Pre-K talk

I have to write these down or I will forget:

• Cooper to Kara:  "I'm gonna get my costume on and give you a ticket!" (referring to his Halloween police costume)
• Cooper when he's mad at me, Jim or Kara:  "I put water on you!"  - taken from Wizard of Oz - water killed the witch!
• Cooper still says wellow for yellow
• Kara still calls Cooper, Pooper
• Cooper on his play cell phone:  "911, hi, Fireman Sam? yes, please come.  Thanks, bye"
• Kara trying to say that she's already washed her hands:  "I ate" - everything is "ate" if she's already done it.
• After reminding Cooper that Santa Claus was always watching him, he says "Where's the video camera?"  (there are video cameras at school).
• When Cooper wakes up from a nap, he almost always says "I sleep 7 times!" meaning he slept a long time.

Obviously I have more Cooper talking stories but Kara is definitely getting better since her ear tube surgery.   She tries hard to get her point across. 
She still loves Elmo but her top favorites are princesses and Barney. 

In other news, I'm redoing Kara's room and will post pics when I'm done.  It's sooooooo fun and my creative juices are flowing wildly!

Happy Birthday Jesus!

God has blessed us with tons of laughter, happiness and joy with our two precious little ones. 
There is more love and joy in our house than ever before!

God is indeed good and we are truly thankful for the blessings we have.

Merry Christmas everyone!

December so far -

So what's been going on over here you ask??
Well - my last post said that Kara would not use a public potty - it's gotten a tad worse but yet a tad better...
She now refuses to use ANYone's potty (including friend's homes) but she did have a breakthrough while we were at the allergist (3 hours by the way).  She peepeed in their potty - crying the whole time but still she did it!
I have been carrying a potty in the back of my SUV for such incidents.  She has no problem going in the car so that's what we do for now.  It's rather easy, I just put a disposable bag down and she goes right in it then I throw the whole thing away.

I think I've mentioned that Kara's been stopped up for the past few months non-stop.  So I took her to the allergist (have I mentioned that we were there for 3 hours?? AND it was snowing outside??  AND I had crazy Cooper with me too??) Anyway, our visit there was to do skin prick test.  She did fine for the 1st half but the 2nd half, where they inject you on your upper arms under the skin, 10 shots on each side...she screamed and cried.  A lot.  Yes, they numbed her for both sets of tests.  Turns out, she has 15 different allergies.  Year round allergies.  After that visit, I had to go to 2 different pharmacies with 7 prescriptions!  In the snow, in Houston, where it snows about 1/8" every 10 years and people can't drive when it sprinkles much less when it snows.

So here's littlebit with her hippie bong, I mean nebulizer -  she actually liked it!  Yikes.

Other happenings... we (Kara and I) went to her friend Ben's birthday party at Gymboree. 

Wow, you really think your kid has come a long way until she refuses to participate and only does her own thing. 

See the little girl in the pink dress all by herself?  Yep, that would be Kara.

The party continued and she played on all of the equipment but just didn't want to sit down - maybe it was because of all the excitement and newness..  she did sit for the cake and ice cream though.

Would someone please tell Kara that the party is over?  So funny, especially considering that she doesn't even like sweets!  BUT she does like the option!

In other news - we went to our friend's house for a little Christmas party and Santa came to visit!  The kids were so excited.  Cooper in a good way and Kara NOT!  Coop ran up to Santa and sat right on his lap and told him he wanted a choo choo train - a black one.   We were so proud of him!
Kara was horrified at the thought of the big red guy and absolutely refused to go into the room where he was!

Oh well, maybe next year...

New Dilema

This little monkey-girl refuses to use any public restroom!

How do I fix this one??

Santa Makes a Practice Visit

Daddy Jim dresses up like Santa so the kids can get used to the idea and practice sitting on his lap. They were up for it unlike last year where they screamed their heads off. Both kids promise to sit on Santa's lap and not cry this year - we'll see when the time comes.
I'll definitely keep my camera handy when the real Santa comes to town.


Stef beat both kids to Santa's lap - she was cracking up!


The kids wanted to try on the Santa suit - They really look so much alike here!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm thankful for my beautiful daughter who woke up this morning at 5:00 and peepeed in the potty in the dark (of course making a ton of noise). I'm thankful that she's potty trained.
I'm thankful that she ate 1/2 can of spaghetti 0's, 2 yogurts, apple juice and milk for breakfast this morning! (her choice of course).
I'm thankful that she feels great and is talking more than ever.

I'm thankful for my amazingly smart little boy who is so curious about everything and asks a million questions a day.
I'm thankful for him asking me yesterday if I took the helicopter to the hospiddle -and all of his other funny questions.

I'm thankful that I have a wonderul, sweet husband who is the most hands-on, helpful and caring father I could have ever asked for.

I'm thankful for my sweet sweet doggies who help keep me sane.

I'm thankful to God for all I have. I'm so extremely lucky.

Tubes

Kara's had several ear infections in the past year. Everytime we bring her to the doctor, she seems to have an ear infection.
She never pulls at her ears or complains so there's no way of knowing when she has an infection but she constantly has a runny/green nose and a yucky cough every day. She sounds like Tony Soprano. If you listen to her monitor at night, you would swear that there was a 500 lb man snoring away in the room but it's just little 29 lb Karaboo all stuffed up as usual.

The ENT checked her ears and she had middle-ear fluid in both ears - not an infection, but "old" fluid meaning that there's no air going in or our like it's supposed to. She failed her hearing test and failed the test where they vibrate the ear drums - nothing moved. This is also a good indication of why her speech isn't improving by leaps and bounds like it should be.
They did an x-ray of her adenoids and they were fine, so it's just ear-related.
Sooooo the doc recommended tubes.

My baby went in to Texas Children's Hospital this morning at 8:00 and at 8:15 the doc came back to say everything went perfectly fine. All the gunk is gone. At 9:00 a.m. we were on our way back home - we stopped by to see her daddy at work and then to the grocery store. She's as normal as can be and NOT ONE tear was shed the entire time. She awoke from the anesthesia looking around like "where am I?" but she saw me right away and asked for apple juice. She watched The Wizard of Oz on the DVD on the way home and sang to her favorite songs... just like nothing ever happened.
I was absolutely amazed.
Right now it's nap time but she's yapping away playing with her babies dressing and undressing them, happy as can be.

Great experience for both of us! Texas Children's Hospital is the best!