@$#%^#$ Barney!

I wouldn't know about the tornado warning that is out b/c BARNEY has been playing nonstop this afternoon on the TV! When I go to switch it back to the weather (and since the sky is black and its HAILING I wanna know what is going on), she throws the tantrum of the tantrums and screams, kicks, takes out her ponytails and whines.....baaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy (aka barney). I just got these DVDS yesterday and she loves them.

Barney......Emma's new best friend. She is now playing on her back, stickering her lovey.

Been a slower than a turtle week

Nothing major going on this week except for flying poop on Friday afternoon. Emma started having some "smearing" going on and finally I decided I needed to give her a "micro-enema" aka Babylax b/c there was a blob of poop somewhere in there waiting to come out. For the first time ever (and I have done quite a few of these over the course of the past year), poop literally came flying out of her bottom, all over me and all over the carpet. It was a mess but there was a ton of poop just waiting to get out. Ugh-who knows what she ate that caused her to back up but I upped her laxative on Friday night and that seemed to have helped. Except today was a cheese day (cheese for a snack at the park, cheese with lunch and pizza for dinner). I pray to the poop lords tonight b/c this could potentially be a loaded diaper tomorrow am or she will be backed up the wazzoo and I'll have to repeat what I did on Friday. Gotta love the IA thing LOL.

And after all the poopiness, she went down for a nap and I got to see a lovely box turtle roam into our backyard (patio). Who knows how he got in but I took him back to our neighborhood pond instead of waiting for the cats to get him.

Today was fun b/c Aidan, Gabriella and Emma went to the park right up the road from our house this morning. Aidan is 20 months, Gabriella is 18 months and Emma is 23 months. They play together pretty well if you consider it "playing together" at all. They all want to do their own thing but stayed still long enough for Aidan's mom to take some pictures. Emma can finally do the slide by herself but when she does, she goes down feet first on her tummy. Crazy kid!

We also finalized the building plans for our new house today! Scott (Chad's BIL) is going to be building our house (he is going to be like the project manager and subcontract the rest out to his crew) and we nailed down how we wanted the kitchen/bedrooms/porch. It will be a beautiful house with LOTS AND LOTS of storage, which we DO NOT HAVE. Photos to come once they start doing all the fun stuff!

Happy Mothers' Day from my potty!

Taken with Daddy's I-Phone....at least she is getting the idea LOL!

Fun at Chesapeake City Park

Me-Mom and Pop-Pop AND Aunt Amanda came down for the day. The weather was pretty crummy here (cold and that ever so annoying misty rain) so we axed plans going to the beach and wound up at the local park instead. Emma got to play on the swings with my dad and then go on the slide with my mom and sister. "Sliding" is still a new thing for Emma- she got on one Thursday with my friend's kids but I had to hold on to her the whole time. Today she wanted to go on by herself-she must have been trying to show off to everyone. She had a blast sliding and afterwards, we walked around the park (with her shopping cart of course) until it started to rain and then we got outta there. A slight meltdown as we were leaving but she got over it quick (thank goodness for grandmom and auntie in the backseat for distraction)!

Walking up with some help.....

Counting down.......

And she is off! Nothing like sliding down on your back to make you go faster!

GI update

Monday was our 4 month appt (since the last one) with Dr.Kobak in GI. We saw him in mid-January before our trip to Cincy. I went into the whole drama from our visit with Dr.Kuhn in December (when she wanted to do the redo, AGAIN and stick in a colostomy) on why we went to Cincy, blah blah blah and how I will never ever regret doing what I did. He could tell I was still pretty bitter about how things went down and said you have to do what YOU think is best for your child, no matter what a doctor tells you. And once I showed him her new butt, he was really impressed-he said it was night and day compared to what it was before. I think is silently grateful that he really doesn't have to manage this end. And I told him about the amount of LT she is on (2.5ml) and he said if you have to go up, don't be surprised and since it's plant-based, don't worry about getting "dependent" on it. Pretty much he told me that if Cincy is following up with her, whatever they say goes 'cause they are the butt Gods as we know them. He is happy she is off the Miralax and said don't stress about potty training-it'll happen when it happens.

