Well it has almost been over a month since my last blog. Time flies when you are at the beckon call of two kids. Audrey been having a tough time lately with teething and has even bit me a couple times. I was quick to let out a loud 'eeee ouccch!' and give her a firm 'No'... Well Audrey has already mastered her drama skills. She is quick to turn on the serious tears whenever I scold her. There have been only a couple of times in the last couple days, but with how hard she cries I felt so guilty ;) That 'guilt' brought me to this post. I thought I should write down the Top 10 things I love about each of my kids (we'll leave my husband off the list for now until I yell at him and feel guilty) so they are sure to know!

Joshua (32 months)

1. Your empathy for others when their sad or hurt and your eagerness to make it all better.
2. Your love of books and movies (the Polar Express is your favorite right now).
3. Your love of macaroni and cheese and chocolate milk.
4. Your outgoing and smiley nature – it's contagious.
5. Your wonderful sleeping habits and the way your coulics stick up after sleeping.
6. The way you gallop when you're happy go around the house singing songs.
7. The way you emphasize a noun with the phrase “big big, super huge, monster” when you're excited.
8. The way you cuddle with your blankie and clench it when you're tired.
9. The way you protect your sister and make her laugh the hardest out of anyone.
10. How you believe Mommy and Daddy's kisses are magical and make any owie better and the tears dry away.

Audrey (10 months)

1. Your soft kissable skin – particularly your chubby little cheeks and thighs.
2. Your easy-going temperament - you're up for anything most of the time and usually with a smile.
3. Your long long eyelashes and almond shaped eyes – everyone says how beautiful you are.
4. Your observant personality – you always survey the situation before diving in.
5. Your love of pumpkin pie.
6. Your amazing posture – you always look proud as a peacock whether standing or sitting.
7. The way you look up to your big brother and your excitement to do whatever he's doing.
8. The way you blow raspberries – you've been doing this since you were about 3 months old – You think you're pretty funny when you do it.
9. The way you raise your little hands when we say “sooo Big” and how you instantly start in clapping when anyone says “Patty-cake”.
10. The way your eyes light up when Mommy or Daddy walks into the room.

Well Joshua just about died and went to Heaven today. We are up in Morris at Grandpa and Grandma's house for Thanksgiving which in and of itself is enough to get Josh all giddy. He was talking about going to G&G's house for about a week and always had the biggest smile on his face when he'd 'inform us' that he was going to G&G's house as if Mom and Dad were going to just stay at home or something.

Before talking about Josh's 'dream vacation' I should tell you that we had our first bowling outing last night after dinner. Josh had a blast. It was pretty funny watching him pirouette about 100 times in his bowling shoes – he thought he was pretty cool. He also thought he was pretty big stuff bowling 'all by himself'. I think he had a 9 lb ball and he reminded me of watching World's Strongest Man competitions when the competitors are lifting the Atlas Stones. I mean that ball was almost 40% of his body weight, but he did pretty well with it in the beginning but towards his 15th frame and beyond, fatigue started to wear in. He had to be helped a few times lifting the ball, but he still had a couple strikes. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you, he used the bumpers and a ramp to launch the ball. He seemed to like that better than trying to roll it though – Give it a nice strong push! he'd always say as he shoved the ball down the ramp. Even with the bumpers and ramp, he is still our little King Pin!

Finally, back to Josh's little slice of Heaven. Me, Ann, Josh, Audrey and Grandpa journeyed out to the John Deere store in Morris. This store combined with Josh's enthusiasm right now for Christmas about put him on overload! We first went inside to look at the display floor which was filled with riding lawn mowers as well as having a little section of John Deere toys. Josh ran back and forth between mowers testing each one out, pressing all the buttons, stepping on all the pedals, etc. Of course he always took the key out before messing around with each one as a precaution...wonder how long we can keep him trained to do that ;) After about twenty minutes of playing inside, it was on to the serious stuff!

