The chocolate

This is the chocolate that my parents are nuts about. All the chocolate beans that made up this chocolate bar came from Venezuela. It is kind of like a wine and the flavors are supposedly different from diffrent chocolate beans from different areas. It is a nice intense dark chocolate and is very rich. You don't want to eat more than a few squares at a time. My mom says you even get a nice buzz from it but I did not notice that effect.

Bummer

Well poor C.J. had a bad cold so Evan did not get to have him over to play. I feel so bad for his mom. C.J. Was born a micro preemie and has been struggling ever since. He has lung damage from being on a ventilator when he was first born. Since then he had been in and out of the hospital with issues with his lungs. I have the feeling that he may be heading that way yet again but I hope I am wrong.

It really makes me realize that we have had it so lucky. Evan has been very good about not getting sick and needing hospitalizations. The worst thing that he has been sick with was a nasty tummy bug that he showed symptoms of mere days after getting out of the hospital from his stroke. I know that he picked it up from there. He was very nice and shared with mommy and daddy. Nothing is funner than going to Target to pick up a few things for a puking husband only to have to run to the bathroom yourself. A nice lady held Evan for me while I puked my guts out. It really freaked me out though because the last thing that the Cardiologist told me before we left the hospital was to not let him get dehydrated and here he was a few days later puking up a storm.

We did make a trip to Trader Joes today and some ginger snaps made everyone feel much happier. They make the best cookies there which is why I do not go there that often. I actually only went because my parents are addicted to a type of chocolate that they sell there and only there. How do I know this? My obsessed parents looked around for it. They do not have a Trader Joes anywhere near by. They live in Utah which is a very uncool state. They have to go to Las Vegas to find the nearest store (and they have actually done this).

Whenever a birthday pops up or some gift giving holiday I hook them up with a pile of chocolate. I feel like a drug dealer sometimes. Although thinking about it I am pretty poor for a drug dealer. I should jack up the price or something. hmmm off to think..................

Fun at the Doctor's office

Because Evan has a heart defect he gets a shot that is supposed to prevent RSV. It is annoying to me because it means that we are in the Peditrician's office once a month during cold and flu season. The good thing is that we have only visited him for this reason and not because he is actually sick or anything. This cold and flu season we lucked out because I have been able to schedule Harry's well baby visits at the same time saving me the hassle and travel time to multiple appointments. I would be taking the both of them any way.

Evan weighed 27 pounds and some change. He is getting to be such a big boy and is gaining weight so well now. He struggled so much to put weight on his first year and now in his second he is packing on the pounds. He was not too happy about the shot but after he had finished crying he was trying to get up onto the peditrician's lap and poke through his pockets. Evan is such a forgiving child. It amazes me that he recovers so quickly from things like that and does not hold it against the person that had to do the painful procedure.

Harry got weighed even though he was not officially in for anything. He is now 15 pounds 8 ounces. He is such a chunk!! I knew he had put on a bit of weight recently because my back hurts after a long day of holding him. Soon my back muscles will strengthen and then he will get even bigger setting the whole cycle over again.

We stopped at one of my favorite places to shop, the Carter's store at the outlet mall. There is a lady working there that worked there when I was pregnant with Evan and going nuts buying baby clothing. She had to ooh and ahh over Harry. I hadn't been in there since he was born. I was good and only got a few short sleeved shirts for Evan since the weather is starting to warm up. I could probably spend a fortune there if I had the money to do it.

That was pretty much the big event of the day. Tomorrow we are having a friend over to play (Evan will ignore him and play on his own while the other boy does the same. They may interact when the other boy plays with a toy that Evan really likes and then Evan will snatch it.) so I have to do a bit of picking up in the living room.

Something odd

I was just looking at the box that my birth control patches came in and I noticed that my husband's name was on it not mine. Does that mean that HE is the one that should be taking it? I have a feeling that it would not really work very well for him.

My new love

Harry's personality has really started to shine through. He is smiling and cooing a lot. It is so much fun to just hold him, smile at him and watch him smile and coo back at me. I have truly fallen in love with him.

The lesson was not learned

Evan's little pointer finger got nipped again so apparently my hopes were vain. For some reason known only to the tiny pea brained Larry, he decided to awaken while I was feeding Harry. Evan did his usual supersonic shrieking at the rodent's appearance and immediately made his way to the cage. I had to tell him several times to stay away but was helpless to actually do much about it because of the hungry baby in my arms. I look away to burp Harry and hear a shriek of pain. Evan is holding up his finger and it is dripping in blood.

If we were ever to have forensic investigators in our home looking for evidence of some sort they would probably end up very confused by what they found. Thanks to my darling child being on blood thinners and being a typical accident prone toddler we have blood droplets all over the place.

This time was no exception as Evan left a trail as I carried him upstairs to the first aid kit. The first bandage I put on ended up later being chewed off far too soon so there are also blood stains on Harry's bouncy seat. Of course I did not notice the stains until much later. The second bandage stayed on much longer because I taped the heck out of it.

I fixed the problem of tiny fingers and nippy rodents. I put some cardboard all around the cage to protect the animal and my son.

