Feeling a bit better...

Here's a video of Jeremiah feeling a bit better after a dose of Motrin and his first dose of antibiotics.

Sick... again.

Well, you read that right. We have a sick little boy in the house again. :( This time, however, it is not his ears! We don't really know what it is, though. It started off yesterday... he woke up from a 2 hour morning nap with a fever, which kind of fluctuated between 99.9 and 102. We gave him Tylenol, and he was acting pretty normal just a bit more tired, clingy, crabby, etc. So, we actually thought maybe the fever was due to those darn molars coming through.

So, we were planning to attend the satellite viewing in West Des Moines of the big Calvin/Hope game in the afternoon. Since Jeremiah was acting pretty normal, and his fever was pretty low, we decided to go anyway (yes, we dragged our sick child out to a restaurant. Horrible parents! But, it was the Calvin/Hope game, people!). And you would never have known that J was feeling under the weather by his reaction to seeing the balloons!

It was funny, a Hope fan tried to get Jeremiah to play with an orange balloon and he wanted NOTHING to do with it! But we gave him a gold one, and look at his excitement! He's a Knight already! :)

And we were all very happy when the Knights were ahead at half-time and seemed to be running away with the game. But then, in true Calvin/Hope fashion, Hope came back and the last part of the game was nail-biter.

Saying "No, no" as Hope takes the lead. Jeremiah has started wagging his finger whenever he hears "No, no" Pretty funny, and we're not sure where he learned this from, since we don't do that (wag our fingers... we say plenty of "No no").

Looking concerned as Calvin loses to Hope. :( What a disappointment!

So the rest of the evening Jeremiah continued to have a fever, and we continued to give him Tylenol. We thought about bringing him in to Urgent Care to get him checked out, but by the time we got back from the game, they were all closed. So, this morning when he woke up and STILL had a 101.4 temp, we decided to take him in.

Waiting for mommy and daddy to go to Urgent Care.

I hate going to Urgent Care. We got there 45 minutes after they opened, and the waiting room was packed. We waited about an hour before being seen. And then I hear all the sick people coughing and looking sick, and I can just imagine all the germs floating around in that room. UGH. So finally we were taken back and were seen relatively quickly. When the nurse took J's temp it was up to 103, so they gave him some Motrin (wonder how much THAT will cost us!). They first did a strep test, which Jeremiah HATED. That came back negative. Then they did an influenza culture, which Jeremiah also HATED. That also came back negative. So then they did a white blood cell count, which involved a finger poke (they should do that a different way... they take an awful lot of blood from that one little poke! And it's horrible watching your baby cry as they poke, then squeeze, then squeeze, then squeeze, etc!). HATE is not a strong enough word for how J felt about that-- he put up quite a fight, and the lady drawing the blood was having a hard time hanging on to his sweaty little hands!

Owie finger.

But anyway, that test gave the Dr. the answer he needed-- looks like some kind of bacterial tonsil infection. This surprised us, since J hasn't been acting like his throat is sore, but the Dr. did say it was red and that we probably caught this early. So, off to Walgreens for Azythro-something antibiotic. He'll take that for 5 days, and hopefully be back to his normal self! Jeremiah is looking forward to a day at home with daddy tomorrow, and possibly a day at home with mommy on Tuesday (it would be perfect if I ended up with a snow day that day)!

An Early Birthday Present!

This post is mostly for Grandma Wiers. :) Jeremiah's first birthday present arrived in the mail today-- a Fisher-Price "Walker to Wagon." He can use it as a walking toy for now, and then pull it as a wagon later on-- super cute! Plus there are all kinds of balls and spinny things on it, which Jeremiah loves. :) Anyway, this gift is from Grandma Wiers-- she figured that Jeremiah could use this toy now to practice his walking!

So, here's a video of Jeremiah's first test drive of the walker. You will notice that he also loves the box! :)

And here's another video of Jeremiah enjoying his new toy. Hope you enjoy the videos, Grandma (and hopefully you can actually SEE them)! Thanks for the new toy!!!!

