With Spring on the horizon, we’re projected to get 6-12 inches of snow overnight. This is the second real snowfall of the season (3rd week of February) and is being billed as “the biggest storm of the winter so far”. I won’t hold my breath, but I would like to use the snow boots I bought for Christopher at least twice this winter.
February was like 2nd Christmas in the Baxter household. You see, since we moved into this house 5 years ago we’ve been wanting one of those enormous oak table/chair sets. The kind that extends and seats 12+ people. The kind that our parents or grandparents own. It was on our bucket list of sorts since we anticipated the expense being more than we wanted to bite off in the near future. Lucky for us, I sometimes shop the classifieds when bored and happened across a table that was EXACTLY what we were hoping for for the tune of $375. I think in all the time I’ve known him, Jason has never been more excited about a purchase. (Thanks again to Lee and Marion for the use of the trailer at short notice). The second gift that arrived was a beautiful cedar mailbox built by my brother. It only took him two years from the time I placed my order to get it built for me! It is such an upgrade from our outdated mail slot which is awkwardly located on the wall behind our front door and is too small to accomodate any real-sized piece of mail. Such exciting upgrades for us!
About a week ago we had the 2nd annual Baxter/Roberts bowling extravaganza. There are not many things cuter than little boys in bowling shoes! At last count we had 16 adults and 15 kids–all of whom came over to the house for pizza afterwards. It was such a nice time relaxing and visiting with everyone and putting our new table to good use. I’m hopeful we can keep doing it every year!
Andrew and I have recently shared a couple of colds. It’s hard. He’s so cute and kissable, but so disgusting at the same time. He’ll run in excited to greet me first thing in the morning, and then stand bedside and cough directly into my face. (No joke, this happened last week). He’s suddenly saying more intelligable words. Thank goodness! I was getting tired of whiney grunting all the time. He now has a pretty solid grasp on “yes please!” and “no”. As it turns out, these are two phrases much more helpful than just puppy, puppy, puppy, car, car, car, and momm-eeee! This week Andrew had a bit of a rough stretch. Thursday afternoon he got a fever while at daycare and threw up in Jason’s car about 6 blocks from home (better Jason’s car than mine!) Obviously I’m thinking stomach bug at this point. Before bedtime he had eaten without incident and was running around happy, and although the night was restless, he wasn’t sick again. Jason elected to try daycare Friday morning since he didn’t seem feverish, and had eaten a decent breakfast without any problems. By mid-morning however, I received the dreaded news that his fever was back and he was feeling pretty punky. I picked the poor little dude up and he looked miserable! I took him straight home for an almost 3 hour nap, however after his nap he looked even worse (and more feverish) than before so I decided it was time for a trip to the Instacare. The doctor checked his ears (no ear infection) and ordered a flu test (came back negative). Almost as an afterthought, I asked him to peek in his throat before we headed home and without any hesitation (and a bit of surprise in his voice) the doctor proclaimed “he’s got strep!”. Apparently it was so obvious he didn’t even need to order a culture. I left VERY pleased that I had asked the right questions and gotten the correct diagnosis. I bet that doctor checked the throat of every person who came through the door for the rest of his shift! He had a rough/crabby day or two but seems to be on the mend today. I’m glad we didn’t let it go even another 12 hours–poor guy was miserable. I’m thankful that this is the first (and so far only) case of strep we’ve had in the house.
Christopher is officially potty trained! Lately he is especially fond of using the downstairs bathroom. Yesterday he had me help with the button on his pants, pulled them down around his knees, and proeceeded to waddle all the way through the house, down the stairs, and across the basement, in 
order to use the bathroom downstairs. Amusing to say the least! He is also still negotiating for more Ben 10 aliens, but I’m hoping we can hold off until his birthday in a couple months. We discovered some Ben 10 DVD’s at the local library and it isn’t as terrible a show as I’d originally thought. In other news, after 5 years of little boy haircuts, Christopher was the recent official winner of our first “bad little boy haircut” award. He came home last week with blunt cut bangs that make him look like Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber. I will be SO thankful when they grow out a bit and can be fixed. Also about a week ago, on an already stressful morning when our shower decided to break, Christopher tripped on a crack in the driveway (when we were supposed to be loading up for swimming lessons) and gave himself the biggest forehead goose-egg I have ever seen! Every day with little boys is another day that I remind myself about the signs and symptoms of concussion. For all the times I’ve heard how we should have a family disaster plan (how to get out in case of fire, where to meet in case of earthquake/flood etc) I feel like a more useful plan would be one that involves rehearsing “what’s the drive time to the nearest ER?” and “what are the hours of the local Instacare?”. As the severity of wrestling in the house starts to escalate, I feel like these questions will soon be answered.
Wiliam recently took his first shower. It was slightly modified, meaning I had to hold the handheld sprayer and adjust the flow so it was almost turned off–but he enjoyed it. Just another step towards being bigger and more grown up. We’re also working on shoe-tying, although not very fast. We attended a math night at his school a couple weeks ago and found out William is pretty darned good at math! It happened to be a night that Jason had to work, so half of the adventure was me herding three little boys through the elementary school. At one point during the parent meeting portion of the night, I acutally sent Christopher and William off to play math games together. We all made it back home unscathed so I guess it worked out just fine. Today he has played a couple computer games on Jason’s old (retired) laptop. One of the “games” was a learn to type website that reminded me of a keyboarding class I took my freshman year of highschool. 5 years old and has already done more with computers than I had done before highschool!
(Upon re-reading this blog, I realized I may have never actually finished it before posting! Such is life.)