Happy Halloween

Don't they look adorable all dressed up!

Today is free dress day for Ellie, but no costumes. But, her after school program is doing a party and so she had her 50s girl get-up in her backpack. However, tonight she will be donning light-up wings and a glowing wand as Tinkerbell.

My little pumpkin (well, he will be tonight) has a costume parade at school this afternoon. So I took his Pooh Bear costume to school for him to wear. His daycare had a Disney theme going on (he's in the Piglets and then he will move up to the Pooh Bears...etc) so the costume works out well.

My diva children, costume changes for each event! We are going trick or treating with friends tonight which should be a blast.

And in other news, Calvin is propelling himself forward and has figured out how to get where he wants how he wants. Not exactly crawling but kid is mobile. We had fun last night coaxing him to come to me and then turn around and get to Nick.

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Sleep

Cal can sleep okay. But, he doesn't fall asleep well. And unfortunately for many reasons Nick and I have gotten him in the bad habit of needing mommy or daddy to fall asleep. So I foresee some sleep training in our future.

He is getting pretty close to actual crawling but he has found other ways to move around to reach toys or something of interest. And he's pretty happy with himself. This morning I found him pretty excited to have gotten to the coffee table all by himself.










If we had a billion dollars and could build our own house or buy a big one, we have all decided that we would have a separate room devoted to Playmobil. An entire corner of Es room is devoted to Playmobil and that's not enough. She covers more... Apparently over the weekend she and Nick "organized" a little bit. Here are all her people.








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Happy to be home

I got home last night around 9:00pm, well after both kiddos were sound asleep. Around 1am Cal got a little fussy and so I got to go in and feed him. He was still partially asleep but it was nice to feed him and get some cuddles from him overnight. He went back to sleep easily with only one pacifier put back in and slept until 6am. Upon going into his room when he was awake I got a big smile and immediate cuddles from an awake happy baby. But, he also didn't want me out of his sight at all this morning.

When E work up I got the biggest hug from her. She said she missed me so much that her heart hurt. I'm happy to be home with the kiddos.

Nick was amazing and I think has a new appreciation for all the overnight work with Cal and the crazy rush in the morning. Not to mention how long weekends with the kids by yourself (yeah, remember all those trips he took to Chicago and left me alone with two kids) is tiring and stressful. But they had a lot of fun that in dad I missed.







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Spirit

Cals got the spirit




Ellie, not so much (she wasn't too happy about her sweater and having to wear the skirt to school, or me taking a picture)



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Halloween dress rehearsal

I won't scare you off from being around babies by relaying all the details of today's diaper blowout that involved cleaning of a car seat, outfit change for Cal and a modified outfit (read I may be burning a dry clean only sweater that I thought was safe to wear since he doesn't spit up anymore) for me. This was only slightly better than the great poo of a few weeks ago that involved clothing changes for both of us and cleaning his armpits. Fortunately his awesome teachers scooped him up and dealt with the mess that was him for me while I dealt with other issues.

Anyway...

So E and C will be modeling Halloween costumes on TV on Monday. The station sent home Cal's costume to make sure it fit our little man. Fortunately I finished Es costume on Tuesday so she got to try hers on as well (not the Tinkerbell costume she will be wearing on TV but her costume for actual Halloween). Good news all around that things fit and E loves her poodle skirt and monogrammed sweater. And yes, those are rhinestones on the poodles collar and on her E. That's also a gold leash and the elastic for the skirt has gold thread. This is LA, and E likes to glam things up.










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Hard to admit

It is difficult for me to admit this, but Nick is better at getting Calvin to sleep in his bed than I am. I can get Cal to fall asleep quickly in my arms but I cannot transfer him to his bed. Nick, on the other hand, can get him transferred with no problem. This is great at 7:00pm when we put him down for the night and there is some quality Daddy/son bonding going on. However, come 11:30, 1:00am, 2:30, 3:30, 4:15, and 5:00 it's not fantastic because Nick is not available! This Cal wakes up all the time and it's hard for me to get him back to sleep. This morning at 1:30 he was really really fussy. I don't recall if I fed him or not, but at 3:30 (after what I thought was only a few minutes or rocking and cuddles) I was finally able to transfer him. I think there was some sleeping in the rocking chair. At 5:00 this morning when I couldn't get him to go back to sleep I gave up and he cried for about 15 minutes until he fell asleep until 6:15. By this time Ellie was falling asleep in the crib herself and sleeping better than Cal is. Ugh.

