Spiders. Why does it have to be spiders.

So Chloe has found a new friend. Outside our office window is this huge, man-eating size garden spider. She's fascinated by it. The past couple mornings she has jumped out of bed (ok, AFTER Barry or I come lift her out) and made a beeline for the office to check on her friend.

Understand this thing is huge. Mom has this monster phobia of anything that has more legs than four legs. In short, I hate any kind of insect and specially arachnids--can't even say I like pretty little butterflies much when it comes down to touching things. Scared to death of them all. BUT, I try to hide my fears from Chloe. I don't want her to be afraid of things just because Mom or her Dad is. I want her to develope her own fears and phobias sans our interferrence.

But why, oh why does the girl have to like spiders? She likes to sit in my drafting table chair by the window and just watch the thing. Granted, she does like snakes. That I can handle. No problem there. But spiders???

In fairness, it IS a pretty spider as far as things that give me the heebee jeebee's go. It's black with lots of pretty yellow markings on it. And if it weren't the fact that this thing could swallow a small child, or bite your finger off with it's huge venem dripping mandibles, I could deal with it.

It really is BIG!

Later that morning, we went and played at the park. Chloe sat in the swing for a long time. There was another family from the neighborhood that was there with there 3 daughters. One was almost Chloe's age...their girl was turning 2 in November.


Chloe sat next to her on the swing and kept saying "hi, friend! Hi friend!" Of course the little girl didn't say anything back--being a mere average mortal ; o ) and having a binky stuck in her mouth. But it's always fun to watch Chloe interact with people.

We practised our facial expressions at the part. Here she's doing "silly".
This is her "Mom, quit--you're embarrassing me" look.

Once again, Fox sleeps thru it all.

Downtown Disney

So nobody told me what a hassle/pain in the butt/major operation it is to get two kids out of the house. We had it planned to where we could get out of the house, do some things with Chloe before we would have to feed Fox again. Chloe is like Mommy in that she can't stay indoors for very long. We both LOOOOVE to get out. So tonight we decided to get the family out of the house and go to Downtown Disney.




We arrived and made our way over to where there's a little ampitheatre and lots of seats. Barry had Chloe on her leash and let her run and jump around. I sat with the stroller and watched them play. It was a wonderful evening. The temperature was comfortablel, there were beautiful cloud formations as the sun set...I guess that was from the hurricane that's south of us. And I watched my family in action. I love to watch Chloe run and play and interact with other kids. It was delightful to see Barry and her together. I took Fox out and although he was asleep I held him close. One of those times where it just can't get any better.


Chloe played with a British boy and his older sister she met in front of The World of Disney. When we first got there she saw him almost immediately and went up to him and started interacting with him. She kept calling after him "hi friend, hi friend" when he'd run away. He was a little older then her...closer to 3. But later on he would come up to her. She loves to meet new people.

Fox just slept thru it all in his part of the stroller.

Chloe rode the carousel. We watched the choochoo train, but it was the horses at the carousel she loved. As we were walking up she started neighing. It was really cute. She wasn't scared in the least and had a blast.

She took time to stop and smell the flowers.

The evening was just perfect.

Looks like another storms a brewin'

Looks like we are going to have some rain this weekend. Hurricane Katrina is coming for a visit, but we shouldn't get hit by it...well, other then rain. We are glad that the storm seems to be keeping well south of us. Yeah.



But the clouds have made for a spectacular sunset. These are some pics I snapped while Chloe, Fox and I went to the park. I like how there seems to be light rays in the pic above. I didn't know that kind of thing would come thru in digital photographs.

Fox was just hanging out in his stroller just enjoying the breeze when I took these pics of him. He looks very studious in the bottom two pics.


Right now he's going thru an icky bout of zits. Can't be any fun. His body is trying to get rid of all the hormones that are left from me. His skin looks worse sometimes then others--mainly when he's angry and he gets red faced, that's when the zits are the most prominent. Seems like this baby acne could last anywhere from a couple weeks up until he's two or more. Let's hope it's just the couple weeks one.


This is Fox's 'Hmmmm' pose. Wonder what he's thinking.

My bet is he's planning all the things he's going to get into when he gets a little more mobile.

"My yummy-yummy"

Chloe loves to munch on our parrots (Hellboy) dried fruit. If she see's the bag lying around she keeps saying "my yummy-yummy, my yummy-yummy" until she gets the bag. Granted, anything she likes (candy, ice cream, etc) can be deemed 'my yummy-yummy' depending on her mood. Many times she reaches up on the dinning room table, grabs the bag and plops down and eats away. She loves the cranberries, raisins, dried pineapple, and bannana chips the best. She even eats the dried kiwi, which is the only thing in the bag Hellboy doesn't like.



