Kicking the habit....

Friends

It's been a fairly eventful couple of weeks since the last update. Lots of little things to get noted down. If you're a longtime reader of this blog (and seriously, aren't all of you? it's not like we're some sort of general-interest blog) then you have probably noted the subtle shift away from posts designed to inform and entertain you, the anonymous readers - to an online diary format. Hopefully when the kids are old enough to read, they'll enjoy having detailed notes from growing up.

The title refers to Daniel - he's been "Fa" (pacifier) free for 9 days now. He only used the "fa" when sleeping, but it was still time to get rid of it before it became a serious attachment. It wasn't pretty, but it could have been a lot worse - a couple of nights of missing it and he's over the loss.

Last Friday, Daniel got a small package delivered on the front doorstep from "Fiona the Fa Fairy" with an empty envelope and a letter. Apparently Fiona was running low on pacifiers and needed them for the new babies, so could Daniel please send her all of his? Daniel agreed that this seemed reasonable (there was also a hint of a reward), so we went around the house gathering up pacifiers. For each one he found, he popped it in his mouth, gave it a couple of sucks as if to say goodbye - and then threw it in the envelope. Envelope went on the front step, and the next morning there was a nice lego set of "Rollie", "Muck" and "Wendy" from the Bob the builder series waiting for him there. The nice thing about this approach is that giving up the pacifier was truly a voluntary action, so he wasn't ever mad about the "fa" being taken - just a little sad that it was gone. (over now).

Daniel is also weening off the anti-seizure medication that they proscribed after the last seizure, and tomorrow he gets his last dose. The doctors at children's recommended that we put Daniel on a preventative medication when we were at the ER. A couple of weeks ago we were able to get a consultation with a neurologist who basically confirmed what we suspected - that the medication might stop the next seizure, but might not, that it offered no long-term benefit, and that the seizures - while scary, are not dangerous. So there's a lot of information wrapped up in a paragraph, but the bottom line is that Daniel will probably have more seizures until he (most likely) outgrows them at age 5-6 and that medicating against it isn't necessary, so we won't.

Whew - you can already tell that this is going to be a big post, can't you?

On to Rachel, who really ought to have been the headliner here, since she turned 17 months old. The big news is really that she's in the middle of a remarkable verbal "explosion" - she's had great comprehension for a long time, but didn't really talk a lot. Now she uses words all of the time. Her favorites are predictable; "Up", "Milk" and "Mine", but she has a number of others too. As before, Daniel is her great hero, so anything he says/does gets copied more readily than anything we might say. Oh, and she knows her first brand name - she calls her "Crocs" by name.

Rachel absolutely loves the water. Between the bathtub, the small pool in the backyard and the beach, there's nothing she likes more than to splash around naked in the wet stuff. Yes, naked -our backyard is a little nudist colony these days (hurrah for high fences) and when asked to wear a swimsuit at the beach, she was noticably agitated about that.

Rachel has a daredevil streak that is stronger than her brother's. While Daniel never really took to the swing, Rachel loves it, and she'll slide and jump off of things much faster than he will.

This posting is still going on? Finally a wrapup of some recent activities. Last weekend we jumped on our bikes and rode the bikepath all the way to downtown Denver (about 14 miles) where there Daniel rode the trolley. Back up the hill was much less fun for the adults. There have also been bikerides to the local beach.

The 4th of July we celebrated with a BBQ over at our friends Doug and Meg. And Daniel is the perfect age for fireworks - he just went giddy with some of them. Then, (finally, I knew this blog had to end sometime) we went down to Colorado Springs yesterday for Harrison's third birthday at the zoo. We fed the giraffes, rode the carousel and generally enjoyed ourselves.

And as a teaser, Daniel now has a helmet, some kneeguards and his little Razor scooter that he got for his third birthday came out of storage. More on that next time.

Whew.

A.R.D.E