Paying it forward...

The first 3 people to leave a comment on this post will receive a hand made gift from me during this year. When and what it will be is a surprise. There's a small catch...You knew there would be didn't you? Post this on your blog then come back and leave a comment, telling me you're in. Fun, huh? Remember, only the first 3 comments receive the gift. Let's see who looks at my blog!If I don't have your home address, please leave it for me.

The Tooth Fairy comes tonight

MacKayla has had a loose tooth for over a month now and has been so excited for it to come out, well tonight was the night. She has lost her first tooth and is very excited for the Tooth Fairy to come and visit tonight. Here is MacKayla and her first gappy grin.
Showing off the empty space.
Showing off the tooth and the space.

Valentine Fun

We had a nice Valentine's Day together yesterday. We started the day out with a nice breakfast of biscuits, sausage, pink eggs and strawberry milk. The big girls loved that the eggs were pink, Bella thought it was weird, but she did love the sausage. The girls went to a birthday party later in the day and they had a blast. After that James was shoveling the snow and I wanted to take the kids out to do something fun. We ended up at the bowling alley and I wanted to teach them to bowl, well wouldn't you know that it would be busy on Valentine's Day. In the end we went for a drive around town, then ate ice cream at home.
The girls on Valentine's Day. Gotta love the large amounts of pink, poor James.

This is one of Bella's new faces, she scowls at you until she gets you to laugh and then she cracks up as well.
MacKayla showing Arabella some love. MacKayla is a good sister to Bella when she is interested in being so. I didn't get a picture of them together but Annika and Bella have a great relationship. Bella gets so excited to play with Annika and Annika does a great job with her.

Always so serious...

Little smiles at least.
I thought this one was sweet. I don't care what the world says, a man is never so cute as when he is cuddling his baby.
Mom and Bella giving loves.
MacKayla being a ham.
Beautiful Annika.
Silly Annika.
A little bit fuzzy but you can see that Bella is back to normal. Thankfully the rash is gone and she is getting back to herself.
I haven't posted Bella and her silly sleeping in a while so here is what we find most days now...she wraps herself in her blanky (heaven help us if that one gets lost), and she plays in her laundry basket until she decides to go to sleep so there is an assortment of clothes in her bed as well. She is one funny kid.

Science with kids

I found a great kitchen science project to do with the kids and I thought I would share it.

Pour heavy cream into a container with a lid. Have the kids shake the container until you can no longer hear the liquid sloshing around. At this point open it up and the kids can see that they have made whipped cream. Have a little taste, it's kinda bland without the sugar though. Put the lid back on and have the kids continue to shake the container. Do this until you get a thudding around in the container. At this point you will have made butter. The milk around it is buttermilk and can be used if you want, or discarded.

When I first read this I didn't think that it would really work, heck I am a city kid, butter comes in nice rectangular blocks that you buy at the store. The kids were kinda ambivalent about it at first, once we made the cream though they were excited to see the butter. The butter needed a little bit of salt added, but it tasted great on bread.

Enjoy!

When pigs fly

Economic stimulus = $787 billion. Anyone else see a problem with that?!?

James posted a great article about our feelings on this, you can see it here.

My feelings on the matter...I believe it will help us when

Can we catch a break

For the last several weeks Arabella has had one thing after another. It started three weeks ago when she cut her top four teeth all in the same week. She was miserable, wouldn't eat and had a heck of a time sleeping. We got over that and then her cough that she has had for months got worse. We took her into the doctor and she had RSV and a double ear infection. We started her on antibiotics and figured things would be fine. The next week she had her one-year check-up (of which except for the illnesses she is doing great 18lbs and I think it was 29 in.) At the check-up the doctor say that her ears were still not better and her cough was not going away. He then put her on another antibiotic and started her on the asthma medication, Singulair. She also received her 12 month shots and a finger stick to check for anemia, she was not a happy kid from all of that. Well on Thursday of last week she started running high fevers (as high as 104.6 F) and being miserable again. On Sunday she developed a spotted rash on her trunk and we thought she was getting chicken pox from the shots. After talking with the nurse we thought that it was instead roseola, except that she was still running the fever.

Well when she gets up this morning Annika comes in to tell me that Bella is all red. I thought she might have been red from crying, but alas we cannot be that lucky, she was completely red. It didn't look like roseola but I did the usual internet check for possible causes and came up with it being either roseola or measles, great...

I took her into the doctor and thankfully it was not measles, however, she is apparently allergic to amoxicillin and it was causing her body to be covered in hives. The doctor ran lots of tests and even had a second doctor come in to give an opinion. They still have no idea what is causing the fever, her ears still have the infection, she is still covered in red and she is still miserable...poor baby.

She is now taking Benadryl every six hours, Motrin every six hours, Claritin every night before bed and her other medicines of Prevacid every night and Singulair every night. As well as starting another antibiotic in a few days. For a kid who has been relatively healthy this has been a crappy month.
My spotted baby
Everywhere but her legs were covered
Poor Bella-boo.

Books Read in January

I had a friend ask me to post a list of books that I have enjoyed reading so that she can find good books for her daughter to read. I also had another friend set up her personal challenge of how many pages she can read this year. So this is my response to both. Here are the books that I have read this month, as well as the total pages that I have read thus far. The number isn't that high, but good enough for now. Let's see how long I can keep it up...

- The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (Interesting fable set in Auschwitz)
Boyne - 216
- Ender in Exile (Very good story in the Enderverse!)
Card - 369
- Invasive Procedures (Good story, however the co-author seems to have had more input into the story as the books seems less Card-like)
Card/Johntson - 400
- Found (Very fun story, it's going to be a series however, so this one leaves you hanging)
Haddix - 314
- The Thirteenth Tale (Highly recommend, I really enjoyed this one)
Setterfield - 406
- Running Out of Time (I started this last night before bed with the intention of reading for a few minutes, two and a half hours later I had finished the book, it was very fun)
Haddix - 184

Total Page Count for January - 1889
Goal for 2009 - 25,000 pages