JD is still having some meltdowns, but they are generally around naptime. And I think they are sometimes his way of asking for boundaries. He'll carry on (usually it involves frequent demands to go back outside) but it rarely becomes a screaming match. Within 5 minutes or so he'll hold out his arms for a hug and cuddle up in bed with me. This leads to the next cool thing I've been doing. Before bed time I've been bringing him into bed with me to watch Veggie Tales (His new favorite is Dave and the Giant Pickle. I also think this is an awesome 30 minute video so I don't mind watching it every day. More about Veggie Tales later.) Anyway, I did this several days ago because JD seemed very keyed up, and I thought some down time in a dark bedroom would calm him down. To my surprise he because a little cuddle monster, and we had a fab time watching the video. So now I look forward to this cuddle time, JD on one side and Katie (Squirtle the squirmy) on the other. I probably enjoy it more than him.

A related aside to this (TANGET) is that we now have a sandbox. This is the most glorious invention in the history of childhood, (way up there with balls, big wheels, and worms), and keeps JD busy for hours on end. To guess the negative sandbox affect, please re-read above paragraph about how he climbs in bed, sometimes before naps. Yes, we've had the sandbox for 1 glorious week and John and I have to shake out the sheets every single night. We've taken to just putting a flat sheet on the bed and tucking in the corners as it's much easier to rip the sheet off and shake. Our entire backyard will soon resemble a desert, as sand envelops it. But, who cares! JD LOVES the sandbox. Loves loves loves it! Currently stuffed into the tugboat frame is a large tonka bulldozer, 2 dump trucks, 2 long handled shovels, 4 short handled shovels, 3 rakes, 2 castle buckets, 1 regular bucket and no room for kids. :) So you can easily see why the sand spills from the sandbox and into things like, say, the rec room couch.

One of my best buddies is Kathleen. She works full time and her husband stays home to watch their 4 month old son Nick. Another mutual friend of ours is Beth, and she has a son named Steven who is about 2 weeks younger than JD. As a favor to Beth, Craig has been watching Steven a few times a week, as Beth is due any day now and could use the rest. On Thursdays Craig has been joining me at Playgym, and then McDonalds. Well, Steven and JD have hit it off like a house on fire! It's so fabulous to watch. The first Thursday they really didn't interact much until we got to McDonalds. By the end of the meal they were fast friends, and now they are great buddies. And I'm delighted! First off, Steven is at the exact same emotional and intellectual level as JD. Second, he is being raised the way I would like ALL of JD's friends to be raised. Beth is a hands-on Catholic mom, just like me, and Steven is a gem of a little boy. The bottom line is JD really likes him, and looks forward to seeing him. The other night when we said our prayers JD said, "God Bless Steven" -- this from the boy who doesn't remember to bless his own grandparents! (Also, "God Bless Baby Goo" which would be Katie!) Playgym ends when school gets out, so at that point I'll probably drive up to Beth's place (Craig and Kathleen live right around the corner) Nick and Katie are about 6 months apart, so they will eventually be friends too.

Tanget to this story too. Kenny has been it a bossy and foul mood recently, so I've been very careful of their contact. I'm not sure if it's an age thing or what! So Kenny tries to boss JD around, and JD has taken to simply ignoring him. Now, that is not a tactic that I want JD to learn, even though it is affective with Kenny. They'll be in the sandbox and Kenny will get out to play somewhere else and start calling "JD, I said do X. . .JD! JD JD JD!!!!" Oh yes, he's also trying to teach JD about the power rangers, which I assure you will never be in my house. "Power Rangers fight and hit!" "No Kenny, not in this back yard they don't." "But that's what they do." Argh! JD is 3 and already his peers have more control over him then I do. I can't stand it! And using sticks and saying "pow pow" -- at 3! He's only 3!

