Practice Makes Perfect!

The night before Henry's first birthday was also the last night Derek, Amy, Andrew, and Jacob were in town.  And since Amelia had missed out on lots of cousin time due to the crazy two days of Christmas and the multitude of sicknesses that she was transmitting, we decided to head to GG and Papa's house that night to make up for lost time.  Technically, she was no longer contagious.  Plus, we figured if my nephews hadn't gotten it yet, they probably weren't going to get it on the last night!

At the end of the night, we decided to sing "Happy Birthday" to Henry and give him his first go at some cake!

 

Success! He pretty much ate the two bite cupcake in three bites.  Not too bad for his first time, of course he had a little help from Amelia!

Then, it was Andrew's turn.  He has a mid-December birthday and we are never there to celebrate it with him since they usually come to St. Louis a week or so later.  I'm not sure exactly what happened here, but shortly after the birthday song, Andrew ended up with a cupcake on his head!  I am pretty sure GG was to blame!

My birthday falls exactly a week after Henry's, so I was up next.  I have no interest in store-made two bite cupcakes.  My "treat" of choice was a caramel nut pretzel bite and a Blue Moon.

GG with all of the grandkids. 

Everyone was still feeling good later in the night, so GG took the two older kids and started a project with them.  Jason and I had spotted some craft kits on sale at Lowe's on Black Friday and since my mom was already going there, she picked them up and saved them to do with the grandkids.  Both kids made a pirate ship and they turned out really great!  It has been a nice touch on those days Amelia wants to reenact Peter Pan all. day. long. I forgot that I have a set of Pirate-themed Lego pieces and Lego people from when Jason was a child.  I think we will be pulling all of that out on the next snow day!

Wouldn't You Know It

Although Henry is the one who went to bed on Christmas night with a low-grade fever, Amelia is the one who got us up at 1:30 AM.  She came into our room with complaints of a bad dream and when I went to soothe her, I noticed that she was on fire!

Sure enough, the thermometer read 101.7 so after some water and Tylenol, she fell asleep between Jason and I.  A few hours later, the vomiting began.  The poor girl was throwing up about every 45 minutes for 7 or so hours.  We tried to keep the the kids separated from each other, which proved pretty challenging. 

Around 10 AM, she finally started to perk up a bit and was able to keep small sips of water and Pedialyte down.  And she finally got some rest.  And although the fever was still sticking around by the evening, she was in much better spirits and actually had the energy and desire to play with a new toy or two.

The next morning, she woke up ready to break out her new Easy Bake Oven that she got for Christmas from Grandma and Papa.  As you can see in the picture, she was bright red!  I didn't think too much of it and after goofing around in the morning and enjoying some new toys, we headed to my parent's house in the afternoon.

By now, of course, both kids were acting completely fine!  Henry had been fever free since Christmas and Amelia seemed to be over whatever stomach bug she was fighting. Amelia got some much needed playtime with her cousins--Henry too--although he spent much of the time there napping.  See, Amelia looks back to normal, right?  No red face.  No vomiting.  No weird rash.  (Do you see where this is going?).

As the night went on, Amelia's face took on the same strange red-cheeked look as she had earlier in the day.  By the time we were heading home, she definitely felt feverish again.  By the time we got home, though, and she had changed into her pajamas, she was cool as could be with no red cheeks.  I started to think that it must have been my parent's warm basement or the fact that she was snuggled under a blanket with her cousins watching a movie that was causing these strange symptoms.

So what do we do the next day?  Head to the Magic House, of course! It was packed!  I have NEVER seen it so busy in my life.  I had to wait in line to get into the building itself!  Jason lasted about 20 minutes with Henry and then they had to leave to try and get Henry a nap in the car.

I didn't get many pictures.  Something about trying to keep an eye on your child in a crowd of 12,000 will do that to you.  I actually overheard a mother reviewing with her child what to do if a stranger in the crowd of people tries to take her away.  Sheesh!

Amelia enjoyed the new(er) nursery part, though.  I did too!

And there's my brother--being my brother. I believe he was pretending to be a mechanic looking over the check list of all that needs to be done to the car.  This is always a popular spot at the Magic House with my nephews!

And wouldn't you know it, as we were leaving the Magic House my mom makes the comment that Amelia feels warm.  And I think, "Of course she does, there are 30,000 people in this one room and she has been running around like a mad woman". 

So, to Steak-n-Shake we went.  I noticed that Amelia still isn't eating 100%, but I figured she will ease her way back into that when she feels like it.  We headed home and napped and you'll never guess who woke up with a fever!

The next morning I called the doctor, took her in, and she is immediately suspected of having strep throat.  A strep test quickly confirmed it!  I felt terrible for carting her all around town and exposing her to hundreds of kids--including my two nephews!  Ugh!  Luckily, after starting on the antibiotics, she was only contagious for 24 more hours and was well on the road to recovery just in time for Henry's birthday!

The Main Event--Christmas 2010

Well, it's taken me awhile, but here's my post about Christmas!  I want to keep the commentary short since I think there are 30ish pictures in this post....

