Santa at the Firehouse

Last Friday, Santa came to our local firehouse.  In addition to letting Santa visit, the firehouse had cookies, punch and allowed the kids to see and play on one of the fire trucks in one of the bays.  

I took Roo to see Santa.  He did great, he sat on his lap and looked at him like he was insane when he asked what he wanted Santa to bring him.  He talked to him real softly for just a moment and then continued to look at him like he was crazy.

We had some cookies and punch and the firehouse gave us a couple of pictures they took of Roo with Santa and then we went to see the fire truck.  Roo loves fire trucks and was so excited to see the fire truck yet he stopped in his tracks as soon as he stepped foot in the bay.  I think he was shocked with the size of the truck.  And even though they were keeping it pretty quiet the noises were different enough that they probably scared him too.  A nice lady came over to us and tried to get him to come in and see the truck but he just refused.  

I didn't force him in, so we left and Roo was happy and ready to eat his candy cane Santa gave him.  Hopefully Santa will come to the fire house again next year, it was a lot of fun and great not having to worry about crowds at the mall!  It's nice that the county sponsors these sort of events for the community.  Every time we drive near the fire house Roo talks about how mommy took him to the fire house to see Santa, and goes on and on and on about it.  It's really cute and it's also exciting because this is the first year that he understands Santa.

Snowpocalypse 2009

Wow, we got a lot of snow!  Almost 2 ft of snow.  The snow started Friday night around 7pm and didn't end until around 10pm on Saturday night.  Over 24 hours of snow.  And it's beautiful, especially today since it's sunny out.

Roo played a little in the snow yesterday and decided it was a little too cold with the snow still coming down.  He did want to measure it like daddy does with just his normal shoes on, so he tried and thought it was pretty funny to get snow all over him, but quickly came in.

He's been outside today for a few hours now.  I'm actually hoping he'll come in soon because he's tired.  After daddy shoveled us out of the driveway, we went for a short ride to see how bad the roads are.  The state roads aren't looking so great, but they do have 1 passable lane.  The county roads are a little worse, but our neighborhood road is awesome.  A portion of our homeowners dues go to plowing during the snow, definitely worth the money.

Daddy and Roo built an igloo.  It's pretty cool.  And they also built a nice seat in the snow.  The little bug was a little unsure of the snow but he had fun being outside with everyone.  Hooray for a snow day!  Lets cross our fingers that work gets cancelled tomorrow.

Rough Day

Love Bug had two important doctors appointments scheduled for today.  His first appointment was an ultrasound of his kidney to see if he still has an extrarenal pelvis.  His second appointment was with the pediatric GI that visits town once a month from Children's in DC to evaluate him for eosinophilic esophagitis (swelling of the esophagus due to allergies).

He did great in the waiting room and flirted with the ladies at the desk before his ultrasound.  And he was doing really well when we first got him into the room and ready for the exam.  But as soon as she touched him with the little wand, that was it, he cried and cried the whole time.  He was so scared.  The appointment probably lasted less than 20 minutes, but it was long enough to wear him out.

In between appointments I took him for a little ride and was able to get him to sleep for a little bit.  When we arrived at our normal doctors office for the GI appointment, he was still out cold, so he was really calm in the waiting room while I filled out the multitude of forms asking about his GI and allergy history.  I was hopeful that because he was so calm that we'd have a pretty easy appointment.  Boy was I wrong.  He had actually just been to the doctor the day before, and in the exact same room because he had a high fever and we wanted to make sure it wasn't another ear infection.  Needless to say, he remembered being there, and was so traumatized from the ultrasound that he cried inconsolably the entire appointment.  Talk about difficult to have any sort of discussion.  But, we did arrive at a good way ahead and he is now off his Zantac for at least 2 weeks to see how he does.  We'll let the GI doc know how he's doing and depending on what's going on, he may be good to go or he may need an upper GI endoscopy.  

The doctor called us back, herself, to let us know the results of his ultrasound.  He still has an extrarenal pelvis, but she's not too concerned since it hasn't caused him any problems so far.  Her plan is to have us follow up with a pediatric urologist so we can hopefully close the book on his kidney bean and just be grateful that there's a little extra part of him that makes him a little extra special!

Bigger and Bigger

I took this picture of Roo today and just couldn't believe how big he looks.  He's really a little boy now.  I've known this for a while of course, but it's just so hard to believe that he's growing up so fast.  He's lucky he's cute though.  He had a 3 is worse sort of day today, it was joyous.  

