Still Sick Part 2 and a video of Evie that was better than any SuperBowl commercial

Robin went to the Doctor on Sunday keeping alive the streak of 3 consecutive days someone in the house went to the Doctor. The Doctor did not find anything that he could treat but Robin still felt miserable. I was not feeling well on Sunday either but luckily Uncle John and Aunt Kristy were willing to watch the kids for the afternoon so we could rest. John stopped by and picked up the kids and took them to his house where he put them down for their naps and fed them. It felt great to get some sleep and rest without having to chase the two of them around for a little while. They reportedly both did very well over at John's and Bella was none too happy when I showed up to pick her up. She laid on the floor and pouted that she wanted to stay (at cool Aunt Kristy's and Uncle John's house). Thank you John and Kristy so much! I am still not feeling great, but much better than yesterday. Robin is still feeling bad and took a day off of work to rest. She is planning on working from home tomorrow even though she is not feeling better right now. Bella seems to be doing well, but had a rough day at school today. She had two accidents and she bit another child because she was not chosen to be calendar helper ( I am not sure what the calendar helper does even after Bella trying to explain it to me). Evie seems to be doing better as well, but really hates taking her medication and we are only through 4 of 10 days.

Here is a video of Evie from last week that is absolutely hilarious. I think the toy should be playing Metallica. I will try to keep up on my posting and share another video tomorrow of Evie showing off a new skill.

Still Sick

It seems as the health of everyone in the house is not the greatest at the moment, but fortunately nothing life threatening. I took Evie in to see if her ear infection had cleared up and it either has not or she has gotten another one in the same ear. We started her on a stronger antibiotic that needs to be taken with food. Last night we gave her her 2nd dose and then Robin fed her. I am not even sure what time it was but approximately midnight Evie woke up and then threw up. Robin got her cleaned up and took her downstairs and she threw up again this time on herself as well as Robin. After that Evie and I slept in the recliner until 5 in the morning. Robin fed her in bed and she slept for a little while and then Robin took her downstairs. I fell back asleep (or coma) and did not wake up until 9:15 when I heard Robin putting Evie down for her morning nap.
Bella was up with Robin and was complaining that her ears hurt. Robin used our ear checker which we have always wondered how accurately it works and it said she had an ear infection in both ears. I called the Doctor's office and they were able to get us in this morning and sure enough Bella had an ear infection in one ear and had fluid and looked to be heading towards an ear infection in the other. The Doctor was also concerned about her coughing and lung sounds and put her on an antibiotic to cover it all. Bella did pretty well and I am thankful she can tell us when she is sick so we can take care of it before she is in more pain.
Robin has not been feeling well, she is tired, has a headache, ear pain (maybe she has an ear infection as well), a horrible sore throat and has some chest congestion. It hurts her so bad when she has to cough it up. She will be seeing a Doctor tomorrow if she is not feeling better which means we could extend our streak of someone seeing the Doctor to 3 straight days. I hope the streak does not continue because that means she is better and because it is becoming quite costly.
I had not been feeling well, but that extra bit of sleep this morning made me feel a lot better today. I hope you all stay healthy and hopefully there will be no more sickness in the house for awhile that is post worthy.

Sick

All in all the kids are doing well, but they both seem to have a constant cold. This weekend started off alright, but Bella was not feeling well after she got up from her nap. She was cranky and did not want to go outside to play in the snow. When she said she didn't want to build a snowman we knew something was up so Robin grabbed the thermometer and sure enough she had a temperature of 103. Kevin and Maria's baby, Calvin, came over for a few hours so they could go out to eat for Maria's Birthday with some of their friends. Calvin was the easiest of the three kids, he was content to play by himself and did well with eating. Evie was excited that there was another baby in the house, but Bella seemed indifferent about the whole situation which was fine with us(could've had something to do with feeling under the weather).

Saturday night I slept in Bella's bed with her of course for a few hours and then Robin replaced me for the last few hours until Evie woke up. Bella was pretty weak today again and her fever went up and down all day. It peaked at 103.6 and was down below 98.6 for a period of time. She actually cuddled up with me and watched a whole movie(The Princess and the Frog) in one sitting, something that has never occurred before. We also watched a lot of Dora the Explorer and started the movie Aladdin. Bella seemed to be feeling better by the end of the day and hopefully will be feeling better tomorrow so she can go to school.

