Apple Santas

Ashley and Bregan came over this weekend to share a childhood tradition with Lilly--Apple Santas!!  Awesome.
Helen is confused...and still wearing the same jammies from the night before.  Parents of the year!
 After Lilly ate a few marshmallows and licked all the gumdrops, she got busy.

We ventured out to Lights in the Heights last weekend--the annual neighborhood spectacle.  This time, we managed to make it out early enough to catch the parade, which our friends participated in.  A huge trailer was transformed into Santa's sleigh and D's Bronco sported some antlers and a red nose to pull it along.  Lilly was most enthusiastic about the high school marching band, to which she danced like a little nut ball!
All dressed up, compliments of the float occupants.  Lilly wanted to ride for a bit, but then changed her tune.  
Helen all fired up to see the lights.  

SNOW!!!

It actually got really cold in H-town yesterday.  After a morning with no power and a threatening sky....it started to snow around dinnertime.  Real snow with some accumulation! Felt very wintry and Christmas-y, and made me really miss a real winter.
Lilly looking at the snow...Helen snuggled in the new sling...all smiles!!

tree decorating

We had forgotten how small they are!!  Lilly loved being held like this too.
Medusa hair, tamed...at least through breakfast.
Lilly decorates the tree.  Most of the ornaments ended up in a swath around the tree about 3 feet up from the ground.  
Helen does her best to help out.  

the latest news

make a funny face!
the first ride in the double stroller...takes up the entire sidewalk.  watch out!!!
Daddy's favorite time...
going home

We welcomed the newest lady to the family--Helen Pierce.  Like her sister, she was the same weight at birth, has the same hairy ears and has the dimples like her PaPa and aunt.

buzz buzz buzz

Team C rallied last night, dressing up in our apiary finery.  We looked pretty good all around!  Lilly's school hosts a giant Halloween carnival for the holiday which is always a lot of fun.  To keep parents and kiddos happy, they provide adult beverages.  Lilly and her pals danced all night to the DJ.  They also had the petting zoo again, much to her delight.  

Pumpkin carving and trick-o-treating are on deck for next week....more to come from our little busy bee!  

little girl

Lilly modeling her lovely new tutu that my friend Sarah made her.  Trains and tutus--YES! She loves it!!!  
Our own little Martha, carefully measuring....

Hurricane Pictures

Pictures below from Tuesday evening.  We escaped any damage of consequence - just some little things to clean up and fix.  We were lucky.

This house is about 4 blocks south of us. 
Big tree across street with utility lines it took down.
Our driveway with fallen branches.

Looking along our street at piles of brush and branches.  

we are safe

friends and family--

Just a quick note to let you all know that we are safe and out of Houston. Luckily, we were heading out of town this weekend anyway for Houston Family vacation up in Lake Travis. The are not planning on evacuating Houston, but we're glad to be out of there.

All is well--we're all keeping a close eye on things back home and are keeping fingers crossed that we have limited damage to the house. I think that I'd rather NOT be in the house if a tree fell or windows got blown out.

xoxo

big girl bed

Big things are happening around here.....Lilly has moved up in the world and is now sleeping in a big girl bed. We built the bunk beds over the weekend and had the first test drive tonight. Evidently it was comfy enough that she didn't want to get out. I had given it 10 minutes before we saw her in the kitchen.

testing it out yesterday

snuggling under the covers has not yet been figured out.....

baby #2 news

Drumroll please.....

...it's a girl!

summer vacation

Some pictures from our summer vacation, now a month later....

We visited our good friends in Asheville. Lilly and Anna haven't seen each other since we moved from Wisconsin...and they have the same sweatshirt on

looking good on Folly Beach

dipping the toes in the waves with Papa

fire, fire, fire! I'm two!

Yum!

new tricks

We're trying new things around here...and taking cues from her Daddy.

The potty training hasn't really started in earnest yet, but Lilly is showing interest when it suits her.

memorial day "vacation"

Like all of us, sometimes getting up in the morning is hard. But we had a bit of a scare on Thursday before the holiday weekend when Lilly didn't want to get up at all. Limp and unresponsive. A trip to the pediatrician had her whisked away via ambulance to TCH (our yearly visit, so it seems). Needless to say, we canceled our trip to California and spent the next five days in the hospital.

Lilly was diagnosed with hypoglycemia--her blood sugar was 42 when she arrived at the hospital. Both of us were totally freaked out to see our little one passed out for the entire day on Thursday. A brief spell of cookies, juice and Thomas the Tank Engine was the only time I saw her animated. After the ER staff decided that her initial tests warranted further investigation, we were admitted to the observation room where they did further monitoring/testing and where I spent the night sleeping on a recliner. The next morning, we were greeted by the endocrinologist who let us know that Lilly was to be admitted for further testing.

