Kitten Pile!

It is difficult to type with a kitten pile on your desk! One of the many advantages of working from home :)

Got Candy?

This is 280 pieces of candy*. (There's another 40 "reserve" pieces). I put Joel in charge of Halloween candy buying this year, so that there is someone to say "I told you so" when we run out. So. I am just entering this into evidence as "exhibit A". 

*By the time trick-or-treat starts tonight there may be a few less ;)

Caroline's First School Picture

Mad... Confused... Slightly amused ;) To be fair, she did end up getting sent home sick with a fever shortly after these pictures were taken! If anyone wants to see the rest of the proofs, let me know and I can email you the link.

Anniversary Weekend

Since Joel and I went to Charleston a few weeks ago to celebrate our anniversary early, we had a quiet actual-anniversary-weekend. We did have a babysitter Saturday night, Caroline's teacher Ashley who is also babysitting for us again this coming Saturday so we can go out to dinner with friends. We had dinner at PF Chang's (got to use those American Express points for something; actually I enjoy PF Chang's since they changed up their menu and offer a lot of seasonal items now). We also saw the movie Gravity. So dinner + movie = good night! The kids were well-behaved according to the babysitter's report, and she did not seem to be regretting her decision to agree to two weekends in a row of babysitting ;)

Yesterday I had a quiet morning at home with Caroline while Joel took the kids to Hebrew School and then to the grocery store with him. During the afternoon both Ben and Rebecca were pretty much unseen; Rebecca has become a lot more independent/sociable with the kids on the street, and it helps that two recently-moved-in neighbors have kids about her age. So she was "out" all afternoon, and Ben was in and out but also self-occupied.

After the Eagles' crushing defeat Joel set about making Chinese food for dinner -- Buddha's Feast. It actually turned out very well despite a lukewarm reception by Caroline and an even cooler reception by Rebecca ;) Ben, Joel and I enjoyed it! Caroline picked out some of the vegetables and noodles, but didn't seem keen on trying the tofu. We of course used gluten free noodles and soy sauce, and double checked that the rest of the ingredients were all naturally gluten free as well.

Pumpkin Carving

The kids made their own pumpkin designs which I dutifully attempted to carve for them. I rejected Becca's first design which involved lots of hearts and other difficult shapes ;) Caroline took her design session very seriously! And when she wakes up from her nap we'll see how hers turned out ;)

I'm Ready!

To eat gluten free, meat free, dairy free, processed sugar free, organic/locally sourced ;) My first of what I hope will be weekly deliveries from Nourish arrives later today! I have been "lurking" on this web site for a couple of months now, and after some friends mentioned that they have started using it and love it, I was able to convince Joel to take the plunge ;) I intend to use it mainly for meals for myself, sharing some things with Caroline, and Joel wants to try it as well so if he likes it I might start ordering more things for him too.

Because She's Too Cute To Say No

Yes here she is, still drinking out of a bottle at 22 months old. Because she asks for one, and come on -- would you be able to say no to this face?

Chilly Morning!

It was 32 degrees at the bus stop this morning! Becca put on a brave face wrapped in her warm ELE sweatshirt ;) Clara was a bit more of a wimp about the cold morning, pictured here burying her face against a heating vent in the kitchen ;)

Caroline Update

Caroline fortunately seems to be feeling better over the last few days both with regards to the croup and her tummy troubles. She also has been talking up quite a storm seemingly overnight, now saying a lot of 2 and 3 word sentences which she was not doing before. Yesterday for example she said "I happy mama!" and "I want kiss!" both of which were very cute and I had not heard her say before. She also started being able to say "Becca" which she could not say before. Sometimes she can get the "c" sound in there and sometimes she leaves it out though ;) For some reason she still can't really say "Ben" though. She says "Beh". She is also getting soooo smart! For instance a couple of nights ago Joel burned something in the toaster, and I put my hands over Caroline's ears because I thought the smoke detector would go off. (It didn't). Then last night Joel put a hot frying pan in the sink and steam/smoke rose up from it and Caroline saw it, jumped up, and covered her ears ;) It was so cute!

