Kindergarten Crisis

Yes, I have a rising kindergartener. And yes, I cannot believe I am saying that. I remember her birth day like it was a week ago (especially since it was quite a tale!). I remembering hearing "it's a girl" and crying as they swept her away. It was a few painful hours until I got to see my new sweet first baby girl. But when she finally arrived to our room as a bundled up little package, I was in love and I knew that I would never let her go. And now almost 5 1/2 years later, I have to let her go. To kindergarten. Out of the comfort of her small homey preschool where I know all the teachers and all the students and all the moms. Out of the comfort of spending a few hours together in the morning and a few hours together in the afternoon just us while everyone else naps. And out of the comfort of being able to control what she does and doesn't do and the people who she is around. She will be off on her own.

Her school is quite smart and does a kindergarten sneak a peek and it happened to be yesterday. It was brilliant for Alexis because she is quite shy and sensitive. And if she is not prepares for a situation, she will FREAK out. She has cried and clung on to me for dear life numerous times and numerous places. When new people talk to her, she pretends she is either mute or deaf and doesn't answer. And while this can all be very frustrating for me, it does have some irony to it. I'm pretty sure that I did the exact same thing. The only difference was that I didn't even talk to people I did know. But sweet Alexis is very gentle, mature, and kind. All traits to admire. She is an amazing sister to two very lucky little kids. You can just look at her and see her sweetness.





Anyway, back to sneak a peek....she asked 15 times if I was leaving and didn't believe me when I kept saying no. As we arrived and were greeted, people talked to her and naturally she didn't answer. I don't think she uttered a word that was not whispered in my ear for the whole time we were there. But she got a whole tour of the school and hopefully next time we are there it will all be a little more familiar. She did already inform me that she will cry the first day, and I already informed her that I was going to leave anyway. At least we got that cleared up.






Looking forward to kindergarten and a new adventure with my first baby!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

March Excuses

I know there were no posts in March. So unlike me :) So either our lives were totally boring (unlikely) or our lives were so crazy that updating by blog became very low on the priority list (highly likely). So here is March in a nutshell for us. At the beginning of March, I either had a stomach bug or food poisoning that caused more puke than you ever could imagine thus dehydrating me and necessitating a 24 stint at Northside Hospital. Fun times! It took about a week to recover from that.

Then it was Purim and we hopped around from carnival to carnival with two dressed up children. Alexis would be nothing other than Dorothy. Luckily, when I was about 6, I was Dorothy for Halloween and had a costume already made. And, yes, my mom kept it. So Alexis got to be Dorothy after a manhunt for red shoes, because her silver sparkly shoes were not good enough and my idea of wearing red socks and no shoes didn't go over so well either. After finding red shoes that met the criteria for a 4 year old, I then had to find Max a costume. Not that easy in March as opposed to October. But we made do. Here is Max man the pirate and Alexis with Bess. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of her full body length to view the shoes. Sorry!

Next, we took a trip to Athens for the Gym Dogs meet. Always nice to head back to the ol' stomping ground and reminisce. The kids loved it and we even had nice enough weather to walk around downtown.

Really the rest of March is just a blur because right about this time is when our house went under contract. Like literally we decided to just suck it up and lower the price on a Saturday and then on Sunday someone came to look and by Sunday night made an offer. So the next couple weeks were spent going through inspection, appraisal, fixing a couple things, starting to pack, starting to look at houses, cleaning out my mom's bonus room and basement (so that we can stay with her until we find something). Really, I can't imagine why I did not have to make a blog post. Oh, and speaking of her bonus room.......WOW! We needed to clean out the closets and empty the room so we can stay in there. And I'm telling you, clown closets. Crap just kept coming and coming. 20 years of stuff. It was incredible.

We then held our 4th Bi-Annual Blood Drive in honor of my dad on what would have been his 54th birthday on March 28. We had about 25 people donate blood and we are very thankful for that and being able to continue his tradition.

Then all of a sudden March was about to end, but of course, we needed Passover stuck in there just to add a bit more fun. So we moved into my mom's house for the week so we didn't have to clean and get two houses ready for this crazy week! And then all of a sudden it became April. Time is ticking by and getting closer and closer to June. Oh CRAP!

At least, I'm already beating the number of posts in March this month. One down! I promise to be better. Well, who am I kidding........