By now, Lilly was up and moving around and was acting somewhat more like herself. After a delicious (hardly) lunch at the hospital, we were told that Lilly was to undergo a fasting test in order to "replicate" her low blood sugar condition. This also meant that we'd be moving to a new room (considerably more comfortable too) in the hospital. This test would require many blood glucose tests to monitor the drop, which by the end of the test (20 hours later) left poor Lilly with band-aids on every single finger of both hands. She looked like Frankenstein.


After her blood sugar got to the low point, what seemed like an army of nurses and I took her down the hall to have the blood tests done. Suffice it to say, it was the worst thing that I have ever had to experience as a mother.

No word yet on the test results, but the scariest of things were ruled out fairly quickly. All we know is that little ones can suffer from this if they didn't eat enough, getting sick, or it could be indicating a more serious condition. We'll find out more in the next week when we have our follow up appointment.

Lilly did have many visitors while cooped up which I am sure boosted her spirits.....it sure did for Mom and Dad! Thank you to all of our dear friends who brought goodies and smiles. While Lilly is fine now, we also were keenly aware that she was never the sickest kiddo on our floor at the hospital. It was heartbreaking and made me very sad-send good thoughts their way too.

boppies

Once again, we headed outside the loop and up to the King's Orchard for some fruit picking. This time of year in Texas promises blackberries and blueberries, fruits that I associate with August most places we've lived. It seems as if we were about a week too early for the sweet blackberries, but we managed to find some that were tasty. Lilly, as anticipated was not so fired up about picking these due to the thorns, but nevertheless persistent for us to pick one for her, one for the box. Our trip also coincided with the last of the strawberries, so we picked them too. The real hit for Lilly was picking the blueberries, as they were 1) easy to pick at every height and 2) plentiful. Try as we did, it was hard to convince the little one to avoid the green ones in favor of the blue ones. Every "boppie" was tasty to her!

Mother's Day weekend

My oh my, it has been a while. It has been busy down here in H-town with visitors, out of the loop excursions, parties and the like. Since the last real post, "Gram-pete" Peter and Sue came down for a visit. Right on time, the nasty summer weather arrived. The weekend activities could not have been more fun! Saturday saw the whole gang down at the annual Art Car parade. Shade was at a premium and we managed not only to get clutch indoor parking (even more so with no A/C in the subaru!) but we managed to carve out a good spot near the turnaround on the parade route under the trees. This year was much better than last, as we actually watched the parade instead of just seeing the cars line up. Lilly's favorite was the giant chicken car. It was awesome. Our favorite was the *heavily* modified VW that was made into a flower.

Afterward, we headed over to a friend's graduation party where 50 pounds of crawfish and several pounds of smoked meats were awaiting consumption. Nothing says high-class like a old closet door propped up on sawhorses covered in crawdaddies and keg beer. Lilly was running around like a crazy woman, flirting with all of the boys. Moving to the woods into our yurt may not be as far off as originally planned....

Thankfully, a summer version of a 'comfy front' made Sunday considerably more pleasant. Even better--it was mother's day. Lilly was not quite up to the task of fixing mommy breakfast in bed, but by next year she should be turning out a bowl of cheerios at the very least. She did come home from school with a glorious bunch of foam flowers for me that were absolutely dripping with glitter, spangles and the requisite hot glue oozes. They now sit on my desk at work.

drumroll please.....

yep....the deuce is on the way...early December 2008

quick update

we've been busy and behind on the updates....stay tuned for the many goings on including:

Peter and Sue's visit
Berry picking, part deux
Memorial Day weekend "vacation"

infatuation

Trains. Lilly can't get enough. First thing out of her mouth in the morning is "choo choo"....she does manage to hear the train that both Cory and I have spent months ignoring. Over the weekend, we passed the railroad tracks just before the gates went down, so we pulled over on a side street to watch. The engineer gave us a toot toot and a big wave. Heaven.

The magic of You Tube has brought all the excitement right to us! Yay for train fanatics that videotape trains!

Email me and I'll send you the video since it won't upload correctly here....

Polly's visit--beach!

We continued the fun down on the beach in Surfside. Team C packed up the car with a picnic lunch and we headed down to enjoy a chilly morning on the sand. We saw some dolphins swimming by the breakwater as well as many little fish that some kids were using for bait. Lilly was very excited. It was warm enough later on to get our toes wet after lunch.

Polly's visit--strawberry picking

Polly came to visit for the weekend--what fun we had! We headed up to Magnolia, about an hour away, to pick strawberries at a farm up there. A rare departure from inside the loop for Team Clechenko! Lilly had a ball--I am quite sure that no strawberry she picked made it into the box.


springtime in Texas wouldn't be right if there weren't bluebonnets!