So handsome!

Jeremiah got all dressed up in his sweater vest for church today. This picture leaves me speechless... gone is my cute little baby. :( In his place is a handsome little boy!

Haircut #5 and an Official First Word!

I promise that this will (probably) be my last blog post about Jeremiah's haircuts. But seriously. 5 haircuts within his short 11 month life? That's pretty impressive! We had her cut his hair a little shorter this time (so maybe we won't have to go back again so soon!). But I am afraid that it makes him look way too much like a big boy! :( Judge for yourself...


We've also heard Jeremiah say his official word! He's been saying "Mamamamama" and "Dadadadada" for a while, but we're not 100% sure that he actually associates those names with Mommy and Daddy. But, he now does officially say the word "ball" when he sees or plays with a ball. It comes out more like "buh." But close enough, right? I tried to get it on video tonight. It's not the greatest video (Jeremiah's not focusing! He's much more interested in smacking his lips! Molly is being annoying! Oh, and I hate my voice!), but I haven't been able to figure out how to post a video before, so I don't even know if you'll eve be able to see it! But if you can, then you can bet I'll be trying to get lots more videos!!! So.... if you want to see it, click HERE. Crossing my fingers that maybe I actually figured it out this time!

Snow Day!

Today was a great day-- a snow day! Now, I am not usually one to be happy about snow days (mostly because any snow days we had usually had to be made up at the end of the year). And also because last year at this time we had already had 5 snow days, and 7 more would follow before winter was done! But, this year is different. My school got wise and scheduled in 8 snow days this year (8 seems a little excessive, but I guess they don't want a repeat of last year!)... which means that we'll have school on a previously scheduled day off (I'm guessing they'll take the Monday after Easter away), but we won't have to tack this day on to the end of the year-- woohoo! Also, last year at this time I was 8 months pregnant and spent all 12 of my snow days pretty much laying around (and doing the occasional load of laundry). Now, I get to spend my snow days with this guy!

Plus, today I was supposed to have 2 recess duties, so I was quite pleased to get out of those! :)


Watching Daddy shovel!

The snow here started Monday morning-- I was actually hoping for an early dismissal or something already Monday, but no such luck. During the afternoon on Monday, they already called a 2 hour delay for Tuesday since the snow was supposed to continue through Tuesday afternoon. Usually when a 2 hour delay is called, they do end up calling a snow day eventually, and that is what happened today! I got the blessed phone call about 7:30 am, and I was thrilled to be able to stay home with my fella for the day! He is one active little dude, that is for sure. This is what he did all day:

Chewed on his favorite giraffe (that Grandma Wiers bought for him at the San Diego Zoo).


Chewed some more on that silly giraffe.


Then left Molly to babysit so he could go play with other toys.


Made truck sounds (bmmmmmm, bmmmm, bmmmmmm). We think he just does this subconsciously-- he does it ALL the time while he is playing!


Then he took a nap. And Mommy got the crazy idea to get him all bundled up in his snowsuit so that he could experience the snow up close!

"Mommy, what are you doing to me?!?!?"


That's better (there is a smile behind that paci)!


He can't move that well all bundled up, so once we got outside, he kind of just leaned against a snowbank (yes, he was like Randy from "The Christmas Story").


What the heck is that stuff?


Laughing at Molly...

Yes, I realize that his ear is not covered by his hat. Don't worry-- we were outside a total of 4.2 minutes. He was fine.

Back inside the warm house, Jeremiah continued to keep busy!
He flipped his paci for awhile (another things he does all the time subconsciously)...


Then he practiced his walking by pushing a chair around.


He banged on the trash can for a while.


Then he got into some trouble...


And he ended the day by getting ready for his bath.


And that was a day in the life of Jeremiah! Tomorrow it will be back to daycare and school for us, but at least it's already Wednesday! I'm still crossing my fingers that the wind will pick up and we'll have at least a 2 hour delay tomorrow. But of course, I'd take another snow day! :)

California Continued!

