Lauren had another ear infection.  Her first (and last) one was 4 weeks ago; we saw the doctor two weeks later because her runny [green] nose came back as soon as we stopped the antibiotics.  At that point her ears were clear; she had lost 2 ounces, but gained half an inch in her length and a fourth of an inch in head circumference.  At our appointment on Monday, two weeks after her previous appointment, her ear was just starting to get infected again.  The doctor said he ordinarily would wait a day or two to see if it clears up on its own, but because of her weight issues, he wanted her on antibiotics.  She hasn’t grown at all since two weeks ago.

So I’m starting to get frustrated with her.  Why is she not gaining weight?  She looks and acts so healthy – despite her ear infection and ridiculously high fever (103…though Peyton said it was 204), she was laughing at Peyton and very interested in what the doctor was doing.  She’s so normal as far as development goes, but she’s so little and hasn’t been gaining weight well for the past 3 months.  The doctor wants to see her again in two weeks to check the ears and see if she’s decided to grow at all.  He says he’s fine with waiting on seeing a specialist because, other than the weight issue, she looks so healthy.

Please pray she starts putting on the pounds!

PBS is conducting a poll to see if the public believes Sarah Palin is qualified to serve as vice president.  Apparently the liberals found out and are flooding the site with No votes – they’re hoping PBS can dismiss her as inept and thereby influence the swing vote.  Vote NOW to bring about the truth rather than someone’s agenda!  It literally takes 2 seconds and requires NO email address etc.   http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.html

Peyton is quite the ladies’ man.

While Peyton was in swimming lessons with a girl from his preschool, I got to know the girl’s mother.  Apparently her little girl has such a crush on Peyton that she is too shy to talk to him.  The highlight of her school year was when she stood next to him in their class picture. 

Another little girl started coming to our house one day a week while her mom works.  She’s a year younger than Peyton, but she adores him…or in her own words, “I Loooooooooove Peyton.”  She even talks to her parents about how much she loooooooooves Peyton.

Today Peyton brought home a photo from a little girl in his class.  Scrawled on the back of the picture was, in the handwriting of a 4 year old, the girl’s name and phone number.

We want a free van. 

Not James and I (and Peyton, Lauren and Ji Young) – Our school is trying to earn a free van from Campbell’s – it sounds crazy, but in fact we’ve gotten free vans from them before!  We use the van to cart around various sports teams etc, and we could really use another one.

Why am I blogging about this?  Because we want your help, of course!

If you get the newspaper on Sunday, grab the full-page, bright red, Campbell’s Back-to-School Bonus Offer forms from the coupon sections (in our paper it was on the back of the Smartsource insert).

If you find it and send it to me, we’d much appreciate it!  Thanks!!!

This recipe is awesome – I found it in a random issue of Family Circle that I picked up.  This recipe is quick and easy, most of the ingredients are probably already in your cupboard, and it tastes great!  We followed the recipe tonight, though I put ranch on Peyton’s instead of mustard (He hates mustard).  It worked out well; I bet this would also taste great with chicken.

Makes: 4 servings

Prep: 5 minutes

Bake at 425* for 15 min.

18 ritz crackers

1/4 cup grated parmesan

3 tablespoons olive oil

1/4 teaspoon dried basil

4 tilapia fillets, about 1.5 lbs. total (I used the frozen packaged fillets – they worked great and were easy to thaw)

2 tablespoons dijon mustard

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper (I used 1/8th)

1.  Heat oven to 425*.  Spray a baking sheet with nonstick cooking spray

2.  Crush crackers in a plastic bag.  Add cheese, basil and oil.  Shake to combine.

3.  Place tilapia on prepared baking sheet.  Brush top side of each piece with about 1/2 tablespoon of the mustard and season with the salt and pepper.  Press the cracker mixture onto the mustard-coated side of the fillets.

4.  Bake at 425* for 15 minutes or until fish flakes easily with a fork.  Serve with lemon wedges and tartar sauce if desired.

And I’ve got one more video for you…Peyton went to work with Daddy this morning and Lauren took a nice nap, so Mommy had some free time

I logged in to brag about Peyton’s swimming, but before I could type I looked over and Lauren had pulled herself up for the very first time!  Of course, the forbidden stack of uno cards had lured her to reach beyond her toybox to the table above.  

She’s learned quite a few new things in the last week!  A week ago she learned to wave hello, and I swear she said Hi at least once (the other times it’s more of a very sweet “ah” sound).  A few days ago I saw her go from laying on her side to sitting straight up., then of course she pushed herself up to standing the day after – she scooted to James, pushed off his leg & stood up all by herself – she wasn’t even holding onto him!  Of course that only lasted about 3 seconds, but it was pretty awesome just the same.  

She’s also learned that she has opinions.  She doesn’t like when we take her toys away, but she’s claimed every single leaf and pebble the cat drags in.  It’s amazing – even with all of her own toys right in front of her, she spies the smallest variance in the carpet coloring and makes a bee-line towards it.  Her army crawl is impressively quick; we’re going to have to train to beat her to the leaves she wants to eat.  Or the paper on the floor this morning.  It slides around so nicely on the linoleum!  Until she ate a hole in it.  Then it did more sticking than sliding.  And she was NOT happy when I took it away.

But back to what I started this post for: Peyton is swimming!  He’s been in swimming lessons twice a week for a LONG time (it’s a LONG story…go read in July and August if you don’t already know), and he finally has an instructor who shows up at every lesson.  Vit has the kids treading water by themselves, jumping in the deep end and swimming to the side, and even swimming below the surface through a ring and back up again!  Peyton has really sensitive eyes that even bathwater irritates, so this is a major accomplishment for him.  He loves lessons, and he’s so close to swimming completely on his own, so we signed him up for one more session of lessons.  I’ll try to take a video of his lessons next week if possible.

It’s been a while since the last post – Lauren had an ear infection and sleep was rare around here until a couple days ago.  She’s vastly improved, though, and things are mostly back to normal. 

In fact, things may be better than normal.  At Lauren’s doctor’s appointment on Monday, she was 15 lbs. 10 oz, which is 8 oz. bigger than she was 10 days before.  Even though she hadn’t been eating well because of her infection, she was still growing, so doctor and I were very happy.