A New Experience

There is always an inner struggle of do you find out the baby's gender when you are pregnant or not. For our first two children, the struggle was limited and we decided to be surprised. This is about the only thing I can think of that you cannot control in life and you can be completely surprised. So we were surprised twice....first with a girl and then a boy. What more could you ask for!!! So for the 3rd time, I thought we'd change it up a bit and find out around 20 weeks (actually 21 because I got off schedule in the beginning with appointments and weeks). Today was our opportunity! We had decided to take Alexis with us because we thought she would be excited to see the baby on the screen, but we were unsure about Maxwell. We figured he really didn't understand the whole concept and wouldn't really get what we were doing there anyway. But in the end, Max ended up there with us. And he totally surprised us! He sat completely still on Ben's lap and Alexis was perched on a stool next to me. As the tech was announcing body parts they were both staring with big, wide eyes at the screen. Finally, she shows us a bottom view clearly of a tush and two legs. She asked us if we knew what it was. Since I thought I saw legs with nothing in between....I thought, "is it a girl?". And she said, yes, indeed, it was a girl. Alexis immediately says, "I knew it was a girl". She starts showing us other views, and Max starts labeling body parts with the tech and was getting so excited. Finally, after seeing all her beautifully perfect parts, the nurse was done and turned off the monitor. All on his own, Max says, "bye baby". So sweet!!! Then all he wanted was to look at the pictures and hold them. Then he would not give them up. I didn't want him to ruin the pictures so I made him his own photocopies of them. He carried them around ALL day. We stopped by my mom's school to tell her and Max rushes in screaming, "Bubum, baby girl, baby girl, Bubum, baby girl". I honestly think he might have been more into it than Alexis. Although Alexis was quite excited too. I have to admit, it is quite the different feeling knowing what it is but not being able to hold it for 19 more weeks. We are used to not being attached to any one gender or the other during the pregnancy, but learning in the moment and then having a baby in our arms. This is definitely different, but just as fun! Now I can dig out the right set of clothes!!! Welcome to the family baby girl!

Sweet, Sweet Things

My babies are just about the sweetest kids around! If I don't say so myself, they are pretty darn cute too! Here they are giving the baby a hug! How much sweeter can you get!I guess Riley didn't want in on the action!!! But at least she's in the background! Poor Riley. It only gets worse and worse for her :)

Torture

We have recently wondered if making your children do things against their will for your entertainment falls under the category of torture. We did not come to a conclusion, so for now, we will continue to revel in making them do things for our enjoyment. Recently, we took the kids to UGA for the game. Not Max's first game, as he came to several last year, but certainly the first game where he was capable of participating and being aware of his surroundings. He actually did quite well and really enjoyed it. Well......most of it. We graciously accepted tickets for the kids from friend which put our seat basically on the 40 yard line about 50 rows up from the field. And since this friend and Uncle Mark were on the field for Homecoming we decided to take a walk down to the cheerleading area to see them and say hi. Every game there is a group of totally insane guys who paint their entire bodies to show their spirit. We thought it would be great to get a picture of the kids with these guys. We asked Alexis if she wanted to get a picture. She quickly responded, "NO". She is getting a little too old to force into submission for photo ops. So, we don't ask Max. We just act. And here was the result:
The face of pure terror. While there is no picture of our faces, they were of smiles and laughter. So is that torture?

Here are a couple other highlights from the game.

Apple Picking

We decided on Sunday to take a trip to the apple orchards. We also decided to take a DVD player in the car so that the long trip wouldn't be so painful. But of course, Max is still facing backwards because he has barely crossed the 20 pound mark and we decided to leave him backwards for a little longer, so he would not be able to see the DVD player. So Ben and I decided to make the milestone and turn him around. He was hilarious just looking around with these big eyes for a while. We drove about 1 1/2 hours to get there which with a small 3 year old's bladder always makes for an interesting trip. We were about 10 miles away when Alexis states that she has to pee. I decide that she can hold it. We get about 8 miles away (out of all civilization) and she starts crying that she can't hold it. So we pull off the side of the road and she pees behind a small brick tower. Of course, Ben decides to take a picture, but he missed the action so here is the after shot. Finally we arrive. The first thing we do is take a "hay" ride. But, hay rides are not what I remember them to be from when I was a kid. I remember a whole wagon FULL of hay that you sat on and played around in. This hay ride was a bench with bales of hay under it. But, nonetheless, it was fun. Then we went to the petting farm. The petting farm including sheep, goats, a pig, turkeys, chickens, and rabbits.Maxwell liked the "petting" part of the farm a lot better than Alexis who liked to walk up close enough to the animals but not close enough to touch them. Although, she did pet this baby goat I think. She would claim she wanted to feed them, get some food in her hand, and then as soon as the animal got close enough to eat it, she would throw the food on the floor. But my mom did like getting up close and personal!
After the petting zoo, we finally made it to the orchards. Of course as soon as Max saw the apples all he wanted to do was eat one. So I let him. Yup, right off the tree. I'm not sure if that was against the rules and I know it wasn't clean, but, hey, it was fun. And it sure beat the knock down drag out fit he would have thrown if he couldn't eat one. Alexis did enjoy picking apples that were low enough for her to reach, but the real thrill and challenge was being able to pick one that was high up. She had this idea before we got there that there would be ladders there (she must have read about apple picking somewhere because I have no idea where she got this from). When we broke the news that there were no ladders, she decided to make her own. Here are a few other highlights!!!!

