Vomit!

For 7 days I have cleaned up vomit. I have never seen so much in my life! (No, maybe I have coming from my own mouth.) Actually, between the two, I think Victoria and Karissa topped me with their vomiting, since it lasted so long throughout a week. Right now in MI there's this flu going around and everyone in our ward who was "hit" by it said it lasted about a week. I didn't really think they meant actual vomiting for a week; at least for us, that was the case. I can't imagine what it would have been like if we had more than two kids, or if Jason or I had gotten it. In fact, it is a pure miracle (and a blessing) that I have not! All I have to say is "P and P"-- Purell and prayer.

On Tuesday, after Karissa started losing her lunch, I had a premonition that things were going to get worse. Sure enough, on Thursday as I was contemplating whether or not to take Karissa to the ER and trying to get her to drink, she had a seizure and I actually called 911. It was very strange to have to call them. I've never had to before and hoped I never would. Since she did not have a fever and with my past history of epilepsy, the doctors performed a CT scan and an EEG, both of which came out normal. It turns out the seizure was due to the stress of the vomiting and dehydration on her body. I read an article about dehydration yesterday and, sure enough, one of the side effects was a seizure.

We made it home Friday night after almost two days at the hospital with Karissa on an IV and being monitored like crazy. Of course the second we stepped in, and it was literally that second, she vomited again. Then Victoria, who had not thrown-up since Friday morning, did on Saturday night. Now, after about 40 hours of no vomit, I think I can say that we are almost done with this blasted flu.


If you plan on coming to MI any time soon, please remember to bring a face mask and lots of Purell. Also, bring your own sheets, towels, and rugs-- I'm tired of washing mine!!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I love Valentine's Day! Maybe it's because my birthday is close to it and that's why I'm named Valerie, or maybe it's because Jason and I started dating two days before Valentine's Day 10 years ago, or maybe it's because I'm just a sucker for the whole idea of the holiday. Any way you look at it, it's one of my favorite holidays. This year Jason and I actually went out by ourselves to lunch at a Middle Eastern restaurant called La Shish. They serve hummus, salsa, and pitas to munch on while you wait for your order, which were most delicious! We ordered lamb with more amazing hummus and pine nuts for our lunch-- so good! We even got to bring home extra pitas and our left-over hummus which I enjoyed for lunch the next day. We then saw He's Not That Into You at the theater (for free since we had a gift certificate from Jason's boss from Christmas). It was pretty good, but I could have done without some of the couple's stories and crudeness.

The kids had fun with the babysitter and we made pizza for dinner that night. (The fact that right after we put Victoria into bed, she threw-up everything from dinner, doesn't make me that interested in our left-over pizza.) Jason surprised us all with our own bouquets of flowers, which the kids tore apart saying "he loves me, he loves me not".


Victoria can take pretty good pictures now, so we had her take a picture of us love birds.

She also took this picture of me two weeks ago when I was 24 weeks pregnant, per request of some people to see my baby tummy. I was very tired at the moment, so just look at the tummy.
We hope you all had a good day as well!

Roller Skating with Elmo

Today we got to go to a preschool roller skate activity at the roller rink. We did it last year, but this year was even better- we got to meet Elmo! He was a little freaky looking, in my opinion, and I think Karissa agreed at the beginning because she did not want to be in the picture with him, which is why I am there. The rest of the time, though, she kept asking, "Where's Elmo?" and then following him all around as he took pictures with other kids. I'm sure everyone who was there has a picture of her with her head back, staring up at him with her wide eyes.



At the end, when we were in a circle to do the Hokey Pokey and some other dances with Elmo, she was in the circle with him by herself. At first she just watched him, then she started rocking out with him, but unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of that part since I was rocking out with Victoria, well, as rocking out as you can get doing the Chicken Dance!




As for
the roller skating, Victoria did very well. She could get her feet under her and actually move around. We had a blast!

Bowling

I won't normally add this many blogs in a week, but I need to add these pictures of us bowling with Victoria's school a couple of weeks ago. This was her first time and she had a blast! She was a little scared at first since Karissa ran right out and slipped on the lane before I could get to her, but I finally convinced Victoria to go right up there, instead of rolling from 10 feet away. I've never seen a ball roll so slowly in my life-- it was crawling! Sometimes it would barely get to the pins before the machine would reset for the next one. At least she improved by about 20 points on the next round where she scored an 82-- not bad, eh?

Lucky You!

This is probably the best picture Victoria has ever made. She made it this morning with some lucky person in mind to send it to them for Valentine's Day. I'm a little jealous of this person because I kind of want it, so I thought I would post it for all to enjoy. How did I get such a good artist for a daughter?

Are These My Kids??

So we were supposed to go to Costco this morning since we need more toilet paper and cheese. (It sounds strange to go 20 minutes to Costco for those items, but obviously I would buy everything else we need from there as well and when you have cheese maniacs in your house, you don't want to buy a teeny tiny block of cheese for $4 when you can buy 3x as much for just $2 more!) In order to get back in time to go pick up Karissa's pictures from JCPenny and then home for naptime we needed to leave by 10-10:15. Usually they like going to Costco for the taste tests and then we share a frozen yogurt at the end. How can you go wrong with that? This morning they just didn't want to go. Normally, I would have made them come anyhow, but they were in the basement (our new playroom) playing so well that I thought we would go as soon as one of them comes upstairs crying, or they are bored and trying to get me to help them figure out what to do next, which usually happens within at least 5 minutes as soon as I leave the room.

Not today! They played together, happily I might add, for an hour!! I could not bring myself to even go down and see what they were doing. Actually, I knew they were playing "mommies", which is Karissa's favorite thing. That was why they played so well. Victoria typically likes to do different enactments from movies or books and they usually involve me crawling on the ground talking like Mufasa or talking like Mulan's father. Karissa will participate, but loses interest.

So what did I do with an hour of happy kids playing alone together without me even in the room? I got to do a thorough sweeping, mopping, dusting, and vaccuming! That means I would have time for my blog during naptime. The amazing thing is, I was doing all that cleaning, so they heard me and knew that I existed nearby, but I did not have one clingy child on me!

For those of you with older children, this may seem strange, but Karissa just turned 2 and Victoria is the boss, so draw up your own conclusion...

As for the cheese, sorry Jason, and the rest of my cheese eaters-we'll hit Costco another day.