Weekly Goodies-- Spring Edition

Jane has finally started trying some new foods. Yesterday she stole the carrots I was cutting.

Jane is very sad to say goodbye to her buddy, Sadie, who is moving to Colorado.

Peanut is growing rapidly.

Proof that Peanut is real and I'm not just holding a basketball in the last shot.

Jane still really likes grapes.

We love care packages. Grandma Janet sent this for Peanut next Summer but it fit Jane this summer so she's borrowing it from her little sister. Oh Jane, what a tiny thing you are.

Jane is really into stacking these days. She is actually very good at it. She concocted this tower completely on her own.

She even puts them away after she is done. If my pantry looks a little crazed to you... you know why.

She is SUCH a good helper. She is cleaner than I am and is always following me picking things up and putting them away. She definitely takes after her Daddy. When Jane finds I have left things on the floor (groceries, etc.) she gives me an exasperated look, tries to pick it up, and says, "Mama... don't THROW it." Silly girl. She went through a phase where when she didn't want food she would throw it. Apparently I put emphasis on the word "throw" because she is hilarious when she says it. Also please know that I'm not messy and I don't throw my groceries, Jane just thinks that means something was left where it didn't belong (for any period of time).

I wasn't making sandwiches fast enough so Jane thought she would help me out.

Lettuce sandwiches for dinner it is!

We were impressed at her final product.

The button nose lives on!

Jane and her Friday buddy reading books.


Not the best shot, but here is the three of us.

Look Crystal! The dress you bought Jane last summer finally fits her ;)

We love Jane's curls. The humidity has brought them right back.

Spring!

Little missy.

This is Jane's "cheese" smile.

Summer Fun

My absolute favorite thing about Milwaukee is the cul de sac we live in. Jane has tons of little friends her age and she is blessed to have daily playdates with them. We are going to sorely miss our amazing neighbors come next year. We're trying to make the most of our last Milwaukee Summer.
On Tuesday Jane and her buddies started out playing in a sprinkler but weren't getting in to it. Soon the sprinkler had run into the side walk making a gigantic mud puddle. This, of course, was far cooler to the toddlers. They romped around in that thing for a couple of hours. You'll notice we left the sprinkler on and it got progressively larger, which they loved.







While we were visiting Aunt Katie Jane picked up the term "woohoo!" She uses it all of the time still, but lately it has meant swings. She regularly asks to "woohoo". Luckily we have swings across the street, so we can woohoo all she wants.
 
The face of summer: hair a little frazzled and bleached, sand, freckles, water, and dirt on face.

With her bestie.

Once we got inside I quickly washed my hands. By the time I finished Jane had already climbed up to the table and was finishing off the grapes. My little addict.

Peanut Butter

When I was around 4 years old I remember a particular busy morning. My mom had gotten my sisters out the door for school and quickly made me peanut butter toast before getting me in the car to bring to preschool. About a block away from school she turned around and saw that instead of eating my toast I had just licked all of the peanut butter off. I remember that her first reaction was exasperation but instead of saying anything negative or yelling she just said, "Sarah, you were supposed to EAT your toast, not just lick off the peanut butter." I remember looking at her innocently and honestly replying, "I didn't know that, I just wanted the top half."

I'm sure it took all of the patience in the world after our busy morning but instead of being angry she just asked me to eat as much of the bread as I could before going to school.

It was such a simple memory but I will always remember how instead of being angry my mom made a conscious decision to be patient and love her toddler.

This morning Jane did the same thing.

I remembered my mom's example and just smiled. Instead of ruining our morning, this event totally made it. I snuggled Jane and then encouraged her to eat the bread, too. She did.


Yesterday we bought a particularly delicious bag of grapes at the store. Less than 24 hours later, they are gone. I'm pretty sure Jane alone ate at least half of them. This is her squirrel face shoved full of grapes.


When Jane still wasn't feeling well I tried to cheer her up. We built a fort, she put on a princess dress, and we ate ice cream.

Every time she got a particularly large bite of ice cream she made this face (which apparently means excitement).



Scott came home and thoroughly enjoyed watching a pregnant lady move in and out of a tiny fort.


Clearly Jane has potty training all figured out.




Watching Daddy leave one morning.


