Monday, August 16, 2010

Cute Picture Of The Day


Miss Nora, in her pool in the back yard, would swim from one end to the other (about 5 feet) and announce "I did it!"

We've had a lot of "I did it's!" in the house lately with all her successful potty training...

But that little summer face...what fun she has.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Seattle Week

Nora loves picking daisies and bringing them to any adult near her, but me in particular...

We have spent the past week at my sister's house...she's watching Joel's house in New York City while I watch her kids in Gig Harbor...

...Don't ask who's watching my house. By the time it matters, I'll be home.

We arrived in Gig Harbor with little more than a week of potty training under our belts. To a house with white carpeting.

But we've done great...

Miss Nora has her Potty Training Sticker Book, which she LOVES.

And I have her potty seats -- one for the house, one for the road -- and fortunately she's done well using both.

Today we headed to Seattle's Pacific Science Center, where Nora got to pet a cockroach and get used to using potties in public places, with some success...


We saw some fun things at the Seattle Center, then Monorailed it downtown to Starbucks and a little illicit people-watching in Westlake center.

We got to see a couple of horses at the Westlake Center, including this rather large, borderline Clydesdale horse who took a shine to Nora, or the wrist balloon corsage Erik got for her.


By the end of the day, the weather at the International Fountain was good enough that Nora and Erik wandered in, and Erik could save Nora once she got hit by a wave of water!

Thursday, August 05, 2010

Just Like That....

Miss Nora is "getting" the potty thing -- rather quickly -- thank goodness. That first week I was in pure hell...not knowing when or where the next pee accident would come, I had to figure out:

A: whether I should just put her in enough layers that when she DID pee it didn't make an epic mess or

B: whether I should put her in NOTHING so she could figure out how/where all that pee and poop is coming from, and THEN she could figure out where to put it.

I tried C: All of the above.

But in the course of a week, we had a success here and there. Despite offering her stickers and M&Ms and my kidney if she ever needs one, she went more for stickers.

And thankfully, after offering her everything under the sun, this past week (including a day off from her short hospitalization for her tonsillitis), has gotten progressively better with relatively little more than praise. And stickers.

In fact, the day off at the hospital when I just finally gave her diapers instead of anything else because let's face it, an IV in a kid's arm is going to kill the whole "Want to go potty honey?" agenda I had just the day before.

Tuesday when she was so sick in the morning with her fever, I had her sit on the potty once, and I felt so bad for her I just put her in Pullups until our appointment at the doc, and even at the hospital I downgraded even further to diapers. I didn't know how long she'd be sick, but I just didn't have the heart to keep going with potty training until she was better.

So yesterday at home she woke up feeling fairly well so I offered her either her Tinkerbell underwear or her Pullup, and she chose her underwear! She only had ONE accident the whole day.

TODAY, she had NO ACCIDENTS! I really MADE her sit and pee a couple of times today (she insisted she didn't have to go once, but I said "so, do you want to have an accident in your pants or go potty?" and she chose the potty).

But the big breakthrough I thought was when I dressed her right after going potty, and after I left the room she took her own panties AND pants off and sat down and she went #2 without me asking or anything! The key for her seems to be to have a little privacy, and she'll sit on her own and do it. She also LOVES the sticker book for potty achievements and she high fives me and yells "I DID IT!" whenever she poops or pees. This is especially fun in public restrooms, as I found out later...

So, I took her to Target after all that (figuring it was safe to go to the store) and I offered to buy her a toy or a book, and we picked out a coloring book...and a Diego potty seat (she's REFUSED to use the folding toilet seat that's just too slippery on those big public seats, and is horrified by my offer to sit her on it backwards). Well, she was dancing in the toy aisle so I knew we didn't have much time to go before she'd want to pee at home, so I offered to take her to the bathroom after we bought our stuff and use her Diego seat, and SHE SAID YES, then she DID IT! She peed in a public restroom!

Then as we were leaving, she saw popcorn and asked for it, and I folded like a cheap lawn chair.

