Chloe

Chloe is almost 18 months now. She has gone to nursery a couple of times. Last week, just because she wouldn’t sit still in our Sunday school class, and this week since we figured we would let her practice before she becomes an official nursery kid. Last week Kyle just took her and stayed with her. He said that she just stayed on his lap for most of the time. This week I took her (since Kyle is a big softy, and I was planning on LEAVING her there for the last part of class). When I took her in I just walked past all the other kids to get out of the way of traffic, and I set her down on the ground. Then I walked away from her to go get her some toys. I wasn’t going to have her cling to me the whole time and make this transition take forever! Anyways she did REALLY well. She came over to the toy bucket on her own and sat down and played. Other kids would try to take things from her, but she just grabbed everything that she was playing with and horded it. I stood a few feet away just watching her. She only looked up to find me a couple of times. So I stood there debating on if I should just leave her alone for the last half hour, or if I should just leave her for the last hour, and she was doing so well that I decided to just leave her for the last hour and go to Relief Society. I told the teachers that I was leaving and I asked them to PLEASE not bring her to me unless it was absolutely necessary. I really wanted Chloe to learn that mommy or daddy WILL come back to get her, and I don’t want her to learn “If I cry they take me to Mommy!” Well when my class got out I passed Tyra, Ethan, Jeremy and Dinah’s classes and went straight to go get Chloe because I didn’t want her freaking out that all the other mommy’s and daddy’s were picking up their kids but hers weren’t coming, but Kyle had already picked her up. I guess she had just fallen asleep in there and one of the teachers was just holding her, but other than that she did really well in there. Next week she will be an official nursery kid! Crazy.

Today Chloe has also started saying two new words! She’s been saying “Mommy”, “Daddy”, “candy”, “jacket” “shoes”, and “doggy” for awhile now (there may be a few others that I’m not thinking of at the moment), but today she picked up “eyes”, and “book”.

We also bumped Chloe to a toddler bed tonight! We knew it was going to happen soon, since we didn’t want to wait until after the baby comes this spring, and have to train her to STAY on her bed while dealing with a newborn. So we figured now was as good a time as any. The tricky part was figuring out where to put the crib in order to make space for the toddler bed in the girls room. So I moved the crib to the center of the girls room, to get the toddler bed in place, then there was no other alternative than to go move furniture around in the boys room and just put the crib in there. We didn’t want to take it apart since we know we are just going to need it for the new baby in less than a year! So after rearranging furniture and putting the boys dresser in their closet under their hanging shirts, the crib fits nicely in the boys room. So it would be really convenient for this baby to be a boy! (But we’ll see what happens.) And Chloe has a big girl bed which she is just thrilled about!

Halloween 2010

We did Halloween early this year. The kids got to dress up yesterday for their parade and parties at school. I didn’t get very good pictures of them in the parade. Ethan was jumping up and down so the picture I got of him is extremely blurry. And by the time Tyra’s class came around there were a lot more people in front of me and I finally managed to get a picture of her as she was walking away from me. So the picture is of her back.

Chloe woke up barfy yesterday as well. She couldn’t even keep water down all morning. And she kept falling asleep in odd places all over the house. She would just seem to have disappeared and I would go to see what she was getting into and I would find her someplace random just sleeping on the floor. Once I found her asleep on the floor right in front of the garage door, then another time I found her asleep on the kitchen floor right in front of the sink.

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She just really was not feeling well dang it.

After school I picked Ethan and Tyra up instead of waiting for them to walk home, then we headed to Kyle’s work for trick or treating.

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Dinah was so excited, and ate a lot of candy WHILE still collecting. She also had great fun pointing out every other witch costume that she saw there.

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The kids went from cubicle to cubicle collecting candy. Most of the desks that had candy available had a flier with a ghost on it posted outside their cubicle so the kids could see where there was candy. I must say trick or treating like this has really spoiled us. They get a lot of candy fast, and it’s indoors where it’s warm and dry. 🙂

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Chloe stopped throwing up around lunch time so I took her in for a bit of the trick or treating. But since she hadn’t had ANYTHING to eat all day for fear that she would throw up again, she kept trying to eat the candy at every desk. Every time we put a new candy in her bucket she would reach down and try to get it out to eat, poor thing.

