A quick trip and a whole lot of busy-ness

I have been a less than successful blogger these days.  Following my last post, Margot and I packed up and went to Buffalo for a quick weekend to see family and go to a baby shower for Aunt Alicia.  The same weekend Mark packed up Sawyer and Isla and went to Michigan to celebrate Uncle Ted's birthday with him and spend time with Aunt Ann and cousins.  I don't have many details from their weekend but understand it was a huge hit.  I mean they got to choose between cake or cupcakes people.  Does it get any better than that?  They seemed to have a great time.  As for Marge and I we enjoyed ourselves but kept it low key.  We spent most of our time at Kate's with her, Maeve, Al and Michelle.  We got picked up by Barb and hit up some Ted's, Aunt Kathy's and then went home to play and watch the Olympics.  Margot loved playing with all Maeve's toys waiting for her to get home.  Even some we have at home were a new novelty at their house.

Of course the main event was the shower.  In honor of Al and Jon, Margot wore her best outfit they got her for Christmas and rocked it.  It's going to need a slight wash because girl got her first bit of cake and loved it. I mean this could be used as a first birthday picture the way she dove into it.  She lasted pretty much the whole party.

It was Margot's first flights, and the way there was definitely better than the way home.  Flight there was full, but a really nice woman sitting next to us played with her and took her right out of my hands several times.  Flight home we had a full row to ourselves but Margot was tired and unable to sleep and she definitely screamed and cried a bit.  Was tiring but once off the flight she was better, and was good until Mark picked us up and she fell asleep in the car.

Seems like forever ago thinking of that trip.  Since then things have been quite busy.  I've had a lot going on with work, including helping to plan my Company's Chicago International Women's Day celebration.  This was this Friday so I expect things will settle down a bit, but there was a lot of last minute things that were occupying my email and daytime.  This was a nice quiet weekend at home resting.  I stayed in the city on Thursday night to set up for the event, and didn't get home till 7pm Friday night so after some time with kids I pretty much passed out on the couch and have tried to spend as much time there Saturday and Sunday as possible.  Sometimes it's necessary, and in this case it sure felt like it.

In other news, Sawyer has molluscum contagiosum.  Sounds like a spell from Harry Potter but is actually a poxlike virus that causes all these nasty bumps to spread on her body.  A trip to the dermatologist told us there's not much to do other than cortisone and lotion, and a whole lot of waiting because sometimes it takes several months to go away.  I have not loved that, so after much research on the internet we are trying a natural home remedy to see if we will have any success.  Basically we are forcing the girl to take baths with apple cider vinegar in them, and then trying to apply the vinegar topically to the bumps to get them to go away.  We're two days in and it seems like there might be progress, but stay tuned.  We've stopped the cortisone and lotion to see if those were actually spreading it further vs. making it go away.

We've also had our hands full with our girl Isla lately too.  She is a pretty constant annoyance to Margot, liking to block her off from walking around the room or going into the playroom.  She basically tries to prevent her from moving anywhere but a one foot area, or will pick her up and carry her away from whatever she wants to play with.  Marge is not happy with her and she's also driving Mark and I crazy with it too.  It's totally unreasonable and she will not listen to us when we tell her to leave her alone.  On a happy note the girl is doing great learning all of her letters.  She was struggling with knowing them by sight, and also writing, but she's been doing great with it lately.  Perhaps she knows preschool is only a few months away.  Both of the girls have been happy about getting a bit more time outside now that temps aren't below zero.  It's amazing how a 30-40 degree day can make you happy.

 Happy to be throwing snow balls in the air

 Pre-snow ball throw

 Playing together.  There was a lot of climbing the "mountains" of snow.

Meanwhile we spent a lot of time in the living room watching the kids out the window.  Margot still isn't spending much time outside and so we're looking forward to warmer weather to get her enjoying the fresh air.  It's amazing how much this girl learns on a daily basis.  She was doing 5-6 steps at a time while we were in Buffalo two weeks ago.  Now she walks across rooms, is constantly letting go of furniture and heading for parts unknown and can probably do 15-20 steps before falling, reaching her destination, or dropping to a crawl.  Also new today is we learned she can do stairs.  She likes to play peek-a-boo while we are in the living room by going around near the stairs and peeking back.  Well today she didn't peek back and I learned she went up two stairs.  Quickly took her down thinking, uh-oh we're going to have a climber soon. That came sooner than we thought.  I had her on the landing of our stairs and she did the 6 stairs up to the top all on her own with no prodding from me.  She then surprised Mark and did 4-5 stairs while he wasn't looking.  Luckily we've had no falls but clearly are going to have to be on our game going forward.  Not too bad for a 9 1/2 month old.

What she's not so into is talking.  She babbles and does consonant sounds but words are minimal.  Maybe a mama and dada but I'm still not sure she does it on purpose.  We'll keep talking to her and see what happens.  No teeth yet either!  It seems our kids are destined to get their teeth late. Hasn't stopped this girl from chomping on everything she can get her hands on though.  We introduced her to Chipotle today and let's just say she's a fan.

time to go put this little one to bed now...