Ada had been on Omnicef for a week to get rid of an ear infection, and Tuesday morning she broke out in hives. I took her to the doctor because they wanted to make sure she was breathing okay because they thought it was an allergic reaction to the medication. He said everything was fine and just to keep an eye on her joints, elbow, wrists, knees, ankles to watch for swelling since that could be a more serious sign. Well that evening after she woke up from a long nap, she said her feet hurt and that she couldn't walk. This, of course, totally freaked me out so I Googled. It said joint pain can be associated with allergic reactions as well. I called urgent care to see if they could treat her, or if we'd have to take her to the ER, and they said they could treat her. They gave us a prescription for Prednisone, which of course she wouldn't take without a fight...but we must've got some of it down because she started to feel better soon after. The hives lasted for three solid days and she was not a happy camper. It was such a lovely sound when she woke up happy this morning yelling "mom! my owwies are feeling better now!"

It was finally time to cut Ada's curly baby tail off, so I took both the girls into Alison for trims today. I remember Ivy had her first haircut when she was about a year old, but for some reason I just couldn't bear to cut off Ada's baby hair..I just loved it. Well the girls did great and they even got a little glitter spray after they were finished. Here are some photos of the event.

So apparently we don't have very good luck with hamsters. Stripe II passed away last night...on Valentine's Day no less. He was found dead in his food bowl, by Eric..again. He was preceded in death by Stripe I. We considered trying to get another quickly without the girls noticing, but I think there was a bad batch of hamsters at PetSmart. I decided that we should probably try another type or another store. I was really worried about how the girls would take the news today, especially Ivy. There were some tears, but after I brought up the fact that we could go pick out a new hamster, she perked up quickly. We headed to Petco instead and picked out a female, "fancy" hamster. We had a long discussion on the way home about what we should name her. Ada thought Sally was a good name, Ivy thought we should call her Spot. Then Ivy mentioned Twilight, in reference to the My Little Pony named Twilight Sparkle. That made me think of the Twilight movies, so I said how about Bella. The girls agreed and that's what we named her. Here are a few pictures of Miss Bella.

I took some time to organize the house a little since I'll be here a lot more now. There were things that were driving me crazy that I just didn't have time to work on. I organized the cabinets in the kitchen, and the pantry. I added a turntable to the hall/medicine closet so I could find what I was looking for more easily. I wanted a couple laundry bags in the closet to separate lights and darks, so I ironed on some vinyl letters and Eric mounted hooks to the closet wall. We organized the laundry room with a shoe rack and a little rack above the sink for more storage. I also ordered some wall vinyl and made a little clipboard to display the girls' artwork. Here are a few pictures...

Just wanted to blog about my new career path. Starting today, I'm a full time mom! Ivy starts Kindergarten in the fall and I'm looking forward to being able to spend some quality time with the girls before then. Also, it will be nice to be able to drop Ivy off and pick her up without worrying about taking time off of work. Plus I'll be able to spend more time doing things for/with her class, so that'll be fun. With the full time job & website design thing, it didn't leave much time for anything else. So now I can still work on websites after the kids go to bed, but have all day long to have fun with them. Wish me luck!

Well Stripe was only with us for a month. Thankfully Eric found him and not one of the girls. So Eric ran to PetSmart that night to get another one just like him. The girls didn't seem to notice or care that Stripe II was a little bit darker, browner and was missing his tail. Anyhow..here he is..

I wanted to start the year off with a fresh look on the blog. Hopefully I can be better about updating too, but don't hold your breath. :)