Yummy, black beans!

Rigley & Brighton love black beans.

Computer Time

Brighton loves playing on the computer and has gotten quite good at figuring out how to navigate the web. In fact, I now have to close the computer when I leave the room or he will immediately get on the computer and go to what he wants to. He likes looking at blogs and playing games. The other day, he went into my gmail and pulled up the pictures from the blog on Picasa - I didn't even know you could do that! Brighton is also getting quite adept at Facebook. I have found him going to friend's photo albums to peruse their pics.

So, if you get any random messages from me, rest assured they are probably sent by Brighton. While he is great at surfing, he still can't spell so his emails/IM's are confusing! :)


Rigley likes playing on the computer, too, though he's not quite as proficient as Brighton yet! I'm sure it won't take long for him to catch up. Rigley enjoys the infant games on Fisher-Price.

First lollipop

We went to Chuck E Cheese for playgroup today and Brighton picked a lollipop as one of his prizes when he traded in his tickets. It was one of the mini Tootsie Pops and he didn't even finish it - he's such a good boy!

My little bunny!

Brighton got some bunny ears in his Kidgits Club prize pack at the mall. He likes to put the ears on and hop around the house.

Got to make the pretzels

I know it is really supposed to be "Got to make the donuts," but if you know Brighton you would know that pretzels interest him MUCH more than donuts. He loves the pretzel sticks from Auntie Anne's at the mall. I agree that they are tasty, however, he asks for them most days after Stroller Strides and since we're there 3 days a week - that can start to get expensive! The frozen SuperPretzels are much cheaper, but just nasty, really. So, my solution... make them ourselves. I got an Auntie Anne recipe from copykat.com and we begin the baking. I'm not sure we'll do it again - they were just ok and pretzel making takes a loooonnnngggg time!

Brighton is a wonderful pretzel maker, though!

Picky eater

Rigley is a bit of a finicky eater as of late. We started him on cereal at just a little under 6 months and then started with "real" food at 6 months. His first non-cereal food was avocado, which he still loves. We introduce a new food every 4-5 days. He still likes sweet potatoes. However, he no longer will eat acorn squash - which he ate very well the first couple of times we gave it to him. He did not like peas, so I thought it was the texture. I typically use the blender and make a big batch of food for him and then freeze it in cubes for future use. Well, with peas it is difficult to get them smooth in a blender, the hulls don't puree well. So, I got a food mill to see if that would help - it didn't. He still won't eat peas, even when they've went through food mill.
He got his first real fruit a few days ago, a mashed banana. (I know, I know - avocado is technically a fruit, but I mean sweet fruits)

Anyway, today we tried zucchini. Here is his reaction:

Rub-A-Dub-Dub, Two boys in a tub

Brighton & Rigley took their first bath together tonight. They had so much fun playing together.

Such a good big brother!

Brighton wanted to help feed Rigley at dinner. He did a wonderful job and Rigley didn't seem to mind who was holding the spoon as long as food was being shoveled into his mouth!

Fancy New Move

Brighton has got a "fancy new move," his term. He's very good at it, too! The best part is that Rigley loves watching him do it. He just laughs and laughs.

Trading Places

Brighton thought he needed to sit in the highchair for lunch today and that Rigley should sit in the booster.

Spring Break - AZ - Day 5

We flew out in the afternoon, so we did not have much time on our last day to do anything.

Brighton enjoyed breakfast with the men (Papa Don and Mr. Gene)

Brighton had helped pick a pomelo from one of Mimi & Papa's trees. Pomelos are the largest of the grapefruit family, as you can see in the picture.


Here we are in the courtyard at the Mesa airport beside some saguaros. On a side note, I love the Mesa airport - it is small & great when traveling with kids. Allegiant is the only commercial airline that flies in there and there are only four gates! We will definitely fly into there again, its so much easier than SkyHarbor.

The boys did great on the flight. This time Brighton slept almost the entire flight and Rigley only slept off & on. However, he was very pleasant when he was awake. In fact, you could tell that Rigley had finally started feeling better by the flight home.

Spring Break - AZ - Day 4

Thursday was another day at Mimi & Papa's house. We have taken a few walks around their neighborhood, however, to add some excitement to the vacation!
Mimi had gotten some bubbles, so we did at least take advantage of the lovely weather and played outside.

