What Happens When Daddy is Bored?

Um...yeah. At least he used a Crayola Washable, not a Sharpie ;)

Dates with our Tiny Loves

(Title stolen unremorsefully from Here, sorry Lauren. But good job thinking it up!)

Of course, since I'm a woman and the mom, I'm the only one who got pictures from this wonderful morning, but Tuesday morning was pure bliss! Isaac decided to take John out to breakfast, and from there came the longest lasting Daddy date so far. They had such a blast and Johnny couldn't wait to burst through our front door just after lunchtime and tell me all about Home Depot, the gun shop and shooting range, playing in the playplace at McDonalds for breakfast, and having Taco Bell for lunch. Yep, just guy stuff, but he was thrilled!

What did us carless ladies do? Absolutely nothing, and it was great! Mommy got in some computer time while Jeanine played with her dolls and teaset. We read books together, played on the floor together, and apparently when you get to play alone, it's best to get into all the toys your brother never lets you play with, like his Little Einstein Laptop. She sat for about 20 minutes on her new plush ride-on horsie with that laptop just pressing buttons and knowing she wouldn't get it snatched sadly back away by her brother. Apparently it's also SO cool for 16 month olds to wear reindeer antlers and push toys around in the stroller yelling "GO!!!". Apparently. We had a blast though, and for one full morning I heard no shrieks or screams coming from the playroom resulting from a dirty look or a snatched toy. Just bliss, through and through. Next time I'm looking forward to being the one to take John someplace, or maybe just stay home with him as well. I love one on one time!

Recap...Get Ready!

When I realized it'd been almost a month since my last post I was a little appalled. We actually haven't been that busy, I guess I just lost the bloggy motivation for a while. It happens when it's December, you have 2 kids, and another one sucking the life out of you daily from the inside out ;-p

SO...Johnny is ALL better, praise God! After my last post he started getting worse again and we took him to Children's Hospital in Seattle. It was a long day but we were so glad we went. After much debate, the specialists there decided he probably never had an infection or MRSA at all, it was just severely angry Eczema, if you can believe it! We took a bunch of crazy proactive measures to get him better, just treating for severe eczema, and there were no more open wounds or spreading after only 2 days! He is now completely healed and back to normal.

Reindeer came to visit mid-December! Not sure why they also wore reading glasses...

We (and by 'we' I mean 'I') got some new diapers, woohoo! Just one shot, but they're super cute and I'm trying a whole bunch of new brands of fitted and prefold diapers. I absolutely LOVE cloth diapering. If you want to know more, just ask!

We tried to stay unbusy and quite lazy this month as well...hence the sweats, jammies, and no makeup or hair done ;)

And then, came Christmas! My parents came for a visit for the first time in 6 months! We all had loads of fun and it was over much too soon, and I actually don't have a single picture of them!! What was I thinking? Oh well, the kids had fun, got lots of great gifts and time spent with family, and were sad when Grandma and Grandpa left Monday morning. 6 days went by way too fast! Johnny especially misses Billy, their 100lb Doberman. Mommy and the cats are now much happier that Billy has left the building ;-p

Christmas morning at home, just our family (you'd never know we JUST woke up and dragged ourselves downstairs huh? Sarcasm heavily laid down here, lol!):

Christmas day at Jen and Ryan's house with my parents and all the kids. 6 adults, 6 kids, a bun in the oven, lots of presents, even more sugar, and awesome food! A sweet new hat for the winter:Tearing open some books with his cousins:Jeanine's new ride-on plush princess horse:

Johnny's new backpack with his name on it:

Saturday after Christmas, hanging out at our house:

Just some kiddo downtime watching Monster's Inc. (Warren, Aubrey, and Jake):

It's also been nice having Isaac home this Christmas season. He took some days off and has been home since Christmas Eve morning, but will go back New Year's Day. We love having daddy home more! We will also get a chance to see Isaac's family on New Year's Eve when we go visit. Looking forward to seeing our new neice Ava who is 3 months old now!

A Mommy's Dose of Grace

Well Johnny is feeling great and his leg looks a thousand times better than it did! We finally have things completely under control and almost back to normal, woohoo! Besides that, we haven't done much lately. Jeanine had her 15 month shots (a month late) yesterday and also both flu shots. Yikes, 6 shots is pretty much baby torture, as evidenced in the blood-curdling screams that sprang forth from my poor daughter's lungs, but we like our immunizations current here ;)

Today was actually a much better day than usual here at the Stegman house. Lately we've been battling loads of disobedience, heaping piles of bad attitudes, and sibling rivalry by the boatload, but for some reason God gave this stressed out mama a glimpse of harmony. It seems like when it rains, it pours, but occasionally God sees it fit to dole out some grace for both me and the children. What an awesome reprieve and reminder that I'm not doing this mom thing for me; I never have and never will. That's simply not what being a mom is all about. At the moment of conception, suddenly it's not about me anymore, it's about that new life and what I have to give through the grace of Christ. Days like this remind me to be patient, kind, and ever-loving through the daily trials of child-training and discipline because somewhere down the line there will be a fruit reward! Here is what the children did for over an hour after dinner, and from naptime to dinner time they were equally harmonious :) Amazing!

