Funny or Scary?

Funny or scary? Creepy or cute?? You decide!!


I mean is it just me, or does it look like Homer is about to devour Little Guys hand?

Hopefully Little Guy won't come home and decide he should try to put his foot in MY mouth. (I do that enough as it is.)

Thank you, Grandpa-parazzi for sharing these photos of Little Guy from today. Only YOU would have Homer slippers and that's why we love you!

Catch-Up (not ketsup)

Whew ... it has been a while since I last posted. Life has been crazy ... working lots more hours than normal, planning a big trip, trying to figure out what to do about kindergarten. pre-school and childcare this fall for Big Guy and Little Guy. Stress levels are on the rise!! So, what suffered? My blogging.

I was inspired to get back on tonight because I am vain and wanted to show my latest picture of the boys from today ....

Also, I wanted to voice my violent agreement with many of the other posts out there from other blogging moms about the Today show piece on Friday about "happy hour and playdates" Do I think mom's should be getting wasted while their kids play with other kids? No. Do I think it is okay to have a glass of wine with friends while your kids play? (If you know me at ALL, this will be a huge no-brainer) YES. If you want to read some witty posts on this check out Wonder Mom; Friday Playdate; Crib Ceiling or A Mommy Story. As my friend at work said, "I don't' see what the issue is. How is this not different from getting together for dinner with friends and while the kids play you have a beer or glass of wine?" And another point I heard was why is this so focused on moms? Do you think dads don't get together and while the kids play, they watch the game and have a beer?

Well, anyway, enough of that. As part of my catching up, I finally posted my new year's eve photos to that post ... at least I got it done this month!

I am also happy to report that because of this blog I got to know another mom through email who just found out her son has peanut allergies. I'll blog more on that when I can be more thoughtful.

For now, I will just say GO BEARS !!!!!

And if you want some fun, get-in-the spirit You Tube videos, check out the Lyric Opera singer or some good old-fashioned Superbowl Shuffle knock-offs with Da Superfan Shuffle.

One more photo ...this guy is not in the video, but he could be, right???

Food Allergies -- Science or Voodoo?

Sometimes I think the whole food allergy thing is part voo-doo because we don't know where it came from or even exactly how to handle it. There are so many different ideas on how to "treat" them. For example, this article was recently published that reports on an experimental study where they fed a person with a food allergy small amounts of the food the person is allergic to. This is the OPPOSITE approach that is normally taken--which is to completely avoid the allergen.

Because food allergies can be so confusing and so damn scary, I signed my family up to participate in the Children's Memorial Food Allergy study. The four-year, $5.5 million research initiative will look at the impact of environmental and genetic factors on children who suffer with food allergies.

It took about half a day to get to the hospital and have the kids, myself and my husband tested. We all had to get blood drawn and get skin prick tests ... that part sucked, but overall it wasn't bad. (And in fact, the tests alerted us to the fact that Little Guy had grown out of his wheat allergy ... hallelujah!) We recently got a letter updating us on the study and asking us to talk to family and friends and see if they might participate. It seems they especially need families who don't have food allergies to serve as the control group. So, if you are interested in helping the medical community figure out this whole food allergy thang, check out this site.

If you participate, we can compare our medical test scores ... cool!

Picture This

Okay, I am finally succumbing to posting pictures of Big Guy and Little Guy on my blog.

I hadn't done so up until now because I was worried about security issues, but after seeing adorable pictures on other blogs, such as Christina's daughter at A Mommy Story or pictures of this cutie-pie at Mommy Off the Record, I can't resist. It is part of the Mommy-DNA to want to show off pictures of your kids, so why not do so on my blog, right?

So, here is the blog premier of my boys!!!! (Trumpets, please)

Below is Big Guy indulging (can a four-year old indulge?) in a soy ice cream cone. Get it! It's yummy.



And here is Little Guy slurping up a rainbow ice cone (another good non-dairy option for you when you are out, like we were at the zoo, where they don't have soy desserts).



And yes, these photos are about 6 months old now. (No more shorts for us for a while.)

So, those are my boys. Most of the time they are sweet and lovable, other times I refer to them as the hooligans. For better or worse, expect to see more of them here!

Kiddie New Year's Eve

We are finally recovering from last night. Ten years ago that would have meant that I was up all night "enjoying" some beverages on new year's eve, today it means a slightly different thing.

Don't get me wrong, we still enjoyed some beverages (we tried mojitos, they were yummy), but having two kids at a friend's house with their two kids and another mom with her two kids and a couple with their two (are you keeping up?) makes for a very different new year's eve than the pre-kids kind. (For the record, this totals 8 kids under the age of 4 1/2 years old.) t was still lots of fun, just very different.

We let the kids ring in the new year with plastic glasses of sparkling apple juice and run around with noisemakers at about 8:30 p.m. The kids did great. They all played well and had a blast.

The part about the whole night that wiped me out was the sleepover part of it all. We didn't want to drive on new year's because of all the crazy people on the road, so we had one big sleepover. Unfortunately my two guys didn't take so well to this. Big Guy was so excited to sleep in his new spiderman sleeping bag, but when the time came to really use it and sleep, he couldn't do it. He finally fell asleep in my friend's bed watching Ice Age on the portable DVD at a LATE hour. Little Guy actually went down with no fuss (a miracle for him), but woke up about 2:30 a.m. freaked out because he was in a new place. We had to calm him down without waking the rest of the herd, I mean kids. At 6 a.m., Big Guy woke up to go to the bathroom and freaked out because he was overtired and in a new place. I had to hustle him to the basement so he wouldn't freak out. VERY TIRING. But, we had a great group nap from 11:30 to 1:30 today, so we are all feeling better.

And the bottomline is that, overall, the kids had a great time, and so did the grown-ups. By the way, couple random things related to all this:

1. One of my resolutions is to blog more


2. The kids enjoyed Orville Redenbacher's Kettle Korn in the cool new mini-bag (perfect size for kids) at the party -- dairy-free and yummy!


3. I planned on posting photos from last night, but realized I left my digital camera at my friend's house. (I told you we were tired!) I'll add them to this post later in the week. Update: 1/28/07 -- Finally added the photos!!
   

So, Happy New Year everyone!!!!!