There is something about putting on footy pajamas. Maybe it's the way you can cover so much ground so quickly - especially on our hardwood floors. Maybe it's the way your entire body is encapsulated in cotton. Maybe it's the way ONE zipper holds it all together and can undo it all so easily. Whatever the case, it brings out the wild woman in Brooklyn. So when I say go over there and pose, here is what she does.

Where does it all come from? Can there just be 4 people living here? I think someone snuck in and added to my pile.

Demonstrating some incredible head control, August glances around the room like he's been holding his head up for ages, instead of just now for the first time. So proud of him.

I learned a couple of things about pink eye this last week. 1) if you're a contact wearer, you can still use eye drops and wear your contacts so long as there are no steroids in the drops. Awesome! 2) If you clean your contacts at night with ClearCare, you can prevent giving yourself pink eye over and over. Double Awesome. 3) pink eye produces some of the most monstrous eye boogers. Closer to real boogers than anything I've ever seen. Like an eye with a cold. 4) it's not as bad as I remember it being as kid. It didn't itch at all. Maybe it's grown up over the years? Or maybe I have...

I'm walking through Kroger with my two kiddos, pushing a loaded cart when my already blurry right eye (blurry because of the sludge being produced by my icky eye) gets seriously foggy. And I start feeling something really wet as I blink. And since the number one rule of not spreading pink eye is to NOT TOUCH YOUR EYE (or wash your hands immediately thereafter if you do), I continue to push my cart out to my car, unload my groceries, buckle the kids in and then sit in the drivers seat. Only then flipping down the mirror on my windshield visor. And gasping out loud at the sight of the montstrous boogerish slime ball OOZING its way out my eye. I happen to keep spare burp cloths in our diaper bag...not necessarily for such a time as this, but in case there ever is excess gunk to be sopped up. And on my eye, there was definitely some gunk to be sopped up. As I carefully extract the enormous eye booger, gagging the whole time, I did notice that the sky seemed to lighten. Or maybe that was just my vision clearing up.

I'm definitely glad to be past that now. And it seems we are. I managed to just have the one eye, Brooklyn went from right to left and then it's gone. And miraculously, Kyle and August have emerged unscathed! Praise God!

It now looks like I have pink eye as well. Dern it all. Waiting on some eye drops from my doc! And washing my hands every 2 seconds!

Ever heard of it? Apparently there are infomercials for it late at night. But having basically no channels and rarely ever turning on my tv, that's not where we heard of it. We have a friend who's used it and really liked the program. It's essentially a 90 day work out program designed to kick your bootie and get you in fantabulous shape. There are actually 3 different types of the 90 day program, so you can theoretically pick your program. And being the workout fiend that I am, it appealed to me on many levels. SO, after experimenting with a few of the workouts, Kyle and I bought the program. 12 DVDs of serious workouts. Designed to move your body up and through the usual plateaus and transform your body. Day One for us was Monday. We started out with a killer chest & back workout followed by the Ab Ripper X. Oh, my abs were crying. Today was an hour of plyometrics. Felt that one, too! An hour of squat jumps, leaping and landing like a cat...or after an hour, like a dead weight...

We did take "before" pictures, but no way am I posting those here until we have some really good "after" photos to compare!

We awoke this morning already having planned to go to see Dr. Jenkins, our family physician, for August's 4 month check-up. (Slightly premature because he won't be 4 months old until Nov. 17, but it worked out 2 months after his 2 month checkup). I was incredibly curious to see just how long and heavy August is. A few weeks ago, I'd measured him myself and he was 26 inches long. At his 2 month check-up, he was 24 inches long and weighed in at 13 pounds. Now, two months later, he weighed in at 18 pounds, 10 ounces (!!!) and was 27.25 inches long. A weight gain of 5 pounds in 2 months and an addition of more than 3 inches to his stature. Wow. He was in the 97th percentile for BOTH. So, at least his weight is proportional to his height! My doctor just laughed and said, Good Work! We love it when they top the charts or even zoom off them.

