Jumping & Sliding, Singing with Dora and Baseball with Daddy & Clifford!

As most of you know week ended with a bit of stress and a sick kid but Tuesday we sure had fun...yes, we did all this just on Tuesday!
The weather is heating up FAST here in the South so we're starting to find fun indoor activities. We recently discovered the newest indoor playground, Pump It Up. The kids love it and after only 1 1/2 hours of playing they are BOTH ready for a nap!


Then there was our visit to the Discover Center where Dora the Explore and her buddy Boots put on a show. The kids loved it! I thought we were taking William to the show but it turns out Claira had the best time! She was singing and clapping and trying her best to do exactly what their Bear Cub Teacher, Ms. Cathy and Dora were doing. You couldn't wipe that smile off her face :)

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Next was the Mobile Bay Bear Baseball game. I got the boys tickets as a pre-fathers day boys night out. They had SO Much fun, though Wil only made it to the 6th inning before asking to go home. By then it was 9pm, almost 3 hours past his bed time. I guess he told Andy, "Daddy, thank you for taking me to the Clifford Baseball game I had so much fun, I love you!" He called it Clifford's Baseball game because Clifford The Big Red Dog was there shaking hands, and driving his car ( I didn't know Clifford drove a car, but at the game he did! ) Andy also said that at one point Wil was chasing Clifford!

Mommy's little helpers

Amazing what you can get them to do when they want to go outside and play.

Petit Mal Seizure

After a stressful week, several visits to doctors office including spending Monday in the ER, Claira has been diagnosed with a condition called, Petit Mal seizure — also known as an Absence seizure. A Petit Mal seizure is caused by an abnormal electrical discharge in the brain. They may cause the child to stare off into space and you can not get their attention, smack their lips, flutter eyelids, chew, or do hand movements. Claira has had 7 since Sunday and the first was the worst her eyes rolled back and her lids began to flutter. She was unresponsive to my voice or my hands. Since she has also experienced the spacing out type. They are very typical in that they only last a few seconds, 10-15, and she has full recovery almost instantaneously. Afterward she is not confused and has no memory of the seizure, in fact she usually just resumes what she was doing. Chances are Claira has been experiencing these for a while. In most cases they can occur for weeks or months before an adult notices, this is because they are so brief. In fact Andy said he saw her do one when she was about 8 months old but since it never happened again he thought nothing of it.

Many can expect to outgrow the disorder. Children who are young, like Claria, when the seizures first started, who have no other neurological problems, like Claira, and who have seizures well controlled by medications are most likely to outgrow their seizures.

Like in Claria’s case there is usually no underlying cause. Some children simply seem to have a genetic predisposition to them. The most recent episodes and the previous one when she was 8 months old just so happen to be the only two times she has been sick enough to go on antibiotics. So maybe hers only presents itself when her body is weak, really it is just too early to tell. We will chart her episodes and see what the pattern tells us.

It is important to know that compared with other types of epileptic seizures, the petit mal variety is very mild. BUT that doesn’t mean they can’t be dangerous. Children with a history of any type of seizure MUST be supervised carefully while swimming or bathing, because of the danger of drowning. So please help us keep an extra close eye on her.

Dinning on Delicious Oysters with Pirates

All week Wil has been asking to go to the restaurant. I kept putting off him until last night I told him to ask Daddy. And he came running back yelling, "Daddy said yes, Daddy said YES!" He was pushing us out the door immediately, he didn't care that it was only 4:30. So off to our early dinner at the 'boat restaurant'. Mikey's on the Bayou is a very casual restaurant/bar on top of a bait shop, thus the 'boat restaurant'. Kids love it for the pizza and fries. Andy loves it because they have fresh raw oysters on the half shell for $5 a dozen and good beer. Well I hate to sound like a mom, but I like because everyone is happy eating there, though they have very good roast beef po'boys.
William was so curious and began asking Andy endless questions while he was enjoying his oysters..."Daddy what that taste like? I never had those? What they feel like? Daddy are they spicy? Hot?" So just to get him to stop Andy gave him half of one with a little cocktail sauce. What do yo think he did?...

NO! He didn't spit it out and make nasty faces (I would, there like someone elses cold lugies, BLAAA) He said, "OOOOO that's delicious!" "Daddy can I have another one?" In a bit of shock and mixed feeling of being proud and not wanting to share Andy gave him another half and with a eager smile William gobbled it down. I think he would have had more but his pizza came and nothing is more delicious than that.