We went outside (the weather was unusually amazing) to look at all the combines, tractors, planters, etc. (whatever all the names are). Well all the doors were unlocked to each machine! So Josh got to climb up and check each one out. I can't believe I didn't have my camera for this...his excitement was undeniable and put a smile on all of our faces. Josh and Grandpa would climb up into this $350K machines and Josh was 'driving' around 'getting corn Grandpa!'. The part that amazed me the most was when he got out of the first combine, there were about ten of them lined up in a row...so that spans what...70-80 yards? Well I sat Josh down and he was gone! He was sprinting past all the combines to get to the tractors, and I've never seen him run so fast and with so much purpose. I swear he ran 80 yards in about 15 seconds! (too bad he didn't do that at the All Comers Track Meet)

Josh and Grandpa checked out about every machine in the field and even Audrey and I got to drive a couple combines - yelling back and forth with Josh to make sure we didn't 'crash' into each other ;) Definitely a fun trip, and I'm sure Josh would like to make it daily every time we visited G&G but I'm a little worried the John Deere store would get sick of us 'abusing' them ;)

Another month blew by without me blogging again, so I'll be posting about several events occurring over the last few weeks. But this time I have an excuse! For the last month or so, our entire house has been sick with 'something'. I don't what variant virus we have kicking our butts, but we have all been miserable, but with Josh being obsessed with 'being a doctor' maybe we'll all get through it.

On to the illnesses...along with battling the runny noses and normal colds that come with this season, everyone in our family traded pink eye back and forth. That was fun! Especially putting in and taking out contacts. (sarcasm) Actually, the first signs of pink eye were pretty scary for me. I was at the RAC with Josh and Audrey. We had met up with Katie Arendt and her girls and were playing. Everything was going fine until the 'day care jail break'. We happened to be there when the supervised day care let all the kids (about a 10 to 1 kid to supervisor ratio) out into the 'supervised general public'. The chaos alone was enough to cause Josh to stand in awe and try to get his little brain wrapped around the commotion and figure out where it was safe to stand. After Josh got acclimated to the new environment, he started playing again. I had Audrey in the Snugli so I was basically just following him around, but I wasn't really prepared for any fast actions.

Josh ended up copying some kids he saw jumping off a 'play box'. I would say it was about 2.5 feet tall. He would jump down, normally 'wipe out', and come up dying laughing 'bragging' about how far he jumped. As he was pretending to be Carl Lewis on the Long Jump, two older kids from the 'supervised' day care where 'fighting'. They were siblings I think, so they were play fighting, but they were pushing each other around and pretend fighting. First off, they were too old to be in the area where we were and secondly, Cassie (Katie's youngest at 8 months or so) was sitting on the floor playing and I was worried they were going to steam roll her, so I was positioning myself to intercept them if they charged towards her. Well I should have been more focused on Joshua, because as they were spazzing out with each other shoving back and forth, they shoved into Josh. Josh got knocked off the 'block' backwards and since he hasn't had too many tumbles yet, he doesn't know how to fall. I got to witness in slow motion as he basically did a full extension, back layout (or something like it) into the hard floor, not breaking his fall with any part of his body except his head! It was a loud crack as Josh's head bounced off the floor like a basketball. I knew immediately it was going to be bad as this was by far his worst fall to date. As I rushed over to him and I think I uttered something rather nasty about the two kids that they and the 'supervisor' heard. I have to learn to control my temper :$ I grabbed Josh and he still hadn't taken a breath yet and he was still in shock, 'loading' up his scream. I knew that with each second that went by without him taking a breathe, his upcoming scream was growing louder and louder. Finally, he let loose and everyone, and I mean everyone knew he was hurt.