The unplanned part of our visit developed when Brooklyn woke up this morning and her left eye was swollen and glued shut with eye gunk. She looked up at me blearily and oh, so sweetly, smiling with her one good eye. I thought to myself, Uh Whaaaaaa? After cleaning her eye up (and washing both our hands), I suspected pink eye. Hadn't seen that in a long time, but it sure looked like what she had. Fortunately and kind of hilariously, she had no idea that anything was wrong with her eye! I almost cried because she was so precious and looked so pitiful at the same time. After looking at her reflection in the mirror and puzzling over it a few minutes, she said, "Momma, what's wrong with my eye?" I said, "Well, we're gonna get that figured out. " How CONVENIENT that I had to go to the doctor anyway!!! Bonus!

An hour later, a weigh in for August and 4 shots later (poor baby), Brooklyn was a confirmed pink eye-er, we had drops in hand, had already administered a dose and were on our way home.
She doesn't appear to be itching on that eye, which is good! She's actually be phenomenal about not touching it! Hopefully, the rest of our family will emerge unscathed. Keep ya posted.

To really get an apple, full submersion is essential, as Michael aptly demonstrates.

Don Quixote (aka Chad) is tremendously ferocious as he prepares to battle the windmills. Meanwhile, Melissa is full of vim and vigor as a bunch of grapes! And it was quite the political event as Sarah Palin showed up (no, not Tina Fey...Lauren!)

You can tell I'm scattered because I'm putting a bunch of party pictures completely randomly around a bunch of completely non-Halloween-related entries. Bear with me. Forgot they were on here. But here they are.

Or probably never gonna be famous, but still. We're gonna get to be on TV! Brooklyn and I, that is. One of the perks of having a husband who's in the advertising business is that you occasionally get offered the opportunity to be in TV commercials! In this instance, Kyle needed us for a TV commercial being shot to advertise a new reading program. Physicians in AR are promoting the benefits of reading to your children (brain development, etc.) by giving out books to their patients. I'm not sure of all the details, but they needed me to read to Brooklyn. It would be a pretend bedtime shot, with B in her pj's and me and her snuggled up under the covers, reading a book. Seeing as how Brooklyn has never been around lots of cameras, camera-men and all the stuff that fills up a room when shooting a commercial (well, not since she was about 6 months old), Kyle and I were afraid she'd pay more attention to the action than to my reading to her. This is where we were wrong.

We showed up at the site (conveniently a few blocks from our house!), got made up and crawled into this enormous bed. Kyle had checked out lots of great children's books from the library, including some new Charlie & Lola books, a Mercer Mayer book, a Franklin turtle book and a dinosaur book. Brooklyn was captivated by them and the prospect of my reading them to her. She only looked up at the camera once or twice. The rest of the time, she was a flawless little actress. Completely engrossed in our little moment together. It melted my heart! She may be the next Dakota Fanning. Right. While we were being filmed, August was falling in love with Lindsey, a co-worker of Kyle's. I don't think these commercials air until December or January, but if you see them, look for me and Brooklyn!!!

Warm and cozy in my new pj's, Momma! And so not afraid of the crazy critters on my jammies. As if.

There are certain times I do things by coincidence or maybe it's all subconscious. If so, that means my mind is working away like crazy on the down-low. For example, I have these brightly colored Ikea plates, bowls, cups and utensils which are used by Brooklyn. Almost without exception, I will grab a plate or bowl first, then a few minutes later just snatch a fork or spoon out of the utensil bowl without really paying attention to what I've grabbed. Just about EVERY time, the utensil is the same color as the bowl or plate I've already given her. So, it's gotta be subconscious, right? Another example. I get everyone dressed in the morning and we go somewhere. People comment on how we're all either wearing green, blue, brown, stripes, etc. I have completely matched us with absolutely NO cognitive awareness of trying to do so! Another recent classic example is a few Wednesdays ago as I got everyone ready for Bible study. I should interject here that I don't dress Kyle. Well, not always, anyway. In fact, in this instance, he came home from work and just hopped in the car with us. Turns out, he was wearing a new argyle shirt I'd gotten him. And lo and behold, I'd dressed little August in his brand new argyle sweater! Coincidence? I wonder... In any case, my two men looked crazy handsome.

I'll take a pumpkin and a red hot chili pepper.

