Tuesday, January 30, 2007

New Settings

Hello Everyone!

Blogger now has a new setting where I can make my blog private. You must be invited and accept the invitation in order to view my blog.

If you know of someone who wants to be able to view it, just email me at sarahdurall@gmail.com with that person's email address and I will make sure they are added.

Kian is Sick :(

Last week I had a nasty cold. I felt like I should have been in bed all day and it was hard for me to even just sit because all I wanted to do was be in bed.

Well, Kian has this nasty cold now. Although he is in GREAT spirits (he always is even when he's REALLY sick). The first sign he's really not feeling good is when he sleeps in. He's like an alarm clock - he wakes up every day at 8AM or a little after. Today he was up at at 9AM even though I thought he was awake and burst into his room at about 8:30 he was sleeping like a log! Me just walking into his room will usually wake him up. Then he asked to have two binkies and his blanket downstairs with him. I honestly cannot remember the last time he asked for those things downstairs. Those have been bedtime things for over a year. I figured he needed the comfort of them so right now he's on the couch watching Teletubbies with a binkie in his mouth, one in his hand and rubbing on his blanket. Poor guy! We might need to skip our class again tomorrow - but I will just wait and see. I would hate to expose him to more illnesses with a weakened immune system :(

If you can, please say a little prayer that he will rest today.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Popularity of Kian in Ireland

Tonight I was just doing some random searches and I came across a list of popular names in Ireland for babies in 2004. Guess what is #67?



Even the spelling is correct (Cian is the Gaelic spelling - same pronunciation). So, I guess if we ever go to Ireland Kian will have others there with that same name. :)

Saturday, January 20, 2007

This Weekend and a Little Update on Kian

This weekend came early with Jamie having off on Monday for MLK's B-day. The funny thing is that this weekend we are finding we don't know what to do with ourselves! For the last month - maybe two - we have had to do chores, had visitors, or other random things so this is the first weekend where things aren't a MUST to get done. We still have a list of things we need to do but only a few of them are a must do instead of the whole list.

It's nice to have a weekend to ourselves :) Not to mention, Kian has been asking all week for Daddy. So it's nice to have some hang out time for my two main men.

"I Sad..."
In other news, Kian is using a lot more words now! He has had a word explosion over the last week or two. He's saying sentences, repeating what we say (which has been limited to "you're kidding" and "no way" thankfully!), and recently he's put together sentences that are all his own. For example, there is a game with Elmo that I allow him to play sometimes on the computer. It was right before bedtime when he asked to play it so I told him that Elmo went nigh-nigh and he could play him tomorrow. Kian responded with "I sad (boo-hoo-hoo)" LOL! At first I didn't catch what he said but after he started his fake crying (which was completely obvious was fake to him too I'm sure) I realized he said he was sad and put together that emotion with the word and the action! Talk about a big thing - not to mention he put that together on his own :) I have been teaching him some emotions (faces for happy, sad, angry) and he's seen them on shows like Blue's Clues. I guess his little mind started catch on to all that :)

The Littlest Cars (The Movie) Fan
Kian has become a Cars fanatic! We first showed him the movie when we went on a trip for Thanksgiving and now he can't get enough of it! He watches it several times a day. And since Santa brought him three of the cars from the movies, he plays with them everyday. He is so cute with them! He's also a great dancer to all the cool music that's on the movie :) He even dances to the beat (and sometimes I'll even join him)!

"I Scared you!"
This is Kian's biggest phrase at the moment. There is a new show on Disney called Johnny and the Sprites. He has seen it maybe 2-3 times now but during the day at different times he will sing the theme song to the show. The one show he has seen one of the sprites has the hiccups and Johnny tries to scare them out of the sprite by saying "raaar" while shaking his head and raising his arms in a scary position. Well, Kian does that to us now and says "I scared you!" right afterwards LOL It's super cute....the only bad thing is that he does this while he's laying in bed (we can hear him over the monitor) and one time he was having trouble getting to sleep so I went into retuck him in and of course I was "scared." Let me tell ya, it was hard not to laugh!

Kian is definitely an entertaining guy! We sure do love him!

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

So, today we learned cheaper doesn't always mean better

Ok, so I already knew that but unfortunately this revelation involves our dear Mr. Kian :(

So, yesterday I took Kian to get a haircut. It is the third time I have taken him to Great Clips to get it done. Yeah, I know I can't expect the best results from a place like that, but he's only a kid and I figured we would survive. Today I went to Great Clips with a coupon in hand.

