Damn Those Playgroups!

No more than three weeks elapse and we get another round of colds! The last one lingered for 3 weeks, but I think this one isn't going to be as bad. August got the worst of it and has been feverish and coughing for 3 days. For some idiotic reason I keep choosing to wear dark colors this week, which makes it easy to see the snot smeared all over me that spouts from his nose. I had to escape the house yesterday after being cooped up for 2 days and Paul said, "You can't go out with that shirt on, it's covered in snot!" At least someone around here is thinking clearly.

We are planning our next big trips and are thinking about Sri Lanka. How do babies take anti-malarials? In a liquid form?

This fall we are going to Florida for my niece's Bat Mitzvah and we and thinking of going to see some friends in Brazil afterwards. Another 9-10 hour flight (direct from Miami), yikes. We might chicken out and go to the Caribbean instead, we'll see how it works out expense-wise since August is going to need his own seat this time (unlike the flight to Ireland). Paul and I have a bunch of frequent flier miles so hopefully it won't be too bad.

We've had some requests for more August movies. He does this funny thing where he scrunches up his nose and breathes rapidly in and out of it--we call it "Mr. Huff and Puff", although it is tough to catch on video. He just stares glassy-eyed into the camera most of the time.

Favorite New Activity

This is for my mother, because she keeps HARASSING us to put this video of August on our blog.
I hope this appeases her. Now maybe she will actually post a comment so we know she is really looking at our blog from time to time!



Yes that is my foot kicking the exersaucer as I wanted to get August's attention so he would start spinning around.

First ER Visit

I didn't believe Paul at first when he thought August had vomited Sunday morning. "I think he was dry heaving before," he said. Hmm. I nursed him in our bed and very soon after he 'spit up', or so I thought. Then he barfed downstairs, I nursed him again, he barfed, and continued to do so several more times. Nothing stayed down and the pediatrician on call said we should take him to the ER since infants can dehydrate so easily. 4 long, boring hours in the ER later, August did great and was able to hold down some electrolyte fluid. If that didn't work he was going to need an IV, which would have really sucked.

The pediatric ER was so depressing. An aquarium was partially full of water, turned off and had no fish in it. There were empty shelves and two books to look at. A very young teenage couple sat next to us with their tweaker grandparents who smelled odd and had no teeth. I couldn't wait to get out of there.

August is doing pretty well now! Too bad I caught whatever bug he had--I was wiped out yesterday.

Someday, We Will Move!

Demolition work has FINALLY started on the Flanders house. Amazing, but true. We will move hopefully this year.

Here are some before photos:


And some after:

It turns out there is a lot of asbestos in the house, so that all has to get removed. You can see how dusty it is in this last photo. All the workers were wearing industrial strength dust masks, and of course me, Paul, the contractor, architect, et. al were not. Duh.

The house is in worse shape than we thought. One of the descriptors in the brochure when we were looking at this house was "good bones!"--ha, what a joke. One good discovery during demo was vaulted ceilings! So now we are getting rid of the attic to have high ceilings, which is fine by us.

Happy 2008

As promised, the moms got their night out on the wild town of Ocean Shores. The dads babysat and we went to the Quinault Beach Resort and Casino where we went completely crazy and ordered two rounds of drinks, onion rings, and played the slot machines. Woohoo! Afterwards we had a drink at the Green Lantern pub and conned this newly married bride into giving us two slices of wedding cake (they were in the midst of the reception when we arrived). The bar was shutting down early that night so we went back to the beach cabin as Paul and Frank were preparing dinner. By 11pm I was so exhausted I could have cared less about staying up until midnight and dozed in a la-z-boy while everyone else whispered in a dark room so as not to wake the two sleeping kiddies. Apparently some fireworks went off at midnight and I jumped up startled from the noise, asked why it was going on, and was very grouchy and puzzled about Frank offering me champagne. I have absolutely no recollection of this and only remember happily standing up to have champagne with everyone. And none of this happened because I was drunk; rather I am not used to staying up so late these days and am generally asleep by 10 pm.

So, another wild and crazy new years has come and gone. I don't miss the hangovers, that's for sure.