Thursday, April 29, 2010

The Tooth Extraction Nightmare

Hannah's two front teeth have been loose for about a year. They were pretty darn loose, but they had been pushed so far forward by the new teeth that the roots in front were wedged into the jawbone. Try as we might, we couldn't get those teeth out! So, we went to the dentist, and Hannah was VERY nervous about the whole thing.

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Here you can see the snaggle teeth, but you can't see how far forward they've been pushed.

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Yikes!! Teeth shouldn't stick out at that angle!

I had planned on taking a picture while we were at the dentist office, but I was too busy trying to pin Hannah down! She is one STRONG kid... I guess she gets that wirey strength from her dad. She was bribed and talked to and bribed some more, but Hannah was as uncooperative as I've EVER seen her. After her gums were numbed (no shots, just swabbed w/ benzocain) the dentist had the fabulous idea to have Hannah push on her own teeth. They cracked and make horrible noises... She wouldn't let the dentist use his "grabbers", so he ended up yanking them out by hand. It was pretty horrible, but the dentist and his assistant were very nice.

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Here is the cupcake that Hannah was bribed with by the dental assistant... It's so pretty!

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Here are the extracted teeth.

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Here's Hannah's new smile :)

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Leah Sings

I'm sure her nursery teachers will be proud!

Here is Leah's rendition of "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam"


Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Montessori's latest trend

There are 2 boys at Montessori wearing "boots" on their hurt feet these days... Apparently, Hannah wanted to join the fad...

Somehow, she managed to hurt her foot yesterday. At bedtime it hurt so bad that she couldn't sleep. After some Motrin and special Mommy time (reading in bed), Hannah was able to fall asleep. However, in the morning it was still hurting her, so we took her to the orthopedic urgent care for x-rays. The official diagnosis is "strained metatarsals" (glad I have some anatomy background!!), and she'll be wearing this cute 'shoe' for a few days.

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Friday, April 16, 2010

Happy Birthday Zeus - School Play

I took some video of last night's dress rehearsal.



This is Hannah's part as Boreus, the North Wind...



Here is Elijah's dance. He's really the only one dancing one this half of the stage.

Friday, April 9, 2010

The Fox Fiasco

While we don't live in a heavily wooded area, and we DO live in an urban area, we seem to have quite a bit of wildlife around our house. We often have bunnies and saw a woodchuck/groundhog in our yard once. Last June I saw a fox in our backyard, and I had NEVER seen a fox before. I was so surprised!

Well, this year we'd heard some "cat-in-heat" noises outside that our neighbor informed us were fox-in-heat noises and that there was a fox den 2 blocks east of us. We started to see a fox in our yard occasionally and we thought she was really cute.

On Tuesday, I was preparing our backyard for playgroup when I noticed a dead duck by our back shed... Gross! I suspected the fox, of course. When the kids and I were headed out the door to take them to school, we saw the fox again. Then Hannah noticed fox BABIES with the big fox... I counted five babies, and they were piling out from under our shed!! They were SO cute, and we just couldn't believe it.

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After more dead animals in the yard, and not feeling safe about letting our kids in the backyard, we decided we would have to get rid of them.

Pete called animal control, but they only deal with domesticated animals. He was given some other phone numbers to try but came up with nothing. Two people suggested he talk to someone at the local nature preserve, and that ended up being the most helpful. It's illegal to disturb a fox den, so we would have to discourage the foxes from hanging out in our backyard. After a little online research I decided to sprinkle cayenne pepper around the shed. I was coughing and hacking, but guess who it didn't seem to bother?

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Yep, this I took this picture a few hours after peppering the yard...

Next on the list was to remove their shelter, so we decided to board and brick up the openings under the shed. Previously, we'd thought that there was a hole dug under the shed, but I was happy to find after further investigation that it was sitting on a concrete pad. We were very noisy and made sure the foxes weren't around, then Pete cleaned up two more dead ducks and a smaller bird (boy did they STINK!!). After that we started putting bricks around the shed to block the openings. We had four, 8 foot fence posts behind the shed and they were PERFECT for blocking three of the sides. We took the bricks from our landscaping, so we didn't have to buy anything except the cayenne pepper.

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Pete also took the opportunity to clear out the area between the shed and fence (something that should have been done when we bought the house... probably BEFORE we bought the house, but we were stupid.)

So far, no more foxes! I'm sure we'll see the mama fox around, but hopefully she'll keep her babies somewhere else and FEED them anywhere but our yard!

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Favorite T-shirt

Elijah had a t-shirt that I LOVED to see him wear ...

Elijah

but alas, he outgrew it. I couldn't bear to give it away with the other hand-me-downs. So, I made it into a PILLOW!

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He is quite pleased with his t-shirt pillow :)

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Easter

Hannah woke up at 5:50 READY for the Easter egg hunt, and she woke up Elijah... I said they could find 10 eggs each, but then they'd have to leave the rest until Leah woke up.

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Here they are starting out...

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... and there OFF! I couldn't have planned this picture if I tried.

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Elijah finds some eggs...

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Hannah counts her eggs to see if she really has 10 already (yep!)

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All the noise and commotion woke Leah up...

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So, she found her eggs...

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She looks more like a zombie here...

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We "unsealed" the stove


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...

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...

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so we could take our resurrection cookies out.

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YUM! Well, actually, Elijah didn't like them (they have nuts in them), and Leah wouldn't try hers... They are basically merange, and hollow inside.


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LOOT!!

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All cute and matchy-matchy!!

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Holy Saturday (Easter Eve!)

We had a BUSY night!!!

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First we dyed eggs...


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Isn't Hannah's bunny egg the cutest?



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Here's all of our dyed eggs


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Next we made Resurrection Cookies. Here the kids are breaking the pecans to tiny pieces to represent Jesus being beaten by the Romans

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Elijah is taking a sniff of vinegar, which is to remind us that when Jesus was on the cross he was given vinegar to drink.


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Eggs represent Jesus's life (we got a twin yolk!)


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The egg whites are super white and fluffy to remind us that Jesus was without sin


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Happy Easter!!!


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I forgot to get a picture of the cookies, but here is the oven sealed up with tape like Jesus's tomb was sealed... In the morning we'll open the oven (you turn off the oven after putting them in and they cook all night) and have hollow cookies.


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... and the ever important Easter basket (the plastic eggs are hidden already!!)