Before I continue, let me rewind a bit. When I started taking Kian to get his hair cut, I took him to a salon that's only for kids. He got to rid in a little car and watch a video while he got his hair cut in less than 10 mins (maybe even 5!) They were fast and good and I was always pleased every time I left there. It was about $5 more to go to the kid place but it was worth it to me because it was better for Kian.

Since we moved this summer I wasn't able to find a kid's salon nearby so I started taking Kian to Great Clips (which is like Cost Cutters of Fantastic Sams). Kian does NOT like getting his hair cut. He's weird about anything being near his ears - he just plain doesn't like it. The last two people that cut his hair were fairly good. The second one did a great job...the first was ok but we survived...this third one it was apparent to me that she really didn't know kids and she hadn't cut hair for long.

This third stylist and I discussed how short I wanted his hair prior to cutting - she cut it WAY shorter than that. I figured I would just deal with it until I saw how she was cutting his hair on the sides and it was bad...she wasn't getting everything..nothing really matched up with the shortness on the top of his head... Then she started asking me to hold him still tell him to sit still, have him put his shoulders down among other things (which hello he's two years old - you try to tell a two year old to sit still!). Finally I just asked if the other lady (that I had seen the other two times when I was there) could cut his hair and she finished it up. The "experienced" lady did an ok job, but of course you can't put hair back on where it should have been! Poor Kian was sitting there for a HALF HOUR while they cut away. The experienced lady sang songs with us like Wheels on the Bus and such which was good entertainment for Kian and had him sit for a bit longer.

Kian had a bath that night and I could see his poor little ear was nicked (the one where he was lifting his shoulder when they would bring anything near it) and there is a chunk out of the back of his hair - luckily you don't notice it unless you are looking at the bottom of his hair closely.

After all this I looked up for kids salons when I came home. When I first started taking Kian to get his hair cut, I took him to a kids salon. But after we moved there weren't any in our area or they were quite a drive away and $20! So, we settled on Great Clips which was near our house.

After we got home I decided to do some research again on kid salons in our area. I had seen an ad in the newspaper a while back for a kids salon opening up downtown. Well, the salon is now open and only $6 more than Great Clips. So, next time Kian needs a cut (probably not for like 2 months!) we will take him there. It's so worth it for all of us.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Vistors Part 2

Jamie's mom, sister and step-dad came out for a visit last week. They arrived late on Tuesday and left Sunday afternoon. Wednesday we kind of hung out at the house. Jamie was at work and we only had my car (which would fit all but one of us). I figured it would be nice to let my in laws recover from the jet leg they had from their trip to Hawaii and let Kian get used to our new visitors.

Jamie took off of work on Thursday and Friday. He put in some hard hours on Wednesday to help him make up for the work he was missing those two days - right now he's close to deadline. We had hopes to go to the park or even go and try mini golf with Kian but it was VERY cold and windy. (it's actually still pretty cold here for California!)

We ended up walking around the mall a bit, taking Kian to Chuckee Cheese and Jamie took the other three to a winery for wine tasting while Kian was napping.

Other than that we enjoyed playing cards and bowling with the Wii which everyone really enjoyed a lot. In fact, Russell left wanting a Wii for at home! Unfortunately the system is sold out everywhere, but hopefully he will be able to get one :)

It was a low key visit but everyone was able to spend as much time with Kian as they wanted which really is the most important thing in my mind.

So now it's back to normal around our house! My oven has been used and on Sunday night I started to go through withdrawals from not cooking (I didn't cook at all because of special diets and wanting people to be able to eat what they chose as well as I get stressed out having to make a meal while trying to visit).

Here are some photos from the Hedrick's time with us (I apologize - unfortunately all that was on our camera was from Chuckee Cheese and Russell didn't come with us so he's not in any of the photos):

Monday, January 08, 2007

Christmas 2006 and New Years 2007

Sorry that this blog post is so late! Things have been very busy around here the last few weeks!

We had a wonderful Christmas with my parents visiting us from Wisconsin :) My mom and Randy arrived on the 22nd and stayed through the 29th. We had a wonderful time together! Randy got to tour EA, we visited two local Harley Davidson shops so Mom and Randy could get some attire there, and we spent the day on Pier 39 the day before they left.

