mostly better

we are mostly better around here. not 100% better, but much, much better. hand foot and mouth is a crazy disease. check out these two pics of ethan and you'll see what I mean.

first, his poor, poor legs. his feet and hands were just as bad if not worse. this is after all the little blisters have turned to scabs, but when they were blisters and all red and puffy... so sad.

but then, look at his chest. the lighting isn't quite the same, but... totally clear. no spots.

If I were naming it, I would call this disease hand foot mouth and butt disease (don't worry, I'm not going to show you pictures to prove this point, just trust me). but it is crazy how it really wasn't anywhere on either kid's torso. all over their legs and butts, half way up their arms, and somewhat on their faces, but totally clear chest and back. weird.

so, this was a rough disease. there was nothing life threatening or really truly severe, but it was a lot worse than i'd originally anticipated. let's just leave it at that, and I'll show you some happy pics. :)

look blake's birth-mas (I know, I'm a terrible person and combined his christmas and birthday present) finally came. we now own a piano! thanks to all the relatives who contributed to the piano fund so that blake could get the one he wanted. :)

the kiddos think it's pretty great.

especially ethan who can climb up on the bench (and does so all the time) and just loves it SO much! (and yes, ethan's shirt is rather drooled upon. while sick he was a crazy drooler. as in 5+ bibs or shirts per day. he's back to one shirt a day now thankfully.)

hopefully later this week I'll get a chance to post more happy pics, but for now I just wanted to say that we did survive! we're going to stay at home for a couple more days just to make sure we don't pass this on to anybody, but we'll be happier while we're at home!

spots

pop quiz. what book is this from?

Tails furry, tails spiny, tails rainbow-hued and shiny!
One day PJ decided to leave home. "I don't want to be a bunny anymore said PJ. I want to be a...
Tails stand up, tails drag. Tails frisky, wag, wag, wag!
BEAVER! And PJ went to live with the beavers.

why yes, that is from the book Twins, by me.

Tonight, blake is at class. Kaylee has been sick since Sunday/Monday. Ethan has been sick since yesterday/today. Blake took the morning shift, but it's mostly just been me and babies all day long. they've been good nappers today (which is more than I could say yesterday), so that's been nice. but night time is always the hardest and tonight was certainly no exception. Two little babies with fevers and spots all over, having meltdowns while mommy applied the calamine lotion. they'd had their tylenol, they'd had their oatmeal bath. but something about post-bath required double melt-downs tonight, so I put two screaming babies on my lap, grabbed the singing and light-up seahorse (thank you mimi) from when they were infants that has resurfaced recently, plopped all three in my lap, and started reading ethan's favorite book, Tails. He was screaming louder at that moment. But Kaylee would not have that, and kept pointing to PJ Funnybunny (which, apparently, is really called It's not easy being a bunny). Her favorite book at the moment is really I Want My Hat Back (a recent present from uncle darren) but PJ is prob her second favorite and was within eyesight. So... we read them both. Poor PJ is a longer book, so we skipped pages. Kaylee didn't seem to notice, what with the Tails lines in between. eventually, everyone stopped screaming and we skipped tooth-brushing and went straight to bed.

ahhhhhh...

so yes, they're sick. kaylee was cranky on sunday, and also cranky on monday morning when blake dropped them off at his parents' house so I could go to work (well, he went to work too). then heidi texted us that kaylee had spots on her legs. she seemed lethargic and spotted, but otherwise happy so we kept working and blake picked them up after work. we called the consulting nurse but they didn't have much to say other than ride it out. our evening was mostly normal; blake put them to bed, I tutored. but then kaylee woke up and would not be consoled. so blake took her to urgent care. usually that's ethan's turf (especially for skin issues) but this time it was kaylee. new trick we learned: tell the check-in lady your infant has spots that look sorta like chicken pox. blake was in triage before he could sit down, and the docs came to him in triage and then sent him outta there super fast. apparently they don't want other people getting chicken pox. he was home less than an hour after he left.

so what does she have? who knows. she had her chicken pox vaccine, so that's unlikey. plus chicken pox (apparently) usually starts on your chest, and kaylee's chest is clear. her legs (toes to butt) are covered, and on tuesday she broke out on her hands too, and she has spots around her mouth. yes, I looked up hand foot and mouth disease too, but it doesn't look like that. so... the doctors' best guess is that it's some virus that's similar to chicken pox. so that's neat. wanna see a pic? generally I would not post disease pictures, but people keep on asking me what her spots look like, so here ya go, this is what they look like:

poor girl. poor ethan too, because as of tonight, he's developing a few spots too. :(


update: apparently I didn't actually click publish last night. whoops. ethan's face is all broken out this morning, so I called the consulting nurse again to ask if we should keep putting his eczema meds over the blister spots (the answer was no) and we concluded that actually, it is hand, foot, and mouth disease. fits a lot better than chicken pox, and the bumps now look more like the online pictures I saw before.

lest you think they are miserable and sad all the time though, we made edible playdough yesterday and today while I was at work my mom took a cute video of them pushing their cars around. maybe I'll post some of that this weekend, we'll see.

happy thursday everyone!

