Monday, April 27, 2009

Whirlwinds

So it's Monday again. When did that happen? We had a busy week last week, and our weekend was pretty packed, too. Roxanne and I went to Greenville to stay with my sister's family, and we both had a great time. Photos soon. Roxanne had SO much fun hanging out with her cousins, and I loved watching her play with so many girly toys. She really liked a baby doll umbrella stroller. She pushed that thing all over the house for a really long time. Of course, it helps that she had more than ten feet to run around in. Unlike our house... We both missed Justin though. He stayed home to try and take a little vacation from his super busy work life. Also, we are trying to put an offer on a house, so that has been INSANE. One issue after the next. I'm pretty sure that there is a roughly 3% chance that we will get this house, which is why I've kept it off of the blog, but it is really time consuming (and thought consuming) so I'm writing about it now... But I won't go into details. We still haven't even gotten the bid in yet. We hope to do that tomorrow. I'm convinced it will be sold any second... To someone else, with less hoops to jump through... Government programs are great in that we wouldn't be able to buy a house without down payment assistance, but they are really really really complicated. And then add to it that we have to buy a foreclosure that costs under 15% of the fair market value and is not located in a terrible part of town... Yeah. Lots of hoops.

We went to the Inman Park Festival on Sunday when Roxanne and I got back, and it was wonderful. Publix had set up a kids' play area, and Roxanne had lots of fun. Although I think her favorite parts were the greasy grilled cheese that came in a yellow plastic hat (which she wore for the rest of the day) and running around the field where we sat to eat lunch and hamming it up with all of the festival-goers. I mean really. She is such a flirt! She also got a kick out of riding the Marta train. We only went one stop, but she was screaming and laughing the whole time. She's a funny little thing.

I just wanted to take a minute to document her eating habits. Mainly for my own amusement in a few years... She is getting to be a picky eater. Her favorite foods are cheese, in most any form, although she LOVES cheese dip from La Fonda. She likes cheese quesadillas from there, too. And the kid's meal comes with rice and beans, too, and she eats a TON of those, too. She loves most kinds of pasta, but lasagna is her favorite. Sometimes I am able to sneak peas into her macaroni and cheese and trick her into eating them, but she is not a huge fan of vegetables overall. I found some butternut squash ravioli at the Farmer's Market and she liked that a lot. I try to tell myself that that counts as a veggie. :( She will eat broccoli fairly well, which I think is mainly due to the novelty factor of eating a mini tree. She likes sweet potatoes, too. She likes meat, especially turkey lunch meat, grilled salmon, and most kinds of chicken. Oh and bacon, but we try not to make that a common thing... Now that we have started ordering her kids' meals at some of the restaurants we go to, we realize how terrible the options are at most places. It's always mac and cheese, pizza, or chicken nuggets and fries. Heaven forbid anyone market a vegetable or fruit for a little one... She does still like fruit a lot. Grapes, bananas, and certain types of pears are her favorites. She likes tomatoes, but they make her face break out a little. She doesn't like strawberries or melon. She loves yogurt, but she's ambivalent about cow's milk. She's still not weaned, although she is night weaned. Phew!

OK, we're off for a walk. A house down the street burned down over the weekend. It's really spooky looking. I feel sorry for the people who lived there. It was split into several apartments. It makes me appreciate what we have!

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Boundless Budgies and 16 months





Roxanne is 16 months old today! We took her to the zoo early this morning to try and see the "boundless budgies" exhibit before it started raining. It was perfect! There was hardly anyone there, and the woman working there told us that the birds had just woken up and were hungry. We bought two "seed sticks" to hold out and let the birds eat off of them. Roxanne kept wanting to hold one, but as soon as a bird landed on it, she would drop it and get a little freaked out. So we just held them for her and let her watch, which seemed to be just as good for her. She was pretty mesmerized. After we finished with the birds, we scooted to some of the other animals, and it was wonderful! The zoo was almost empty, and the animals were all very active. We got close up views of two of the elephants, the lion cubs (these guys are HUGE now), the otters, the pandas, and we spent about fifteen minutes watching three baby gorillas clown around. They were only about 10 feet away. Even the panda room was pretty empty. It was really nice, even though we got slightly sprinkled on.

Yesterday, we enjoyed the lovely weather. We looked at a couple of foreclosures in the morning, and then we went to the Sweetwater 420 Festival at Candler Park with Ariel and Luke, and Roxanne had her first Sponge Bob Square Pants popsicle. Messy, but apparently delicious. She still has a runny nose and has been a little fussy, but it doesn't seem to be getting worse at least...

