Sitting Around

Not that there was ever any question, but if we needed any more proof that Jackson is my son we have it. In general, Ella develops ahead of Jack. She leads the tooth race 5-0 (yup, she just got another one), smiled first, rolled over weeks ahead of her brother, and seems ready to crawl any second (while Jack is happy to just roll around). However, there's one area where Jack is kicking his sister's butt: sitting. That's right, my boy is awesome at sitting on his ass. Just like his daddy.

At the twins' last checkup, the doctor told us that they should be sitting better than they are. We hadn't really been working with them on sitting up because they were doing so great rolling around and didn't seem to want to sit still. Well, after the doctor's visit we (we being Shae) started working with the babies on their sitting.

A few weeks later, Jack is a sitting pro. We can sit him on the floor and he'll hang out for 15 minutes or so. Like I said, just like his daddy Jack is skilled at sitting around. Ella on the other hand has no interest in sitting, at least not when we want her to. When she's sitting in her bouncer she has no problem sitting up and looking around. If we sit her down on the floor, she just flops down and starts rolling all over the place. She's going to be super fun to chase when she finally figures out how to crawl. Yay.

Anyway, here's a pic of our baby boy sitting:

And just because, here's a pic of Ella (not sitting of course). There are a few new pics over in our gallery:

Feeling Ill

It's been a rough couple of weeks around here, but everyone is finally feeling better. Since I had a four-day break over Memorial Day weekend (thanks to an off-Friday and the Monday holiday), of course I got sick on Thursday night. Thanks a lot babies. I can't wait until they start going to daycare and school and bring home all those super-germs. It's going to be awesome. Anyway, here's a recap of our sick weekend.

Shae's parents drove down on Friday, so we spent the day straightening up and resting. Of course, the babies were still sick so they didn't make cleaning very easy. My sore throat and body aches didn't help either. Other than that, Friday wasn't very exciting. Tom and Grace finally got into town just in time to go to bed.

Saturday was international blacksmiths day (everyone knew that, right?), so Tom and Grace spent a good portion of the day up at the tractor museum in Vista doing blacksmith stuff. I was very disappointed I had to stay home with Shae and the kiddos. Super disappointed. Shae, the babies, and myself all weren't feeling super so we just kind of rested and relaxed most of the day.

After the grandparents got back from the exciting tractor museum, we put the kids down to sleep, grabbed some dinner, and then Shae and I pawned the baby-sitting duties off and got out of the house for a bit. It's been so long since the two of us have been able to get away on a "date" that we were really excited to get away long enough to see a movie. We met up with Chris and Patty at the theater and spent a couple of hours watching Star Trek. Spaceships, explosions, and (best of all) no babies. It was great to get a few baby-free hours, and we both really liked the movie. Good times.

The plan for Sunday was to spend some time at the zoo, but something was going on at Balboa Park and the traffic was crazy so we gave up on that idea. Instead, we decided to go over to Fort Rosecrans Cemetery where Grace's parents and sister are buried. In honor of Memorial Day, there were flags setup by all of the headstones so Shae took some pictures. Shae and I were both feeling pretty crappy Sunday, so we took it easy the rest of the day.

Monday, Grace fired up the smoker and cooked several chickens and some ribs. While the meat was smoking, we took care of a few projects around the house. Tom and I (mostly Tom) finally put the doors on our hall closet (they look great), Tom setup our table saw, and Shae and I installed a new deadbolt and knob on our back door. We even found time to give Lunchbox a bath and let him play with the water for a while. Eventually, the food was ready and Chris and Patty came over to enjoy some smoked meat and some beer. It was a nice laid back Memorial Day.

