Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Adventures of a Saturday Night

We look back at this past Saturday night as one of our funniest nights....post children, so we thought we would share these laughs with our faithful blog viewers!

We cancelled our babysitter for the evening, which in retrospect was a tremendous blessing for us and our sweet babysitter. We decided instead to do an "in house" date night. We do these about once a month. We'll go to Wegmans and buy something we normally wouldn't buy in our weekly shopping and a bottle of wine. After we put the kids down we cook together and then enjoy our meal and either a movie a game of Yahtzee or scrabble. So for this Saturday night we bought some flank steak and marinated it all day and we planned to make a yummy balsamic steak salad with a bottle of Merlot - YUM.

So about 6PM we fed the children. I boiled up some Trader Joe's pesto gnocchi. Little man inhaled them as usual, but our princess was struggling with them. She kept telling us they were spicy. She tends to sometimes be a little dramatic, by the way we have no idea where this comes from, so we dismissed it. We made her finish the gnocchi and she soon started complaining her stomach hurt. I ran to the gnocchi packaging and almost fell over - I can't believe what I've done. Our daughter reminds us that she is allergic to nuts about 10 times a day. In fact, after we made her finish the gnocchi, I gave her a cookie left over from bible study the night before and she said "Are there nuts in here"? I said "No sweetie, you never have to worry about Mama giving you something with nuts". HA. So apparently Trader Joe's makes their pesto gnocchi with cashews - which is the EXACT nut that she is allergic to. She has had pesto in the past, but pesto made with pine nuts which she is not allergic to. So here we go - this is going to be an interesting night and the guilt was piled on high!

We proceed to take both children up into the bathroom. Little man is in the tub and princess is whaling that her stomach hurts but she doesn't want to "puke" as she says it. About 10 minutes into this, the power goes out. Splendid! So I get little man out of the tub, put jammies on him, while hubby runs around getting candles and flashlights. I lit a few candles upstairs and found another flashlight. About 5 minutes later, the fire alarm goes off. We just figured it was because we lit a few candles upstairs and we also knew our alarms are a bit sensitive. Fire alarms are made for a reason, and unfortunately they were sending us an accurate message that we just decided to ignore. A few minutes later I started to go down the stairs and I clearly smell what the fire alarm was trying to tell us. I start running and yelling hubbies name. A beautiful candle with herbs and flowers molded in the wax around the sides, was in full blown flames in the hallway. The beautiful herbs and flowers had caught on fire. Luckily we tended to this just in time and damage was prevented. WOW - ok what's next?

We put little man in his room to bed and tend to our poor whaling daughter as the stomach pains come in flows. About 45 minutes go by, and after talking to a neighbor pediatric nurse and NOT getting thru to the pediatrician that is on my "not so good list", she says she's tired and wants to go to bed. So perhaps there were just traces of cashews in the pesto and she's not really going to vomit. Last time, when we found out she was allergic to them, it was an immediate response. A few hives formed this time, but nothing like last time. So she climbs into bed about 8:30PM and we go downstairs to make the best of the remainder of our date night in the dark. We started playing Scrabble as we ate our peanut butter sandwiches - not so yum. I sort of had an uneasy feeling about the evening, and was not really into the game. At least this is what I told hubby since I was not having a good Scrabble night - 5-6 vowels at all times. We decided perhaps it was best to call it a night and go to bed early. It was only suppose to be a low of 30, so hopefully we could stay put in the house without heat all night, but you never know, a hotel might be in our future.

We just settled down for a long winters nap when we heard the princess cry. And yes indeed she did vomit. I'm amazed how it was able to touch every comforter, blanket, sheet, pillow, stuffed animal and the chair next to her bed. After an hour of cleaning we get her nestled in bed and she's feeling much better. And the power come back on! We breathe a sigh of relief that we now have heat....almost asleep....and then little man wakes up. Now when little man wakes up, it's a whole different story. One of the characteristics of Fragile X is called Hyperarousal. Some children, him being one of them, have trouble if they wake up in the middle of the night, settling back down. On a scale of 1 to 10, we wake up and at an arousal level of about 1 or 2 and usually settle back down quickly. Jimmo wakes up at level mock 10 and wants to play and yell and play and yell some more. So we go thru our routine when this happens, and a few hours later the entire family is fast asleep for at least a few hours before morning.

Now we look back at this evening and laugh - really - could all that seriously happen in one evening? I think in a few years we'll laugh even more!

And don't look too close at the board.....it was a tough night for Scrabble :0)

Monday, January 21, 2008

Best Friends

The term "Best Friends" is heard often around our house, as our daughter likes to often tell us we'll be her best friend forever and ever. I actually have this on video, and can't wait to show it to her when she's 17 and resigns from the "mama is the best person in the world" fan club. OK maybe at 16.

But this entry is truly about best friends. Hubby and I collectively over the years have friends from different stages of life.....Grade School - High School - College - Various Jobs - Church. It's truly such a blessing to have these friends in our lives. Although my parents didn't feel it was such a blessing when it came time for our wedding guest list, but that's another blog post! But this is about a certain type of friend. The kind of friend that you might not have seen in many months but when you do, you pick up like it was yesterday. Years later the same stories are just as funny and new memories are perseved each time you're together. During this busy season of life, we cherish the small little nuggets of time we have with them.

Well hubbies best friend flew in today from Watertown, NY. He left behind his sweet wife and triplets to come spend the evening with hubby. We only get to see them about once a year, but love them dearly! So hubby and friend just departed for a Syracuse/Georgetown game. Yes, he's from the Syracuse area, season ticket holder at that, but flew to DC to watch this game together. Can you say - HUGE FANS! They know every statistic about their teammates /opponents from hometown to three point field goal percentage. I sit and listen to the two of them talk in awe. But I LOVE that they do this each year. It's so important for both of them to have this time together.

Thanks for visiting....we love and miss you all! Go CUSE!

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Trading germs


Apologies for our lack of posts this week. An ugly cold hit the Grande family one member at a time and we're still on the road to recovery

Be back real soon!
P.S. not sure how we all got sick, its not like we ever go to the Park in January!

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Big Boy Swings all by himself....kind of!



What a beautiful Sunday we had! About 55 degrees - perfect for a walk to the park. Our little man surprised us this afternoon. He went on the "BIG KID" swing for the very first time and loved every minute of it! He protested with screams when it was time to get back in the jogger. Still not too steady on his own, but it just tickled my heart to watch him swing as he watched his big sister swing right next to him. The walking is coming along. He now wants absolutley nothing to do with his walkers, but just a finger or a passer-by shirt/pant to hold on to. We can't wait to see him take off and hope to catch it on video so we can share it here!

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Welcome 2008...


The kids enjoying mom and dad's hats from the night before....

who knew how much fun a crown could be!