BreeAnna's Look-alike Meter

So this is what I do when my camera runs out of batteries.

Aaron's Look-alike Meter

Now you know who our kids look like.

Wild Weekend

Brian was a chaperon for our ward youth conference this weekend and he had a blast. The host family ranch he and the boys stayed at owned a restaurant size waffle maker and soft serve ice cream maker so they ate ice cream on their waffles for breakfast. He said the speakers were good, what he heard of them. He said that about a quarter of the leaders couldn't stay awake for the speakers, him included because they were so tired from shepherding youth to their classes and to bed. He left Friday morning and got back Sunday morning (12:30ish).
Meanwhile, Aaron and I got the flu. I called my visiting teacher to help me put the kids to bed Friday night. She and her daughter and her daughter's friend stayed all night and left at 5:30 AM for work, bless their hearts. We called a friend's husband to give me a blessing and he brought the bishop along because they are neighbors. After the blessing my nausea left almost immediately, so miracles do happen. After that I was just exhausted. I figured since I wasn't exactly nauseous on Saturday that I probably had food poisoning so we went to a birthday party that afternoon because it was easier than trying to keep Aaron locked up in the house all day and they had air conditioning. He had a blast, but then I took him home, put him to bed and he got up at 9:00ish and threw up.
He was such a brave boy. This is the second time this month he has had the flu (FYI: he did have flu shots this year) and the last time he was absolutely terrified that his body could do such a terrible thing. This time he calmly continued to get up and walk to the bathroom and lean over the toilet, waiting for the inevitable. A couple of times he said, "I don't like it," but otherwise he just got on with it. He threw up once more that evening and then slept on the hall floor with me until Brian got home.

Brian didn't even know we had been sick until he pulled into the church parking lot and one of the brethren told him about it. I had not even told this particular brother. Word had gotten around because I couldn't call Brian from our home phone because it is a long distance number. I had to ask other people to call for me, so when they couldn't get a hold of him they called other people who also went to youth conference who called other people, so now the whole ward knows that Aaron and I were sick all weekend.
Aaron got up this morning and asked for oatmeal and crackers so apparently he's over it. I still feel some lingering fatigue because I can't seem to get more than 2 hours sleep at a time. I am so grateful for all of the caring people who helped me out over this miserable weekend. It could have been a lot worse without all of their support. And I'm so glad Brian is home.
And the picture...

No, this picture is not from this weekend, but I know a few people who don't like to read a lot of text. They just want to see their Grand kids. A friend of mine took this picture of Aaron for me when we went to her house for a play date. The little girl in the pool is Aaron's buddy Bristol. They talk about each other all the time, but they only play together if other kids aren't around. Bristol is a regular character in our stories when Aaron and I play with his train set. He has named his blue engine "Bristol-Thomas."
BreeAnna is predominantly walking now, unless Dad is chasing her. She tried running from him today and took a spill that scared her, so she decided it's faster to crawl when under fire. Our friends say she looks like a little wind up doll when she walks because she doesn't look big enough to do it. But she is, and she's so proud. When we get some batteries for our camera I'll post some video of it.

A Sticky Situation and other BreeAnna News

For some reason, my child doesn't like to eat things from a spoon. She'll eat anything if she can hold it herself and if it's not sticky or slimy. Yesterday, I finally got her to eat some oatmeal off of a spoon (probably because she could see it was big people food because I took it from Aaron's bowl).

After a few bites, of coarse, she insisted on wielding the spoon for herself, and this is what she did with it. It stayed for quite a while.

And this is what she thought of the oatmeal. Not really. She liked it pretty well.
In other BreeAnna news, she is officially walking. She gets up from the floor by herself and can make it wherever she wants to go as long as Aaron doesn't pick her up en route. She also got a third tooth on the top this week so she's all ready for some cake on her birthday. She also tried to escape this week. Aaron learned to unlock and open the front door and he left it open yesterday morning. We heard a knock on the door at about 8:30 in the morning and when Brian went to investigate he found our neighbor standing white faced at our door holding our baby. She'd been on her way to her car when she saw BreeAnna at the top of the stairs to our apartment trying to go down the first one. For anyone who has been to our apartments you know how dangerous this is for a baby as we live on the third floor. Thankfully, she ran up and rescued her. We are very grateful for caring neighbors.

There's Nothing Like a Good Book

Close Encounters

Once a month the zoo is free so we went to the zoo this week. Since Brian is always the photographer we will never have any proof that he accompanies us on family outings, except that there are actually pictures of the event.

The kids had a few close encounters with animals which reminded me that my children's personalities are very different. BreeAnna and Brian were eating lunch when a peacock hopped out of the bushes not ten feet from them.

Here BreeAnna watches unconcerned as it circles them.

And here I am holding Aaron as a goat comes to sniff our stroller. Aaron likes to look at animals, but doesn't like them to be anywhere near him. Perhaps I'm being to unfair to Aaron. BreeAnna's close enounter animal did not have horns and teeth, and she may not be old enough to understand that animals can be dangerous. When the peacock came near Aaron, however, he ran around behind me and said, "I don't like it!" I am grateful to have a cautious child. I feel quite certain that if a stranger tried to pick up Aaron he would scream bloody murder, as he should. BreeAnna, on the other hand, would observe them with polite interest.

Animals were not the highlight of the trip for Aaron anyway. He could've cared less about the lions and tigers and bears (oh my). Early in the trip he heard a train whistle, and he began asking to see the train. From that point on our trip became a quest to find the train. We peered into each animal exhibit under the guise of "looking for the train." We found the railroad crossing and he stood there and watched the train go by 4 or 5 times before we coerced him to go on. I think our next big outing will be to a train museum.

So THAT's why they call it a 24 hour flu bug!

So, I thought when people talked about having a 24 hour flu bug that it was just a figure of speech; a flu that lasted about a day or so. Well, yesterday at 7:00 Aaron started to act kind of sick and by 7:30 he was throwing up. By 7:00 tonight he started to eat again and at 7:30 he got off the couch and walked into the bedroom to tell me he had to use the bathroom after not moving from the couch all day except for me to clean up his sick. So now I know why we don't call it a "day flu" or a "quick flu." It's the 24 hour flu because it lasts literally 24 hours. By bedtime he was a little docile, but back to his normal self.

Here he is playing with BreeAnna (sort of). He gave us a nice piratey smile and wink, but we couldn't catch the smile on camera. Just two hours before this he was laying in the same spot on the couch that he'd lain in all day looking like a zombie and with only enough energy to whisper responses. It is the first time he's thrown up and been able to tell anybody how he feels about it. At first he didn't know what was happening and we had to keep telling him to spit it out, not swallow. Everytime he started to feel it coming he'd say, "Oh, no. Help. Help. Help me!" And while it was happening, "I don't like it!" It just about broke my heart to hear him. So Brian gave him a blessing, and he slept in bed with me, and Brian slept in Aaron's bed so he could wake me to feed BreeAnna. Thus we successfully made it through our first flu with our child being the sick one and it was terrible. The flu we all caught at Brian's Grandma's funeral still tops the charts as the worst flu EVER, but Aaron didn't catch that one.

In other news, BreeAnna took her first step this week. She fell pretty quickly, but she's definitely working it out. I expect she'll walk by her birthday. She also got her second bottom tooth in the front today!