This is for you Aunt Barb

My family every year has a family cook out and pitch-in, where we get together and enjoy each others company. My family is fun, loud, laughing, and loving (now you know where I get it). My family is pretty close, my father has four sisters and two brothers. I used to love naming them all off in order, still do, I could do this by age nine I think. Ann, Barbara, Bertha, Bill, Larry, Jerry, Janet, it's harder to type than to say. Ann my father's oldest sister passed away a couple of years ago, she was the quietest of the bunch. I always thought she was the classiest ladies I'd ever known. Barbara is the next in line. I grew up in church, every Sunday, morning and night. Every Wednesday night, and any special services we were there. If the preacher washed the windows we filled our pew. Aunt Barbie was the church pianist. From what I know she had very few lesson, she played by ear. My family is very musical, out of the seven children, they all sing a different part. Any time they got together they sang. Christmas was a particular favorite, and Aunt Barbie was always in the middle of it all, playing the piano. Never wanting to be in the spotlight, always backing everyone else up. In fact, she has the most beautiful alto voices you could ever hear. Once again, singing the harmony, making the spotlight sound better by her contribution. I love my Aunt Barbie like a second mother, and always wanted to be like her. I can't play the piano, but I do sing alto. I personally don't think I can hold a candle to her.
In my family, we inherit several things. A love of music, a wacky sense of humor, a strong sense of patriotism and loyalty, and aleshiemers. It is so prevalent that we joke about it. We say you start out with sometimers, then progress in to part-timers, before finally making it to allstimers.
Aunt Barbie has not been singing much anymore. She is very quiet, too quiet. It breaks my heart to see her slipping away. This bright, intelligent, loving woman.
Today we had the cookout just as always. Aunt Barbie was there, smiling, sitting by her husband trying to pick out the ones she knew from the ones she didn't. I kissed her as I left and told her I loved her. She told me she loved me, but I'm not real sure she knew who I was. Oh well, it still counts anyway right?

Doing battle at night.

Ok, so my daughter still had or has a sippy cup, and she doesn't sleep through the night. She sleeps in her own bed though. I was reading the blog of this poor woman, who said people were looking at her strange because her SEVEN month old wasn't sleeping through the night. I'm not telling anyone Hannah still doesn't at almost two. Maybe I should wear a bag on my head. The other day I realized that Hannah was still waking up about every three hours. So, I think to myself, it's time to take away the sippy at night. Plus, I want to start potty training. So I began this week. OHHH I need sleep. and I feel awful. "Mama milk. Mama C'mere." Note- I do go into the next room and sit, both rooms are open to the other. But at 4am I finally go to bed. She's still waking up every 3 hours or so. Got any suggestions?

Hannahisms

Today I dropped Hannah off at the babysitters, and prepared to go to work. Hannah has been doing a great job with her glasses. She rarely takes them off or messes with them. We just have one problem, she wants to look over them instead of through them. So, we remind her to either lift her chin or head or to look through her glasses not over them. She was looking over them and my babysitter daughter (who's sixteen) said "Hannah, look through your glasses not over them." To which my daughter replied "I know they're my glasses!" I couldn't see her face but I could have sworn she was rolling her eyes. I'm in so my trouble

Styling and Profiling before glasses 

Hannah & the Good Doc Wiener 

Funny Face 

Guess who's got her glasses?

We went to Doc Wiener's on Saturday and got Hannah banana's glasses, she looks so much older. That I'm not liking. She is doing really well with them. She leaves them on most of the time. The only trouble I've had with her is when we are riding in the car and she is bored. She wants to put them on top of her head like sunglasses. I had to take her to get them adjusted, she was looking over them. Poor baby, she's only got a little button of a nose, not much to hang glasses on. I have a picture of her but she is making a funny face. I'll post it and then hopefully get a couple of a better one from the 14 gazzillion, my mom and brother took. Bill (my brother) was so funny. He had her take a picture of everyone, that had glasses. He even got his own glasses out and put them on for a picture with her. Funny, I didn't know he had glasses.

