Week 117

May 25-31

This week was so much fun! Ed's Dad Ron and stepmom Maryann (aka Pap and Maymay as Jack calls them) visited from Pennsylvania. They usually come down once a year to see us and we always have a great time with them!!! The first two days they were here I had to work so I didn't see them much. They took Jack on a trip to Toys R Us and got him a new golf cart...that actually has a motor and everything. They took the boys out to dinner a couple of times. By Wednesday I was finally off work to see them. They took Jack in the morning while Ed was at work (and while Mommy had a lovely break) back to their hotel for beach and pool fun time. He LOVED it!

Jack with Pap and Maymay waiting in line to see The Lion King

Every morning that they were here the first thing out of his mouth was "Where's Pap? Maymay? Where go?" When they came over to pick him up I would have him ready with his 'babyshoop' on, diaper bag packed, and suntan lotion already applied. He would leave with them and hardly say goodbye to me. He would half wave, not even looking back, "bye!" They would wear him out by going and playing at the beach, then coming back to their hotel and playing in the pool. They then would feed him lunch, and drop him back off just in time for nap! He was in heaven!

Waiting in the shade...he found a rock to perch upon.

Singing Itsy Bitsy Spider while we wait for the show to start.

On Thursday we were graciously treated to Disney World's Animal Kingdom. Awesome!!!! We had gone once before, Jack wasn't quite 2 years old yet. He liked it that time, but this time I think it is safe to say he LOVED it!

Loving The Lion King!

Waiting with Pap to see Donald Duck!!!

This is one of my favorite parks for little kids because they can pretty much do everything except for the roller coaster. We walked the entire park and even stopped for two shows. In the morning we saw The Lion King show. I always get nervous about these things, wondering if Jack will actually sit still through them. Once the music started he was mesmorized by the characters, the actors, the floats. He absolutely LOVED it! We had awesome seats and he was able to stand in front of us and dance to the music. I have never seen him dance like that. It was super cute.

Donald Duck!

After the Lion King show we decided to meet Jack's favorite character...Donald Duck! It was a great day to go to Animal Kingdom because I think we waited in line all of 10 minutes or less and then got to see him. We weren't sure how Jack would react...but he loved him. He gave him a high five, hugged him, and then talked about it all day. Super cute!

Sitting with Pap on the train ride.

We went on the Jungle Safari Trip and saw all of the animals of the African Savannah. They were amazing. Jack loved pointing out the animals and going over the bumps and water. We walked around, and then found a train ride to go see more animals. We got to pet goats and learn all about conservation. We rode the train back and then had a nice big lunch of burgers and fries! Mmm...

Ready to brush the goats a the petting zoo!

Picture with Mommy!

After lunch we were stuffed so we walked around a little more and then found Dinosaurland. Jack, Ed, and Pap went on a spinning/flying dinosaur ride while us girls took a break and sat on a bench in the shade. We did get some good pictures of them though. We did more walking, then stopped in for another show Finding Nemo. Once again I was nervous Jack wouldn't sit still, because this show lasted 40 minutes. We all thought maybe he would take a nap. He kind of half started drifting off a couple of times, but then something exciting would come out and catch his attention and he would start watching again. He really enjoyed himself.

The Safari Ride to see all the animals!

Standing on a rock with smoke in the background.

We walked around a little more, then called it a day around 6:00 pm. It was a full day and I was so proud of Jack for not losing it. He never even took a nap. We all figured he would fall asleep on the car ride home...nope. He was in a charming funny mood and entertained everyone despite being exhausted. I think it was because we told him we would get "p-pie" for dinner.

Jack and his Pap!

Riding the dinosaur with Pap and Daddy!

That night we were ALL exhausted. We came home and had our pizza dinner, put Jack to bed, then relaxed on the couch and watched "The Fighter." I think we were all in bed before 10:00 pm. I'm not even sure how I made it through the movie without falling asleep. We had to say our goodbyes because they were getting up super early the next morning to start their long drive home. We were sad to see them go, but soon we will live much closer and hopefully see them more often!!!

Poor baby is exhausted and hot, but still in a happy mood for the car ride home!!!!

Thanks for a great week! :)

Week 116

May 18-24

This past week we had a nice zoo date with lots of friends!!! I am so lucky to have friends where I work...who have kids my age...and are all knocked up like me. :) Haha! It's really nice to hang out with people who totally get it when you are in the middle of a conversation and have to interrupt it briefly to run after your 2 year old. People who also smuggle snacks and juice cups into places. People who understand why you wear big sunglasses because you rarely have time to put on full makeup. Moms.

