Friday night I harvested all of the brown bananas I've been saving in the freezers for the past year for an annual batch of banana bread.

Bananas are a primary staple in Julia's diet, so I may be making it more often.
See, every morning, Antonio has a go-gurt or cereal, and Julia has some kind of breakfast bar while we finish getting ready.

I found 12 bananas, perfect for 2 loaves and a couple batches of muffins.
Antonio helped squeeze out the defrosted banana from the peel, and toss a few of the ingredients in the bowl. He's a great baking helper.

Part of the morning routine is when I get Julia up and put her on my bed, she has a little something to eat. Keeping her happy and pretty still while I get her dressed & tame her hair. Antonio is usually already dressed and watching Sesame Street up on the bed, so close enough for entertainment back up should I need it.

This morning, she was crabby!
I put her on the bed she sits up, puts her head down and screeches, hair wild and everywhere, eye sqeezed shut in frustration of being awake.
I leave the room to get coffee and her breakfast, and when I walk back in she's the same way that I left her, but the squeak in the floor cued my entrance, and her little arm shot out with hand open.
She knew I had bites.
As I placed the muffin in her hand, she shoved most in her mouth, sighed, and soon after looked up not so cranky.

Dad had an out of town softball tournament and suggested I come down for the night and we could have a night out (!)

So, this weekend, Julia had her first overnight jammie party at Gramma's, sans The Parents.

When we got there, we were greeted by Grandpa. Julia squirmed down from my arms, ran over to him and put arms up and stood on tiptoes in front of him. She had kisses and hugs for everyone.
Antonio was so happy to be there, I think if he had the choice between Chuck E Cheese and a jammie party, sadly the rat would loose.

The kids got settled, and I was so kindly allowed to slept off some of the sudafed I'd taken for an awful allergy day.

Gramma had a gift for Antonio to keep him occupied with it being rainy out. A cat's cradle kit, which had a bright red string and a book full of tricks (I can't get past just getting the base set up woven through my fingers)
He mastered a few tricks, but one that Gramma taught him he liked best & since it involves a partner, anyone that wasn't holding something *got* to help him out.

I had initially thought about leaving around 7, then, thought maybe I'd leave earlier, but we were all having a nice time, I stayed through dinner.
Then kept mom company while she gave Julia a bath, and showed her how the girl usually settles in to go to bed.

We were a little worried about bedtime, she has a definite way she likes things done, and hey, as long as it gets her to sleep reasonably quick, I'm okay with it.
It did turn out that the major kink in the bedtime situation was
1) Not Mom was putting her to bed, in
2) Not her bed.

Gramma prevailed, and after Angry Julia got over it, with a little help of going outside to look at starts (Clever Gramma) the story goes she eventually settled down and went to sleep....for a little while.

After the girl got to sleep, Gramma and Antonio stayed up late watching The Wizard of Oz, our family favorite. I'm glad that he's enjoying it as I did.
When I was little mom would make a big deal when it would come on, and I felt special sharing that with her.
I wonder if he feels the same way.

It sounds like they had a good morning. Antonio is generally pretty laid back early in the day, and while Julia is too, her version of mellow is not running.

Here she is still-ish for a moment in mid-what-can-I-get-into-next scope.
Or maybe mid-ah-ha-I-can-get-to-the-computer-keyboard...



Here he is showing off his cat's cradle skillz and his latest snaggled hanging by gravity loose tooth.

They play...

The Ear! II

Julia is still not 100% and more crabby than usual.
There's still some ear poking at too, on her part.
Monday at the encouragement of Gramma, I made a follow up appointment a few days early, just to check and see how things looked.

I tried the appointment line first and amazingly enough, there was an appointment available this week.
The next day at 4:30.
With the Evile nurse practitioner.
Her pediatrician, who we adore, was unavailable.
At least we could get in and it shouldn't be too much of an ordeal to peek in her ears.

It was determined that her ears are looking just fine.
Must be the molars again...