Phone frustration

We have been having the worst time with our phone/DSL this week. The DSL has been in and out, the phone line had been filled with static and we have been getting some horribly rude guy's line crossed with ours. He was yelling at my husband while my husband was on the phone with the phone company trying to get the phone fixed. It has been like pulling teeth to get an actual person to come out and fix our phone line. Their idea of a repair timeline is anytime on a specific day between eight in the morning and six in the evening.

The biggest irony of this whole situation is this is what my husband does at work, fixing phone lines and stuff like that. The only problem is that he does it for the military so that he can't fix our civilian phones. The boxes are locked up to keep people from messing with them. I find it very annoying that if we lived on base this situation would have been taken care of in a snap and probably would not have even happened in the first place.

A fun thing did happen yesterday. We finally got a printer after going without for about two years. We got a pretty basic printer/scanner/copier. It does not print pictures very well but it is cheaper to get them done at places like Costco any way. The printer did not come with a USB cable that we needed to have it connected to the printer and the crooks at the store we got it from were trying to charge us $30 for it. My husband goes to Wal-mart and they are there (on clearance no less) for $9. HA! Ya gotta love a good deal even if the store has appalling labor practices.

Well I managed to avoid the whole horrible chocolate ordeal that I usually face every Valentine's Day. I suggested to my husband that we should use one of the one pound gift certificates that he got for Christmas. His inner cheapness decided that not having to spend actual money was the way to go. While we were at the store there was this nice grandmotherly woman handing out samples. She was very taken by Evan who reminded her of her own granddaughter.

Evan's cuteness really seems to attract all sorts of people to him. One time when I was in the grocery store a mentally challenged person came up to us and told me that he was a very special little boy. That was something that I already knew in my heart but it was nice to have someone else say it. I think that his spirit really seems to shine through because we get people coming up to us all the time. I don't mean to sound conceited or anything but I do think that his broken little body has an especially bright spirit in it.

Feeling Good!

I am in such a good mood right now. I have my launch cast radio station rocking in the background, the kids are asleep and I have the computer all to myself. Life is good!

Oh I am also wondering if feeling not so bad that Evan got nipped by the hampster makes me a horrible mom. He hears us all the time telling him to keep away from the cage and yet he stuck his little finger in there and got a nip. I know that Evan understands that certain things are off limits because he will rarely go into the kitchen unless one of us is in there. He will try and sneak in but that only happens when one of us is cooking dinner and the other (usually my husband) is off in another room.

I can hardly blame to poor hampster for the nipping. Earlier in the evening we had him out in his exercise ball and Evan was treating it like a toy and batting the hampster around despite our best efforts to get him to stop. We put the poor animal away before Evan threw him across the room. I guess this is why I usually wait until Evan is asleep before I let the little bugger roam.

The only thing I really feel a bad about is that the nip made Evan bleed, which because he is on blood thinners really is not all that hard. I always feel bad every time he bleeds because even the smallest prick will make him bleed as if the actual injury was much worse. I hope that this will teach him to keep his fingers out of the cage but I am not holding my breath on that one.

Valentine's Day Chocolate

I am working on a way to get my own chocolate this year. My husband is a bit upset but I have not been able to tell him the real reason I don't want him getting my chocolate this year. The reason: he gets the cheap crap. Every stinking time he gets me chocolate he gets me the waxy, tasteless cheapest chocolate candy he can find. It is torture to eat it, but eat it I must or I will offend him.

I managed to dodge the horrible chocolate ordeal at Christmas time by convincing him that I had plenty of time to pick some up. I didn't really but I made time to drag both kids to the store and pick up some of the good stuff.

Now it is Valentines time and I am tired still of the bad chocolate. He is already mad that I figured out his gift to me which I could really not help since he was making it in the garage and I have to go in there now and then too. I get so very little chocolate now I just want to make sure that at the very least it is edible. Maybe I could strongly encourage him to get it at See's Candy.

Generally I would just grin and bear it. That is just how I am. But lately I have decided to cut back on some of the more fattening things of life so when I do splurge I wish to actually enjoy it. Hopefully a great plan will come to my mind before the big V day. I will keep you updated.

Eerily accurate

Your Five Factor Personality Profile

Extroversion: You have low extroversion. You are quiet and reserved in most social situations.A low key, laid back lifestyle is important to you.You tend to bond slowly, over time, with one or two people. Conscientiousness: You have high conscientiousness.Intelligent and reliable, you tend to succeed in life.Most things in your life are organized and planned well.But you borderline on being a total perfectionist. Agreeableness: You have high agreeableness.You are easy to get along with, and you value harmony highly.Helpful and generous, you are willing to compromise with almost anyone.You give people the benefit of the doubt and don't mind giving someone a second chance. Neuroticism: You have low neuroticism.You are very emotionally stable and mentally together.Only the greatest setbacks upset you, and you bounce back quickly.Overall, you are typically calm and relaxed - making others feel secure. Openness to experience: Your openness to new experiences is low.You're a pretty conservative person, and you favor what's socially acceptable.You think that change for novelty's sake is a very bad idea.While some may see this as boring, many see you as dependable and wise.

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