Occasional Rambling

Annuals

2010-03-19T17:49:00.001-04:00

Sean turned another year older a few weeks ago which means it’s time for his doctors to poke and prod again. So far he has had his physical and his allergy retest. Next week is the pulmonologist. Growth and Nutrition is a few weeks after that.

First up, his physical.

This went pretty well. Although he has all of a sudden become a bit wary of doctors. He used to see them every week when he was younger. But now that a few months have passed between visits he has decided to protest. Meghan is still worse. She cannot even watch someone else get a shot. We can probably rule out a medical career path for that one.

His stats:

Height: 36.5”

Weight: 27.13lbs

He’s progressing. That puts him above the 5th percentile for weight. Which makes him normal. However, I’m not going to count it until his growth and nutrition appointment. There they are more precise with the weight measurement. Plus, he was fully dressed this time. He does seem to be doing well, though.

Next, the allergist.

Aaaand…..no change.

He is still allergic to milk and milk protein. He gets retested in a year.

I was hoping that he wouldn’t have to start preschool with his food allergy. Maybe we can shoot for Kindergarten.

Turks & Caicos: Part I just want to finish this already

2010-03-09T19:46:00.001-05:00

I lost track of exactly what I mentioned and what I may not have. I do know that I skipped the pools. There are a BUNCH of pools at the Beaches resort. Plus, a water park.

Water Park

Since we were last there, they have added some waterslides, a lazy river and a kids water area. The lazy river was nice. Relaxing. I did go on one of the slides and it was pretty fun. The kids loved the smaller slides and pirate ship water area. Sean did manage to whack his head on the concrete at the bottom of one slide the very first day we were there. They should really extend the cushy mats they have and anchor them to the ground somehow. They were sliding away from the slides.

Oh, and they have a surf simulator but we did not try it.

And I managed to get exactly zero pictures of the water park.

Pools

If we were going to go to a pool, we hit either the French Village or the new Italian Village pool. Both were heated and both had a small kids pool. Every pool had a bar so that was never a concern. Because that, obviously, is a requirement.

***We did not receive any type of compensation at all for these wonderfully descriptive (ahem) reviews. However, if Sandals resorts would like to offer us a vacation we would not turn them away. :)

Wordless Wednesday - Love

2010-03-03T08:49:00.001-05:00

Happy Birthday to the Three Year Old

2010-02-28T16:02:00.001-05:00

Presents!!

Untitled from Dorene on Vimeo.

Happy Birthday Sean!

Wordless Wednesday – Fruity With An Umbrella In It

2010-02-24T09:21:00.000-05:00

Turks & Caicos: Part 4

2010-02-23T09:49:00.002-05:00

Sesame Friends
Beaches partners with Sesame Street so there are shows, parades and activities with the Sesame friends. Last time Meghan was still unsure of the giant Elmo and huge Cookie Monster walking around. This time, she was much more comfortable around them. In fact she cried when she didn’t get a huge one day.
We did not do any of the activities this time but they got plenty of Sesame time with the shows and the character walking around the resort.

Turks & Caicos: Part 3

2010-02-19T09:46:00.001-05:00

The Beach

Oh, the beach. If you’ve never been, imagine soft sand and crystal clear, calm water. Or, the opposite of the Jersey Shore. Yup, that’s it.

We love this beach. We can let the kids can play in the sand and run up and down to fill their water buckets without worrying about them getting sucked into the ocean by a monster wave. There were a few days where the water was a little wavy, possibly due to a storm further out. Those days the beach become much more narrow. We just headed to the pool when that happened.

The ocean was calm enough for the kids to use floaties and swim around with us. Plus you could just look down and see fish swimming by. They loved it!

Wordless Wednesday – It’s Cookie!

2010-02-17T12:07:00.001-05:00

Turks & Caicos: Part 2

2010-02-16T09:51:00.001-05:00

The food

This was my biggest worry. Not the food itself, I knew that it was good and there was plenty of it, but food for Sean. This was the first time he would be eating at a restaurant. Every meal at a restaurant. How would it work?

About a month before the trip I contacted the resort. The Executive Chef responded to my email and we sent a few messages back and forth. He described the process and asked what type of food Sean like to eat. I sent the details. He seemed to be pretty knowledgeable on the subject and asked the right questions (like, is he allergic to milk protein) so I felt a little better.

Once we arrived, I met with him again and he described how each meal would work. I was to fill out a form one meal in advance (lunch form at breakfast, dinner form at lunch, etc.) and hand it to the chef. We needed to know where we would be eating, at what time and request the food he wanted.

