Elmo has competition

That's right folks, a new obsession with a well known big purple dinosaur has begun at our house......BARNEY.

I remember when I was in junior high, flipping through the channels on the tv and seeing Barney on the PBS. I would quickly change the channel and think to myself "whatever happens when I grow up....my kids will not ever watch that show". Well, it's happened. Funny how things change like that when you have kids. For the past year or so, Hunter and Hannah have been completely obsessed with Elmo or anything Sesame Street. A few months ago when I started turn on the tv for our 9am Sesame Street ritual, they started screaming "no, no, Barney!" Keep in mind they are two year olds, and their speech is not always distinguishable. So, of course to me it sounded like they were saying "no, no, running", to which I said"no...no running we're going to watch Sesame Street". (Don't ask me how I confused "Barney" and "running") This dialogue went back and forth several times for a few days, which ended up with them totally frustrated and me totally confused. The next week, when I walked into their classroom to pick them up from school, they ran up to me and started saying the same thing and pointing at the tv. Evidently, when they moved up to the 2 year old classroom, they also began watching Barney. Man, did I feel like a fool. I'm sure they were thinking "yeah mom, duh! We've been telling you we want to watch Barney for a week now!"

So....that's how it happened. I will try to get a video of them when the intro to the show starts....they run around and start dancing like wild little monkeys! Hunter is now perfecting his rendition of the famous "I love u, u love me" song. He sang it at the top of his lungs at Kohl's and TJ Maxx yesterday. It was so cute, I didn't have the heart to tell him to lower his voice. A few weeks ago we went to the annual Children's festival in The Woodlands to see Barney live. We all had a lot of fun, and they LOVED it. I guess Barney isn't so bad after all...

Halloween...very late!

First off, let us say a very belated "Happy Birthday" to one of Hunter and Hannah's favorite little pals miss Adalee Kate Grindstaff! I can't believe she is already one...her birthday was actually on October 30th. As you can see above, she is absolutely adorable and ever so fashionable!

a little pumpkin carving pre-Halloween...

Hannah was a "pumpkin princess"

Hunter was a farmer...he was not feeling the cowboy hat...

Finger Pricks :(

To sum up October for us....crazy, busy, fun, and ROUGH! We are just now getting back into the swing of things around here, hallelujah!

Over the last few weeks we have all had a pretty bad cold...nothing serious like the flu (thank goodness), but still not fun. We have all been way too healthy this year so I figure we were just due for something....here's a little how our last few weeks have been...

The week before last when Hunters symptoms first started (runny nose, coughing), I decided to go ahead and make a trip to the doctor to rule out the swine flu...yes I am overly paranoid. Well, turns out he had an ear infection, so they sent us home with some good old antibiotics for Hunter (Hannah is fine at this point, just a slight runny nose). So a few days later Hunter starts running a fever and coughed all night long....me, being the paranoid mom, thinks the antibiotics should have kicked in so something is wrong so I make yet another appointment.

The morning of the appointment Hunter woke up with no fever and in a generally good mood-I thought about canceling the appt, but decided against it and went ahead. Doc says that his ear looks better, but wanted to run a blood test to determine whether what he had was viral or bacterial. So the nurse comes in to do the finger prick and takes what seems like FOREVER squeezing his little finger...after she left Hunter was fine and continued playing with the toys in the office. Hannah, on the other hand, began having a complete meltdown. All we can figure out is that she was watching Hunters finger have the blood drawn, and she thought she was next. After trying to calm her down and explain to her that she was fine and she would NOT have to have her finger pricked, she was still freaking out, so I handed her to Kevin so he could have a try. The second I handed her to Kevin she threw up ALL over him and herself. At the exact same time, the doc walks back in to give us the test results, and sees that things have gotten messy so he calls in his nurses for a "clean-up". Keep in mind that up until the finger prick, Hannah has been as happy/healthy as can be. My first thought was that she has come down with a stomach virus, until we lay her on the table to undress her and she turned completely white as a ghost and limp as a noodle. The doc called the nurse back in and they immediately began checking her vitals and trying to get her to wake up....which scared me even more. As it turns out, she had what they called a "veso-vagal episode" (spelling?), which basically means she got so worked up, her blood pressure dropped way down and she passed out. Just to be sure, the doc wanted to do one more thing on her....you guessed it, a finger prick. Luckily at this point, she was so exhausted that all she wanted to do was sleep.

As I am holding her in my arms while they are pricking her finger (which I promised her she would they would not do), I notice that Hunter (the reason we are in here in the first place), is running around the room dancing and singing his ABC's. All I could do was shake my head, because I knew I had probably brought this all on myself. So the one thing I learned from this fiasco is to follow my instinct....if I had, then we would have avoided the situation entirely. Poor Hannah. As it turned out, Hunter just had a cold. Hannah was eating chicken nuggets an hour later.