I hot dog you, too.

In the vein of my cousin Bridget, let me relate to you, Gentle Reader, a scene from this evening. I teased Robert before dinner that if he'd tell me he loved me that I'd make him a hot dog for dinner. Being his typically 2-year-old self, he giggled and refused to say it. Later, after dinner, he ran up to me, threw his arms around my leg and sincerely declared, "I hot dog you, Mama. I hot dog you."

This little piggy...

...has swine flu. Or something like it. The pediatrician helpfully said (of the EPIDEMIC of 103 degree fevers, sore throats, headache and cough calls they have been inundated with to the point it takes 3 hours to get a call-back), "well, it certainly is flu-LIKE," I suppose in a misguided attempt to a.) keep parents from panicking and b.) keep parents from finding more competent pediatrician since the vaccine has been out for 3 weeks and my pediatricians STILL. DON'T. HAVE. IT.

So far, Robert is holding his own, slightly more cranky (ok, a lot more cranky) than usual, but as long as the Motrin is at therapeutic levels he's ok. I'm experimenting with alternating the Tylenol with the Motrin to try to get us over the hump, so we'll hope that helps. And that today is the last day of the fever... I've heard from some other parents that it's only going about 3 days.

Off to slop the little hog...

Happy 2nd Birthday

...little one. I can't tell you how happy I am you came to live with us. Hugs and kisses forever.

Our CA trip Part One

I finally got my camera back and the picture off loaded, so here is a recap of our CA trip. We left on Tuesday to take the late flight out to LA. We're lucky to even have a direct flight after US Air once again screwed Pittsburgh over and pulled our

direct flights to CA. Fortunately, United picked up the routes. We had an easy time at the PA airport and our gate happened to be right next to the very nice play area at the airport. Robert had a lot of fun looking at the planes and yelling "Airplane" every 10 seconds (like his cousin Emmett, apparently).

We got on the plane with lots of help with Uncle Jacob and got Robert strappe

d into his seat. We could have had him travel "on lap" but that would have been insane. Robert wasn't a big fan of takeoff, but after I closed the window blind he was fine.

We landed in LA an hour early which was good because the rental cars weren't at the airport and getting to the rental car place took a bit of time. Robert was very tired at that point and not sure about the whole trip at that point, but we got to the hotel and got to bed by about 1 am our time. After a fairly short night of sleep, we headed on down to San Clemente to see Uncle Joe.

We had a nice day with Uncle Joe and Maryanne but had to head back to L A early because Robert had an upset tummy and had gone through the 6 diapers I had brought. :) But we had probably wreaked enough havoc on the reti

red folks for one day as it was. We went swimming that afternoon, went to dinner at California Pizza kitchen, and had a nice evening with my friend Matt.

Thursday we went to Manhattan Beach to introduce Robert (and Jacob) to the Pacific. Robert LOVES the beach and had to be bodily dragged back to the car to catch the flight to San Francisco.

More on the NorCal part of the trip soon!