28 days later

Raise your hand if you saw that movie. Raise your hand if it scared the crap out of you. I know, right? Fast zombies are way scarier than slow zombies.

Also, if you actually raised your hand, give yourself a little pat on the back with it. You're awesome.

Technically it's been more than 28 days since I wrote in this thing, but my creativity is a bit off today, and I didn't want to start of this long overdue update getting hung up on a title. Shall we update chronologically? Let's!

On May 28, Chason and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary. Congratulations, us! For our crazy night on the town, we went to dinner at the Mall of America and then headed across the parking lot to see Cirque du Soleil's Ovo. First time seeing them live, which was awesome...however, one of these days I should learn that I do not do well at events where there is the chance of someone getting seriously hurt. Remind me to avoid all circuses, sporting events, and playgrounds in the future.

June arrived, and with June comes grad parties! Henna and fortune telling for five nights, yay! Other than the hours, which are rough anyway let alone when you combine them with an infant and a full time day job, I always look forward to these events. This is in part because the kids are usually pretty awesome, but also because it means Crystal comes into town! Yes, folks, I got Crystal twice in a month. This time she was accompanied by her boyfriend David, and they were both here for about a week and a half, though they took a few days to explore greater MN. While they were here, we did a couple of backyard barbeques, went to Como Zoo, went out for some delicious meals, and generally relaxed and socialized. Come back anytime, Texans!

We also had a chance to celebrate Father's Day with Chason and with my dad. Saturday was Chason's day (which kind of felt like Romelie day, but what are you going to do?). We went to the park, played in a community center rec room, had ice cream, went to a book store, a toy store, and then out to luch, all within walking distance. It was a nice family day...and then I took the girls to church Sunday morning so Chason could have a few hours to himself before we all headed to my dad's house to have lunch with him and some of my extended family. Happy dad's day Chason, Dan, Steve, and all the other awesome dads we know and love!

After dad's day came...summer camp! Last week was a crazy busy week at work because it was the first week of summer camp (2nd and 3rd graders around power tools...gotta love it!), plus there was a teacher workshop, tours, meetings, and other prep work I was trying to help with or participate in. This week is much more relaxed. Yay.

Also last week...Uncle Paul's in town! He came to boot camp with me to my delight and his chagrin, and I spent Thursday with him, my mom and my grandma. This weekend Chason and the girls and I joined Paul and my dad up at his cabin, which was pretty awesome. It was nice to get to spend a lot of time with my family, Romelie had a great time splashing in the lake and hiking around outside, and Cori spent lots of time trying to crawl and discovering the sound "da," which then led to her saying "dada" a lot, but since Romelie's first word was dada, I'm holding out for something new with Cori.

That seems to be the chronological update; on to general news and developments.

Cori's cough is still persisting, so folks have stopped writing it off as "just a cold" and are actually trying to get to the bottom of this thing. It's good because it means we're trying to fix the problem. It sucks because I feel like I'm torturing the poor baby, so far to no avail. She's had an x-ray (nothing unusual), tried Zantec for acid reflux (no change) and albuterol in a nebulizer for asthma (may have reduced the frequency of the coughing, but it's tough to tell, and the sound of the cough itself hasn't changed). Now we have an appointment to see a specialist...on July 22. At which point she will have had a cough for 5 months. Patience is starting to wear a bit thin on this one... (By the way, this is a picture of her at 6 months with Dr. McEvoy, the doctor who birthed her. We love her.).

Romelie is becoming more dramatic, and not in a cute way. For those who know how drama-prone she already is, this may sound hard to believe, but it's true. Her new thing is pouting when she doesn't get what she wants in an end-of-the-world sort of way. Example: Can I have more crackers? No, you're done with crackers for now. I'm still hungry. We're about to eat dinner, so we're done with snacks. (Crosses arms, puts mad look on her face, says in the most angry upset voice she can) Fine! I'm NEVER eating again! "Oh good Lord" is a phrase that comes out of my mouth a lot more these days.

On a positive note, Romelie has been making some very good choices lately. The nebulizer thing required Cori to sit still for about 15 minutes, 3 times a day, while I turned on a loud machine and clamped a mask onto her face which blew chemicals up her nose. Remember how she's less than 8 months old? So that wasn't a lot of fun. But Romelie would (usually) help by sitting in the room with me and making Cori laugh or singing her songs or telling her "It's okay, Cori," which is pretty sweet. She's doing better with self-reliance, and she's even managed to stop herself from going into a tantrum a couple of times. You can see she's about to whine or cry, and then she'll stop and you can actually see her make the effort to rephrase or to add the word please or to use a calmer, nicer voice. Granted, she still throws a tantrum 9 times out of 10, but I really love that 1 time when she "uses her words," as we remind her 50 times a day.

Oh, I know I could add more, but I'm running out of steam. We're going up to the cabin again for the 4th, so I'll update more sometime after that.