Road Trip to Northern Florida

Eric bought a house long ago that I still hadn't visited.  My cousin Denise just had a baby girl.  I hadn't seen Lory since Austin, TX when Mia was 18 months old.  And I hadn't seen my cousin Madhavi since  the meet Gavin party in June of 2011.  All this had been making me ache for a tour of Northern Florida but the how and when and with whom didn't come together until Matt told me he and his boys had nothing to do during their February break.  So I took off the 4 days after President's day and we used Matt's Sienna mini van to roll down to FL in style.  We left at around 9pm Friday February 15th and returned home at 4:30am Saturday Febrary 23rd.  

from NJ to FL

Here is a picture through the cool spy-on-your-kids rear view mirror.

It worked nicely having Mia and Randall as buddies and Gavin between the big boys who were indispensably helpful during the trip (especially Jeremy!).  

Eric's house

Eric, thanks for letting the kids play on/in/around your truck.  Jess, thanks for making yummy tacos.  Eric, thanks for helping Jeremy with his homework.  Jess, thanks for doing a photo shoot of our cranky crew.  all (including Tyler and Buddy):  thanks for letting us into your house and disturb your peace and quiet for a couple of days.  It was great reconnecting!

The boys (minus Randall)

I love this picture because if you didn't know it was mid-yawn you'd think that was some pretty frustrating homework.  But then again with the name of Russian math I wouldn't be surprised.

We got to Eric's house on a Saturday afternoon and left Monday morning headed towards our:
 Day's Inn Suite

To the far left is the refrigerator, which is just the edge of the full kitchen. The open door is bathroom #1 (the kids bathroom) and the next door is the room with the 2 double beds (2 kids/bed).  After that door is the door to Matt and my room.  Gavin had a whole huge walk in closet and there was another bathroom off of that closet.  This space was great and reasonably priced!!

Palmer's house

Monday morning  cuddles with uncle Matt/daddy

Hanging outside the biggest and littlest boy cousins find time to pose while waiting for a turn in the bounce house.  

Later at the big playground we had a picnic and Chloe flashed some amazing smiles around before passing out on a stroller ride by me and Bryce.  

Climbing

 
See Saw

After Publix Chinese take-out on our last day I noticed Matt and Denise were twins and I took this shot.  That's Bryce in the back trying to be a photo bomber but I cut his head off in this one.   

Wow, everyone is here!  Most are even looking!!  And some are even smiling!!!  This is the whole gang.  We didn't see much of Ethan, Jeremy or Mattie because they mostly played video games.  Gavin continues to talk about "baby Chloe" even after our return home (he referred to one of Mia's dolls as Chloe). Bryce, it is so great that you are growing into such a wonderful human being.  I can't wait for you to join us during a summer sometime.  Denise & Gary, thanks for your hospitality!

We got to Denise's house on a Monday morning and left on a Tuesday evening.  Wednesday we went to:

Legoland with Lory

They had these genius little lego areas at the end of every ride's line where the kids can build while you wait in line and then join you in line at the very end (when you are almost done waiting).  Brilliant!

Here are Lory and Mia on the boat ride.  I think Mia didn't realize how hard she had to press the gas pedal because they caused quite a back up at first just puttering out in the water.  

Here is Jeremy posing with a life-sized lego version of R2D2.  

The visit to lego land was a great one.  We all got to take turns riding the rides or waiting with Gavin (and or Randall/Mia), which gave us a nice opportunity to connect with each other on a 1 to 1 level.  It did take us a ton of time to find one of the two places in the park that had vegetarian options but at least that traipsing put Gavin to sleep.  At one point Lory and I ended up in a crazy annoying indoor toddler area with circus music worthy of self ear mutilation but luckily our conversation was stimulating enough to drown out the sickly sweet repetitive kid tunes.  Thanks for taking a day off work to hang out with us Lory.  You were critical to the success of the trip.  My favorite part was dinner afterwards (the beer/margaritas, not Jeremy's car time-out).  Join us in NJ whenever you'd like!

