It's shaping up to be quite the week! Max started to feel better on Monday only to have Dusty fall ill. He's still not feeling the greatest today, hopefully he'll get better as the day progresses. Thankfully, I feel just fine!

We had Rory's 9 month checkup on Monday. Here's the stats:

She weighs 21lbs, putting her in the 91st percentile for her weight. She is 2' 5" long which has her in the 92nd percentile for her height and her head circumference is in the 97th percentile! Once again, she is one big girl, but she is very perportionate so we can't complain. Plus, I mean, look at how cute she is!

Don't you love her new clip? I finally ordered some no-slip hair clips to help hold those long front hairs out of her eyes. I think she likes it and has yet to touch it or try to take it out. I'm sure that will happen eventually but I choose to believe for now that she understands it is meant to stay in her hair and is leaving it alone. hahaha

Picking pictures can be so hard sometimes because I want to tell the story but I also want to show off some of my favorites. Hopefully you'll enjoy these as much as I do!

Before we left Mom decided to let Dusty wear her "special" tick shirt. It was rather comical!

It was fun to see "the old folk" just sitting back and enjoying everyone. They just sat there and soaked up all the fun and everyone just came to them. Look at how relaxed and happy they seem!

I was able to get a picture of my kids with their GG John. As you can tell it was towards the end and they both were filthy from all the fun at the tracks. I wouldn't have it any other way. This is exactly how my sisters, cousins, and I used to look when we'd leave from there too!

They bring a book with pictures and newspaper articles from the Wood Tick Races in the past. Well, there also were a few old pictures from the family reunion that had me and my cousins so I took pictures of them. (Yeah, I'm real sneaky.) Here's one of them - I'm on the right:

When we got home I had my mom take a family picture for me. I wanted to get a picture of all of us dirty and tired. We all had a great time and I love that I get to do this tradition with my own children!

Here's two cute pictures of Daddy with his babies. He really is a great father and these two think the world of him. Their faces lit up at the site of him after he had been gone for a week!

Poor Dusty, his reunion with his family and Father's Day was unfortunately just a small moment of joy in an otherwise busy, busy life.

Friday afternoon I got a call from daycare to let me know that Rory had a fever - as I was driving in to pick her up! I made a quick decision and decided that we would still be traveling to the lake house as I had no desire to sit at home with a sick baby and no help. Thankfully, Rory was really fine. She did have a fever and was slightly more crabby, but really, she was also pretty great given that she was stuck in the car for over 2 hours!

Saturday she was still a bit cranky but otherwise seemed to be on the mend so we decided to continue with our plans to go up to Ino, WI to participate in the Wood Tick Races. We had a blast, the kids had a lot of fun, Max had WAY too much sugar between all the yummy treats that everyone would hand him if he got within ten feet of the food area, and everyone left dirty and tired!

Unfortunately, later that evening, Max got sick. We assumed he was just sick from all the sugar he had. (He seriously had a ton of treats and juice, which he is not used to.) But when he was still throwing up 6 hours later we figured he probably caught Rory's illness. When we got up with him at 2am, after the sheet/pillow case change and his 3rd wash down we crawled into bed and I snuggled up next to Dusty and said, "I think this is going to be the most appropriate time to tell you 'Happy Father's Day!'" We both giggled. I mean, why not just accept that his Father's Day is not going to be about you now? Thankfully, we gave him his gift - a dump trailer for his lawn tractor - on Saturday when it was just us and no grandparents.

Max was feeling better on Sunday. He was a ball of energy and running around for the most part but he still needed a good cuddle, extra sleep, and wouldn't eat much. Hopefully he'll be feeling better today. Daddy is home with him so I know he's in good hands!

Oh, and those crazy tick races? I'll post pictures later. I still have to sort them out to pick out some of my favorites. But here is Rory's 9 month picture to tide you over until then. We go in for her checkup today, I can't wait to see how big she is now!

All about our little Boogers. No, not about the body fluid, about Rory.

I don't believe I've ever mentioned this, while Lorelei's nickname is Rory to most people, in our household she is called Boogers. The thing is she has always, and I mean ALWAYS, had a runny nose. The poor thing got sick within a week of being born, as most of you know of our hospital stay at 3 weeks old, and she just has not learned how to fight all the viruses yet. It also doesn't help that she has an older brother that insists on being all over her and passing on his bugs too. So Dusty started calling her "Boogers" and it has just sort of stuck. We still refer to her as Rory and Lorelei, but Boogers is yet another name added to that list.

