After a whoooole bunch of stress with our afternoon bus schedule, we’ve finally worked everything out and we’re just plain busy instead of super stressful busy. It’s good. We’re better at holding things together when we don’t have too much time to sit on the couch.

Sunday:

I love this umbrella

Living his best life

It’s important to practice before Halloween

Tuesday:

Everyone is at school or asleep and I am RELAXING

The cat is obsessed with our heated floors

Wednesday:

Enormous baby measured as enormous at his check up

Thursday:

We got the last one of these stupid things

This outfit makes me happy

It makes Finn happy too

Friday:

Cookie time

I hope this are the memories they have of their childhoods

Saturday:

Very fancy facepaint

Pizza is his favorite

That’s her “I GOT A NEW BOW” face

I bought Wonder Woman yesterday, so we can watch it at home and in the car and alllll the time, because I would much rather memorize Wonder Woman than all the episodes of Paw Patrol on this stupid pirate adventure DVD. Once you can name all the dogs on Paw Patrol you lose part of your soul forever.

Sorry, planning a party, no time to remember anything else including my blog, my children and where I put my keys.

Sunday:

CUTEST PRINT EVER

My town can be pretty cute

Driving directly into the sun – scenic but inconvenient 

Monday:

The only time he is EVER still

We introduced Evan to video games

SO HELPFUL

Tuesday:

He’s pretending to be the more mature one

I MADE THOSE WHICH IS NOT AT ALL CRAZY

Editing and watching Arrow, two of my favorites

Wednesday:

HAPPY PEPPERMINT SEASON (ignore my nails)

Thank goodness he loves sleeping

Caroline is in that box

Thursday:

Doin’ important baby work

SURE HAVE A COOKIE JUST STAND STILL

She’s very excited Darth Vader is on her pajamas

Friday:

Post-flu-shot faces

She got send home from school for “feeling sick”

Hot chocolate stirring spoons: chocolate marshmallow, white chocolate peppermint, salted caramel

Ok, be back next week when I can think straight again and not spend all my time trying to imagine Nutcracker themed names for various cookies.

It’s Superbowl Sunday! Wait, am I allowed to say the word “superbowl”? Or do I have to do the dancing around all the TV commercials do? Big game! Football day! Nationally eating stuff event! I do plan to eat all the stuff, although I’m lucky enough to be attending a party where someone else is doing all the cooking.

Sunday:

One in a set of about fifty

Watching Star Wars, obvs

They are sitting like that because that is how one sits when singing “Do You Want To Build A Snowman”.

Monday:

Dinosaur attack!

More dinosaurs at her 3 year well-baby

No idea what wore this kid out but he CRASHED

Tuesday:

It was 4 degrees but they insist on waiting outside for the bus

Fashionista

Their first trip to DQ

Wednesday:

Very cold twins

Patiently waiting to get in the pool

Visiting our lobster friends

Thursday:

She was happy (if cold) at 8:30 am

But when I picked her up at 11:30 she was HYSTERICAL and said her ear hurt. Poor baby was right and wins the award for the first Davis child to get an ear infection. She was back to normal after 24 hours of meds and luckily loves the taste of amoxicillin.

Attempt #2 at McDonald’s biscuits was failure #2

Friday:

She has an active imagination

Ugh. Even worse, I have to do federal taxes next.

Cuddles

Saturday:

Morning ballet…

…afternoon sing-a-long…

…evening bread hugging. Weirdos.

I am behind on literally everything I’m supposed to be doing right now, but I have high hopes I’ll be able to catch up this week. I also have some exciting weekend plans involving seeing some of my very favorite people in the world. Just keep your fingers crossed we don’t get a snowstorm late in the week that keeps me trapped at home and moping instead of once again eating all the things.

Today is another installment on my recent theme: parenting gets easier and you’re a good mom. YES your kid will eventually eat a vegetable. YES he will survive even on Goldfish and cheese slices. YES your kid will probably be fine even if he hates bottles and you can’t ever leave him for more than 2 hours at a time and you feel like you’ll be breastfeeding until he’s 12.

Evan had his four year well-child visit on Tuesday. The visit itself was kind of awful, with two children sobbing about their shots (despite the fact that only one child even GOT shots) but the information from the visit was great. Evan is 40.5 pounds and 41 inches tall, which puts him just below the 75th percentile and right on the curve he’s been on since his 2-year check up. They also calculated his BMI at 16, which a) does a 4 year old really need to know their BMI? and b) obviously doesn’t mean the same thing for a kid, since 16 falls in the “significantly underweight” category for adults and my kid is clearly not underweight. He’s as healthy as can be and impressed the pediatrician by saying his favorite food was apples. SO MANY APPLES.

It was a good check-up. As the doctor asked her questions I felt an overwhelming sense of “I got this. ” Despite the fact that it’s been almost three years since Evan fell of the growth curve I used to still get nervous when they pulled out the charts. Finally I feel like I can own our choices and our mistakes – when the doctor asked if I thought Evan’s speech was a little unclear I said it was probably because we relied on a sippy cup for too long but we had already switched to straws and I wasn’t worried. Then the doctor started asking ME for advice, since she has a 2 year old she’s struggling to get off sippy cups because he has been so reluctant to give up bottles and they finally found a sippy he liked and she doesn’t want him to stop drinking milk and she wasn’t sure what to do and did I like the take’n’toss cups as an alternative? (Yes.)

There’s nothing like seeing your pediatrician as just another mom struggling against the whim and will of a toddler to make you realize we’re all just doing the best we can as parents and things will be OK.  Of course, telling you things will be OK is not going to make you believe they will be OK, but try to  hold that knowledge deep inside. If you think there is something wrong, there might be something wrong and getting it checked out is the right choice. Always. But don’t feel guilty over every less-than-ideal-nutrition bite that crosses your kid’s lips. I wish I could go back and hug my previous self who thought she was doing everything wrong when it came to feeding my kid and show her 4 year old, 75th percentile Evan. He’s doing great, which means I am too.

At his 24 month checkup yesterday, Little Evan was almost exactly 50% on all the charts.

Height: 34 inches (he’s grown 2 full inches in 6 months)
Weight: 26 lbs 8 oz (up 2 lbs 5 oz in 6 months)

I was concerned his iron might be low because he drinks so much milk (too much dairy can inhibit iron absorption) but it was high enough to be in the normal range, even if it’s in the low end of the normal range. He didn’t cry or protest during the finger prick at all but I explained it to him as a “little poke” so when I told him he was getting one more “little poke” for his vaccine he cried. But even with the sad sad SAD crying he thanked the nurse for the stickers and held my hand nicely to the front desk. Such a big kid.

I did ask the pediatrician about whether she thought he should be talking more and she said the threshold for delay was less than 50 words and not making 2 or 3 word phrases, so as long as I thought he had more than 50 words he was ok. I’m…not so sure. He did talk to her and sign several things – which she was impressed with – but she agreed that maybe it would be worth getting him evaluated and wrote us a referral. Someone from the speech therapist’s office will call me so we can set up an appointment soon and I can either stop worrying about it or actually DO something about his lack of words.

But for now, I’m just thrilled he’s growing and healthy and ready to play outside in the spring weather at last!