Oh, Max, you cute 4 (and a half) month old thing

15 pounds 14 ounces of sweet cheek, lovable goodness.

This boy could not get more precious if he tried. And why would he try, if this much preciousness just came natural? So, our sweet, snuggly, BABY boy is now rolling, laughing till he sucks air, and pretty much insisting on being stood up in your lap at all times. He loves Rylan, watches him constantly and laughs at his craziness.

Oh, and that whole, 15 lbs, 14 oz at the 4 month visit? That was 16 days ago. As of, Friday, at his sick visit, its 17 pounds of sweet cheek cuteness. To quote his Doctor: "dang that's a big kid." Story of our lives doc, story of our lives. I shall be dwarfed by my children by the time they are 5.

Here he is entertaining me during one of my steroid induced sleepless nights. It was good to have some cute, monkey footed company.

All business casual and uber cute

And aren't these two cute, being all matchy matchy? They didn't call Rylan and I to put on our lime green shirts. Whatevs.

Precious

AND NOW........A new addition to the blog (for the next 97 days)

Does anyone watch I Used to be Fat on MTV? I think we've discussed that I watch ridiculous reality TV when we own a DVR/satellite. I don't feel quite as bad, since most of my ridiculous TV watching is done between the hours of 11pm and 5am while I am breastfeeding an infant and trying to stay awake. I feel it makes it less cheap or something. Anyway, all the people on the show have an alotted amount of days before they leave for college to lose weight and their trainers give them this peel off calender that's really awesome and they peel off a page every day till their diet/training is over. I did one for myself, except instead of using some awesome printshop I used a free pad of paper from my work and a sharpie. Still counts.

In 97 days, we are leaving for Gulf Shores. Home of shorts, bathing suits, the ocean, short sleeves, and flip flops. It is also the end to the Rohr Family Slimdown Challenge, and I still haven't given up on winning $200. I'll need some money for all the shorts, bathing suits, and flip flops I'll be buying, cause if I learned anything after last summer's hellish heat, its that you need to get your body ready for shorts next summer, Sara. You won't have the gigantic baby belly to steer their eyes away from your tree trunk legs and it is hot up in Little Rock in the summa time! Anyway, I'll be updating about my progress. Workouts, weight loss.

So, 97 days to go. I've lost 9 pounds so far. Since we are still recouperating from the flu, my exercise today is consisting of getting our house put back together and playing with my boys. Anything more than that sets off a coughing spurt and the sweats. I know I sound hot, don't lie. I put together a soundtrack for cleaning so that when I clean, I'll make it a bit bouncy or something.

Here's Rylan exemplifying our alarmingly healthy eating. Usually he waits till they are peeled, but this day, he was good with the straight out of the ground sort. Yuck.

Outbreak, without Dustin Hoffman or Morgan Freeman

The baby boys both have fevers now. Looks like my strep test didn't turn all streppy and this was probably full blown flu *. Sooooo, I'm pricing 5 of these bad boys.

One adult/tall

One adult/short

One 4T for the 2 year old

One 6-9 month for the4 month old.

One canine version for Lola

*I do realize that, being a nurse and mother, that it is silly to have not gotten a flu shot, especially since I've had about 1,000 doctor appointments lately. I simply had way too much else on the noggin these last months. Rylan did get his, so if this is flu, he'll, hopefully, have a very mild case. And, fingers crossed, Rob and Lola had immune systems like a couple of oxes.

Excuses, excuses

1. Death fever pain returned

2. I have 2 kids 2 and under, one is teething, the other is being a little bit 2-ish

3. I've taken up working out

4. I have strep throat AND bronchitis

These are my new excuses for my blog break. Let's just say that after Max's 2nd ear infection in a month and Rylan's bronchiolitis and my Death Fever pain, that I had maybe a little bit of a meltdown. Blogging was the first to go and I just haven't gotten back in the habit. That and I lost my camera cord to transfer pics to my computer (no worries, its been found) and posts aren't any good without sassy toddlers and gummy baby pics.

