Happy Birthday Uncle Derek!

We had a fun surprise party for Jon's brother, Derek, last night.

He was pretty surpised when he walked in the door expecting the annual family lobster dinner only to be adorned with a sombrero, a homemade Bacardi lei, and a cane.

We had a grim reaper pinata filled with mini (plastic) liquor bottles, Bengay, Preparation H Wipes, denture cleaning tablets, and candies.

The streamers were decorated with all sorts of helpful coupons for old people like Uncle Derek: Depends, Metamucil, Colon Health, and Geritol.

Jon had the awesome idea to blow up a photo of Derek with their dad at his 40th birthday party. Grammy made it happen.

There was a ton of food. I mean it, like, a ton.

We managed to float a pony keg of Zeigenbock and plow through one and a half containers of frozen margaritas. Grammy rented the machine from Margarita Mania. She's so smart.

Aunt Jen got an awesomely morbid cake from HEB. The frosting turned everyone's lips and teeth blue.

Here's a rundown of the party menu:

Appetizers:

cream cheese tortilla rolls

southwest egg rolls

cheesy-meaty things (Grammy knows the real name)

Texas Trash

drunken weiners

Dinner:

crockpot chicken tacos (Katie's recipe)

beef enchilada casserole (Paula Dean's recipe)

homemade salsa

taco fixins

charro beans

flour tortillas and crunchy taco shells

Dessert:

cake

fruit salad

Amery helped clean up the streamers this morning.

In case you were wondering what toddler help looks like.

After a while he decided it was just more fun to climb on papa.

First Hockey Game

We took Amery to his first Texas Stars hockey game last night and he loved it:

He started off a little freaked out by the noise but he got into it pretty quickly. He also sat pretty still throughout most of the game. French fries helped. Lots of french fries.

Jon bought him a little Texas Stars hockey stick at the game, and he insisted on taking it along in the car on the way to daycare this morning. We had to trick him to let go of it last night or I think he would have slept with it.

Three Generations

Amery's First Haircut

This afternoon we made a trip to Pigtails & Crewcuts for Amery's first cut. It was a lot of fun. I definitely recommend this place for kids' haircuts. They have locations all over the country - even Honolulu. At the Austin location they have chairs shaped like a firetruck, a plane, and a police car. There's a train table to play with while you're waiting your turn, Disney movies playing on big flat screen TVs at each chair, a place for birthday parties in the back room, all the animal crackers you want, and you get to choose a prize (or three) from the treasure chest on your way out.


Here's a "before" picture on the way there. He constantly had to push his hair out of his eyes, and mama got a "she's cute" comment the other day. Yeah, time for a little boy cut.

We think he questioned our judgment a bit when his stylist showed up with pink and blue hair. She was very nice and clearly very talented when it came to cutting the hair of a wiggly toddler. I forgot her name so we need to call back and get her every time. We loved her!

He actually sat pretty still. Most of the time.

Full view of the cool police car chair.

And after. He looks like a big [little] boy! Mama misses the curls in back, but they'll grow back soon enough.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Quick Update

Sorry for the lack of blogging. We've been all kinds of busy and we're still dealing with the never-ending ear infection. Throw in a couple of lower molars and you have one grumpy kid and two tired parents. Speaking of ears, Amery's pediatrician referred us to a pediatric ear, nose, and throat specialist whom we will meet on Friday afternoon. I suspect ear tubes are in his future. I found a pretty good article on the ear tube surgery procedure if you'd like to see what our little man is in for.

He's not without a few smiles here and there:

How to use a spoon

Amery style.

Ear Infection #3

Poor little man. Three hours at urgent care, a yucky flu swab (which was negative), and a fever that topped out at 105.5 yesterday. I don't blame him for feeling like this:



We'll report back when he's all fixed up and back to trouble making.

Fashionable Friday

How do you make a mommy happy? You find a 6-12 month sized denim jacket stashed in the back of the coat closet that you completely forgot about. Then you find out it still fits him!


Rockin' the denim, khaki style.



I had to bribe him with Cheerios to sit for the picture.

Major Catching Up To Do.

Holy moly it's been a looong time since I updated the blog. Sorry. We've all been sick on and off since Thanksgiving. Amery has been the most sick, poor little guy. Let's get that out of the way and then we can move on to the cute pictures.