Rory has sparked Max's interest a lot more lately. Max has always been aware of Rory, but he has taken an interest in playing with her now. While this is great, what I find so incredibly amazing is how tough she is around him! Max will push his truck right into her or whack her upside the head with his styrofoam sword and she will laugh and laugh and laugh.

I don't know if he has taken on this interest just because, or if it is because Rory is finally able to move around and getting in his way he can't ignore her? That girl is rolling all over the place! Her favorite thing to do right now is to get up on her knees and then attempt to start moving. She's good at pushing herself forward and toppling over, but she hasn't figured out the whole complicated movement that is crawling. So eventually she gives up for a short amount of time, finds a spot to roll to, plays with whatever she wanted to roll to and then gets back up on her knees to start the whole process over. Once she does figure out crawling Max better watch out, because the majority of the time she is moving it is to get closer to him. I have a feeling he isn't going to appreciate his shadow as much as he does now.

This morning when we dropped Rory off in her room he started to flail his arms at Rory. The teacher got concerned and told Max not to hit. Rory on the other hand just started laughing - hard - as if this was an amazing new game. That of course meant Max had to keep it up, so I encouraged him to "tickle" her as it stopped him from swinging his arms at her. The teacher and I just laughed and joked that pretty soon little Miss Lorelei was not going to let Max get away with anything. That girl, she is going to be one tough cookie! It will help me relax more in a few years when she starts dating - well maybe it will.

Don't let their cute little faces fool you, these two are out to get me.

I swear their goal is to make sure Mama does not get one single stinking night of consecutive sleep while Daddy is gone! Sunday night we got home late and the naps that the kids got were really subpar since we were at the zoo. Max slept fine but Rory made noises all night long. (She does this when she is under slept so I wasn't too surprised.) What did surprise me was that she was up before 5am on Monday morning!

OK, one bad night. Monday night Rory develops a cough around 9pm and I go in there to see that her coughing has caused her to spit-up - and there are food chunks too! So by the time I get her cleaned up and changed, her bed cleaned up and place her back into bed it's already 10pm. Then I sit up by her room to make sure that she isn't sick and going to throw up (she didn't) and finally crawl into bed a little before 11pm only to have Rory up AGAIN before 5am. What's up with that?!

So yesterday I got this brilliant idea:

If you can't figure that out, I have taped two diaper boxes to Rory's windows. We already have blackout blinds in all the bedrooms but we don't have curtains to cover the side cracks and I have a feeling with the sun rising so early right now she is waking up to that. (I have to sleep with an eye mask so I'm pretty sure she gets this issue from me.) So I figure this should take care of Rory and I'll get to sleep until 6am. Nope, wrong again. A little after midnight I wake up to Max crying.

I go into his bedroom but instead of him reaching out to me, he is just laying there crying. So I move closer thinking he'll see me and then jump up to be held. I get right up to the crib and he continues to lay there and cry. Then it dawns on me, Max is sleep crying! (He definitely gets this issue from his dad!) I start to stroke his back but he whines a "no" at me and swats at my hand. So I stand there looking down at him in the crib all confused; I'm not going to be able to go to sleep with him crying! I make a second attempt and start to stroke his head around his ear. This works! He slowly stops crying and starts snoring. So once again I crawl back into bed and thankfully, wake up on my own a little before 6am. (The cardboard has worked!)

Now... what will tonight bring?

Please, oh please tell me that I don't have a biter and that this is just Max's coping mechanism while Daddy is out of town! He bit two kids and was stopped from biting on two other occasions yesterday. He even attempted to bite his teacher when she stopped him one of the times! Oh my little monster.

I'm hoping that once we are with Daddy again he will stop, but I know I am grasping at threads here. I'm trying to stay with the positive parenting at this time and praising him often when he is doing good things and then talking with him when we have some quiet time and explaining that we don't hurt our friends by biting or hitting them. We tell them "I'm mad" instead. Yeah, I know, sounds really lame-o but what can I do when he isn't acting out on me all that much right now? I'm not going to make a situation occur.

Naturally I've been researching and I even have a book on its way from the library to see if it will help. I hate that there really is no good advice. I've heard and read just about everything that is suggested and nothing is guaranteed to work. So while making him bite an onion or even flat out biting Max are some of the extremes, I don't want to go that route if it isn't guaranteed to work. I guess I'll stick with this method for now and hope it passes quickly. (Like Daddy gets home and he is instantly cured!)