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Elliot just had a conversation with his penis. He was sitting at the opposite end of the couch from me and looked down and went, “penis? peeeeniiisss?”

It didn’t answer him, so he grabbed it and said louder, “penis? PENIS!” then he yelled twice, “penis, peeenissss, don’t go dat, penis!” and then “daddy? daddy penis? PENIS!??!”

I asked him if he was talking to his penis and he said, “my penis, mine, no penis mama”

Oh if only I had a video camera built in to my glasses or something.

Lauren is 4.5 and she’s VERY into being “and a half!” though she really wishes she could be 5 like some of her friends who are having parties now.

We’ve had a busy summer. Last week we spent the week in Ohio with Ryan’s family, his brother and family came back from 3 years of overseas living in Tel Aviv, and we took all the kids (2.5, 4.5, newly 5 and newly to Cedar Point for an overnight of rollercoaster fun. The kids did great and the grownups got to ride on some fun rides too.

We recently rehomed Zoe to a wonderful couple on the east end of Ohio, where she is now roaming 10 acres of pet fenced land on a huge 50+ acre farm. We’re thrilled that there is someone out there willing to love her as much as we do, and we’re thrilled to know she’s safe and happy. She and Elliot have really had a hard few months together, and we were finding it much more difficult to rehome Elliot.

Dad has been traveling for work, and Ryan went to Afghanistan right after Easter, the kids and I have only been going to Ohio. We’re hoping to take some sort of trip in the early fall, after school starts, so we can avoid tourists and still enjoy the nice weather.

Mom graduates in December from CSU, she’s pretty excited about that. And Ella is going to be a big sister in the fall too.

Evie is coming here in a few weeks to visit, for a whole week, and Lauren is THRILLED. Though she would prefer visiting at Nonnie’s house and going to Kiddie Park, she’ll be pleased to have company here too.

Not much else is new, we’ve been VERY busy this summer, going back to Ohio for Amy’s dad’s funeral at the beginning of July, tons of park days and playgroups, and general good-weather mayhem.

I’ll be back with pics soon, I have to unload my camera and get the pics online first.

we have one of these

http://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-Motorized-Roaring-Dinosaur/dp/B000EZ8EZE
it roars and opens/closes mouth, turns head

So yesterday the kids had the dinosaur in the basement, I think they were trying to dress it up or bounce it on the trampoline.

This morning Elliot was downstairs, found it, and was bringing it back up, yelling “dista! scare ew! heeelp!” (sister, scare you, help), as in, Lauren, this damn dino is heavy, and I can’t say dinosaur, so it’s a “scare you” and will you help me drag it up?

He managed to get it up here on his own. And turned it over and said, “hi butt! scare you butt!” to it.

Then threw it down the basement (carpeted) stairs, “ut oh! hurt! scare ew hurt! hurt, ut oh!” and ran down to check on it. “ew kay?”

http://focusorganic.com/giveaway-madsen-bucket-cargo-bike-1299-value/comment-page-3/#comment-10896

Follow the link and enter too! What fun we could have with one of these in our garage. I might even convince Ryan to sell his car.

I was just noticing that there aren’t any pictures on here in the last few months. Matter of fact, there are no pictures of my kids in the last few months, except for a few that my mom took of them at Christmas. I can’t find my camera. I did find my camera before Christmas but the battery was dead and I couldn’t find the charger. I finally found the charger yesterday, but now have no idea what I did with the camera.

So children, I apologize, for missing Lauren’s 4th birthday, for missing a huge chunk of your lives. You are having fun and growing and look adorable, I promise.

And yes, Lauren is 4! She is already telling everyone, “I’m going to be 5!” now. On her birthday (it was a Sunday) we made farble mudge cake and invited our favorite neighbors from across the street to come over for lunch. We served big bowls of chili, Lauren helped me make the cake and cornbread, and Elliot fell asleep in his chair at the table, with food on his face.

Mommy and Daddy gave Lauren a dollhouse, and Elliot and Zoe provided some furniture for it - Elliot, the kids bedroom (bunkbeds, etc.) and Zoe, the kitchen (her favorite place in our house too).

It’s been a big hit with the boys in our playgroup, they gravitate toward it every time they are here.

To really celebrate Lauren’s birthday, we had a “party” on a regular playgroup day/time. We invited our entire playgroup to join us, but to not bring gifts, as we have far too many toys here already. If they really wanted to bring a gift, I asked them to make her a card instead, which she thought was really neat after getting email cards from her cousins Patrick and Scott.

I guess I should mention that our playgroup is over 100 families big, and spans an entire county and beyond. Fortunately, only about 12 responded that they were coming. *whew* So on Monday Lauren and I headed to the store to buy supplies - we had promised lunch to our friends for the party. We bought a ton of pita bread and pizza toppings, and the kids had a blast building their own pizzas and eating them. The moms enjoyed it too. And Lauren and I made 48 cupcakes, 30 of which were literally inhaled in moments by the kids. In total we had 19 kids in our tiny house (ages 1-7.5) for 4+ hrs. and nobody got hurt, nobody had a terrible fight over a toy, and they left the moms alone to talk upstairs most of the time. I LOVE our playgroup.

