Getting ready for school

Joaquin loves getting ready to go to daycare in the mornings. Except putting a diaper on and getting dressed - that's a daily negotiation. We have a nice morning routine that includes a breakfast of scrambled eggs with cheese, an Eggo waffle and some sort of fruit. While Joaquin eats his breakfast, I pack his little daycare bag. We have a little canvas bag that we bring his sippy cups to daycare in each day. When he sees that bag he gets very excited. When he's finally free from his highchair, he grabs the bag and throws it over his shoulder and heads for the door. He turns around to wave and say 'Bye!' or more accurately, 'Bah!'.

Joaquin takes saying and waving 'Bye' very seriously, and I laugh every time. It requires a stretch from toe to fingertip. His stance is like how you would stand if you were pointing at something really far away - he reaches forward and stands on his tippy toes and reaches his arm out as far as he can. His 'wave' is more like the motion you would make with your hand if you were milking a cow. He sometimes loses his balance when he waves bye because it really requires a lot of coordination.

Anyway, so Joaquin stands at the backdoor ready to go. I usually can finally convince him that we need to put our shoes on, and then he heads right back for the door again. When I open the door, he crawls down the stairs and walks over to the car- with the bag over his shoulder. He has the biggest smile and he is very happy to get in the car and head off to school.

Maybe this is one of those things that only Joaquin's parents will find amusing. Oh well. It's one of the daily pleasures we get and I don't want to forget his funny toddler behavior. I always wonder whether his mannerisms now will stick with him the older he gets.

OK..rambling complete. Thanks for listening. Over and out.

Libby
a.k.a "MAMA!"

Why I may look 5 years older than I did last Sunday....

A lot of you may know that we had a rough week! It started last Monday when Joaquin had a fever so I stayed home from work with him. That afternoon when I was trying to get him to take a nap he had a febrile seizure. At the time, I knew right away that it was a seizure, but didn't know that febrile seizures are fairly common among young kids when they have a fever (and I later learned that I used to get them myself!). I was in a panic and called 911. His seizure lasted no more than 2 minutes. Count off 120 seconds with your child in convulsions and it seemed like an eternity. Paramedics came into the house and made sure he was stable and we headed off to the Emergency Room - my first ambulance ride. We were there for 8 or 9 hours where they gave him an IV, swabbed his nose, throat, took blood and a urine sample, and did chest x-ray. They weren't able to identify any sort of infection or flu in the testing, and just chalked it up to an unknown virus and sent us home.

For the next couple nights we slept with Joaquin in our bed - although he was so sick he wasn't really sleeping and neither were we. If he wasn't on a steady dose of Motrin/Tylenol, his fever would jump back up to 103 or higher. His fever finally got better after 3 or 4 days. Today is Sunday, and he is finally back to his normal activity level.

Joaquin still has a little bruise on his hand and a small dot where the IV tube was placed. He rubs it and looks at it because he knows it doesn't belong - and Joaquin is always very concerned when something is not where it belongs. He sticks his arm out with a whine and we give it a kiss and a gentle rub. We are very thankful that he is healthy and has only a little bruise left from that scary day.

Pumpkin Patch 2009

We drove down to Uncle Marc and Aunt Lindsay's today to go to a pumpkin patch. It was a beautiful day and it seems like we weren't the only people in Chicagoland who had this idea. Here's me and Joaquin with Uncle Marc and Ryan - and we are ready to conquer.

We did go to a pumpkin patch last year with Joaquin. He was wonderfully slouchy and immobile then.

Today we had to run around like aggressive paparazzi to get a shot.
His favorite place of the day was the gigantic haystack that kids could climb on. This was just a giant tower of haystacks - kids were digging holes in the middle of stacks and creating tunnels - and running around. Now that Joaquin is confidently mobile, we are very aware of how social he is. He will run up to any kid and try his best to keep up with their play. Art was in charge at the haystack, and spent most of his time doing this:


Joaquin was in his element.


Joaquin and I went on a tractor ride and Marc and Ryan were a few cars back. This picture was taken moments after I stole this cow car from a dad and a six-month old baby. That excitement on my face actually the look of victory. I'm not proud of my behavior, but this was another free-for-all at the pumpkin farm. There was no line - and the tractor would just come to a stop, and you just had to fight the crowd for a seat onboard. I was polite the first time, but we quickly learned that being polite would not get you a seat on the train.


And there were pumpkins here too! Here's a few other shots from the day.



Thanks for letting us come along to your pumpkin patch, Ryan!