Evelyn is battling another ear infection. This is her 2nd ear infection in two weeks, her first one cleared up. She is gaining new skills, pulling herself up on everything and everyone (she often crawls to me or Robin and will pull herself up by grabbing our pants). She has not said much besides "Hi Dad" thusfar, but Robin, Bella,and myself have been holding our hands up and hers and saying "Touchdown Iowa" and then clapping and saying "Yeah." This morning when we did it Robin and I both swear to goodness that she said "Touchdown Iowa" in a weird voice. Robin claims that she actually heard it twice, we tried to get a video of it with no luck.

Here are some pictures from the weekend.

The new hot club (really hot club with Bella's 103 degree fever)

Calvin after eating carrots and pears in Evie's chair.

Evie and Calvin chillin' in the gym.

Calvin in the gym and Evie posing for her senior picture.

3 Year and 9 Month Check ups

Evelyn and Isabella had their checkups last week. Evelyn had her 9 month check up and Bella her 3 year check up. Isabella is in the 75% for height and weight (38 inches tall and 33 lbs.). Evelyn is in the70% percentile in height (28 inches) and 30% percentile in weight (18.5 lbs.).

Evelyn's Leaps and Bounds

A little after Christmas Evelyn really started crawling and now there is no stopping her. She loves her new ability and loves moving around. She has even started pulling herself up on things and taking steps while holding on to something.

Here is one of her first times crawling



Isabella isn't so impressed that Evelyn can move around. She's not happy that Evelyn can get into her stuff and Isabella's stuff is the only things Evelyn is interested in. Isabella says, "Evelyn's crawling!" in a tone that sounds like she's tattling on her. Or she just screams and says "Evie's coming" and throws herself over her stuff. We are really working on sharing, or having Isabella pick out something else for Evelyn to play with. Isabella usually just finds the closet thing that she's not interested in and throws it at Evie.

Here is Evie walking with the shopping cart. She stops to wave "hello", which we think is just so cute!

Bella's 3rd Birthday

Still trying to catch up on the blog, this post is almost a month late. Bella got to celebrate her 3rd Birthday with lots of family. Grandpa Groves came down for the day and Grandma Linda, Grandpa Jack, Aunt Jill, and Uncle Joe drove in from Ohio. Uncle John and Aunt Kristy stopped by for Bella's favorite lunch (sandwiches) and some Birthday cake. We got Bella a Dora the Explorer cake since she has really been enjoying Dora lately. Bella told us she wanted a brown and purple cake so they put a purple frosting trim on the cake and added a brown tree. Evie tried to upstage her big sister by crawling for the first time. Bella got to open lots of presents for her birthday and then the next day as well for Christmas.



Bella looks pretty bored after we sang Happy Birthday. She didn't want any of her cake.








She was playing with the Ipad with Grandpa Jack and I do not remember why she got angry(that is the problem of waiting so long to do the post),but Grandpa Groves got some good pictures of her sour face.
















The two pictures below are Bella opening some presents and Bella showing us how old she is.

Potty Humor

Wrote this up on 11/22/2010, but forgot to ever post it....

For a long time we have made halfhearted attempts at potty training Isabella. She started doing alright with peeing a couple months back, but refused to have a BM on the toilet. When she moved to the three year old room in October she really became much more interested in going on the toilet as many of the children in that room were potty trained. She began having all of her BM's in the toilet. Over a weekend we were able to wear underwear all day except during nap and overnights and had no accidents. Bella really wanted to wear underwear that Monday to school so we decided to let her and has done great. She rarely has had any accidents and now only wears a pull-up overnight and it is dry or only a little wet.

You can't go through potty training with a bunch of humor. Of course the fact that I'd just blogged about Bella's BMs is funny enough. Other funny stuff:

Bella refuses to throw the toilet paper in the toilet after she has a BM. She says "I can't see the poopy, no cover it up!" if you try to put toilet paper over it. She likes to watch it while she flushes.