Don't Look Down!

Here is Becca braving one of the many rock walls at Inner Peaks Climbing Center yesterday. She attended her friend George's birthday party there and though she was a little nervous in the beginning she got the hang of both going up and coming back down pretty quickly! She didn't make it all the way to the top but as you can see by this picture she got pretty close! 

Besides the birthday party the weekend was pretty quiet. Saturday Joel took Ben and Becca to a friend's house to play for the afternoon, and Caroline slept from 1 until I woke her up at 4:45 so I had the whole afternoon to lie on the couch snuggling with kittens and watching television! (As a result of that down-time I have piles of laundry to catch up on now but it was worth it). 

Yesterday Ben and Becca had Hebrew school in the morning and Caroline and I took a walk with the dog and played outside. While I took Becca to the party in the afternoon and Caroline napped, Ben had a friend over to play for the afternoon. So it was not a busy weekend, but nice/relaxing.

Friday Update

Caroline's had a bit of illness this week. She came down with croup over the weekend and was sick Monday and Tuesday. Fortunately it was not as bad as it was last time (no urgent care / steroids needed this time!) But still she was coughing a lot, had a low fever and was just generally cranky. To make matters worse she started to have diarrhea over the last few days. After a while of thinking about what we've been doing differently recently with her diet, I came to the conclusion that the culprit must be the gluten free bread I  bought last week and this week at Great Harvest Bread Co. They shut down on Mondays, clean all their equipment, and bake gluten free bread that day which is available in limited quantities and usually sold out by Wednesdays. Well I happened to be right next door last week at the vet's office so I picked up a loaf and Caroline liked it so much I picked up another loaf this week. I don't know why I thought I could trust that the equipment that has gluten on it all week long would be clean enough not to contaminate the gluten free bread they bake no matter how much they say they clean it/try to control for cross contamination. But, I think that must be it. After looking into it further, the general consensus seems to be that people who actually have celiac disease should not eat the gluten free bread from Great Harvest Bread Co. (Which leaves me wondering who does actually buy it? Apparently not anyone who really needs to eat gluten free!) Lesson learned. Unfortunately she ate it as recently as yesterday morning for breakfast (had diarrhea four times yesterday and once this morning so far) so it is going to take a couple more days to get out of her system. Poor kiddo -- double whammy this week :(

Hair Cut (professional this time)

Ben was due for a trim anyway so I brought Rebecca along for a little my-kid-cut-her-own-hair-please-fix-it hair cut :) so she got long bangs framed around her face to hide the chunk she cut. Looks pretty good I think :)

Halloween Preview

Ben was too busy being beaten at Madden 25 by a five year old neighbor to participate in my photo shoot ;) he is going as an evil clown ;)

Red Card

Becca brought home her first "red card" today for bad behavior (quite a few yellows -- warnings -- but this was her first red card). Actually her behavior has been pretty good lately, and I think in the last two weeks she has been on green or blue every day except for one yellow, until today. As you can see from the note, and the accompanying lock of hair, Rebecca's transgression today was cutting her hair with scissors, and then lying about it. (Really? Cutting our hair with scissors? How unoriginal).

The even more exasperating part was that when she got home she took her backpack upstairs and hid the note, so when I saw the red card and no note I immediately asked her to go find it and bring it to me. Because of lying/hiding the note, I gave her double punishment -- no TV for two days. She lied about cutting her hair, thus prompting the red card, and then lied about the red card :P When will she learn? *SIGH* And now she has a random short lock of hair in front of her face. 