Now that we have nice weather Jane is obsessed with going outside. Every ten seconds she is bringing me shoes to go outside. She is obviously very helpful and one day brought me this nice combination. Not only does this picture accurately display how adorable she is, it also shows how bipolar our weather has been.


Jane REALLY REALLY likes her princess dresses. Thanks Grandma Janet!

"A Fever is Not Your Friend." Alt. Title: We freely bribe our toddler

So Monday morning Jane woke up bright and early (waaay too early) with a 103 temp. All she wanted to do was snuggle and be held. It was so sad (and random).
It looked a lot like this:

It won't flip, trust me, I tried.

Which meant that going to the store looked like this:

Baby-wearing at 26 weeks... no biggie.

With the rest of the day looking like this:

Clearly my toddler who normally looks like this:

was feeling awesome.

Her fever stayed between 102 and 103 (even with Tylenol every 4hrs) until late afternoon when it broke for a few hours but came back with a vengence at night. I went in to check on her during the night and she just climbed into my arms (burning up) and said, "oww." I felt so bad, I wish I could have done more. At one point I told her that I was just so tired and she looked at me with her big brown eyes looking like she was about to cry and said, "Sawwy!" ("sorry"). I melted and felt incredibly guilty for having said anything, she is such a sweetheart sometimes I forget how sensitive she is. I wasn't saying anything to make her feel bad I was just talking to myself while getting her some more tylenol. Oh how we love our sweet little girl.

Luckily we had her well-child check Tuesday morning so we gave the doctor a heads up that she wasn't feeling so well and they switched our appointment reason and we got right in. At this point her fever had been going on for a day and a half and she still had no other symptoms (runny nose, cough, ear infection, etc). We were told to get a urine sample if possible and come back in the morning.

A urine sample... right. My non-potty trained, barely 18-month-old is really good at peeing in cups so this should be easy.

After a quick Facebook poll I was instructed to use a potty chair and give her lots of liquids. Unfortunately Jane didn't want to eat or drink anything so it took FOREVER.

Here is where shamless bribing comes in. Note: we normally feed her healthy, but when she is sick and refuses to eat anything, a parent gets desperate.

We started off innocent enough:


But things progressed quickly:


In front of her we had sippies filled with milk (white and chocolate), juice, gatorade, and water. Clearly we know how to keep children happy.
Note shown: me hand-feeding her pizza, cereal, yogurt, ice cream, apple sauce, squeezies, anything under the sun we could use to keep her on her potty chair.

After a loooong battle, we finally got our sample. The problem is that she thinks the potty chair is evil and she may or may not be traumatized from being forced to sit on it while really sick. This should make potty training interesting...

Jane's fever continued all day and our amazing doctor even called us that night to check up on us. Our doctor is the greatest and she called us from her cell phone after work to make sure Janie was okay because she was worried about her. Yup, greatest doctor ever. We gave her the update and told her we would see her in the morning.

The next morning we got her urine sample checked and learned that she does indeed have a UTI causing her high fever. It was definitely worth the battle of getting the urine sample from the potty chair because it spared our tiny daughter from spending a day at Children's Hospital getting cathed and having blood drawn to check for a cause.

She still isn't eating much but we have meds for her now and her fever has FINALLY broken after 3 full days of 103 :(
Yesterday our eating situation got even more desperate... Here is her dinner:

She actually ate some McDonalds. We were thrilled because it meant some sort of calories. But then she threw it up. Awesome.

But by bedtime she must have been feeling better because we were saying family prayer and as soon as Scott and I closed our eyes she darted off. By the time we finished praying we found this:

Smart girl. waiting for her parents to be most vulnerable.

We let her eat her cookie (considering she had managed to get the package off of the counter, open it, and retrieve a cookie on her own). While she munched I asked her if she would get me one. She immediately offered me hers. I told her she could keep hers and proposed she get me a new one. Jane went into the kitchen and came back out with another cookie. After bringing it to me I went to eat it and she yelled, "NO! Daddy!" and promptly took the cookie to Scott who was in the other room, gaming, completely unaware we were even eating cookies. Well, my sweet daughter, we know where your alliances lie.

It's a bummer she has been so sick, the last few days have been the hottest yet and the weather was AMAZING.
In fact, she refuses to take off her sunglasses.