Thursday, April 16, 2009

The snotty tickler

Roxanne has a cold. She woke up this morning with a runny nose. What was all that I kept saying about her awesome immune system? Ooops. Oh well. So far, it's not too bad, just a drippy nose. I have been giving her the Hyland's C-Plus Cold Tablets, and they seem to be making her feel more comfortable. I've also been using saline for her nose, which she hates, but I want to keep things moving.

In other news, Roxanne has learned to tickle people. She waves her fingers at your neck or other body part and goes "tickletickletickletickle" and giggles. It's adorable.

Isn't this weather great? We've been going to the park and playing in the backyard most of the week. Aside from yellow bottoms from sliding down the pollen-covered playground equipment, the babies are in heaven. Maybe that's the snotty nose culprit...

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Oh, and the weeble chair

I have to write this down before I forget. Roxanne made me laugh so hard I cried tonight. She was in one of her wild moods where she was marching around and playing with things for just a minute or two before moving on to something new, when I saw her pick up a tiny plastic rocking chair, that is made for her Weebles. It's probably 2.5 inches tall. She set it down gently on the floor next to the big red chair where Justin was sitting, and then stood back up and turned her back to it. She started backing up and trying to sit down, and I finally realized that she was actually trying to sit on the Weeble chair. I kept watching as she was standing back up and moving the chair to try and get it placed right where it needed to be, but somehow missing it each time she sat down. Finally, she was still keeping her back to it (she always backs up to sit down) she started bending over and looking between her legs to make sure she was lined up with the chair. She was so determined! Finally, she sat on it, and promptly started crying. I guess I should have intervened sooner, but it just didn't occur to me that she would actually aim it right, or that it would hurt her little bottom when she did sit down. Sorry Roxanne. Still, it was funny. One of many moments where you think how much you would love to know what goes on in their little brains...

Playing catch-up


So, it's been one of those weeks/weekends where I didn't get much sleep or time to catch up. I'm going to try and go to bed early (haha) and catch up a little, but we'll see. Following up on my last post, we did go to see the house, and it was just too much work. It's such a shame to see a cute house with so much potential in such rough shape. I mean, it needed an entirely new roof (even some of the wood structure underneath was rotten) and the walls were moldy, all the windows were busted out, etc. etc. etc. Sigh. I found another foreclosure right in downtown Decatur that was PERFECT, and of course, it sold almost immediately. The scary part is that it sold at 121% of the asking price from the bank. Yikes. We can't compete there. Especially since this home still needed some work. Oh well, the right thing will come along. And I'm really enjoying looking at listings. It makes me feel almost like I have some sort of corporate job again. Almost. Usually I'm looking at listings during nap time or while the babies are eating. The last time I talked to the mortgage broker, I had to interrupt him to tell someone to stop eating dirt. And yes, it was Roxanne. She loves dirt.

We had a very full weekend, with friends over Friday night, then Chloe's fourth birthday party on Saturday afternoon, and then straight to Pop Pop and Yaya's farm to spend the night. Sunday morning we went to Gainesville to see Tucker's christening and have brunch at the club, which included an Easter egg hunt. Roxanne was spoiled and got several Easter bundles from assorted family members (Thanks to all, she loves all of it!). She also had another Easter egg hunt at my parent's farm. Colleen (Yaya) organized that, and Roxanne surprised me by picking up on it so quickly. She really seemed to enjoy picking up the eggs and putting them in her basket at both places. Justin and I were really torn about what to do for her Easter basket. I finally got some Annie's Organic Bunny Cookies in chocolate, and put them in plastic eggs. I also got her a little notebook and knitted her a tiny bunny. He was very simple, with no limbs or eyes, but she seemed to like him. I tried to shape his body like an egg, so she could fit him in the plastic egg shells, and she definitely got a kick out of that. For her dress, I put her in one of my old dresses. As you can see above, I'm wearing it to get my picture made with my sister. I guess I'm about the same age as Roxanne is now, but I'm not sure. My mom told me today that she got the dress at a pharmacy in Winder. Wouldn't it be neat if stores were still like that? I mean, I guess some are, but not many. I thought it had been my Easter dress at some point, but I'm not sure. Either way, we thought she looked really cute in it. Like a baby doll.

