A Terrible Awful No Good Very Bad Day....that ended up not being so bad after all

Have you ever had one of those days that should be a lot of fun, but then something happens that seems like it could end up ruining the whole day? Well that's what today looked like. All week I've been so excited because Dan and I are going on our Valentines Day date tonight. :) We haven't been out on a date with just the 2 of us for a very long time and I've been looking forward to this since we planned it a couple weeks ago. I spent the morning getting things ready here at home, and making sure that everything would be ready to go for tonight. I had some errands to run so I loaded James up in the car with a stocked diaper bag, just in case. As I was walking out the garage door, I checked my pockets to make sure that my keys, wallet, and phone were all accounted for. I've been known to lock myself out of the house, so I was pretty pleased to find that I had remembered everything. I closed the door, buckled James in, and left.

I went to Smith's Marketplace first with the intention of picking up a few of the things that I needed there, but after pulling in the parking lot and getting out of the car, I decided that I didn't really want to take the time to go in that store after all. I got back in the car and drove away. I went to Kohl's to look for jeans for James for his birthday. I got out and to my horror I discovered that my wallet was no longer in my pocket. I looked all over the car and under every seat. I grabbed the diaper bag and looked in both front pockets, I pulled out tissues, chapstick, and a ponytail holder...but no wallet. I checked the back pocket then I emptied the entire main compartment because things have been known to disappear in there in the past. I couldn't find it anywhere.

Frantically but carefully (baby on board) I drove back to Smiths and looked all over the parking lot...nothing. I called Dan in desperation and asked him what he thought I should do. I took James into Smith's to check to see if anyone had turned in my wallet to no avail. I drove home and looked in the garage to see if somehow it had fallen out of my pocket when I got in the car, still no luck. Being the overly paranoid person that I am, I called and had a hold put on my credit and debit card. Then I drove to the police station to see if anyone had turned it in there. The lady said they didn't have it, but she said that I could file a report saying that I lost it and if anyone turned it in, they would call me. Still, she said that most times people just take what they want and toss the wallet in the trash. Not too much hope there.

Slightly dejected, I drove to my parents house and hung out there for a while, and talked to my mom. As I was leaving, my Dad pulled up so I stopped and talked to him outside for a minute. After he went inside, I reached in my diaper bag to pull out my cell phone, and my fingers closed around a larger object. I pulled my hand out and to my astonishment, I saw my wallet. Feeling rather silly, very grateful, and slightly perplexed as to how I could have possibly missed that when I had initially looked in the diaper bag, I drove home feeling very relieved. It was in the pocket that I had pulled the tissues, chapstick, and ponytail holder out of earlier. I know I looked in that pocket, but somehow I missed it.

The only downside is that I have to go and request a new debit card because my bank closed that card rather than putting a hold on it. And that is really not a big deal at all, I can handle that. :)

Guess What?!!

In case you hadn't heard yet, we have big news! We are expecting our 2nd child!!! YAY!!! The due date is August 13th. Lisa is in for a fun prego summer. :) Anyway, this means you all get to play the fun guessing game of whether the baby is a boy or a girl. We've created a poll over on the right for this very purpose. Last time the vote was split 50/50, so pretty much half of you were WRONG. Let's see if more people get it right this time. Thanks for voting!

And so it begins...

Babies learn new things at an amazing rate, it's so fun to watch James learn all about his world and explore his limits. He is experimenting with standing on his own and learning how to wrestle with Dan and how to throw things around. However there is one thing that he's learning far too quickly, my baby is learning to climb...

It started small, James would pull himself onto the metal chairs at church, then he climbed into the dryer one day. A few days ago he figured out how to climb onto the ledge by our fireplace. I found him standing up there once. But today he climbed something that I didn't know he could climb. James climbed into his high chair. He didn't even want food, he just wanted to play with the buckles, he loves those.