This process wasn’t difficult. There were a few complications. At least one time the restaurant didn’t get the form. Not all the hostesses were as helpful when returning the next meals form. For example, if we were currently in one village and our next meal was to be in a different one, they wouldn’t take the form. This only happened a few times. Overall, everyone was very helpful. The chefs would come out and meet us. Some started to recognize Sean as the week went on. Not every place was able to accommodate our food requests. No soy milk here, no dairy-free ice cream there, but nothing too bad. They stocked the fridge in the room with soy milk so if we couldn’t get some we could always go back and fill up his cup.

This was our third time at the resort but the first where Sean was eating prepared food. It was nice that they had a system and was probably less complicated than a vacation where you are dining at someplace completely different each meal. I will say that you do miss out on a bit of the experience of the resort. One thing I enjoyed on previous trips was not having to decided when or where we wanted to eat until that meal. Or being able to just pop into a place for a snack or some ice cream. Everything had to be preplanned. I suppose this is the reason I didn’t gain 10 lbs while there.

Even though Sean had food available to him at every meal, I think he survived the week on mostly fruit and french fries. Sometimes he would eat the chicken nuggets, other times he would not touch them. He is a picky eater anyway so this was not a big surprise. And sometimes he was just way to tired to even think about eating.

Lunch at Cricketer’s

Turks & Caicos: Part 1 of ?

2010-02-11T09:03:00.001-05:00

I am going to try to do my best to give a recap of our trip. But, considering I have trouble remembering what I ate a day later, this will not be easy.

We will call this Part 1 of I-have-no-idea-how-long-this-will-take.

Destination: Beaches Turks & Caicos. Woo Hoo!

This was our third visit there. We absolutely LOVE it. However, this was the first time we would be completely dependent on them for Sean’s meals. My biggest worry was how difficult it would be to get him milk-free food.

It was the last Saturday of January. We were all packed up and headed to the airport. We had 3 bags to check, which I thought was reasonable for 2 adults, 2 kids, and a week’s worth of diapers and swim diapers. But it was a very tight fit. Diapers were squeezed everywhere. I was worried they would want to do a security check on our bags. I had this vision of a TSA official opening a bag and diapers flying everywhere like one of those snakes in a can things.

The plane ride could have been much worse than it was considering (1) the kids stayed awake the whole time even with a healthy dose of Benadryl, (2) there was no soy milk to be found past security, (3) Sean refused to drink the powdered soy milk and (4) our DVD player refused to work.

We arrived to wonderfully warm, sunny weather. We were placed on the first available shuttle and headed to the resort.

There was a little snag. Once there, the resort delivers your bags right to your room. Nice, if they tag it correctly. Only 2 of our three suitcases were waiting for us. The one containing Sean and my clothes had gone missing. No immediate problem for Sean because diapers were spread around in everything and I had his swim suit in the carry on bag. But I had to walk around the resort in my long pants for awhile. Very. Hot. But, I won’t complain too much because It was freezing back home. The bag finally arrived after 2 phone calls and a trip to the office. Now we were all ready for the vacation to begin.

Wordless Wednesday – Tropical Sunset

2010-02-10T08:15:00.000-05:00

I have an excuse

2010-02-09T17:39:00.001-05:00

I know posting has been, um, lacking recently. But, it’s not because I forgot about this blog. It’s because I was here:

I’ll post details as soon as I finish unpacking.

I’ve been busy

2010-01-28T19:21:00.001-05:00

I’m not entirely sure what I’ve been busy doing, but it seems like I have not had time to post. So, I’m just going to create a list of what has been going on in an attempt to figure out where the last month went.

We had Christmas, again, when my family came to visit. There are still things in boxes that need assembly and/or batteries.
Tree and decorations were (finally) put away.
Swim lessons started back up. I thought we turned the corner with Meghan. But, last week proved that we have not.
Sean is now registered for preschool next year. (Eek!)
One week in there Ryan was travelling so that week was a bit nuts.
I read all 4 Twilight books.

Ok. I think that last one did me in. I barely have time to read few chapters and yet somehow squeezed in four entire books. Now I understand why I haven’t been online as much.

-------------------------

I feel like some sort of update is necessary. Hmm. Okay. Sean.

Sean rarely goes to sleep when we put him to bed. He used to just destroy his room until he dropped from exhaustion. Lately, he has added something to his bedtime routine. He changes his clothes.

Sometimes he wakes up like this:

Not bad, right? He can do much worse that mismatched jammies.

However, there are times we find him like this:

Diaper-less. Pants on arms.

That? Worse.

Surprisingly we have had no accidents. Yet.

Wordless Wednesday – Soon….

2010-01-20T10:25:00.001-05:00

The A-Team Movie

2010-01-11T13:23:00.001-05:00

Apparently there are no good original ideas left.