But apparently he rolled over from his back to front yesterday at school. So that may have something to do with all the wakings. I haven't seen it yet but hope to soon.

Ellie and I had a good morning. Despite being completely sleep deprived and getting a late start I was able to make and get her to eat two scrambled eggs this morning. High five!



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182.5

Maybe this should be the Ellie and Calvin 182.5 blog and I take the pressure of posting everyday off myself. Things are crazy busy with work right now and I'm barely able to keep my head above water. Add in an infant son who isn't a fan of sleeping, or falling back asleep at 2am and it doesn't make the day any more fun. That's all on top of my normal craziness of life with two kids and working.

Weekend was good. Hit up a pumpkin festival and went to Kidsspace where E and her friend willingly spent time on a Saturday researching and doing a report on a cherry tree.












Not sure if it was because he got up at 5:15 this morning and wouldn't go back to sleep or the fact that I put him in a footed outfit for school but Cal was super serious this morning.



We started him on puffs (little easily dissolvable cereal pieces) over the weekend. He immediately got on in his mouth (I put a few on his tray to see what he would do). He will find a way to get food to his mouth! Still the only thing he hasn't been a fan of is avocado and broccoli. But you can trick him with the broccoli.


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Parent teacher conference

Ellie didn't have school today (none of PUSD had school) due to parent teacher conferences. So she came to work with me in the morning which went surprisingly well. It's amazing how some pens, paper, a bagel, and an iPad will keep her busy for a few hours with minimal intervention from me.

The best part of the day was when we were walking into my building after getting special breakfast and we had the following conversation:

"Mommy, you work in a tall building."

"Yeah, it's a mid rise."

"And we parked the car under the building?"

"Yep."

"What keeps the building from falling on the cars? Won't if fall into the hole where we parked if we parked under it?"

Well kiddo, let me tell you what keeps the building from falling on our car.

Her assessment from the teacher was good. Nothing we didn't know. She's engaged, bright, reading, detail orientated, a little bit of a show off, a leader, and deemed a responsible kid in the class.

Cal was just happy to be at school, where he did some arts and crafts earlier this week.






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Ellie takes a sick day

So Ellie vomited multiple times yesterday and had a fever last night, so I decided to keep her home today. I think she was well by about noon and only had like a 24 hour bug or something. So she will be at school tomorrow.








At the PTA meeting tonight I saw her principal who asked how she was doing. Apparently when she vomited in class, her principal was there talking to the kids! Apparently Ellie had her hand up while he was talking, but he said there would be questions at the end. So she put her hand down. Then she put it back up. Apparently when she vomited (down the front of her dress) her table mate got pretty animated and Dr Bauer told him to be quiet and stay in his seat and then finally did he notice that Ellie had vomited.


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High profile

So this post was to be about Ellie and her awards and how she was excited about having a pizza lunch with Dr Bauer (her principal) today.

But I got a call that Ellie had vomited at school and was with the nurse and needed to come home. So...yeah I went and got her and she's now resting. She seems okay and in not sure what happened this morning. She's drinking water and had an orange. We shall see if that comes back up or not.

But here is Ellies picture in the hallway at school with her award that she got at the assembly.






Yesterday when I went to pick up Calvin he was hanging with the bigger kids in the Kangaroos (next class up). Apparently when the class isn't full they will sometimes "break out" the older piglets who are starting to be development ready. And since Cal is super interested in trying to crawl or move right now he had a little adventure yesterday afternoon.

He was super happy to see me and tried everything he could to get to me. But got super frustrated and started to cry.









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High profile

So this post was to be about Ellie and her awards and how she was excited about having a pizza lunch with Dr Bauer (her principal) today.