Vomiting, fevers, and seizures, and other fun things!

My Daughter spent Tuesday night getting up every hour on the hour. Which is not too unusual, she still doesn't sleep though the night. Wednesday morning she got up, and I thought "utoh she feels hot," just before she threw up all the way through the house. I felt so bad for her. I clean her up and started cleaning up the house. She wanted to sit on the back porch, so I put some PJ's on her, the morning was chilly. It wasn't long before she went to sleep, and I started searching for the advil. We had just moved and I thought it was in the medicine cabnet but no luck. So, I called the babysitter, I thought I had some in the diaper bag. In the mean time, hannah woke back up. She was laying in my arms when she started having seizures. I, panicked, I told Tommy to get the truck and drive us to the hospital. He said we should go to the EMT that were around the corner. We drove over there and I ran in with her crying for help. I don't know if any of you have been through something like that but for me it was like seeing my life before my eyes. They cooled her down with an ice pack and some wet towels. She stop have the seizures and we headed for the hospital. She stopped crying about half way there and started looking out the windows. At the emergency room she had a blood test, catscan, and a urine test. The hospital called this morning she has a bacterial infection. She is taking antibiotics now. Maybe I should have put heartattacks in the title for me

Time on my hands.

I'm fianlly officially moved. We are in a small but ours apartment, that fits our small buget. Starting over from scratch sucks, but that's ok. Hannah is loving the back porch area where she can play. I just have to keep her off the stairs, there will be a gate there soon. She would rather play out there than do just about anything. I'm finding i have a lot of time on my hands with just the three of us. It's almost strange not worring about everyone else. We have no internet or cable so it's hanging out with the kid and playing. I need to get me some books.
Hannah was suppose to get her glasses this weekend. The eye doctor was so kind to her and my sister. We took him a present. Bless his heart, his name is Doc. Richard Weiner. When we went we had to wait for awhile and hannah kept wanting to get into the kisses i had bought for the good doc, i said "No, Hannah, those are our gift for Doc Weiner" and when he came out we thought Hannah was saying Come'mere, but then realized she was saying "Weiner" and she took him his gift and card. We will get her glasses later this week.
Hannah Banana's birthday is the 4th, of June. I can't believe she will be 2. I plan on getting her picture taken on her birthday. We did last year and they were so cute. I'll post them so you can see her pretty new glasses.
BTW, Nino & JerriAnn thank you so much for reading and commenting, you'll never know how much i appreciate you guys.

Glasses for Banana's

The other day I was in the grocery, when a man stop to comment to my daughter. This is not an unusual thing, she has huge blue eyes, and is darn cute if I do say so myself. She is also a very social little girl. Anyways, after commenting to her, he looked at me and asked if he could tell me something about her, and I not get mad. I said sure. He told me that his daughter, as a young one, had a lazy eye, and he thought Hannah had the same. Now, let me tell you something, My beautiful older sister at 18 months, one of her eyes crossed. You can not tell that now, and she is beautiful. Well, I looked at Hannah and got one of those gut wrenching, feelings. My sister grew up with thick glasses, and the kids teased her something awful. In fact, even to this day, (with men following her around like puppy dogs) she still doesn't think she is pretty. So, I went home and tried to think about what to do. I didn't want to say anything to my sis, because I knew it would upset her, but I had to think of some way to get Hannah in to see a Doctor. I couldn't sleep, that night, and it was a weekend and the adults were sitting around the table (remember I lived with my sis) They asked why I was up, and I told them I couldn't sleep, and explained why. My sister said she would take Hannah into the eye doctor she does some secretarial work for, and she joked that she would curse me if anything was wrong with hannah's eyes cause I named her after my sis, (middle name).
Well, consider myself cursed. A few minutes ago, I got a tearful call from my sis saying she had just picked out a pair of glasses for Hannah. She is very far sighted, and it's her right eye that is worse of the two, we thought maybe it would be her left like my sis's. She will have to have her glasses on all the time. Which should be interesting for a 23 month old. My sis is devastated, I'm not. I don't think.