Spring Break - AZ - Day 3

Given that we had a sick, cranky baby - we scrapped any plans to go do anything. It's a good thing Brighton is only 2 because he had a great time at "Mimi's Arizona house," as he calls it. We had taken his cars with us and he had fun playing with them out in the Arizona room - as much as he was out there playing with them, you would have thought I would have gotten a picture of it. I did not, however. One of Brighton's favorite parts of the trips was having breakfast in bed with Mimi. Mimi & Papa have a king-sized bed and a TV in their bedroom. So, Mimi made him bacon & eggs and spread a blanket out on the bed and let him eat breakfast there while watching cartoons and playing with his cars. He must have mentioned it about 50 times and he would laugh and say, "That's so silly!" As you can tell, we have never let him eat in bed at our house!

That evening Rigley started really using his little stomach muscles to breathe - which is the retraction that the Urgent Care told us to be on the lookout for and to get to an E/R if we saw him doing that. So, a little before 9pm we headed to Banner Children's Hospital's emergency room. Apparently by the time we arrived it was "rush hour" at the E/R because we waited FOREVER. The waiting room was very full. We finally got called back and the staff was very nice. The doctor we saw had actually worked at Children's Hospital in St. Louis for quite a while - that's where we take Rigley for clubfoot treatment. Anyway, they did the actual RSV test to confirm that is what he had. They also found that he had a double ear infection - that could explain the waking up screaming every hour or so. I felt so bad, but they didn't catch it or even mention that his ears were looking bad at the Urgent Care, so I never suspected it.

Here is Rigley with Daddy in the E/R waiting - which we did alot of that night.


We thought Rigley needed a souvenier of his trip to AZ and what better than a chest x-ray?!?
They discharged us about 1am with prescriptions and a list of 24 hour pharmacies. We dropped off the prescriptions and he told us to come back in about 20 minutes. What are you going to do at 1am for 20 minutes? Go to an all-night taco stand, of course!

We went to Filiberto's Mexican Food and trust me, they had a good photographer to take the above pic for their website. In real life, it looks like an old In-n-Out Burger that is run down. However, it has some yummy food! Donovan got a Spanish Omelet and I think it was the best omelet I have ever tasted! We drove back to the Walgreen's and sit in the parking lot and ate until it was time to pick up Rigley's prescription, then got back to Mimi's house about 2am. What a vacation! ;)

Spring Break - AZ - Day 2

Donovan & Brighton went to the Cubs game on Tuesday. We had gotten tickets on the lawn because we thought that would be much easier on Bright to not be confined to a little seat. It was a beautiful day at HoHoKam Park.



The game fell into nap time, though.
Brighton was not happy about getting his picture taken, but here is Donovan & Bright with Hall of Famer Rollie Fingers.

Here they are with Hall of Famer Ferguson "Fergie" Jenkins.
They didn't make it through the whole game as Brighton was worn out. He took a nap in the car and was much happier when they got back to Mom & Don's house. Brighton went out to pick some oranges after the game - Daddy had to help with the ones higher up in the tree.


We didn't get pics of Rigley's exciting day. After speaking with a nurse from his pediatrician's office, we headed out to a walk-in clinic at Walgreen's. This was after spending a considerable amount of time on the phone & online finding somewhere in AZ that was on our insurance and we could get into. We get there only to find out they don't see patients under 18 months old. This applies to the clinics at CVS's, too, in case any of you need to know that. So, we regrouped and headed to Urgent Care. We were sent home and told to use the nebulizer we had brought with us for Brighton on Rigley, too, and to keep an eye out for retraction - using his stomach muscles to breathe is an indication he's having a very hard time breathing.

Spring Break - AZ - Day 1

We flew to Mesa for Spring Break on Monday, March 2. Apparently the camera was set wrong because all of the pics have the wrong date on them!

This was Brighton & Rigley's first time in an airport. We flew out of Springfield, which is a nice, little airport. It is wonderful when traveling with kids b/c it is so small, there aren't big lines or much ground to cover between check-in, security, and the gates.

Here is Brighton exploring the airport.


Rigley had not napped ALL DAY until we got to the airport - did I mention that our flight didn't leave until 8pm? He was quite fussy the whole day until he finally drifted off for a short nap.
Here are the boys on the plane. It was their first flight; we even got them a pair of wings and a commemorative certificate that the pilot signed.
Brighton was allowed his bin-bin on the flight so he could suck on it during take-off and landing to help his ears adjust.

Brighton & Rigley did really well on the flight. Even though he hadn't napped that day, either, Brighton didn't sleep at all on the flight. He watched Cars on the portable DVD player and colored.
Rigley slept pretty much the entire flight. During his nap, though, I noticed that he was feeling warm. Sure enough, once we landed and I could check, he had a fever. Brighton had been diagnosed with RSV-induced bronchiolitis last week, but was doing better & the pediatrician told us to go ahead and go to AZ because the climate would be good for him.