Mommy you are beautiful for me...

We were cleaning Genni's toys up tonight and all of a sudden Genni says "Mommy you are beautiful for me" I said - Thank you Genni - we picked up a few more toys and she says again "Mommy you are beautiful" - out of the mouths of babes -

Snow Days

I shouldn't be happy for this snow day - I have SOOOO much work to do for Solo Fest and now I have to squeeze all of my midterms into 2 days instead of 3 - but it so nice to sleep in and play with Genni all day. I did finally find my string judge so that takes a little stress off, but there is so much paper work and logisitical stuff left to do. One of the directors emailed me saying how nice it must be to have the day off to get work done for the festival (!?!) Obviously a boy - how on earth am I supposed to get anything done with a 2-year old and two dogs (one a puppy that needs constant supervision or else he chews eveything in sight)! I'm luckily if I can have 30 second of uninteruppted time - in fact since I started this post - I had tochase the dog away from Genni's train set, take her to sit on the potty, and kiss a boo boo. And it's only one stinkin paragraph.

On the other hand, the things my daughter says crack me up! If she just wouldn't repeat them over and over and over and over - by about the 10th time it's no longer funny. I think she must drive Laurelyn crazy during the day, she just neer stops talking. Even if nothing is happening - she is thinking about something and talking about it. When I got her to sleep for her nap this afternoon I just watched her sleep for a few minutes - so this is what my daughter looks like when she's still....

Eric just came into the room complaining about trying to get something done with Genni in the room - I think it was a hint for me to help - but seriously he never gets the hint so I'm going to sit here and finish and enjoy the fact that she's leaving me alone for minute. When he complains I'll just remind him how I was trying to email my string judge half an hour ago and he sat on the couch while I asked her to leave me for just a minute so I could finish. I love you hunny! Beside her comments are so much funnier when I sit here and listen to them.

Well snow days are fun - but it's back to work tomorrow - work - play rehearsal - choir - home - get ready for the crazy weekend. Love these stolen days....

The Weekend

Hhhhh, it's Monday morning and the weekend is over - how sad. It was a nice weekend, Eric judged the 6th grade solo festival on Saturday and I had students in it, but we were all done by noon and had the rest of the day to ourselves. Sunday was church and stuff, and then we had some of the musical staff over for a work session and dinner, it was nice to visit with them and we got a lot of work done. Now we delve into another full 5 day week of 10-13 hour days - ending with Saturday and the solo festival that I run with like 14 schools and judges and lots of kids and logisitcal nightmares - and then the Chuck Mangione concert Saturday night - Sunday is church and the Superbowl - and then we do it again. There is a winter storm watch for Tuesday night into Wednesday afternoon though - I could use a 2-hour delay to catch up on sleep:).

So more news in the milk saga - I actually thought of doing a post yesterday and calling it the milk saga:). Well Saturday morning Genni was with Grandma, who is not quite used to thinking so hard about all the food she eats (don't worry Grandma:)) and she had a hershey's kiss - not sure how much one piece of chocolate effects this milk protien allergy thing. She was up at 3:00 that night, well morning I guess. Then on Sunday her dark circles where back - I'm not sure what from. We ate at the church luncheon (I wasn't going to cause I didn't know what she'd be able to eat, but they convinced me, I bowed to peer pressure!) but she just had a hotdog and jello with fruit and tomatoes. I don't think she even ate the bun. Not sure what happened, but she's back to normal now. Eric wants to take her to the dr, but I know what they will say - we need to start writing down everything she eats etc. and they'll ask if we started using any new detergent, cleaners, etc. So I'll just start keeping better track I guess. I hate to think of my child as a science experiment, but that's what it feels like sometimes. Oh well, at least it's only milk so far and not milk and wheat like Genni's friend Graham - that has to be super hard. We'll figure it all out eventually:).

More Sleep:) - and more things to notice!

Genni slept till 4:30 this morning! 6 hours of sleep in a row again! Sorry, but that is very exciting for me:). My theory is that after the first dramatic change in milk intake she slept well because of the dramatic change, and now that it's working itself out of her body we'll have more gradual results. This is totally non-scientific and could be totally wrong - but what's the harm in positive thinking?

Also - I turned to Eric last night and said, is it me or is Genni using much longer sentences? Last night in the car and when we were talking about her day, instead of the "good" and other one word answers we actually carried on some conversations in which I asked, she answered with a story, I commented, and then she responded to my comment. I mean I saw her all day Monday, it's only been a few days since I spent a lot of concentrated time with her, but I can't believe the improvement. Sometimes I wonder - is it because I wasn't paying attention and I just noticed? or do they really just all of a sudden change so dramatically? This being my first child I have no idea - but it's quite exciting nonetheless. She's also so happy and perky sometimes that she just makes me laugh - you know how in church they talk about being like children - well I can see what childlike excitment is when I'm with my daughter, she seems to have no limit. That is when she's not throwing a temper-tantrum:).

It's Friday - the whole evening with my family!

Growing Up and Milk

My Genni is surely growing up - the other day she said "I'm not a young lady I'm Genni Griffin!" and this morning she was talking about us all going downstairs "and daddy and mommy and me!" I don't recall her saying me much before - mostly she refers to herself as Genni.

