Wuzzup

Under the weather

Well as if it wasn't hot enough on mon poor Moira had a fever. Luckily it only lasted a day. To help cool her off I wet down some wash rags and put them in the freezer. She quickly discovered this was a good way to beat the heat and kept one on her head for most of the day :)

Washin' the car

Nick decided to wash the cars today and so Moira gave hers a once over as well.

The Champion

Well Suki surprised us all by winning first place at the Bothell Skyhoundz Local Championship. Granted the competitive field was relatively small, only about 10 dogs, but she scored a respectful 20 points with my friend Aaron throwing for her and got 4th place with me throwing for her. All in all it was a great day to get out and enjoy the sun . . . not to mention the fact that it was a few hours with no kids!

Can you guess??

Summertime

Well things have been pretty mundane around here. Moira has done really well with the whole potty training thing, and rarely has an accident. Kiah has proven to be a very smiley little girl and is quite the comedian of the house. She wakes up very early, 5am most days and lays between Nick and I grunting and carrying on, and as soon as you open your eyes to check on her she flashes you great big smiles. It's hard to be irritated with her when she's just so happy to see you.

Moira has also gotten really into music in the past week. She has a couple of cds and has figured out how to turn on the stereo and switch between the ones she likes on the disc changer. I'm pretty sick of them since even if she's not in the room she goes racing back in each time the cd ends to start it over. I've tried to capture her singing on video, but so far she's been a little camera shy.

Suki will get her chance to shine at the Bothell local disc dog championship on sat. most of the good dogs are out of town so she stands a chance of placing in the top 3. Poor Kess is still pretty bad off and just when she starts to get to feeling a little better she runs around and hurts herself. So it looks like she'll need to be on a leash whenever she's out of the house to prevent these shennanagins.

Hopefully we'll all get out of the house to enjoy the sunshine this weekend.

Potty Training

Well I'm not totally sure what prompted to to start potty training with Moira, but here we are. So far we've had a couple of successes. The big drag is that you run the risk of a big mess if you head out of the house . . . wet clean-up on isle 4. So we're kind of marooned at home. After a day of failures Grandma came over and informed Moira that if she went in the potty she could have a present and shazam 10 minutes later Moira came and asked for her present, and she had indeed used the potty. This feat was preformed again last night so we'll keep our fingers crossed. A quick trip to the dollar store has supplied us with ample presents!

April Showers . . . Bring May flowers

It seems like summer can't get here soon enough, and then before you know it it's gone.

Moira cuteness

Blue Steel

If you haven't seen the movie zoolander than this post will make no sense . . .

Baby smiles

Tummy Troubles

At Kiah's last doctors appointment I mentioned that despite her girth she often refuses to feed and unlike most babies she cries and fusses after she eats, sometimes for hours. The Dr. recommended we wait another week to see if i was just developmental and if she continued to be upset after eating that we should try a baby antacid. I guess it's fairly common for the muscle that generally keeps stomach acid in its place to function poorly in newborns. The common term for this behavior is colic. After some debate we decided to give it a try. Nick's out of town for all of next week and if there's something that can alleviate Kiah's daily crying spells it would go a long way to maintaining my sanity. So far things look promising, she almost always cries from 6am until 10-11am in the mornings and today she did fine. She was also awake for an hour without crying (which has never happened before). Hopefully this will help my little girl out. It sure was nice to get to hang out with a happy smiley baby.

It's a Miracle

Well Kiah slept from 11:30 last night to 4:30, yep folks that's FIVE hours. Granted it will probably never happen again, but I feel pretty great right now. Well Moira has turned in to a total t.v. addict since Kiah's birth. I tried going cold turkey with no tv yesterday which resulted in two screaming kids for several hours so we're revising the strategy to slowly reduce tv time.

We had a great time in the sun this weekend. We finished planting a couple of flower beds and introduced Moira to a bin of sidewalk chalk. The basketball court makes a great canvas.

Nick's first project with his new table saw was to build a trellis for this lanky rose next to the front door.

Nick has also dug out a new path that will go from the deck to the upper level of the back yard. This flower bed will border one side and the flower bed up against the gazebo is on the other side. This bed has two purple hebe we inherited from Judy and Paul and 3 white azalea and three purple azaleas that we got from Keron and Ross.

We also finished planting the bed next to the gazebo. It contains two indian hawthorn, a bleeding heart, 4 hostas two rhododendrons (I particularly like the peach/orange one) and 20 day lilies and a row of inpatients for some color.

Pity Party

Well I try not to be much of a whiner, but this is one of those rare times when I just need people to agree that this sucks. In addition to the normal trials and tribulations associated with taking care of a newborn I now have a cold. My fever is 102 I have a hacking cough, which only serves to accentuate the post partum pains in my abdomen, and a horribly sore throat.

Kiah sleeps blissfully for 3 hours at a time during the day, but wakes up every hour to eat at night. So I'm stumbling through the day in a zombie like trance. To top it off Nick goes back to work tomorrow, and my mom is still out of town. Luckily Keron will be here wed to help out, and my mom also gets back in town, so for now that is my focus and goal, I just have to make it 2 days.

