Jon and Amber

We hosted a poker party on Saturday afternoon/evening and it was a blast! Jon had 10 guys at 2 poker tables in 1 big tournament downstairs, and Jeremy and I spent most of the time upstairs hanging out with Kate and Niamh – a mom and baby we met through our daycare. (Niamh and Jeremy were born just 10 days apart and they make great playmates, which is a lot of fun for us moms, too!)

Here’s Jeremy giving Niamh a hug and a “kiss,” or maybe a little bite:

We weren’t downstairs much, but we heard lots of loud laughing and shouting from the guys, so I guess they all had a fun time too. We ordered a bunch of pizza for supper, and the party was done by 9 pm (since it started at 2 in the afternoon), so we didn’t even have to stay up super late and feel tired the next morning! Win!

Jon is thinking about doing this kind of game once every month or two, depending on interest. At least a few guys said they’d definitely like to do this again, so this might become a regular occurrence! (And a super incentive for us to keep the house clean – HAH!)

I tried to help him climb stairs a few weeks ago and he just didn’t quite “get it” – but tonight he approached them all by himself and lo and behold, he’s suddenly a pro!

Visual proof:

He got all the way up to the landing before i stopped him (he was trying to eat every little leaf and piece of dog hair he found along the way.) Nevertheless, we are so proud! (Of the climbing, not the debris-eating.)

Almost forgot about this, but I had to share! I brought Jeremy to the office for a couple hours last Friday. He made a lot of new friends and had a fun time crawling up and down the hallways and yelling at the cars on the freeway, which he got to see from the 3rd floor window. Very exciting stuff!

He even helped me with some filing. What a good little worker!

On Saturday we had pizza for supper. Jeremy got a corner of crust with a little sauce on it. He loved it!

Last weekend, Jeremy had fun with Dad:
   
(Also had fun with Mom, but I’m usually the one behind the camera so we don’t have any pictures of me!)

And Grandma:
   

And this weekend he and I had fun going to the library with Niamh and her Mom on our first playdate! (Click the picture below to see a few more of the babies playing together.)
 

Today has been an eventful day. This morning, we noticed a little white dot on Jeremy’s upper gums… his third new tooth! Hooray! (It’s been hard trying to get a picture of it, but it’s not much to look at right now. Maybe when it’s bigger we’ll be able to get a good picture.)

The even bigger event happened when Jon’s folks and sister came by for a little visit. We were showing them Jeremy’s little ride-on toy car that converts to a walker. We popped it up into the walker just to show how it worked, and somehow or another Jeremy got a hold of it and ran across the room while holding on to it! I got the video camera out, and after a few slow starts, he really got going and was extremely excited and proud of himself, shouting and grinning like a madman!

I’m just now waiting for the video to upload – will post it here when it’s ready!
Here’s the video – enjoy!

I had to leave work early today and happened to get to the daycare just in time to see snacktime! (cheese cracker sandwiches & water in sippy cups). Jeremy did great and I’m told he is very happy to be part of the group finally when food is served (Poor kid didn’t like our ideas about delayed solids!)

Jeremy is cruising along the furniture, crawling at lightning speed, and getting into EVERYTHING these days!

We had a nice Christmas with Jon’s side of the family here in Minnesota. And between Xmas and New Year’s, my folks came down from North Dakota to visit too, so it was a great holiday season all around. I think Jeremy’s favorite gift this year was this little play table. He loves walking around and around (and around and around!) and playing with it.

It’s been a very busy 2-week vacation for Jeremy and me. Besides being constantly on the move, he’s also experimenting with new foods – he already recognizes the box of Cheerios when he sees his favorite little snack (besides his milkies of course ) And this evening he got a new treat – (smushed) blueberries – YUM!

The Cefprozil for Jeremy’s ear infections gives him horrible diarrhea – many, many times per day. And the diarrhea is giving him a diaper rash, not a horrible one yet, but it’s obviously uncomfortable for him because he cries and cries whenever he knows he’s going to get his diaper changed, and no matter how gentle we are when cleaning him off, he cries in the saddest way and is pretty hard to console after the diaper change is done. The one thing that takes the crying down a notch is when I slather on gobs of Butt Paste, I guess it’s pretty soothing to his tender skin. He’s still crying by the time we finish up and do hugs and kisses, but the Butt Paste does seem to help.

I absolutely LOVE the smell of Boudreaux’s Butt Paste. LOVE IT. Like, I wish I could get that exact scent in some kind of body oil or something, LOL. It’s kind of earthy and balsam-y.

