Roller Skating

This is very delayed b/c the connection from our camera to the computer has not been working. So, get ready for some catch up blogs.

We went to Little Rock a few weekends ago for Claire's baby dedication at church. Brooklyn had been sick all week, so it was so nice to have a change of scenery. It was a beautiful weekend and we were able to spend some time outside in my parent's yard. The dedication went great. Claire was the cutest one up there. I promise I'm not biased.

During Brooklyn's nap on Saturday, John and I got to take Emma on a date. There are quite a few things that John and I want to do with Emma now that she is older, but it is hard to do some of those things with an 18 month old. One of those things, is roller skating. My parents stayed at home with sleeping B and we went to the Arkansas Skatium. It is actually a roller rink on one side and an ice rink on the other. We decided to stick with roller skating. Emma is one of those children (much like her father) who has a lot of excitement about doing things, but if she is not immediately good at it, she is done. I had a feeling that if she fell once, we might be heading home. She totally surprised me. She wanted to hold on to us most of the time, but then she wanted to try it on her own. She did fall a few times, but got right back up and kept trying. I was really proud of her. She told me, just today, that she really had fun roller skating. We did go over to the ice rink and watched for a while. She wanted to do it, but we were not dressed very well for it. Instead, she and John played air hockey. Emma was actually really good. She beat her Daddy once, but I think he might have gone easy on her!

John and I also had fun skating. It had been a long time since I had skated. John was quite the skater in college. I actually met him in the midst of his skater days and fell in love with him. So, when he walked out with his roller blades on, it brought back many memories.

It is rare that the two of us both get a date with Emma. Usually we take turns taking her on dates while the other stays with B and has a date. It was a fun afternoon.

Thunderstorms

John is gone for the whole week: Monday morning-Friday night. Yuck! The good part of it is that my Mom, Sister, and Claire got to come stay with us for a few days. It sure helped the time go by faster. We didn't do a whole lot, but it was fun hanging out at the house and being together. My sister did help me organize our garage. We didn't clean out that much, but we organized the stuff we have.
My main reason for this post is to document Emma's sweet response to our conversation about the storm last night. I had already put the girls to bed. I could still hear them in there chattering and Emma singing to B. A lot of lightning and thunder started up about the time I put them to bed. There was a big crash of thunder and I heard Emma immediately call for me. I went to the door to ask what she needed (if I go in to their room, it sets B off, so it is better if we talk through the door if possible).

Emma: "Mom, I don't like the thunderstorms."
Me: "It's okay. You are inside and the storms can't get you."
Emma: "But, I'm scared."
Me: "Em, God is just moving some stuff around up in heaven."
Emma: "Oh, okay."

Silence from them on out. I thought that was such a perfect response. It was almost like it was okay as long as God was in control of it. Of course, he is always in control of the weather and everything around us, but neat that she is starting to realize this in her little 4 year old mind.

I Love Crayola!

I have had 2 secret (well, not to secret if you know me well) dream jobs for most of my life. One being to work for Ralph Lauren in his home/design department and the other to work for the Crayola company in some way. I absolutely LOVE a new box of crayons. They make me giddy, even at 31 years old. I am always on the look out for new Crayola products. I bought some of the new Crayola Sidewalk Paint the other day at Target. It was a great $5 investment. The pack we got came with 2 paint bottles, a brush and 3 sidewalk chalks.
During B's nap today, Emma and I tried it all out. I had a lot of fun. Oh, and Emma enjoyed it too. Hopefully, it comes out of the sidewalk like it says. I will let you know after we get some rain. Emma is wearing the little smock that I had when I was her age. This picture is for my Mom, so she can see Emma wearing it!

Croup

I had always heard of croup, but never knew exactly what it was. I learned first hand what it was last night.
Brooklyn has been sleeping a lot the past few days (I'm talking like 4 hour naps) and not eating all that great (the girl loves to eat, so this was big for her). Besides that, she has seemed fine. John thought she felt warm before bed last night, but barely had a temp. When I checked on the girls before getting in bed, B was breathing like she was congested. About 11:30 last night, I heard yucky coughing in the monitor. I thought B was throwing up. When I went in there, she was sitting in her crib crying, barking like a seal, and trying to catch her breath. It scared me to death. I was ready to walk out the door to the ER, but John stopped me. I had remembered my sister in law talking about sitting in a steamy bathroom with Luke many nights when he was little. So, we turned on the shower. I called Amy at midnight for "mommy" advice. Steam always worked for Luke and cold outside air worked for Grace. Luckily, the steam worked within 5 minutes for B. She went back to sleep and only woke up one other time barking. We went back to the bathroom to sit for a bit. We set the pack n' play up in the playroom for her to sleep the rest of the night. John was able to drop Emma off at school, so B got to sleep in. She slept until 9:45 and woke up with 102 fever. Went back down for a nap at 12:30 and slept until 5:00. We put her down for the night around 8:15. She just woke up crying, so I better go. Say a prayer for little B tonight.
Also say a prayer for sweet Lucy who woke up with an even worse case of croup last night and had to go to the ER. Ironically enough, they were in the same Mother's Day Out class last Thursday. Funny how that works!

