Thank god someone else in the house knows computers....

Okay. My plan tonight was to write a quick little note on the coming of Spring (finally), and post some pretty cute pics of the kids and their first ever homemade hop-scotch board. These pics included Paige in her nightgown, sparkly black Mary Janes, and pink corduroy vest, and Aiden in his pjs, a hoodie, and his Spider Man snowboots. Yes, my children are obviously on the cutting edge of fashion.......

Because I am a multi-tasker extraordinaire, I was going to tackle this little blog on my very portable mini- laptop in the wee hours of the morning at work. Hey.... All my patients are sleeping, and I don't have any meds due for an hour. Come on.

However, in an attempt to foil my 3am plans, my oh-so-cute laptop with its built in wireless card thingie simply refuses to connect to the wireless network here. I've "repaired the connection", turned my firewall on and off, searched for new connections, and basically pulled my hair out at the roots trying to figure out why it won't work tonight. Well, everything short of turning the computer off and turning it back on. I am listening to Breaking Benjamin right now, and I don't really want to interrupt that.

So, my loving, IT savvy husband is hopefully going to read this in the morning and tell me what I'm doing wrong. Pity he actually IS asleep right now.

So those pics of the kids playing hop scotch, and the video of Finn walking will just have to wait.

Oh; how did I post this blog, you ask, if I couldn't connect to the network??? The patient laptops were open for business. Luckily, at almost 4am, no one else needed one.

A childhood rite of passage???

Kids do gross things. It's just a fact of life.

When I woke up today, Chris greeted me with our childrens' accomplishments for the day. This is a fairly normal thing. I love hearing what the kids have done during the day, exciting or mundane.

Well, this overcast Friday, one of our children learned the fine art of swallowing air to make oneself burp. Apparently, this talented child can also make the air come out the other end. On demand. And of course, this newfound talent is hilarious to said child.

Who is it, you ask??? Could it be the almost 7 year old kindergartener? He is a boy, after all.....

Amazingly, no.

The baby??? Isn't he too young to engage in such activities???

Surprisingly, he's not too young. But more on that later.

No, the burping, farting, laughing monster of a child is none other than our precious (precocious) daughter Paige. Just imagine this long-haired little sprite running around in one of her signature princess dresses.... She skids to a stop in front of you and offers not a kiss, but a huge swallow of air followed by a burp her brother (or father) would be proud of.

*sigh*

Back to Finn for a moment. Most babies learn to fake cough for attention at a pretty early age, right? Finn did it for awhile, and then it passed. Chris and I noticed something at dinner the other night. After finishing his dinner, our sweet little toddler ripped his bib off, pushed his uneaten portion off the side of the tray onto the floor, and burped- no belched with gusto.

What makes the scenario even more entertaining...... The belch was not of the natural variety. The kid was totally faking it!!!! We have since then noticed him making the same said burp/ growling noise on many occasions.

Seriously, what is going on in our house???

Going to the movies

I love going to the movies. I've loved it since I was little. We don't make it to the movies very often. You know, three kids and babysitters and all of that. But when we do, it's a treat.

Yesterday, we took the big kids to see "How to Train Your Dragon". This is not the first movie we've taken the kids to see. Aiden's first movie at the theater was "Cars", when he was three. And I think Paige's first movie was Kung Fu Panda. Most recently, they saw "The Princess and the Frog".

The kids actually do really well at the theater. They still cover their ears when the previews start, and Paige still has a hard time sitting still the entire time. But overall they are great. And the experience is worth it. We always buy them the awful movie popcorn and a drink, but smuggle in Junior Mints or Gummies for an extra treat. Okay, the Junior Mints are for me..... but Paige really likes them, too!

How to Train Your Dragon was great. Adventure, excitement, Vikings, dragons, and scottish accents (yeah, I'm not sure why the viking sounded like a scot.....). It was funny, breath-taking in parts, full of fantasy, and very family friendly. Aiden loved it, and Paige thought it was pretty okay. However, she insisted on "going to the bathroom" one time too many.....

This may be the only time I say this line...... Thankfully, the current Happy Meal toys are dragon figures from the movie. Now that Aide thinks he's a dragon expert, he has action figures to help him act out all his favorite scenes. And for once, we got the "main character"!!! We usually only get the supporting players.....

For those of you who are following my liver saga: I've been on vitamin D replacement therapy for nearly 5 weeks now. I had my labs drawn over the weekend, and I'm happy to report that they are significantly down!!! Woo hoo!!! Hopefully this whole Vit D debacle will be the key to having a happy liver again.

Let's play catch up!!!!

Life is just never-endingly busy. If I'm not working a million days in a row, then it seems like I'm doing a million things on my days off.

So, now we need to catch up on our vacation to Bend, Easter at my folks', and the beginning of soccer season. Just to name a few.

It was great to finally get out to my parents' place again. the kids love "going visiting"..... Whether it's on a long trip, or just to a friend's house down the street. While we were away, Aiden and Paige had great fun playing "dress up" and "store" in Nana's closet.

Paige was introduced to her very first mini tea set while we were there, and Aiden and Finn became defenders of the Galaxy with a new "ray gun" and alien spaceship.

We colored eggs, and had a visit from the Easter Bunny. One of the best things, was being able to see Gigi and Grasshopper for awhile. It was great seeing them enjoy the kids. Finn loved my cousin (okay, my cousin's puppy), and refused to sleep in the pack-n-play unless coerced. As it was, he was up at 4-530 every morning. Ugh. So not great.