Amelia came into our room about 6:45 on Christmas morning.  She was in no hurry to get downstairs, but instead declared "Merry Christmas" and then got into bed with us.  While we were snuggling, she casually said, "I wonder if Santa came last night".  My response was, "Let's find out!". After that, it was a mad rush downstairs to see!

Checking out the loot Santa brought:

The two things she asked Santa for were a "rocking horse" and a "Rapunzel doll".  She wasted very little time looking at the other gifts he brought and jumped right on the horse for a ride!

Sleepy head Henry was still sleeping at this point.  We told Amelia she couldn't open ANY presents until he was up.  So, she sat down with a mug of hot chocolate and we played a couple rounds of Guess Who (a new game Santa brought), and finished off the chocolate advent calendar!

I also took a moment to snap Jason and Amelia in their new jammies.  As you can see, Jason got dressed up for the occasion!  (As a side note, he wore this shirt on New Year's Eve, too!  It's very versatile).

I also got a picture of Amelia with the tree--something I rarely remember to do.  At this point we were STILL waiting on Mr. Sleepy Head.

Look who decided to finally join us!  He hadn't a clue what was going on, but since he is such a go-with-the-flow baby, he just jumped right in and enjoyed the ride.

A wooden choo-choo train was Amelia's gift to Henry along with some jumbo crayons.

Henry got Amelia the coveted Rapunzel doll she so badly wanted!

Truman got a new "baby" which she promptly destroyed.

Henry got a touch-and-feel book about one of his three favorite topics:  puppies!  (His other two favorites are balls and vroom vrooms).

Amelia dove right into her jumbo Princess coloring book.

And they took took a ride on the pony together in their matching jams!

We took our time to enjoy a few gifts at home and then got ready and headed to GG and Papa's house for round two.

Aunt Amy with Jacob and Andrew

Jacob loves his astronaut set!

Andrew is pumped about his KU shirt!

And Amelia could not be more thrilled with Papa's Shop-Vac!  (We were telling her to pose here and be the "shop vac girl").

Papa made Henry a very special rocking chair!

And he even stayed in the chair long enough to open some vroom vrooms!

Then it was on to the next house--Jason's aunt Therese.  Here is Henry looking quite dapper in his coat and tie--even though he wasn't feeling too well by then.

"baby" Olivia in her cute Christmas get up!

My mother-in-law and her sisters and parents modeling their beautiful Christmas hair accessories.

After no fewer than 20 pictures taken of our family, this is the best one. 

Amelia decided to catch some zzzzzzz's while heading to the next house--#3 if you've lost track!

I thought Henry might be sleeping too, but couldn't tell in the car.  I put my camera back there to take a picture to see and this is what it took.  Henry looking angry because he has to wear his sister's winter hat.  (We had temporarily misplaced his much more boyish navy blue and gray one).

While Amelia was refreshed at house #3, while Henry started to feel feverish again.

He was still a good sport though!  His Melissa and Doug car carrier was a very popular toy!

Note to self: try to get the kid's picture together at the first house, not the last house.

We originally had plans to go back to my parent's house that evening, but decided we had had enough Christmas fun for the day.  Little did we know we were going awaken to another surprise in the middle of the night......

Christmas Eve 2010

As usual, the craziness of Christmas started with a busy Christmas Eve schedule.  We laid low most of the day and both kids took great naps.  We opened up our traditional one-present-on-Christmas-Eve-that-is-always-new-PJ's-for-everyone gift.  Then, we loaded in the car and headed to Christmas Eve mass with Jason's family. 

Jason dropped Amelia and I off at church and then took Henry to hang out with some relatives since we weren't sure he could handle the nearly 2 hour wait time/service.

Henry hanging out with Mike and Ike

After church, we all met up at Jason's aunt Carol's house for a little fried chicken dinner.  It was around this time that I first noticed that Henry felt a bit warm.

But he has been doing the whole drooling, chewing, crabbing routine for a couple days, so I thought it may be a teething related fever.  So the fun continued....

Amelia LOVES hanging out with these ladies--Candace and Sienna.  Not only do they (still) have a huge Barbie stockpile at their house, they have a PINK room.  With BUNK beds.  It's pretty much all Amelia talks about when she is there.  It is rare for her to be out of the pink room at Carol's house like in the picture below.

And speaking of pink, poor Henry totally got the Christmas Eve pacifier shaft.  We were running late getting ready for church and the pink pacifier is all I could find.  Poor, poor Henry.  (As a side note, this particular binky is not leftover from Amelia's stash.  One night I went to Walgreens to replenish our binky stash and the pink/purple combo pack was all they had!  What was a mom to do?!?).

As you can see, as the night went on, Henry seemed to be feeling worse.  He was acting okay, just tired and a little clingy.  You know he must be feeling bad when he lefts Uncle Dave hold him!  Around 7 pm, we headed to my parent's house for Christmas with my dad's side of the family. Poor Henry basically came in, said, "Hello", played a tiny bit, and then went down to sleep.  The other two babies both younger than him are total night owls and outlasted him by HOURS!

Upon returning home, we set out cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer.  And then, we headed to bed--all in our new jams!