IHOP and the Climbing Wall

I spent the entire week in beautiful Battle Creek, Michigan for work. Being reunited with my wonderful girls, we thought we would celebrate this morning by going to IHOP for breakfast. We all ate pancakes and had really great time...a fantastic start to the day!

Afterwards, we went to Lewis & Clark Outfitters in Springdale to see if Emma wanted to try out the climbing wall. We arrived about 90 minutes before the wall opened, so we browsed the store for awhile. The long stairs to the upper level were a big hit with Brooklyn. So much so, we had a hard time getting her to do anything else. While upstairs, the girls played in the tents displayed up there. I was standing next to the stair at an outdoors guide table reading up on some good hiking areas in Arkansas. That's when I see Brooklyn heading toward the stairs. Quickly. I start to make my daring life-saving dive for her when my foot kicks a large framed picture they had resting against the table I was standing near. Allison grabbed Brooklyn before she tackled the stairs alone, and I smashed the glass frame of the picture. We offered to pay for the damage, but the workers just said "no way...we told them it was a terrible place to put it...this just makes us right!". I agreed with them, but felt terrible.

Later in the day, we decided to try to wall again (now that it was open). Emma is a little finicky, so we weren't sure if she'd try it or not. She walked up without a second thought, got harnessed, and started climbing. She got just above our reach before she got nervous and didn't want to go further. It's still about 8-10 feet up in the air, so we were all really impressed. She really enjoyed being let down on the rope, too. In fact, the nice guy just let her hang there and swing for a few minutes! She did great!

Then Allison said "maybe Daddy should do it!"...and I did. I'm terribly afraid of heights, and not exactly "in shape". But I got about halfway up before my shoulder started cramping up and came down. Seeing as though I had very low expectations of myself, I was semi-impressed. Below are some photos of Emma's big climb.

Girls Weekend with Daddy

Though I have unofficially retired from blogging (which I leave to Allison now), I wanted to blog about last weekend.

Allison went to Little Rock by herself, so I loaded up the girls on Saturday and went to the Wild Wilderness Drive Thru Safari. There's a lot of construction going on there, so most of the animals were in different locations. Also, most of the animals are still "winterizing", so they were sheltered instead of roaming the safari area. Of course, we didn't know this until we were leaving, so we missed all the monkeys and fun petty zoo animals. While driving through, I put Brooklyn in her car seat next to me in the front. Emma got the entire back seat to run back and forth to see the animals (what few there were to see, at least). I did get to snap a few pictures of the animals while we were there. We had about 5 camels chasing the car, thinking we had food. When I stopped, they all were vying for Brooklyn's window. The picture of the camel below was taken from my side of the car, meaning it was about 1-2 feet from Brooklyn...she loved it! After the safari, we ate at McDonald's and went to Veteran's Park to play. It was a full day with the girls, and it was great! The last two pictures are llama's. They're beautiful and intelligent-looking animals, aren't they?

18 Months Old

Today Brooklyn turned 18 months old. Hard to believe that she is that big! It was a nice day, so John was able to take her outside for a little photo shoot. I think he got some really cute ones. These are 3 of my favorite. I love her cheeks when she smiles really big and I love her tummy!

We went for B's check up today and all is well. We take for granted good health to often. I am truly grateful that both of my girls are healthy and growing well. I know you guys don't care about her height and weight, but I want it on the blog so I have record for our book.
Weight: 23 lbs., 12 oz. (b/t 25-50%)
Height: 31 in. (25%)

I'm a Winner!

With all the flooding we've had over the past couple of weeks, the creeks (and streets) have provided some great opportunities for picture taking. During the flooding a couple of weeks ago, I went out around Johnson to capture some high water shots. There's a low water bridge on South Ball Street in the heart of Johnson that was under about 3 feet of water.

I submitted the picture to 40/29 News for Drew's Digital Snapshots contest yesterday. I got a call from Drew on my way home from work today telling me I won and that my picture would be on the news tonight around 6:30 PM. We totally taped it! And not only did we tape it, but I took a picture of my picture on TV. Yeah...I'm retarded. Anyway, I win a disposable camera and a 40/29 umbrella (sweetness), and get entered into a drawing to win either a camcorder or camera ($600 value) from Bedford Camera & Video at some point this year. And that totally rocks. Here are a couple of flooding shots of the old one-lane bridge in Johnson, near the Main Street / Carley intersection I took last night. There's usually some water flowing under the bridge, but it was easily 5 feet deeper than normal. Be sure to wear your life vests, as we're expecting more rain over the next couple of days! Happy canoing!