Since Halloween landed on a Sunday this year, our neighborhood did trick or treating today. We usually order pizza as our Halloween dinner tradition, and the only place close enough to deliver pizza to our house is REALLY expensive. So this year Kyle went out to pick up pizza from somewhere else. When he got home we ate, well Kyle and I ate, the kids were just too excited to get out of the house to bother eating anything. We helped the kids get their pumpkins ready.

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Then Kyle took the kids trick or treating while I stayed home to pass out candy and clean up after dinner. They just did our street before coming back to make a potty stop, and at that point Kyle dropped Chloe off and just took the others back out. Chloe was not very happy at being left behind. She ran to the door to watch everyone else go, and then every time some one came to the door she ran ahead of me to go help pass out candy.

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Thankfully Chloe was feeling much better today than she was yesterday. 🙂

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PS: There are more pictures in the photo gallery.

Chicken Pox :(

Well we’ve made it 7 1/2 years as parents and have never had to deal with chicken pox before (aside from when we had it as children of course). Ethan came to me after putting pajamas on a couple of weeks ago saying “Mom, I have a whole bunch of bug bites that weren’t there this morning. They happened while I was at school.” My first thought was WHY would a bug be crawling all over just YOU at school? So I asked him to show me. When I saw them I instantly thought “Chicken pox!” Now the last time that I had ANY exposure to chicken pox was more than 17 years ago, I’m no expert at what they look like or diagnosing it, but really that was the only way that I could explain so many spots appearing in such a short time. I called the after hours doctor, and spoke to a nurse. She told me that based on my description of the spots that they didn’t sound like chicken pox and there really wasn’t anything they could do about them. OK FINE!

The next morning, Saturday, I had Kyle inspect the spots as well and I insisted that Ethan go to the urgent care to have a doctor actually look at them and tell me what they are. Well they WERE chicken pox. Ethan has had both the chicken pox vaccine and the booster shot so his case was very mild. We missed stake conference, Sunday then he missed school Monday, but all of his spots had broken and were scabbed over by Tuesday morning so he was good to go back to school. Then life was good. Or so we thought…..

This past Saturday we were at Granny’s house, and while Kyle was holding Chloe, Granny pointed out a spot on the side of her head and said “oh she’s got a zit”. One spot no big deal, it could have been a zit, or a bug bite….

Sunday morning Kyle went to get Chloe out of bed and brought her into our room saying “I wonder why she’s breaking out.” She had more spots on her face, then he unzipped her jammies to change her diaper and there were other spots on the rest of her body too. Dang it! It’s gotta be chicken pox! Only thing though, is that Chloe has NOT had the vaccine! Her doctor was being lame and I decided not to go back there and I haven’t made an appointment with another doctor yet to take her in for her vaccines that she should have got at 12 months (Bad mommy! I know!). The varicella vaccine would have been one of those shots. Chloe has been coming up with new spots every day since. It makes me feel horrible to see her like this, knowing full well that had I actually just taken her in she wouldn’t have a full blown case of the chicken pox. 🙁

But in a way I guess it’s good that I got to see the difference between chicken pox with the vaccine and chicken pox with out….. Ethan only had a few patches on his belly, his back and neck, a few spots on his face and a few on his arms and legs. Chloe has them everywhere! All over her face and scalp, and all over her body and arms and legs and all over her bum. 🙁 SO SAD!

Washing her face and hands after a meal is so hard. Normally if there is a bump on her face it’s food that is stuck there and I get to pick it off. Right now I have to be careful about what I’m picking off her face.

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At least I know that if any of the other kids get it, they’ve all had the vaccine so they won’t get it this bad. Thankfully.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING???

I have never had a child do this before. I know of other people that have children that have done this, but this is a first for me.

I was cleaning up the kitchen after dinner tonight, and heard someone open the toilet lid. I KNEW that it was Chloe because all of the potty trained kids were out in the living room reading books. So I went to go get Chloe out of the bathroom and I saw……

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She was just having the time of her life sitting in the toilet bowl. Tyra happened to come down the hall while I was taking pictures of my silly little princess, and she saw Chloe and ran out to the living room to inform the others that “Chloe’s taking a bath in the toilet!”

Sigh. I had JUST put a fresh diaper and her pjs on her too.