Potty on Elmo!

So, my friend Jasmine always give me her crap (ahem, goodwill stuff), which I gladly take! Debbie got a lot of boy clothes out of it for Jeremiah, and I got some cute girl clothes for Squirrely. There was one prize in there, a potty seat, you know, the kind that goes right on top of the toilet seat. Well, it has Sesame Street characters on it so it was quite exciting for Squirrel. She noticed it in the bathroom, so I put it on the toilet and let her try it out. She just kinda' hung out for a minute or two, then we pretended to wipe, then flushed and washed our hands. Well, later on in the evening she said 'poop?'....which also means 'potty' sometimes.....so I got really excited and asked her if she wanted to go potty on Elmo. She said yes, so we took off a wet diaper, and hopped on Elmo. I was asking Adam to get the camera, but get the other camera and take the memory card out, and put it in the other camera.....then I heard a *tinkle, tinkle, tinkle*. How freakin' cool is that??? I freaked. My jaw dropped, I was so excited for her! She was so happy and proud of herself. Adam was walking past the bathroom door (in the wrong direction, of course) looking for the camera, and I don't think it hit him until he noticed my face.....duh!!! We told her what a good job she did, and what a big girl she is, and let her know we were sooooo happy! We wiped, flushed and washed our hands again, and she was a pretty happy girl. ;-)

Of course we called everyone to tell them. I have her saying 'Potty, Elmo'. Such a big girl. I don't think we're 'potty training', but at least she's interested. ;-)

Oh, and we never did get the camera.

Thanks Jaz!!

The tree.

We had a horrible pine tree in our front yard. ;-) I've hated the thing since we moved in. It dropped needles year round, preventing anything from growing beneath it, it was full of sap and pollen.....that it liked to drop all over our cars, and it was just an ugly sight! There were two good things about that tree....the shade it cast on the living room window, and the hummingbird nest I got to watch last spring.....we actually saw the mommy/daddy build the nest, lay eggs, hatch, grow, then fly away.....it was pretty awesome. We'd always talked about taking it down, but we were afraid to because of the hot sun. Well, we finally just decided to do it.....mostly because we're trying to re-vamp the front yard. The Johnson kids (mostly Vala) expressed their sadness (the Johnson's are my nieces and nephews that grew up in this house, and played in that tree all the time.....it was a great climbing tree.....Neeka even 'ran away' to the tree one night) for the removal of the tree, but I'm pretty sure they'll get over it. ;-)

So, I called Dave's Tree Service (highly recommended) to come take the tree out. Three days before they were scheduled to come, Jonesy came over and said he wanted the (fire)wood from the tree, so he and Adam then decide they can do it! Yikes! I was not looking forward to that...though it was much cheaper...free! I canceled with Dave, and had a great time watching the guys (manly men) take the wretched thing down! I can't upload video right now (but I will), the thing had so much pollen in it, if you had allergies you would probably have died if you were anywhere near it!

The Terrible Tree

It was difficult to get a pic, I was holding Squirrel, looking into the sun, and trying to work the camera at the same time.
How do you work this thing?
We'll just cut to the chase! It's almost gone!!
Bye bye tree!! Look at that mess! I was very concerned that we would be filling our yard debris bin for the next couple of months trying to get the brush cleaned up. Thank goodness the guys cut the firewood, loaded up the brush and took it to Jonesy's dad's house and threw it in his burn pile! The only thing I did (to help) was sweep the driveway!
You might notice the new retaining wall!! I'll do another post on that....when I get the chance.

So, the tree couldn't leave without giving us some problems.

He's hacking away at the dang thing. Adam is so awesome. ;-)
Oh surprise!! I broke a pipe under my stump! (I'll post the video of the stump removal when I can) He's pretty sure it's a rain drain.....fun, one more thing to work on.
Digging it up.
Notice the concrete block!! There was a metal (Adam thinks maybe stainless steel) pipe connected to the plastic (?) pipe. Well, they didn't exactly fit together so whoever laid them poured concrete over the elbow to 'fit' them together and prevent leakage. What a retarded jerk!!

Using the jack hammer thingy to break up the concrete! Poor Adam. :-(

The stupid pipe!