All of these girls are amazing and I am grateful that we can confide in one another about how hard it is to potty train...silly side effects of pregnancy...how to communicate in your marriage...and of course complaining about work. LOL.

Okay so now I am rambling. Back to my post about the zoo. We had 6 kids and 6 moms this particular day. It was our typical zoo day where we spent the early part of the morning walking around and looking at animals. We stopped by the giraffes and had a snack...waited for them patiently and only saw a couple. There is a new baby giraffe that is apparently 10 weeks old and SUPER cute but I haven't gotten to see him yet. Hopefully soon though.

We stopped by to feed our bird friends. That is by far Jack's favorite thing to do at the zoo. He runs right up to the counter with his money and picks the popsicle stick with the most amount of bird seed on it. Hilarious! He holds out the stick and goes, "come here bird!" I am impressed at how well he holds the stick and his entire arm very still so the bird can jump up on him if it wants to. He is not scared of them at all.

I have to mention something that happened at the zoo because it really bothered me. There was a class on a field trip. The kids looked like they were probably in kindergarten, maybe first grade and they kept coming up to Jack (who is 2 years old) and asking him for his bird food. Their "chaperones" were nowhere in sight. I told this one little girl that this was his food...but she could go up to the counter and buy her own for $1. She twirled around and put her hand on her hip and said (with quite the attitude), "I don't have any money!" I seriously wanted to find her chaperone and chew her out but we were really having a nice time and I didn't feel like causing a scene so I just said, "well that's too bad for you then," and moved Jack away from her.

Two things bothered me...number one was the fact that young children were on a field trip at the zoo basically unsupervised. What kind of school was this? I am glad I'm a nurse and only work 3 days a week because I can tell you right now that based on this experience I will be one of the parent chaperones for my kids school field trips. I mean there was no one in site. Not only were these kids basically misbehaving, but more importantly someone could have swiped them right out of there and they would be gone forever. SCARY!!

The second thing that bothered me was that a girl much older than my kid was trying to take something from him and when I basically stopped her she got attitude with me. I know this sounds kind of mean and it is really hard to describe how she acted towards me...like I had no right to tell her she couldn't take something from my child. She seemed smug like she thought she was entitled to it. It really got under my skin. I am so sick of kids these days who just think that everything should be given to them at no price. You have to WORK HARD for things. Obviously their parents are not teaching them these lessons.

So after the animals we all went to the water park. Thank goodness they have that at the zoo, because it gets HOT in Florida! It is only May and we are already in the 90's during the day. The cold water felt soooooo good after walking around the hot zoo all morning. The kids had a blast as usual. We just let them all run around and play. It was great! After the zoo some of us parted ways. Jack and I had lunch with Madilynn and Andrea at Chick-fil-a (or as Madilynn calls it "Chick-ray"). We usually ride together since they live down the street. After lunch we went back home and it was definitely nap time! Jack slept and I think I slept that day too because a full morning of kid chasing makes you sleepy!!!!

I wanted to include a quick Jack update. His PR rash is still with us...but getting much better. You can kind of see it in some of the pictures. The pediatrician warned us that it could last up to 14 weeks so we have a ways to go. It doesn't bother him though and you would never even notice it unless you take off his shirt.

He is talking more and more in full sentences. He says the FUNNIEST things! The morning of the zoo trip I was telling him about how we were going to pick up Madilynn in our car and go to the zoo and then go swimming. He got super excited and started babbling about "Mad-lynn" and "babing shoop" (bathing suit). This kid loves the water and any excuse to put on his babing shoop he is ready to go!

Another cute thing he does is now that my belly is growing he is starting to understand the whole "baby in the belly" concept. He says "mine baby" and gives it a kiss. EVERY time we ask him if the baby is a girl or a boy he says "girl". I'm talking every, single time. Sometimes we even emphasize boy or girl to trick him...he still says girl. Interesting. Everyone else thinks it's a boy. We will see if Jack was right.

He love, love, loves to read books. We read all the time. He is starting to get into the Dr Seuss books, which delights me because they are fun to read and they are certainly entertaining. He will sit through the whole "Cat in the Hat" and thinks it's funny that things rhyme. I am quite impressed because that is a fairly long story and he will listen to the entire thing. He still doesn't watch too much TV, but he likes "Little Bear" and "Little Bill" on Nick Junior. He is over Oswald and Wonder Pets...fine with me because I'm sick of all those episodes over and over again. :) His favorite movies are "Monsters Inc" and he still likes "Toy Story" every once in awhile. He is also into the old "Donald Duck" cartoons. We have them all on DVD because that is Ed's favorite Disney character and he bought the collection years ago for himself. Great investment because Jack watches them all the time. I love classic cartoons. They are so simple and wonderful!

