Does this baby look sick to you?

I snapped these on Monday night after bathtime. Emily had a temp of 100. I thought maybe she was teething again. She'd been fussy all Sunday night and most of Monday. By the time we headed to the pediatrician the next morning, her temp had climbed to a whopping 104. Diagnosis: sinus infection. Apparently she had lots of thick yellow and green mucus running down her throat. Sorry for the visual. I answered the doctor's questions: Has she been coughing? No. Runny nose? No. Then the doctor said, "Wow. She's acting really great for as sick as she is." That's our Emily. Such an easy baby. Totally miserable and still manages a smile. Granted we've been up quite a bit for the last two nights. Poor baby. I just gave her the second dose of antibiotics so let's hope we see some improvement tonight.

Don't you just love her post bath hair? Her hair grows straight down, so when I comb it back, this is the result.

The Weekend

Despite the gloomy weather, we had such a fun weekend. For weeks Ava has been begging to build a bear for her birthday. It's been on our agenda, but Saturday's nasty weather and the fact that we will be otherwise engaged next weekend for Ava's birthday provided the perfect excuse to hit Build-a-Bear a little early. What's better than the mall on a rainy Saturday (that is if you've got young kids and you can't just cozy up on the couch and watch old movies)? "Beary" has been quickly welcome into our family and Ava was so excited to bring her home. Here are a couple of clips of her at Build a Bear:

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Then on Sunday, after church we had a little girls outing to a local arts festival. Not that Mike didn't want to come along and be cultured with the rest of us, but I think he appreciated a whole Sunday of uninterrupted football. The festival was awesome! I really enjoy art, so I was happy to be able to spend a day sharing one of my loves with the girls. It was seriously the best free entertainment I've come across in a while. I spent $1.50 (for a bottle of water) for the whole day! Can't beat that. The venue (on a lake) was beautiful. The sun finally returned to the sky. Aside from a good amount of vendors there was live music, performance art, and tons of activities for kids. Ava got to make a pin, a Japanese koi fish, some bead work, and a sailboat. They had other projects to choose from as well. Ava even joined in on one of the performances. A little band had instruments out for kids to pick up and play along. Ava was up there in a flash, ready to shake her maracas. She also did the limbo. I could not stop laughing. Her form is hilarious. She understands that she's supposed to bend backward, so she assumes this exaggerated pose as she approaches the limbo stick. However, she has not figured out that she needs to bend at the knee as well. When she finally gets up to the stick, she ends up just walking under. Maybe you had to be there to appreciate the hilarity and see her determined little face, but I did include a clip at the end of this slideshow that I put together from pics I took at the festival yesterday.

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Luckily we made it home before the next round of storms hit and record high winds knocked out power around the city.
So that was our awesome weekend....despite a loss for Purdue. Let's hope they Boiler up and come back strong next weekend!

The Alphabet Bag

Ava had her first ever in class presentation today! She brought home the class Alphabet Bag on Monday with instructions to fill it with 5 things that start with the letter "A". She took the bag back today and got to show her class what she brought. I decided that she needed a practice run so I asked her to show me her 5 things before we left for school. This way you all get to see her presentation too.
If you're not sick of all of my video clips yet, then click on the link to see Ava and the class Alphabet Bag

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8 Month Progress Report

This kid is MOVING! Emily was just starting to crawl/scoot when I gave the 7 mo. progress report, but now she's a pro! This has been so fun to watch. Ava didn't crawl. We waited and waited and then right around 10 months she took off walking. This week Emily is having a great time tearing books off of shelves and impersonating a vacuum cleaner. Everything goes in her mouth...which means that I vacuum 1-2 times a day. Seriously, where does all that stuff come from and why didn't I notice it before? Again, it's fun to see the difference between my two kids. Ava never put anything in her mouth. Never. She wouldn't even eat the birthday cake at her one year party. Emily- no fear. Mulch, lint, and who knows what else lurks in our carpet, it all becomes a tasty snack. She watches me now. She targets the next nasty floor snack and creeps toward it, periodically looking at me to see if I've noticed. When she's close enough, she strikes. The piece of dead leaf is no match for her little pinchers. It is snatched up and popped into her mouth in the same moment that I am diving across the room to stop her and she is turning to crawl away as fast as her little hands and knees will carry her. And she's giggling. And chewing. As Ava would say, "She's berry sneaky."