So, to paint the picture, I have Audrey in the Snugli and Josh in one arm to the side of her screaming bloody murder. I was trying to console him and he wanted none of it. On top of that, Audrey's trying to pull his hair and poke his eyes...that made him really happy ;) He finally started to regroup enough so that I could look at him, leading me back to the point of telling this story. Looking into Joshua's eyes, 'snot' was running out of his tear ducts faster than any runny nose he had ever had. I had never seen anything like it. I was scared something bad happened from the fall, but looking back, I've learned that that is symptom of pink eye. My understanding of pink eye was simply irritation of the eyes and your eyes get red/irrated and itchy and not this 'runny nose from the eyes.' But I was happy to know from our doctor that this is indeed common. Well, we all ended up fine, but I definitely was scared for a bit (so were others at the RAC as they forced me to fill out an 'incident' report because it was such a nasty fall).

So after pink eye, we started up with the ear infections. Actually, Josh and Audrey both went into the doctor to get 'checked' for an ear infection. Audrey was just super fussy for a day or two (out of character) and constantly pulling on her ear, so we thought she possibly had one. Then, Josh on his own told Ann his ear hurt and less than 20 minutes later was screaming in pain, so I was 90% sure he had one. Luckily, neither of them were diagnosed with an infection, but merely had fluid behind there ears. Two bullets dodged. During Josh's visit, a few cute things happened. First, as the nurse was checking us in, Josh was doing pretty well because the Tylenol we had given him had kicked in by then. So he seemed pretty normal. So he was off in his own little world as the nurse questioned me. Then out of no where, "I love Dr Jacobs" (Dr. Jacobson is our family doc). Both the nurse and I couldn't help but smile. Then when Dr. Jacobson came in to check Josh, he looked in both ears and noticed the irritation/fluid in only one of them. After looking in his ears, he tried to ask Josh which ear hurt just to confirm, but Josh was quick to answer, "My ears are all better now!" Dr. Jacobson, I guess you have the magic touch!

During Joshua's visit, I had Dr. Jacobson check my ears because they felt like they were getting 'plugged up'. Too long to explain, but I have ear wax problem due to the combination of narrow ear canals and 'tacky' ear wax. Dr. Jacobson checked my ears and said that indeed they did need to be flushed out, but noticed a bunch of scarring in my right ear. He asked if I had a lot of ear infections growing up. I didn't remember having several but I did distinctly remember a very bad one when I was four years old. I'm not going to go into that here, but I do remember screaming all night long driving my family nuts. So with that memory fresh in my head, I was trying to remember what the 'pain' felt like. I remembered screaming but I couldn't remember the pain as I wondered what Josh's ear felt like. Well, two days later at 4 AM I woke up with 'total recall'. It was the worst pain I could remember feeling in my life. It felt like an ice pic had been jammed down my ear towards my jaw/neck. I couldn't even think straight. I immediately started taking medicine trying to dull the pain and I called the hospital to get in as soon as I could...3:45 PM. I knew this was going to be a fun day. After finally getting to the hospital, all the ear wax prevented them from looking at my ears, so they had to flush them out first which was more pain beyond belief. I was diagnosis with a 'major ear infection' and sent home with prescription to fight it.

Seven days later, seven days with migraine head aches, loss of all hearing in my one ear, and a constant ringing inside my head, I went back to doctor saying things were worse. They gave me a different prescription which finally started to take. So 10-11 days of battle with an ear infection took quite a toll on me - both physically and emotionally (I was very grumpy). During this battle, it didn't help that we decided to finally try (emphasize try) to stand up to Audrey and make her sleep through the night. That was a mistake. To compound the ringing headaches in my head, Audrey had learned to stand up in her crib and I swear she thought she was at a rock concert in a mosh pit or something - jumping around all night screaming at the top of her lungs. She was relentless. I think she sensed my weakness and went for the kill. My head and ears are hurting again just thinking about this ;) We backed off the 'sleep through the night battle'. I'm happy to say that today I am hearing totally fine again - I will not mention Audrey's sleeping habits.