Now on the GI front. We have been off the Prevacid since December of 2006 (she was 6 months old) and our past upper GI studies have shown no sign of reflux. The last study done in January of 2008 showed no narrowing in her esophagus and no reflux. I was thinking we were off the hook for awhile. WRONGO. He wants another upper GI done early next month to check for reflux and to make sure the esophagus is growing with her body and not stricturing down. She has grown 3 inches and gained 3 lbs since we saw him in January and b/c of this growth sprut, he wants to check. And then we will do another upper GI in December to end the year. If this one looks good and the one in December looks good, we should only have to have this done 2x in 2009 and once in 2010. After that, she'll be 5 and that will pretty much be the end of that test unless she starts gagging/refluxing. We have been having the UGI done 3x a year since birth so you figure Emma would be a pro at this by now......

Can I tell you all how much I HATE HATE this test? It's really quite horrible having to strap you down on a table, in a dark room, with 2 huge machines and making you drink a nasty white liquid while they turn you sideways on a table. The one in January was the worst yet-the nurse should have been shot (I should have stashed a gun in the diaper bag LOL) so this time around, I am having child life there and if I get the same nurse, I am going to politely ask for a new one. The nurse shall be 1-giving out stickers before the test 2-not shoving the bottle/cup in her mouth when I have two good hands to do that 3-not bitch about how tired she is and how she is so far behind ect. Not too much to ask for right?

We go Monday June 2nd at 7:30am, the first one of the day. Lovely start to the week. If there is some narrowing at the site of her inital repair, he might leave it alone and see how the December UGI looks. However, when we were in the same boat last year (UGI 12/06 and then 5/07) there was MAJOR stricturing and they did the dilation under GA in June. It's not a bad procedure but it still an all morning affair with Same Day Surgery and the whole sedation/recovery thing. Blah! I will only think happy thoughts for this :) In retrospect, Dr.Kuhn did an amazing job with the TE/EA repair-we honestly have not had the problems other kids have had (no reflux/tearing/dilations monthly) and her scar is hardly noticable. She did great with that, not so great with the butt thing.

Off to watch the American Idol boot-off! Toodles!

Shop Girl

The grocery cart is a new thing. Two weeks ago I had a reunion of sorts with the people I did research with almost 10 years ago (has it really been that long?) and I needed something to occupy Emma's time at my friend's house. She really loved this cart she has at her Nana's house so I went to Toys-R-Us and got her one.

Took it up to Salisbury with me and I kid you not, she pushed this thing around for about 3.5 hours. It was great and I was able to enjoy some chit-chat without Emma getting into everthing at her SO NOT childproof house LOL. Then went to my parents house up in Baltimore where she played with it some more. Last night, I figured I let her take her cart with her for a walk and so she did with her lovies/stuffed animals in tow. And this morning, well she went to Lowes pushing this cart around the garden center (we were there at 9 so it wasn't too crowded yet). The girl LOVES LOVES LOVES this cart! She places different things in it daily and everything has got to be just right or she dumps everything out and starts all over again.

Feeding the cats

Two posts in a row about the cats-we live oh-such-an-exciting life LOL!
The neighbor who lives across our court has six cats (yes I know what you all are thinking) but only four of them are indoor/outdoor cats. It just so happens that one of her cats looks very similar to Pungo. We gave this cat a name-the orange cat because all of her cats names are.....KITTY. ALL OF THEM. Very strange indeed but they are nice cats unlike our psycho one and the neighbors are very nice.
Apparently when we trotted off to Cincinnati, the cats went through some sort of withdrawal from not seeing Emma and I everyday and when we got back, they were always in our backyard. Well, just two of them, the orange cat and the "little cat". Ingenious names right? The little cat has stopped climbing under the fence but however, the orange cat thinks he lives here.
Partly why the orange cat never leaves is that one day he came by, meowing at our screen door just as I was giving Pungo a treat (he is good now and then). I figured, I will give the orange cat a treat too, he looks like he needs one. Well, 2 canisters of Whisker Lickins later, we are still feeding the orange cat 2-3x daily when he starts meowing at our door. And this cat never meows for anyone else but us and has the most softest, quietest meow I have ever heard coming from such a large cat. Enjoy the clip of our daughter feeding BOTH cats their treats :)