January Update

What a busy month for us! Here is the update for this month specific to each person starting with the smallest :)

Grab a coffee, this is a long one :)

Madelyn:
Went for her first round of vaccinations this month. I always find this to be the scariest because there is no history of reactions (or lack of) so it makes me nervous. I'm so happy that she didn't react ... at all. No fever, no crankiness, no swelling, nothing.

Also took her for her first check up. finally! A day past her 2 month birthday, and she was 11lbs even (which is above average), and 22.5inches long. I stepped on the scale with her yesterday (Friday) and she is already over 12lbs. I had the doctor check her for thrush, something I have suspected we have had for a while, and he said he couldn't see anything wrong with her, but when I told him my symptoms, he said I was right. He prescribed Nystatin for both of us and told me to take it for 10 days. 10 days later, only a mild change, but not better. Decided to try some other techniques instead ... Picked up some Gentian Violet and Acidophilus pills. We're on day 4 of this and can't tell if it's working yet (although Madelyn has a lovely shade of dark purple stained lips). Talked to a friend of mine who is a Le Leche League leader who answered some of my questions, told me some things to do to keep it away and said if this still doesn't help, she's going to refer me to another leader in my area who should be able to help.

On a positive note, she's smiling and responding to those around her a lot. She loves her big brother and even seeing his picture on the computer causes her to break out in a huge smile. She is definitely a daddy's girl, and most of the time is happiest in his arms. She loves to watch what's going on around her, even at gymnastics she'll happily sit on my lap and watch all the kids doing stuff (I know that she likes it because if I turn her away from the action, she starts to get upset). And, due to a freak gravitational pull, she has rolled from front to back twice (not in a row, and not intentionally) ... she just pushed herself up so high that she toppled over, so while exciting, I'm not counting it as rolling over yet. If I find her on the floor when I swear I left her cooing on the couch, then I'll put it in the baby books (I kid).

She also graduated into her own crib just over a week ago and has been happily spending almost all of her sleeping time there (she does still take one short nap in her swing while we're having supper).

We've fallen into a pretty good routine now. She's not so cranky in the evenings (she is pretty sensitive though - we tried to go out for dinner tonight and she woke up as soon as we got out of the van, and even once we got her back to sleep, she didn't stay that way for long), and I can almost always eat supper with the boys. She sleeps from about 9pm until 4am (give or take), and then 5am until 9am.

Logan:
Dave & Logan started gymnastics 3 weeks ago, and holy - what a difference from last time! He participates in everything they do, listens to his teacher, and has so much fun :) He gets to jump on the trampoline, walk on the balance beams (sideways and forwards) and do handstands against the walls, plus lots more. Madelyn and I watch from the bleachers every week to cheer them on.

He went for his 3 year checkup at the same time as Madelyn. He is 38lbs (which, according to the growth chart is the same as an average 6.5 year old) and 39.75inches (which, is the same as an average 3yr,9month old) ... so needless to say, he's a big kid. At least his doctor didn't imply he was overweight this time, but just asked how big his dad was (and then laughed when I told him)

He is now 4 weeks into potty-training. With only a couple of accidents, he has been successfully wearing underwear every day now and only diapers at night (although he has had 8 dry nights in the last 4 weeks too (sporatically), so we're getting there). We took him to pick out his own underwear, and he was so proud carrying them around the store.

I try to take him out a few times a week, to burn off some energy, although we've had a couple of illnesses keeping us home. Every Tuesday, we head to an indoor playground and meet up with some friends there. A friend and I also took our kids to open gym at another gymnastics club in the city last week and he had fun playing with the equipment in an unstructured environment. I plan to make that a weekly thing too until the weather starts to improve.

I know I say this all the time, but he is such a funny kid. He has starting reciting commercials he thinks are funny and today he was re-enacting a bit from the Pinnochio book that Dave has reading him a couple of times. He talks ALL the time and comes up with some of the most random things. He knows his full name, and sometimes likes to be called "Logan" and other times he likes to be called "Samuel". He's big into "saving girls" ... even the ones who don't want to be saved lol.

Finally, I'm researching preschools to enroll Logan in for this coming September. Registrations are starting in the next month or so, so I should have something in place soon. He'll go 2 days a week for 2-2.5 hrs a day from Sept until June.

Dave & I:
Dave is done his 3rd week of school and is doing great!! We're all enjoying the extra time we get to spend with him in the afternoons and weekends and he's pretty happy that he's inside a nice warm school during our coldest months instead of working. It's going to be a shock to the system for him to go back to work in March (for everyone). We've definitely switched roles ... now he's the one staying up until midnight (to study) while I go to bed at 930 or so.

I had the flu. Probably the sickest I've been in a long time, with a fever that hung around for 3 days. It was probably a lot harder because I had to deal with 2 kids and get up in the middle of the night. I'm pretty lucky that I was the only one who got sick, so I guess it was a fair trade.

I'm still doing my 365 project, and am even finding a little more time to do something other than take a snapshot at the end of the day. I'm participating in some small friendly competitions as well to help stir up some creativity both in my photos and my post-processing. Because I was sick, I'm about 10 days or so behind on my editing, so I haven't posted anything on Flickr in a while, but I'm slowly getting caught up. -3o is too cold to take the kids outside for too long, so our pictures are limited to inside the house or if I take my camera with me somewhere, but once it warms up a bit we'll be getting outside more.

Well, if you made it through the whole update, yay! Will post my month's worth of pictures at the end of the month.