Keeping Track of Lauren & Jack » June 2007 Journal Entries » AboutMyBaby - online baby scrapbooks, photo albums, videos, birth and pregnancy announcements

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Sat, Jun 30, 2007 11:21 PM
Today we had a birthday party to go to for Darren Levy, whom we know from Music Together class, and he's also a neighbor in our community. It was a pool party and we spent most of the time, yup, you guessed it, in the pool! Lauren was swimming all the way cross the width of the pool with one breath and was very proud of herself. Now, granted, the pool wasn't very big, but she just seems more and more confident in the water. There were a few kids her age and just a bit older that were really good swimmers, they were diving down to the bottom to retrieve toys etc. Jack spent most of the time wanting to float, but I think he still swallowed quite a bit of water, we got some big burps out of him. He did fairly well, he stayed in pretty good spirits considering we blew right through nap time and didn't get home until about 3PM.

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Fri, Jun 29, 2007 11:25 PM
So I go and buy speacial non-waterproof but still absorbant pads for Jack's crib, and of course he hasn't been sweating in the past few days. So it's all a mystery but I'm not quite as worried. I still want to ask the doctor but it may have to wait until after the trip to New York.

Jack is doing very well in swim class, although he still seems to prefer to float. His instructor Miss Emma says that he's "aquatically safe" but we need top work on the swimming part. She says if we practice by giving him a good launch in the water he'll get much better.

Jack has been saying OK a lot lately, but not just random babbling or repeating what I'm saying like he did before. Now he'll say it in response to a request. Like, "Hey, Bubba, let's go get in the bath. He gives a really intent look like he's processing, then "OK,Mama!" And then he takes off running toward the bathroom. It's very cute.

Lauren has been using the excuse "I don't feel good" for anything she doesn't want to do. She seems to think they are the magic words to get out of anything. That's the trouble, once they can talk, they start whining! She's also very interested in knowing our plans for the next day at bedtime. Like she'll say "Tomorrow what, Mommy?" So I find myself having to outline in detail any plans we may have for the next day. The trouble comes when there IS no plan yet!

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Mon, Jun 25, 2007 9:42 PM
Cute story from today. Jack has been saying "gilk" instead of milk, but today he said milk clear as a bell. When I mentioned it to Mike he said, yeah, Lauren taught him. (It's funny because for the past few weeks Lauren has been asking me, Why does he say gilk, Mommy? And I said, well, he's learning how to talk, he just doesn't know how to say it right yet.) And then this morning Lauren said "Say Milk, Jack!" And Jack dutifully responded "Mmmmilk!" So, I'm a bit worried what else she may be teaching him, but I just thought that was so adorable!

Otherwise I'm now obsessively worried that Jack may have sleep apnea. He has been waking up all sweaty, so much so that he soaks the bedsheets and around the neck and shoulders of his PJ's. So I finally did some research online and it seems that night sweating, combined with restless sleep and snoring (all of which he has)can be signs of something called obstructive sleep apnea, where there's a pause in breathing, and the body has to wake up a little to continue breathing. Those little wake-ups can be very disruptive to a truly restful and restorative sleep. That might explain why sometimes he's still cranky even though he's had a good nap. So I'm going to call the doctor tomorrow. He'll probably send me to a sleep specialist. I wonder what kind of sleep study is possible with a toddler?

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Sun, Jun 24, 2007 9:31 PM
Yesterday I had to go buy dogfood at this place down near the Brandon mall so we made a family excursion, mostly because that mall has a carousel. They also have a Nissan dealership showcasing cars inside the mall, so the kids had fun crawling around inside the cars. We never allow them to do that in our cars normally, so they were thrilled to sit behind the wheel etc. Lauren was very interested to be in a department store and was extremely excited about the escalators. I forget sometimes that she's not used to these things! Then we had lunch at the food court and headed home again. We didn't do any shopping at all, which I have to say is an absolute first for me!

Later on after naps I tried to get them to frolic on the lanai with the Elmo sprinkler, and we were blowing bubbles too. But then Jack was having none of it and wanted to go inside. I took the opportunity of having Lauren alone to go into the pool since she's done with her lessons. She just loves jumping in and floating, but she just loves putting her head under and swimming! It's still a little bit worrying since she still gets very excited and out of breath. But she really loves it, and it's going to be an excellent way to wear her out I hope!

This morning Mike took Lauren with him to the store, so I took Jack for a walk. Boy, was it hot out there! The cutest thing though, whenever we saw anyone and I said hello, Jack had to go and say hi too, which meant going right up to the person and waving and yelling HI!! He's becoming quite the social creature!

