Baby animal day!

The kids had a great time today at baby animal day at the American West Heritage Center. We went with Scott, Ceci, Maria Luisa, and Scott's mom, Mary. It was a beautiful day and good company.

Here Madi checks out a lamb. They have people in period costumes to help show you the animals, drive the horse-drawn wagons, run the pony rides, etc.. (Unfortunately, our camera battery gave out not long after we arrived, so at some point you will notice we transition to lower quality iPhone photos.)

Henry just loves sheep. He got into the pen with a mama and her baby. The mama sheep thought he was pretty interesting. Henry in turn was really interested in all of the animals, and he not nervous at all!

Madi petted a sleeping lamb.

Henry and Tim scratched a miniature burro. This burro loves attention! He is really funny.

Henry liked petting the bunnies. This one was so soft.

Next up - pony rides! Madi really liked the pony rides. She went three times. She went around all by herself.

Meanwhile, Henry was watching and pointed at the ponies, and then pointed to himself! He wanted to go too. He wasn't afraid at all. He didn't want to stop either.

Hmm. Maybe there is a pony in our future. Maybe when Madi turns five ...

Easter

The kids had a great Easter. Here Madi checks out her basket and finds a peep!

Here is Henry tasting his first peep ever. He thought it was ok.

He likes his new bunny.

Neither one of them felt too great, actually. They have had a long bout of diarrhea unfortunately. We think it is a viral thing. Hopefully it should be winding down soon (Henry has been going for 5 days now and not sleeping well at all).

Easter was fun anyway. Here Madi gets ready to dye some eggs with Sarah.

Andrew got in on the action too.

Look at the fabulous results!

Here is Henry tonight modeling the bunny ears. I think he is starting to feel better.

Everyone had a great time hanging out in the field on Sunday. You can see the June grass is coming in.

Here is Henry admiring the kite. You just have to imagine the kite.

Henry is starting to 'talk' more and more. In this video, you can hear him say 'bok bok' for chickens. The chickens responded!

Spring is here!

Spring has officially arrived to Cache Valley. Tim and Madi tried flying her kite today. There wasn't quite enough wind. The goats were pretty interested despite that.

Madi had a great time.

We all took a walk in the field south of our house during the week.

Madi and Tim took a walk around the yard one day too. Here they are on the wall that borders our property to the south.

Henry continues to enjoy putting food on his head. We're not sure why, but we all think it is pretty funny.

Here is Madi with her princess costume, checking out a bug sticker book from SuSu.

We are happy it is Spring!

Bye bye kitty cats

Last Sunday was the last day with our indoor kitties. We gave them away per doctor's orders because Tim and Henry are officially allergic to them.

I think maybe Leyden was dreaming of a toddler-free home anyway. Henry thought she was fuzzy though.

Stanley was always patient.

Leyden had a nice last nap with Madi.

Eric, Tim's graduate student, is now the proud owner of two more cats. Here he is picking up his new wards.

He has admired them at parties at our house for years, so they already knew him. We were very happy he was able to take them.

He said they have settled in just fine. We are glad they have adjusted to life in their new home. Tim and Henry are breathing easier now too.

Henry update

Henry has been doing better lately. Yesterday we took him down to Ogden to an allergy specialist to see if we can get his food issues figured out. She did skin prick tests with a limited number of common food and household allergens. His back is not that big, you know.

The results were: allergic to peanuts, coconut, and cats. We were pretty surprised about those first two! At this point, his food allergies are not serious for the short term, but she wants us to keep him away from those foods so he does not develop serious problems. For the cats, she recommended we get rid of them. It makes me very sad, but of course we have not hesitated. She said there was some possibility it could be behind Henry's ear problems. We are hoping to find a good home for them together. They are great kitties.

The allergist also recommended more extensive testing for soy and dairy for Henry (blood tests). We are to go back in a month to see how everything is going and find out the results of those tests. She said it is also possible that he has a food intolerance, rather than an allergy, to soy and dairy. The good news about that is that she said she has yet to see a child who didn't outgrow it!

The most surprising news, though, came for Tim. He got tested too. His back is a lot bigger so he got lots of pokes. Turns out he is allergic to everything that blooms in Utah (trees, grasses, weeds of all sorts). Not too surprising. He is also allergic to cats. Again, no big surprise. And dust mites. Hmm. And dairy! And wheat! Pretty amazing. He is sort of just thinking about those last two right now I think.

Sorry if you were wanting pictures of the trip to the allergy doc. The whole 2.5 hour visit was pretty intense, and I forgot! I was busy holding a wiggly itchy infant with drops of liquid all over his back that couldn't be allowed to touch anything or else we would have to repeat the whole thing.

Here at least is some video for you though. I have decided to highlight Henry's three current forms of locomotion.

In this first video, he shows off his crawling skills. At first he is just sort of leisurely tooling along, but then he sees the refrigerator is open and kicks into high gear! This is what we deal with all the time. He is in to everything!

In this second video, he shows off his knee walking skills. He frequently gets around like this for short distances.

In this last video, you can see his truly bipedal stance. He is getting a lot better at it. When he really needs to get somewhere fast, though, he still relies on his old standby, crawling.

Madi update

It has been snowing a lot lately. Here are the Wasatch mountains at sunset a few days ago. Spring is trying to arrive but keeps getting pushed back out of Cache Valley.

Madi has been enjoying playing in the snow around the house. Here she is in her snow shoes in the spring snow. Note that I did not pick this outfit.

Sunday we had an outright blizzard. Madi and Tim went out to play during a lull.

The snow started to pick up again and they came back inside.

Here Madi is enjoying some venison that GaGa brought from West Virginia. When Tim served it, I jokingly said "Are you going to eat Bambi?" Tim corrected me and said it wasn't Bambi, it was Bambi's mother. To which Madi replied "You guys, Bambi and his mother are not real deer". Sigh.

She had on the right shirt for the occasion at least.

Madi had her annual doctor's checkup on Tuesday. She weighs 36.5 pounds (50th percentile) and is 42.5 inches tall (95th percentile). I can't imagine for the life of me who she takes after in this regard.

Tomorrow I will post a Henry update!