So while were enjoying our time at the restaurant the kids sat and enjoyed the view. Like I said the restaurant is on top of a bait shop that sits right on the Bayou. When we first arrived there was boat way out in the grass that had a few flags flying behind and William was sure it was a Pirate ship! Just to humor him that it must be a pirate ship but then it got closer and closer and I realized it was a pontoon boat. We hoped our happy little kids who were "ARGGGing" like pirates wouldn't notice. As it pulled up to the dock we all realized the driver/captain was wearing an EYE PATCH! The kids didn't know to be scared or go say Hi. It was one of those moments we sat there as parents in fear of what our children were going to say to this 'pirate' and his bandanna wearing friends. Lucky for all they sat in the bar on the other side of the glass divider. After dinner the kids had to go look to see if they had a treasure on their ship, and you wouldn't believe it they did! A COOLER! (looked like a treasure chest to them)

mmmmm! Broccoli my favorite!

Yesterday at the store like usual it was battle through the produce section. They seem to think it is a snack bar!!! Not just that they want to take everything home no matter how much it cost. Yesterday they got a pineapple, grapes, bananas, apricots, apples, cucumber, corn & BROCCOLI. The reason this was a stranger day then usual was the broccoli. We always have broccoli but I usually buy it frozen because we eat so much of it and the kids actually like it with lunch so frozen makes my life easier. The cashier looked at me like I was a crazy mom, Wil carried his bag FULL of broccoli to the counter gave it to the cashier and told her, "Don't put in the bag I want to eat it, now!" sure enough the look on her face turned to shock as she scanned it handed it back and he pulled out a whole thing and stated chowing down! I was a bit shocked myself especially when he turned and yelled with broccoli bits in his teeth, "I LOVE BROCCOLI ITS MY FAVORITE!"

Wil's first Home Grown Veggie & Invasion of the Claira Bug

When it was time to plant the garden I got William very involved this year. He helped turn the soil, lay the soaker hose, and pick out what vegatables he wanted to plant. He only wanted to plant carrots, so he did. I tried to tell him that if he planted his seeds in little containers first they would grow better but he insisted that his little seed could go strait into the garden, and as the weeks went by I was very glad he had forgotten about his carrots. All the other veggies we were getting, like lettuce and strawberries had taken his attention away from the non-growing carrot seeds. BUT yesterday I was pulling weeds and to my surprise what I thought was a weed was a CARROT!!! So I re-planted it and told William he had a carrot growing. Oh, how excited and proud he was!

We rinsed it with the hose and he ate it, even shared a bit with me! It was a little soft but very sweet.

Now my dear little daughter seems to be the bug who has been munching up ALL my strawberries. For a while I couldn't figure out why I was not getting any berries, I would see flowers and even little white baby strawberries but never saw one turn red UNTIL....what did I see when I looked out the window to check on the kids playing was little Claira bug over in the garden gently lifting strawberry leaves in search of treat.

Feels like California!

We couldn't have asked for a more beautiful weekend, the house is open and the breeze feels wonderful. For those of you who have never visited the 'Deep South' this is a rare event, especially this time of year. Us Californians are taking full advantage!!!
Who needs Redondo beach when you have a sand box and a blow up pool?


Lets hope she's doesn't take her baby sister swimming like this!

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We also went to the neighborhood picnic. The firemen were there along with Sparky the firedog, a police man came and let Wil sit in and play with his 'radio phone' along with giving both kids police badge stickers. There was also a bounce house of which Andy was very reluctant to let Claira play in but there was no stopping her!



The nights have been just as wonderful as the days, cool with little to no bugs! So we took advantage of that and went camping...yes, that is our back yard! The kids loved it but Claira had a hard time understanding the boys were not pretending to go to sleep. So she eventually came inside, but she put in a nice effort maybe next time.