But I got a call that Ellie had vomited at school and was with the nurse and needed to come home. So...yeah I went and got her and she's now resting. She seems okay and in not sure what happened this morning. She's drinking water and had an orange. We shall see if that comes back up or not.

But here is Ellies picture in the hallway at school with her award that she got at the assembly.






Yesterday when I went to pick up Calvin he was hanging with the bigger kids in the Kangaroos (next class up). Apparently when the class isn't full they will sometimes "break out" the older piglets who are starting to be development ready. And since Cal is super interested in trying to crawl or move right now he had a little adventure yesterday afternoon.

He was super happy to see me and tried everything he could to get to me. But got super frustrated and started to cry.









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Marathon

So Nick and I had a few friends that ran the Chicago marathon yesterday. Well, I feel as if I just completed my own marathon. I just issued a report to a client that has been a couple weeks in the making (not including the weeks for field effort by a team of 7 people). The report is over 70 pages long and had 6 authors. Four authors are licensed engineers and a fifth, while not licensed, is considered an expert in seismic and related building distress and is very senior within the company. So all the authors had some strong opinions about how to write this beast. I spent over 9 hours at the office yesterday finalizing this thing and after one last review, it got issued. And now I begin my next major project which will actually be bigger with more complications and players. That's on top of all my other work including three in-construction projects, putting together a set of documents for repair, and acting as an expert witness for a client who had a failure at new construction.

And when did it become the middle of October?

Enough whining.

Last Friday Grandma Pam was in town to go to the Grandparents Lunch at Ellies school. She got to see her buy her lunch, meet her friends and teacher, and play on the playground. She got a glimpse into Ellies day and world that Nick and I know very little about. By all accounts everyone had fun, although E was sad to part ways after lunch. We then went up to SB to visit with family and eat good food.






Yesterday we got home just before noon. While I went to work Nick took Ellie to ballet (and Cal) and then met friends at the zoo and then went to dinner. And then he got them both in bed.












I currently don't have pictures on my phone from the weekend fun. I think Nick took some but they haven't shown up in my photo stream yet. So just wait a little bit and I think we will be able to add some.

Maybe tomorrow I can post video of Cal and his latest achievement in locomotion.




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Little dude is 7 mo old

Today Cal is 7 mo old. And as luck would have it it is also Grandparents Day at Ellies school so Grandma Pam was able to celebrate with both kiddos today.

With Ellie she went to school this morning to check out the book fair and met Ellie for lunch. So now she has all the insider information on the goings on at school.

Last night she asked to and therefor fed Cal his solid food dinner of peaches and pumpkin mixed together (which happen to be his favorite). This morning he wanted nothing to do with his mango though. But we did get some cute tiger photos!
















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Cousins

Last night we had some special visitors. Nicks aunt and uncle (Matt and Mary), cousins (Jenn and Jordan) and Jenn's kids (William and Caroline) all came to our house for dinner and a visit. It was nice to see everyone and Ellie was excited to see her cousins. In addition, it was a first meeting for Cal to meet his cousins and see some of the extended Illinois family.

The kids played so well together and ate well (at their own kids table). We had Domenicos take out and are at our place to allow the kids time to play and run around. Cal, as usual, was his charming and smiley self.









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It's a major award!

On Friday when we picked Ellie up from school her friend, upon seeing Nick, said, "Ellen got an award!". Ellie just nodded as if she was too cool to talk about it. We knew there had been an assembly that day but Ellie didn't seem to really want to talk about it. She was much more interested in the fact that we were going to Disneyland.

Upon cleaning out her backpack last night I found a certificate indicating that Ellie had in fact received an honor for Language Arts.



Apparently she got to go up on stage and everything. She mentioned that a boy in her class also got to go on stage. She doesn't seem too impressed by the whole ordeal.

Today we woke up early and left for school early all so that we could go to the Book Fair at school. She picked out two books, Miss Nelson is Missing and an early ready about a fairy princess. It was a pretty good book fair setup with decent books. Ellie was overwhelmed and had to choose quickly because the bell was about to ring.




I also took probably one of the worst pictures of Ellie ever!



At daycare they did some arts and crafts with the infants that included some hand prints. Such pudgey fingers!


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