Well, that is all I have for now! Hope you enjoyed stories from our little corner of the world. See you next week! :)

Week 115

May 11-17

This week was fun because my friend Lindsay and I threw a baby shower for a very special girl Angi. :) It was a pleasure to throw the shower for her because she is seriously one of the sweetest, nicest people you will ever meet. Lindsay was gracious enough to hold the event at her house and did most of the work. I did vacuum though. :) Haha!

Just for a little background on how I know Angi-as you all know I work in the Emergency Department as a nurse. Angi works in the Radiology Department and we actually first met when I still worked on the Pediatrics floor. When I first got the job I was going back to work after I had Jack. One day I had a kid who needed procedure done and didn't have a parent with them so I decided to go with them down to Radiology. As I was waiting for the patient to complete all of his testing I started talking to Angi who revealed that she had just had a baby as well. We figured out that our kids were less than 2 months apart! We chatted for a bit, then I took my patient back up to the floor.

I don't think we saw each other for months and months, which is sad. Somehow or another we crossed paths again almost a year later and finally went on a play date together! The babies were a little over a year old at the time. Since then we have been on a few play dates together. We also see each other at work all the time now that I work in the E.D. Long story short we have become great friends and now we are pregnant together at the same time!

So for this baby shower Lindsay and I decided to do jungle animals since that is the theme for Baby Jackson's nursery. This baby is Angi's 3rd kid, but her 1st boy!!!!! To prepare for the shower I decided to try the cookies I made for Jack's party. They made super cute favors...and they actually taste good too! I found a giant box of animal cookie cutters at the craft store and decided to narrow it down to 5 animals for the shower to keep things simple. Trust me, I had about 10 animals I wanted to try. :)

I baked the cookies a few days before the shower so that I ensured that they cool off completely and harden before frosting them. For this particular recipe the frosting is actually "painted" on with a brush...at least the base coat is. The frosting actually hardens onto the cookie into a glazed effect. For the details of whatever animal/thing/whatever that I am trying to achieve, I use the same recipe, but thicken it a bit and then color the frosting to whatever I want. I had actually bought frosting bags and tips for these cookies, but ended up using my oldie but goodie trick that I learned from my MIL...plastic baggies with teeny tiny holes in the end. :) They work GREAT! Here are some pictures of the process.

So the shower was amazing. There was a nice turnout of people from work, mostly the radiology department. Angi got some awesome presents from everyone! The food was WONDERFUL. Lindsay's friend is a caterer and she spotted us some of her delicious treats to feed the guests. There were games, but just a few simple ones. Everyone seemed to have a nice time. By far, one of the best baby showers I have ever been to, for one of the nicest girls I know.

Week 114

May 4-11

After returning home from our big vacation, we got right back into the swing of things. Ed and I went off to work and Jack hung out with his babysitter Ashley, went to school for a couple of days, and by Saturday morning he was sick. He had eaten a decent breakfast but was acting a little bit off. He didn’t have a fever so I just brushed it off. When Ed got home from work that morning we decided to head down to the beach to enjoy the sun and ocean.

We played for a little over an hour and suddenly Jack wanted to leave. He NEVER wants to leave the beach. It was nearly lunchtime so we rode back home and made him his favorite…pizza! He seemed excited about it, but when we all sat down to eat he took one tiny bite and then just kind of looked at it. Ed and I were both concerned. He had his little hands clasped together and looked kind of worried. “What’s wrong buddy?” He had a strange look on his face.I felt his forehead and he was warm. I ran upstairs to get the thermometer and just as we expected…fever…101. Hmmm.

We gave him Motrin and put him on the couch with a cup of juice with ice in it. It wasn’t quite time for his nap so we let him watch part of his latest favorite movie, Monsters Inc. After it had been about 45 minutes I checked his temperature again and it was…103. WTH? I gave him some Tylenol and began assessing what the possible culprit could be. He wasn’t breathing hard or coughing. I got out my stethoscope and checked his lungs, they were clear. There had not been any vomiting or diarrhea. I watched him closely and noticed he was drooling a little. Must be the throat or possibly ears.

We put him down for his nap, checking his temp frequently to make sure it wasn’t going up. It got down to about 99.0 but as soon as the medicines started wearing off it started creeping up again. Still no other symptoms were present. Well at this point you start to figure out if it’s a virus or a bacteria source. We figured we would give it overnight and if he showed no signs of getting better we would take him into the ER Sunday.