2yr old - Preschool Graduation

This week was Wil's final week of school. He has learned so much this year! It amazes me that he can count to almost 20 all by himself (the only reason I say almost is he gets caught up at 14 and 16 and needs a little reminding), he can count to 10 in Spanish too!
He knows most of his colors, pink, brown, yellow, green, red, blue, purple, white, black...well you get the idea.
One of his favorite games to play while we ride bikes around the neighborhood or walk through the grocery store is point out shapes or go on shape hunts. We obviously do this a lot because on Wed on the way to storytime Claira was eating a bag of mixed snacks and yelled, CIRCLE!!! William looked at her in as much shock as I felt and said "YEAH! Hey, where did you find that cookie?"
The main and most important , to me, that he has learned in school is self reliance. He has the courage now to ask or talk to adults without my help or support. He has learned to make friends and most important how to treat his friends. His self-esteem is out of this world. He will sing out loud, sometimes a bit TOO loud.
During this final week of school we have been crazy busy, along with having crazy weather! On Tuesday it was beautiful day, and before school William went out to the garden and picked two BIG bags of lettuce for his teachers. As he picked we talked about how the garden grows. "It needs Sun, Dirt, and Water. Mommy, Daddy, Claira and ME take care of it to help it grow. GOD helps us too by giving us rain and pretty days." When he gave his teachers the bags they asked where did this come from and he said, "our garden, God helps us grow it". Again something he has learned in school is GOD.
On Thursday his class came over for an end of the year party. It was crazy! The weather had changed from beautiful to stormy. So our outside water party came inside. It was poring! Winds up to 60mph, Tornado warnings, thunder and lightning, then to top it off a power outage! The kids all had so much fun they didn't hardly notice the bad weather, until the power went out then they all ran around screaming. Some were saying "the house ran out of batteries!" others like Wil were just yelling, "NO ELECTRICITY!" Oh the craziness, but after a while we didn't notice the lack of power.




Today, Friday, was Wil's graduation ceremony. I had to brave the crazy weather first thing to pick up the cake, balloons and get it all to school by 9. That seems like a reasonable amount of time to do it but it was raining so hard I could hardly see where I was going, even with the wipers going full speed! After safely returning home to get the rest of the family I found a feverish little girl who was cranky with the expected arrival of a new tooth, a little boy who was fussy and kept telling me, "Mommy I don't feel good" and a Daddy who was starting to look forward to going to work ;) Wil still wanted to go to his graduation party, mostly for the 'birthday' cake so off we went with tissues stuffed into his pocket (yes I was that mom who took her sick kid to school but how could I let him miss his graduation? And now after his nap and a movie with popcorn he says he feels ALL better, so we'll see). They sang all their favorite songs from the year, even little sick William tried his best to sing and received his little diploma.

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Then they had 'birthday' cake!

"She Thinks My Tractors Sexy..."

We'll this was a Mother's Day gift I forgot to mention. While Claira was napping last Sunday the boys went and came home with this!


It was Wil's dream! Andy said he was skipping around Lowe's telling everyone, "I'm gonna get a TRACTOR!" I guess he also had to have the floor model, much to Andy's dismay. He didn't want one from the back or one from outside he wanted the (scratched) one he played on inside. So since he gets everything he wants he got the floor model, Andy said he just couldn't say no to such a big smile.


When they got home, unloaded, Wil let Claira have a turn to climb on it (such a nice brother, HA, HA!). Isn't she cute? Wil stood back with his arms folded as I took the picture and said, "Mommy, you see my tractor's smile?"


She did get a turn to ride on it but once it started to move she started Yelling, "NO! NO! NO!" and ran back to her swing. Her and baby were much happier observing from the swing then participating.


The tractor just this week has had many hours of play, caused many fights and all it has done is sit in the garage! Just think if they were teenagers and it was car! Oh what we have to look forward to...


Kenny says it all----"She's always staring at me, As I'm chugging along...."
Click to see me mow!

My Montage 5/13/08

Mothers Day 2008

Hand Prints On The Wall
One day as I was picking
the toys up off the floor,
I noticed a small hand print
on the wall beside the door.

I knew that it was something
that I'd seen most every day,
but this time when I saw it there
I wanted it to stay.

Then tears welled up inside my eyes,
I knew it wouldn't last
for every mother knows
her children grow up way to fast.

Just then I put my chores aside
and held my children tight.
I sang to them sweet lullabies
and rocked into the night.

Sometimes we take for granted,
all those things that seem so small.
Like one of God's great treasures...
A small hand print on the wall

Last Tuesday I went to Muffins with Mom with William and he gave me my first mothers day gift. It was a book that he and his teachers had made. I didn't know but while we were at the park a few back Ms. Melissa had taken a photo of the kids and she incorporated that into Wil's painting for the cover. They also filled the book with poems (above), his hand prints, quotes and interview. The interview was as follows...

My Mommy....
by William

What is mommy's favorite color? Blue and brown----its actually yellow and green but I guess I like blue and brown

What do you love to do with mommy? Go on a bike ride----guess I'll do this more often

What is your favorite food taht mommy cooks? Pizza and Muffins!---I am not surprised, I am very over blueberry muffins.

