Hairy's Passing

We're sad to say that our pet tarantula, Hairy, passed away on October 25, 2012.  We knew that we probably didn't have long with Hairy.  A spider-reptile expert we know said that if you find a tarantula close to your house, then it is probably on its last leg.  He said it would last a few months to a year tops.

We buried Hairy in the backyard and had a service for him the following day.  Elina made a cross with popsicle sticks.  Eli made a pile of stones to mark his grave.  Evie put in some flowers.  Then we all talked about our fondest memories of Hairy.  I said that I remembered the days when he would climb on the top of the tank upside down and make scratching noises to scare me.  B said he remembered Hairy's first kill, a cricket we found in the backyard.  Elina just said that she loved Hairy and would miss him.  The other kids were just running around in the dark at this point.

Even though I was not Hairy's biggest fan, it's strange that he's not crawling around in his tank anymore.  We'll miss the little guy.  And as B said, "Petco will miss our business."

So long, Hairy!

So....Call Me Maybe?

Really, people?  This happens in 2nd grade?

Elina: Mommy, I have a really funny story!

Me: Tell me!

Elina: Today, L gave me a piece of paper with his phone number on it and he wrote "Call me" on it.  He told me to call him.

Me: What?  What did you say when he said that?

Elina: I said, "Why?" and he said, "So we can talk."  Isn't that funny?

Me: It's really funny!  Do you want to give him a call?

Elina: MOM!  I can't call him!  I don't even KNOW his mom.  That would be SO weird if I called and his mom said, "Who's this?"  I can't call someone if I don't know their mom!

I thought it was so cute that Elina doesn't want to talk to someone unless she knows his/her mom.  It reassures me that she'll try to stay safe...for now.  =)

Later that night we had Elina show B the note.  He wasn't laughing quite as loudly as A and I had.  He just said, "I'LL keep that note."  Hahaha.  It's just the beginning, B!  

Then Elina said, "Maybe I should call him.  Or he'll be waiting by the phone until, like, midnight!"  

After this conversation, B went and put away all the phones in the house.  (Not really, but in his mind he did.)

Now I'll have to keep an eye out for L.  I'm not even sure which boy he is in the class.  But I'm pretty sure Elina won't be calling him.  We'll have to get to know his mom first.  

2 Months Have Flown By!

What a difference 2 months makes!  As my sis A says, Eulee is no longer little and delicate-looking.  Here are Eulee's current stats--

Weight: 11 lbs 9 oz. (60th percentile)

Height: 22.5 in (50th percentile)

I don't think we've ever had a kid over the 50th percentile for anything!

There are 2 new things that Eulee does--

1. Smile: Those first smiles are definitely one of the best things in life.  She focuses on our faces and intentionally smiles at us. When she focuses on our faces she looks at us as if she really knows who we are.  Love it!

2. Coo: Usually, some cooing goes along with the smiles that we get.  Lately, the sounds have gotten longer...almost like sentences.  Hahaha!  

And of course, she's still a winner at crying.  Our typical routine goes like this: nurse, 15 minutes of happy/alert time, then cry and fuss, and finally get swaddled to take a nap.  This routine just goes on for the whole day until bedtime.

She's been treating us pretty well at night though.  She usually stretches to 5 hours or so.  And she's even done 7 hours...gasp!  (But, remember, we can't talk about this for too long...)

Eulee still doesn't like the car, but she doesn't cry as much as she used to when I'm driving.  There have actually been long periods of quiet time in the car recently.  I never thought that would happen!

Other than that, everything's been going well.  We're still tired, but we're getting there slowly....but she's certainly growing quickly!

Chalk It Up!

What time is it?

It's Art Time!!

I absolutely love this temporary tattoo we just got on Saturday from an art festival downtown called Chalk It Up.  Every year a local art museum called Artpace takes over a few blocks on Houston Street and invites local artists and art groups to draw with chalk on the sidewalks.  Each group/artist is given a certain amount of sidewalk space and groups usually have a theme for their murals.  The community is also encouraged to draw with chalk in a "freestyle" zone.  There are also food booths, live music, and art stations.

