Picking Battles

You have to learn to pick your battles with toddlers:

1. "Mom can I have chocolate milk?"

2. "Mom can we go outside in the rain?"

3. "Mom I will get the muffins out of the oven".... NO

4. "Mom I want cookie for dinner"

5. "Mom I no wear shoes to school"

Luckily if I get it wrong the first time I am usually have a chance to battle it out again the next day!

Organizing Old Pictures

One of the reasons I keep this blog is to justify the millions of pictures I take of my kids. It's also a way to organize our memories. My mom is going through a big box of pictures in an effort to organize some of her old family pictures. I hadn't seen many of these before, but thought I would share a few pictures of me and one of my whole family.... stop snickering....

A Taste of Spring

Winters are hard on most people. They are especially hard on kids who are used to running around outside and suddenly they are stuck in houses that seem to shrink everyday you are stuck inside. Well today we saw spring, I am not saying it's going to last but today we hit 77 degrees! So we went out to enjoy it. It is not my fault that I have more pictures of Audrey, Ryan tells me every time I pull out the camera "mom, no more pictures please" so I have to sneak pictures of him.

Matching PJ's

When you have a boy and a girl it can be hard to find good matching outfits. Then today I came across Monkey Pajamas. I swear I am not going to turn into one of those moms that match my family every time we go out but when I saw these PJ's I just couldn't help myself.

Happy Valentine's Day

Here is why a two year old likes Valentine's Day...

Our Super Bowl Party

This is our version of a Super Bowl Party... This picture was taken 1 minute after the game ended. Don is awake in the picture, but I bet in about 10 minutes he won't be.

Croup

I will start off by saying, everything is fine now.

So yesterday after lunch Audrey suddenly started sounding like a pack a day smoker. The second I heard it I decided to take her to the doctor. They diagnosed her with Bronchitis and gave her a breathing treatment. Well at about 9:30pm last night things started getting bad. She started the barking like a seal cough and was having trouble getting air in. I made the decision to take her to the ER because as a very good friend of mine was saying earlier in the day (unrelated to Audrey) "airways are not something you mess with."

So at 10pm Audrey and I showed up at the ER. I am very lucky to be surrounded by great medical facilities with very little wait. We were checked in and in a bed by about 10:30pm. They diagnosed her with croup and gave her a humidifier and steroids. It was all very scary but the staff was very good and calming and Audrey even managed to doze a bit. We actually ended up with the same doctor that treated Ryan a few months ago when he had a bad allergic reaction. He even remembered me, a sign I live in a smaller town then I thought I did.

They were worried because she wasn't getting any liquids so they wouldn't let us leave until she drank something which she really didn't want to do. Luckily she seemed to realize that she didn't have a choice in the matter and ended up drinking a whole bottle.

At 2am I left the ER with a calm baby who was breathing much better. She is still flemmy and has lost her voice but the emergency feeling of it has gone away. So today we are resting and I am doing my best to make sure that she is getting plenty to drink.