And yes, Jeanine MUST wear the Mr. Potato Head glasses almost full time these days. She really makes me laugh!

Update

We finally went back to the pediatrician yesterday when John wasn't responding yet to the antibiotics. He was pretty shocked about the progression of the wounds while being treated for so long, and we decided on a more aggressive course of action. Finally this morning, Johnny's leg seems to be responding to the oral antibiotics, topical antibiotics, and steroid cream and is no longer one big open wound. We are keeping him on his meds through the course of the next week and continuing to bandage up his leg after applying all the medicines so that it can't spread. We are so thankful that God has allowed Johnny's body to kick in and do its' job and begin healing! Thank you for your continued prayers for Johnny and his healing, and mommy's sanity ;-)

Oh, The Weather Outside is...

COLD! Sorry it's been a while, and I still don't have much to post, but I decided I better stop in and blog something before you all start abandoning reading entirely, lol! As the post title says, it's cold here! We actually got snow yesterday! It's a bit early for that here and we never truly get very much, so it was surprising to look out the window before lunchtime and see little flecks of white clouding up the sky! Nothing actually stuck here at our house but Johnny was still determined that we should go outside and make snow angels. Since I'm not one of those fun moms who abandons everything on a whim and makes "grass angels", we stayed inside where mommy wouldn't freeze. ;)

Also, Johnny has been battling quite an infection lately. It started around the beginning of November when we were in GA and John's eczema flared up. I guess it was worse than I thought and it slowly developed into Impetigo, probably from him being a roughhousing boy, and from scratching it with dirty little boy fingers. We went to urgent care on Nov. 17th and they prescribed some topical antibiotics for it, which did not help at all. Instead of the recommended 5 days, I used the ointment up entirely for almost 3 weeks to no avail. Right when it ran out we went to the pediatrician and he said Johnny had some severe Impetigo or maybe even MRSA infection. He prescribed an oral antibiotic...which we later found out in the ER on Friday night that Johnny was allergic to it!

His rash kept getting worse all the while, so the ER diagnosed him with cellulitis and prescribed a new antibiotic that is supposed to work well on the MRSA bacteria. So far it's still been getting worse, but he's been on this antibiotic for less than 48 hours still, which is apparently the magic number for the beginnings of effectiveness. We've been in contact with our pediatrician's nurse line and for right now we're just waiting it out and keeping a very close eye on the poor boy's leg. He's on full time Benadryl and Tylenol since it's itchy and swollen and painful, but I think it's finally starting to get better.

If you're squeemish...don't look:

This is what it looked like last night, at its' worst so far:

It also spread to his lower leg and other leg yesterday, but we're just waiting out the antibiotic. Please keep our boy in your prayers! If it gets worse after today, we will be going to the hospital to admit him and get him IV antibiotics. And if you know someone who has MRSA, don't send them our way! We don't know how Johnny got this in the first place, but we do know we want it gone for good :)

Tutorial: Making Baby Leggings (Babylegs)

I have been asked by quite a few people if I would share how I make baby leggings for Jeanine so I thought I'd share on the blog. I was shown by my best friend Lauren, who also told me that there are myriad other online tutorials on how to make them, but I thought I'd give it a go anyway. This project takes about 15 minutes start to finish, using a pair of knee high adult socks.

Start with these:I buy this kind, but any knee high socks will do:Hey look! It's about 3:05pm!Take your socks, individually or one on top of the other, and cut off the foot, just above the heel and straight across. You can use a rotary or scissors, doesn't matter.You will be using these, don't toss them!Take the foot of the sock, one on top of the other or individually, and cut off the toe, straight across, as close as you can to the toe but before any sort of flaring or tapering of the end of the sock begins.Turn them over now and cut off the heel side, straight across, and again before any sort tapering off or flaring out of the material. You want the middle part of the foot of the sock to be as straight as possible.Here's what's left, not too much waste from one pair of socks if you ask me! Go ahead and toss these parts, you won't be needing them.Here's the foot part of the sock, soon to be a cuff. Mine does flare out a bit, but because my socks were so stretchy and soft, it didn't really matter. With a structured sock you don't want this to happen.Grab the middle of the cuff and fold one side in, so that the "right" side is still out and the edges match up cleanly.Insert your leg portion into the cuff and match up the edges as perfectly as you can. You probably want to work gently and quickly as the edges of some socks ravel terribly and need to be finished off soon!Pin the 3 layers (2 from the cuff and 1 from the leg part) together as shown, all the way around.Sew all the way around using a straight stitch or zigzag (if you really need to prevent a lot of ravelling, use a zigzag). Trim your threads and flip the cuff outward!Here's your finished product! A cute new pair of baby leggings for your favorite little model ;-P Generally they work best with the original cuff at the top, but if they fit your child better the other way, go for it! For pre/early crawlers with chubby thighs, if you sew your cuff on with a zig-zag stitch, they'll stretch further and you could use them longer.

She's wearing them opposite ways, so you could see they work either side up:

My handmade cuff side is down on this one, and I like it best that way on her:

And look, it only took me less than 15 minutes!

More Woolies!

These are from a repurposed purple cashmere sweater that I got from the thrift store for $3.49. So soft and snuggly! And waterproof ;)