I can't think of much else that is new at the moment. I'm too tired. I am putting LOTS of new photos on our Flickr page, but I will try to post another entry here that is just some of my favorites. I know it can be a little overwhelming when I put like 30 photos up at once on the Flickr page. I'm just lazy. And the uploader keeps failing on me, which is really annoying.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Dodging a Bullet

Roxanne is still not sick (I just knocked on wood). I don't understand, but I won't question. Josh still has a runny nose and a cough. This week I'm keeping Josh and Ben and Roxanne AND Noah, Josh's older brother. He's on spring break. I'm *exhausted* but I figure the week will go by faster this way... No time to think... Roxanne is having a blast though. She loves the big boys. She has started picking a couple of new words every day. I think it's from being around the big kids. Her newest words are "bubbles," "shoes," "stick," "Josh," "Noah," and "baby." None of them are crystal clear except for "bubbles." She says "Josh" pretty clearly, too. She has also started stringing together baby sentences, much to our shock. It's OK if you don't believe me on that one, since I probably wouldn't, but it's pretty neat to hear. When I'm holding her and she wants to get down, she dips her upper body down and says "I wanna walk," but it sounds more like "ah-wan-walK," with lots of emphasis on the "k." Justin heard it the other day, so I'm not totally crazy. We think it could be coming from the fact that I always ask her "do you want to walk?" when I'm carrying her.

In other news, we are going to look at a house tomorrow night. I found a program (Neighborhood Stabilization Program, through Georgia Dream) that allows you to buy a foreclosed home and grants you up to $14,000 for down payment and/or renovations costs. It's really complicated, but the mortgage broker we've been talking to has sent our application to the guy who works with the program and he said we are approved. Not officially of course, since we didn't actually apply for the loan, but on paper, we look like good candidates. The awesome part is that the underlying loan is an FHA loan, and the second loan that is the $14,000 is completely interest and payment free. If you live in the home for 5.5 years, it's forgiven. Between that and the $8,000 tax credit, it would really be a good time for us to buy. It's not going to be easy, since we have pretty much decided that we really want to buy in the City of Decatur (I know, I know, the taxes are CRAZY, but we aren't going to be in a mansion, and the schools and services are worth it). Then we have the whole issue of our lease, which ends at the end of September. We can't afford to break it, and we can't afford to pay rent and a mortgage payment, so it's kind of confusing. At this point, we are just trying to see what types of homes are out there, and what we would be looking at in different price ranges. The home we are going to look at is in Oakhurst, which is City of Decatur, but not the most established area, so it tends to be slightly cheaper. But the house looks like it needs a LOT of work, so it probably would end up being more than we could afford, even though the asking price is pretty low. Regardless, we just want to explore things so that we feel like the decision we end up making is a good and well-thought-out one. We're very very determined to keep a mortgage payment only slightly more a month than our rent, so I've been basically only looking at that number as opposed to the highest amount we would qualify for. I don't even want to know what that would be... OK, I'm rambling. I need sleep. And a spa day. Right.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Well-ish baby

Roxanne's hives are looking MUCH better today. Sorry, I forgot to post after our trip to the pediatrician yesterday. She basically said that Roxanne had hives. It wasn't a reaction to the MMR shot, but it was a reaction to having the vaccine in general. Like it made her immune system go a little haywire. I totally didn't understand, but after talking to my mom, I kind of get it now. According to Nana, who is my go-to person for all things baby/child/health/fashion/home furnishings, etc., hives are usually an auto-immune reaction. So probably what happened was Roxanne's immune system perceived a threat from the vaccines and went into overdrive to fight them, but ended up overdoing it. Ugh. I hate vaccines. But, I trust modern medicine (for the most part) so I can't say I don't want her vaccinated. It's just not nice to see your child covered in welts. This morning the hives are much more faded, which is surprising since the doctor told me she would likely have them for a week. She told me I could give her Benadryl, but that Zyrtec would be better because it lasts for 24 hours. This is fabulous, since giving her the Benadryl every six hours was a pain, especially since she hates it and spits it out all over both of us. She isn't a huge fan of the Zyrtec, but it doesn't make her sleepy, and once a day is really not so bad. And as it turns out, when I went to pick up the Zyrtec at the drug store, they have a Children's Zyrtec especially for "Hives Relief." Again, thanks Modern Medicine.

On another note, I just wanted to take this opportunity to stand on my soap box for just a minute. Roxanne is *knock on wood* very very healthy. She hasn't even had a cold since Christmas, in spite of Ben and Josh going through at least two. Of course, they have one right now, so she might end up getting it in a few days, so we'll see. I know that all of that could be a fluke, but I have to feel like it's at least a little in part because I'm still nursing Roxanne. I know it weirds some people out for an older baby to still be nursing, but after doing research on it, I think it's best for us as a family. Well, me and Roxanne. Justin wouldn't mind if I weaned... But I don't plan on going past 2, no matter what, and I might just go to pumping and giving Roxanne sippy cups at 18 months to avoid some of the potential developmental delays that extending nursing can sometimes cause. Either way, one of the main benefits of extended breastfeeding is strengthening your child's immune system. So for now, we're going to stick with it.

I hope you guys aren't all suffering from allergies. It's so nasty and yellow out!