Halloween is in the air...

as is fall... it was nice having a cool day today. I'm still sick, which is not fun. But we went to a Halloween craft party this morning, which was fun. My boys tried out their costumes for the year (we are going as Super Mario bros). I will show my princess costume at a more appropriate time. Meanwhile, I thought they were cute. I even found these gloves that fit 0-3 year olds. They are a little big on Joey, but MJ loves them. He also likes wearing the red had. Actually, both of the hats are a little big on them, but it was the best I could do.
This was a super fun Halloween craft party...thanks Michaela and Mindy!

 

 

 

8 months

Yesterday, our little Joey turned 8 months old. I wish I took a picture of him on that day, but i forgot... so here's one from the day before where he was lunging at me. We actually went to the doctor on his 8 month b-day because I noticed he was pulling on his ears and had a cold a few days ago. No ear infection, but they took his weight. He is 27lb 5oz. I should try to get his length tomorrow morning.

 

And here's Mario after that birthday party I told you about on Monday. You can see his new Doc Hudson car on the step behind him. I'm was proud of the way Mario handled himself today when we had to leave the Franzonello's house. Normally he screams and whines when we have to leave Tony's house. But I talked with him about that before hand (we always talk about this before and after we visit them). But this time he made his sad face (the one where I know he's being honest) and said "But I'm sad when I leave Tony's house" so we talked about that more. Well anyway, this time when we left, he pouted for a little bit, but was able to walk out the door on his own without tears. He was also so exhausted from the fun he had that he didn't follow me out of his room when I put him to bed. He's been consistently good about that with his dad, but only recently getting better with me. Hopefully the next trip we go on in a few weeks won't set us back in the falling asleep department again.

 

The Hanson's Party & more

I meant to catch up and post last night, but I have a cold and decided to go to bed early. We've been having fun lately.

Mario and I are sort of searching to buy a home. We're really not sure what we are going to do, but something may happen in our future: move to Chicago, buy a home here, or just do nothing b/c we like where we are living right now. Just in case, this weekend we dragged the boys around to many houses- so that kept us pretty busy. ND won, finally, so that was nice. Saturday I went to the Catholic Children's Consignment sale and a few more fall clothes for Joey (since we were in Bangkok at this time when MJ was 8-11 months old and didn't need long sleeevs stuff) and some GREAT toys which will probably be seen at Christmas and birthdays next year. Then we saw a few homes and after naps we went to a birthday party for Little Pete and a Thank you party for Big Pete. I think he leaves to return to Iraq today. He was home for about 15 days. He originally left in January and had never seen Joey...so we took a picture of them together (below).

MJ and Joey continue to be so much fun. MJ likes that Joey is crawling and tries to crawl with him. Joey just seems so much bigger and I enjoy sitting back and watching him think about what he wants to do and then going to do it. Of course, I'm not always watching him (I must watch him closer) and have had to retrieve paper from his mouth a couple of times. Oh, and I forgot to mention (or maybe I did) but for a month or so, Joey has been doing the Maam Maaa kind of crying/talking when he's upset or needs me. He doesn't do it all the time, but it's cute to know I'm wanted. And when a friend was watching him last week while I volunteered, he started crawling towards me when I came in the door. He also gets excited for bath time and crawls to the bath tub. Lately, he seems to make more noises when he is playing.

MJ still watches out for Joey and keeps him away from cords and other dangerous things. He is so good at making Joey laugh, and I think they really enjoy being together. He's been to a few birthday parties recently so we've been working on how to handle the emotions of giving someone else a gift and doing the whole party thing. The last party we were at, he got a new die cast Doc Hudson for a party favor (this was definitely a great treat for him!) Lately he has been attempting to negotiate more. For example, he'll say he wants chocolate for breakfast. I'll say no, he'll ask again so I'll say, "Mario, I said no." His response "But I say yes!" It doesn't really get him anywhere, but he tries.

Here are Joey and Pete Hanson

 

Here are MJ and Joey at church this Sunday. Mario insisted we take a picture (even though I reminded him we were in church). It's not the greatest picture b/c he turned off the flash and tried to do it quietly, but he wanted to capture the moment that MJ was trying to sit near Joey and be cozy with his blanket.

 

Here is Joey with 2 of the girls I watch on Monday morning. I think he really enjoys hanging out with them. We see them twice a week for 4-5 hours at a time.

 

Finally, I don't think I've shown a picture of Joey's metatarsis adductus (I think I spelled that wrong but I'm too lazy to go look it up). Basically, his right foot was cramped in the womb and the ligaments were pulled tight because of it. It's common but all we did to fix it was I would stretch it a few times a day. We went to our last appointment with the orthopeadic doctor a month ago and he said things looked great. Sometimes Joey will curl his foot in quite a bit like this, but other times he relaxes it straight. When he does curl his foot in, it makes his big toe look really big.

 

Time to lower the crib mattress

A few days ago, I noticed Joey would sit up in his crib when he was awake. That was cute. He's even pulled up to his knees before, still very cute. Well, at naptime today, he thought it would be fun to stand up in his crib. He was so excited about it, he wouldn't settle down, and kept doing it every time I put him back in the crib. So, I took a break and read him a book with MJ before MJ's nap. That made him realize he was tired and he fell back to sleep in his crib. Geesh!