I think springtime may actually be here. I hope so! Finn's discovered that playing on the back patio is great fun, and I'm happy to let him cruise around out there. The Easter Bunny brought the kids a huge box of sidewalk chalk, and Paige has had a great time with that. Aiden and Paige both have just about exhausted their bubbles (also a gift from the EB), and will soon need more.

Another great thing about Spring??? Soccer season starts again!!! I love watching the kids play soccer. Even if Paige's team regularly get their heinies kicked. And even though Aiden has figured out that, playing goalie, he doesn't have to run the whole time. They have so much fun, and they're so cute in their uniforms! Though Aiden certainly isn't a star player, his team usually wins; until Paige gets on a different team, I'm not sure that she'll ever win. But they both make goals, and the having fun is the important part.

Ahhhhh... rambling. See what happens when I blog at 3am???

Toddlerhood passages

Toddlerhood holds certain rites of passage: Walking, first words, first public temper tantrum. And one of the most important ones of all..... The meeting of coffee table with face.

Mr. Finn and the coffee table were introduced quite abruptly one afternoon early this last week. Chris was in the kitchen, and I was upstairs sleeping. There was the tale tell "thunk", then a moment of silence, and then incensed shrieking.

And rightfully so.... After seeing the goose egg that developed over Finn's left eye, Chris and I were shocked that he could even open it!

Over the next few days, the resultant black eye was pretty impressive.

Come to think of it, Finn's the first of our kids to end up with a black eye.

***Sorry for the ideways picture. I've tried to flip it and load it about 5 times, but blogger is not cooperating!!!

And yes, the yellow color is the bruise, and not a trick of the light......

Whew....

......what a week!!!!

I worked, and worked, and worked some more. And then I worked again! I've decided that working 8 hours of a skills lab might be a little too much. 4 hours is great, but teaching the same thing over and over again for 8 hours (to people who should know what's going on) gets a little old. I was teaching/ evaluating my fellow nurses on the use of a PCA pump. Okay, I think 8 hours would be okay, if we can swap with someone after 4 hours and teach something else.

Anyway, I was ready to get the heck out of there. Lucky for me, when work called last night looking for extra help (for the third day in a row) I had a great excuse to say no. "So sorry, I'm headed out of state in the morning". Woo hoo!!!!

We got up at 6am this morning (sucks, by the way. One should never see 6am unless it is at the end of your day), loaded into the car, and headed over to Oregon to see my parents.

We were a little apprehensive about the trip. We drove. For 6-ish hours. In a minivan....with three kids. One of whom is a toddler. Could have been a disaster of epic proportions. But amazingly, everything went as smoothly as it could have gone. Finn was grumpy for about the last 45 minutes, but the overall trip went really well.

We're looking forward to our visit. Tomorrow we're going to celebrate the beginning of Spring with my parents and the kids. So the Easter Bunny (who skipped our house last Sunday) is going to bring baskets and hide eggs here tomorrow afternoon. We decorated eggs tonight; a great fun mess. And on Sunday, we are going to have a dinner with my parents and grandparents. I even think one of my cousins is going to come over.

I've been slacking on the blog front. I need to make an effort to get to this more often. I don't want to be one of the blog statistics. You know, the ones who blog religiously for the first 6 months then quit.......

Happy Spring everyone!!!

Another chore?

I love reading other people's blogs. And I love my blog. But I find it's really hard to keep updated when nothing exciting is happening in life. There's only so much mundane every-day stuff that I think other people want to read about.

But then I remind myself that it's the mundane every -day activities that make up our lives. And if I skimp on that all the time, then I'm missing out on memories.

Our Spring Break ends tomorrow, and the kids head back to school. I think Aiden's ready. He misses his friends, and he misses class. We miss the routine of him going to school for a little while every day. He's spent the break building with his legos, playing Ratchet and Clank on the PS3, bugging his sister, and playing with a friend on his first ever drop-off playdate. We also cleaned up the kids' room, which they think is a very fun thing to do. (Could be cause we don't do it that often.....)

Paige has watched The Princess and the Frog countless times since it came out on DVD almost 2 weeks ago. She spends her in-between time playing The Princess and the Frog with her stuffed frog, and if she's not doing that, she's playing Princess Pinkie Pie with her My Little Ponies. She still prefers to dress herself in dresses, and poofy princess dresses are still on the top of her list. Yesterday she got to pick out a new pair of purple glasses, and she is anxiously awaiting their arrival.

Finn has found his independence. He's not walking quite yet, but is soooooo close he can taste it. It won't be too much longer now. He has embraced toddlerhood in all its glory, and reminds me of his brother at this age. As Aiden was the king of temper tantrums, that's not necessarily a good thing. Finn definitely knows what he wants, and if he's not allowed to have it, or taken away from it he protests. Loudly. He's babbling a lot more now with a ton of different noises. He responds when you ask him something, and a lot of times his responses sound like he's trying to say the actual words.

Chris has been trying to iron out the whole car thing. And he's done a great job. I'm also super proud of him for sticking with the whole not smoking thing. It's been a challenge through the last couple of weeks, but he's stuck with it. I've been working and working some more. Now we're trying to get the chores done and house pulled together before our trip to Bend next week. On today's agenda: more laundry. I swear it never ends.... We had a great, although short, visit with Chris' brother and his family this weekend. Makes me remember how much I love to see family. Just wish we could travel more.

The next week is going to be mostly work for me, but after three night shifts and an 8 hour day I'll have a week off. Hopefully we'll have more exciting adventures to post about then!