Baby Talk

Yeah...ignore the date listed on this post: it's really Sept. 25th!

Our little TeaRose is now 7 months! Crazy! In the past month, she went from just starting to roll over to sitting up...to crawling...to pulling herself up to stand & walk along tables.

She talks (oh, okay, babbles) to herself & others...including her stuffed animals. Her pediatrician was blown away by her today. She is also up to 17 lbs! That's 10 lbs since her birth! And she's grown 2 1/2 inches since last month. Our little girl is growning up!

She also has her first boyfriend...an older man: Aidan is already a year old! They have lots of fun together!

Yesterday she became the stair master! Look out, mama! She's truly mobile now!

Be sure to check out my sister's new blog: http://www.bambinobistro.blogspot.com/ to view the recipes my sis has created for Teagan now that she is eating solids!
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In other news...Demetri is also still in the womb...which is great news since he gave us a scare by trying come out at 29 weeks gestation! His mama is slowly coming off of bedrest & hasn't had any further contractions! All great news! He is very playful already: if you poke or pat his mama's tummy, he pokes back. You can play games with him across D's tummy. Gramma had the pleassure of spending 2 weeks in SoCal with J&D helping while D was on complete bedrest. She had a lot of fun getting to know Demetri before he's even been born! We are looking forward for his arrival in mid-November.

This was in late July--imagine how big D is now!!!!

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As for me...I love living in WA more each day! I am feeling healthier...and I love love love the weather! Fall has fallen here & I love it!!!!!

Frustration!

Yeah! So I still can't get my freakin internet connection to work & am posting this from my sister's house. This sucks since I have some great pictures of our little family vacation to SoCal. Sadly, Mike wasn't able to join us. Teagan was the best little girl you can imagine for being taken out of her environment and put in a variety of new situations.



I've tons of swimming pictures (Ava grew a tail & became a mermaid who lived in the pool)! We got to celebrate Ava's b'day with her while at J & D's, before Ava returned home. (Our house is lonely & quiet without her.) We saw our cousin (who was always more of a brother to us) & his lovely wife.

I also got to see my friends...Katie even came out from DC! She, Lidia, Erin, Ashleigh & I went out on the town one night....a Tuesday night. As you can imagine, there's not all that much going on in Temecula on a Tuesday. However we did find something fun & unusual to do after dinner: goldfish racing! But for that you really need to see the pictures (sigh!).



Tiff & Teag spent a night with Grampa Jim, as did Ava & I. As Ava said: I like Grampa Jim...he's really cool! True.



We missed the heat wave up here in WA--105 degrees without A/C would have really messed up my body! I had a hard enough time in SoCal with A/C.



On the bright side, my neurologist really saw some improvements in my condition. She says that the climate in WA is really helping and I can feel a difference. While in SoCal, I saw my neurologist, endocrinologist (good news there, too), rheumatologist (some good stuff, some not so good stuff--some of the bloodwork I'd had done had some concerning results), and my cognitive therapist. This kept me busy. "Lucky" Ava got to go with me twice to have blood drawn for different doctors. Let me just put it this way: Ava will not be a flobotomist when she grows up!

Anyway...it's good to be home. Van came over yesterday for a couple hours & we baked a cake together. Such fun! I missed him over the past couple weeks! And Kenyan...she comes home from her daddy's soon. Van really misses her and Ava. Poor little guy is stuck with a bunch of old people lately (except for Teagan who is too little to play his games).

Blah blah blah...as you can see life goes on. But that's enough ramblings from me for now! Someday...pictures will return. I hope. The rest of you 5 faithful readers probably don't care all that much! ;-)

On Vacation

So...both my computer and then my internet connection decided to go on vacation...my computer came back to life but not my internet. Sad day. I'm using someone else's computer right now which means I can't even put up any of my oh-so-marvelous pictures from the past few weeks. Sad day.

In the meantime, I am also on vacation: Ava & flew down to SoCal on Monday night. She's done a lot of swimming in J&Ds pool (and I've done my fair share). I'm also seeing 4 of my doctors while I'm here.

