Bathtime Adventures

We had a bathtub/ bathtime adventure last night at our house. After dinner I mention something about it being time for the kids baths and how we need to head upstairs. A few minutes later I am still cleaning up in the kitchen and hear water running upstairs. Hudson likes to get stools or paint cans, whatever he can find to step up on and turn on water in the bathroom sink. I go up there and to find them running back and forth from the sink to the bathtub with "buckets" of water, trying to fill the tub with water for their bath. For their "bucket" they were using the empty potty bowl from their potty chair, and several bowls of this water had flooded the bathroom floor already. This was the biggest adventure we've had yet in bathtimes, and it took several towels to mop up the water. I had nice clean floors afterwards though!

Potty-training

We are still working on Annalise being potty-trained. I had given up for awhile simply because it wasn't working for her (or anyone else in the house) and because I am not the least bit worried over other kids her age and younger being potty-trained before she is. I will not compare my child to other people's children and do not like her being compared either!
Today we got up and started with underpants right away. Pull-ups do not work, look ridiculous and do not make potty-training any easier. Cotton underpants look so much more cute. So far it is almost 11:30 am and we've had two pee-pee accidents as well as two successes. I'm rewarding her with fruit snacks candy since that is something I wouldn't normally have for the kids to eat on any occasion. It's a little challenging trying to potty-train her the right way where she has my full attention to help with the whole process, helping her on and off the toilet seat, wiping, and washing our hands after poop or peeing. This is mainly because Hudson is around getting into things and still wanting to nurse alot. I was nursing Hudson earlier when Annalise told me she had to potty. I told her to go upstairs and try to sit on the toilet herself. She went upstairs and a few minutes later I see a whole roll of toilet paper being thrown and unraveled down the stairs. We clean that up as well as the pee-pee on the floor, all while trying to keep Hudson out of the accident. I am helping Annalise get dressed in her room when I hear Hudson reaching inside and splashing toilet water in the toilet. I gather him up and bring him to the sink right away to wash hands and then change his shirt since his sleeves were in the toilet water. I wonder if I will have another load of laundry to do after just one day.

Adventure of the day

We've had a few mishaps and adventures recently in our newly purchased house. The other day I tripped while carrying the plastic humidifier tank upstairs to the kids room, and it burst open spilling a tank of water on the steps. I mopped it up with a big blanket and got all the water, then I checked the basement below the stairs. The water and gone down to the bottom step and through the wooden beam ceiling of the basement, but there was so little left by that time I mopped it up with an old towel and that was it! We had just gotten the humidifier with the kids being sick this past month, so we will have to wait until next winter to buy another one if it's ever needed again.

The second most recent adventure in the house was this morning. I brought Hudson downstairs to the living room and heard a chirping, flapping noise in the fireplace. It is enclosed with doors like a wood stove so I couldn't see whatever was in there, but I assumed it was a bird. We called my dad to figure out what to do and decided to open the doors and let it fly out the front door. My husband bravely opened the doors with a bucket ready to catch it and a little black bird flew out into the room. He opened the front door and thankfully it pretty quickly flew outside. I think Jeremy said it was a grackel bird. I'm just glad it was a bird...it could have been something much worse!

2012 Adventures

Our household has had quite a start to the year! In March we went on our first cruise in the Caribbean. We went with Colbert grandparents, uncle David, and aunt Sarah and uncle Mike and went to the country of Belize and to Cozumel, Mexico. We were so busy with the 2 kiddos that the week went by so fast. It wasn't until about a month or two later that we can look back and really appreciate our vacation and be thankful for it. I don't know if we will bring the kids on a cruise again until they are older or potty-trained at least, so that there is more for them to do. We were very lucky to stay healthy too, some other ships had gotten nasty, dangerous stomach viruses. One of the best times we had on the cruise was when we all went to Belize while Hudson and Annalise stayed with my parents on the ship. We were only gone for 3 hours or so, but I was still a little nervous leaving them on the ship. We met some really neat guides on the land who took os on a tubing adventure through some ancient caves on the river. They were so much fun to talk to, and we had fun figuring out what they were saying in their creole dialect. On Belize the primary language used is not Spanish but English, and everyone uses Creole as well.
When we got to Cozumel, Mexico the next day all of us including the kids went on land and to the beach. We had fun wading, snorkeling, looking at all the fish in the water and getting braids in Annalise's hair.
Looking back, the best memories I have of our vacation was being right on the beautiful ocean, hearing the water and smelling the ocean breeze, and of course the families being all together for a whole week!



