Sickie Update

Sean has gotten worse. Wah! When the doctor examined him today, she said it was like the bacteria was laughing at the antibiotics she prescribed. THey didn't help one bit. His ears are worse-- all pussy. His throat is very red with white patches. He's got pink eye again and still has this fever off and on. Not to mention a runny nose and cough. They did a throat swab and it doesn't look like strep. The last time we did antibiotics, Sean was on Augmenten, which is more powerful than Amoxicillan, because the dr said when pink eye and sore ears come together, they tend to resist amoxicillan. But it resisted augmenten too! Yikes! Sean got an injection of antibiotics today, and he starts another round of some even MORE powerful antibiotics. I really hope this works, as I shudder to think what may be in his future. :( Poor baby hates all the medicine and eye drops. And I hate forcing it on him.

Meanwhile, I've missed 3, going on 5, days of work this week. So I feel guilty about my students not progressing. But its really me that needs to be home so he can nurse. Especially so he doesn't get dehydrated as he still refuses the bottle. I don;t know what we will do next week if he doesn't improve. I'm not sure the principal will look too kindly on me missing more. But I;ve got to do whats best for Sean.

Of course Sean has been grumpy and hoarse. But mostly he just sleeps. However, he insists on being held whether he is awake or asleep. That appears to be the only comfort I can give him, so I've just been holding him. It reminds me of his newborn days when I just parked myself on the couch and watched tv while he slept over my shoulder. Except now, he is waaaaaaay longer and doesn't fit up there in quite the same way. And he is also hot from the fever, so we both get a bit sweaty.

Home with Munzie

Sean has a fever of 102. So I am home with him today. Maggie is at school and Glen is at work, so its just the two of us. Poor little guy! February has been a rough month for him. First pink eye, then ear infections, now a fever, cough, and runny nose. Bleh.

Parada Del Sol

Went to the Parada Del Sol today! (Had to skip Maggie's art class to do so, but totally worth it. I love parades.) Lots of fun. Saw the Ballet Folklorico.


Also saw clowns, miniature horses, lots of girl and boyscouts, and even a cactus balloon.

The weather was nice. No rain like I was worried about yesterday. In fact, we had to break out the sunscreen and hats. The Parada Del Sol is really low key. As you can see in the pictures, there is almost noone on the streets. In fact, everyone is on one side and there was plenty of room to sit in folding chairs with everyone getting a front row seat. That made Sean happy.

I even got a little video clip of our favorite band. They were visitors from San Luis, Arizona. I have to admit, they were way better than the local highschool band. The camera didn't record the sound very well. Sorry!

After an hour and a half we went to McDonalds. A lot of parade go-ers were there too, so Maggie had lots of kids to play with. Saw a few brownies, a cheer leader, and a baton twirler. Afterwards we went home and had a nap. But there was more fun to be had. Glen BBQ-d chicken for dinner, and that made Maggie think of camping. So she got Glen to set the tent up for her in the backyard. Here she is making sure to put a "heavy rock" on the stakes so the tent wouldn't blow away. It is amazing that girl's memory. I think we told her that last time we went camping, which was about 2 years ago!

There are the happy campers. Maggie is currently asleep in the sleeping bag, but in her room. Too scary outside.

Learning, learning, learning...

Gosh! It seems like Sean is learning and growing and changing daily. Today, as I was trying to feed him his baby food, he grabbed a piece of celery off my plate. My first thought was to take it back as he has no teeth, and I was afraid he would choke. However, he seemed to be so happy, and I didn't think he would be able to bite a chunk off, so I let him have it. After about 10 minutes of gnawing on one end, the celery had kind of flattened out, and he was able to get little bits out from between the strings. I think he ate about an inch worth of celery over the span of half an hour. He was just happy as a clam. I guess its time for me to starting offering him more "real" food.

Sean is also really trying to move now. He can change from a sitting position down to laying on his tummy, and then roll around to his back or side. When he first started doing this, he would start to fuss if he was on his tummy too long. He doesn't know how to sit back up. But today, he was happy on the floor for quite a long time. 30 minutes or more. He was laying and grabbing at the rocking chair, then he would push himself up and kind of pivot on his tummy and turn to grab at another toy. Maggie decided to play bowling with some of the toys, and she would roll a ball towards Sean and try to knock over one of his toys. He found this terribly excited and Maggie loved it too.