This year Elina's art school also had a piece of the sidewalk, so we decided to check this festival out.  Elina's school named their piece Peacock Plumage and each child got a peacock feather to decorate and color.  Elina was really focused on blending the colors together.  She was definitely hard at work.

The little ones got in on it, too!

The kids visited the art stations...

and then we walked around to see some of the murals.  They were all so amazing!

This one is definitely my favorite...

We will definitely be going to this festival from now on.  It was a very family-friendly and laidback scene to check out artwork.

Bug Trouble

As many of you know, my kids LOVE bugs.  They love to look for bugs, look at bugs, hold bugs, and keep bugs.  They've even formed their own Bug Club with our next door neighbor's kids up in the bonus room (I'll have to post about this cute club later).

Well, the kids had a jar with a bug in it.  Elina claimed it was an assassin bug.  Just from the name, I was already really uneasy about keeping this thing in our house.  But the Bug Club needs its specimens, right?  Today the kids took the assassin bug and some beetles outside because they wanted to take them out of their jars and hold them.  Ewww, but that's fine.  

Suddenly, I hear a very familiar scream coming from the backyard.  It was Eli (no surprise there)!  But this time was different.  He was holding his hands together and crying and screaming....but he was also screaming out, "Mommy!  Mommy!  Mommy!"  He's never yelled for me like that.  I ran to him and asked, "What happened?  Where does it hurt?"  I was almost afraid to see what he would show me when he opened up his hands.  Seriously, A and I thought he broke his wrist or a finger.  

Then I saw his middle fingers and they were red and getting a little swollen.  Elina mentioned that he was holding a bug.  I asked Eli if a bug bit him and he said, "Yes..I don't want to die!!"  This kid knows too much about venomous creatures!  So I ran him into the house and poured vinegar on his fingers (that's what a friend of mine did when someone got attacked by fire ants).  Eli was still crying in pain, so I knew the vinegar wasn't doing it.  I got him to tell me what happened and he said that he had the assassin bug in his hands and it bit him.  

I don't know a thing about assassin bugs, so I started Googling it.  Someone said that the assassin bug bite feels like a bee or wasp sting and that Clorox bleach would neutralize it.  My next door neighbor (who is also our pediatrician) ran over with some bleach and it made Eli's finger hurt more.  So our pediatrician looked at Eli's fingers and suggested a baking soda paste.  We left the paste on Eli's fingers for about 15 minutes and I also gave him some Motrin.  He was still sniffling, but at least he wasn't yelling anymore.  After an hour the pain had subsided and Eli was better.  Phew!  But his finger was still a little purple.  I found a little puncture on the side of his middle finger where he probably got bit and then all the red/purple that had run down his finger was just the "stuff" spreading.  Scary.

Here are pics after an hour or so have passed.  (I didn't even think to get a picture earlier on.)

It's funny because after he got over the trauma and pain, Eli started acting like he was famous.  He kept saying over and over again, "I never thought I would get bitten by an assassin bug!" and, "Can you believe I got bitten by an assassin bug??"  It was the cutest thing.  Although it wasn't so cute when he was wailing and screaming.  

This was definitely a little scary event for us.  I mean, I don't know what bugs do what!  But it did look pretty  awful. From now on, no more handling of bugs we don't really understand.  I told Elina to add that to the Bug Club's rule list.  She agreed.  

Recent Happenings

I'm so behind on everything because I really have no free time anymore, folks.  So here is a snapshot of our recent happenings--

1. Auntie S came for a visit in the middle of September.  As usual, she brought cooler weather and rain with her.  This was actually her longest visit ever--4 days!  We had such a great time with her and the kids didn't want her to leave.  We ate yummy Mexican food and BBQ.  We went to the Botanical Gardens to see the Dinosaur Stampede.

And after visiting us for years, we finally took S to the Alamo.

I was thankful that S was kind enough to keep my kids entertained whenever I had to nurse Eulee.  She was Evie's playdoh buddy, Eli's dinosaur buddy, and Elina's whatever-she-wanted-to-do buddy.  She even rocked the baby for us!  What a wonderful aunt!

