Pictures

Leah holding Daphne. Daphne is considerably lighter than Casper weighing in at 6.5 lbs, while Casper is a solid 8 lbs. Anyhow, Leah can hold "Daffy."
Silly kids. They love to push each other around in this cart. This morning Leah was upset because she was not involved in the action.
Another favorite activity of Leah's, reading books! We do encourage book reading in our household. In fact, we loaned out 26 books from the Library yesterday, which may only last us a week.
In preparation for our St. Thomas trip, I got these hello kitty sunglasses for Miss Leah. She looks like she is posing for the paparazzi, my little Hollywood star!

Eli's Brewing

Sung to the tune of Three Dog Night's "Eli's Coming" - "Eeeeeli's Breeeeewing."

I don't know if it is for the love of beer or for the love of scientific experimentation, probably the former, Eli has brewed a batch of homebrew. He started about 3 weeks ago and coined his first batch "Eli Amber". We sampled throughout the process and had our first finished bottle a couple of days ago. It wasn't fully carbonated yet, but it was quite tasty. Eli is already thinking about what kind to make for another batch.
Here he is pouring beer from the bucket to the bottles. He does it this way to avoid getting sediment in the bottles. He could make Vegemite if he wanted to.
Now he is capping the bottles. He bottled 51 beers; just over 5 gallons worth. Ask how he enjoyed his first brew and he'll say it was fun, but time consuming, and sanitizing all the equipment was a pain in the butt.

Zachary and Leah Updates

Today Zachary and Leah went to the doctor for their standard check-ups. Leah is 29 3/4 inches tall and weighs 20 lbs, she is 30% and 22% respectively. Zachary on the other hand is in the 50% for height and weight, which are 34 lbs and 39 1/4 inches. Oh, and they got 7 shots between them, 3 for Leah and 4 for Zachary.

Okay, now to the interesting part of our day. Both Leah and Zachary were being checked out in the same room by the same doctor. Zachary was checked out first, the doctor did the normal ears, nose, throat, groin area, etc. She looked in his left ear, right ear, and found something white in there. She thought maybe it was a bit of ear wax as she was looking, and then looked more closely with the magnifying glass and said it looked like a shell. Anyhow, she finished with Zachary and Leah's checkup before trying to fish it out.

A second doctor came in to try to help pry out the shell. No luck. Zachary was struggling too much and the shell was too deep. So she called an Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor to set up an appointment. We went to the ENT several hours later, and sure enough, when the nurse looked in his ear she thought it was a shell, tiny and pearly white. She even had me look at it. Yup, a white shell in his ear.

We moved to another room where the kids got to watch Sponge Bob while we waited. The doctor came in and looked in the ear and agreed it was a shell. Now the fun part, the assistant came in and gave Zachary Valium. He can't swallow pills so she was going to dissolve it in water, but apparently it tastes pretty disgusting, so I suggested juice. She found some bright orange V8 splash, yum! It took him two Dixie cups full of juice to get that Valium down. 15 minutes later he was good and loopy and the doctor came in with two assistants to hold him down and take out the shell that has probably been there since Pawley's last June.

The doctor took long tweezers and put them in Zach's ear and pulled; meanwhile Zachary was struggling and turning beet red. Suddenly he took out a shell like a magician pulling a coin from Zach's ear. Not a piece, but a whole shell. The assistant helped us get Zachary into the car for the ride home. He was so drugged up he couldn't walk straight and he was a little chatter box on the ride home.




As you can see, the shell is on the right of the penny.

Some Pictures

Avery, Leah, and Zachary. I gave the little devils hair cuts with the new clipper set Eli got me. It paid for itself in one sitting.
When did my baby turn into a little girl?

It has been an unusually busy February. Most weekends were spent going to birthday parties, and celebrating Zachary's birthday, which seemed to go on for weeks.

Some updates of the kids. First off, Avery, is continuing to surprise me. His knowledge of the world is growing by leaps and bounds. He also can sound out words. He is a little unsure of himself, but we know he can do it. His teacher will send home books that the students put together and he can read the books cover to cover, some of it memorized, but the rest sounding out. I'm excited about this development, but Avery rather play video games, then read books right now.

Zachary is doing very well in school. I thought Avery was my artist, but Zachary seems to be enjoying art more right now. Maybe it is an age thing. He is also starting to read a little. He can sound out all his letters and spell a couple of words. Avery is definitely leading and teaching his brother some of these skills.

Leah, as you can imagine, is blossoming into a little girl. She follows everything we do. Just yesterday, she opened the door to the trash can and threw away trash. How did she even know it was trash? She has three distinct words. Mommy, Daddy, and Daphne. It's really funny that she says Daphne and she knows which cat is Daphne. I give Leah cat treats and she will say "Daphne" and throw the treats at just Daphne and ignores Casper.

More to come. Leah has her 15 month doctor appointment on Thursday and Zachary has his 4 year. I'll post some stats.