Doc put me on a large amount of steroids for the Death Fever, and they have definitely helped. Max would be golden if that dang tooth would just pop through and Rylan, even if he loves the word no and screams "POOPIE" in the middle of a quiet library, he's still my favorite firstborn in all the land. After I shake this strep/bronchitis/fever of 103, I promise I'll be back!

Curtdog

Please excuse my blog break. We've had a tough few weeks here, with Rylan having bronchiolitis, Max with not one, but two ear infections, return of Death Fever pain, and the death of our pooch.

Rob and I lost our firstborn furbaby a little over a week ago. Curt. Or Curtdog as we'd taken to calling him lately. He was such a sweet and happy dog. Always ready to chase and be chased, super good at catching balls, begging and rolling over. He would do any trick for some of your leftover popcorn. And boy did he live. 16 years. Thats 112 in people years. And, yet, we were still shocked at his death, simply because Curt has fought through some nasty stuff for the past few years and come out shining and happy every time. Frankly, I was starting to think he would outlive all of us.

Here are some of our favorite stories about our fluffy friend

-He loved to run away, not because he didn't like us, he just really liked a good adventure. He was always super excited when we found him.

-He had been trained to "speak" (bark) on command, Rylan loved to say "peek!" at him and throw him a treat. Curt had recently learned that Rylan gives treats even if you don't actually DO a trick.

-One time Curt ran away from Rob's house in Mountain Home, made it to the town square, hopped through an open window into the backseat of a car and partook in a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken they had in there.

-Another time Curt ran away and returned a few hours later with a ham off of someone's grill in his mouth.

-The dog loved a good car ride. We always said he would have been an awesome dog for a truck driver. I wish ANYTHING made me as happy as Curt in the car with an open window and the wind in his face.

I never knew that losing a dog would hurt so much, but I've known and loved Curt a lot longer and a lot more than many of the people I've had in my life. He and I have walked many miles together and I still look outside waiting to see his pointy ears sticking up and him staring at me, wanting to come in. He had figured out that he might want to hang out with Rylan-the food dropper lately and they were becoming fast friends.

-The very last time he ran away, he took our other dog Lola with him. When I found them, they'd only made it half a mile. Curt, the 16 year old dog with congestive heart failure was looking happy and spry, and Lola, the much younger dog was dragging ass, her ears were touching the ground and she was foaming at the mouth. They both hopped back in the car with me and Lola hasn't left my side for an extended period of time since.

I know that dogs don't read blogs, especially ones that have passed. So what!:

Thank you Curt. Thank you for being a super awesome dog and loving us. Thank you for teaching me to become a "dog mom" and for being your happy, funloving self. Thank you for tolerating Lola's overzealous love for you. She misses you and so do we.

Such a big boy

So, while Rylan can climb to the top of a jungle gym, slide down any slide, reach anything off a counter you think he can't, he is a little slow on the talking. He's just been really, really, really busy spending his energy on running, dancing, climbing, tackling, hugging, pushing, pulling, and anything else that falls under the category of: BOY!

We've been staying home a lot more lately, with colds, snow and death fever, so I've been working on Rylan's talking skills lots more. Its really helped. As he was able to verbalize his needs, I watched his terrible two-ness subside little by little.

So, toddler talk is totally cute and I'm going to miss it when Rylan pops out "mother, may I be excused to wash my dishes, dry them and put them away?" Okay, so he'll never say that, but I'll totally miss all the toddler-isms that come out of his mouth.

Here are some favorites

Me: "Rylan, do you want a drink?"

Ry: "Please help, D!"

Me: "Wanna go outside?"

Ry: "Please help, side!"

Me: "need a snack?"

Ry: "Please help, nack!"

Also, he calls Max "Ma", and says "mom" in an English dialect, so I'm "MUM". He loves to eat "peash" (pizza), loves him some "yoya" (lola the dog) and as soon as you snap him into his carseat, he informs you he's "duck" (or stuck). Love it, love it, love it.