The NP was decent enough to Julia. Julia insisted on standing during the whole inspection.
Laying down is not her thing.

But, when she walked in the door, the first thing she did was point at Antonio and tell him rudely that his fly was undone.
When he didn't do anything about it, because, he had no idea what she was talking about, she looked at me, raised her eyebrows and told me that his fly was undone.
I ignored her and waited until she was occupied with Julia, and whispered to Antonio that he needed fix his zipper.
No need to shame.
Not like anything was hanging out.

When I asked him about it later on at home, he said he didn't get what she was saying.
He was trying figure out why there were flys in the hospital and why he needed to do anything to one.

When I picked up Antonio from school this afternoon, his teacher told me that he was difficult during a portion of class today.

They are going to be creating a book, and today's assignment was to create the cover. They needed to come up with a title, draw a picture and put themselves as the author and illustrator.
Antonio stated that writing is not his thing, and refused to do the project. Then he went a step further and shredded the book cover he had started on, and refused to start another one.

I got the details for the assignment and once we got home, set him up with the necessary supplies and stepped back while he came unhinged.
Seems he wanted to do a true story, and another kid already took the title idea he had.
And well
WRITING IS NOT HIS THING!

he says.

While he sat at the table and alternated between being mad and calming down, I thought about his situation.

Then I actually had an idea. I asked him if he was worried about how long the story he needed to write was going to be.
He said, "YEEESSSSSSSS!"

I asked him if he thought he was going to have to write a story as long as Frog and Toad or Charolotte's Web, which we're about halfway through reading.
He did.
I told him that I bet the story they were going to write was only going to be a few pages, and since they were illustrating the book as well, a lot of space would probably be taken up by pictures.

This totally settled him down.
We talked about ideas of real things that he found interesting that he could write about, and he decided that he wanted to write a story about going to see the snow.
In 5 minutes he had his book cover finished.
And he was about 10,000 times less freaked than when he first got home.

After a snack and little down time once we got home, she did no less than 20 laps around the kitchen table, screaming and laughing the whole time.
Then she played Matchbox car demolition derby with Antonio.
Their very favorite game right now.

Seems to be doing better...

Oh the ear!

Her daycare provider told me she was poking at her ear and didn't nap well and was pretty unhappy when I picked up Thing 2 yesterday afternoon.
She's had some serious upper molar action lately, so we decided to try the standby decongestant/Motrin cocktail.

She slept restlessly, when she did sleep. She spent a decent chunk of the wee hours perched on our pillows.

This morning I called the appointment line to get her into see her Pediatrician.
Give 10 minutes of personal information, Thing 2 symptoms and address.
No appointments available today.
"Please call the Ped office, see if they can squeeze you in. "
So, I called the Ped's office, and was snarked at by some Corpsman for calling them.
Let her know to call Tricare office and tell them to stop telling parents to call.
Asked if I could chat with a nurse. Snotty Corpsman takes my contact info and says a nurse will call me.
To clarify, "Today?"
She says, "maybe."

Nurse calls, and says there are no appointments available this week
I ask nurse what is going on that I cannot get Thing 2 in to see a pediatrician when she's sick?
Nurse says I should take Thing 2 to the ER.
Let nurse know that ER gets pissed when kids are brought in for things that are not super emergencies when there's a perfectly good Pediatrics clinic a few floors up.
Nurse says all the kids booked in appointments are sicker than mine.

What.ever.

I put Thing 2 down for a nap.
Hospital calls, and I let it go to voicemail.

After restless 25 minute nap, Thing 2 has a snack while I get us ready to go to the ER out in town.*
I check the voicemail, and it was the nurse calling back to say they made some appointments for the evening and suggested I try and get one.

Call appointment line and relay what the nurse had said.
The scheduler wouldn't give up that information without me giving up the standard 20 minutes worth of information. Essentially repeating everything I had told the other scheduler earlier this morning.
Scheduler states no appointments are available this week, but I can call the pediatric clinic and see if I can get in.....