 

 

He's also been after our steps...which are really great practice steps b/c there are only 2 of them and he doesn't have far to fall.

 

MJ has been doing really well. He really enjoyed "babysitting" again as we call it when I go to teach and he hangs out in the nursery. And he takes good care of Joey and I. While I wouldn't put all of my faith into MJ watching Joey, at times when Joey is doing something dangerous (like eating paper) I hear MJ say "No, Joey" and take it away from him. Then he gives him another toy to play with instead. So sweet!

Molluscum

Last Wednesday was pretty exciting and started what became a busy and fun weekend. Tuesday I took MJ to the doctor to check on some more bumps on his face. I knew he had Molluscum from a previous visit where I asked about one bump on his cheek. It was a small skin colored bump (like a pimple or wart maybe) that had been there since April. Molluscum is a skin condition caused by a poxvirus. It is not harmful, but causes small bumps to appear on the skin. Each bump can take a few months to disappear. The whole condition usually will disapear without treatment in 6-18 months. Treatment is to remove each bump by heat/freeze/scrap which is not reccommended for kids and may scar. I was fine with the one bump, and then learned that the 20 new bumps on his face were more Molluscum. I also learned that it is contagious and Joey has it too! (Although, once you have it you are immune to it like the chicken pox too, so it appears that Mario and I are not affected). The doctor recommended that we see a dermatologist since it was spreading kind of quickly. I was suprised that I was able to get an apointment the next day!

So Wednesday at 8:30 we checked and the dermatologist said the same things but offered a cream that we could use, though it's particular use for this might not be approved by the FDA. I wouldn't treat Joey's bumps anyway b/c he is so young. But I've decided not to use the cream on MJ either. The skin-colored bumps aren't as noticeable, and the red ones kind of look like pimples. But appearantly those are ones that the body's immune system is fighting and they will go away more quickly. It's been 6 days now, and they are looking better. Mario theorized that since it's an immune system thing that Joey's might go away faster since he is nursing. That seems to be the case since I've only noticed Joey's bumps for a week and his are definitely going away more quickly. It would be weird to have MJ drink breastmilk from a cup, wouldn't it?

Wednesday afternoon we took off for Charlottesville, VA since Mario was doing a recruiting event at Darden. I took the boys to hang out at Clark Elementary where I used to teach. It was very nice to catch up with old friends. We stayed at georgous hotel that was really not meant to have kids... the Clifton Inn. But it was only 1 night, and we survived.

We got back Thursday and made it in to volunteer. And then Friday, the Kazas came over to hang out for the morning and we took our crew shopping at SAMs together. It went pretty well. I don't have any pictures of it, but I had Joey, MJ, and Peter in the cart together, and they seemed pretty happy. Here are a few pictures of MJ and Peter sharing books (they are playing so well together now!) and it seems Joey and Catherine like to hang out too!

In this first picture, Joey is eating in his stroller (which is so multifunctional when I go on trips!) and you can see one of the molluscum on his forehead from last Wed. The last picture shows MJs red molluscum on his left cheek. He has several on his right cheek that are skin-colored and not noticeable really.

 

 

 

 

Video of Joey Crawling

I like how Joey thinks he's close enough to the magazine and flops down. But then gets up and tries again when he realizes he isn't close enough.

Look what we can do...

Mario and I think we can now say that Joey is crawling. He seems to have skipped the army crawl and prefers to go for the knees and pushing with his feet approach. This first picture is from yesterday (9/24) when he kind of did a crawl and flop for the magazine. I was just thinking this morning how I guess I rushed into his whole moving thing a bit when I posted about it last week.

Later this morning, we had Joey upstairs and I was changing his clothes when Mario had me let go of Joey as he was trying to take off. We use all sorts of bad things as incentives for crawling (like paper/computer cords, our boys' favorite things as babies.) We'll work on disciplining with those later. :-) He had at least 3 crawling revolutions (for lack of a better description) before flopping towards his goal. Maybe I can post a video later.

Among MJs new accomplisments: taking even better pictures with our digital camera. He had about 20 today, and some, like this one, even had a person in them!

Sunday, MJ had his first lesson in cutting with scissors. I am impressed by his motor skills (being a Kindergarten teacher, I've seen many kids who at 5 still cannot operate scissors). Of course, now I have to hide all of my scissors in the house, b/c this is his new fun thing to do. We've discussed how scissors should only be used to cut paper, but I still worry what harm a 2 year old with scissors could inflict on himself or other objects around him.

As for the rest of us, Mario finished the Ohio project last week and is starting on a new one next week. In the meantime, he has been working (very hard) on both projects and other stuff from home. We are happy to have him here! Last week my RE classes started. I'm only teaching one class this year. I'm sticking with K again, which has been so nice since all of my lessons are already completed. We have 20 students and so far it's been a lot of fun. MJ and Joey are doing well at the church babysitting too.