I’m not sure about an A-Team without Mister T but I’m willing to give this one a shot.

First post of 2010

2010-01-05T11:15:00.001-05:00

Like the title? I’m not even sure what the topic of this post is so that seemed to fit.

Last year ended with a 3 hour visit from the cable repairman and then me watching the ball drop while everyone else was asleep.

This year started with fireworks, which woke up Sean. And everything the cable guy fixed broke again within 24 hours of his visit. Awesome.

Our internet connection is back. Thankfully. I’ve never been so happy to have an iPhone. We were losing both the internet and phone at times. So the iPhone was my connection to the outside world.

Ryan is in Aix en Provence for work this week. Whenever he is gone I hear every creak and squeak at night. Our house can be noisy. I cannot fall asleep before midnight. At least Sean slept until 8AM today.

I’m so ready for vacation. Less than a month away. It seemed so much closer now that I’ve been exchanging emails with the chef about Sean’s food restrictions. This will be the first time he will be eating something prepared by a restaurant. For an entire week no less. They seem to be knowledgeable enough to ask me all the right questions so I’m feeling better about it. I told them as long as they can make chicken nuggets without and milk protein in them we should be all set.

Sorry about the lack of posts recently. My laptop hard drive got fried again last month*. And a lot of the stuff I thought was getting backed up actually wasn’t getting backed up. Apparently the default settings for my backup software do not include copying video or music files. WTH? Which means I lost almost a years worth of original video footage. To say I was upset is an understatement. I am so glad I have this blog and the internet because I was at least able to grab the videos I posted online. Resolution? Back up everything. Twice.

Oh, and Happy New Year!!!!

*This happened the same time we lost the internet connection for an entire weekend. Coincidence?

Day after Christmas: Disney On Ice

2009-12-30T11:52:00.000-05:00

Usually, the day after Christmas is spent in our pjs eating leftovers surrounded by the "Christmas Mess".

We did that for the most part. Only, this year, we actually got dressed and left the house at 5:30PM. Why would we do such a thing? Well, thanks to In the Trenches of Mommyhood, we had free tickets!

This was our second (I think) time watching a Disney On Ice show. Both kids loved it. Sean got a bit antsy during the second half but, considering it was past bedtime at that point, he was well behaved.

I took some pictures during the first half but decided to put the camera away and just enjoy the second half. Here are some of the shots I captured.

View Full Album

If you have a chance to see the show I would definitely recommend going.

Things heard at our house during Christmas

2009-12-29T09:00:00.001-05:00

Sean: Look what I found!!

Meghan: I think this box is shaped like a Zhu Zhu pet!

Sean: Mommy, I can have more presents?

Meghan: Let me find the box shaped like the rolling ball.

Sean: I'm taking off my pants.

Meghan: ACK! The Zhu Zhu pet is stuck in my hair!

Meghan: This is the best Christmas EVER!

The day after Christmas.....

Meghan: Oh no! I forgot and did something I was not supposed to do! (as Zhu Zhu pet is hanging out of her head)

Meghan: This is the boring-est day EVER!

Merry Christmas!! Please hold.

2009-12-25T15:26:00.000-05:00

We will resume our regularly scheduled blog after I recover from opening those stupid packages toys. Until then, here is a festive song for your enjoyment.

Wiggle

2009-12-21T15:51:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to catch Sean's wiggling on video. He always stops and just stares at the camera. I was finally able to catch a little wiggle the other day.

Wiggle from Dorene on Vimeo.

I'm gonna keep trying for the ultimate wiggle video. Because, seriously, those moves belong on camera.

Wordless Wednesday - Visit With Santa

2009-12-16T08:38:00.001-05:00

Happy Holidays!!

2009-12-15T15:31:00.001-05:00

If you would like to share your card, you can join the "Great Bloggy Holiday Card Exchange" by clicking the button below.

Ok. This? Made me laugh.

2009-12-04T08:25:00.001-05:00

Happy Crazy Shopping Day

2009-11-27T07:18:00.001-05:00

I detest crowds. I never leave the house to go shopping on Black Friday. I will, however, shop online. Usually while still in my pjs. Really, is there any better way?

One of the places I’ll always check out is Amazon. Check it out for yourselves.

Note: If you wish to visit Amazon through the link above and spend hundreds of dollars that would be fine by me as I would get maybe a whole dollar for referring you. If you’d rather just go straight to the site, I won’t hold it against you.

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T08:41:00.000-05:00

This year we will be eating two Thanksgiving dinners. Next week I will be visiting the gym as many times as possible. We will be on the beach in two months. Woo Hoo!