What are the odds...?!

Soooo, We won a cruise. Well, Justin won a cruise for us. Specifically a a "$3,000 vacation that includes air-fair, transportation, hotels, and a cruise for you and a guest". Ya, we never win anything. What a thing to win! We are really beyond excited.

Justin was at a work assembly thing (bear in mind he had only been working there for 2 weeks) and the company president started going crazy and throwing out "cruise" balls. And Justin caught one, a ping pong cruise ball. :) They sent us the "rules" of winning the cruise. One of the rules was that the "cruise MUST be 7 days long"... Hehehe, well, if you insist. :) But actually, for us, right now, that isn't as cool as it sounds ONLY because I have a 10 month old at home and don't want to be gone for super extensive amounts of time. Because I love my little boy children, psychotically, sigh... And I do NOT want them to have emotional detachment issues.

Anyway, we can go anywhere as long as it's under $3,000 for the whole thing. We have no idea where to go or on which cruise line---I've heard NOT to use Carnival and to try to go Eastern Caribbean.  Anyone have any other good advice? We want to do a beach-y cruise; and I don't want to see tons of starving children... open to ideas.

I want it to look like this...

I wish everyone could win a cruise. But since everyone can't; we will go ahead and take one for the team... ;)

Things medical in nature...kind of. :)

Jax and Rod are super healthy. We are SO grateful for our healthy kids. So this post is about as "medical" as it gets around here.

Jax even eats sometimes. :)  

But I had to post this funny story about Jax so I can remember for long. 

Jax hit his face/teeth/gum on something at my mom's house.  He was bleeding pretty bad and freaking out--he HATES anything that has to do with doctors or hurting or anything in that general category--like MAJOR phobia. He used to HATE band aides and would do anything avoid them. BUT, he has now grown to the polar opposite.  Everything needs a band aid. yada yada...

 So, he hurts himself in his mouth at my mom's and NEEDS a band aid...you can't put a band aid on your teeth or your gums. But how do you explain that to a 2 year old?  He was just hysterical and wanted that band aid SOOOO bad. So, we obliged; but he didn't just want a band aid, he wanted "big" band aid, over his entire mouth. Only then was he appeased and able to stop crying. Would that be claustrophobic or what? He literally kept that band aid over his mouth the rest of the night until he feel asleep on my mom. WHICH, he has almost never done. And then Rod feel asleep on Great Aunt Lisa....it was a weird night.

Damage the next morning, you can kind of tell, swelling scraped gum up his little front tooth. Purple-ness.

It has been really sore, poor guy can't bite into anything, even a banana.  We have to cut everything up so he doesn't have to bite into it. Oddly, it seems to have perked his almost non-existent appetite. 

He thought he was sooo funny in my camera phone. Cutie. Yes, lots of drool--I think his banged mouth has made it even worse.

Other "medical" news: Rod had surgery on his left clogged eye duct this morning.

 It was kind of (totally and completely) a crazy night b/c Rod was basically screaming for 3 hours last night, (teething induced, I believe) about every half hour for an hour until 1am. This is NOT normal. Jax got up about 4 times too at different times throughout the night.  He does this "Mom!", "Mom!", "Mom!" thing, like an alarm clock. So you HAVE to go in there and get him to stop and settle and such....The last time he got up was at 5 am. This again is not normal.Then I got up at 5:45am to take Rod to the surgery place by 6:15. I don't do well on no sleep. I think I might die. uhg.

 And then when you get to the "waiting" room, ALL you do for an hour is wait. Seriously. They didn't do the surgery until 7:20. Gag. He did it like a charm. 60 seconds of being put under and they are good to go. He was ultra cute and floppy after the anesthesia wore off. It was kind of nutty because his clogged duct appeared to be suddenly healed 3 days before surgery; we and the doctor decided to do it anyway just in case. So, NO MORE GOOPY EYE!! YAY!!!

Ps. Justin started his new job last week. He is really enjoying it. I can't even tell you the big "Huraaaah!!" that is happening inside us. Good job babe. We love you.

Now lets just see if I can stay awake today....

End of February

Rod is a crawling maniac.

He was crawling up the stairs like 3 days after he learned to crawl. It's very cute but he can only go up, not back down. So it creates obvious problems of falling; so you have to be watching all the time. It's especially crazy because we have 2 sets of stairs in our house...So you cant leave him on any level without vigilance. But he's pretty cute to watch so it's not that huge of a deal. :)

Rod will also pull himself up to standing on anything solid around him. He can walk while holding onto one of those push toys--he looks weird and you have to follow at a close distance to make sure he doesn't fall, but it can be done.

In case you can't tell, we think he is quite the stud tank. 

 Jax loves that book that he's holding. He loves to go through and point to the letters and then he tells me to "talk it". Which means to say the letters he points to. :)

Jumpin'Jax. One of his favoirte past-times. He has recently--in the past month--started taking the cushions off the couch to jump and do tricks. 

 My little square head.

The following pictures are Rod's new favorite past-time. Cute little mess maker.

 Okay, and this is SO cute--you can't really tell from the pictures below but Rod will totally throw back his bottle in this guzzel kind of way and sit and drink for about 5 seconds or less and then play and then throw back and take another long swig, and it just kind of keeps going. Jax never did anything like that. It always cracks us up.

The only other thing to note is the 6-8 poopy diapers we change daily in this neck of the woods. We go through diapers, and then we go through more. 

And I think I really want to be a serious vegetarian.

Life is crazy. It's a good thing we have cute kids.