Lots of concrete!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE having a husband that can do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING! The guy is pretty amazing. He got all the right parts, cut the steel pipe, fit the elbow on correctly, tossed the broken pipe.....totally fixed it up! Way to go Adam!!!
All done! He sure loved that pipe!! Lol!

Next up.....the dry rot he found a little while ago. What a pleasant surprise! Just below the vent you can see the dip in the roof.

All better!

Well, I don't have any body shots, but there wouldn't be anything to show anyway. The rash is all gone! We saw the Dr. on Monday, and it was a quick in and out, she's all better, period. These two pics are self-portraits, I let her play with the camera while we were waiting for the Dr.

Holy Cow!

Can you believe this? 1:30pm Sunday.

She was smiling, and just starting to stretch, so she looks a little funny here.

It looks better

She looks better today, it's still all over her body, but it's just not as dark. Her face looks really good, her eyes aren't as red, and it's really faded from her cheeks. She slept much better last night, she only fussed a couple times at about 4:30am. Adam just rubbed her back and laid his hand on her until she fell asleep. Then she slept in until 8:30......that's pretty late for my Squirrel! She actually 'asked' to eat this morning and did a great job with breakfast. She seems to be feeling a bit better too, she's not as whiny and cranky.....but it is only 10:30am.....we'll see. ;-)

My poor baby :-(

So, she had the fever from Tuesday to Thursday, it broke Thursday after her morning nap. Thursday night I noticed she had a bit of a rash on her chest......Friday morning, YIKES! She had a full blown rash on her chest, tummy, neck, and up the side of her face. Throughout the day on Friday it got worse (I called the Dr. in the morning, the soonest they could get me in was 4pm), it crept all over her face, down her tummy into her diaper area, and all over her back. The first 2 pics are from Friday evening after her afternoon nap. By the time I went to Diane's for Genevieve's b-day (Adam stayed home with Squirrel), it had started creeping down her arms and legs. She had a rough night, we were up with her (on and off) until about 3am, finally we gave in and let her sleep with us.....we've never done that before.......it was the ONLY way she'd actually sleep. It was really cute though, it was like 3:30am and it was so quiet, we could hear the train (the train along the river), and she and I laid face to face talking about trains and 'Choo, chooing'. She was just so pathetic, but still trying to be our sweet happy girl.

So, the Dr. said to watch it and come back in on Monday (I knew she'd say that), she said she thinks it's viral (which means they can't do anything, just wait), and we'll see what happens. At first she said Measles is going around, but she pretty quickly said it's NOT Measles. Then I suggested Roseola, though the only symptom that does not match is the high fever. Roseola starts with a high fever, in the range of 104, (Squirrel's was only 101) then the rash shows up. So far the fever has not returned, but the rash is now all the way down her legs and all the way down her arms to her fingers. It's really hard to watch it get so much worse, but everyone is telling me it should get worse before it gets better. She still does not have a fever, which is a great sign, and does not seem itchy at all. You can tell she's just generally uncomfortable, and she wants her Mommy.....all the time! Poor Daddy, he just wants to help her feel better. :-)

Well, it's time to get her up.........I'll update soon.....I hope. ;-p~

This is from Friday afternoon.

Friday afternoon
I just edited this post to add this pic. This is from 5:30pm Saturday, look how much worse it is than yesterday. And yes, she's wearing the same outfit 2 days in a row, it's the only comfortable clothing, I did laundry today. ;-)
Here's her back yesterday afternoon.

This is her back this morning, during her oatmeal bath. It's gotten much worse. :-(

New Post

We've had a lot going on with the yard, Chris' coming home BBQ, camping, etc, etc. I just haven't had the time to really sit here and blog. Even now Squirrel is watching TV (at 7:30am) while I hurry with this...ahem, PRE coffee...........

I just wanted to blog real quick that my poor Squirrely is sick. She had the sniffles last week, that's it though, just the sniffles, not even a runny nose. Well, that cleared up, then yesterday she woke up with a fever of 101.6. I gave her some tylenol which brought it down to 99.9, but it shot right back up again when the tylenol wore off. I just feel so bad for her. She's still got the fever today. She's just totally not herself, she's VERY cuddly (but only with me, she cried when Adam tried to cuddle her last night), her eyes are droopy, she doesn't feel like eating....she's just pathetic. :-(

One of these days I'll post all the pics from camping, and from everything my awesome husband did to our front yard!