The second half of our wonderful week in Cali!

Wednesday turned out to be chilly (compared to CA weather, not IA weather) and rainy. We ladies headed out to the Cabazon Outlet Mall to do a little shopping, because later in the day we had family pictures!

Our plan was to have the pictures taken outside, so we had to change things up a bit. But thankfully, Matt and Cheryl live near the University of Redlands and we were able to find some outdoor spots that were covered. I think the pictures are going to be great-- can't wait to see them! Here is Matt with Josie and Jeremiah, getting ready for pictures!


That evening we had awesome pizza (don't even get me started on the pizza crust!) at The Gourmet Pizza Shoppe. It was SO good! And I had never had cashews on a pizza before, but I liked it. Too bad I forgot my camera AGAIN! :(

Then it was time to say good-bye to Uncle Ben-- he had to head back to Chicago to get back to work.

Jeremiah said his good-bye, but he was a little unsure about it. He really liked making his truck noises at Uncle Ben!


Thursday was... um... very interesting, to say the least! Matt had to pick up some friends at the airport in Long Beach, and we decided to go along and see the beach (oh, how I LOVE the beach)! We first stopped in Seal Beach and walked down the pier. It was chilly (again, by California standards) and breezy, but there were still crazy people getting in the water!


Me and Abe-- we love the beach (the water is behind us, the sun was just too bright)!


Me and Adam. Oh, and for this day we decided to go kid-less. We FORCED Grandma and Grandpa to stay home with the babies for the afternoon(they hated every minute of it, too).


Look at that view! The water, sand, palm trees, snow covered mountains-- amazing!

After that, we headed to the airport to pick up Matt's friends, and then we decided to see some sights in Long beach (I will skip over the part about how me and Abby really wanted Jamba Juice, and there was one in Long Beach, and we even found it, and then Matt made us leave because there were only 2 people working and like 7 people waiting for smoothies). We wanted to see The Queen Mary and also visit Shoreline Village (Long Beach's version of San Diego's Seaport Village).

Well, Matt was driving and Adam was helping to navigate, and me and Abe were in the backseat. Let's just say that we took a few detours before we got to our destination.


"Hmmm. All I see is cargo and semi-trucks. Are we sure this is right?"

Finally we arrived at Shoreline Village, and (even though it was chilly) we got ice cream and smoothies (because remember? Abby and I had wanted Jamba Juice!).


Abby, me, Matt, and Queen Mary.

Then traffic on the way home was another adventure...


Adam had sigalert and googlemaps up on his phone, trying to find the bast way home with the least amount of traffic. We actually made it home in about 2 hours, which was pretty good. We made it home in time to have Panera for dinner with the rest of the fam (if you are wondering where Cheryl was during this whole ordeal, she had to work. I'm guessing that if Cheryl had been along, we wouldn't have had some of the driving "issues" we did).

Then it was time to say good-bye to Auntie Abby-- she was leaving EARLY Friday morning to head back to Chicago.

Jeremiah does not like good-byes!

"Is that Auntie Abby or mommy?"

Friday (New Year's Eve) we went to Pasadena to see the Rose Bowl parade floats as they were being decorated for judging. This was so cool! When I was in high school we went to the Rose Bowl parade a few times, and it was always amazing to watch those floats go by. So it was especially cool to see the floats up close and watch them put the last minute decorations on!


If you look to the left, those are the guys from the Big 10 network preparing for their coverage of the Rose Bowl. Seeing this was a highlight for Adam!


Jeremiah was so excited to see the floats! Or maybe he was just excited to taste his first funnel cake.


Us in front of the Trader Joe's float!

So amazing to see up close!


As we were walking back to our cars, we were stopped by security. And then we watched as a police escort and 4 big buses pulled up in front of the Rose Bowl and both the TCU and Wisconsin teams unloaded and went inside-- so cool!