One day Bella went up behind Robin and pulled Robin's pants back. She said "Any poopy in there, Mama?" Robin explained to her that you don't just walk up to someone and look down their pants (even though we were doing it to her all the time). Bella replied "I was just checkin'"

Robin went in one morning to wake up Bella. Robin was dressed and ready for work, the first thing Bella said to her was "Mama, you wearing underwear?" Robin said "Yes, I am wearing underwear". Bella said "Let me see it!"

Trip to Florida

We flew to Florida the week after Thanksgiving to visit Gus, Nancy, Grandma Groves, and Great Grandma. Gus and Nancy flew down from New York, but Bella thinks that Gus lives at Grandmas. This was the first time we flew with Evelyn and all in all both kids did well on the flights. We were looking forward to getting away from the cold Iowa weather, but it was not as warm as we had hoped. Florida was experiencing record lows during our trip with frost warnings overnight. Despite the weather we were able to have a lot of fun. It seemed like the weather got colder everyday we were there. You will probably see that we are more clothed in each picture.

Bella got to fish with Gus and Grandpa caught her first fish.










No trip to visit Grandma is complete without visiting Parkesdale for some Strawberry Shortcake. Unfortunately they didn't have Strawberry shortcake yet, but we were able to get a Strawberry Sundae. Bella was upset that she had to share one with Mom even though they are huge.

















We played a joke on Bella and caught it on video. Thank you, Gus, for knowing when to end the joke. Gus's maturity helped to avoid a complete meltdown by Bella.







We did swim one day while in Florida. Bella sporting her new swimsuit with built in life vest and enjoying the water with Grandma.




















Evie watching the swimming and showing off her two bottom teeth.














We also made a trip to Busch Gardens. Bella had a blast going on the rides and meeting many Sesame Street Characters. Her favorite ride was Air Grover (rollercoaster) which actually goes surprisingly fast. The weather helped as the park was not very busy so there was no waiting in lines for any of the rides.







Here are a couple of pictures of Evie just to prove she was in Florida as well. She is taking a snooze under my coat while we are at Downtown Disney shopping. After she woke up she tried on the Minnie Mouse ears.









































We really did a lot while we were down there. Here are some pictures of our trip to the Glazer Children's Museum in Tampa Bay. We were all happy that we could get in for free with our Children's Museum cards (ours was expired, but we are planning on renewing...).










































In addition to the cool firefighter outfits, there was also a pole they could slide down. Gus was a pro, but Bella had never seen such a thing and just fell straight down rather than slide down the pole.















We were so busy that many of our nap times took place in the van. On one trip Robin was the only one awake for a 40 minute stretch as all three kids as well as Nancy and I fell asleep. This picture is taken on our way home after the Children's Museum and a lunch at Burger King.
















Here is the 4 generation shot with Grandma, GG, Robin, and the girls.

Bloomsbury Farms

We went out to Bloomsbury Farms in October during the Hawkeyes bye week. Isabella had a great time jumping on the Jumping Pillow, riding in the barrels, seeing animals, and lots of other stuff. Bella also really liked this big slide they have, she liked it so much that she ran right back up and cut in front of the entire line and went down again. I wish I could say she only cut in front of one or two people, but it was a lot longer line than that. We do have pictures of Evie to prove that she was there as well. We have a picture below of her next to the measuring stick and also of her sleeping next to Tyson. My favorite pictures of the day though were Bella on the jumping pillow. You also have to check out one of my favorite videos of all time at the end of the post where Bella looks like she gets shot out of a cannon. I recommend watching it in slow motion so you can see how the expression on her face changes as well as the imminent doom.




Bella's impersonation of David Lee Roth.

















Bella doing her Wrestling moves on Aiden















Evie and Tyson taking a snooze

Banwarth Halloween Party

Since my parents were in town Robin and I were able to go to the annual Banwarth Halloween Party. Abe and Brandee always do an unbelievable job with the party, they decorate the entire house and always have awesome food. We also got to meet up with friends that we don't see very often. My parents brought us the gorilla costume and this blonde wig. We were able to put together some nice last minute costumes, although I would say that mine was most disturbing.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

We posted a video of Isabella reading 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'.