After we got home from our cruise we closed on our new house and moved out of the apartment we rented for a year. We moved to a 2-story house with a basement and an attic, so there are lots of stairs to run up and down. It actually isn't as bad as I thought it would be, even with the kids up and down the stairs, and it gets us plenty of exercise. We have one large bathroom and it is on the 2nd floor with all the bedrooms. The only difficulty we have with that is for potty-training, but even that isn't too inconvenient for the kids. Another thing I am happy about is that the house is pretty loud and open, with the open staircase, and I can hear the kids wherever they are, upstairs or down. We live across the street from a park we can use, and we walk to lots of other parks too since we are right by the trail systems around the city, which we use a lot! Jeremy walks or bikes to work downtown everyday. We have been busy with painting and re-doing a few things around the house. My dad updated a few electrical outlets and lighting fixtures. They put in a rug runner on the wooden staircase, and Jeremy climbed on the porch roof last weekend to take out storm windows and put in screens so we can open the windows this spring. We also discovered that our refrigerator is plugged into a cabinet instead of the wall, and that is supposed to be bad. What this means for me is... we will have to have a kitchen remodel/reorganization within a few years since that refrigerator cannot stay that way :) In the meantime, I am going to make do with painting my kitchen cabinets green/brown to look better with the white appliances.
This is our 1920's home :)


Not long after we moved in to the house, the kids got sick with bad colds and coughs. Hudson had to go the the emergency room twice. The first time was in the middle of the night. He had woke up crying and didn't sound right to me in the monitor, and when I checked on him he wouldn't wake up and his breathing sounded really labored. When we got to the emergency room he was acting like he was having a seizure and it really scared us for awhile, and no one knew what was wrong. They gave him some advil drops and he started returning to his normal self within a couple hours. They sent us home by the early morning when he was running around the room. While we were there they checked his oxygen levels, took a chest x-ray, took several blood tests, made sure his blood sugar levels were normal, and took a nasal swab because I thought he might have a bad respiratory infection. They called us back 2 days later and told us he had RSV (a bad respiratory virus that can be dangerous in infants and small children if they are not able to breathe the appropriate levels of oxygen their bodies need). After several days he finally started acting like he felt better, but the next weekend he was getting really high fevers. We took him in again when his temperature reached 105 degrees and he had an ear infection. Now both kids are feeling much better and we are all getting lots of rest and trying to pace ourselves with all the house projects. Next weekend we will finally be back in church. The coughs can last up to a month and that is how long it has been almost. We definately don't want to spread this virus to other small children or babies!

Kids Activities

Hudson decided to climb out of his pack n play (the bed where he sleeps) at 16 1/2 months old. One of the reasons why I've had him in the pack and play to sleep was so he couldn't climb out, figuring it would be less dangerous than climbing out of a crib with sides that are much higher in the air. I can't believe how strong he is, and what a rascal!

I also caught him one day with his face down in Jasper's water bowl, drinking the water! He must have been pretty thirsty, poor guy. I haven't seen him do that again.

Every morning Hudson loves to get up in the chair to play the keyboard. He plays the keys and also turns on music to go with it. For some reason he always hits the buttons for disco music, and then bounces up and down to the beat. Every morning we get to hear disco music :)

Both Annalise and Hudson are starting to sing now. Annalise can sing "Jesus loves me" and "Twinkle, Twinkle little star." Hudson hums a lot now at night time as he falls asleep and also first thing in the morning as he is waking up. It is so sweet to hear their little voices singing.

Birthday Celebrations

Hudson turned one years old this July and we celebrated his birthday in Mississippi while visiting relatives.



Annalise turned 3 years old this November, and we had a small family party for her and made pizzas. She is growing to be so tall! All of her 2T clothes are too short or small for her, so I had fun going to Savers and picking out cute 3T outfits for her.

Annalise's Art and Play

The first picture is Annalise :)



The second one is a picture of daddy, with legs and feet.



Annalise and I built a leggo house with a front and back door and garden on the rooftop, and it even has room for a horse!