Its raining now. We have a few sprouts in our backyard. Maggie hopes that they are the purple carrots that Katrin sent us. Glen doesn't really keep track of what he plants where, so its always a suprize when the garden starts to grow. I've identified some squash coming up, but a lot is still a mystery to me. The leaves are only maybe the size of a dime, or smaller. I'm sure they are loving the rain.

Tomorrow is the Parada Del Sol, one of the few community parades left in the area. (Most parades have big sponsers and big commercial floats, but this parade is mostly just the highschool bands, girl and boyscouts, firetrucks, guide dogs, and horses. Lots and lots of horses. Maggie likes the Parada Del Sol because there are a lot of "pretty" saloon girls riding horses in this parade. Oh...and she likes the candy thrown from the floats. :) We plan on going with our umbrellas tomorrow.

Urban Trekking

Our walk from home, around the water filtration plant, to the playground and back.



Glen carrying Sean who is sporting the sun shade on his hiking chair.

Hiding from mom behind the reeds.

Walking behind the water filtration plant.

Wheeeeee! This is so much fun!

Nap time. Whoops...gone too long.

New Kelty "Hiking Chair"

We went to REI today to spend out Christmas Gift Certificate and bought a Kelty Backpack for Sean to ride in. Maggie calls it his "hiking chair". It comes with one of those shade screens that arches over the top. We didn't want to scare Sean too much the first time out, so we decided we will try it next time. We went to South Mountain (conviently located next to REI) for our first trek. Their is a handy little daypack underneath where Sean sits that we put some Schlotsky's sandwiches in for an impromptu picnic. There is a second bag attached to the back of the pack that contained all the diapers and what not. We still need to fine tune some of the strap adjustments, but it worked well. We discovered that both Glen and I have freakishly long torsos compared to our leg length. So we can switch who carries the pack without having to readjust everything. Very handy! We weren't out for more than an hour and a half. Didn't want to push it with them both still coughing. But Maggie is insisting that we go out again tomorrow. So we will. We have Monday off. Yay!

And on another note, Sean seemed to learn a lot today! He learned how to roll off the rug to reach the forbidden stack of newspapers. He learned that he could put his face in the bath water and drink it. And he learned that if he protests when Maggie takes a toy out of his hands, she will usually give it back. :)

Pink Eye Update

Well, now Sean has it. Bleh! Took him to the doc yesterday and he has a double ear infection too. So now he has eyedrops, antibiotics for the ears and probiotics to keep his tummy healthy. Maggie is done with her eye drops now, but was just prescribed antibiotics for her ear infection too. She was up in the middle of the night crying, so we took her to the doc today. "YIPE!" was what the doc said when she looked into Maggie's ear. Thats never a good sign. So Maggie is going to be on antibiotics and probiotics for awhile too. Meanwhile, we missed ballet, I've missed two days of school, Glen has missed 1 day, and we had to cancel a playdate. Hopefully, everyone will feel better by the end of our 3 day weekend.

Despite being sick, Sean is still a little charmer.

Here is a little video showing Sean's crawling progress. The most he does is lean really far over like he is going to go for it, but then he change's his mind. Sometimes he will fall onto his tummy, kick his little legs, and go nowhere. He used to cry for me to sit him back up, but today he rolled from his tummy to his back and happily stayed their for awhile. He has rolled from back to tummy before, but never tummy to back. Yay Sean!

Pink Eye!

It has returned. Maggie is a pink eye magnet! She seems to get it every year. Yesterday she was coughing quite a bit, and today after school, she complained about her eye hurting and there was the nasty green goo in her eye duct. Of course, by the time we figure this out it is 5 pm and the doctor's office is closed. So, Glen is staying home from school tomorrow and taking Maggie to the doctor. I'll be taking Sean to daycare like normal in order to minimize the chance he will get it. Maggie has been really good about washing her hands a lot and not touching Sean today, although it is very hard for her. She is really being quite a trooper actually. I can't even remember the last time she was sick. But she spent the afternoon laying on the couch with a cool rag over her eyes and sucking on a cough drop. Poor thing! I gave her a teaspoon of honey to help with the cough. I read that somewhere honey worked better for a cough than cough syrup. We never used cough syrup anyway, but now that its not considered safe for kids we definately stay away. She didn;t like all that honey at once. But it almost immediately helped and she was able to fall asleep.