Moira's doing pretty well with the addition of Kiah, but we've had a lot of acting out. How much of that is developmental 2 year old stuff and how much of it is in reaction to Kiah is hard to say. She's discovered the word MINE, and frequently expresses her ownership of all manner of things. Blankets and the boppy pillow have become highly contested items, and we're subject to a fair amount of whining over the most mundane aspects of our daily routine.

Last but not least Kess has injured her back. She's swollen right on her spine over her hips. Of course I would happily rush her to the vet for x-rays, but Nick has pointed out that we have no money. So we've agreed to wait a week to see if it improves. So in the meantime it's ice and aspirin for poor Kess.

Hopefully today I can get some one on one time with Moira, and a nap in and things will look a little brighter.

Danicin'

The newest little Ericson

Kiah Ashlyn Ericson joined our family at 11:52pm on April 19, 2008. We're just starting to get a handle on getting everyone dressed and fed and ready for the day at reasonable hour. Nick's decided to take another week off from work, which is great. He'll still gets a whole month off, and will probably take that later in the summer.

Moira is starting to warm up to the idea that Kiah's here to stay, but she has acted out a little. The most noticeable side effect is a lot more whining out of Moira. So far we're able to still both get some one on one time with her every day, and work hard at making the most out of the time when Kiah is snoozing.
Today we all headed out to Moira's school carnival. They had lots of games and little prizes for the kids. We followed up the carnival trip with a stop off at a little park near the house.

Several folks made it up this weekend to see little Kiah. It was great to see everyone and put our deck to use on such a nice afternoon.

Nick's Birthday

Well we couldn't have asked for nicer weather . . . it was in the mid 70's out on the deck for our afternoon barbecue. We all seized the opportunity to don short sleeved shirts and enjoy the sun. After eating all day we capped off the evening with a fire. Moira had a great time entertaining all of her aunts and uncles so of course we had to take pictures.

STILL waiting

Well after the Dr's promising report that my baby would probably born in a couple of days I thought I'd be posting baby pictures by now. Well a couple of days have come and gone. Since people are planning on coming down sat for Nick's birthday I figure it will happen then, and we'll just have a house full of people waiting around for us to get out of the hospital. However, I've learned not to cancel activities because I thought the baby might come. I would have been sitting around at home a lot this week if I hadn't just kept up my plans, and that makes the days even longer.

In other news Kess got bit by a dog at the dog park and when I told the people she'd need stitches they grabbed their dog and ran away. You got to be pretty low to run off from a huge pregnant lady, her toddler, and her bleeding dog. Karma shall exact my revenge. Of course it was after hours so I had to take her the emergency clinic. The next morning I had to leave the house for an hour and she promptly tore out her staples, there went $300. I called the vet and since the wound was more than 24hrs old, and since we have no money, they said to just watch it for infection until it dries out, and that it will just take a long time to close up.

The adorable toddler report is that Moira is a big fan of the harmonica Juju bought her and goes into foot stompin, gyrating fits when anyone plays it. I have yet to capture the phenomena on video tape.

Gotta start them young

Moira, my mom and I went for a picnic at the Seattle Arboretum. Moira has recently been requesting "go up in tree" I expect her Dada has something to do with that, although grandma said she practically lived in trees when she was younger.

Just in case you haven't heard I'm STILL pregnant. This little bun has already been in the oven 4 days longer than her big sisters stay. It's the waiting at the end that's the hardest, but for the most part I'm surviving.

Ahhhh. . . springtime

Well we've really enjoyed the nice weather the last few days. I even hauled my fat butt out and got the rest of the flowers I bought planted. Nick mostly finished recovering one of the flower beds, and got some shrubs that my mom brought over in the ground. Moira loves to go outside, outside, OUTSIDE. Of course she prefers the back yard where she can go up and down the stairs and taunt mom with death defying feats next to the retaining wall. She also really likes to run around in circles on the basket ball court. The only problem with the back yard is that it requires a thorough poo patrol before Moira can come out. I miss the days when the dogs just went off into the woods to go!



In other news this baby has officially baked 2 days longer than her big sister. I'm pretty sick of waiting, but since there's not much I can do about it, it's business as usual around here.

Moira investigates her shadow

Lucky Break!!

So way back in Jan I fell victim to a speed trap. I haven't gotten a ticket in 15yrs so I was pretty annoyed that the cop gave me a $250 ticket, plus my tabs had expired, which was another $200. So I decided to actually go in to court to see if I could get the fines reduced. Well I finally had my court date today. Apparently the city of Lake Forest Park lost their copy of my ticket and the copy that I sent in with my request for a hearing, so the judge had no choice but to dismiss my tickets since they didn't know what they were for. Unfortunately I was so happy I forgot to get anything to that effect in writing so I'll have to call them tomorrow. I could just see trying to renew my licence and getting told it was suspended for unpaid fines.

It pretty much made my day, week, month. I wish I could say that we went out and celebrated, but we're broke so we just rented some movies and had a pizza, but I might have to go buy a lottery ticket in the morning.