The day after they arrived we went to the mall to exchange a gift we received and decided to try seeing Santa while we were there. The line was long but it was moving fairly fast so Kian had a snack while we waited in line. I’m not sure if you remember but last year Kian freaked out seeing Santa so we were prepared for the same this year. Well, you can see the results of our trip in these two videos:




We made a meal on Christmas Eve and opened up some up the gifts under the tree. We figured since Santa was coming with more on Christmas Day we would open on Christmas Eve and let Kian have a calmer Christmas Day opening. He enjoyed opening gifts which was good since most of them under the tree were for him! lol Our living room now looks like Toys R Us threw up in it lol But Kian has really enjoyed his new stuff and has been playing with all the new stuff off and on throughout the day.

He also has a bit of a new wardrobe thanks to Kian’s Grandma and Great-grandma. All I have to say is I Love Caters! That place has the cutest clothes! And he added some more books to his expanding collection. Which is a good thing since I think Cuddly Kittens and Fluffy Bunnies need to go on the shelf for a while lol! Thankfully Grandma took over some reading duties with Kian to give me a break :)

The day after Christmas Kian had some sort of 12 hour stomach thing. Not fun :( We had planned to go to the Wharf the next day and decided to postpone it due to Kian’s stomach thing and the weather forecast of rain. The beginning of the day was bad but after a short nap in the afternoon Kian started to seem like himself and was keeping food down finally.

Our big day on the Pier at Fisherman’s Wharf was a lot of fun! We drove over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and parked there. We didn’t look around really at all in Sausalito. It was very cold and some of the shops didn’t really seem like anything we were interested in. There is a Ferry there that takes you across the bay to Fisherman’s Wharf so we did that right away. Luckily it was much better temperature wise over there! We ate at Hard Rock Café for lunch and then ventured down the pier stopping at shops as we wanted. It as a little difficult to maneuver the stroller in some of those areas so one of us would stay out on the Pier most of the time while those that wanted to shop did. They had a cute little Irish shop there and a lot of places that had touristy items at very good prices.

At about 3PM we finally made our way back to the Ferry place to check the times when we could go back to Sausalito. (btw, Jamie had been saying since we arrived that we should get a schedule and we were all so taken in by everything that the task got pushed back until this moment). The ferry attendant told us the last ferry left at 2:45…I think my heart sank to the bottom of my shoes! He did tell us that we could catch a trolley to the next station – it was a 10 min ride. After not quite understanding his directions Randy asked a guy standing on the street and he told us we could walk there. Good thing since every trolley that went by was packed like sardines! (it brought back memories of riding the tram in Vladivostok, Russia lol!)

So, we made a brisk 45 min walk down to Pier 1…yep…a lot more walking that I had planned for. Luckily the weather wasn’t too bad and Kian had was plenty warm. I know he enjoyed the walk as he always loves it when we walk…me on the other hand realized that I need to walk more! Hehe

Anyway, we finally got back to Sausalito at about 6ish and headed toward home. It was a fun day – definitely filled with excitement! But I think we will definitely be doing some more planning the next time we head out to the Wharf lol

Here are some photos of my parents’ time with us:



New Years Eve

We invited our newly married friends Steve and Lisa over for the evening. We had some yummy food that they brought for dinner and then snacked on stuff that I had made for the rest of the evening. It was pretty much like an normal evening spent with them – Lisa and I chatting in the dining room while they guys were in the living room watching a sports game of some kind. It was a good night. We watched the Ball drop in Times Square and shared some champagne to ring in the new year. It was a really great night – I think we all had a lot of fun :)

Jamie had off New Years Day but then it was back to work after a few weeks off! It was hard for me and Kian to see him go – we really enjoyed having him home with us!

Up to Speed

So now it’s back to the grind stone. Things are back to normal in the Durall household. We finally took down our holiday décor this weekend. I realized that our living room is MUCH bigger than I remembered! It was great to have Christmas stuff for a while right now it’s so good to have our house back in its normal state.

This last weekend was not very relaxing. We had a lot of things on our to do list and we got all but one accomplished. I myself have quite a bit of work to catch up on (both housework and work-work) - especially since Jamie’s mom, stepdad and sister will be arriving tomorrow night.