We ended up spending Wednesday night at Lory's and were treated to bagels/coffee in the morning before heading to: 

Alachua with Abhaya

after we all reacquainted and had some fresh, yummy farmers market food we headed to a natural spring to cool off.  Jeremy, Vera, Mia (with floaties) and I swam across the whole river? lake? There was quite a current and then seemingly quicksand on the other shore so we had to rest holding onto a tree branch sticking out of the water.  It was a scary/exhausting swim back but we made it.  Gavin was mommy clingy but once alone with Madhavi they really hit it off on a stroll in the woods.  

After all that exertion, Chinese take out was just the remedy.  Mia fell asleep on the way home so we just left the van door open and let her sleep in the parking lot where we could see her while the rest of us feasted.

The kids really liked Alachua not only because the ages were so well matched but also because of the swimming and their ability to be so independent there (thanks largely to a close playground and a very maternal/responsible Vera).  Thank you Madhavi for all the lovely food and nice night time conversation.  Call me anytime and always know that our door is open to you.  

We got to Madhavi's place Thursday morning and after a cousin's sleepover and oatmeal breakfast we left Friday morning for the big:

Drive home

We first stopped at a grocery store and bought oodles of fresh fruit, veggies, gogurt-type packages and some garlic bagel chips too (I had an urge).  Luckily everyone was quite happy on the drive home.  It wasn't all movies and sleep either.  Exhibit 1:  Jeremy and Mattie were allowing Gavin to pull their hair and hit their heads for almost an hour.  Exhibit 2:  I bought a round of York peppermint patties that were a hit.  Exhibit 3:  Jeremy and Mia rocking out to Kidz Bop and so on.  Although it was a good thought, the books on tape just never seemed to get off the ground with Gavin being so loud.  Matt and I enjoyed some adult conversation up front and for all of you negative Nancy's just wanting to know how much we fought being in close quarters for a whole week the answer is:  much less than I expected :)  and not much at all in fact.  I really had a great time and I'm sure the kids did too.

We arrived Back home at 4:30am Saturday and although I never in my wildest dreams thought it could happen we put every single child back to bed from the car and everyone slept until. . . . 8:45am!!!  Those of you without kids reading this are laughing or just becoming more certain of your lack of desire for kids and this is fine but I will continue to take pleasure in life's little comedies like sleeping in until almost 9am being a huge deal.  So unexpected was this waking time that Dave missed a fairly important event he was planning on attending because we no longer use alarm clocks and instead rely on the kids, who were thrilled to have Dave stay with us and ditch his obligations.  

Arm wrestling:  3 against 1

Dave won

Thank you everyone for making our tour of Northern FL so successful.  We had such a great time and the driving wasn't so bad (though I now know that 5 hr energy drinks are a bunch of baloney!).  

Blizzard Nemo

We woke up Saturday morning to not only our third day of Mojo peeing on the floor but also to the historic and comically dubbed Blizzard Nemo.  First, I decided to take the cat to the vet to see if there was a physical reason she was suddenly incontinent although given her past I was pretty sure it was more behavioral.  Long story short, I had a ton of snow to shovel, scrape and navigate through just to find that we have an anxious cat (duh!) who may benefit from Prozac.  In any case, when we returned and found out Mia's ballet was cancelled we decided to have fun in the sunny snowy day.  Mia and Dave made a snow man and I later built an igloo around him.  Gavin just wanted to run in the street and (excuse the pun) melted down when this resulted in the consequence of being carried back to the house.  

Hot cocoa was definitely in order when we went back inside!  And that remains one of the only times we got a decent amount of snow here in Highlands, NJ.  