2. Zoo Campout--On 9/22, A took Elina and Eli to the zoo for a campout.  The kids had fun, but I think the thing they enjoyed most was staying up late ('til after midnight!) and telling scary stories in the tent.  My kids just know too much about animals and aren't easily impressed anymore.  It's quite sad.  At the campout they take out animals for the kids to touch.  Elina said, "Mom, they brought out a frog and a snake.  Why did they bring those out?  I've already seen those before."  Tough crowd!  But they did enjoy the armadillo and owl that the zoo brought out.  They loved the s'mores and the silliness with A.  The next morning, they even stayed at the zoo just to walk around and see more animals.  We're lucky the kids have so many awesome aunts!

3. Bike Rodeo--Elina had a Bike Rodeo at her new school on 9/28.  Honestly, we haven't been bike riding as much lately because our new house is in a hilly neighborhood.  (I kinda miss the flat sidewalks in our old neighborhood.)  Because Elina hasn't been practicing as much, she wasn't as confident on the bike.  Later she told me that she thought she did terribly at the Bike Rodeo.  How sad!  I explained that she did fine, but that it was hard to do well since we haven't been taking her out on her bike.  I told her we have a whole year to practice more so that she can do better next year.  Of course, she wasn't satisfied with that response since she kindly pointed out that a year is 365 days away!

4. Pumpkin Patch--Since Eulee doesn't enjoy long car rides-or ANY car ride-we couldn't make it out to a "nicer" pumpkin patch this year.  We decided to go to a new, local one and we were pleasantly surprised!  They had a few bounce houses, a hay ride, a barrel train ride, and lots of pumpkins.

The day we went, it was actually windy and cold (low-50s, which is freezing to us!).  So all the cute fall clothes I bought them for the pumpkin patch pictures got covered up by coats and jackets.

Boo!!  Oh well.  I guess it was nice to actually go to a pumpkin patch on a real fall-like day.  We got to take a nice family picture there since J and V went with us.  We promise Eulee is with us...she's just bundled up in the big blanket because it was windy and cold. (Although we DID joke around that we could just be holding an empty blanket for show instead of actually taking Eulee out of the stroller.)

So those were the highlights for us for the past few weeks.  Life has been a blur, but still loads of fun!

One Fun Run

Today Elina had a Fun Run as the first fundraiser for school.  The kids ran around a course that was 1/16 of a mile while pop songs blasted in the background.  It was actually quite entertaining and fun!  For 40 minutes, each grade ran the course as many times as they could...but maxing out at 36 laps.

Elina did better than I thought she would.  She ended up running 33 laps...although, she didn't run the entire time.  After the first 2 laps, our girl was already hitting the water station.  She was hanging out there, taking her time to fill her cup and drink her water.  It was amusing.  What was even MORE amusing was that by the 2nd lap, it looked like 25% of all the 2nd graders were at the water station and not on the course!  It was just the place to be!

Elina ran and walked...and she would also chat it up with friends if they happened to be walking by her.  It was so cute.  It was almost like a social hour at times.  But when I told her it was the last song, she got her bottom in gear and started booking it.  She told me she didn't realize that there was a time limit!

So here is Elina toward the beginning of the run, when the excitement level was high...

Then here she is when she realizes this is a lot more work than she expected...

We thought Elina did a great job.  Last week she sent out an email to family and family friends asking for pledges or donations.  She got a good response to her email (because everyone was so generous).  With her 33 laps, she actually made a decent chunk of change.

This was a really fun fundraiser...I can't believe I'm actually saying that about a school fundraiser!  I didn't like asking relatives for money, but this was better than making them purchase rolls of gift wrap for $15!  I liked that this got the kids to move their bodies.

The guys who were in charge of the Fun Run were really wonderful.  These guys visited each classroom every day for a week to motivate the kids and teach them about being leaders.  Today they ran with the kids and were really encouraging.  They even let kids use the microphone to sing some of the chorus lines from the pop songs they were playing during the Fun Run.  They looked like they were having as much fun as the kids were.

A even made a "Go, Elina!" sign to hold up and the Fun Run guys thought it was so cool that A got so into it.  A's sign was a definite hit...everyone was taking pictures of it!

Definitely a great day!  Eulee was also a trooper...taking a nap in the stroller the entire time...with the music blasting in the background!  Amazing!!

And the best part?  Elina peacefully fell asleep a little before 8pm.  How lovely!