Aaarrrrrgggghhhhh!!!!!

Yup, it was a day full of pirates! But before we get to the pirates, the trip getting there was quite adventurous. We left our house around 10am for a 10:30 birthday party....plenty of time. Get everyone loaded in the car, Ben pulls out of the driveway while I plug the address into the GPS. As we get down the road, the GPS keeps saying "match not found". Well, darn GPS, I know the address is correct as it is printed on this card; however, it is not working. The next logical step is to call the phone number and asked for directions. The guy who answers the phone tells us how to get there. About 30 minutes later we are driving though the nastiest, grossest, most disgusting part of the town that I didn't even know existed. Ben called it "Crack-worth", a bit of a play on its actual name since that is about how slimy the area was. So I decide to call my friend for directions. We get some different directions, but after about 15 minutes realize that we are in the next county. Fabulous! We call again. This time we finally get directions that work and 1 hour later we arrive. Anyway, the birthday party was at this really cool Pirate's Cove.It's basically a warehouse size sand box with a huge wooden pirate ship built above it with things to climb on, play on, and slide down. It also has some super cool air shooters that shoot these little foam balls.
Max really enjoyed this part, especially since he would not play in the sand. Every time we put him in the sand, he would make a really weird face and come right out. And if by some rare chance he was near the sand and some got on his hand, he would immediately run over to us with his hand held out and say "dirty" wanting us to wipe it off.
Alexis was playing in the sand, but not actually getting dirty. She primarily would walk on it and then go up onto the play structure.
She did make a friend who played her style and they sat under at a picnic table for a while making "pies".
It actually was kinda funny to see all these kids running around like maniacs and literally rolling around in the sand, and then there are my kids either walking around outside the sand box or sitting at a picnic table! I love my kids! Because then I didn't have to give them a hose down when we got home or dig sand out of diapers!!!!

Perhaps one of the funnier moments was not in the mega sandbox, but in the jumpy toys they had surrounding the sand box. One blow up tunnel was particularly intriguing to Max because the place where you crawled in would blow air when you opened it. Here is Max upon opening:But funny man Ben decided that coming out of the the opening looked more like ummmm.......well.......being born! I thought it looked rather like a giant blue tush, but my sicko husband had other ideas. So of course he had to climb in and "crawl out"!So there is Ben being "born, and here is Max being "reborn"!
Here are our two little pirates!!!!
And the best part was......our 60 minute trip there getting lost ended in a 20 minute trip home!!!!

Battle of the Allergies

Get ready folks, this is a long one!

We have suspected for about six months that Alexis has a nut allergy...not peanuts, just other nuts. She happily snacks on peanut butter and various other peanut products! But one day about six months ago at a friend's house, Alexis ate her first nut, a pistachio, in fact. At the first crunch, she started screaming that her mouth hurt and her stomach hurt. Thinking that she just didn't know how to express that she didn't like it, I down played the whole thing (also sort of embarrassed that she might puke at someone else's house!). Luckily, she did not puke and after drinking 85 loads of water and eating something else, she finally calmed down. This, however, was not enough to convince me. About 2 months after that, she ate another nut....same thing happened. You would think that my brain might get clued in, but, oh no, not yet. Fast forward to July 4th. After the Peachtree Road Race, they were handing out Lara Bars. We took a couple and Alexis ate one when we got home. Since this time she liked the taste, she ate the whole thing. You can use your imagination here folks, but what happened was not pretty. Just close your eyes and imagine ALOT of puke, ALOT of screaming, and ALOT of mouth hurting. Fun! You may even think fun enough to GET A FREAKIN' CLUE that she might not be able to eat nuts. But, no, not yet. Fast forward to sometime in August when we have run out of milk (oh the insanity). I decide to give Alexis a glass of Almond Milk instead. I'll let you use your imagination again. FINALLY, I GOT A CLUE. Hmmmm.....there seems to be a pattern here. Fast forward again to the end of August and we are at the pediatrician. I happen to mention these incidents and the doctor says immediately she must go to the allergist. She refers us to someone and we make the appointment for yesterday.