Elliot’s birthday is coming in 2 weeks, and while he doesn’t really get it, Lauren is terribly upset because it means that her birthday is over. She’s insisting that it’s still her birthday (and she insisted it was STILL Christmas until recently, though she will tell you it’s still Christmas because we still have snow on the ground), and that brother can’t have a birthday. I think really it’s because she knows her Other Nonnie and Grandma have gifts for her in Ohio and she wants to open them. Only thing is, we won’t be going to Ohio until after Elliot’s birthday. Can’t wait to see how she processes that one.

In other news, our lease is up in April and we’re starting to watch the housing market. Ryan’s #1 priority is to live somewhere “where we won’t get shot” after watching kids running in the street with guns in our Chicago abode. I’m fairly sure that we’re not going to even consider moving back downtown as his office is a 30 min. drive WEST of where we live right now and we’re about an hour drive west-northwest of downtown. His #2 priority is being able to bike to work, which limits us to a 6 mile radius around his office and that limits us to about 4 towns in the area. 3 of them are in the next county. Which is good, it’s lower taxes, but bad in that it’s further west yet again, and it already takes 6 hrs to drive home. Or maybe his #2 is having internet access. Either way it’s important.

So, housing considerations. 3 bedrooms, 2 car garage, 1.5 baths. Air conditioning, dishwasher, usable basement or rec room. Those are the important parts. Bonus points for an attached garage, fenced yard, nice neighbors.

I hate browsing houses (we’ve been driving past for curb appeal and neighborhood feel) when it’s so cold out - I’d much rather see the neighborhood in action on a summer weekend to feel it out. More later on the house hunt. Of course we’re just starting now, so this could go on for the next year.

We’re home! We’ve been celebrating Christmas for a week, and I think the kids are going to need to start a 12 step detox program tomorrow. I seriously fear the look of sadness on Lauren’s face tomorrow when there isn’t anything to open under the tree.

We had a nice week of visiting family and friends, and we avoided a major snow and ice storm here, as well as one in Cleveland, by our excellent plans (LOL) to travel. It’s raining like mad now, but I think the snow will be back before the end of the week.

So… a fast holiday recap:

We headed to Ohio on Monday, arrived after dinner, played with Nonno and Nonna, and headed to bed.

Tuesday we hung out and didn’t do much of anything, played with Gella and Evie, ran a few easy errands, dropped off some stuff, and lounged on the sofas.

Weds. we headed to Other Nonnie’s house for lunch, and played there all afternoon. She made us spaghetti and let the kids have icecream. From there we went to Grandma’s house for dinner with Ryan’s family (Grandma, Aunt Lala, Great Grandma and Grandpa, and Grandma Fitz), celebrated Grandma Fitz’s birthday, exchanged gifts, and ate cake. Big hits of the night - Lauren got a puzzle she loves, and some dolls (her dollhouse is coming in a few weeks for her birthday, watch for that important update), and Elliot is just enamored with his new airplane.

When we got home on Weds. night there were 2 big boxes at the house waiting for us - gifts from Todd and Jen had somehow traveled from Tel Aviv to my mom’s house! (Thanks guys, the gift cards rocked!) Elliot is the proud new owner of a ukulele and Lauren has a guitar.

Christmas morning they couldn’t wait, they really were excited to find more boxes wrapped in colorful paper. Nonno and Nonna gave the kids books, and Lauren got a fancy princess dress up dress, while Elliot scored this awesome truck that is just big enough to sit in and let Lauren push him around the house.

Other Nonnie gave Lauren a new chair and Candy Land, which she promptly figured out how to manipulate her parents while playing so that she’s guaranteed to win. Elliot got some more cars and trucks, smaller ones that he can play on the floor with.

THEN… Aunt Cole, Uncle John, Gella and Evie came over… and we started round 20394823049 of gift giving. A HUGE bag of art supplies for Lauren, and even more cars and trucks and airplanes (little wooden ones) for Elliot, I think we have enough cars to transport most of Ohio to Chicago now.

Whew! That was busy. But we weren’t done! On Friday we packed up and ran errands and took care of some business, stopped to have lunch and playtime with the Anholds, and headed for home. We got home at bedtime, but of course some magical entity made sure there were gifts under our tree when we returned home. Giant building blocks for the kids, a helicopter and bus for Elliot, wooden blocks for Lauren, some educational games and puzzles, and a GIANT ball for Elliot, and a bunch of finger puppets for Lauren, we were out of boxes to open.

Ryan got Lisa a Tomtom GPS, and Lisa got Ryan a toy for his phone, a geek t-shirt, and a few other little things. The kids, they love their dad so much that they each got him a bottle of Baileys and some Baileys glasses to match, and a tea kettle for me.