How old do you think mommy is? FIVE ---- I am very glad I'm not five, but to him I know that is OLD

If you could go to a store and buy mommy ANYTHING you wanted, what would you get for her? flowers!--- a friend of mine got hers and it said "An Alligator!" Lucky her :)

Last night when I received my first gift of the weekend. Andy got home from work, yes on a Saturday, about 4:00 and took the kids for an hour or so to go shopping for Mothers Day. When they returned, William came running into the house yelling, "MOMMY! MOMMY! We got you something for Mother's Day" I responded with a big hug and said, "I'm so excited". He then proceded to tell me in front of his drop mouth Daddy, "I got you flowers, their orange and pink. But SSSSSHHHHHHHH its a secret :) Daddy is going to put them out on the counter after you go to bed." He was so excited all I could do was laugh and give him a hug. Andy just stood there in shock. Then said, We'll buddy I guess we need to work the definition of a secret. I guess he also insisted that they get me a card, and he wrote "LOVE WILLIAM" on it and Claira scribbled something cute. And I guess this week the Mail Lady is going to bring me a new Diaper backpack! Very excited, I have no idea how I will fit 3 kids of snacks, drinks, and cups into my current bag. The kids also made hand prints over at the neighbors house and Melanie printed a cute poem to go alone with them. Very sweet of them to do. My Mom also sent a very pretty hair clip with green stones along with a nice book of mommy quotes.






And my gift from Claira...we'll look for your self. She's growing so fast and joined us for dinner AT the table with no baby high chair tray! Can you belive my baby is eating corn on the cob with us at the table!


She even took her own dish in just like her brother. And such a proud little guy he was helped her reach the counter and told her, "careful Claira, don't spill"

Rancheros Vistadores Ride

Nearly 1000 riders paraded down the HWY in the California Santa Ynezz Valley herding many longhorns and cattle. The Rancheros Vistadores are in the 78th year (began in 1930)of their historic ride which begins with the traditional blessing at Mission Santa Ines and takes the cowboys (real ones and wanabees like my Dad), politicians, civic leaders and many riding clubs northward 60 miles for a week of camping behind Lake Cachuma. This is not a typical camping trip, in fact it is not your typical club. It is said to be the largest riding group of its kind in the world. During the week there are elaborate ceremonies and games. Their meals are elaborate and nobody goes hungry.
Participants are supposed to and encouraged to wear 'authentic' cowboy fashion. Members are broken up into camps, such as Los Amigos, Los Tontos, Los Vigilantes, Los Flojos and Los Borrachos. Former United States President Ronald Reagan and former California Supreme Court Justice William P. Clark belonged to Campo Adolfo. Los Gringos, Los Borrachos, and Los Chingadores are camps with many participants that are also members in the Bohemian Club. Camp Maverick is for newcomers, and as imagined, there is relentless hazing. The newcomers of Camp Maverick are encouraged to fight back.
My Dad is a Maverick with the 4Q Camp of Los Chingadores and yes he did his hazing a few years back. He didn't seem to to get his but kicked like many other men do, but remember he's 55 years old and many newbes are younger so I think he had age on his side. He did get his brand new Maverick vest torn to pieces but he made it through and has such a good time with all these guys acting like a "man". I personally think it is funny to hear about the silly pranks they pull on eachother, its like being at girlscout camp when your 13.
All I can say is my dad is home safe, dirty, and sore today along with his beautiful horse Chopper. And they are both looking forward to next year. Here are some pictures my Mom took of my Dad as he rode through the mission. He is in on Chopper a red/brown horse with a white nose and has a cowboy hat on with a black vest.

Exploring the Studio

Today William was invited to "Bring a Friend to Gymnastic Day" at The Studio Upside Down. He had so much fun; it is unfortunate that we will be out of town during their summer classes, but I will be sure to sign him up for the fall classes. They got to do the trampoline, the rock wall, swing on the rings, and practice his forward rolls!

Claira also had fun, they have a little area for the siblings to play! And she too will be doing a "Mommy and Me" class there in the fall (they said it was ok for the new baby to come too!).


After Class Wil got a sucker and he is so sweet he let Claira have some licks! Claira got some fruit snacks because the few licks she got just weren't enough. Wil asked if he could have one, "Please". "NO!" after a few tries and reminding her of the licks she gave him TWO!!! She is making progress in the sharing, YEAH!