Giggles Makes A Mess

Hard to believe, I know.


Grandma's out of town, and Giggles has been busy strewing toys around the living room, tearing into the newspaper, and taking every single tissue in the house out of its box! On the plus side, after a crazy week, she's back to sleeping like a champ!

Pumpkin is also doing much better after his most recent bout of croup. Last week, he woke one night (4 AM actually) with a croupy cough, rattling breath, and chest pain. For the next couple of hours, he and I alternated between sitting in a steamy bathroom, lying down in the living room, which is much cooler than our bedroom, and chatting on the phone with our pediatrician's afterhours nurse line (well, I did anyway). The next morning, I took him in to see a good friend of mine, who's a Nurse Practitioner at an ENT clinic, and she was wonderful! She loaded us up with samples of Z-Cof and Pulmicort for the nebulizer and a prescription for steroids and antibiotics. I borrowed my niece's nebulizer and some of their Xopenex since our supplies were, um, left behind in Colorado (for which my friend gave me a bit of a scolding, btw), and we were on our way.

Unfortunately, Pumpkin missed his last 2 days of swim class because of all this, but his lovely teacher, Miss Bede, invited us to return this week free of charge to make up the missed classes. Now, how thoughtful is that?!! :)

I still don't know exactly what Giggles' problem was last week, but I attribute her odd behavior to teething...and perhaps heat and noise. I don't recall if I'd already mentioned, but she has 4 new upper teeth coming in right now. I figure she's been pretty uncomfortable lately, which may account for her waking at all hours of the night and crying nonstop over the past week or so. And when she wasn't cranky, she was unusually quiet, which as y'all know, is not like Giggles at all. So it's good to see her back to her giggly, playful self.

With everybody out of town this past weekend, the kids and I have all gotten some much needed rest, thank goodness. I honestly don't know if I could've lasted much longer at the rate of sleeplessness I was going (see previous post). ;)

Baby Offer

Used baby free to good home. Cute as the dickens. Lungs work great. Crib included. Must pick up now!

Today's Temp



Typically, I've found that the reading from the car is a bit lower than the "official" reported temp readings in town so it's probably closer to 108 today. Guess the nice weather's over.

In other news, Pumpkin and Giggles are both feeling better. They've both had low-grade fevers over the past few nights, and they've both been fever-free all day today. So that's good news. Especially for Pumpkin. He's still on nebulizer treatments until his croupy cough is completely gone...all cough actually. Might take a while. Giggles, on the other hand, is back to her normal rabble-rousing self. She had me worried yesterday because she was unnaturally quiet and still. Everybody who knows her who saw her yesterday commented on how quiet she was, haha. Gotta run now. Tonight is Pumpkin's last night of swimming class, and we're having a pizza party. :)

Weather (Text)

It's 7PM and a balmy 98 degrees outside. At the pool, this is downright chilly!

I forgot to mention that the wonderful rug in the pictures came from my brother's office. From his storage actually. It used to be in his house. He lent it to Mom while we're visiting so that Giggles could crawl around the living room without hurting herself. The older kids seem pretty happy with the rug too, and it seems that they all end up playing on it at some point throughout the day. It's cute.

Pictures! Finally.

Click here to view these pictures larger

Tuesday

Except, I think it might actually already be Wednesday.

Anyway, here's all the news that's fit to print. At the very last minute on Sunday evening, my sisters and I decided to enroll our kids in a week-long summer camp that was starting on Monday at the Imaginarium (formerly the Laredo Children's Museum). I thought of putting Pumpkin in the same class with his older cousins. I actually think he would've handled the content matter just fine, but as soon as I heard the instructor say "ancient Rome," I knew he'd be better off with the other preschoolers. QT & I have introduced the concept of countries to him before, of course, but I don't think Pumpkin has any idea what ancient even means. And that was just in the first 15 minutes on the first day of the class! Now, if she'd said "Very Old Rome"....well, maybe that would've been a different story, hehe.