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Fri, Jun 22, 2007 10:43 PM
Lauren had her last day of swimming lessons today. It was a bit anti-climactic. She didn't get a certificate or anything. But I do feel like she knows how to get onto her back to float, and that's the most important thing if she's too far away from the wall to swim. I guess now we'll just keep working on her stroke technique.

Jack is doing fine too, except that he gets into his back by leaning his head back instead of rolling over sideways. He seems to have a surpising amount of upper body strength. He has another few weeks to go I think.

It's been so hot that I don't even want to take the kids outside to play. What I want to do is swim in the pool but the instructor has told us not to while we're in the middle of the lessons. Well, she said not to INSTRUCT them, but I don't see how we can be in the pool without doing some instruction. Apparently it can impede progress. So today I set up the Elmo sprinkler on the lanai and just let the kids play in that for a while. They were actually pretty entertained for quite a while.

Oh, but this evening we have been having a big problem with Lauren screaming. And I mean ear-piercing, blood curdling shreiks. I have tried Time Outs but she just sits there and screams. I have triend taking away things I know she values, and that is somewhat helpful. The most effective thing was removing her from the family room and sitting with her until she had calmed down. Even though she can express herself much more than Jack, I think she still screams from frustration, and she needs to be helped with finding the words to ask for what she wants. I try really hard to role-model the behavior I want from her, but today was really a challenge. It doesn't help that I've had a migraine the whole day!

Well, there is still a frog in the toilet. That's the third one! You can only see his leg dangle down sometimes when you flush. It's freaking me out! Plus I killed three scorpions today inside the house. So I've got that creepy feeling like something could crawl on me at any moment. I'm also freaked by the thought of a scorpion biting one of the kids. I don't know why we pay for pest control, these pests are NOT controlled!

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Wed, Jun 20, 2007 6:10 PM
Swimming has been going very well. Jack still gets anxious from the moment we turn into the place in the car, and he cries and screams right up until he's in the water. The he seems absolutely fine. It's most peculiar. Lauren has had clothes and shoes on the past two days and she's still doing fantastic.

We caught another frog this morning. I was in the other room for a moment and the kids were screaming that he's gone under a piece of furniture in the kitchen. I moved it back, and sure enough, there he was! That was quite exciting for them, and Jack kept calling to the froggy long after he'd been safely deposited outside. I think they are coming up through the pipes in our guest toilet, which is a bit frightening!

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Sun, Jun 17, 2007 6:07 PM
Happy Father's Day to Mike and all you Dads out there!

Lauren started Fathers Day off last night actually when she insisted on buying Mike some flowers. I asked her if she wanted to give then to him right now or wait until Father's Day and she said she wanted to wait and talked the whole way home about the big secret we were going to keep about it. Then the mooment we got home she ran right in and gave them to him!

We had a great day today, first we had brunch at one of the best restaurants in the area, then we had a BBQ with some frineds John and Jeanie at their house where both kids proceeded to torture their cat Jazz the entire time we were there. After feasting on all their goodies, we came home and put the kids to bed,and then had John and Jeanie over to our house for game night. Lauren was a little reluctant to sleep knowing that people were here, but eventually she finally settled down. But it was a very packed day for all of us!

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Fri, Jun 15, 2007 11:06 PM
It's been a busy week. Swim classes are going VERY well. Lauren has pretty much learned the swim-float-swim technique, she just stays sort of lopsided once she flip over from her back to swim the second time. The instuctor Miss Emma said she should be done in just another week, which I think is incredible. That will only be a total of three weeks! And Jack is apparantly catching up very quickly. He hasn't had as much previous instruction, so he didn't seem to mind the floating position as much as Lauren did at first. I think they're both really going to love to swim once they really get going.

Jack's results from the lab for his iron and lead were both fine, which was a releif, since I just heard about this Thomas the train recall with the lead paint in some of the wooden trains.

We had a visit from Jennifer, our former nanny on Wednesday, and they both seemd very happy to see her. Funny story about that day, after a visit to our bathroom, Jennifer informed us that we had a FROG in our toilet! I was so embarrassed, but set about trying to catch him so we could set him free outside. He kept climbing up under the rim, so in a moment of pure genius (not!) I flushed the toilet and . . . he was flushed away! I can't believe I committed frogicide, but it really was unintentional! Oh well, what is it they say in Finding Nemo, all pipes lead to the ocean? Let's hope so! (Oh well, that's what we get for living in a swamp.)

Today we had a play-date with Taylor which was the usual chaos over at their house with the kids running around in big circles and figure 8's. Lauren had not really napped though so we had to have a time out which escalated into a tantrum which resulted in our leaving a little earlier than we had planned. Jack also threw a fit when I tried to give him some milk in a sippy cup. Oh well, some days are just like this. . .