I was also noticing how big Love Bug's gotten when Grandma was holding him today.  He's 30 inches long now and is growing out of some of his 12 month pants.  He's still a cute little baby though!

And best of all is just how much the boys play together now.  At bedtime every night, after we get all of Love Bug's lotions on him, he and Roo chase each other around Love Bug's chair and laugh and laugh and laugh.  And when we snuck out of the bathroom tonight and let them think we weren't right there they played together really well.  Love Bug loves to mimic everything that Roo does.  Even watching them fight over toys right now is cute.  Hopefully they'll be the bestest of friends.

Happy Hanukah.

One Small Step...

Love Bug took his first step last week!  And tonight he took 5 steps!  He thinks it's just the funniest thing in the whole world.  He stands up, gets his balance and then I wave him towards me.  He giggles the whole time and then laughs really hard when he falls.  It's so exciting to see him so excited about getting his balance a walking.  And he's doing it the hard way, he stands up on his own in the middle of the room without holding on to anything.  What a cutie!

Snow Day

It seemed like a lot more snow fell from the sky than what stuck to the ground.  Sunday morning Roo was excited to go outside and play in the snow.  He was great about wearing his boots, hat and mittens, something I was horrible about in March when it had snowed.  He and I went outside and played for a bit.  It was really crunchy snow and Roo wasn't a big fan of it.  We moved from out back to out front and played with his trike and he shoveled for a bit.  He hated his mittens, they didn't help him work at all, he said he needed ones that fit!

Then when we decided it was too cold we went inside for some hot chocolate.  I hope we get some better snow this year so we can build a snowman and a snow fort.  Because if we get snow, it might as well be fun snow to play in.  Oh, and while I'm making snow requests, how about some snow in the middle of the week so we can get a day off from work!  I promise to do all my homework the night before :)

What's That Song?

If you've ridden at all in the car with Roo recently, you'll hear him say, "what's that song," as each new song comes on.  I've got Sirius so it tells me the name of each song, and if I think it'll make sense to him, I'll tell him the name, otherwise I make something up.  But there can only be so many songs called Love or other simple names like that.  His favorite song is Fireflies.  He absolutely loves it, and when we were out today, he sang it as we were walking through the store.  It was super cute.  He also likes to sing "there's a roo roo, mommy, daddy, love bug, baxter, in the closet, a woo."  And his favorite modification of a song is to Elmo's Potty Time, he'll sing "Roo do it, Roo use the potty" to the tune of the song.  We're starting to be very careful about the language of the songs we listen to.  Otherwise, it's a lot of fun listening to him sing along.

Tis The Season

It must be winter.  We got up this morning and it was raining pretty hard and getting cold enough to get some snow.  Roo and I went to Target to get a few more decorations for the tree.  By the time we were done it was snowing pretty hard and though Roo was super excited to see it, he wasn't very happy when it was hitting him in the face.  We headed home and showed daddy what we got.  

We enjoyed lunch together and I made some Love Bug friendly oatmeal craisin cookies (egg, dairy and nut free), they were very yummy!  Roo was an awesome helper and really enjoyed baking.  And both boys watched and waited by the over while the cookies cooked.  

After the boys woke up from their naps (Roo fell asleep on me while Love Bug took his nap) daddy got the tree out and we decorated it.  Love Bug kept putting all the ornaments that had glitter on them in his mouth.  And Roo was a good helper putting ornaments on the tree or passing them to daddy to put on the tree.  We also finally weeded out all the glass ornaments, I thought we did this last year but we didn't as we found out the hard way.  

Minus a few of my fancy ornaments and all my White House ornaments, the tree looks great and is actually pretty well color coordinated with lots of blues.  Now we're trying to teach Roo the about Santa.  And we also need to teach him about Hanukah this year as well.  Should be a fun and memorable holiday season!

Hug Me

Love Bug has another ear infection and is needing lots of love and hugs.  Normally we just pass him back and forth between mommy and daddy.  Last night he decided that he also needed some love from his brother.  It was just the cutest thing ever, he crawled up to Roo and signaled that he needed a hug. I told Roo that he was asking for a hug so Roo sat him in his lap and gave him a huge hug and a big kiss.  Love Bug asked for more hugs from Roo tonight too.  We love that they are playing with each other more now, even if it means more fighting, but even more, we love that they love each other <3