J has been traveling on business for the past 2 weeks & gets home tonight. Also Gramma Cindy & Tiffany bravely drove down from Seattle to Temecula with our little 5 month old TeaRose. Teagan believes they are torturing her by keeping her in a car seat for so long each day. They arrive this afternoon & I'm sure Teag will love being free of the car! Mike flies down next weekend and Dani's mom & two of her sisters will also be here that weekend. Talk about a crowded house! But fun. Ava is planning a luau style pre-birthday (for her) post-birthday (for Dani) and welcome home (for J) party for next weekend. Should be a fun time! With any luck, I'll be able to post pictures from our adventure.

In the meantime...just imagine all the fun we are having!

Stormy Sundays

We had a delightful day of rain & thunder storms yesterday. While that crushed our plans to take Ava to the beach to learn how to skim board, it was still a delightful cozy-in day. We went out for breakfast, watched the movie Dreamer, and then sat outside under blankets, listening to the thunder, while drinking hot cocoa.

Spoiler Alert

So, invariably, when I have a migraine, I get sick to my stomach. Last night was no different. What was different however was the song I woke up to while sick that has remained stuck in my head, even now.

Having a 9-almost-10-year-old niece in the house, we have been introduced to a new genre of television shows (don't worry--this is not totally random; it does connect to the previous paragraph). Such shows include: The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, iCarly, and (of course!) the oh-s0-popular Hannah Montana.

Here comes the Spoiler Alert: Do Not Continue Reading if you have not yet seen the most recent new episode of Hannah Montana! I mean, I wouldn't want to ruin it for you or anything!

Having now seen this episode twice in one week and having never seen HM before, apparently Miley AKA Hannah is growing up & is dating (gasp!) a boy from her past (double gasp). That's right, Jake (whoever he was/is) is back. Miley wants her Dad's approval to date the guy who has broken her heart multiple times but kinda screws up that plan when she fails to tell him for 3 weeks that Jake is back & that they are dating. Dad is not happy. Dad acts juvenile. Miley schemes to make him like Jake by pretending to like "bad-boy" guitarist Jesse (who plays in her own band) but accidentally falls for him too. In the end, after composing a song & much dilemma, she choose Jake~which is good cuz otherwise they wouldn't have been able to do that whole memory montage to the new song (something like "He Could be the One"-which at 16 the emphasis should definitely be on the Could!).

Point being, prior to composing the above song, Miley strikes a tune & begins to sing about how she's angry at her dad. The chorus of said song goes (roughly) "Neaner, neaner, neaner. Neaner, neaner, neaner. Neaner, neaner, neaner...."

So going back to my migraine & waking up in the night to be sick & having a song stuck in my head, sadly said song was not the "He Could be the One" one, but rather the Neaner-Neaner-Neaner one. Perhaps this is really why I was sick in the night. I must say that after being sick, I lay in my darkened room & cursed the day(s) I saw that episode.

Here's another observation based on my new exposure to these television shows, aside from Hannah Montana's dad, where the heck are the parents to all these kids who are running around?!?! Is the TV industry subtley trying to get kids to resent having parents? Or are they unwilling to pay the larger salaries an adult might try to garner from them? Or can they simply not find any adults willing to play a full-time roll on these series. Either way....it's weird!

And those are my musings for the morning. On a brighter note: the sky is blue, the air is crisp, & it is shaping up to be a beautiful day sans head pain. Yay!

Black Out

This is the view from under the black blanket blocking out the light that was attacking me during today's migraine:

(yup, that's my foot)

Sadly, even w/black drapes, my room is always extremely bright/light. Even at night. The whole neighborhood is "safely" lit with street lamps & garage door lamps that burn all night.

We had to leave the lake today because of my migraine (sigh)...oh & because Spiderman left his mask at home by accident. Hate it when that happens.

If I can ever get the pictures on my to down-load to my computer, I'll show you the (birthday) story behind the costume. [These pix are from my phone.]

As for now: it's back to bed & a darkened room for me.

Hey Bren! How is it that I haven't had a migraine since October & I have one little conversation with you about them & 2 days later, bam! One hits me outta no where! Hope that means that you are currently migraine free. :-) I'll gladly bear your pain, chica!