Illnesses

On Saturday Feb 2nd, Mia complained in her bath that she was cold and then started shivering when she was toweling off afterward and rapidly declined into a puddle of ick with a 103.3 fever!  After Ibuprophen and 30 minutes elapsed her temp was then 103.5.  I was getting nervous.  Finally, the fever subsided.  She managed to feel fine-ish during the days but at night she would spike a fever for 2 more nights.  Dave stayed home with her Monday and I stayed home with her Tuesday.  By Tuesday she was doing fine but we were abiding by the '24 hr with no fever' preschool rule.  We made a plan that morning for things we could do and among them were to put on a puppet show and to make cupcakes, both were Mia's ideas

here is the stuffed animal audience

Here is Gretal Penguin and Red Monster Witch

Mia and I made cupcakes but we waited for Gavin to return from school to frost/eat them.

Here they are frosted

YUM!

That Tuesday night, we put the kids to bed excited that we wouldn't have to miss anymore work when Gavin started fussing.  At first we let it go for a bit because it wasn't too intense and often he is just working on putting himself back to bed but after a while I got that feeling that something wasn't right.  Dave went in first (we are gently working on weaning) and alerted me to the fact that he was "burning up".  His temperature was 103.7!!  He was limp, lethargic and barely able to moan/whine but yet refused his medicine vehemently   Thus, we were left with no option but to give him a tepid bath to decrease the temperature at least in an acute sense until we could coax him into taking the medicine.  He HATED the bath and afterward and then we had the following conversation:
Me:  Here take your medicine buddy
Gavin:  No
Me: Do you want another bath?
Gavin:  No
Me:  Then take the medicine or you will need another bath
After that we slowly (over the course of 15 minutes) got the 5 ml of medicine safely down (once we didn't respect his will to refuse and he almost got the meds in his lungs. . . scary).
I read books with him until 30 mins had passed and his temp was down to 102.7 and put him back to bed.  Unlike Mia he was in pretty bad shape the next day (Wed). Since daddy had a required work-related orientation I stayed home from work a 2nd day in a row.  Gavin, whose recent obsession is cooking, decided at 10am that he wanted to make pizza so pizza it was for morning snack/crazy-early lunch.  This was about the only thing he ended up eating that day.

Then he still wanted to cook and I had an old pear and an older banana so. . . 

Banana-pear muffins it was!

and what sick day wouldn't be complete without sleeping on a couch and watching some "TV".  So on my laptop I snatched a Bob the Builder off YouTube, put the loveseat and couch together and voila:  a sick chick nest

awww (he later rolled off the pillow and onto his tummy as he prefers to sleep only he was completely face down, which is bad for 2 reasons:  hard to breath and snotty couch so I turned his head to the side . . . the couch is fine and so is he)

OK now you may be surprised by this since I typically only blog about Mia and Gavin, the two fastest changing organisms in the house but. . . Mojo has an illness too.  Mojo. . . you know. . . one of our two cats?  The fluffy tailed one.  Anyhow, it was not the flu or whatever terrible beast overtook the kids for 2-3 days each but rather a mental illness.  No surprise for those of you who know Mojo but what inspired me to finally write about Mojo's illness since she has been this way since birth?  Glad you asked.  Well Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning we found a puddle of pee (shhhh don't tell the landlords!).  Although we were successful at cleaning them up (How you ask?  Vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, bleach water, wishing I believed in prayer and then trying more vinegar instead) I worried that something might be physically wrong with Mojo despite her history of "behavioral problems" pee-related and otherwise.  So I dug out our car, shoveled the driveway (see Blizzard Nemo post to come) and took Mojo to the vet.  My homework:  get a pee sample, get her previous vet records and find out her favorite flavor wet cat food (we do dry).  The pee sample simply entailed locking her in the bathroom with a litter box of fake plastic beads that I paid too much for and that are supposed to con her into thinking they are just normal litter.  Instead she went in the bathtub.  Luckily, I plugged it just in case and was able to use the vet's syringe and get a decent sized sample (I hope).  Then, more vinegar!  Next, I called and got her vet records so they knew what sedative had made her flip out (literally!) the whole way from Binghamton to Philadelphia.  With this knowledge, they'd be able to sedate her safely and get a blood sample (apparently 3 people [1 vet, 1 vet assistant and 1 assistant with falcon-taming gloves on are not enough).  The blood sample would rule out any metabolic disorders and act as a baseline before putting Mojo on long-term medication.  Which one you ask?  Prozac.  For those of you who know Mojo this makes perfect sense (our poor little early-weaned, anxious, run-when-you-sneeze kitty).  But how to get such an anxious cat to take a pill every day you ask?  I'm not sure how much those vet assistant gloves cost but I'm sure that this approach would not exactly help her anxiety.  Instead, the vet said that special vet pharmacists will compound the meds into a liquid and flavor that liquid.  Hence, my homework #3:  to find out Mojo's favorite wet cat food flavor.  And you don't become a research psychologist for nothing folks so here is the 4-way preference test:

Before

S = salmon, C = chicken, TN = tuna, TK = turkey

and yes, I had her sample from all 4 before she got to choose her favorite.

After

I know it looks like the test was inconclusive but as a good scientist, I watched the whole test unfold and it seemed she liked the salmon and tuna the best, then the chicken and then she seemed to almost reluctantly eat the turkey, perhaps just out of hunger.  

Gogo was happy to support her newly-diagnosed kitty sister by helping her eat the rest of the cans of wet cat food.

A couple of weekends in the life

Although these pictures are from 2 different weekends, let's weave them together like a story:

First we wake up and have pancakes with Nutella:

Then we go to R Bounce for open bounce time:

Here is Gavin in the toddler room.

Then Mia and I go for a girls outing while Gavin naps.  We go to a fancy shmancy hair salon together and get a chop:

before

after

(don't be thrown off by Mia's demeanor here. . .we didn't know it at the moment but she was coming down with something.  Oh and also try to ignore where my hair is smushing up against her, I couldn't convince her to take another picture).

Finally, comes Chinese takeout from across the street (yum!).  Daddy braves the cold to pick up our order and afterwards plays monster with the kids.

These are pretty typical weekend activities for us (with the addition of ballet lessons and a trip to the library on Saturdays).  Nothing special in and of themselves but somehow they seem so magical and special in contrast to the long week we spend apart at daycare and work.  I treasure these days and am so happy that I can leave my work at work and be completely present on the weekends.  Hope you enjoyed this peak into our lives!

Gavin is 1.75 years old!

Stats:  Gavin is around 31 lbs but I'm not sure exactly how tall.  He can still fit many of his 18 mo old clothes (which he has been wearing since 4 mo old mind you) but the 18-24 mo and 24 month clothes fit him best.  His shoe size is a 7.5.  We believe he is outgrowing his "one size" cloth diapers, which are leaving marks so we purchased an XL gdiaper to see if that works better.  Hopefully, when it warms up we can give him some nudy time and see if his interests in the potty increase.

Potty:  speaking of potty training, Gavin does tell us before and when he poops, which would be a great help with cloth diapering but as of now he just barely wants to sit down before he gets up again, which is risky with a new area rug in the family room.

Sleeping:  For awhile Gavin was sleeping from 7pm to 7am, which was great, especially on the back of a 2 mo streak of waking up once in the middle of the night and then up for the day at 5:30am.  But now his internal clock pendulum has swung back to a 7:30pm-6:00am type of schedule.  It seems he is giving his daycare caregiver (Ms. Barbara at First Steps Preschool) the extra hour as his nap, which used to be 12-2pm is now 12-3pm.  Of course at home he doesn't sleep this long.