Part of me is thrilled to see my baby learning a new skill, but then again that also means that soon he will be climbing to higher and more perilous heights. This is going to be very interesting. :)

He got up there all on his own. :)

A Vomitastic Day

If you couldn't already guess from the title, this post may contain some information you might file under "TMI". So, consider yourself warned. That being said, I like to find humor in insignificant unpleasantness, and so you are the lucky one who gets to hear about it.

Last Thursday night, Lisa made a delicious dinner that contained some meatballs. We've had them several times before with no problems. It was really good, and so I actually ate quite a bit. As we were going to bed that night, Lisa felt a little bit of nausea, but we went to bed without incident.

Fast forward a few hours, and I found myself turning in bed with a bit of a stomach ache. I hoped it would go away, but it only seemed to get worse. While my stomach was trying to decide which direction to send all the food it didn't want, I did my best to convince it to send it down south. Throwing up is way up there on the dislike list, and I would take diarrhea over vomit any day. And so I sat on the toilet hoping relief would come.

(this paragraph is probably the worst, feel free to skip it)
A little bit came out, but it seemed like my stomach was going to allow me to taster dinner once again. So, I got off the toilet and readied myself in puke position. Unfortunately, I got a whiff of what I had already left in there, and so I instinctively recoiled a bit. This threw off my aim, and thus the first heave was far from a direct hit into the toilet. More heaves quickly followed, but I was able to improve my aim somewhat on those. After I had a chance to catch my breath some, I actually saw the mess I had made. There was throw up all over the floor, not to mention my legs. Lisa was such a dear, and asked if she could get me something to drink, but at that time, there was no way I was giving my stomach more ammo. Upon seeing the mess, I had to get out of there before I made it worse. I felt so bad leaving it all there, but I had to get away.

Considering I had puke on my legs, showering became priority number one on the agenda. I headed to another bathroom and started the water. As it was getting warm, the thought came to my mind, "Man, it'd be great to just sit in a warm bath for a while..." Fortunately, I had enough sense to realize that would mean sitting in vomit-water. Undesirable. So, I took a nice long warm shower, even if it meant standing.

I got out of the shower and headed back to bedroom. Lisa was being wonderful, as usual, cleaning up the mess I had made. However, I could soon smell the odor I had left. I was forced to rapidly retreat once again. I could not be near that bathroom anymore. And so, I spent the rest of the night sleeping on the recliner in James' room. He had since woken up from all the commotion, and spent the rest of the night in our bed with Lisa.

So, I spent most of the day, wasting away on the couch not doing anything. Thinking it was an isolated incident, Lisa had the leftovers for lunch. I saw her eating them, and I immediately had to roll over the way and not think about it. I suppose I should have offered some sort of caution, but I was banning all thoughts of that food from my mind.

Then came the evening, and Lisa was feeling the nausea once again. It wasn't long before she found herself in the bathroom. Fortunately, her aim was much better than mine, and so there was no mess to clean up. I had also recovered pretty well by then, and so I am grateful I could hear her without making a new mess on the couch.

And so our two beleaguered souls gingerly made our way around the house for the rest of the evening. Who would have thought James would be the only one in the family to not puke for a day? Well, we got James to bed, and made our way to bed nice and early.

By Sunday, we were both feeling pretty good again, but had pretty much sworn off those meatballs for quite some time. We usually go to Lisa's parents' house for dinner on Sundays, and so I mentioned to Lisa how we should probably warn her mom, and how it would be funny if that was what she made for dinner that evening. Well, turns out more humor was to be had, as we found out that those exact same meatballs are exactly what she had prepared. Needless to say, we filled ourselves on other parts of the meal.

Today Lisa returned the poisonous meatballs, and our house is no longer infected. After such a day, you can only help but laugh at it, and hope it doesn't happen again. So, what's the moral of this story? I'd like to think that it's something along the lines of: The family that pukes together, stays together.

Latest Happenings

It's been a long time since our last post so here it goes....