Here's Rylan at the park pushing Max in the stroller. So sweet.

Perhaps a new, New Year?

So, at the New Year I had big intentions of starting a weight loss regimen, being super mommy, and Death Fever being a thing of the past. But, my babies got sick, my Death Fever returned, then quelling my attempts at working out.

Welllllllllllll.................................

My friend, Michelle McAwesome watched the boys last Thursday while I went to 3 doctors appointments for some fix ups and fine tuning. Basically I got poked, prodded, felt up, and worst of all FLOSSED!!!!

1. Eye doc-vampire eye is GONE! No more inflammation. Still need glasses since Death Fever gave me wanky vision in one eye. But, beggars can't be choosers.

2. Dentist-zero cavities. I was worried about this one, since alot of post-pregnant ladies say they got like 5 cavities during pregnancy, and I'm a little guilty of having middle of the night cereal during my long nights with Max.

3. New general doc-a needed a new pair of eyes on my Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. I felt like the guy that helped me in November was a little weirded out by my illness, maybe it was the "I laid in bed wondering what the heck was wrong with you" statement that made me feel this way. When it was bad, I could barely walk, so a few weeks later, when I could walk, with pain, I felt vastly improved. Well, its now been two months and the walking with pain never went away. I've tried EVERYTHING. Advil, Tylenol, old pain pills leftover from my c-section, ace bandages, epsom salt bathes, working out, not working out, icing my feet, warming my feet.....nothing helped.

New doc got me on steroids, which makes total sense, since that's what fixed Vampire Eyes. The next day, after 5 pills, I got up without pain for the first time since before Max's birth. AND, I'm happy to say, I didn't even grow a beard OR develop massive forearms from the 'roids.

So, anyway, here we go. January 18th, a new, New Year. And, Rohr family? Watch out! We all put in money for a weight loss challenge (we tried this last year, but I messed it up by getting pregnant) and I'm sooooo gonna win.

That's over 50 pounds of kids right there!!!!

Snow Days

Yeah for Rob driving while I blog. He probably thinks I'm a computer addicted, cotton headed ninnymuggin, but who cares? I've been trying to post some sweet winter pics all week and I finally have the time!

In case you didn't know, we got a wee bit of snow last week. Or a bunch. A bunch in Arkansas terms at least. Especially central Arkansas terms. Since having children, snow days have changed for Rob and I. We used to hole up in our house, make soup and alcoholic drinks and alternate sleeping and movie watching and book reading until it was time to leave the house again. Now, we tug and twist and cram our kids into several layers of clothes, only to have them want to come back in after 20 minutes. We still make soup, but coffee has taken the place of beer and wine. We still read books, but smut romance has been replaced by Dr. Suess. We still watch movies, but all 3 Toy Story's took over our house long ago.

Rylan has re-discovered his sweet love for Max. He went through an awful terrible two little period and basically acted like Max wasn't there. Then suddenly the terrible two switch turned off and he is, once again, all about loving and kissing and waving and petting Max's sweet head.

Max's first snow. He was a little unsure what to think.

The best money we have ever spent. This swing gets use, even in freezing temps and snow covered seats.

A picture is worth 1000 words. All 1000 words would be: precious.

Rob wasn't able to make it to work Monday, so he worked from home and had a new boss on hand

We spent our week staying in, getting over colds and even hosted an in-home playdate with lots of kiddos and mamas. Because I get a little crazy during in-home playdates, I have no pics, but you can go to my awesome mama friend, Michelle's blog to see some good pics. The playdate went pretty well. Except for one sweet girl drinking out of the toilet, Rylan dumping goldfish crackers all over the table and the kids shoving them in their mouths like we'd never fed them before, and me dipping into the non-diet food a little too much.

Peek a boo

Not alot of words needed, just an intro for a short vid of a totally presh bambino. Sorry you have to listen to my annoying "peek a boo", and the rustling of the blanket I was using for the hiding. He was wearing a onesie with monkies on the feet, so he keeps looking down at his feet in between laughs.