So up until the appointment, we hear from everyone we know who has had allergy testing how HORRIFIC it is. Great, thanks for the undue stress and imagining of possible scenarios occuring in my head. I decide to opt out of bringing Max especially since they said the appointment could be 2-3 hours. So Alexis and I arrive promptly at 9:10 and we talk to the dr. about what has been going on. He says he is going to do skin testing with 16 pokes. She must lie stomach to stomach with me with her shirt off. They tell her it's going to feel like a pine cone poking her back. Like she knows what that feels like. Who has ever poked a pine cone on their back??? Anyway, she doesn't even cry as they push the plastic little boxes on her back. She has to sit for 3 minutes with the liquid on. Everything going smoothly until it starts itching and she can't scratch it. After 3 minutes, the nurse wipes off the liquids. Still must sit for 15 minutes and NO SCRATCHING. Insert MUCH screaming here. The nurse comes in and says a good remedy is to blow on it or fan it. So I start fanning Alexis's back (which by the way, she calls "winding" her). Ahhh, screaming stops. 15 minutes later, hydrocortisone applied, we are back to being happy. The doctor comes back and says that she is highly allergic to cashews. Also, pistachios and almonds (duh, could have called those). He says the cashew allergy is enough to warrant carrying around an Epipen in case of accidental ingestion. No more eating anything with nuts, anything that has touched nuts, NO MORE NUTS. Oh, and they were also testing for egg since when Alexis eats whole eggs, she gets sick (not anything with eggs in it, just whole eggs like scrambled eggs or egg salad). The egg mark only came up slightly so he wanted to do some bloodwork for any sort of confirmation on it or if it's just an egg sensitivity. Oh goody.....bloodwork. He wants to see us back in two weeks so we better get that bloodwork done ASAP which of course you can't do there and you have to go to some lab somewhere else entirely. After we are done, Alexis wants to know if she can go to school. Sure, girlfriend, whatever works. Dropped her off at school!

Fast forward to today. Pick her up from school and head to the lab. Get lost, call lab, finally find lab. Oy, not a good start. When we get there, Alexis reluctantly sits in the big gray lab chair. Gets all settled in and then, "mommy, I have to go to the potty". Ok, great. Let's go. Get to the potty and NOTHING. Head back to the big gray chair and the screaming begins. Did I mention that I am also holding Max during all of this. She is screaming and running away from the chair (not that I can blame her). I put Max down and give him some food (food makes him happy). Get in the big gray chair myself and hold Alexis in my lap. I am holding her other arm with all my might as the nurse is pulling her blood-giving arm straight to wrap with a rubber band and begin drawing blood. Alexis was already screaming so much that she didn't even notice when the needle went in. As the vials are being filled, Max decides to stand up. He trips and falls and hits his head on the chair. Awesome. He starts his pass-out cry. Awesome. He passes out underneath the chair while I cannot move to help him nor can the nurse who has a needle in Alexis's arm. Awesome. The nurse looks at me with this very questioning glance. I tell the nurse that he does this pass-out thing when he is mad or hurt. The nurse asks if he is okay. I say, "He will be, I hope". Many times after he passes out he falls asleep. So there is Max passed out on the stone cold tile floor at a blood drawing lab and is now asleep on same stone cold tile floor. Awesome. Does somewhere have a candid camera somewhere? I mean, really. Finally, she gets done and reaches down for Max while I am calming Alexis. She picks him up and of course he wakes up and starts crying. She immediately hands him to me. Two crying kids, one in each arm. We start to walk out the door. The once empty waiting room now has about 8 people in it staring at me. Awesome. As I'm walking out carrying both kids, I hear a woman say, "I wonder which one it was?". My question is "I wonder what kind of drink I will have when I get home".

Airplane/Airport Excitement

UPDATE:

Here are the pictures of the towels stuffed into the air vents as promised:


ORIGINAL POST:

We left for New Jersey yesterday morning and got to the airport in plenty of time. So much time in fact that my father-in-law would be proud and Ben made fun of me. Nothing exciting about the airport ventures in Atlanta, but we had no idea what was yet to come.