He seems to be enjoying himself regardless. As a preschooler, his lessons are much shorter than those of the older kids, and he also gets more playtime so I don't think he's minding it too much (being w/o his cousins, I mean). He still gets to see his cousins during shared playtime and at lunch. I also paid a bit extra to leave him there an extra hour after preschool camp is over so that he could stay until his cousins' class is over.

In the evenings, Pumpkin is taking swimming lessons with Sofia, my brother's daughter. The classes are being given by my brother's neighbor, who is a former well-known dance instructor here, and Pumpkin's doing great with her. He's taken to the water like, well, like a fish to water. Yesterday, he even jumped in the water and dunked his head TWICE. All on his own. To be fair, I don't think he meant to dunk his head either time, but he also wasn't upset when it turned out that way.

In between camp and swimming, he just runs around goofing off with whoever's here. Usually Lissa. By the end of the day, he's so tired that he can barely finish dinner, and he slurs his words like a little drunken man. Last night, he told me that it was his bedtime already. Poor baby. Unfortunately for him and for me, Giggles picked last night to wail, scream, and generally carry on like a mini-banshee. The noise kept Pumpkin awake, and I finally just took him into my parents' room to sleep. Even though he could barely even walk by then, he still didn't want to leave Giggles behind because she was still crying. What a good boy!

Giggles...well, she's a handful. No surprise there. She's crawling all over the place. She pulls herself into a standing position in her crib, in the living room, and pretty much wherever she happens to be. I'm afraid she'll be toddling soon. Since hardly anyone here has carpet in their homes, we brought a walker for her to use here, and she tears around in that thing. So far, so good. The only things that have been broken are those I dropped while attempting to baby-proof my mom's living room so that Giggles wouldn't knock anything over. LOL!

I finally took some pictures at swimming yesterday. Now to figure out how to post them from a borrowed PC. Tomorrow, we're going to a birthday party! Busy busy. Stay tuned!

Saturday

Baby's asleep, and Pumpkin went out for breakfast with his grandparents. I'm stuck here with no Internet and no computer. Hometown newspaper's very thin. I already read the whole thing. I finished my latest book last night while waiting for Pumpkin to return from parents-night-out event at the kids museum that he went to with his cousins. It's too hot to sit in TV room, and way too hot to do laundry. For obvious reasons, I can't go in our room to finish unpacking, and I can't leave the house either. Hmm, what to do?

I'm gonna need lots more books.

Toothies!!

BTW, I completely forgot to mention that Giggles has 2 new front teeth! They're so cute and tiny. I wish I had a picture to post, but those little suckers are barely visible to the naked eye as it is, and the subject herself moves about a mile a minute so there's no way I could ever capture the little toothies on film. Perhaps when the teeth are a bit bigger, I'll show 'em to ya.

Giggles also suddenly started standing in her crib!!! Coupled with the new front teeth, this is so monumental that it deserves a triple exclamation point salute!!! Here it is again in case you missed it: !!!

She pulls herself up and stands there for a long time. In fact, I don't think she falls. Rather, I think she simply sits back down when she's done standing. LOL

I've been very lax so far in taking pictures of any of our daily activities, but I'll try to remember to take the camera with me wherever we go tomorrow.

G'nite!

Day 3

Today I cleaned out our closet and unpacked. Mostly. Well, a bit. Giggles was very sleepy and since the kids and I are sharing a room...I must stop unpacking at naptime. I also did some laundry, went grocery shopping, and took Pumpkin to a trial swimming class. It was 108 today, but it cooled to a more respectable 103 by the time swim class began. I'm already fried, and my night's just begun.

Thing 2 has been bathed and fed and is now sleeping, but Thing 1 is still out back playing with his cousins and his cousins' cousins (are they 2nd cousins?). No telling when I'll finally get him to come in for a bath.

This is going to be a looong month.

Text Message

We arrived in Texas in time to attend Lissa's 9th birthday party. It was a Mexican fiesta and lots of fun! I'm thinking of using the same concept for my upcoming 40th bday only with more tequila. ;)
Well this is my 1st try with text-blogging so I'll keep it brief. More later.