Speaking:  Gavin is speaking quite better than I was led to believe boys his age would talk.  Perhaps this is because his mommy is a chatterbox, who knows.  Although he usually speaks in 2-3 word sentences, he has been heard speaking much longer sentences on occasion such as when he told Dave exactly what he wanted for dinner one car ride home:  "Dada, awa (I want) eat aayys (eggs) a-home (at home)".  Some of his favorite words are:  "ba-hoe whoa-der" (backhoe loader).  I love that he still
has his own little language for fruits and animals especially.  For example, "alley-doh" could be an elephant or an orange and used to also be used for alligators.  "Saturdays" are strawberries.  For Mia her words always approximated the true word and for Gavin he will parrot any word you tell him to but he prefers to use his own language.  Sadly his "pippa" for pizza is now pronounced correctly but I suppose that is part of growing up.  Fortunately, I got his "broc-lavah" (brocoli) on video just in case he starts saying "brocoli".  One last thing that I noticed develop in Gavin that might be specific to his place as our 2nd child is that he recently learned the word "too" and uses it a lot.  For example, "Awa cula too" (I want to color too) when Mia is at the art table.


Gavin definitely knows many colors (red, green, "yay-o" [yellow], purple) though he occasionally gets them mixed up (brown/black).  It is no wonder he knows his colors so well, this boy loves to color, just like his big sister!  For the most part, they color very nicely at the art table together though he sometimes wants to color on her paper.

our point of view

Gavin's point of view

Gavin can sing many songs (ABCs, B-I-N-G-O for example) and requests them by name in the car:  "Mama whole werld" (he's got the whole world in his hands. . . ) or "Mama hey ho nahwah" (hey ho the narwhal in Alphabet Songs by David Polansky).

Maybe it is subsiding or maybe I am just getting used to it but Gavin's screeching phase seems to be calming down.  I couldn't blame him, it was mostly because he was tired and hungry after daycare and before dinner (in the car).  With his increasing ability to talk he can now simply tell us he is "hunwy" (hungry).

Speaking of this difficult hour after daycare and before dinner, Gavin still nurses upon getting home.  I'm sure it is because he is hungry.  If we magically had dinner ready and waiting for us or if I let him snack more on the way home he might be less apt to nurse (but then he wouldn't eat his dinner, which nursing doesn't seem to disrupt).  He also still nurses in the morning but we are working on having daddy whisk him downstairs and feed him so we can get down to at least once per day (Mia had given up nursing by this age).  It isn't that I mind nursing him, in fact I still love our snuggly time together and soak in every moment of it given he is our last.  But we are planning a getaway for our 5 yr wedding anniversary (13 yrs together) and then I have a 4 day conference soon thereafter and it would be cruel for him and my breasts if we didn't taper down before those trips.

Eating:  Gavin loves pizza, pasta and bagels (see breakfast photo below).  Although he sometimes shuns vegetables he eats very well for the most part.

"I do it"

Gavin recently got his very first haircut (Jan 12) with daddy who reported that he was nervous at first and wanted nothing to do with that cape.  But on daddy's lap along with the help of a sweet stylist (at Supercuts), Gavin started to feel more comfortable.

Sicknesses:  Both Mia and Gavin have had colds and congestion, which started around x-mas time.  Gavin went on to get pink eye and medicated eye drops and after a little fever Mia eventually got on some antibiotics.  The congestion waxed and waned for a bit more and then Gavin, who oddly had only a little bit of pizza one night woke up at 3:30am after vomiting.  This vomiting went on and on and eventually the illness attacked the other end as well if you catch my drift.  After loads of laundry, two days home from daycare and popsicles to get small amounts of fluid to stay down he finally started feeling better.  Mama caught a lighter version of this and luckily Dave and Mia escaped fully.

playing at home sick

Popsicle:  doctor's orders

Gavin abides!

Personality:  Gavin is a happy, extraverted, sweetheart willing to talk to anyone and yet he also listens very well.  He loves to clean up and very recently he has started to love being a "cook helpa".  He loves to play ballerina with Mia and me.  He is very easy to put to sleep and even easier to fall in love with.  He likes to buckle his own chest buckle in the carseat. He likes construction vehicles and dinosaurs but mainly just to know the name of everything. His favorite books are the ones with just pictures and labels like this animal encyclopedia book we have for kids (he can even say prairie dog).