Caroline's First School Project

Mommy worked hard on it ;)

Mad Cats

Chamberlain has ringworm, and thanks to all the picking up /lugging around of said cat by Rebecca, Rebecca now has ringworm too. Chamberlain and Sheridan went to the vet today, and $345 later, we came home with instructions to shampoo them both with anti fungal shampoo once a week. Also they may need some oral medicine as well, which the vet needs to order or send out to be compounded or something, so I don't have that yet. You can see Chamberlain's ringworm infection in this picture below her shoulder. It's gross. Rebecca now has several small round scaly spots on her chest up near her neck, which makes sense because she picks Chamberlain up and holds her up against her chest. So now she has Lotramin cream 2x a day and the kittens had their first shampoo.  (Sheridan is being treated just because she will probably get ringworm from Chamberlain if she doesn't already have it though the vet didn't see any of it on her). The directions on the shampoo said to let it sit on the skin for 10 minutes before rinsing. After an initial, OMG I have to shampoo two kittens and then leave the shampoo on them for 10 minutes before rinsing? WTF? I decided that after shampooing in the kitchen sink I would lock the kittens in the bathroom shower stall for 10 minutes and then take them out one at a time for rinsing. This worked pretty well though the kittens, as you can see, were not thrilled! Neither was I, I have several scratches on my wrists despite my efforts to wear long sleeves to avoid being scratched. I now have wet sleeves and am still scratched :(

Charleston

Charleston had a lot of pretty flowers ;) Joel and I had a great, relaxing weekend celebrating our anniversary early in Charleston. We stayed at a cute little inn that had complementary wine and cheese every evening, and a cute little courtyard to enjoy it in. The inn was walking distance to lots of great restaurants, so we did a fair bit of eating/drinking, and also spent most of Saturday lying on the beach at Sullivan's Island, which is about a 15 minute drive from Charleston. The weather was unseasonably HOT this weekend so it made for a perfect beach day! The only disappointment of the weekend was that we could not eat at Husk, one of the restaurants we had a reservation at, because a power outage forced it and some of the restaurants around it to close on Saturday night. We found an alternate though and had a great meal anyway! The kids had fun with Sharon, going on a scavenger hunt at the greenway, going to the arcade at adventure landing, going out to dinner, and yes, they even made it to Hebrew school! ;)

Happy Friday!!

Here she is, decked out in her "Shabbat shirt" for preschool. Unfortunately the back of the shirt says "Challah!!!" and of course Caroline is not allowed to eat challah. Oh well.

Today is not just ANY Friday, it is me and Joel's early anniversary weekend trip to Charleston Friday! We are leaving after lunch, and leaving the kids with the very capable and slightly insane for agreeing repeatedly to watch all three of our children for an entire weekend, Sharon ;) We are staying at The Indigo Inn, and we have dinner reservations at two highly recommended restaurants, Slightly North of Broad, and Husk. We also are planning to go to the beach tomorrow at Sullivan's Island. And maybe do a ghost tour. And maybe go try to find Robert Jordan's grave. Okay that one is my idea and so far I have had a hard time convincing Joel of it. Anyway, whatever we end up doing we will have a lot of fun I am sure!! We will be back home Sunday afternoon. Saying goodbye this morning to my Shabbat Girl was hard, because she does not understand that we are leaving. (Ben and Rebecca on the other hand are very excited to have Sharon staying with them this weekend, apparently preferring her company to mine). Anyway I will post some pictures from our Charleston trip so stay tuned!!

Kitten Pictures

Kitten pictures, because everyone likes to look at cute kittens right? I am a little peeved at Sheridan right now though, for some reason she is obsessed with people food and whenever I am eating anything at my desk or even drinking coffee or something she literally tries to climb all over me to take a taste. She just tried to jump onto my lap for the 50 thousandth time to have a look at my lunch, and I got clawed on the thigh. Ugh. Otherwise they are doing fine. I relocated them from my office to the laundry room (their litter box, food, water, and where they sleep at night but otherwise they have the run of the house now). They enjoy sleeping in the laundry. In the pic above, they are sleeping in CLEAN laundry so, please pardon the cat hair on the clean clothes...