Katie's life. Katie still doesn't want to crawl. Has no interest in it. So, she "hops"; one leg in the correct crawl position, the other straight as a rail. So she swings the straight one around like a wooden leg. Or else she has both legs straight and crawls by moving her arms and hopping with the back too. So she's a funny bunny. She is also the most charming darling baby. I call her my Darling Precious Angel Baby! On May 1 she pulled herself up to standing. So in the space of one month she's gone from nothing to standing. She's already made her first few aborted attempts at cruising. I think she could pull herself along the furniture, but she's currently scared to do so.

On April 26ish - you should remember this week, it contained the longest consecutive nights in history - Katie's top two teeth came in. Let's just say she's been absolutely miserable! I think the top left one is still coming in, so she's been very fussy during the night. She's a total gem all day long, but a pain half of the night. And, since I wrote that she was sleeping through the night, of course now she's not. She just wants to nurse and nurse. Katie still has little to no interest in juice. She will play with a cup and actually take the juice in and then spit it all over herself. Joy. So she'll be nursing until she's 20.

We ended up taking Katie to the hospital April 18. The night before John and I went to a charity auction for our church. When we came back Jessica was like, both kids were great. Katie got up at 10 and was a bit fussy, but I figured this was because she was annoyed missing her goodnight meal. (The nerve of her mother! Going on a date with her father!) Anyway, at midnight she got up and was totally inconsolable! Screaming and fussing! I gave her aspirin and it didn't seem to help. I even took her diaper off thinking maybe she had diaper rash and it waking up every time she had to pee. (You know it's love when you have a naked baby on your chest and you are actually hoping she'll pee on you) At about 7 am I looked at John and said, something is drastically wrong here! He thought maybe it was shaken baby syndrome - which I was positive was NOT the case as Jessica is fabulous. Anyway -- years and years ago dad had a court case about a little girl that had appendicitis that her doctor repeatedly misdiagnosed. Of course she died a horrid death, and now I have this fear my kids will have appendicitis at a young age and not be able to tell me. So, I can honestly say I've never been so scared in my life. I wasn't that scared with JD as I didn't grasp the severity of the situation until they said his heart rate was at 80 when we brought him in - and by that time he was running around trying to get out of the hospital. Anyway, I totally freaked that my little girl had something internally wrong and I left the house at 7:15. Rush to the hospital (trip time, 3 minutes). . . Rush in (in tears with screaming baby), get rushed back to the doctor. . . who promptly stuck a thing in her ear and said, "She has an ear infection." I was home by 8am. The whole "ordeal" took less than 45 minutes. NO, she never pulled her ears, she never ran a fever -- she just screamed! One week later JD said his ears hurt so the very next day John took the day off work and took him to the doctors. No fooling around.

Nannie and Gramps (and Aunt Kathy) visit: John's mom, dad and his sister Kathy came up for JD's birthday. JD and Katie both had the time of their lives being the center of attention. JD totally adores his Nannie! John and his dad ripped down our deck, which took most of the afternoon on Saturday, and on Sunday they bought JD's sandbox (and didn't seem him for the remainder of the day) Saturday night we all went down to Old Town near DC. It could have been disastrous - 2 small children at a nice restaurant. But it ended up being a lot of fun, and both of them behaved pretty well. As always I had a large amount of Cheerios with me, and we ended up feeding them first to the fish and later the ducks. I had more fun than anyone feeding the fish because I was throwing crumbs in when this HUGE ENORMOUS fish rose up from the depths of the river to eat them. So my goal was to continue to bring him up to the surface for JD to see. I think JD liked feeding the ducks best, as this involved standing on big rocks very close to the waters edge.

A quick note on John and I - we went to the Church's charity auction on April 17. (Another non hockey related date!!) We has such a blast! We ended up buying some stuff, and got to meet a member of the Redskins. That was funny because we were siting in the front row waiting for the live part of the auction to start and a confused looking well built black man walks by. Well, there aren't that many black people at our parish, and non of the ones I've seen are huge, so I figured this has to be the guest auctioneer. So asked if I could be of assistance and generally tried to be nice. He was the sweetest guy, and he really got into being the auctioneer! (And his girlfriend one something from one the raffles) Anyway, I really had a great time! This is the second one that I've been to.

Note 2: John is in the backyard right now digging post holes for our deck. Yippee!