Christmas 2009

Santa came to our house and ate cookies and drank milk while we slept. He filled stockings with toys and left presents by the tree. When Viv woke up, it took her a few minutes to figure out that it was Christmas. She had slept all the night in her big girl bed, which is becoming more frequent lately, and she was talking to us from there when she thought to ask whether Santa had come. We got up and found that, indeed he had. So the kids opened their presents from Santa, and from us, and from each other.






















Then Grandma and Nonna came over with even more presents! We opened presents all over again and had a fabulous feast of turkey, ham, stuffing, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and gravy, spinach madeleine, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream. Man, just typing that made me uncomfortably full all over again.

Decorating the tree

We didn't have anyone over to decorate the tree with us this year, but Viv and Gus helped a lot. The lower branches were decked out big time by the time we were done.

Santa picture

Thanksgiving performance

Viv's preschool had a little "feast" before Thanksgiving where parents brought sack lunches and ate with the kids and watched some musical performances. Curt went to eat with Viv, and he shot these videos of the event.

Viv's School Picture

Here's Viv's first school picture.

Viv (part 2)

Sunday evening Viv was feeling a little puny and it was obvious something was a little wrong. She walked up and gave me a hug and whined some, then puked all over the front of me. It happened again in bed last night. She seems alright this morning and doesn't have a fever, but she's staying home from school today just to be sure. (No pics in the post for obvious reasons)

Diagnosis: Foreign body in nose

This is a Polly Pocket shoe next to a dime. The shoe was part of a pair that came with a Princess Aurora (of Beauty and the Beast fame) doll. We've always been very strict with Viv's use of this doll and only let her play with it when Gus was asleep, so that he wouldn't get it and try to swallow it. Turns out we worried about the wrong child doing something foolish with it.



This is Viv with above pictured Polly Pocket shoe inserted rather deeply into her nasal cavity:




So, here's the story. Yesterday afternoon we we're planning on going to lunch with Pod and Ya-Ya at 1:30. Around 12:30 or so Gus was sleeping and Viv was playing with Princess Aurora and her tiny blue shoes when all of the sudden she started howling and grabbing at her nose. For some reason only Viv can explain, she had stuck the shoe up her left nostril then proceeded to shove it all the way up in what was probably an attempt to get it out. It was so far up that it took a flashlight to see it.

We rushed her out to the urgent care clinic in Chalmette and waited for several hours to find out that they didn't have the tools to get it out. This is Viv on (unsuccesful) attempt 1 at shoe removal:



Since they couldn't extract the shoe down here in Chalmette, we packed up Viv and headed to Children's Hospital uptown. They were really great and managed to get Viv in pretty quickly. After a second round of being strapped down to a spine board and held firmly in place, the doctors (plural) were able to insert a small balloon catheter behind the shoe and yank it out. Viv was a bit traumatized but all in all was quite brave.

I feel bad for Princess Aurora though, cause she's gonna have to go barefoot from now.