Happy Mothers' Day!

Sorry for not posting recently. April was an extremely busy month. My conference was the second week and then we were getting ready for our vacation. We just returned yesterday. We had a fabulous time! And I have lots of new photos to share! Hurray!

We spent the first week of vacation in Madison, Wisconsin with our friends Kelly and Grace. Christy, Cindy, and Katie joined us there, as well, and we all had a great time. We went boating on the lake, painted pottery, baked cookies, had a tea party, did a group photo shoot, went to the zoo, had a picnic, made homemade pizzas, and played outside a lot in the wonderfully mild weather. Us moms took advantage of the time together to hire a baby sitter and enjoy a childless dinner and movie. What a treat!

On Wednesday, Christy, Cindy, Katie, Alivia and I all left Madison for Chicago. We visited the Navy Pier, the American Girl Store, and Legoland. The girls really enjoyed the American Girl Store and Alivia got a new doll who she named Jeana after me! I thought that was really cool as up until this all of her dolls had been named Ali after herself. Her doll has blond hair and blue eyes just like her. I'm planning to take her and her doll to do some professional photos soon.

Then on Friday, Alivia and I left Chicago for Indianapolis where we visited with my brother and his two boys. It was a great evening--and I'm hoping we can see them again before another two years passes. We go way too long between visits!

Okay--now for the adventure tales from the trip... Livi and I had an uneventful set of flights to Indianapolis. When we got off the flight we stopped by the ladies room before going to pick up our bags and our rental car and when we got to baggage everything was gone except for our stuff. I had Livi, two suitcases, and her carseat to deal with, so I got a skycap to help us get everything out to the car. I decided to upgrade our rental at the last minute--the original vehicle only had two doors which is really difficult with a car seat. We got on the road at about 11 a.m. in pouring rain and started the 5 and a half hour drive to Madison.

About an hour and a half into the drive my cell phone rang. I had almost forgotten to bring it--in fact I had to turn around and go home to get it. Thank God I did! My dad was on the phone and informed me that we had the wrong suitcase! Apparently another passenger had a large red suitcase like ours and had picked up ours instead of hers. Since only a red suitcase and Livi's carseat were left at the baggage claim, I didn't bother to check the tags... We had to turn around and drive all the way back to Indianapolis and exchage suitcases.

We ended up hitting Chicago at rush hour and our 5.5 hour drive turned in to a good nine hours. I was so ticked! Thankfully the conference I attended over the next two days was so great and the time we spent with our friends was so enjoyable that it made all the aggravation of getting there worth while.

I hope you enjoy the photos!

~ Jeana

End of March Update

Livi's surgery to remove her ear tubes went extremely well--10 minutes and they were done! While he was working on her, our ENT looked closer at her palette, though, and determined that the muscle doesn't go all the way across yet and so he's going to have to repair it. So... this summer we will be redoing her jaw and then next summer we will be doing her cleft palette. That really sucks!

In other news... Livi has been a real terror lately. She's got a super independent streak going and she's pushing her boundaries in all directions. On the upside (so to speak) I now have a new bit of leverage. We built a beautiful swing for Alivia in her play yard that she absolutely loves! If she misbehaves she loses swing time. We'll see how that goes...

We're both on spring break this week so we'll have lots of mommy and me time to try to get things back on an even keel. I'm hoping to go to Disney on Wednesday for my birthday, since I will get a $70 gift card to use in the parks. (I have a season pass so I already get in "free" on my birthday and they are giving me the gift card instead.) Livi's birthday is coming up in three months and I'd like to use the card to get her a nice Disney related gift.

No new photos to share... hopefully we'll have some in the next couple weeks.

~ Jeana

March of the Livis...

Alivia and I have had an exciting March so far. We spent last weekend at Disney and Livi absolutely loved it! This was the first time she really knew who the characters were and she got so excited every time she saw one of them. She actually knocked Minnie Mouse over when she ran up to her and wrapped herself around the poor woman's legs! She also finally got to ride the roller coaster in Toon Town. She loved it, of course, and loved the Teacups, too. "Faster, Mama! Faster!"