That evening we decided to grill steaks for our New Year's Eve meal-- they were delicious! But they usually are, when Adam is the grillmaster...



These 2 got into a little trouble...


Jeremiah had bedtime stories with Grandma one more time...

and then it was time to say good-bye since Grandma and Grandpa were heading back to Wisconsin on New Years Day, and we were heading back to Iowa.

All of us adults played some Wii and TRIED to stay awake until midnight. However, I think that we were all in bed by 10:30 (hey, we rang in the New Year on Iowa time, okay?).

Then Saturday we hung out and watched the Rose Bowl Parade, and then it was time to get to the airport. :( We did stop for one last meal at In 'n' Out, though!

Me and Adam with the "twins." While we were eating, 2 separate ladies came by and asked if Jeremiah and Josie were twins!

And then we went to the airport. The End. Such a great trip!!!

California!!!

What a trip! We had so much fun with the Wiers clan out in California-- it's hard to believe that it's over and tomorrow we head back to work already. I always hate the sadness of leaving my family and ending a wonderful vacation. I am not a huge fan of reality and would much prefer to be on a permanent vacation! Oh well... somebody has to pay the bills, right? So before the work week starts I'll reminisce about the great week we just had (probably in 2 parts, because I have lots of pictures!).

When we left off, we had just enjoyed a wonderful Christmas Day full of presents, brunch, Wii, and playing in the park! On Sunday, we went to Matt and Cheryl's church in the morning and then hit Cuca's for lunch. GOOD Mexican food! Of course, we also hung out at Matt and Cheryl's house, enjoyed the nice day, and played Wii. Jeremiah took a ride in cousin Josie's swing!


Oooops. He also got into Josie's new purse-- he's got his lipstick and car keys ready (don't tell daddy)!


On Monday, Cheryl had to work, so Matt took the rest of us on a little walking tour of downtown Redlands. He is full of historical information!

Jeremiah enjoyed the fountain outside the Lincoln Shrine (it's the only Lincoln memorial west of the Mississippi FYI)! The Memorial Shrine was closed that day, though, so we couldn't go inside.


We also walked around the Smiley Public Library and the Redlands Bowl. Both Jeremiah and Josie were excited to be on stage at the Redlands Bowl!



Of course we had to make an ice cream stop at Baskin Robbins on the walk back home!


We ended the day with dinner at In 'n' Out (can't believe I forgot my camera!) and another tour of some Christmas lights.

On Tuesday, we drove down to the wonderful city of Escondido (where I was born, grew up, and lived until college!). We stopped at my most favorite place in the entire city-- Wedeking's Bakery! I have loved the cookies at this bakery for my entire life-- ever since my mom started taking me there as a reward after eye doctor appointments.

Love this place!


Jeremiah is now a lover of Wedeking's cookies!


Oh my. LOVE these cookies (probably a good thing I don't live near this bakery)!


After Wedekings and a drive down Paradise St. and Casa Real Ln. (our old houses!), we headed down to San Diego to hit the San Diego Zoo! It was SUPER busy, but we managed to find places to park and enjoyed the afternoon there. The first stop-- lunch!


Next stop-- the children's petting zoo. Jeremiah LOVED this and couldn't get enough of the goats!



Checking out the fish with Auntie Abby...


And the hippos with Uncle Ben (seconds before the hippo pooped)!


We finally had to put Jeremiah in the stroller and block his view of everything so that he would take a nap!


Me and Abby by "The Big Bridge" as we called it when we were little.


Polar Bears that live at the San Diego Zoo have a good life!


We ended the day with a stop for dinner in La Jolla. We stopped to see some of my extended family (the Diekemas), who gathered for Christmas in SoCal. It was great to see everyone!

Jeremiah with my cousin Maria...


gathering in the kitchen...


Adam was happy to see that they had the Hawkeye game on!


Well, that's the first half of the week. Stay tuned for part 2!