J and B are up, T and C are down

It was a very, very long day yesterday! B only wanted to watch Charlie & Lola all day long, and we only had a few episodes recorded on the DVR...so it was the same thing over and over and over. After J got home we were able to track down some Charlie & Lola DVDs and watched a couple of them last night. We set an alarm to make sure that we gave B acetaminophen every four hours throughout the night. This morning she woke up with a normal temperature and has been acting completely cured (except that she's confused as to why she has to eat cereal for breakfast today instead of sorbetto). We're still stuck watching a Charlie & Lola marathon, however, since we can't tell her no when we just bought all these DVDs.

The bad news is T is now feeling crummy and coughing a lot. Oddly, she's not running a fever; instead her temperature has dropped even lower than normal (usually around 97.6) to 96.3. C has coughed a bit this morning, but doesn't seem to feel bad at all, so its entirely possible that his is just due to teething.

High Temps, Outdoors and In

J came home on Friday complaining of feeling dizzy and feverish on his bike ride home, we thought it was just the heat since its been in the 90s here lately. But low and behold, he had a fever of 100.4, poor guy. His fever eventually spiked to over 101 and lasted until Saturday night. Sunday he still felt pretty crummy, but was on his way to a full recovery.

Unfortunately, our little lady B turned up with at fever Sunday morning which has been hovering around 102 ever since. Surprisingly, she just started acting sick this morning but it appears to be the same thing J had and so we're hoping it runs its course in the next day or so.

J to assist in the protection of the world as we know it.

Or at least he'll be working on a movie with that premise. Some of you may know that J finished his work on Shrek Goes Fourth a couple of weeks ago and has been in training on new software. He was scheduled to start working on Puss In Boots at the end of July, but found out on Friday that he will be working on The Guardians instead. J is really excited about this project and looks forward to working on something completely new and different.


The Guardians is based on an unreleased book by William Joyce (who also wrote Rolie Polie Olie and Meet the Robinsons) about familiar childhood characters banding together to save the world.

For those of you interested, here is an article about Dreamworks current scheduled releases through the year 2012.

Swim Lessons

We started swim lessons today and both kids loved it! It made for a very busy morning: up at 6:30, out of the house by 8, run a couple errands, to gymnastics by 9, then straight to swim lessons for 10:55 class. B and C were very happy to take their naps as soon as we got home!

The class is pretty simple, with an instructor leading a few games and then giving advice and help while the parents play with their tots. C was happy to splash the entire time and B loved the pool toys (lots of rubber duckies, noodles and kick boards). We worked on a bit of dunking, and C was completely fine with it while B was a bit apprehensive. But the instructor helped T learn how to ease B into it and taught them a few games, and by the end of class B was already feeling more comfortable with it. And as for C, he is not nervous in the water at all! He wanted to be faced away from Mama and Dada the whole time and practiced his kicks and floating about on his belly. We may have quite the little swimmer in our midst!

Sidewalk Chalking at PDI

Sweetest 16 Yet!

Happy Birthday Taylor Rae!!

We love you so much and hope you have a spectacular birthday and a wonderful 16th year.

The Eight Month Mark

C is growing so fast! We swear time is moving at least twice as fast as when B was a baby, and her first year went twice as fast as any year previously on record...so you can imagine how quickly time is going for us now. We don't have a well baby check until next month, so we are guessing when we say he's about 17lbs now.
He's crawling like a ninja: very swift and very stealthy. He's climbing on everything, up and over if there's something he wants on the other side. He's doing pull ups, push ups and bear crawls; the last one is very funny to see. It seems pretty obvious to us that all those Saturday mornings watching big sis at gymnastics have not been wasted. Don't want to jinx him, but we wouldn't be surprised if he walks in the next month; he's already trying to "free stand" and taking little steps toward furniture.One thing he's not quick to do is eat baby food. C's pretty much still exclusively a breastfed baby with very little interest in eating anything pureed. He has started munching on teething biscuits (no teeth yet though) and has given banana chips a try. We're kind of thinking he's just going to bypass the baby food stage entirely and just go straight to table food. (So glad we bought that fancy baby food maker!)Overall he's really coming into his own lately. Not just sitting back and observing as much, he's in the thick of the action now and asserting himself much more (making things a little rocky with his big sis). He can do "goal arms" (something we started when B was little, basically just throwing your arms up like you're at a soccer match and yelling "goal!") and just started waving today. He's not much for television (not that we are complaining) but he does show interest in Yo Gabba Gabba, Pinky Dinky Doo and the Wonder Pets. Playing ball is his favorite game right now, with the Handy Manny tools and Legos coming in a close second and third. He likes to be read to, but he isn't really one to sit still for story time; he does love pulling the books off the shelf though. Mostly he enjoys doing anything that B is doing, and now that he is very mobile she has a hard time keeping herself or her things away from him. He's a determined little man, and if he goes after something sooner or later he will get it.