The next day was not so nice. For starters, I guess I overdid it on Monday because I felt like crap when I woke up on Tuesday. Of course, there were some major issues at work to take care of so I had to go in for a few hours to take care of them. Even worse, something was very wrong with Lunchbox. Monday night he was not himself and Shae and her dad decided they probably needed to take him to the vet on Tuesday. By Tuesday morning something was definitely wrong with LB and he was clearly in pain. Normally, when the alarm goes off LB jumps around like crazy until I get up and then he sprints out to his bowl for breakfast (with lots of peeling out and slipping on the hard-wood floor along the way). Tuesday morning, however, he was really lethargic (he still made his way out his bowl and ate breakfast of course, he's still a lab). Shae and I were both really worried, and we decided LB had to go to the vet when they opened. I had to leave for work so I didn't see it myself, but apparently Lunchbox started trembling like crazy and Shae and her dad were both worried and decided he had to go see the vet ASAP. They took him in, and after examining him the vet decided it was most likely some sort of muscle injury (probably hurt when we were playing in the water). She gave the Box a painkiller shot and sent Shae home with some doggy-profen to give him for the next few days.

When I got home from work around noon, we had a house full of sickos. Shae and I were sitting on the couch feeling like crap, the babies were still sick and fussy, and LB was laying around drugged and sore. Everyone was still under the weather on Wednesday and I stayed home and rested. By Thursday the babies, the Box, and I were feeling better (Shae still wasn't super), and by Friday everyone was pretty much back to normal. The babies still have runny noses, but they don't seem to be feeling sick like they were before.

That's about it for the Memorial Day weekend recap. I'm going to try to write a few short posts a week rather than only writing about one post every couple of weeks. For some reason, the babies don't like to give me time to write out these posts. Maybe I can even convince LB to write a few more posts.

Probin'

Well, last night it happened: we finally had to stick a thermometer up a baby's ass. We've been able to avoid the ram & read for the past seven months, but out luck finally ran our. When I got home from work the babies were sleeping, but when I picked up Jack after his nap he was burning up. He was red and fussy, and even after some Tylenol he was still too warm. By bedtime we had no choice; we had to go find the thermometer and get a reading.

Of course, we don't have a 10-second anal analyzer so we were going to have to keep this thing up Jack's pooper for about a minute. Yay! After a short argument over who was going to hold baby boy's feet and who had to hold the thermometer (I won), I grabbed the feet, Shae lubed up the rump reader, and Jack got an unpleasant surprise. About a minute of discomfort later (Jack was very brave) the thermometer beeped and the readout told us Jack's had a fever (100.4). Even though Shae was slightly traumatized, there wasn't much we could do last night so we put the babies to bed. A few hours later we retook Jack's temperature and his fever was gone. By this morning, Jack was back to smiling and laughing. I guess we did good work.

I think Jack was a little traumatized by the probing experience. Even though he didn't feel as warm this morning, Shae wanted to take his temp just to make sure he was doing fine. Jack disagreed. Just as Shae was about to give him another jolt, he defended himself the best way he can: he peed on his mom. That should teach her to think twice before trying that again.

A few updates:

• My guess at the cause of Jack's fever was that his teeth were finally coming in. Ella already has three and he doesn't have any so I figured it was time. So it makes perfect sense that Ella has a new tooth this morning and Jack doesn't. So Ella leads the tooth race 4-0.
  
  
• Speaking of 4-0, that's the current "score" in our war against the rodents. About two weeks after deploying the WMRs (Weapons of Mass Rodent-struction, AKA D-CON), Shae found three more dead mouse-warriors. Counting the one we got with the trap a couple of months back we've taken out at least four of the little bastards now. It seems to be working because we haven't heard any scurrying up in the attic lately. I'm sure they're just plotting their next attack. Of course, the mice got the last laugh. They may have died, but I was the one who had to to dispose of their maggot infested carcasses. I'd almost rather have them making a ruckus up in the attic than have to pick that crap up again. Gross.
  