Some other fun skills: waving and clapping. Oh, and I think the very beginning of talking. I've been waiting for a "Mama" or "Dada". Not yet. But several times this week she has repeated the word, "Hi". She's even paired it with the waving of her arm in a big enthusiastic greeting. I swear she also said "up". She held her arms up to me and said, "up up up". This could be purely coincidental, though. She probably doesn't know that the sound that she was accidentally making was also the word "up" and she just happened to use it at the same time she wanted to be picked up. Or, maybe she's a baby genius. Could happen, right?

Ava loves that Emily is actually old enough to play with her now. Ava sets up tea parties. While Emily is nowhere near the pretending stage, if handed a teacup, she appropriately puts it to her mouth. For Ava, that's good enough. A guest that will sit at her tea party and pretend to drink the tea and eat the plates. Ava really is good with her. She doesn't even get mad anymore when Emily crawls over the tea party and wrecks it. Yesterday morning they played for 2 hours in the playroom. I was working around them and from time to time would step out so that I could eavesdrop. I love listening to Ava make up the scenarios for Emily to "act" out. For instance, while playing pirates: "Alright, sister. You sit there and stand watch, matey!" Emily sat and stared out the window. She takes direction so well! The fun came to a screeching halt when a 3 foot tall cardboard crayon "accidentally" fell onto Emily. I overheard Ava screaming at poor, sobbing, Emily, "I told you to move, baby ninja! I told you!" Apparently they'd moved on from pirates. It was time to swoop in and take Emily, um, I mean, the baby ninja up for nap time.

So that's the update on Emily. It feels like it's going so fast. Ava must feel the same way too....yesterday she asked me when we could start praying for another baby sister. Uh-I'll get back to you, Ava.

Here are a couple of clips of Emily crawling:

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Do you believe in magic?

I should start this by saying that Ava really wants to plant things and watch them grow. She's been hung up on this topic for a long time. She's already begging for a garden next year. Even last spring, she planted a peach pit in our backyard and then sat, very still and very quiet for a long time staring at the ground. Finally I asked, "What's wrong?" "Shhh. Mommy, I'm growing my apple tree" she answered in a serious tone. She thought that if she planted and watered that seed, a tree would shoot right outta the ground. I didn't even bother to explain that apple trees don't grow from peach pits. I did however, have to explain that it takes a looong time for trees to grow from a seed. An apple tree wouldn't be popping out of the ground anytime before dinner so she'd better head on in and wash up.

Two weeks ago we headed back to Indiana for a visit. As soon as the wheels stopped rolling and my gearshift popped into the "P" in Mom and Dad's driveway, Ava jumped out of her booster seat, leaped from the car, and was up my parents sidewalk as fast as her little feet could carry her. She was screaming and gesturing toward a patch of sunflowers. "My magic! IT WORKED! Yes! YES! Look, look Mom! My magic! I grew them! I grew them!" After calming her down enough to get an explanation, we found that she had, in fact planted the seeds that had grown into those sunflowers. My mom, a meticulous gardener had been so busy for the last month or so that she'd meant to get around to pulling the unsightly "weeds" that popped up by her back door. The task had gotten put off long enough that those "weeds" bloomed into sunflowers. It was a curiousity that neither of my parents could figure out. Certainly neither of them had planted sunflowers. So here is what Ava explained: She and Riley, my nephew sorted through the bird seed from the bird feeder in my parent's lawn. They pulled out all of the "big" seeds. The sunflower seeds. Then they dug a hole and planted and watered them with the hose, getting extremely dirty in the process. That's a fact. I have pictures of them on the day that those seeds were planted, from our visit back in June. Here are a couple of Ava the Gardener:




And a couple of video clips of her in front of the sunflowers, explaining "the magic" she created. I like the part in the second clip where she says, "I was very sneaky"

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First Day of Preschool

Ava was so excited for her first day of preschool. Her new school is a pre-K curriculum. Very structured. She could actually start kindergarten here next year. Not sure I'm ready for that! Her birthday is 10 days before the cut off, so she'd be the "baby" in the class.

