Nov 23-29: Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  I hope that you all had a wonderful and pleasant holiday with family and friends.  Since I'm writing this blog a bit late (today is Dec 7 - oops!) and since we've had a bit of a traumatic experience recently (see the blog entry for Nov 30-Dec 6), I am, once again, going to use pictures as the main part of this blog entry.

We had a lovely, quiet Thanksgiving holiday at the Johnson household.  We spent the first part of the day relaxing and playing at home and then went to a friends' house for the big meal in the evening.  It was wonderful of William & Heather Cochran to include us in their holiday celebration with their parents.  Sadly, we took no pictures of that event.

Erik's daycare had a Thanksgiving party for his class on Friday, November 21.  Elin & I were able to attend the party.  It was a beautiful day, so having the party as an outdoor picnic was genius.  The kids were able to play outside and run off some energy from all the treats!

The kids & I at the picnic.  I couldn't get Erik to close his mouth for any of the pictures!

Pilgrim Erik wearing a hat he made at daycare

Elin, testing out Erik's pilgrim hat

Some random photos:

Elin, testing out Kent's knit hat.  This picture makes her look like a smurf!

Erik's bed head hair after his nap!

Elin's sad face - sorry, baby girl, this one makes me laugh!

Elin's pouty face - yeah, I still have to laugh at this one, too!

We went to SeaWorld on Friday with the Cochran and Zbaraschuk families.  Yes, it was cold that day!

Family photo - Elin is blocked by Erik and we inadvertently put Erik's face in a sun spot.  Oops

All the kids

We had a burst of Christmas spirit on Wednesday, November 19, and decided to be crazy and put up our brand new, never used, prelit Christmas tree super early this year.  We got 2 sections connected and then discovered that a strand of lights wouldn't work.  After Kent went through all the trouble-shooting steps, we had to call the company and get a replacement light strand. Then poor tree sat all forlorn for a week until we got the replacement part on Wednesday, November 26.  I decorated the top part of the tree with all the fragile, breakable ornaments while the kids slept and then let the kids help me put the soft or more kid-friendly ornaments on the bottom part.

The completed tree

Erik hanging an ornament - he was very particular about the placement of his ornaments!

Elin inspecting some of the kid-friendly ornaments

The look I got when I told her to be gentle!

On Thursday of this week, we decided that it was time to finally move Erik to a toddler bed.  What?  You're surprised?!  Erik has only, in the past 2-3 weeks, tried to climb out of his crib!  Since he had never tried before, we decided to let "sleeping bears lie", if you will!!  We certainly didn't want to mess with his sleep routine!  We were very worried that Erik would play "jack-in-the-box" once we moved him to a toddler bed.  We could not have been more wrong - at least so far!  He stays in his bed once we put him in it until we come to get him up after naps or in the morning!  I'm still shocked when I think about it!  He'll sit up in bed and play with his blankets or stuffed animals, but he won't climb out.  We'll see how long that lasts!

Erik & his crib

Erik & his toddler bed

Erik showing us how he would sleep (I gave him a pillow to his great excitement!)

Some funny stories:

1. A very little known fact is that I love musicals and sometimes, I sing my conversations to the kids. (And NO, I do not dance in my real-life musicals!!) They generally get a kick out of it, but one day Erik stopped me mid-song and said "Stop singing, it hurts my ears"!!!

2. We have been germ conscious in our household since our long bout of colds in September.  One day, Kent was playing with Erik and pretending to sniff his neck.  Erik responded by telling Kent "Don't 'niff me!  You have boogers in there and I don't want to get sick"!!

3. Elin can't talk to us much yet, but she is certainly an expressive little girl.  When eating, she tends to stockpile your food in her cheeks while asking for more bites.  We finally caught on to her tricks after a few puking incidents and we now will prompt her several times to "Chew" during meals.  When we say "Chew" now, she will tilt her face up to you, open her lips and show you her teeth as she takes some giant, exaggerated bites of food!!  Too funny.  Of course, now we sometimes say "Chew" just to get her to perform her little trick!!