I started blogging too late last night to actually get much accomplished. So now, while my dinner cooks (Lemon Curry Chicken with Mango Rice compliments of Tyler's Ultimate), I will take advantage of my window of opportunity and try to catch up! One of my problems last night was that I sat down with the wrong camera! Now, I am equipped with both at my side, ready to upload pics.

What a day! After sleeping a little late because I feel like I've been getting up relatively early, we began our Halloween. August's first. We cleaned house, darted around to find an extremely last minute pumpkin to carve at Josh & Lauren's party, darted back home to put Brooklyn down for her nap before it was time to garb up and trick or treat. So the pumpkin I found was actually in a trash bin. Probably a day away from rotting, it was the only one still intact and although I would never have paid money for the deformed thing, I was only too happy to snag it as a freebie. I like to think I rescued it.

We walked up and down Park Hill's Halloween on the Hill. I may not bother next year. Too many cars, not enough candy. I was so pooped from that I almost didn't want to try trick-or-treating. And apparently no one else did either because there were only 2 houses with porch lights on within walking distance of my house! Come ON! My precious neighbor, Russ, was in action, as was his equally precious dog, Rose.

Then, Kyle and I assembled our own costume (we were opposite halves of a S'more - a full S'more when smushed together). We were both quite pleased with the results. And August as a little red hot chili pepper was so stinking cute. Brooklyn, too, was a crowd pleaser in her pumpkin suit. And I managed to get the best deals on both of their costumes! The secret is to order them barely in time for Halloween and you pay practically nothing! So far, Babystyle has not let me down in the quality costume department. So far, we've bought a shark costume, dragonfly costume, pumpkin and red hot chili pepper. 5 stars.

Josh & Lauren's party was super fun. Everyone participated and dressed up and there was so much yummy food that I didn't have room in my tummy to try everything. We bowled with pumpkins, played Wheel of Misfortune, bobbed for apples (well, my brother Michael did - the only one brave enough to stick his whole head underwater), stuffed our faces, and carved pumpkins! As our pumpkin was totally retarded, it sort of could only become one thing. As you'll see, it could only be a T-rex. Complete with a person stuck in its teeth and carnage surrounding it. We got first runner up. Cool.

As daylight fades and we wait for Daddy to come home, I pop in a yoga video for a quick workout. August intently watches, clutching his burp cloth. Brooklyn, meanwhile runs to get her goldfish to snack on while she attempts to join me in what she calls "Yogat." Round this place, Yogat is a family affair.

"And by this I mean get all the peas out and put them in my mouth. Forget those macaroni cheesy things. I just want peas. Mom, how hard is that to understand? I see you trying to sneak a noodle on that spoon. Forget it. I just want the peas. Fine. I'll throw that spoon on the floor and use my fingers. Just peas. Oh, is that a piece of onion, ok, I'll take that too. But blech, no noodles. And I want some cheese! Oh, there's cheese IN this noodly stuff? Well, not good enough! I want my special cheese that comes in a little package just for me! No, well, fine. Give me more peas. I'll eat yours off your plate while you're up getting me a napkin. Tee Hee."

Brooklyn

As I sit at my chair, sneaking a few minutes of blogging, Brooklyn is playing with her dollhouse. Which is really a place where all her tiny toys converge - dollhouse people, Noah and his ark animals, occasionally Ingrid the cat...

I hear this conversation ensuing, "You're not Thursday, you're Tuesday!" "I'm not Tuesday, I'm Thursday!" Interesting. No idea where that came from. Is anybody Wednesday?

Just to prove my daughter has the memory of an elephant (meaning she never forgets a thing), I have an example. At the State Fair (SEVERAL weeks ago now), we watched the pig races. Ever since then, without fail, Brooklyn wants to make sure those pigs are included in our nightly (or afternoonly or morningly) prayers. Whenever prayers are said, and I often just pray out loud while we're driving, Brooklyn pipes up, "Pray for the pigs, mommy!" "Pray for their running...pray for their cookies! Pray for the pigs, mommy!" I would be really surprised if there were any other pigs over which so many prayers have been issued. I wish I could find out just how the little guys are doing. They ought to be WELL protected after such prayer. Thriving, even.

It takes such restraint not to smother these little cheeks and lips with smooches...but that risks waking a sleeping baby. Such a no-no.