Sean is doing well. He was just happily giggling to himself and kicking his legs into the air this evening. I figure he was watching some invisible fairies flitting around. He is loving his baby food too. Scarfs it down at daycare. And almost always eats when offered here at home. I find myself holding back so he won't be too full to nurse.

Oh...and I drew the lottery number for Maggie's application at Villa Montessori (our first choice school). I didn't think I could do worse than last year, but I drew number 47. Looks like we won't be there next year.

Scallions...

Just another day at the Hestenes House.

Hestenes Family Update

What is going on in the Hestenes world?

Adrienne and Glen: Both of us need to update our certification for teaching in Arizona. And of course, as everyone knows, beaurocracy is never fun. We've done our 180+ hours of professional development (Actually, we were both closer to 400+ hours), we've taken the 4 credits of utterally pointless SEI classes (Structured English Immersion), we've updated our fingerprint cards, we've gotten the superintendent to sign off (no easy task as the office is downtown Phoenix in the midst of construction and only open during school hours...why does that make sense???), and now, the least step, is to go to the Arizona Department of Education tommorrow and pay around $200 each to get recertified for another 6 years. Bleh. Tomorrow is the day to do it because Maggie has early release which means Nancy will pick her up so I will have time to do this without having to rush home to pick her up from Kindergarten.

Glen: He found a new frisbee golf course today right next door to Villa Montessori while picking up the application for Maggie. He says that is good luck, so maybe we will get in this year. :) Its only a 9 hole course, but fun. He tried it out.

Maggie: Grandma Nancy picked her up at noon today. They had an adventure in Chandler which included bringing home quail eggs, papaya, coconut, and brown rice candy. Maggie said she saw squid so I am guessing they went to a Chinese Market. Cooked up the quail eggs for Maggie's dinner. She ate 4 of them. They were really tiny.

Sean: Ate his carrots puree and applesauce at daycare today, but no breastmilk. He was doing so well last week too. Downing a bottle everyday. He is back to his old tricks of refusing the bottle again. Guess the growth spurt is over. Sean has moved into a Large diaper (eek!). I've been posting on Diaperswappers to sell off some of his smaller mediums. I really don't want to sell the giraffe one. It is soooooo cute. Why can't he stay small for a while longer....

Glen: Just came running in to announce that the Suns have acquired Shaq (Shaquille ONeal)! He is totally jazzed.

Adrienne: Off to acquire me some icecream. :)

Its a small world!

Sean and I took Maggie to her first art class at Herberger College for Kids. This is a 90 minute long art class on Saturday morning at ASU for 6 weeks. Glen had planned to come as well so we could take a walk around the campus and hang out while Maggie was in her class, but one thing led to another, and when it was time to leave, he wasn't ready. So maybe next week. Turns out I had company anyway! I met Theresa and Larry there, parents of Grayson, who used to be in Maggie's preschool class. 5 years ago, Theresa and I would nurse our babes together during the lunch hour and they even came over for a playdate or two. But they moved Grayson to another preschool at age 2 and we hadn't seen them since. I cannot believe how much he has grown! I remember him as a cute little toddler dressing up in capes with Maggie. Now he is a handsome little boy! Time flies! Anyway, Theresa, Larry and I (and Sean) ended up going over the the MU to grab coffee (them) and orange juice (me). As some of you know, the MU caught fire last semester and has only partially reopened, so I thought it quite ironic that while we were there the fire alarm went off. We took our drinks outside and had a nice time catching up. Turns out Grayson is going to Villa Montessori, one the schools on our list for Maggie. So maybe we will be seeing more of them beyond this art class.

We got home around 11 am, and I went into the bedroom to put Sean down for a nap. Maggie said she was tired so I casually told her to lay down in her room and rest. Usually Maggie will go entertain herself for a little while and then I go give her my attention after Sean is asleep. NEVER in my wildest dreams did I expect Maggie to actually do what I suggested. 10 minutes later I go looking for her and she is curled up in her bed fast asleep. She slept for an hour and a half! Amazing! I guess this last week wore her out. ....all that homework (grumble). ;)