sick days

Our household has been in semi-quarantine this week. A lovely, nasty flu bug is making it's rounds. It started with Gavin on Saturday, Mikayla and Levi succumbed to it on Monday and last night it hit mom and dad. We've been having lots of chicken noodle soup, movies, gingerale, naps and snuggles. I suppose the snuggles are probably why the adults are now infected, but hey, what do you do?

Who can resist a snuggle with a sick little kiddo? Just look how sweet they are when they don't have the energy to bounce off the walls!

What to do when you're "bored" (her words) of being home from school?

Mikayla read a 65 page "chapter book" while she was home sick from school. She has really taken off in her reading skills this past year. She has gone from reading each word out loud, following with her finger - to reading silently only to stop and ask how to pronounce a word on rare occasion  She is now able to read on her own AND follow the story, instead of reading word-by-word and loosing track of the bigger story. I'm a proud mama!

Anyway...
Slowly this bug is making it's way out of our house, Gavin has been fine for a few days, Mikayla actually went to school today (mostly because I didn't want to hear all day about how being at home is boring and she misses school), and the rest of us are, well, y'know... give us another day or so.

Big Boy Bed

We've moved Levi into a big-boy bed!! Can you believe my little baby boy is one step closer to being a big boy. Jan and the kids set up the big boy bed while I was at work one day. It was so sweet when I came home, Levi was so excited to show me his room. He grabbed my hand before I could even get my shoes off "mommy, I show you my new bed". He's so proud of himself!
This move was about 2 weeks ago now, and things are going quite well. The first few nights we had no problems at all, then he spent a couple nights coming to his door after he had been put to bed, knocking on the door, calling out "mommy, daddy open the door". He still is not able to open his bedroom door himself, that's a bit of a saving grace. He got over this quickly enough, and bed time has been relatively painless ever since. Unfortunately, Levi has always been an early riser (always before 7:00), and the change to a new bed has pushed his wake time even a smidge earlier, I'm hoping this just slowly moves back to normal.
Our biggest  issue with the new bed has been at nap time. Levi figures he doesn't need to nap now, I'm praying we get him past this, because I'm just not ready for him to give up his nap yet. Mikayla stopped napping shortly after she turned 2, Gavin kept napping until after he turned 3, and we had to force Gavin to give up naps because they fell at the same time as preschool. I was really hoping Levi would follow his big brother's lead on this one. Either way, we'll just have to see how it plays out.
I've gotta admit, I'm feeling a little bit sad to see the "baby phase" of our family coming to a close. Just a little though. Luckily my friends are having lots of babies right now, so I still get my share of baby snuggles.

Next step to being a full-fledged big boy: potty training!!! I can't wait for the day I no longer have to change diapers!!

Fall Photos

We got our first smattering of snow last night. So in celebration of that, may I present some fall pictures of the kids from a week ago - when the weather was MUCH nicer.

Me

I love birthdays! I love planning birthday parties. I love spoiling my children on their birthday. And I especially love MY birthday. I'm pretty sure it should be a national holiday, but apparently it's not such a huge priority for the rest of our country.

When we went over to mom and dad's for my birthday dinner last Thursday I thought I should get the story of my birth-day straight from the source(s). The parents say mine was the most "civilized" of their 4 children's entrance to this world. Mom says labour started while she was making dinner - apparently a great new recipe she was trying out - mustard chicken with white wine. Mom tells me she didn't want to waste such a good supper so she had to finish making it before she would go to the hospital. I'm a third child, the older two (ages 4 and 3 at the time) were sent to our aunt and uncle's. They say things went quite quickly (of course, I'm the third), and mom says she didn't have an epidural. I had heard this before - mom likes to recount how the delivery was special because she got to actually pull me out herself!

I had been going through old photos this week, and so I thought in keeping with the trip down memory lane I would scan in some old photos of me as a birthday girl. What a cute kid!

I love my parents. One thing I always remember my mom saying when I was a kid was "Oh no, I forgot the camera". So, there aren't tons of photos of my younger years. But, I suppose this just makes each picture I do have a little more special.

...and a few from more recent birthdays.

Last but not least, this year! A great big 33 years old.