James now has 4 teeth on the top and 2 on the bottom. He is absolutely adorable and absolutely the most mischievous little angel ever. He LOVES stairs and he tries to get up them whenever possible. Any time we turn our backs, he makes a beeline for the staircase. He goes up really well, but he's still figuring out how to get down. If I happen to catch him at the base of the stairs, he'll look back at me, squeal with delight, and try to get up as fast as possible. James also LOVES his daddy. :) James and Dan will chase each other around and have a grand old time. :) James has also discovered the kitchen cupboards. He found my colander and had a great time playing with it. Here are some cute pictures. :)

I made bread! It is cinnamon bread and it's pretty good, check it out. I'm thinking of using it to make french toast.

I made a fabric wreath too, I think I like it. I wanted to make a Christmas Stocking for James, check out the picture below. The green is the lining. The red will be the top, and the yellow plaid will be the main part of the stocking...hopefully it works well. :)

We put our Christmas tree up!!! James helped as much as he could, he loves the lights on the tree.

One crazy week

This week has been full of new adventures, some good and some that were really not so great. James started off the new adventures on Tuesday night, when his new tooth started to come in. He had a fever and did not sleep well at all that night. The fever got up to 101.9, but he seemed to be fine so I just watched him the next day. His fever dropped Wednesday morning, but by Wednesday night, well Thursday morning around 3am, it was up to 104. Thankfully it dropped to 100.9 by about 9am Thursday morning and he has been so much better since then.

Through all of this, Dan's throat had been hurting, but he hadn't said too much about it because we were both concerned about James. Thursday night Dan decided to look at his throat in the mirror to see if he could see anything. Sure enough, there were a few white dots on his throat. We had plan's to be with Dan's brother and his family on Saturday night, and to be with the rest of Dan's family that lives in Utah on Monday for FHE. I was fairly confident that it was nothing to worry about, that Dan just had a cold and the spots would go away, still I felt like he should get his throat checked out just in case. So I set up an appointment for Friday morning.

Dan was a good sport and went to the doctor, even though he was feeling much better on Friday. I went with him and we left James with his Grandma Christiansen. The doctor came in and asked some questions then looked at his throat. She swabbed it with the longest Q-tip ever made, and then left. The LAST thing that I expected was for the doctor to confirm that Dan had strep throat....but when she came back in the first thing she said was, "You've got Strep."

As soon as we got in the car, I looked at Dan and laughed. I had fully prepared myself for Dan to tease me on the way home for making him go to the doctor for nothing, because I was so sure that he didn't have strep throat. Dan's mom and his boss at work both laughed at him too. The upside of all of this is that Dan didn't have to go back to work, so we had more time together Friday afternoon. We went out to Salem Pond, and then we walked up and down Main St. in Spanish Fork to see the scarecrow's. It was a lot of fun.

Yesterday, we had the opportunity to go to a BYU football game. We took James with us. That kid can sleep through anything. I was holding him through the first half. I'd jump up and cheer loudly for the Cougars, all while James slept peacefully in my arms. Even the cannon didn't wake him up, that kid can sleep. :) It was a lot of fun to take James to the game. During the second half, I'd put him on my shoulders while we sang the fight song after touchdowns and he smiled at the people around us. Someday he will probably/hopefully show some interest in the game...but it was still fun to have him there. :)

Climbing

One of the things that I have really liked about the layout of our house is that there is a little den right next to the kitchen. It is perfect for James to play in while I am in the kitchen because there is a little step up into the kitchen which has been very effective in keeping James contained...until now. On Thursday I was in the kitchen putting mozzarella cheese into smaller bags to put into the freezer. James was playing happily by the step. I was keeping an eye on him as I worked. I turned to put everything into the freezer. I closed the door and turned to go pick up my baby only to find that he had climbed up the step and was scooting towards me happily! I was shocked, but in a good way. I had no idea that James knew how to do that. At the same time I was a little sad because I hadn't seen him climb up. He did it the next day too, only I missed it then as well. :( FINALLY I got to see him climb up as Dan and I were eating dinner Friday night. Then tonight I caught him on video as he was trying to get to his Daddy. :)