Hold the phone

and shut the front door!

Do you know what this is?



This, my friends, is Ava. In jeans. Denim jeans. They don't have an elastic waist, they are not made of spandex. Real Jeans, on a real girl.

She thinks she looks like a grown up. I think she looks like an 8 year old.


This is such a big deal for her for a few reasons, and what I know today is that I am grateful for peer pressure. I think it finally got to her that she is the only kid she knows who wouldn't wear jeans (cause they bug her, of course). I shouldn't be so desperate to get her into jeans, I'm sure. It's just that I'm finding that the wardrobe choices dwindle significantly as she gets bigger when all we can consider are stretchy pants.

After years of her socks and pants and shirts (among other unmentionables) "bugging" her, she is finally showing much less sensitivity to these sorts of things. She asks me, "If I just try to think about something else, then this won't bug me so much?" I always tell her yes and I think it is finally working. That or she is just growing up.

Ian came for the fastest visit in the West this weekend. It wasn't actually that fast, he was just working for the majority of it, so we only logged a couple of hours together.



But I'll take what I can get. Now if only I could see my brother Bret, then I would have seen everyone in the space of a month.

The good news is:
Luke's bloody diarrhea results came back normal leading us to believe it was an effect of the antibiotics he was on and has since finished. Also, x-rays showed that Luke's foot wasn't broken either. Dan has what I would call a mild version of the flu. He is doing better and back to work. And finally, the computer mouse has recovered well from its swim in the toilet, a la Max.

This past little while has felt like I was at the helm of a sinking ship. I started bailing water and any time it started to look promising another leak would spring up. I feel like shizzle and have pretty much since I finished the antibiotics for strep. I've just been dealing with it because, what's new? But I am really getting tired of it. Tired of everything. And just tired. I'm hoping to make it to the doctor this afternoon.

Max on the other hand, is still pretty sick. The follow-up with the pediatrician was very disconcerting for me. It was our first time meeting and it made me miss my old doctor so much. From the moment I said, "alternate vaccination schedule" she thought I was an idiot. And the way she acted from there on out made me think she was an idiot.

We aren't the type of family that sees their pediatrician just for well-checks and the occasional cold or ear infection. My old Dr. Haney was like a part of the family, we saw her so much. It feels really bad and kind of scary not to have someone I trust and like to help me with the health side of things.

But we're doing what we can now, which is keeping Max on the Tamiflu (in case he got it from Dan) and having frequent visits with Nebby.


Nebby, the nebulizer, joined our family back in '07 when Luke was such a bad breather. And it looks like Max is following in his footsteps. He's so used to it now he cooperates pretty well.


The weather has been gorgeous this past week so we busted out the water table.



And it's been nice to have a little sunshine in our life literally if not figuratively.