T's been accepted!

Its not common knowledge, but T recently applied to the graduate photography program at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. And yesterday she received an acceptance letter in the mail! While this is very exciting, its also a little curious because she hasn't sent in her portfolio yet. But the letter says that the portfolio is really just to place her in classes and clearly states that she has been accepted to the Masters of Fine Art program for the fall semester. She is opting to do the program entirely online, so it will be much easier to manage while also mothering two young children. There are weekend seminars that she may decide to attend at the school on occasion. So this week she will submit her portfolio and statement of intent, which will (evidently) place her in the appropriate level classes. Once we sort out the financial aspect of going back to school she will register and officially be a grad student!

And away he goes!

I was going to wait until C's "Eighth Month Mark" post to discuss his crawling and climbing advancements. But his feats keep getting more daring and more astounding to us, so we had to share. He really started crawling about a month ago; it had appeared that he was on the cusp of crawling since mid-April, but he didn't seem to have any interest in actually doing it...walking is what all the really cool kids (B) do. But eventually he gave crawling a shot, and by the second day he was super-warp speed crawler, able to cross any room in the blink of an eye. And by the third day he had started walking along the furniture.

He still hasn't taken any steps away from the furniture, but he can go from the couch to the table, etc. Last night he was in the kitchen with J and tried reaching up to a ledge above his head. J thought this was good fun, and encouraged him to grab the ledge with both hands and helped him to pull himself up. C caught on very quickly and grabbed the counter, pulling himself up further. Then today I found him climbing B's dresser, using the knobs like a peg board, easily lifting himself up off of his toes! Wonder what he'll try tomorrow?

Our Little Cake Boss

We've been very cake oriented around here lately, with B's birthday and discovering the Cake Boss on TLC. And B has been very interested in cooking lately, she wants to help with every meal and snack: "Me cook numies!" is a commonly heard phrase in our home. So it shouldn't come as a big surprise when B announced last night that she will be cooking cakes for her work. But we know she will be generous in her baking success and share the wealth (because, of course, she will be the best baker in the world), she has already promised a job to J ("Dad help cook cakes!")

T minus 14 days to the cleanse.

We've decided to do a 21-day cleanse starting July 1st; no caffeine, alcohol, refined sugar, gluten or animal products. J's most concerned about saying good-bye to the caffeine, T's most concerned about missing out on dairy. T's checked out several cookbooks from the library and is busy planning out our meals ahead of time. Hopefully the more prepared we are, the easier it will be to stick to the plan. Our goals for the cleanse are 1) to feel better, recharged 2) to expand our culinary horizons and 3) to develop better eating habits. We'll try to keep the blog posted regularly with our dietary struggles, strategies and successes. Come along if you can!

More Photos...

Taken recently that didn't really fit into B's birthday posts. Believe it or not, there have actually been other things happening around here.

Easy & Important

Beautiful 'Preschooler' B

What happened to our Beautiful Baby B? We thought she was still a toddler, but we've been told she falls into the preschooler category now. She's still our beautiful B though, no matter the category.

The March of the Cupcakes!

There has been much ado about the penguin cupcakes, and here they are; the messiest cupcakes known to mankind. T tried to steer B towards simpler, tidier cupcake design, but these were on the back cover and she would not be swayed. We got up early, although not early enough as it turned out, on Saturday to make them for B to take to her friends in gymnastics class. On any given Saturday there are maybe four kids in her class, but this Saturday there were three new kids! Fortunately we had plenty to go around, and none of the parents wanted any. Much to our surprise most of the kids chose the "iceberg" cupcakes over the penguins, maybe they were confused by the penguins though. They certainly didn't look any cupcakes we had ever seen before. We made B wait to eat hers until we got home so we could strip her down to her undies first; black frosting is messy!

first we start with a dainty iceberg...

...then we move on to a bite of J's penguin...

...and its all over
And then she realized her hands were dirty.
Nothing to do but work it.