Watch out!!

Joshua has decided that Nathaniel's crawling ISN'T the best thing. Now, he can't get away from him! Last night he was trying to play with some toys and Nathaniel discovered that big brother's toys looked more fun than his...so he started over toward Joshua. I'm in the kitchen fixing dinner and hear "Mommy, help me. Get him off me!" And upon going into the living room, find Nathaniel trying to climb into Joshua's lap and get to his toys - that Joshua is now holding above his head! So I moved Nathaniel, gave him something new to play with and told Joshua that unless he was going to go play in their room, he'd have to deal with it. So, he moved to another area in the living room...and a few minutes later he's calling for me again. Nathaniel had "found" him. Joshua informed me that we were going to have to discuss this crawling thing. I told him that Nathaniel just loved him and wanted to be with him. A few more minutes later, another holler for help, and this time Joshua tells me that we need to discuss how Nathaniel loves him and he should show it a different way!

Well, today it was the same thing. Joshua was trying to eat some carrots - and of course to Nathaniel if we're putting it in our mouths then he sure wants it in his! Prior to this they were playing trucks together - until Joshua got hungry and was starving (about an hour after lunch!). Instead of a carrot stick, Nathaniel got a nice bowl of Gerber bananas, pears and applesauce...no complaints from him!

Scrapbooking

This month I've had the honor of being the feature member on the Storyteller's Club message board. I've been a member there for about 2.5 years. A couple of weeks ago other scrappers got to scraplift (use my layouts for inspiration) from my pages for a contest. This week I had to come up with a contest - I challenged them to scrapbook a childhood memory - with or without pictures. I've also had to come up with a Question of the Day every other day - which has been fun. You can see my Featured Member page here: http://www.storytellersclub.com/Community/FMhome.asp

The above page is a digital page that I did for a contest yesterday - and I won (my name was drawn out!)

You can check out my other pages in my gallery here:
http://www.storytellersclub.com/gallery/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=74

President's Day Weekend

We had a nice President's Day weekend. Carrie came out Saturday night and spent a few days - Joshua loves having Aunt Carrie vist and I sure love the extra pair of hands with Nathaniel! We got some more stuff out of storage and now have bookcases in our room and the boys' room - and they're already filled. Later this week we'll get the pictures back up on the walls. Brian did some finishing on my scrapbooking desk...but I decided not to put the sealer on it right now because I wouldn't be able to use it until Thursday or Friday. We'll do that before we go on vacation in April, most likely.

Nathaniel has definitely taken to crawling! He's not quite up on all 4s, but he moves FAST in his guerrilla style crawling! He almost looks like he's swimming. Speaking of swimming - when Merlot would stretch and roll around on the floor it we called it his swimming. Well, last night Shadow started doing that! We've had that cat for almost 7 years and she has never done anything like that. I told Brian that maybe she's channeling Merlot :) A couple of days ago I found her laying in the hallway where Merlot would lay so he could keep an eye on people in the front and the back of the house...another thing she's never done before.

Joshua helped Aunt Carrie with her homework yesterday...she needed some motion pictures for her photography class...she came to the right person for that help!

Brian's back to work today and I've got laundry and dishes to do - not too much since I was able to get caught up (thanks to Carrie!) on all that piled up last week due to my cold and Nathaniel's . Joshua and I are going to get going on preschool, too, we've kind of slacked off lately.

We made it to storytime today - yay! out of the house!!! The stories were about dental health and going to the dentist...just in time...we go for check-ups in a couple of weeks. Joshua was thrilled to see all of his storytime friends again...it's been three weeks since we last went!

Happy Valentine's Day!!

What a week! We've all had colds - even Nathaniel! Brian started it all (and ended up with a sinus infection), then Joshua got it (and still has a cough and runny nose), then at the end of last week I finally got hit with it. We hoped and hoped that Nathaniel would luck out again, but it wasn't too be. After being up with him most of the night Monday night and sleeping on the couch with him what little he did sleep, we took him to the doctor's for a check since it was his first time being sick. He weighed in at 17 pounds and the doctor said other than his cold he looked great - very healthy and happy. By last night he was back to his almost regular self and today is pretty much back to normal - except for a cough and very runny nose! He also decided to start crawling today! He's been working on it for awhile, but really has taken off (literally) today.