As we are waiting to board, the gate agent comes on the speaker and says "We'll be boarding in about 5-10 minutes because the air conditioning was leaking on the plane and several seats are wet. We'll be turning on the heat for 5-10 minutes to dry it out". Oh fantastic!!! A steaming hot airplane for 2 hours with Max sitting on my lap. I can't freakin' wait. Alexis, Mom, and Ben boarded the plane and Max and I waited until the whole plane was boarded just to avoid some unnecessary screaming. Max was ever so tired because of the lack of naps yesterday. Fast forward to us sitting on the runway waiting to be cleared for takeoff......I start feeling a little mist. Yup, just over our heads coming out of the airvents was a little sprinkle. The flight attendant brought us a very high tech solution - paper towels to stuff into the vent. Slowly but surely, all up and down the plane, paper towels began to line the vents. I took a picture, but I'll have to add it later because I don't know how to do it on Scott's computer. Shortly before takeoff, Max decided to be pissed off that he couldn't walk around so he held his breath and passed out. Perfect! A whole plane full of people got to witness me bizarre child. At least he slept through take off. Max was quite annoying through the whole flight squirming around and whining just about the whole time. But just in time for landing, he got pissed off enough again to pass out again. PLANE PASS OUT COUNT = 2

Once we got off the plane and got to baggage our three suitcases were there, but no car seats. Hmmm....must be in oversize baggage they say. So we trek over to oversize baggage only to find that it's locked. After waiting for someone to unlock it, we retrieve the carseats. Now we have two carseats, three suitcases, three carryons, a stroller, and two kids to carry back upstairs to the Air Train. Since we all don't fit in the elevator, my mom, Alexis, and me (with Max strapped to my chest) get in first. The doors open at the top, and the screams begin. Unaware at first what happened, I look down to see why Alexis is screaming bloody murder and her entire hand is smushed in between the elevator door and the frame. And IT WON'T COME OUT. I start freaking out thinking that we are going straight from Newark to the hospital because all of her fingers will be broken. The guy who worked there called the police because he thought if we pulled her hand too hard, her skin would rip off. All these people begin to gather around and start pushing on the doors. Finally, someone pushed the door in and someone pulled it out, and her fingers became dislodged. After many tears and convincing her to try to calm down enough to see if she could move her fingers, we realized that she was actually okay with nothing broken. Although, they did have to interview me for an incident report stating that we refused medical attention. We finally made it to the rental car place and got our car and drove away from the hellish airport.

I'm sure more trip adventures will occur before we leave so I'll save those for a later post!

Happy Days!!!!

My Nephew

I surprised my brother this weekend with a trip up to NJ for my nephew's bris. I was really hoping to be there since we need to relish every happy occasion there is. He is very cute! He got his name on Sunday, Dovid Yaakov. This was my dad's Hebrew name so hopefully he will embody everything my dad was. Hadassah was also quite hilarious over the course of the weekend. Here is just one example of the funny conversations we had.

Hadassah: I want ices.

Okay, come get one.

Hadassah: I want purple ices.

There isn't any more purple ices so let's pick a different color.

Hadassah: Okay, I want blue.

Great! Here's a blue.

(Hadassah messily eating her ices).

Hey, Das, how about you go put your purple bib on so we don't make a huge mess.

Hadassah: No, I can't because my purple bib doesn't match my blue ices.

She had me there! Needless to say, she ate her ices without her bib on. I wonder if she really had purple ices if she would have put it on or if it was just a good excuse. She wasn't used to having me to herself without Alexis and Max so she took full advantage and became my little shadow for a couple days. Super cute!!! When we left for the airport, my mom got in the backseat with her and Hadassah says, "No, grandma. Michelle is sitting next to me."
Here are a few extra pics just for fun!!! Personally, I love the one with milk dribbling out of his mouth!!!

I have a Nephew

I added a nephew to my collection of nieces today!!! My brother and Devorah had a boy this evening around 9:30ish (I think). And he was quite small considering how big sister, Hadassah was. I don't have a lot of details because clearly Scott was busier than sharing trivial stuff like height, weight, etc. with me on the phone. I'm sure I'll get more from my mom tomorrow. I'm very excited for Max though because he won't be the only boy anymore. He and his new cousin can play with boy stuff and throw their sisters' princesses and purses out the window. Although Max does have a special affinity for pink light up wands. Hopefully, I'll get a picture soon and can put one up here.