So we think Genni is allergic to milk - I had eliminated apple juice from her diet for a while cause she was just having so much of it and so she started drinking a lot more milk. Then we noticed her getting dark circles under her eyes and her eczema started spreading to her face (both signs of a milk allergy - not lactose, the milk protiens). So I stopped giving her milk for a day and her face showed immediate improvement. Now last night she didn't sleep throught the night, but the night before she slept from 9 to 6:30 and I had to wake her up! I'm being hopeful (and I did find some research agreeing with me) that some of her waking during the night was due to the milk allergy too. I called the pediatrician and they agreed with me that the dark circles and worsening eczema was probably milk and that I should take it off her diet for at least 3 weeks - now they suggested slowly reintroducing it after that - but that doesn't really make any sense to me. If she's allergic to it she's not going to magically get better in 3 weeks. Also they said maybe it was not really the milk so much as the amount of milk increasing - but I think it's more likely that she has always been allergic and the symptoms weren't severe enough for us to notice before. If her eczema clears up and she starts sleeping through the night then I'm not reintroducing it for quite a while. Now this is of course going to make life more interesting. Luckily she loves the rice milk and doesn't seem to care about not having the other stuff, it's cooking that'll be the problem. Eric and I are big fans of cheesy creamy stuff - so that means we have to think a lot more seriously about what we eat and whether we can adapt part of it for her to eat or not. She doesn't really know there are things she can't eat for awhile yet. It just occured to me that she is going to be extremely upset if she can't eat chocolate! I better go look for a substitute for that!

Anyway - it's still a busy week with the musical and all, but since we had Monday off it's not so bad. We start on the stage tonight blocking Act 1 scene 1 - so I'm excited to see it all come together:)

See I did it:)

I'm writing again! Yeah! Eric and I are both super tired - two long days and today is the third. Tonight we have a meeting with musical parents at 5:30, I have rehearsal 6-8:30 and Eric has a band parents meeting - so Genni will be at school with us, floating back and forth and we will be eating dinner at West too. Fun.

Tomorrow will be a bit easier as I get to go home at 5:30, we decided to have choir Sunday morning instead due to Cathy having a dinner and the extreme cold. I'm totally Ok with having at least part of an evening at home.

I was reading some of my entries from last month where I talked about what Genni was saying and it just put into perspective how much she has changed! She talks non-stop now, it's actually quite unnerving in the morning when I'm not yet awake and trying to think. I can't believe how big she is getting! Pretty soon we'll have to pay a lot more attention to what we talk about when she is listening. Not that we say anything bad, but we still tend to talk about her instead of to her sometimes when I'm telling him a story or discussing the schedule for the next day. Pretty soon she'll start getting offended by that if I know my daughter. Wow life flies by. Time for me to fly to the next thing!

Yeah for a long weekend coming!

Catching up again....

OK, I promise this is the last lapse in blogging - now that I'm back into the routine I should be better at this again:).

Anyway, since the last time I wrote a few things have happened:

Trip to CT to see my Grandma - Genni is so great with her Great Grandmas. While some kids would be shy and afraid of someone they don't see too often, Genni goes right up to both of her Great Grandmas and gives them hugs and kisses and talks to them. It's so cute, and both of them love it so much when she is around. We had a great although short visit with my Grandmother in CT - presents, dinner, hotel, breakfast, home again. Eric fixed a few more things around her house so he is of course her favorite grandson-in-law. She was telling us this story about how she fell off a stool she was standing on (the stool was INSIDE the bathtub) and fell across the room and broke all this glass (she's 83!) and then just got up and cleaned it up and never went to the dr. I can't believe how resilient she is! On the way home from dinner she took us by the hospital cause she wanted to show Eric where she eats dinner most nights. My smart-aleck of a husband says "so this is right around the corner from your house - maybe you should come here and get checked out next time you fall off a stool!"

On the way home from CT we stopped to see Eric's Grandma - unfortunately she's been in the hospital and is now in a nursing home permenantly. Things aren't looking too hopeful, but she's 93 so the family is as prepared as anyone can be for the inevitable. Prayers all around...

So the rest of our vacation consisted of finishing the moulding in the bathroom downstairs (it looks awesome!) and visiting with Tim, Sandi and Emily for the weekend. It was nice for the girls to be able to play together again:)

Well now we are on to January - play rehearsal has started again so our days don't really end till 8:30 at night most days. It was nice to have a snow day on the 7th so I could see a little more of Genni and the weekend was nice and relaxing too. We switched the furniture around in the living room for something new, so that has been fun too.

Genni started going to Laurelyn during the day now instead of Sara, so my whole morning routine is different. Eric takes her to Laurelyn's so I have some extra time in the morning and actually get to make coffee and fix breakfast before I leave. Having the car to myself on the way too and from school is different too. I like it, but it took me all week last week to get into the new routine. Unfortunately with the musical going on I'm spending a lot more on gas going to Corning to get Genni while Eric does tech and then back to Corning for rehearsal - but it's only for like another 8 weeks anyway. Genni loves going to see Graham every morning - he's still the first person she says good night to every night - Laurelyn has moved into #2, with Uncle Mike a close #3. Then it's usually Grandma and Grandpa, and if she remembers maybe mommy and daddy. She's been singing a lot lately, and it's so stinkin cute! Sometimes she does it at night once I put her to bed and I don't have the heart to yell to her to go to bed. It's so funny the words she leaves out of the song. "Jingle bells..all da way..oh what fun etc.". I love it. She's catching on to the "May I have...please" unfortunately when she is asking to do something that means she says "May I have get down please?" - how do I explain the difference to her? Hmmm.

Anyway - Monday through Thursday we go go go now, and Friday - Sunday we try to relax as much as possible. Luckily we have Monday off next week and February break isn't too far away either. The months keep flying by.....I promise to write tomorrow!