Next week Livi has surgery--a minor one to remove her remaining ear tube. I'm hoping she doesn't have a bad reaction to the sleeping gas this time. Last time she got really sick and kept throwing up... Yucky Poo! as Livi would say.

Today Livi decided to try out Mama's mascara. Now, I hardly ever wear the stuff and I'm pretty certain she's never seen me put it on, but as you can tell from these photos she actually had a pretty fair idea of what to do with it. Thank God it was just mascara, though! At first I thought it was ink and we had a party to go to this evening. Yikes! She's also still into practicing her model poses, as you can see.

I'm hoping to spend at least part of tomorrow at a park so Livi can do some sliding and swinging. I'm also hoping to get her play area set up in the backyard over spring break so that we can swing and slide at home. Spring break is going to be a bit on the busy side as I am planning to squeeze in another Disney trip then, too. We'll see...

~ Jeana

Livi's Trophy

Livi is so proud of her photo trophy. This photo was taken at the ceremony. She made the whole crowd laugh with her cute little scrunchy face. I'd love to capture more sweet smiles, but I have to admit that this one is cute!

She's been on really good behavior lately (excluding the scissors episode) so I'm thinking about taking her to the zoo this weekend. I'm hoping the weather will be nice enough for it.

This photo was taken this evening. She was wandering around the house "watching" her trophy. I can't wait until her hair grows out a bit...

~ Jeana

Oh... My... God...

While I was in my office typing up my last post, Alivia was in my bathroom giving herself a haircut... Sigh... the bangs are her work. I decided there was no way to save it and cut the rest of her hair to match. Sigh... Thank goodness she waited until after the trophy ceremony to figure out how to open the medicine chest and find the scissors...

~ Jeana

Livi Got Another Trophy!

Well, last year, Alivia won two runner up trophies. This year she only received one trophy, but it was for Voters Choice Overall Winner for the Most Photogenic Baby Comic Category (2-3 year old). This is the photo that we entered in that category. We also had another photo entered, but it didn't win anything. It was really difficult to decide which photos to enter because she had so many cute ones. I'm posting the one that didn't win and a few of the other cute ones below. The organization that does this contest will be posting photos of the winner getting their awards tomorrow and I'll add that one, too.

Funny story--they give out dozens of awards at this thing--mostly the small runner up trophies like Alivia won last year. This year the crowd was rather quiet and sometimes clapped and sometimes didn't as the kids went up on the stage to get their trophies and pose for a picture with the trophy. Well, Alivia made a bit of a production out of getting her trophy and did a couple of her "model" poses and then did her signature squint face. Everyone in the crowd laughed and applauded for her. It was too cute! I wish I'd had my video camera with me.

Here's one of her supermodel poses--a la Tyra Banks and America's Next Top Model...

~ Jeana

Finally a Warm Day!

It has been miserably cold here for the last few weeks, but today we finally had a warm day. Alivia and I spent the day running errands--one of those errands was to check out the competition at the Most Photogenic Baby Competition. Tomorrow is the awards ceremony. I'm fairly confident that Livi will get at least one trophy. Speaking of photos, these are a couple of the photos from the photo shoot that I didn't enter into the competition. I'l post the ones from the competition tomorrow along with the results. I love doing this competition just because of the quality of the photos we get out of it. The photographer is great!

Another of our errands today was to check out summer camps at the Jax Camp Expo. Most of them catered to older kids, but there were several that she was eligible for. If we can get her potty trained it will open up more options for us. Of course all of the ones at the Expo were open to the general public and weren't specifically tailored to special needs kids, so I had to discuss our situation with each of the ones I was interested in to see if it would be a good fit. I also want to talk to some of the special needs camps, but most of them seem to cater to more profound issues than Alivia has, so I'll need to be careful in that respect, too. I'd love to find a place with a low child to adult ratio and lots of out door activities and active play that operates all day for several weeks. We'll see...

On a taking care of Mommy note, I've decided to go back to school and get my doctorate. The job market is just too scary and will be for some time, so I want to make sure I have as many options as possible. And my leg seems to be doing okay. I go back on the 13th for more x-rays, but at the moment there's little pain and it's more of an inconvenience that anything else.

Cheers!

~ Jeana