I had to hang up on her.

I took Julia to the ER to the nice hospital downtown, was sitting in an examination room with her within 15 minutes of walking in the door. She was diagnosed with an ear infection by the nicest Doctor, and was given a dose of each of the two meds she was prescribed by a nurse who told us she was a joy to treat and invited us back anytime.
We were happily out the door within an hour.

I was told to have her in with her Ped. for a follow up in ten days.
I should call now and book the appointment.


*When Thing 1 was three, he was having symptoms of an ear infection late at night.
We were due to fly across the country a week later. We brought him to the ER at the Naval Hospital and after waiting 2 1/2 hours, the pediatrician on duty came in and told me that in Europe they don't treat ear infections with antibiotics.
And since Thing 1 was so compliant, he couldn't possibly be sick, and we were told to just go home and give him some Tylenol.

Because it's never the wrong time to look cool.

We went to chuck E Cheeses for Antonio's 'I stopped sucking my thumb' celebration.

He did this program with the orthodontist, where he got a sticker for every day he didn't suck his thumb. At the end of each week he was to call the Orthodontist and report to him how the week went. Then, after a month, if he stopped, he got a Really Big Prize! To be decided upon between him and I.

Truthfully, I was really skeptical.

The first week was shaky, but by the second week, he was determined and throughout the next three weeks, he only had a few sneaky thumb moments.

I'm really, really impressed. It's a hard thing to do, I may know a thing or two about it...
The Orthodontist was really supportive and upbeat about it. I was concerned he might not be, but I guess he knows what he's doing. (!)

We made the stop by Starbucks, so Dad and I could caffeine up enough to hang.
A little something for the kids too, to keep them occupied for at least 7 minutes of a 45 minute drive.



We went early, since we had an Added Bonus Prize arranged for the afternoon.
It wasn't as horrific as I'd heard rumor of.
Antonio took his slot machine winnings bucket of Chuck Change and headed off to play anything he wanted to.



Julia played here for a little while, then Gramma and I (mostly Gramma) followed her around.



We were pretty well done after an hour, so Julia went with Grandparents and Antonio protested that he had to go with us.

Until, he slowly read the letters on an envelope we handed him.

Mon st er Tr uck

What the heck is a Monster Teruk?

After an agonizing amount of time, like 5 minutes, he finally figured out

MONSTER TRUCK!!


He had to get a banner for the Grave Digger truck, oh yes. he did.



So stoked!



We were so close, if a truck had spun out near us, we so would have gotten dirt on us.



I would have gotten more pictures of trucks doing cooler things, but my batteries crapped out and I forgot to bring extra.

All in all Antonio is so proud of himself for not sucking his thumb anymore.
We all had 'The Best Day Ever of His Whole Young Life'.

We started swim lessons again today.

This time both Antonio and Julia are taking classes.
I will admit, that Julia is taking a class not so much that she needs to perfect her crawl stroke, but is a bit of selfishness involved on my part.

Last fall during Antonio's last session, Julia wasn't quite walking yet, but she was mobile and started to really hate being in her stroller. Being head wasn't enough, she wanted downnnnn.
Now that she runs, it will be less fun trying to keep her happy in her stroller.
My idea was if she took a class which was the session before Antonio's. While Antonio's taking his, we can be getting changed, hair dried and have a little snack and catch the last bit of his class.

The only drawback is I have to get in the pool with her. Not such a bad situation on it's own, but a lot of my colleagues children take classes there too. You probably get where I'm headed...

So.

While Antonio kept himself amused by reading a magazine he'd brought along and waving at us, Julia was happily bobbing in the pool with me.

After our 30 minutes, Antonio joyfully joined his class and took it up like he hadn't missed a single day of lessons, let alone six months. Julia and I got ourselves presentable and had snack bites and did watch the last 10 minutes of Antonio's lesson.

It worked!