I have planned a trip for just Lauren and I for over the July 4th weekend (And my 40th birthday!) to New York City. We'll be staying with my dear friend Elli from college and her family. Elli usually lives in Berlin, but is in New York on a sort of sabbatical and she is renting a 4 bedroom penthouse in midtown,which means she has an office/guest-room! I had been trying to figure out how we could all go up there, but she doesn't have room for all of us, so that would mean hotels etc. Plus Jack doesn't really have the impulse control for New York, and he doesn't like being in the stroller all that much anymore. So Jack is staying home with Daddy for some serious male bonding. Jack may still have some swimming lessons he needs to finish up anyway. I am beyond excited, and Lauren is too, although she gets excited just going to the grocery store, so I'm not sure if she quite understands yet!

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Mon, Jun 11, 2007 10:21 PM
In truly uncharacterictically timely fashion, I actually got Jack's thank you cards for his party in the mail TODAY. I have decided that this is a sign that I'm turning over a new leaf in terms of my procratination about these things. (Well, a girl can dream, can't she?)

I also took Jack straight off to the lab to get his hemoglobin and lead tested. With Lauren it took me over a month after her doctor's visit so I vowed not to let that happen this time. He definitely screamed while they were drawing the blood, and gave me a look of such betrayel afterwards, but he was quickly placated with a bottle of milk and a cuddle.

Then I decided to take advantage of having just him with me and ran some errands. I went to have his feet measured and am aghast to see he's grown an entire shoe size! He's basically too big for his fancy new sneakers that are only about a month old, and his even newer leather sandals are only going to last another month at the most! Yikes! What's really sad is that instead of all of his expensive shoes, he always wants to wear his Crocs, probably because they're the only shoes he can put on himself.

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Sun, Jun 10, 2007 11:31 PM
Well, Jack's Thomas the Train 2nd Birthday Party extravaganza is officially over. Everything went really well and the kids has a blast. I almost had an annurism when I went to pick up the cake and it was not the one I had ordered. But I have to say, the manager did a terrific job. He said he would make the cake for me right then and deliver it personally to the venue. So it turned out fine in the end. And it was a really cool cake, sort of 3-D in the shape of the Thomas train. Other than that everything went off without a hitch. The woman who runs the club did a great circle time with songs and dancing and a parachute and a story and bubbles. It's perfect for their age range and all the kids got into it. I was surprised Jack was as involved in things as he was. Lauren would wander off at the same age, but I think Jack's had more practice since he tags along to most of the birthday parties she goes to.

I served little bagel pizza's along with the many other snacks I had laid out. One of these days I wil learn to make about 1/4 of the food and it may just be about right! Then later on the cake was a big hit, and everyone wore little cardboard conductor hats. Jack had a real conductor hat and a pin so that he felt special as the birthday boy. And the big cake was a big hit, even though the blue frosting gave everyone blue lips! The smartest thing I did was have a box of baby wipes there at the table!

At the last minute I decided to not use the stick I had bought for the pinata and had planned to give them each a string that they could pull, but that idea went out the window when one little girl pulled with all her might and the strings all came off in her hand! Oh well, the effect is always the same feeding frenzy with the candy. Apparently the lollipops were the hottest item in there.

And then it was suddenly all over and everyone seemed to leave at the same time, but for once I had extra party favor bags so at least I wasn't stressed about that. Jack really made off with a lot of loot, and we opened presents later on after naps. He got such a cute variety of things, and thankfully things we don't have. He was very excited about everything.

Somehow we have to calm down tomorrow and face the reality of swim lessons etc!

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Fri, Jun 8, 2007 10:42 PM
Jack had his 2 year check up and we managed to fit it in BEFORE swimming lessons, which was just short of a miracle. Jack is 31 pounds and 36 inches tall which keeps him the 90th percentile in both categories. I can't believe he doesn't weigh more actually, because that's what they said ages ago and I swear he's gained weight since then. Oh well, I guess the scale doesn't lie. Lauren is still 29 pounds where she seems to have plateaued, and she's just shy of 40 inches tall. Everything seemd fine, and when I told him how well he sleeps, he said a lot of other parents would be jealous! (That's OK, we have Lauren who sits in bed singing at the top of her lungs to keep us in line!) Jack had a shot and again was pretty stoic. I guess it helps to have a lot of meat on those hams! And the Dr. is sending us to the lab to test his iron and lead. Hmm. That should be fun. I'm going to try to go with just him this coming week.

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Thu, Jun 7, 2007 9:09 PM
Happy Birthday Jack! I can't believe my baby is already two years old. He is such a big boy, and sometimes he looks like a little man, he's becoming such a distinct personality. At other times though, he still needs so much from us, which honestly I'm thankful for. I guess he's technically not really a baby anymore. He's walking, talking, climbing. He's even starting to respond to discipline like time outs and he has shown some mild interest in the potty. (Not that he's actually produced anything on there yet!)