In other news, I started a frickin’ kitchen fire last night. Oh yeah. I was going to make some noodles, and I put the pot on to boil on the left front burner. Then I turned the dial for the right front burner because, oh, I don’t know, I’m an idiot-head. Then a few minutes later, from the living room, I smelled something burning. Instantly I had a flash in my head of where the pot was, and which burner dial I had turned, and I knew exactly what had happened. And yet, even knowing what to expect, when I got to the kitchen and saw my pot holder and part of the plastic bag of noodles on fire atop the glass-top stove, I just froze and said, “Oh sh–! Fire, fire, fire, fire, fire-” until Jon came in and said “Stand back!” He blew on it because it wasn’t a huge flame, but it didn’t quite go out, and then I got my senses back about me and jumped forward, turned off the burner, and threw the pot lid over the flames, extinguishing them. Then the smoke. Oh the smoke. Good lord, it stinks even now. We turned on the exhaust fan and opened the back door and a few windows, and then Jeremy started getting annoyed at the smoke or the cold air or both, so I took him downstairs so he could sit and play in his swing while I worked on straightening out the branches of the Xmas tree. (Little story about that – we got this artificial tree last summer at some kind huge group rummage sale, for ONE DOLLAR! The branches were all kind of smushed down from being stored in a big bag, so I was straightening them out to make it look nice before we put the lights and decorations on it tomorrow. A little late, I know, but at least we’re DOING it!)

So to make a short story even longer, after the fire was out and we were still clearing smoke out of the house, the oven (which had our main dish in it) flashed yet ANOTHER F3 error message and turned off. We’ve gotten these errors at least 8-10 times in the 2.5 years we’ve had this house, and between those and the wonky temperature-setting dial, and all the other stuff I dislike about it, I’m hoping Santa brings me a new range for Christmas. He probably won’t. But then I think I am going to go buy one for my personal New Year’s gift to myself and the people I feed in this house.

This was my last week in the office before a 2-week holiday vacation, so I had a lot of things I wanted to wrap up before Friday. Of course that means I had to get a call from the daycare at noon on Monday saying that Jeremy had what appeared to be pinkeye, and I had to come pick him up immediately. Also, he could not return to daycare until he had been on medication for at least 24 hours. Great. So there goes half of Monday and all of Tuesday!

The pediatrician did a double-booking to get Jeremy in on Monday afternoon, thank goodness, so we were able to go get checked out and get a prescription for eye drops. And during that doctor visit, she also found an ear infection – in both ears! Poor Jeremy! But our jolly little trooper never made a peep or even had a fever, so we would have never known. Yikes. So we ended up with two prescriptions – eye drops and an oral antibiotic for the ear infections.

Let me take this opportunity to mention that the oral medicine, Cefprozil, tastes absolutely terrible. It’s supposed to be tutti-fruity but I got some on my finger and it tasted like… well, like tongue-burning, nasty, bitter horror. Plus it smells EXACTLY like tutti-fruity flavored cat urine. Seriously. The first time we gave him a dose, I thought one of the cats had just peed on the carpet somewhere behind me. So I can’t blame Jeremy for fighting tooth and nail when we try to give it to him.

I spent Tuesday at home with Jeremy, and he was happy and well, even his eyes were pretty clear, so he was able to go back to daycare Wednesday. Then on Thursday at 1:00, I got another call from the daycare. Jeremy had a fever of 101.3, and I needed to come pick him up right away. Argh! I called the nurse to see if I should bring him in again, and she said that it was most likely his body just working to fight the ear infections, and that I didn’t need to worry unless it got a couple degrees higher. So that was a little good-ish news at least. I gave Jeremy a dose of ibuprofen when we got home, and he had a good afternoon and evening. The fever came back at about 3:00 am, so I dosed him again and he slept pretty well after that.

And that leaves us here, home together again today – Friday. I am struggling with trying to decide if I should just call it an early start to my Christmas/New Year vacation, or if I should bundle up the baby and run in to the office for a couple hours just to tie up a few loose ends before the mandatory corporate shutdown next week. Right now, I’m leaning towards just staying home. Nothing will suffer too much if I don’t go in, and I’m still in my pajamas at 9:00 am and rather enjoying this slower pace today! Plus the Cefprozil gives Jeremy diarrhea and I don’t know if I am really brave enough to risk that happening on the 25-mile drive in to the office, heh.