back from mexico. back to the old grind...

taking vacation near year end is BAD...ugh. catch up work will consume a whole week easily...bummer. i'll post mexico pictures later. bottom line is that nathan was a trainwreck there. he didn't want to be left alone and became super needy! he wouldn't stay in the daycare for kids for more than a few hours and cried the whole time until his voice was almost gone after 3 days of being in the daycare thing.

so much for relaxing alone without kids at the beach, bad idea for us to go to club med, a totally unrelaxing week for us. It was better when he was with us at the beach or in the pool. Nathan did really love the water/beach, and is fearless. He just goes deeper and deeper in the water! We saw some turtles that had hatched and a big hubbub was made to get them into the ocean at dusk! (pics to come of that too).

Eileen is all dark now (much to her chagrin, you know how she likes to stay pale). pretty impossible to do that in mexico!! :-)

closer to mexico!

today i have to watch nathan in the office. he's watching his mighty machines which allows me to work. Shanna is out taking her continuing ed courses. eileen's out with the baby at some craniologist. baby has a flat back of the head. ANYHOW...uh oh. nahtna just finished his show and is now hovering around my desk. time to go... 'bee ba ba ba'...that's something he always says but we have NO idea what it means. kind of like how used to go "irglut...gla" as a baby.

lately he gets frustrated when he speaks and we have no idea what he says...some mysterious words indeed...

Tired nights and hurt kids

I took Nathan out to the backyard while I carried down extra window screens that we removed (better views and it's winter so we don't open the windows anyhow). In fact, with our allergies and Austin being a horrible allergy place, we try not to open windows anymore during allergy season at all!

Anyhow, I was putting the screens into the basement/storage area and I hear Nathan cry out, it was a loud one too, which then quickly subsided into a more quiet 'sobbing', but I was a bit worried so I hurried outside. He was stuck in the middle of this branch that had been discarded in the grass area. What adults would think is a small branch of slightly 1 foot in diameter, he had managed to walk right into the middle of it and had evidently fallen and cut his palm on one of the offshoot branches that come off the main branch. Poor kid was definitely hurt as the skin was hanging off the palm. He was going "tong tong" which is chinese for 'pain/hurt', but wasn't crying too bad at all.

What came after I took him inside is the most amusing. he really worked it big time when he got inside. We went upstairs and when he saw Eileen, the big crocodile tears and full out bawling came back on. Keep in mind he was 'ok' but slightly sobbing for a full minute before seeing mommy. He carried on for 10 minutes while we cleaned the cut, put pain medicine on it and bandaged it up.

We had guests over for chinese 'hotpot' and Eileen really went all out with all the chopping and preparation. It sounds simple to just make hot pot happen but it's a LOT of work... so while our friends were over with their kids, nathan was not using his hand at all. it was all limp on the side..poor kid. somehow i think it was more mental than anything else though :-) it wasn't THAT bad of a cut. it was more of a really shallow cut that scraped the skin rather than puncture, as there was barely any blood even!

frog sleep

here is nathan sleeping at night in a frog position. how it's comfortable is beyond me...

Kids will throw up if too upset....

Poor Nathan threw up last night. We're not sure what went wrong. No temperature, nothing more than just a lot of yelling/screaming and when I looked at the security cameras, I couldn't really see anything wrong so I didn't know something was wrong when I went into the room. Once the light turned on, I could see the throw up and something wrong. Poor nathan was very distraught. He stayed up for almost 2 hours while we tried to clear his nasal passages and get him to drink/eat something. He looks ok this morning and he's moving around (ie. he's alive) a bit on the bed so that's ok. We'll have to pull a temperature this morning and see what's wrong, hopefully it's nothing.

Matthew pictures

looks just how our eldest uncle (stone) looked. this is definitely from my mother's side of the family. he's a..well..'healthy' size compared to our normal skinny small 'Ma' side like me and my siblings were as kids...

for some reason, he loves to hold his breath or swell out his face...weird looking...

he's found his feet lately. actually managed to put his nasty sweaty feet into his mouth the other day...he's still behind on his milestones. probably because we make him sleep on that inclined sleep thing in the closet. it's like 'people under the stairs' but our version is 'baby in the closet'..it's quiet and dark for his sleeping as he's a very light sleeper.
our cute monkey toed baby. yes, two different socks. i think i mentioned previously he puked on one so we just kept the other on. not that one of his socks makes a huge difference in the whole washing machine :-)

fellow buddies and waking up!

king of the castle!!!


I tried to catch a picture of him waking up. Nathan is most definitely NOT a morning person..

David doing a 'take down' on Nathan. Nathan hates getting his hands dirty more than anything else...

Big dave moving the kids about on the see saw. hopefully nathan doesn't get sick. toddler david there is sick now...

cute picture. kids can be so cute and loving. just don't hug too long...some folks might get the wrong idea... haahhaha

david taking off matthew's socks. matthew is much more aware and intent on looking around his environment now. hahaha...one guilty sock still in hand. And yes, we're aware the socks are different colors. Matthew managed to puke on one...less laundry to just do it one at a time :-)