Nuts are a big thing with our Chloe. She's become somewhat of a connoisseur of nuts. She knows the diffence between almonds, peanuts, and cashews. And she is a fiend for macadamian nuts when we have them.

She also loves to eat popcorn. This is another pancake** for her (** this refers to Mike Mignola's Hellboy comic (don't remember the exact issue number--hey, it's almost 3 o'clock in the morning, deal with it) wherein the young Hellboy partakes of his first pancake and then the next panel shows all the demons in hell bemoaning the fact that Hellboy is now lost to them as he has eaten this delicious morsel. Go read the comic)



Don't try to come between a girl and her yummy-yummy.




After Chloe had her fill of my 'yummy-yummie' we played with Grimly, our pet chinchilla. Today was our day off, so we kinda just relaxed around the house (I had to work from 7-10 but no big) and played with the critters. This is one of the first time chloe came close to holding Grimly. She pets her all the time when someone is holding her, so this was quite fun to watch as she attempted to get Grimly in her grasp.

Tember's goodbye party

Wednesday we took the family out to 1900 Park Place at the Grand Floridian to celebrate the departure of Tember. She'll be returning to Mississippi to finish out her senior year and work. She's been living with us since around March-ish. She'll be missed very much by all of us.




Here Tember waits with Fox outside the resturant.

We wanted to do something Disney-ish for our last big outting and unbeknownst to her we planned a character dinner. Unbeknownst to US Tember is terrified of costumed characters. This made for a couple of interesting moments.




Chloe makes an entrance into the resturant with daddy close behind.



Doesn't she look excited, folks?





Tember meets her Prince Charming.



It seems Fox doesn't like characters quite so much either. He's definitely related to Tember.

I don't know who is more upset here. Fox is squalling--but that's more because of him being hungry then being scared, and Tember looks like she wants to start crying as well because she actually IS more scared then hungry.




He doesn't take to giant mice too well. Dare we tell him Mom was Chuck E. Cheese for a spell back in high school?



Even Fox gets to hang with royalty.



Our best friends Thomas and Rene' met us as well.



Chloe strikes a pose with her fairy Godmother, Nana'.



Chloe looks on...bring on some food!! Chloe loved the pasta, chicken fingers and french fries. She also loved all the gummy bears Thomas kept plying her with.



Chloe and Fox at dinner.



Chloe meets her favorite Princess--Cinderella!! I think she just wanted to get back to her chicken fingers.



Not too sure about this mouse thing.



But it all works out. Kisses on the nose go along way!

The "eye's" have it!!

I don't know where she got them from, but they are the most beautiful green eyes I've ever seen. Barry and I comment a lot how sometimes we just look down at Chloe and she literally takes our breath away.









We've been learning different kinds of kisses.

There's "butterfly kisses" where you brush your eyelashes on her cheek.

There's "hair kisses" where she likes it when you brush your hair across her face. She gets the giggles big time with those!



She loves to give "big sister" kisses to Fox. He's even getting use to 'em!

Then there's "daddy kisses" where it's a combination of LOUD zerberts and kisses and given only by daddy.
She likes those the best!

Sure....he looks innocent enough....

...but I promise you, come 3:00 in the morning and he's screamin' like a banshee for one of his many nighttime feedings and Mom is all blurry eyed, stumbling around in the dark trying to find her glasses, and feelin' mighty sleep deprived, it all ain't so pretty then.










But then you look down at his face, see his eyes trying desperately to focus in on you, or feel him snuggle closer to you, all is forgiven and you are suddenly not tired anymore and you just want to hold on to that moment for forever.






































Fox is staying awake so much longer now. This morning he probably stayed awake and alert for 2-3 hours or so. I know this because I was planning on going running during his nap period whist Barry watched Chloe, but no. Of course Fox chose the time I had somehting planned to do a cluster feeding and decided he just wanted to be held.

Our Universal trip

Today the family went to Universal/Islands of Adventure!! We had a ton of FUN!!! It was my first time to ride any really "cool" rides since I was pregnant with Chloe. Barry and I snuck away to ride 'The Mummy' while Tember watched Chloe and Fox. The ride was awesome!!! Next trip, we're riding 'The Hulk'!!






Barry and Tember rode the Popeye ride and got quite drenched.






Chloe, Fox and I watched from the bridge look out. I'm sure she can't wait until she is big enough to ride more rides!!




Chloe loved to play in the water. She wouldn't go into the water if it was spraying too hard, but she loved to splash in the puddles that were around.






Chloe is very big into playing frog.