Stinkhole Manor is less stinky

I think our foul creature is rotting away. Whew! I'm so glad to be posting this.... I hate the thought of it continuing to stink up our house! Yeah!!! (Now I have to deal with the unpleasant thought of a rotted corpse in our walls. Nice thought. Ugh.)

Stinkhole Manor update

Well, the rotting varmint in our walls has let up enough on its stench to allow Chris to open the door and watch the football game. Not really sure if that means that Chris is enough of a nut to deal with the reeking creature or if it's actually receding. Hmmmmm....

(And I'm not about to upload the image of a rotting carcass. I thought this was nicer.)

The calm before the puking

Poor Sam! I'm so upset for her! At her last doctor's visit, we were told to get her on cereal to get her some more iron. So I tried her on cereal that weekend and *puke*.... it all came back up. I wracked my brain to see what I could possibly have eaten (Wendy's? Something else?) and couldn't think of anything but the cereal and Wendy's. So I held off and just got her eating some squash. She finally started eating that.

Then today I tried cereal again and about 2 hours later.... *vomit*. Ugh. So I'll get her into the doctor as soon as I can to figure out what's going on! This sucks!

But on a positive note, we had a GREAT night last night. She slept from 8:30-11:30pm and then woke again at 5:30am! She didn't get up for the day until close to 8am! Chris let me sleep in and took care of the girls so I could try to shake off whatever I seem to be getting. It was great!

Ahh, my poor allergy girl. I hope this isn't anything serious!

One step closer to Crested Butte!

I'm so excited! After a HUGE brouhaha, Chris finally accepted a position with a company called Web Visible. Although he's going to be traveling more than if he had stayed at MNGI, I think this might give him some fun, interesting opportunities.

Next on the list: Selling our house!! WOOOHOOO!!!

Another Sam sleeping update

It's going okay.... Not great, not horrible. We have some days that are wonderful - and nights to match. And others that aren't. Last night wasn't fun.... The longest time in a row she slept was 3 hours. The rest was 1-2 hours. *yawn*

But I've figured out a "concoction" that works well to settle her tummy and help her sleep. (We ran out of some of it yesterday.) Mostly it's Colic Ease - this stuff ROCKS. I love it! And the other stuff is Cocyntal. This stuff is great, too. The Colic Ease will settle her tummy and the Cocyntal helps with her gas. I'm going out today to get more of the Cocyntal before I go crazy! LOL!

She's reaching and sitting and doing awesome! I'm so happy that she's so much happier now that I've cut so much from my diet and gotten her sleep mostly figured out. I'm still frustrated from time to time, but it's nothing compared to the first 6 months.....

Terrible twos

I think Ellie is hitting her terrible twos now! She's saying "No" to everything and not sharing nearly as much as she used to. It's so frustrating.

She's doing okay at potty training. She will pee a *tiny* bit in her pants (she still won't wear big girl panties) and then stop and pee in the toilet. Then she'll want a new pair of pant.... We're going through them way too fast! Ugh!

She's still as cute as ever, though! LOL!

My photoshoot went great!

Not only were Mark, Julie and Matt GREAT subjects, but I learned an immense amount during this shoot! I thought I'd start recording the things I learned here on my blog....

• When searching for the best light, have someone follow you with their face as you walk around them. This was amazing when I had Julie do it - all of a sudden I could SEE the most amazing difference in her face with the light. I was so pleased about it!
• All kids are really different - I thought Matt wouldn't mind getting a little dirty and playing, but that's not what he's like. He likes keeping clean. I still ended up with some great shots even if they didn't turn out the way I envisioned!
• Go with the flow and don't overthink things. Although I think that trying new things and thinking too hard about them for a little while is a good thing - I think it's faster to learn that way - in the long run, it's best to go with instinct. And there are times when I find that surprises come out because of that.
• In this image, for instance, I was thinking I would get a more "formal" shot. But instead, I think I got a well posed (in terms of where people were placed), but more candid image. There is something sweet about this photo that I like very much!
• The "sweet light" of the sun as it is setting doesn't last long, but it doesn't disappear as quickly as I expected! This makes for some gorgeous light and color!

I know there was more, but I can't think of it right now. I'll add more as I think of more!

Ellie potty training update

pee training is going really well. We started on Monday and just said "no more diapers unless sleeping" and she had one small accident Monday, a medium one on Tuesday and another today. (We didn't train on Wed. because of hte pooping issue below.) She's just been GREAT....

The two problems I have:

• She will NOT wear big girl panties! I tried taking her out to buy some with me, but the ONLY kind I could find in 2T were the Gerber ones. Nothing fun like Pooh or whatever... (I found a ton in 4's, but those are HUGE on her.) I'm going to try a few more stores and see what I can find.
• She won't poop while potty training. She holds it. She "tries" and I've tried bribing her with something GOOD, but she doesn't poop. I did NOT want her to get constipated so we put the diaper back on so she would poop. (She did.) I'm putting Karo in her sippy today so hopefully that'll make it more "necessary".

Well, on the positive side - it's not a skunk

But it looks like we're going to have a rotting carcass in our house for a while. Bill, our nanny's husband, was nice enough to come over and check it out.... After smelling *whew* and looking around, it looks like it's probably NOT a skunk and he said that if it were his house, he'd wait to see how long it smelled. If it got worse, he'd come help us get it out. If not, we should just let the thing rot.

Lovely.

Sam's got another tooth!

I'm shocked that her teeth are coming in so quickly - and easily! I think it just might have been uncomfortable for her for a total of 30 minutes! LOL! It's going to be so cute seeing her with teeth... I'll be interested to see how quickly the others come in! (She looks so upset in her picture! Poor thing!)

On a side note, Sam's sleeping is really all over the place. Last night wasn't quite as good as I would have liked.... She went down at 9:15, up at 11:30 for 45 minutes, down until 1:30 then up almost for real at 6am. I took her into bed with me and we slept for another 45-60 minutes, but certainly not good. But the night before she slept for 12 hours with only waking 3 times. But it's still 100% better than it used to be!