Snow babies

We took a few field trips outside this week.  Ethan and Kaylee enjoy putting on their snow clothes.  Once they get outside, they quickly voice their desire to be "all done".  Here is some pictorial evidence of their displeasure.

Dana construted a makeshift sled out of a plastic box lid and pink zebra duct tape

Kaylee did not love the sled

The Christmas lights are still up

Ethan's lost foot

Toddler and mommy footprints

SNOW!!!

the snow arrived yesterday. here are a few pics from our (very short) adventure out into the snow today.

happpy birthday blake

I love you blake.

Happy 30th birthday.

Thanks Heidi and Bruce for creating such an awesome husband, father, and friend.

Enjoy the random assortment of blake pics that happen to be on this computer.

new daddy. best husband ever.

totally our best family pic.

painting the kiddos' bedroom w/ dave.

two babies? no prob.

in rhode island w/ my fam for my cousin's wedding.

at RTC for Heidi's flute concert.

random summertime pic of ethan feeding blake. :)

our lung surgery shirts. mine said "no mo' pneumo"; blake's said "I'm the husband" and he wore his with pride for my lung surgery. if you want a shirt that's that awesome you have to have a rotten disease, and then brianne and danielle will make them for you. or maybe just ask them. :)

one of the shots we did not use for our 2007 christmas card. snow at our then-new condo.

blake's bday surprise bday party one year. yah, I got him a truck pinata and we did it in our garage (hey, it was snowing outside!) there were other people there, they're just behind me.

blake and dave playing DDR. they are so cool.

resting on the beach before/after our first outdoor triathlon at ocean shores on 07/07/07.

oh... the prom party. jackie in her old homecoming dress, caleb in my old homecoming dress... blake and I in value village purchases.

rwanda. the rwandans were about a zillion times better at this than we were.

disneyworld

hiking little mount si (near the blueberry farm where ev and alyssa got married)

and last, but not least... leaving jackie and dave's wedding just a few days after the kiddos were born. me w/ my pump, blake w/ my purse and our other clothes. he is pretty much the best.

you really are the best blake. happy birthday.

new years

new year's this year was just my family plus darren's friend tiahnan and my friend danielle. we mostly played games, ate food, and made fun of Evan. the kids slept through the whole thing, including the midnight noise we made w/ noisemakers and poppers and everything. here are a few pics from midnight itself.

tiahnan, darren, ev, mom, danielle

this pic deserves a little explanation: we don't own a TV. and apparently other people care about watching a clock tick down on new years. so we watched the NY new years on Evan's laptop at 9pm. Then, the next thing you know, it's almost our new years and my mom tells Evan to pull soemthing up on his laptop. she says go to komo (the local news station) and it will be there, quick, hurry, click on it. So evan goes to the site, and clicks on the first thing he sees. It is about goats. So as the clock struck midnight, we are all laughing REALLY hard, as evan shows us this video about goats eating christmas trees.

we continued to watch it, of course.

happpppppy new year from blake!

evidence that annemarie was there

evidence that dad and alyssa were there (plus mom and evan again too)

I got a new camera

Part of the reason I haven't been blogging as much (other than laziness) has been that our laptop has been dying. I don't know where the cord that goes from my camera to the computer is, but the laptop can read the camera card directly. but the laptop is dying... and the other computer can't read the card directly so... (that's also why I posted a bunch of videos and scans, since that's a different camera / the scanner which can talk to the other computers). anyways... this is to say that YAY! I got a new camera for christmas from my oh-so-wonderful husband. it's a nikon d60. pretty much most of the fancy-camera people I know have nikons so I told blake I wanted whatever nikon he could find used for a good price. honestly I didn't expect him to get it though, so I was excellently surprised. the point is though, it came with a cord. so here I am... with pictures. enjoy!

blake reading a book (that was a present from my cousin jennie) to the kiddos

they still absolutely love the cars they got for their bdays from my aunts

kaylee loves doing this lately. who knows why. blake and I like yelling "kaylee's doing a downward facing dog*!" when she does it, and the she looks up and smiles at us like, "aren't I so silly?" (* that's the name of that yoga position)

playing with dad is so fun

especially when you're wearing just one ugg

this picture is actually the result of me putting my fingers (accidentally) over the flash when taking the picture of kaylee climbing up on my lap. but it's sorta cute.

so now that I have this new camera you are more likely to see a few more posts from me. but having a camera does not fix the laziness part, so... we'll see. no guarantees!