Poor Zoe, she got a long car ride, some hugs, and a cookie. She’s been on the naughty list this year.

Finally, bedtime! Elliot begged to go to bed last night, and Lauren didn’t want to. She left a bag of carrots out for Santa’s reindeer, and Santa threw the yucky ones in our trash, but took the rest. He also left some remote control cars next to a partially eaten cookie for the kids - a police cruiser and a red sports car, complete with batteries and ready to go. Elliot found them this morning when he woke up, and Lauren was excited to play with hers.

Merry Christmas! And Thank you! The kids are so thrilled with their gifts this year, and I’m so happy to have fun toys to play with too!!

You know your children love cosleeping when they climb into the bed at IKEA with their friends and snuggle right up like we do at bedtime.

Lauren and her buddy Chase tried out at least 6 beds in the kids section last week, after getting tired of playing with the toys. Lauren also tucked stuffed animals into beds and covered them carefully so they would have a warm place to sleep.

Had to share this Lauren gem.

On Monday we finally went over to the preschool to do the paperwork required to withdraw her. And the week before that I had called to tell them I was going to take her out, and would someone please get her epipen from the classroom because it was extremely likely that I wasn’t going to be able to show up at the start/end of any classes, and I didn’t want to disrupt the teacher’s lunch OR any classes when I did get there.

SO of course the epipen wasn’t there, it was still in the class. And the desk lady, rather than let me walk over to the door and get it, CALLED (the door is like 10′ from the office window) on the phone to the class, talked to the assistant, who talked to the teacher, who said she’d bring it out to me at the office.

So we waited at the office window, and Lauren was playing near me, and the door opened and Lauren saw the teacher and RAN and hid behind me. Not silly or flirty or anything, but scared. I reassured her and told her she could say hi to the teacher, the teacher said hi to her and gave me the epipen, but Lauren didn’t say hi back. Then…

“My mommy says I ever ever never have to go to school again in my life! GOODBYE!”

*giggle* I’m proud of her. I wonder if she’ll consider online classes for college.

2T olive oil
1# red skinned potatoes sliced 1/4″ thick
1-2 medium onions, sliced
1t rosemary
6 eggs beaten
2/3 c applesauce
1 tart apple diced
1/2 c nutritional yeast flakes
salt and pepper to taste

(for next time, try adding bacon, sausage, or peppers)

Preheat oven to 375.
Saute potatoes, onion and rosemary until potatoes are tender and onion is translucent.

Combine eggs, applesauce, yeast, salt, and pepper.

Place potato and onion mixture with apples into a 9×9 baking dish, pour egg mixture on top, bake for 30-40 minutes until set in the center.

Serves 4, serve with spinach salad.

The kids gave this a thumbs up, Elliot cleaned his plate, and Lauren ate most of hers.

This week has been really busy with appointments and getting caught up with lots of stuff after being gone for a week.

Lauren had an appointment with the allergist - the primary purpose was to retest her for peanut allergies, and I think our pediatrician referred us to the dumbest allergist ever. Or maybe she is just a drug pusher. Either way, we won’t be going back to her again.

Lauren’s appointment went well, they did a skin test for peanuts which came back with a much less significant welt than it did when she was a toddler. This is good - this means that while she does still have some sort of peanut allergy, it’s not nearly as severe as it could have been/was. She whined the whole time about how her back itched, but we read books and sucked on suckers and all was good.

Ryan was home with Elliot that day, and of course, as luck would have it, every project he was working on in the last few weeks had some sort of emergency he needed to fix right away while on the phone while trying to keep Elliot from screaming.

They also ordered a blood test for Lauren, and I guess little kids have issues with giving blood, because the phlebotomist showed up with a “friend” to help her restrain Lauren to do the draw. I asked them to let me hold her, and she sat calmly on my lap, unrestrained (I didn’t even hold her other arm) while extending her lovely vampire-friendly veins (she got those from me) for her draw. She even remembered to keep her hand in a fist the whole time. The best part, “Look mama, my big red blood goes wooo-wooo-ooooh around the tube into the bottle!”

That’s my girl!

Oh, and she’s 42″ tall and 35.5# if anyone is keeping stats.

The next day was Elliot’s turn, he had his 18 month checkup a little late (seems we always do them a little late…). As usual his head is gigantic, 99.5%ile, and he’s 32.5″ tall and 26#. Nothing new and exciting for him, though his pedi recommended we consider getting his vision tested in the next few months. I have to find out more about that first.

We also found a turtle walking in the street yesterday, just walking along without a care in the world. I picked him up and put him in the car with us, and took him on some errands. Lauren says, “He didn’t look with his eyes,” meaning that he didn’t look both ways for cars before trying to cross the street, “and he might get squished!”

We took him along to the store, post office, and around the neighborhood before putting him down in the grass across the street and chasing him back to the pond. He swam away when he realized he was back to the lake.