“Preparing for the future”

It recently dawned on me that someday my girls will be old enough to dig through the archives and find this blog.  Which then made me realize that I haven’t exactly shared the publicity amongst my girls.  Of course, most of my content comes from the antics of 2-1/2 year old Claire, since 5-1/2 month old Natalie can’t do a whole lot yet.  So today, I’m just going to share the joy we get to see regularly.  Get your “awww” ready:

Happy to just be by herself on the floor at the end of the day

That's it, that's all I've got for today.  Adios!

Ryan

“Mooooom!”

Potty Training.  Yup, Claire’s pretty much potty trained at this point, she tells us when she’s gotta go, and rarely has accidents anymore.  BUT, she’s not good enough to take care of business on her own yet either.  So it’s pretty regular for the following to take place:

“Daddy I gotta go potty!”

“Ok, let’s go”

//walk to bathroom together but stop in the hallway outside the bathroom.

“Dad, you stay right here, I do it myself” 

//gives me the hand motion to STAY!  Then runs in and sits herself on her little potty seat…

“Peek-a-boo!”

I’ll ask if she’s done, but she takes forever!!!  Got more than just her old man’s looks I guess.  When she is finished, the entire house (and I suspect half the block) hears:

“MOOOOOOM!  I’m done!”

Pride may go before the fall, but dignity definitely goes before the potty time!  Such is life.

Tune in till next time…

Ryan

“Another day, another trip to the children’s hospital”

So what is it like to see your own injury/sickness plagued childhood relived through your own kid???  Let me tell you, it’s never boring that’s for sure.  Also makes me realize I should probably tell my mom "thank you" for all she put up with from me growing up and pray that the cycle ends in the near future.  So what am I getting at?  Follow me…

This weekend was our annual party, The Back Yard Bash, at my mom’s place next door.  Good party as usual, my step-dad Arn sure puts on a heck of a bon-fire.

"The Tiki Bar"  aka: bonfire kindling

The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire!

Who brought the marshmallows?

Claire & Mama dancing in front of the band

All in all it was a fun night, no real drama, and nobody got hurt…  Or so we thought. 

//Flash forward to Sunday morning

We all slept in (thank you girls!), and thankfully neither Mama or I were hangin at all.  Tired for sure, but feeling pretty good.  But when Heather went to get Claire out of bed, when she got down she screamed in pain when trying to walk.  Something was the matter with her left foot/ankle/heel.  We gave her some Motrin & then Tylenol, but nothing took the pain away and she had to be carried everywhere through the house that morning.  After 3 hours of not getting better, we called the doc and they sent us down for x-rays.  Now don’t get me wrong, the Helen Devos Children’s Hospital downtown is a really nice place, but if your phone automatically connects to their wifi, it means you’ve been there too many times!  So we wait for a room to open up for us to be seen.  While waiting, we meet some really nice people, and some really (we’ll call them “interesting”) people too.  My favorite was the drunk father of 3 puking in the bathroom.  Ah, such a wonderful feeling deep inside watching a father setting such sterling examples for his loving children…

Anyway, we go through hours of waiting, then x-rays, then getting a room, then waiting, seeing the doctor, more waiting.  I think you get the point.  After all is said and done, there’s no evidence of any broken bones, she’s just got a sprain.  So they wrap her ankle (thank you doc, at least we feel like we got something out of the visit) and some peace of mind, and are on our way home.  After her nap, Claire woke up feeling better, and crawled around for a bit.  By evening she was doing much better, and started to hobble around.  By bed time, good grief it was as if the girl had springs in her legs again!  Matter of fact, I overheard from the bathroom from Claire “I’m so happy I can stand.  I’m so happy I can play with this [had taken the ace bandage off her foot]” I guess when you’re 2 the little things satisfy.  Good to be back to our reality J.

“A Jack-O-Lantern just in time for Halloween.”

About a year ago Claire had an accident at church where she slipped off the edge of a short stage and as she fell she banged her mouth on the edge.  She hit so hard it shoved two of her teeth up into her gums.  The cool thing though, was after a month, they dropped back down and you’d never have known anything happened.  //Flash forward to now…  We (and by “we” I mean mommy of course) found a boil on her gum right by one of the teeth that was traumatized before.  The dentist said it was an infection about to rupture and the tooth had to come out.  So on the 15^th Claire had the tooth pulled.  Holy cow, I can’t believe how big that tooth was for such a little girl.  Must have her daddy’s big mouth I guess.  So anyway, now she looks like our little hockey player with her toothless grin.  I don’t mind it, it’s kinda cute in a way.  I bet if you ask Momma about it, we don’t exactly share the same feelings though ;)

And it begins...

For anyone reading this, you’re probably curious about the title.  Living with 3 girls I never know from one day to the next what I’m going to see or hear around our house.  So I hope you can enjoy the humor that is my life…

Here’s a quick rundown of the past 6 months:

Just hangin out waiting for Natalie to get here

Claire & ‘Tricky’ straight up chilin.  While the dog’s real name is Boomer, for some reason Claire has decided that he shall now be known as ‘Tricky.’  I have absolutely no idea why, but it seems to suit him well.  Also notice the bandage above is back foot.  What you don’t see is the fact that his entire leg is bandaged because the bugger tore his ACL and yes, we actually PAID to get him surgery… ouch.

Claire helping Grandpa (who btw has lost approx 120lbs since this picture was taken).  Grandpa had to cut up her own shish-kabob supplies because, as we all know, she’s a BIG girl and ‘I DO IT MYSELF!’.

Natalie Sue joined us on April 9^th.  Lord help us all, I’m the father of 2 girls…

Apparently it was ‘bath time’ and Claire needed to show her babies how it’s done

Welcome to the Redneck water park

My head is SOO heavy!  Her old man has felt that way a time or two…

Anybody noticing a pattern here?

Claire doing her ‘crazy-bootie’ dance on the stage for the Back Yard Bash

Natalie laughing at her reflection in the mirror of the jumper

Isn’t it obvious?  Dora was on and there was nowhere else to sit!

Well, there it is folks, my life in pictures.  Check back later to see what Claire comes up with next!