One more doctor visit to go. Shots! Josh has been pretty entertained with Audrey's latest doctors appointments when she gets immunization shots. He thinks it's pretty funny before the shot, then afterwards, when Audrey is screaming, he of course switches gears into his empathetic brother mode and dotes on Audrey just as bad as we do... It's all right baby girl, it's all right... Well the whole family was going to get Flu vaccinations and I was kind of chuckling to myself thinking that Josh was going to hate the doctor after this visit. Before getting to the hospital, I explained to Josh that the shot was going to hurt a little bit, but that he couldn't cry and after the shot, he had to say thank you to the nurse. I wish I had brought my camera. It started out pretty good. Ann was actually corralling Josh as Audrey and I went in first. I got mine, without crying, and then Audrey got hers and only cried for about 5 seconds. Much better than anticipated! Ann came in and didn't believe Audrey's shots were over already! So Ann got hers, then it was just Josh left. As the nurse was getting the needle ready, Josh was quick to inform her, "It just hurt a littttttttttle bit!" he said with a nod to make sure she knew he was serious. She told him it was going to be a little poke then jabbed him. I saw a flash of pain run over Josh's eyes but before screaming, I could see the wheels in his head spinning and then he remember he 'couldn't' cry, so he fought back the pain/tears. I was impressed with that! Then as the nurse put on a Band-Aid and told Josh she was done, Josh mumbled "Thanks for the shot" in a tone so far from the truth I almost laughed. They didn't know Josh well enough to read his voice, so she was impressed beyond belief that he was saying thanks for the shot. Josh definitely made her day! He got two 'special' stickers for being so nice to the nurses...they all loved him and I could hear them chuckling about him thanking them as we walked away.

We are finally all better now (knock on wood) just in time for our upcoming Florida vacation! We can't wait!

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays each year, especially since having kids. I love seeing all the cute costumes and the all the candy of course :) Josh and Audrey were Hershey's kisses this year and I might add that they looked yummy enough to eat.

We started off the morning with a visit to Daddy's office for some trick-or-treating which was fun. He gave pumpkin Snicker's bars - pretty fancy! Then we headed to the mall for some more trick-or-treating, but were so disappointed because no one was handing out candy. I guess ever since 9/11, the mall quit this tradition because of the liability. What is this world coming too!! But, all Josh wanted anyways was a strawberry banana smoothie from Orange Julius. Whenever we go to the mall, Josh's one request is "smoofie please?"

All pooped out, we headed home for lunch and naps to get all rested up for the big evening ahead. At the last minute, the Arendt's called and invited us to join in on their festivities and Josh was totally pumped about that. So, we headed down there about 5:30, ate dinner with the Arendt's, and then and handed out candy to all the trick-or-treaters. Trick-or-treating (for Josh) lasted about 10 minutes because of the cold weather. After two houses, he was ready to come in with rosy red ears and cheeks. BRRR was it cold!! They did head outside into the cold one more time though to visit the Haunted House down the street. Josh came back and the word “BOO” had a completely new meaning. Mommy even screamed went she went through it.

For the rest of the evening, Josh, Elizabeth, Cassie and Audrey played toys, answered the doorbell and handed out candy (eating one and then giving one :)).

Marriage and motherhood has transformed me as a person in so many ways - and the whole subject is yet so new to me. And, I can't imagine how wise my parents must be. :)

have learned so much about myself through the relationships with my husband and children. Terry has enriched me in many ways. I most admire him for his patience and kindness. I am the type of person who usually becomes all worked up and frustrated about things if they aren't going right or not fast enough. He usually calms me down and helps me figure out what's wrong and tries to fix it. His heart is always in the right spot in all that he says and does. He's truly a man of his word.

As for my children, they have taught me how to be unselfish. When it comes to Joshua and Audrey, their needs always come first - life is not just about me anymore. They have also bonded my relationship with Terry more than I could have ever imagined. I feel like we share the most important goal - raising happy and healthy kids.