Joshua's getting tired of being sick and being home...we've missed storytime the past two weeks due to his cold last week and Nathaniel's yesterday. Hopefully next week we'll make it back. We finally got some rain a few days last week. More is on the way for the weekend, supposedly. We need it.

February Fun

Nothing that exciting going on for us. Nathaniel is trying so hard to crawl. He digs his toes into the carpet and shoves himself forward. He can propel himself quite far that way! Joshua is getting over a cold that has had him low for the past few days. He's starting to get better and just as a croaky cough to deal with. Brian's working at getting rid of a sinus infection and I'm just trying to keep any form of a cold away! We've had rather nice weather the past few days - almost got to 70 today! However, it is supposed to start raining tomorrow and do that off and on for several days. That's a good thing though, we really need it!

Five months old!!!

Nathaniel is already 5 months old - time flies when you're having fun, so Brian and I have decided we're really having fun with as fast as time seems to be going! And we truly are. Nathaniel is trying his darndest to crawl...we tell him he doesn't need to, he can wait a month or so, but he doesn't seem to listen to us. He discovered one of Joshua's Hot Wheels toys yesterday (Crazy Croc) and will turn and scoot himself to get it, but hasn't gotten his knees up and his tummy up yet. I'm waiting for rug burn on his tummy from the spinning and scooting! He's pretty determined. He's getting the hang of sitting up...though he still topples over. This usually happens because he wants to grab a toy - or better yet, his toes. He likes to suck on his toes - gross!

Saturday Joshua & Nathaniel got to go spend a few hours at Aunt Carrie's house. Joshua was so excited...he'd been looking forward to it all week! Nathaniel was pretty nonchalant about it all, but behaved well for his aunt. Brian and I were able to go to the Sacramento Temple for the first time. We had a very nice afternoon.

Merlot

Last Friday we discovered major lumps on our dog's neck. Merlot was a Cocker Spaniel and hadn't had a haircut in several months, so we must have missed them amid all the hair. We had been noticing his vision (or lack thereof) as he was stumbling over nothing, running into things (large things like flower pots and fences) and not finding food that had dropped on the ground. Also, a few days prior to finding the lumps, he'd suddenly had a lack of appetite - very unusual for our garbage hound. Our wonderful vet came Tuesday afternoon and confirmed our suspicions - lymphoma & blindness. She said he's relatively young (8 1/2) to develop lymphoma, but it's pretty common across the breeds. She gave us a few options - medication (with unpleasant side effects), chemo, and of course, euthanization. Besides being well out of the range of our budget, neither the meds or chemo would cure him and make him better - just stretch things out. So we made the hard decision of having him put to sleep. It wasn't the way we'd wanted to find a new home for him...something we'd been considering in recent months as his behavior had changed and he'd gotten more aggressive (playfully, not violent) with Joshua...some of that may have been an effect of the disease or blindness, we don't really know. Wednesday afternoon, our vet came and picked him up and took him to her office at home to take care of him. Joshua did well with this, as we had explained to him that Merlot was very very sick and wasn't going to get better so the vet was going to take him to a special place where they could make him feel better...we didn't want to have him think that the vet was going to kill his dog. We will eventually tell him that Merlot has gone to be with Heavenly Father, but not right away. Joshua gave a couple of bags of dog treats that we had left to the vet when she picked up Merlot and asked her to give him one for breakfast each day...that about did me in. What has saved Joshua a lot is that a friend brought him a little beanie baby puppy that he has been dragging around on Merlot's leash since Wednesday afternoon...that seems to really be helping him. It all happened so fast - but we didn't want to watch the poor dog suffer or maybe wait too long and have Joshua find him if he didn't wake up or something. Merlot had a lot of annoying habits and traits (the dining room carpet that needs to be replaced is a testimony of that!), but he was wonderful with Joshua as a baby and so very protective. He will be missed.