Today Jack woke up still sniffling a bit and had a slight cough, but I had to bring him to swimming anyway, so I got him dressed and decided to see what the instructor said about him getting in the water. I knew we didn't have time before swimming for all his presents, so I just let him open a gift bag that had various Matchbox vehicles, his favorite is the helicoptor, but there was also an airlplane, a tractor, a truck and a car. It's amazing how easy he is to please right now. If that was all he got for his birthday he would have been just fine!

The instructor said he seemed fine and he didn't have any difficulty breathing, so we went ahead and put im in. He was crying at first, but settled down pretty soon and did very well. His position in water is improving. She said he's going to be a good little swimmer once he gets over the swallowing the water part. He is surprisingly bouyant, and she said that's because fat is very bouyant and he certainly has plenty of that!

Lauren also did well and is continuing her work on the float position. She seems to trust Ms. Emma a bit more each day. She was even smiling for the first time, and she seemed to have a real sense of accomplishment when she did the float to a count of 10.

Then we ventured into Target where Lauren selected a card for Jack and we got his cake, (among other things, of course!) After lunch and naps there was a huge storm so we were stuck inside. Jack opened more presents and he loved his talking truck car carrier, and the V8 driver which is like an arcade game with a seat and a steering wheel and pedals and a gear stick and sound effects and everything. We also got him the movie "Cars" which he's been very interested in from all the merchandizing everywhere. It was fortunate to have for entertainment during the storm.

After dinner and bathtime we had a little party with cake and ice cream, neither of which Jack was interested in at all, although he blew his big "2" candle out like a champ and he seemd to get that this was a special occasion all about him. After dinner there was some serious wrestling with Mike on the floor. Dog pile on Daddy! Then at one point Lauren was kicking her legs like a rockette, so I broke into a spontaneous rendition of "New York, New York" because it's easy to kick to. Even Jack got in on the kick line, it was so funny. So all in all, I think it was a good birthday. Jack seemed tired and content when I put him down, and that is really all that I could want for him at this stage in the game. He's healthy and happy, and that's all that matters.

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Wed, Jun 6, 2007 11:44 PM
Swimming lessons are getting better each time, although Jack has thrown up a little each day. Just a little. He seems to be taking water in up his nose which is apparently hard to teach them not to do. He also had a slight case of the sniffles today which I'm not sure is related to all the time in the water. Lauren is doing very well and seems to be remembering a lot of what we did last year. Both of them are calmer each day and today there was hardly any screaming. Lauren is starting to float which she is not very comfortable doing. It involves keeping the head tilted way back and she seems very insecure in that position. But hey, it's only the third day!

Yesterday after swim class we headed out to the beach to see Mike's dear friends from his chldhood Mark and Genevieve Mossman, their twin girls Pam and Irene, who are just a month younger than Lauren, and all their various relatives that they go on vacation together with. It was fun to swim in their warm pool and we even hung out at the beach itself for a short while. This time both kids really enjoyed playing in the waves a bit. Jack stil gets a little freaked out, but Lauren seems so exhilerated, she just jumps for joy! The only problem was that we blew right through nap time, which was fine with Lauren, but Jack didn't eat well the entire day and just had a complete meltdown when we got home around dinner time. So we just put him down early, and then he slept until almost 9AM this morning which is almost unheard of!

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Mon, Jun 4, 2007 10:54 PM
The kids started their swim lessons today and they both pretty much screamed the whole time. Lauren started off promisingly enough, but then she was screaming that she wanted to get out. Jack was screaming because she was in the water and he was out, and then once he was in, he wanted to get out too. They get individual instruction for just 10 minutes each, but it's every day M-F. I think it will get better once they get used to it, and I think we'll try letting Jack go first tomorrow.

They have a ton of paperwork at this new swim school, and all these different requirements. Like they're not supposed to eat or drink anything for an hour and a half before the lesson. She said he shouldn't have ANY dairy before, and I don't know to do that because Jack usually has a whole bottle first thing in the mornings. Plus she said we should avoid apple juice becuase it exacerbates the distention of the stomach when they swallow a lot of water. Hmm, it's a complicated business, this swimming stuff.

Otherwise we had a playdate with Taylor today which was the usual mayhem. I'm glad we finally got together because it's been a while, and I feel bad that the kids have been stuck at home a lot. We've been renovating our office with new furniture and installing shelves, and then I've also been auditioning a lot. It's been either stormy and raining or really hot outside anyway. All the more reason to get serious about the swimming because then we can spend more time at the pool cooling our heels!

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