Overnight we set our alarms and continued with the Tylenol/Motrin combo. He started coughing…and coughing…and coughing. We noticed his throat was hoarse. It was this barking, dry cough that sounded awful. Both of us were getting a little nervous and by 5:30-6:00 in the morning we decided to go ahead and bring him in. At least it wouldn’t be crowded.
We took him in and the doctor verified that his throat was indeed red with white pustules; he also had a fine, raised, red rash (on top of his old rash that was still healing). The diagnosis?Strep throat with scarlet fever. Great.

It is VERY rare, almost unheard of, for kids under 3 years old to get strep throat. Jack has now had it twice. He goes to school for 3 hours twice a week, no daycare. Ed got frustrated at one point and exploded with the comment, “That’s it! No more school!” I laughed and although I completely get where he was coming from I know that we can’t keep Jack in a bubble. He will go to school at some point. He will get sick. This new baby will get sick even more because Jack will bring home germs from school. It’s just going to happen. Ed agreed with me, but I understand how frustrating it is.

Monday morning we called the pediatrician’s office and took him in so she could take a look at him. She confirmed the diagnosis of strep throat and was a little concerned about how swollen his throat and tonsils were. She kept him on the antibiotic prescribed by the ER doctor and wrote an additional prescription for steroids to help decrease the inflammation in his throat.

So long story short Jack was pretty darn sick from Saturday until Wednesday. He laid around, watched movies, took 3-4 hour naps, drank a lot of juice, ate popsicles, and rested. I know he felt terrible because he NEVER does these things. He is FINALLY feeling better thank goodness. I personally have cabin fever and can’t wait to get back to work on Saturday. I know that sounds terrible, but it was awful being cooped up in the house with a sick, miserable kid.The steroids made him awake even though he was exhausted. He would just sit there and cry because he couldn’t fall asleep and his throat hurt. Poor baby.

Is there a tonsillectomy in our future? Only time will tell.

Week 113

April 27-May 3

So most of this week we were still on vacation in SC. After all of the Easter fun in Myrtle Beach we went back to Sumter, SC to stay with Ed's parents. We relaxed for a couple of days and then drove to Columbia, SC to spend a day with my mom, my sister, brothers, and also my grandma who had driven up for my brother Will's graduation from fire school. We had a nice time hanging out with everyone.

My mom and Grandma watched Jack while Ed and I went to one of our favorite places for lunch. While we ate we noticed firemen setting up bounce houses in a parking lot adjacent to where we were eating. We walked over and asked what was going on and found out that evening there would be a benefit that evening for the Columbia Fire Department. Baskin Robins was having $0.31 scoop night and taking donations for the firefighters. Well of course we were in. Jack LOVES bounce houses. We went with my sister Caroline. Uncle Andy walked over for a little while because it was right across the street from his work. Jack had a blast!!!! We all had our ice cream, made our donation, then he bounced his little heart out!!

The next night was my brother Will's graduation from Fire School. It was so awesome to get to be there for it! He is so grown up and mature all of a sudden. He got his assignment and had to report to work for the first day this past Monday. He loves his station and the people he works with. He has gone on quite a few calls so far and seems very excited and happy about where he is at in life. We are VERY proud of him!!!!!

The next day we were back in Sumter and Jack had a play date with Mr. Nolan Manning. His parents went to Clemson with me and his dad is stationed at Shaw, AFB. Ed and I went to their wedding years ago and we haven't seen them since. We have all been traveling so much with the military it's a rare moment when paths cross. Nolan is a few months older than Jack so they are very close in age and had a lot in common. We met on base and they got to play for a few hours. It was so awesome to catch up with Becky and meet the newest member of their family....Harper!! She was ADORABLE and so very well behaved!!! Thanks for meeting up with us Becky!!!!

On one of our last days in SC we decided to check out the Riverbanks Zoo! I'm pretty sure I have been to the zoo in Columbia, but I can't remember when the last time was. It was amazing! We went with Ed's mom and met up with his brother Ryan. Jack was in heaven!!! As far as selection of animals and things to do, this zoo beat our little zoo out of the water. We had a blast walking around and looking at all the different animals.

There were lots of fun things for kids to do. We waited in line for Jack to ride the pony, but for some reason he kind of freaked out when we went to put him on it. I don't really understand what happened because the last two times he rode a pony he loved it and didn't want to get off. He also rode the carousel, fed the birds, and saw two bears fighting! Awesome day at the zoo! We got tons of great pictures to share. I only posted a handful on here, I will put the rest up on Facebook.

Sunday morning we woke up super early and drove home. Jack was very well behaved in the car once again. At one point he even fell asleep reading his book...adorable! We had a great vacation and enjoyed getting to see our families!!!!!!!