I can't remember who got sick first. It may have been me. Shortly thereafter, Amery got a cold...that turned into a sinus infection...that turned into an ear infection...that turned into a bad cough and wheezing. Christmas morning we finally called our pediatrician from Jon's parents' house in Lago Vista (about 45 minutes from our house in Austin). She told us to go home immediately and get the nebulizer we had from when he got RSV sometime around 5 months old. So, without opening a single present, and with Amery still in his jammies, we went home, got the breathing machine and medicines, and drove BACK to Lago to have Christmas with the family. A follow-up appointment on Monday showed he now had a DOUBLE ear infection, still had the cough, and still had the sinus infection. He also couldn't go to daycare for the week. I had no paid time off, so we called in the cavalry! My mom was able to fly down and help us out for a whole week. That was HUGE and such a relief. Amery and Grandma had a great time hanging out while he recovered.

Another follow-up appointment this past Monday showed he has an antibiotic-resistant bacterial sinus infection. The bacterium is called Streptococcus pneumoniae in case you feel like a bit of Googling. He is now on a very strong antibiotic nose spray that hopefully will knock the crap out of the evil bacteria in his cute little nose.

On to the good stuff. Amery got a lot of toys for Christmas. Like A LOT of toys. So pretty much all the pictures I have are of Amery and the toys. With him being sick and our stress over that, we didn't think about the usual family pic in front of the tree, or any photos of us for that matter. So here you go. Amery and Toys - Christmas 2009.


Little Tikes Inside/Outside Kitchen and Grill from Santa.


PBK Anywhere Chair. He loves this thing. If I sit in it and say "Mommy's chair" he tries to nudge me out.


I really doubted whether or not he would actually sit in it, but we couldn't get him out of the thing.



Sometimes the packaging is more fun than the toy.


Mickey Mouse Ride-on Plane from Auntie Laura.

I've got some more pictures to add of his wagon from Grammy and Grampy, but they're on a different computer so I'll update later.

Furry Christmas

I figure Amery is going to get most of the blog spotlight over the next few days - better give our big bear some face time.


Kona's first Christmas in Colorado.



Two years ago in Austin. Don't be fooled by his well-behaved appearance. That hat became a chew toy shortly after this was taken.

He's Cool

I forgot about this video and just found it on my computer. Amery got a little wooden puppy pull toy for his birthday from The Urbans. Once he got the hang of how to pull him around it's become one of his favorite toys. Don't really have much to update, but I was sick of the snowstorm post. So here's a dark but cute video.

Austin Snow 2009

As promised, video and pictures from the "snowstorm" last Friday. It lasted about 15 minutes, and the only reason we were all home to see it was because we were all sick, so we couldn't be outside for that long anyway. It was still fun to finally see snow again.

Worst.cold.ever.

I'm back in the land of the living...almost. Promise and update and some pictures of The Great Austin Snowstorm of '09.

We're Ahead of the Game

Amery wanted to get his requests in early.

Como Park Zoo

We've been in Minnesota for a few days and it's been pretty busy around here. Today we are heading downtown to see the Macy's 8th Floor Christmas display. Yesterday we visited the Como Park Zoo in St. Paul and Amery loved it! Here are some pics.


He never did go through the tunnel.


Touching tropical leaves with papa.


More tropics. It felt like Texas in there.


This is what Amery thinks of the smell in the giraffe's indoor winter area.

The famous Sparky the Sea Lion! We used to go see the Sparky show when I was little.

We're back.

We've been MIA for a bit, but I think we're back in the game! Amery's been trying to kick a stubborn sinus infection, some fluid in one ear, and a throat virus to boot. Poor little man. A lot of our time at home has been spent on the couch and looking a lot like this:



Thankfully he is starting to look a lot more like this:



Which makes us all happy:

The Park

Amery and I stopped at the neighborhood park on our way home from work yesterday to enjoy the sunshine and 70-degree temperature. Too bad the sun starts to go down at 5:30 now or we probably would have stayed longer. The most challenging part of the park is teaching him not to eat the pea gravel.


Mmmm, this looks tasty.


You want some?


Papa joined us too!


Not so sure about this weirdo swing.


Ok, it's cool.

Halloween Fever

No, not in the sense of being crazy about Halloween. I mean a fever, on Halloween. Sigh...no trick-or-treating for us this year. When I took his temp around 6:00, an hour before we were supposed to join our friends for trick-or-treating and fun, my heart sank as the thermometer read 101.2. With all the talk of flu combined with a whiney kid and a runny nose, I didn't want to us to be those parents who bring their sick kid to the gathering with all the other kids. That's just not cool.

As Jon headed out the door for a Walgreen run (we had no candy cause we didn't think we'd be home) I burst into tears and lamented about how I will never get to wear a mommy and baby matchy-matchy Halloween costume again. Next year he'll probably want a say in what he wears. Jon told me to get my costume on and he would snap a few pictures in the driveway when he got back. So here you go. Evidence of our matching costumes.


Giraffe and Zookeeper.


My badge said "Giraffe Wrangler."