 102. i couldn't believe it. so i gave him some motrin and put them both down for a nap. at 1:30 he woke up fussy, and i discovered that he had gotten sick in his bed. his eyes were open but he was limp and not really responding to me. this scared me. i checked his temp and he was up to 103 (this was just an hour or so after getting the dose of medicine). i was scared. i called andy and then called the dr's. they wanted to see him but couldn't get to him until 3. so we sat and watched Cars- him simultaneously shivering and burning up to the touch. we got to the dr's and the poor thing fell asleep on the floor of the waiting area while waiting to be called back. then when we were shown into a room, he fell asleep again waiting for the dr to come in. i think after the 2 little naps the fever medicine started to kick in and actually bring down the fever a bit.

he perked up a little for the doctor and once again, we were told it was a cold.

last night we brought him home and he slept for a good 3 hours. he was very pleasant when he got up but soon the fever was back. it was a long night with not a lot of sleeping. andy and i took turns sitting with him but he didn't really sleep much. then this morning the fever was up again, this time to 104. fortunately, we were already scheduled to be at the dr's for Sadie's 18 mos checkup. so Caleb got checked out as well. part of me wonders if there's some kind of spell or something on the dr's office, that as soon as a sick child steps into the waiting area, their symptoms begin to fade and are almost completely gone by the time they are actually seen by the dr. then of course, the parent is left looking like a paranoid hypochondriac. that is what i felt a little like today. i was actually happy when they took his temp and saw it was 103 (yesterday the highest they got was 99).

well, as both kids were checked, we learned that Sadie actually has another nasty ear infection and over night Caleb seems to have developed one as well. they still feel that the fever was caused by the cold.

so we're home now and with new medicine. Caleb was much more cheerful this afternoon and has taken a really good nap.

we have follow-up appts in 3 weeks- hopefully we won't have to be back before then.

zoo trip

this is several weeks old but i've been playing around with these pics from the zoo. we went with our church at the beginning of april. caleb loved it! he was so excited to see all the different animals. sadie loved being able to walk around, and did walk around by herself for the most part. i had lots of fun taking pics of the animals. here's some that i thought turned out nice.