In other less important news, Alexis tried out a new vocabulary word tonight. We went to the pool and after we got back, she was running around naked because she didn't want a bath. In true typical Alexis fashion, whenever she is not listening, she usually ends up getting hurt. As she was running through the bathroom, she stubbed her toe against the door and yells, "DAMN!". Glad I was actually using the bathroom when this happened and Ben had to deal with it. She clearly has heard that somewhere before, but I just can't really imagine where.

We also had a very successful garage sale today at Mark and Stephanie's house. They have a prime location for garage sales and I think overall we made about $300. Most of our share was grandma's stuff though. So we only pocketed about $50. But it was $50 more than we had before.

THE MOVE

I should preface this post with the statement that I love my grandma. She's always been a fabulously loving grandma, and I would and have done anything for her just as she has for me, but I have to rant, therefore, my blog is the medium.

Moving is such a simple word, yet I hate its guts. Moving sucks. And we weren't even the ones moving!!! My grandma finally agreed to go to the Jewish Tower about six months ago. After turning down an apartment in January (damn!), she finally accepted the offer last month and the big move was yesterday. However, packing began a month ago. From a two bedroom rather spacious apartment to a one bedroom rather minuscule apartment (it's so small, I'm not even sure apartment is the right term). Clearly, things were going to have to be prioritized and the B, C, and D-listers needed to be left behind. It was sort of like telling a three year that she/he can't bring ALL their toys in the car, but just pick a few. Then you get the whining response from them, "But I want them!" Sort of the same response from an 80 year old woman when told she doesn't need five (no lie, no exaggeration) sets (yes, complete sets!) of dishes for a one-person household. I mean do you really need to have every mug you have ever set your lips to in your three cabinet mini kitchen. Not to mention all the hideous knick knacks that are going from four display cases into two. Oh, sure, just cram it in, but when the shelves fall, don't call me. (FYI, not all the knick knacks are fugly, so keep the nice ones and get rid of the fugly ones). Why exactly a mini kitchen table is needed in the literally four foot square kitchen when the large, nice dining room table is two feet away, I'll also never understand. Oh, and I can't forget about the two completely full racks of shoes (probably 30 pairs) that she still "needs" especially since I've only seen her wear two pairs of shoes in the last 3 years. But, you know, she still needed those white heels (ummm....wait.....she can't even walk well in flat, sneakers), "in case [she] needs white shoes when [she] gets dressed up". Dressed up??? Where, the hell are you going? The rockin' sock hop in the cafeteria???? She finally came to the realization that some of her things weren't fitting as we were hopping over boxes and hurdling furniture to get around last night, so of course, Ben had to drive back today to gather some of these up for the garage sale. It would have been too much to ask to have figured this out BEFORE we packed and unpacked and then repacked it again.

Well, before my rant gets too unbearably long, I should say that I do love my grandmother dearly and she truly cherishes all her belongings. I'm not an unsentimental person, but I'm also a realist. I am actually very sentimental and keep just about everything (old movie stubs, every card I've ever gotten, etc.), but when I have to move and downsize, I give my kids permission to get rid of them. The nice part is that she has told us all the stories to go along with many items and possessions so it's nice to know their history, but some things don't have a history or an attachment other than parting with something that you once owned. I was actually more compassionate with her, but since she doesn't own a computer, I figured this was a good place to release!

Learning a Lesson

I learned a valuable lesson this past weekend.....CHECK THE VIDEO CAMERA TAPE BEFORE YOU START TAPING AGAIN!!!!! This Saturday was Alexis's dance recital (I will post pictures below) and she was a beautiful little ballerina. She loved getting her makeup put on and dressing up. We thought she might just stand there on stage watching the other girls or us in the audience, but she actually loved being on stage and ate up the performance. I would have a video to show you except that after someone videotaped that night, they rewound the tape to watch some of it. Then, the next morning was Max's birthday party, and someone began taping again without checking the tape. Needless to say, no more recital :( I cried....literally. The silver lining to this cloud is that the dance studio was selling a DVD of the entire recital for $20 so I was able to buy one of these. Not the same, but at least it's something. (FYI, neither of those "someone's" were me, but they shall remain nameless!). So the lesson here people is NEVER TAPE WITHOUT CHECKING THE SPOT! I promise that will never happen again in our house. Here are some pics of the beautiful ballerina and tapper: