One of the bad things about having everyone visit for Christmas was that Izzy got all used to people spoiling her.  Now that everyone has left, we’re trying to get her back into the habit of doing what we tell her to and sleeping in her room and in her bed.  When the grandparents were here, she’d pretty much do whatever she wanted and sleep wherever she wanted.  She takes after her mommy, so she doesn’t like it when I try to make her do something she doesn’t want to do.

This is how happy she was with me this evening as I made her go to her own room to sleep.

We went to visit my parents house today, to see my side of the family.  The visit was kind of weird, since my cousin just died a couple of weeks ago, but it was good to see everyone and we all had fun.  My aunt and I are the family photographers, and we had a good time chasing the kids around and taking pictures.  I hope she didn't take any pictures of me.

Here’s all of my parents grandkids, in one place.  It’s hard to get them to stand still and smile at the same time, and I’m convinced that Izzy won’t smile in pictures just to be difficult; she’s usually the smiley-est kid you’ve ever seen.

The week of Christmas is almost over; everyone’s leaving tomorrow.  It was a fun week, but I’ll be glad to get the house back in order and the kids back on schedule.  All of the kids are convinced that they can stay up late every night now.

Everyone had a great time on Christmas day, but I was so exhausted that I didn’t get a chance to update.  Today we’re going to my parents house to see the other side of the family, and leave Eric there with his cousin Will.  It will be lots of fun, and I hope to get a lot of pictures.  I’ll have an update tonight!  I hope all of my spaces friends and family had a great Christmas too.

There was a great haul of presents.  I got a tripod for my camera that I hope to try out today sometime.

(Obligatory kid picture:  Eric with his Santa Yoda.  I told him that I was probably going to have to appropriate it for my office, and he thinks that’s unfair.  POOR ERIC!)

(Note the beautiful decoration on the wall behind Eric.  Izzy had a GREAT time with a pencil.  Ugh!!!)

Well, everyone is finally here, and we’re ready for Santa to visit.  I’m in the attic trying to get Izzy to go to sleep, so then I can go back downstairs and finish assembling what needs to be assembled, etc.  The only notable pictures I took today were of Izzy and Soapy sitting together in their Christmas dresses.  There’s nothing cuter than little girls wearing Christmas dresses.

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas, and I hope to hear from everyone soon.

Just so you don’t think I’m neglecting the other kids, here’s how Eric and Alex acted all day:  you’ll understand why most of my pictures are of the cuter, more posable kids.

And this is the expression of disgust that Jake gets on his face when he feels as if you’ve disappointed him.

Today was a little bit more eventful than yesterday.  I took Izzy to the doctor, because she  was up a good bit last night wanting water and generally acting pitiful, and she sounded very congested.  Since Jake already is taking antibiotics for pneumonia, Jenny and I figured we should take her in.  The doctor looked at her, listened to her breathing and agreed, so now she’s taking amoxicillin too.  I was thinking we should cut out the middle man and just get a big vat of it and put it in the garage to save time.

After the doctor, Izzy didn’t feel very good, so she sat on my lap all afternoon and slept.  That was pretty fun, because she usually moves too fast to want to sit with me.  She seems to have perked up a little bit, and even felt good enough to ham it up for me after baths.  Grandma is here, and Jenny’s brother in law, niece and a few other people are all showing up tomorrow.  It will be tons of fun.

Can’t you tell that she has pneumonia?  She looks really sick, doesn’t she?

Today was kind of an intermission (for me anyway).  Jenny and her sister and her mom and dad left with all the kids at about 9 this morning and didn’t come home until almost 3:30.  It was nice to be alone for a while, I need my alone time to make sure I don’t go crazy.  After they got home, we didn’t do much:  just played around, ate, and then went to bed.  There are reinforcements coming starting tomorrow, so the sleeping arrangements have changed:  now I have to sleep in the attic with Izzy.  The only problem with that is there’s no DOOR to the attic, so Izzy doesn’t think she has to stay up there.  So I’m up here too, making sure she doesn’t escape.  When we first came up here around 8:00, I figured she’d go down pretty quick, but she talked literally NON STOP until 9:00, at which point I broke down and put “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” on the Xbox for her to watch (and STOP TALKING).

This is Isabel NOT sleeping.

We’ve gotten through two days of Christmas with no one getting mad at me, so that counts as a victory. (Well, the kids have been mad at me at various points during the day, but I don't count that, since I’m doing my job).  My main job today was watching over Jake and Isabel while Jenny and her mom and sisters cooked.  It was cool, because I got to sample all the baked goods.  I took them outside for a while, because it stopped raining and was nice.  Jake’s still kind of sick though, so we didn’t stay out long.  The rest of the day, we just hung out.

Isabel (pictured above as she departed from the spaceship that dropped her off on this planet) played with some body glitter that someone gave her as a present last year, and ended up eating it.  We figured it was non-toxic, since it was kid’s play makeup, but I decided to look up the company’s website to make sure.  The label on the container was “Glamour Girls”, so I used my favorite search engine to look for that and hit the first link without looking at it too hard.  It was DEFINETLY the wrong place to go, and my sister in law and I were both sure we were at the wrong place instantly.

Here’s Jake looking all innocent.  Even with “ammonia”, he’s on the go non-stop.  Tomorrow, I’m gong to make an effort to get Eric and Alex in some pictures, but they spent all day either out playing with their friends, or in the attic avoiding family time playing video games.

I took Jake and Izzy out this morning for a walk, because it quit raining and they were kind of bouncing off the walls, and we went around the block to the big tree in our neighborhood.  Jake’s pneumonia isn't all gone though, so he was pretty tired out by the time we were done, so we aren't taking him out for a while.  On our way home, I saw some hawks and took some pictures.  They look pretty cool, even though there isn't a whole lot of detail.  I put them up on flickr with a couple of other nature pictures.

EDIT:  I am betting that my friend Beth is right, and these ARE turkey vultures, but that’s not NEARLY as nice as calling them “Hawks”, so I’m going to remain ignorant!

(sorry I’m posting a lot, I’m trying to keep Jake occupied in the attic where the computer is until some other people wake up). 

One of the things I didn’t know about pre-teenage boys is that they don’t really have hygiene mastered yet.   Sometimes, they don’t like to do it, other times, they don’t really know how to do it.  My kids are no exception.  Eric, 10, thinks that taking a shower will kill him, and until very recently (i.e. until some of his friends told him his teeth were brown) didn’t like to brush his teeth either.   Alex, on the other hand, just doesn’t know what to do when he takes a shower.  We always gave them baths until they were about 5 or so, and then we started letting them do it themselves.  At some point, they switch to showers, but we never, you know, gave them instructions on the mechanics of showering, other than to make them put the shower curtain inside the shower so they don’t flood the house.

The point of all that intro was that yesterday, Alex sat down next to Jenny and was kind of funky.  Like I said, Alex doesn't really mind taking a shower, when he starts smelling like a wet dog, we just tell him to go and take a shower.  So Jenny sent him to take a shower, and he came back in about 15 or 20 minutes and sat back next to her, and she smelled his hair (which was still wet) and said “You didn't wash your hair, did you?”  After much back and forth, it turns out that while Alex doesn’t really mind taking a shower, he just kind of turns the water on and stands there for ten minutes or so, and lets the force of the water erode the dirt from him.  Jenny decided that Alex needed a lesson how to wash.  At this point we discussed whose responsibility it was to teach him how to take a shower, we have “pink jobs” and “blue jobs” at our house, and whenever there’s an unpleasant task to be done, we argue on what color the job is:  she does pink, I do blue.  Stuff like choosing the colors of paint for the walls is a pink job, killing spiders and stuff is a blue job.  I lost the argument, but with the agreement that if Izzy ever needed a lesson how to take a shower, Jenny would do it AND Jenny would be in charge of explaining the whole female reproductive system to her too (which admittedly is about ten years in the future, but I didn’t want to take the chance of getting stuck with THAT job – I’m kind of hazy on that whole area anyway, so I don’t think I’d be able to explain too much).

So Alex and I went upstairs for a shower lesson in the grownup bathroom (the one in the master bedroom, that they usually aren't allowed to use – because it has a glass walled shower so I could see what he was doing without having to get wet).  He was aghast, but once I told him he could wear a bathing suit if he was embarrassed, he was fine with it (he’s kind of an exhibitionist though…Eric would probably literally rather die than take a shower with anyone watching…and I understand, so I can’t get too upset about it).  I gave him instructions on how to actually put the shampoo on his HEAD and rub it in EVERYWHERE, not just on the top of his head.  I also showed him about shampooing more than once, until he got his head nice and ‘foamy’, to make sure all the grease was out.  I was very detailed in explaining which parts of him to pay particular attention to with soap, and by the end of the lesson, he seemed to understand. 

(pic unrelated, this is Jake playing video games in the attic this morning instead of waking everyone in the house up, which was his original plan)

EDIT:

My blogfather Jim comments:

You just wait. Regardless of your desire or lack there of to be involved in the female reproductive conversation, you will be involved. Either directly or as a victim of a drive by. Mark my words, it will happen. When it does, i will be there to make fun of you just as you have with me the last three+ years. Oh how sweet with payback be.

What he doesn’t realize is that since he’s much more mature than me, so he can’t use my plan: if Izzy ever starts talking about the whole female thing with me, I'll stick my fingers in my ears, start singing the national anthem and run out of the room.  Like I do now when Jenny starts to say something about it.

Everyone has started to arrive, and the house is a zoo, as usual.  I’ve started putting pictures up on flickr.  Everyone’s making a huge deal over baby Sophie, she’s a doll.  I got to hold her for at least an hour this afternoon, and she really liked it, I think.  The kids were all really excited, and they probably wont calm down until after Santa comes.  It may be a long week…

Today is the day that Christmas officially starts:  Jenny’s sister, her sister’s baby, and her mom are all getting here from Florida around noon (the men and her niece are coming sometime later).  It’s going to be great, but having a house with four kids is kind of….umm….MESSY, and Jenny always wants to make a good impression on her mom, so we’ve all been cleaning a lot.  Jenny’s super-mom, so everything looks awesome, but she always wants it just a little bit better.  It’s not enough that she’s a great mom, a great wife, and a great employee (because she just got a big promotion YESTERDAY), she has to be a great housekeeper too. 

(And my mother in law has never said a single word about the house not being clean, so I think this is a woman thing that men just don't understand.  I figure if you can see the floor, the house is clean enough)

This is the first trip that baby Sophie is making here too.  I can’t wait to see her, I love babies.  Jenny’s already told me “NO MORE BABIES”, so I’m not allowed to say “let’s have another”.  She always loves it when I say “My next wife might want to have some babies”.  That’s a joke that never gets old.

Yesterday was the last day of school for the kids too, so we spent a lot of time working on projects and things that were due yesterday.  Thursday night, we were all up a little bit late;  I was helping Alex with his life timeline project and Jenny was helping Eric with his history project.  They turned out pretty well, but I’m glad we’re done with projects for a while.

Today I went to Eric’s Christmas party at school (I took pneumonia boy, because Jenny was out trying to get the Christmas shopping done—I just didn't let him get near anyone) and everyone had a great time.  It’s so funny seeing a kid you’ve known literally his entire life interacting with people and trying to become his own person.  He’s still young enough that he ran across the room and gave me a hug when I got there.  Tomorrow is Alex’s party, Jenny is going to that one, I may accompany her unless I can think of some other stuff to do.

Since we were at Disney last week, we had to rush to get the tree put up on Monday.  In a break with tradition, I got colored lights for the tree, and I think everyone liked white better, so I went and got some white lights that Jenny will put on it soon.  I kind of like the white lights too.

I also did the decorations on the front of the house different.  Instead of the usual white lights, I got blue ones.  Jenny tried to convince me that blue icicle lights were Hanukah lights, and she had me about half convinced, so I called my friend Cheryl who was able to set me straight.  I think Cheryl thought I was an idiot, but it’s not like she’s never thought THAT before…she used to be my manager a few years ago.

(Notice that Alex is 1/2 in the picture:  I exposed the shot for 10 seconds, and had him run out of the shot half way through.  He loves to do that)

The family starts to arrive on Saturday, and everyone is really excited.  I’m not sure where everyone is going to SLEEP, but since it’s my house, I am sure that I’ll get a bed somewhere.

Merry Christmas!

The day before yesterday, Jake started complaining that he didn’t feel well.  He’s not really the hypochondriac in the family, but I kind of ignored it and told him to suck it up, which he did, and he seemed to be fine.  Then yesterday he had a fever and a cough, but it wasn't all that bad, I just kept him home from school and he had a good time playing video games all day.  This morning, he didn’t have a fever and he seemed pretty normal; he was bouncing off the walls like usual, but he wasn’t bouncing that high.  He was still coughing though, so I gave him some kids cough medicine and sent him to school. 

(Then, Jenny and I went out to breakfast together ALONE.  It was great to be able to talk to her without a bunch of kids around.) 

About 10:00 this morning though, the school called, because Jake had put his head down on his desk and not moved for a long time (probably as much as 5 minutes, which is about 4 minutes and 50 seconds more than he can usually be still.)  So I got him and took him to the doctor, so we could figure out what’s going on.  It turns out he has pneumonia.  So I sent my 5 year old to school with pneumonia this morning.  I suck as a daddy.

In my defense, he still doesn't have a fever, and this is what he looked like this evening when he went to bed (I’m letting him sleep in the attic, so I can be there if he has trouble breathing tonight)

I love Motrin.  I mean I LOVE it.  When one of the kids gets a fever, I dose them up with Motrin and it usually knocks the fever right out.  (So I can kick them out and send them to school!!! (Just Kidding.  Somewhat)).  However, I was talking to one of my good friends the other day who’s a nurse, and she says that she doesn’t treat her kid's fevers until it gets over about 101 or so (maybe she said 100, I wasn't listening too hard).  This allows the body to fight the illness ‘naturally’, or something like that.  What do you guys think?

The reason I ask is that Jake’s up here in the attic with me right now with a fever and a cough.  I think I’m going to give him some cough medicine, but skip the Motrin unless his fever gets up there too high.  Luckily, it’s pretty easy for me to do my job from home, since I have better computers here than I do at work :-D.

This is Jake when he’s NOT sick, being a weirdo.

Tonight is a full moon when the moon is at perigee (closest to earth), so it’s nice and big and bright.  I got a couple of shots early this morning, and then a few more tonight after Jake and Izzy went to bed.

I like the second one, but I overexposed the moon so that you can’t really see any detail.  I hate when I do that.

You can read all about it at National Geographic.

Izzy is kind of, well, I guess you could call it “Strong Willed”.  Sometimes, it can be kind of trying.  Anyway, the other day she informed everyone that she was having a ball.  (I believe it’s because she’s a princess).  She went over the guest list with us and told us who was coming and what they will do, etc.  So far, the activities planned are dancing and eating cake.

Later, we had to give her a bath, which she usually loves.  For some reason, she didn’t really like it that time, and she was kind of rude about it…refusing to get in and then refusing to get out, crying because she didn’t like her pajamas, etc.  So Jenny told her that she had better shape up, or she was going to bed immediately, instead of after we watched a Christmas show.  Because of that, Jenny was disinvited to the ball, and after I went and started helping out, I’m not allowed to come either.  While everyone else is at the ball, we have to go to a picnic, but we’re not allowed to have fun.

Do not thwart the princess.

The good thing about the kids getting older is that they’re turning into actual people now, with their own personalities.  Eric for example, is 10 1/2, and has his own unique sense of humor.  Lately, he’s taken to making up words for stuff.  His latest is “Ridonculous”, with the accent on the second syllable, which means the same thing as ridiculous only a little bit extra.  It’s my new favorite word.

Jenny thinks we’re weird when we call stuff “Ridonculous”, but that’s just because she doesn’t have a sense of humor that’s as finely developed as ours.

This is Eric, who would rather play on the computer than do just about anything.

We got home about 6:30 last night, and not a moment too soon.  The trip was fun, but everyone was a bit tired of sitting in the car all day.  I’m going through a bunch of the pictures now (all 1200 of them) and I’ll post a bunch later on.  I put some up on Flickr, and hopefully that page will get more pics as the day goes on.  Then, I saw that I had 1000 posts to go through on google reader to catch up with all of my friends and blogs, not to mention a folder full of email at work (but I’ll ignore that until Monday in the hopes that the list will magically get smaller).

Just like the last time we went to Disney, I was blown away at how expensive it was but also how great a job they do making sure everyone has a great experience.  Once I got past the fact that I was spending around $1000.00 a day to go to an amusement park, I started to enjoy it.  On Thursday night, we went to Mickey’s Christmas Party at the Magic Kingdom, and it was really great: the fireworks were fantastic, the parade was fun, and the kids had a great time.  After the parade, Jenny took the little kids back to the cabin and the big kids and I rode some rollercoasters and stuff until 11:00 PM.  It was kind of hard getting up at 6:00 AM the next day to drive home, but I managed to do the drive without killing anyone.

Jake was a real handful throughout the trip:  he’s interested in everything but sometimes would run off so fast I couldn't always find him, which led to some very forceful discussions.  I considered getting a leash for him, but I figured someone would report me to the police or something.

Today we’re all just going to rest and do laundry.  Since we were driving on my birthday, we’re going to celebrate tonight, so I’ll get my favorite dinner and a chance to take a nice long nap.  It’s amazing how much your birthday changes from the time you’re 5 to 25 to 43 – you go from having cake and ice cream to adult beverages and chatting up girls in a club to wanting to take a nap and read a book WITH NO KIDS AROUND.

Happy weekend everyone…I’ll get to all of your spaces today or tomorrow!