She goes three days a week, in the afternoon. Here is her daily schedule:

12:45-1:00 Opening, Religion

1:00-1:15 Language Arts

1:15-1:30 Playground (Mondays) Gym (W, F)

1:30-2:20 Art, Free Choice, Centers

2:20-2:35 Bathroom Break and Snack

2:35-2:55 Math, Music, Science, Social Studies ( I assume that they don't do all 4, every day in the allotted time period)

2:55-3:10 Show and Tell. Ava's day for show and tell is every Monday.

3:10-3:15 Closing Prayer, Dismissal

She also will go to library every Wednesday and gets to check out a book (big stuff)! Every child has a turn at the classroom jobs (ex. line leader, weather helper, napkin passer). She will go to chapel once a month and the class does a monthly cooking project in the cafeteria too. Today she came home with the alphabet bag. I guess being at the front of the alphabet qualifies her for first spot. We have to fill it with things that begin with "A" by Friday.

I'm excited to see all that she's going to learn this year!

Here is a clip of her right before we left for school:

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M.I.A.

From this blog, that is.
So here's where I've been: 2 weeks ago, I took the girls for a visit back home. My sister-in-law was due with their 2nd baby so I scheduled a visit around my beautiful, new nephew's arrival. We spent the first few days visiting my parents. Ava had a blast playing with cousins and catching butterflies on the farm. I got to catch up with my sisters, got a little pampering (a day at the salon and then a spa pedicure) and my dad's side of the family came over for a dinner. Some of my family on that side had not yet met Emily. It was so nice to see everyone. On my sister-in-law's due date, we headed down to Mike's parents and I got to meet baby Tyler. I also got to go out a couple of nights and catch up with some good friends while Grandma Pammy babysat. Ava and Emily were loving their visit as well. Ava had play dates with cousin Nicholas and Emily had a play date too! The girls got to enjoy playing on the lake and in the sand and Emily took her first boat ride in Papa Nick's boat.

We made it back here just in time to spend Labor Day as a family. We took the girls to a kiddie park and then had a cookout at Mike's office. Monday night, I fell into bed exhausted from our travels and a big day of family fun. Ahhh, I thought. My bed. Home sweet home. I'm gonna sleep soooo good tonight. And I did...for the first 2 hours. Then, Ava developed her most painful ear infection ever. I've never seen a kid in so much pain. I've heard the term "writhing with pain" but I'd never actually watched anyone do it. Now I know. It was awful. Also on Monday night, Emily's other front tooth decided to pop through. It was one of those nights that you know you will eventually encounter as a parent...both kids screaming....the night that seems to go on forever.

On Tuesday I spent part of the day at the pediatrician's office and the other part keeping the kids happy and trying to unpack our bags. On Wednesday I had to start cleaning and laundry because company was on their way for the weekend. 2 couples and my in-laws were coming to stay with us for a wedding. Here is also where I would have updated the blog, had I not left my camera cord back in Indiana. I hoped to post pictures of our trip, now there are 200 pictures to sort through. On Thursday my mother in law arrived to help with the girls so that Mike and I could attend a dinner for our a friend that got married over the weekend. Friday was crazy with an attempted trip to the mall and grocery shopping for our company. My father in law and our good friends from Lexington, KY arrived in time for dinner. Our friends from Chicago got in later. We had fun sitting around the fire and telling old stories and hearing new ones. Saturday, the ladies went hiking while the men shopped for the wedding gift. Love that! Then we all reconvened to get spiffy and put on our dancin' shoes before the wedding. Saturday night we hit the town in our mini van and had a fantastic time tearin' up the dance floor at a Yacht Club wedding reception. Sunday morning came early. This mamma's not used to 3 late nights in a row! We went downtown for lunch with our friends and said goodbye to everyone. Last night as I served up a quiet mac n cheese dinner, Ava said, "It's nice that everything is back to normal now." I agree. We had so much fun, but it's been a whirlwind couple of weeks.

Of course, today was Ava's first day of preschool, so my feet hit the floor running again as we were in charge of snack and it was her day for show and tell. But I did manage to get her and everything required into the car and then into her classroom. I even put the house back together a little bit while Emily napped this afternoon. The forecast might hold "normal" in it for our family...at least for a week or two.