  
• The babies had their 7-month checkup on Tuesday. They're both doing fine. A few highlights:
  
  • The babies growth-rate has really slowed down. Ella was 15lbs 8oz and Jack was 16lbs 5ozs. Basically, in three months they both put on about a pound-and-a-half. I guess this is pretty normal since they are both still about average according the the chart the doc showed us.
  • Ella is still a very tall girl (90th percentile...she must get her height from her mom). Jack's height is still right about at the average. He would have been a lot taller if they counted the height of his faux-hawk.
  • The expectations for the babies get higher every visit. Last time everyone was impressed that they drooled. This time, no one cared how good they were at drooling (Ella is a superstar drooler); the doc wanted to know about their sitting, rolling, "talking", etc. I guess it's kind of like school where not pissing on the floor is a big deal in kindergarten, but by the higher grades you have to do math and stuff (Note: this comment is based on kindergarten when I was a kid, not the crazy requirements now where kindergarten students do algebra and calculus). Actually, I think teachers at every level are happy if the students don't piss on the floor. Maybe it's not the same at all.
  • Another visit, another round of shots for the babies. That part gets tougher every time because the babies are more aware of the pain as they get older. Especially Jack. He's our sensitive little boy.
    
    
• Last weekend my mom came down to visit for Mother's Day. It was a short visit, but we squeezed in a trip to the zoo, some pictures at Balboa Park, and we took in the Bodies exhibit that is currently at one of the Balboa Park museums. Oh, and lots of baby time. It was a very nice visit.

I think that's about it for now. Hopefully Shae will get around to processing and uploading some new pics of the kids sometime soon.

An Update From The Box

I've decided that I'm tired of letting the humans write my posts for me, so I decided to get my own account and take care of things myself. It's only fitting since I'm such a grown up dog now (2 years old!). I've got my own email address (lbthedog@gmail.com), and I'm even on Twitter (http://twitter.com/lbthedog). I'm quite the Web 2.0 puppy (I guess that makes me "Lunchbx").

This weekend was the big yard sale in my 'hood. For the humans this means lots of sunscreen and shopping. For me, it just means a super long walk. Last year was crazy. It was really hot and there were humans everywhere. Cars were parked on the median, and on every curb. There were so many crotches to sniff! Of course, Mommy still had babies inside her (the good old days as I call them) so we had to take lots of breaks. This year it was a lot cooler and there weren't as many humans.

After the humans finally got out of bed and fed me and the babies, it was time to go on our walk. I was so excited about the yard sales that I grabbed a $5 bill out of my private stash (I'll never tell where it is) and brought it to Mommy to buy me stuff. Of course, we couldn't just go walk. I threw on my pirate outfit (you never know who you might meet at the yard sale, gotta impress the bitches (I can say that, I'm a dog)) and was ready to go, but the human babies take forever to leave. They had to have cute outfits, hats, sunscreen, bottles, and everything else the humans could find. Those little things sure are a lot of work. It's bad enough when they wake me up at night, but getting in the way of my walk is completely unacceptable. Anyway, eventually all of the humans were ready and it was finally time to go out and get our walk on.

Since my human parents don't trim my toenails often enough, it's a little tough to type everything up so I'll just skip to the highlights. We walked all over the area and saw tons of humans and even some other dogs. Apparently the humans didn't find anything they liked, because they didn't buy anything but some breakfast burritos (they spent my $5 and didn't even give me any, totally not fair). I got to play a little with a Wiemariener (any idea how hard that is for a dog to spell?) at one of the houses, but we had to leave before the W and I started breaking stuff. The craziest thing I saw was two dogs being walked in strollers like the human babies. Why would the dogs agree to that? What's the point of going on a walk if you don't, you know, walk? Some dogs are lame. You won't catch me riding in a stroller. Mommy's ankle has been acting up lately, so we had to cut our stroll short (if an hour-and-a-half is short). I was so tired when we finally got home, so I pretty much napped the rest of the day. I can't wait until next year's yard sale.

The humans want to use the laptop so I guess I better wrap this up and go get some water. Typing is a lot of work. I'm exhausted. Time for a nap.