Look kid, you pee and poo for a whole day in the right place. Mommy will spring $1 for the Target popcorn for dinner.

I had her call Daddy and my Mom and she bragged all about the day with no accidents. I'm just so stinking proud of her!

As an update to her medical checkup yesterday -- she's doing very well too with no fever...on 10 days of amoxycillan...too tired to look up the proper spelling, but she's doing great. Doc says we'll watch her and if it comes back, tonsils come out.

Wednesday, August 04, 2010

Nora's Hospital Visit



Sorry the quality is so poor on this "movie" from Picasa. I suddenly have had problems with PhotoBucket and RockYou Photo Sharing, so I'm stuck with this for now...

But boy howdy...what a day! Nora spiked a fever yesterday all day, but responded well to drugs, but this morning she hit 104.8 then 104.9 when I called the doc and got her in.

Of course by the time Nora got there, she was responding to Tylenol and Ibuprofen and danced down the hall to the exam room. But she faded fast and despite a rapid strep coming back negative, Dr. A could see a tonsil abscessed and we got greenlighted to the hospital for an IV therapy and many hours hanging out watching TV and waiting for the IV drip to take.

It was AWFUL having to get her hooked up to the IV. AWFUL.

But boy once she got that in, she was a trooper, even saying "SORRY" to the nurses who all had her pinned down!

We stayed in her room the rest of the evening, and Aunt Judy stopped by with a balloon and helped out with Nora's adjustment of her IV, and then we had dinner and waited for the IV drip to finish.

We were home by 9:30 and have a followup visit with Dr. A tomorrow.

As we were leaving Miss Nora said "BYE PEOPLE!!" as we left the Pediatric ward. For 9:30 p.m., the girl perked up rather well.

She's sleeping now. Here's hoping there's no more complications.

Sunday, August 01, 2010

Just Call Me Julie Chihuly, and Sometimes I Break The Rules...

I have an editor from The Seattle Times who still calls me "Chihuly" when I call him to catch up a bit.

It all stemmed from a night when I was an intern at The Seattle Times newsroom, when political reporter David Postman was stuck in traffic, and then-First Lady Hillary Clinton was supposed to come to Dale Chihuly's house on the north end of Lake Union for dinner one evening after a day of campaigning during an off-season election in the summer/fall of 1998.

My editor, who will remain nameless, thought it would be wise to send me in rush hour traffic to Dale Chihuly's house, where I would wait for Hillary or David, or both, and if David showed up, then I was off the hook, and if Hillary showed up, I would go in so that there was SOME representation from The Times, if not the best one.

So I went to Dale Chihuly's house, and there I sat, chatting with the Secret Service agents whose job it was to make sure Hillary was safe.

One of them said their first introduction to the job when they were out of the Marines was to park them at a door and say "Make sure no one comes through that door. We'll be back in 6 hours."

I was glad to not have their job that night.

David Postman showed up, and so I didn't get to see the inside of Dale's house, or meet him, or Hillary either.

But I got to appreciate his art more, and I got the nickname of "Julie Chihuly" from my editor, who said that he thought I should marry the rather eccentric artist for no other reason than my name would make the fine rhyme that it does with Chihuly on the end of it.

So last Saturday, when I went to The Portland Art Museum and saw this piece, I took a picture of it, which was against the rules...and thought: Yeah, sure, I could have married Dale Chihuly, if he was shopping for a wife..."

But instead I'm at the PAM stealing pictures of his work with my beautiful kid and the man I really love with all my heart, whose name doesn't rhyme with my first, but that's quite fine by me.

Life is Good.

Brian Speaks...

So for the past year or so, Nora looks at me when I ask for a picture and gives me a look of disdain that can only happen child --> parent.

Then Brian says "Nora, would you look at Daddy and smile?"

And he gets this picture.

Cool Pic

I took this at the Oregon Aquarium in Newport some time ago, and wanted to share it.

Nora loves "Finding Nemo" so she loves "the jellies"

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