4. This last story is more a trick that I played on Nana (my mother) than a cute story about the kids.  Back in October, I had included the "Love you Forever" children's book in our library rentals and we had it when my parents came down for a quick weekend trip (the weekend of the stomach bug).  I had never read the book and since it had a picture of a little boy playing with toilet paper on the cover, I thought it would be a story about potty training - which I definitely wanted Erik to hear about!  Well, the first time I opened the book to read it, I had to quickly paraphrase the story and put it down.  It made me burst into tears with the "I love you forever, I like you for always, as long as I'm living, my baby you'll be" chorus.  I showed it to Kent that evening and he told me that he had tried to read it to Erik a few days earlier and it made him cry!  A little devil got ahold of me and I carefully set the book aside for my parents' visit (my Mom cries really easily).  Then, once they arrived and had settled in, I waited until we were all in the living room and then, oh so casually, suggested that Nana might like to read Erik some stories.  Of course, Erik jumped at the opportunity.  I handed Mom a stack of books and she cheerfully read through a few books about race cars, trains, etc.  I then handed her the "I love you forever" story.  She opens it and reads through the first few pages.  We all laugh at how crazy the Mommy in the story was to drive across town to climb through the window into her grown son's house so she could rock him while he slept & while she sang him her little sweet song.  Well, then Mom got to the page where the Mommy in the books is old & sick and calls her son to come see her and the son, in turn, rocks his Mommy while singing the song.  Mom is almost sobbing but she kept on reading the story to Erik; even as I'm laughing to myself at this trick I've played on Mom, I'm crying and then I look over at Pops and HE is crying.  Mom gets through the end of the book and looks at me: "Why would you read this to your kids?"  Excellent question.  I've seen that book on lots of popular book lists or searches.  How did it get there?  It is a tearjerker story!  Anyone know?

Oct 26-Nov 22: Major Catch-up

Yikes, I guess I've gotten very behind in my blog posts!  November was very busy with various illnesses, potty training, appointments, etc & so on.  As I sit here trying to think back on the month, I really cannot remember everything that we did and why I got so far behind on this blog.  I hope that my faithful readers haven't suffered too severe a withdrawal this past month!!  I'm going to catch up by using lots of pictures!

At the beginning of the month, I told Erik that we had run out of day-time diapers (I gave him a few days advance notice) and that he would have to start using the potty like Mommy & Daddy now.  This approach worked pretty well and we only had a few accidents during the first 4-5 days.  After that, Erik has no problem with going pee.  We are still struggling with going poo-poo in the potty, but I hope that he will soon stop holding that until nap or bed time.  Potty training has also provided me the opportunity to talk to Erik about anatomy, much to my chagrin.  He saw me getting into the shower one day and looked at me with surprise and said "How do you go pee?!"  That was an interesting conversation, to say the least!

Erik has fully embraced the concept of being sick and getting medicine since his recent bouts of the flu and a head cold.  He insists on having a puke bucket in his room at all times and will often ask to have it in bed with him (he doesn't get it).  He also makes sure that I never forget to give him his vitamins/medicine every morning.  Erik has also started drinking Xango (mangosteen juice) and was so upset when one of Kent's shipments went missing and there wasn't any "juice medicine" in the house for him!!

Elin is getting more vocal in the past few weeks.  She is mimicking a lot of sounds and intonations.  She will say "dow" for "Down" when she wants out of her highchair.  She also tries to say "thank you", "Amen", and "Erik".  She can say "Noooo" really well and is learning "Yes" though it sounds more like "Yeth".  She is starting to display some temper - however, rather than throw herself on the floor, she will start to cry, walk over to a wall, throw her hands on it and bury her face in her hands.  This lasts only for about 10 seconds or less before she turns around to see what I think of her performance.  She loves all of our ride-on toys and is super good at steering, especially the plasma car.  Elin did get her first boo-boo while riding on the trike - a little road rash on her elbow, knee and tiny bit on her cheek.  She is a super tough little girl, though, and didn't even whimper about it.

Pictures from our month:

We finished up our session of fall swimming lessons (when you live in Florida, you can swim into November!):

A neighbor was getting their yard landscaped and Erik got to drive a tractor/front-loader!!

A local fire station visited Erik's daycare and he & Elin have been playing with his fire hats since:

Various photos of Elin from the past few weeks:

Elin on Erik's trike - she loves all our riding toys and is really good at steering:

Elin showing off her owie from riding the trike:

Elin at Sabbath School - she looks like she knows what she's doing!

Erik demonstrating the classic Johnson stance:

We have 1 tree in our yard that drops its leaves; Erik helped Kent rake them up one Sunday.  It was a bit nippy for Florida!

Elin lounging:

Kent was reading a book to Erik at bedtime about tools, so he decided to show him the real, live versions!

We took some family pictures at JCPenney (look for them on our annual Christmas letter!) and this is how Kent entertained the kids while I reviewed the photos and placed our order.

Erik & Elin had a dentist visit this month.  This was the first time that Erik was supposed to go back on his own.  That didn't work out at all.  Due to his uneasiness of the whole experience, I wasn't able to get any pictures of Elin's first visit.  Oops.  Doesn't he look so small & pitiful sitting in the x-ray chair?!

Oct 19-25: Nana & Pops!

Nana & Pops Chalker drove 18 hours from Ohio to come spend the weekend with us - but they came especially to attend a special program for grandparents at Erik's school on Friday morning.  Erik has never had any of his grandparents in town for this annual program, so I, for one, was very excited that Erik would have someone to attend the program with him.  Nana & Pops arrived on Thursday morning around 9AM and Erik came down with the 24-hour stomach bug around 4PM.  Yep, you read that right.  Nana & Pops got to Florida after 18 hours just in time to see Erik puke up his guts.  I really do hate puke.  The first episode required that both Erik & I had to take showers & start a load of laundry.  The poor kid, he had it bad.  He had the dry heaves about 5 times after the first time.  He would puke after just having one teeny, tiny ice chip.  He would kinda choke as he had the dry heaves which freaked me out, so I spent the night on his floor.  Erik thought it was just fabulous that he had company overnight and he woke up around midnight to take full advantage of this golden opportunity.  It took me awhile to get him back to sleep; it was a long night for me.

I mentioned this in last week's blog, but this week is the first time that I've had to deal with a child sick with a stomach bug.  I've been so lucky to have gone 3 1/2 years puke-free, but that ended with a vengeance this week with Elin getting sick on Sunday night and Erik on Thursday.

The rest of the weekend visit was very low-key, though we were able to sneak in a visit with my Uncle Phillip on Sabbath.  We were very sad to see Nana & Pops leave at the end of the weekend.  Their visit was way too short and sadly, Elin was just starting to warm up to Nana & Pops.  She kept asking for me to pick her up and then waving Bye-Bye to Nana the entire weekend; I'm sure that Elin was worried that I was going to leave her with this new baby-sitter.

Funny Story Elin-Style:
She has recently learned to put her finger over her mouth and say "SSSSSS"; she did it to me the other morning.  We were in the kitchen and she walked back into my bedroom looking for Kent.  I followed her and called out to her.  She stopped, turned around and told me to "SSSSS" and then she grinned, turned back and went to find Kent.  I think she might have been trying to sneak up on him!!!!

Funny Story Erik-Style:
This weekend, Erik decided that he was going to clean up a mess on the kitchen table so he jumped up from his chair to grab a paper towel.  On his way back to the table, he passed by Kent's chair and told Kent, "I'm cleaning up that mess.  Don't move"!!  My guess is that this is from when Erik dropped his piggy bank and I had to sweep up the glass shards while telling Erik to "not move a muscle."  He didn't listen to that so good.

Group shot with Uncle Phillip

Erik and I after Sabbath School

Elin chilling with Pops at church

Pops & Erik at Sabbath School

Kiddos with Pops & Nana before they left

Elin showing off her "Bye Bye" wave.  She finally let Nana hold her just before they left!

Oct 12-18: We Forgot My Skates!

So, my thankfulness last week that I wasn't still sick with a cold while the kids were sick totally came back to haunt me!  I woke up Sunday morning with severe stomach cramps that progressed quickly to icky symptoms.  I was sick all day; it was an absolutely dreadful day, even though I was able to lay around in bed all day!  On the bright side, it was only a 24-hour bug and I was able to get up and resume my Mommy duties on Monday.  Kent should be thrilled that I was so considerate and got sick on the weekend rather than a weekday!!  We have been super fortunate that I was the only one that got sick - thankfully, no one else has gotten sick.
     Side note: Of course, just as I finished writing the above paragraph, I heard Elin coughing and when I glanced at the baby monitor, I saw that she had thrown up in her sleep and her crib was a mess.  Yuck.  I've gone 3 1/2 years without having a child get the flu and puke (I'm not counting the infant spit-ups and picky eater gagging here).  Poor little Elin was so tired that she just sat calmly through the entire process of me cleaning her up and changing her pajamas and then stood patiently next to me as I cleaned up her crib and put a new sheet on her mattress.  Every once in a while, she would give me a sweet little smile and sway a little bit, but I couldn't get her to sit or lie down.  Kent came into the room just as I finished and he sat down with her and rocked her back to sleep.  That was her only incident, so I think she might have gotten an upset tummy from something she ate for supper.

Looking back on the rest of the week, I can't really remember what we did that was out of the ordinary.  I took both kids grocery shopping on Tuesday as I didn't feel quite up to par on my normal day for grocery shopping (Monday).  We all survived that only thanks to the power of modern technology and YouTube videos!  Thankfully, we can find Baby Einstein videos to watch, which both kids enjoy and I feel okay about letting them watch.  All the Beginner Bible videos have been wiped clean from YouTube so we can't watch those anymore; I thought they were wonderful and miss them greatly.  I've tried to find them on Amazon and am a bit shocked that I've not been able to find them there or anywhere else yet.  If you know where I can get some, let me know!!

We also had swimming lessons on Monday & Wednesday afternoons this week.  Yes, yes, I know, it is October but when you live in Florida even the outdoor pools can stay open through the end of November!  Both Erik & Elin seem to really enjoy their lessons and rarely fuss or cry before or during the lesson.  Now, if Erik would only listen to his teacher and follow instructions!  He gets a little distracted during his lessons and starts saying really random stuff, such as "My shorts have flowers on them" and "That guy is swimming" and "Where is Miss Sasha (Elin's teacher)? Oh, there she is!" and "I hear sirens" and so on.  You get the idea!

I did shore up my courage and took the kids to the library on Thursday.  I've found it is so much better if I can get Erik out of the house and doing something each day.  Otherwise, he ends up in time-out, Elin ends up crying a lot and I end up yelling a lot and then praying for forgiveness & patience!  However, library visits are always a bit scary since both kids love to explore the various shelves (aka hide from Mommy) and Elin figured out recently that yes, she can pull books down faster than Mommy can grab them to keep them on the shelves.  The kids' section of the library also has computers at cute, little kid-sized desks - a positively dreadful thing for my little angels!  They both love to sit in the chair and see how they can crash the computer.  A few weeks ago, both Erik & Elin worked in tandem to nearly destroy one machine - Erik froze the screen and then Elin pushed a few buttons which restarted the computer in Safe Mode.  Thankfully, I was able to get the PC working again and I've learned to never let their tiny, little fingers touch the keyboard without me standing over their shoulder guiding them.

Friday this week was my Mommy day!  Earlier this year, Kent had gifted me a day where he would keep the kids all day so that I could do anything I wanted!  Our schedules finally worked out so that I could take my day and I was out the door by 8:30AM!  I ran quite a few errands, had a chiropractor appointment and met Amy for lunch.  It was very nice to be able to zip in & out of stores or linger over the clothing racks, depending on my whim!!  Kent had a good time with the kids; he played with them at home and then took them to his office for a little bit so he could pick up some things he had forgotten on Thursday.  We ended the day by having supper with the Zbaraschuk & Cochran families.  Kent got lucky on that one as I was going to insist he do all the cooking & cleaning as well on my day off!!

And now, an entry from a guest writer - Kent!:
On Saturday night, I took Erik to his first sporting event - a Solar Bears ice hockey game.  My boss gave me two of their season tickets.  We sat mid-rink 10 rows back so we had really good seats. Erik was pretty excited about it considering he didn't really know what he was going to see!  He sat on my lap whenever he was sitting down, as the movie style chairs proved to be a very unstable experience for him.  He wasn't heavy enough to prevent it from being more like a teeter totter than a chair! He was very attentive for the pre-game introductions and most of the first period.  We had chips and popcorn to chew on so that kept him occupied.  He got scared twice when the canons went off during the starting line-ups.  At the end of the first period he asked me if we could go back.  I'm not sure where "back" was, but we went up on the concourse and walked around and bought some souvenirs (little hockey stick and a puck) and a refill on our $8 drink.  We were well hydrated! We went and sat back down for most of the 2nd period and about half of the third.  I let him watch some videos on my phone to keep him occupied.  I brought headphones which proved to be a good idea.  I couldn't believe the number of fights at the game.   After we got home he informed us that he & Daddy had forgotten his skates and helmets!  The ticket attendant at the game gave us a free knitted stocking hat for him to wear at the game.  It wasn't actually that cold but he did wear it for most of the evening.  He was excited by the whole experience and is anxious to learn how to ice-skate now.  RDV Sportsplex near our house has skating so we will see what he thinks of that at some point.

Erik at the game (love his spiky hair!)

Trying out the seat

Wearing his free hat

Showing off his cool souvenirs 

Okay, back to Kelli:

Erik had a funny moment this weekend that showed how my "parent-isms" can come back to get me. We were all getting into the car to go somewhere and Erik asked that I sit in the back between him & Elin.  I normally comply with his request, but this time I said that I wanted to sit up front with Daddy and that Daddy wanted me to sit with him.  Erik looked at me and said very clearly, "You are going to sit in the back with me and you are going to be happy about it!"  I sat in the back and didn't fuss at all about it!

In the World of Elin, she has learned how to shake her hand for No-No.  She now loves to do something that she's not supposed to do (i.e. drop things off her highchair tray, hit my arm, try to remove the book cover from library books) and then tell us No-No with the hand motion!  Elin has also adopted a very cute mannerism this week where she will just start to giggle or laugh.  If you giggle back at her, she will just keep going & going.  I've never figured out what sets her off initially, but it is hard to resist a giggling baby!

Random Photos:

Elin cuddling with Daddy

Elin verifying that, yes, she does have a belly button!

She may be trying to tell us something here - I guess she's ready for bed!

Loving on each other or close-quarter combat?!

Elin as a mouse in Sabbath School

Elin in Sabbath School 

Elin loves to snuggle after her bath!  So sweet