Patty Johnson's Blog

Went to Wausau with my parents today. We went to Dollar Tree, Factory Card Outlet, Wal*Mart, Sam's Club and 50-50 Outlet. We got some stuff for Lily's 2nd birthday party in January (lots of cute Elmo stuff of course) Lily also found this cute hat she loves to play with:
After we got back I took notes on a bunch of my tv shows and I also redid my notes on "The Ice Storm" trivia movie.
I've signed up for another Volunteering gig since the other two are kinda hit and miss. I'm going to be helping do data entry with Fair Wisconsin They have jobs from 6-9pm pretty much every night for the next couple of weeks so I'll be living there trying to catch up on my volunteering hours. Woohoo!

Today Lily and I slept in until 10:30. Then, we quickly got ready and went to playgroup until 11:30. Lily had fun playing peekaboo in the house and making snacks with her friend Savannah

We had Chili Dogs at home with Adam for lunch. Then, we watch a little Sesame Street. Then we were off to Piffner Park to play on the "weee" (Slides), play in big puddles, and see the duckies!

Today Lily and I went for a drive to the video store. We were returning the "Elmo in Grouchland" DVD that was at least a week overdue. We also went there to rent 'monkey movie' which is Curious George. Lily had watched a tv episode of Curious George and loved it so I knew she'd like the movie. Anyways, when the girl at Family Video was returning Elmo she opened a drawer and a spider jumped out! She started screaming at the top of her lungs (I would have too the spider was big and ugly) She tried to catch him but he went under one of the cabinets. She felt bad for screaming so she got rid of my late fee! Super Sweet!
We just got done watching "Curious George" and it was really cute.

Tonight we went to my parents house for Tacos! Becky, Mark, Nick & Braeden went there too. Tacos were super yummy and the kids had fun together

That's right she slept in her own big girl bed in her own bedroom! Who's proud?

Today the place my Grandma lives at had a Harvest Fest! The activity director was a "Harvest Princess" and had everyone having a good time and even dancing. Lily had a blast. She ran around the place, played with some pumpkins and some kids, and danced with some kids and one lady who twirled her around. Lily loves to twirl.


Note: I finally got the pictures from Shaun & Sarah's party so check em out HERE

I got my new camera finally and here is some pictures I took. I'm still waiting for my memory card to come so I can only take like 15 pictures at a time. Lots of settings to figure out but I LOVE this camera!

Here's what my camera looks like (Sweet Slim and ORANGE):

My nephew Zach won the Xenia Old Fashion Days Baby Race! Here is the article on the front page of the Xenia Daily Gazette. [Click on picture to see full front page]

Caption says: Zachary Spanbauer, below left, crawls his way to victory in the Old Fashion Baby Race (Well, technically they spelled Spanbauer wrong but I'm not going to misspell it on here!)

My parents picked us up at 7am Saturday morning and we were off to Wisconsin Dells for our annual family trip to the Wo-Zha-Wa festival. It was really early for us to get up but it was a good thing because we shopped most of downtown while it was still nice and cool outside and there wasn't very many people out. Then, we tried to check in at our hotel (The Wilderness) but it wasn't ready yet. So, we did lunch at McDonalds and then went to check out the new outlet mall. Adam got some nice shirts at the Adidas store and Lily got a couple cute things at the Children's Place. While we were at the Children's Place the whole mall lost power. Then, they were on emergency power for the lights but they had to do everything manually which the cashier there was obviously not trained for. So after they had to ring us up twice we left there and went to the hotel again. We got to check in this time. We were in a room with my parents and we all pretty much took a nap when we got settled in our room. Then, we hung out until Steve & Lori and the kids got done shopping downtown and we all went to Ponderosa for dinner. Then we went to two of the waterparks at our hotel - Wild West & Klondike Kavern. The waterparks are pretty cool with waterslides and all that but since we had Lily we pretty much stayed in the kiddie zones. Adam took Lily down a few little waterslides and it was fun watching him because he got soaked just climbing the stairs to get to one of the slides.

Lily really likes going on the lazy river as long as we don't go under any of the waterfalls. Adam went on a couple waterslides while Lily and I chilled on the lazy river and the big indoor/outdoor hot tub. Then, it was 10 o'clock and all the pools were closed. That's one of the things I really didn't like about this hotel. The outdoor waterparks close between 5 & 6 and the indoor ones close at 9 & 10. So, you'd think then they would open early in the morning. Nope. They open at 9 & 10 & 11 depending on which one you go to. weird. Add that along to the fact that they only have like 20 tv channels and 4 are ESPN and the fact that they only have wireless internet in the lobbys and dial-up in the rooms...I thought these features were pretty strange since this is a huge and expensive place. Oh well, we had fun anyways with the two hours that we got to swim. After that we watched "Dumb & Dumber" in the hotel room. Adam was laughing alot....it's been a while since we've seen that flick! Lily and my Dad also played many rounds of sock ball. This is where they toss my dad's rolled up socks back and forth to each other. Lily thought it was super fun.
Sunday Lily woke Mom and I up at 8am and the men slept a little later. Then, we debated for a while whether we were going to swim or eat breakfast. Hunger ended up winning and all of us went to Paul Bunyans. The food was really good and we were seated amazingly fast even though we had 10 people. After that we went downtown to check out the craft fair. We got Lily and adorable Elmo rack that you can hang coats and hats on. It will add to her Elmo room once I finally get it redecorated. The parade was pretty good and Lily had a blast. She really loves dancing along to the music and waving at people. See video HERE
We were lucky too because it started to rain right after the parade finished. After that we left and came home. Lily got to sleep the whole way home but now of course she is totally awake and Adam and I are tired.

We went to Belt's at 9 o'clock with my parents tonight because it was customer appreciation day so it was 33% off. Then, we went home and after finishing our ice cream we tried to put Lily to sleep at about 10. We popped in "Elmo in Grouchland" which puts her to sleep quickly when she is tired. Well, must have worked wonders because all three of us fell asleep! I woke up at 3am wide awake so I did some research online and I'm about to do laundry. Woohoo!
My current project in the house is Lily's bedroom. I'm taking out all the stuff she doesn't need and I'm setting it up so she'll use it more often. I'm going to move her toddler bed back in there and also add a tv so she can watch Elmo whenever she wants and hopefully I can watch something else in the living room. I'm going to be taking notes on lots of shows that start up pretty soon so I can't spend every hour watching elmo-related material!

Lily watched "Sesame Street" and "Elmo in Grouchland" a million times today as usual, but today she decided she likes the Count!  She made me rewind Count von Count's 'number of the day' segment a bunch of times by saying "count" in this adorable puppy-dog voice.  Also later in the night while we were watching the movie she started copying Count's trademark "ah! ah! ah!"  So cute
Of course seeing the Count so much reminds me of that Family Guy episode...

We got home from Stratford at about noon and then we got ready to go to Splash Point (the "waterpark" inside the new Holiday Inn) We had a coupon for buy one get one free and Lily is free anyways with an adult. It's $12/person and I'm glad we didn't have to spend any more than that. There are two pool sections: one for kids (only 1 ft deep) and one where you can play water basketball (only 3 ft deep) there is one waterslide which was closed. Even though we felt ripped off we had fun anyways. Lily and Adam had fun playing in these water fountains and Adam would step on two of them and the third would shoot up really high. Lily thought that was pretty cool.
After that we met up with my parents and went to Pacelli Panacea. We walked through the building but everything inside was pretty much closing up (including the kiddie area outside) We shared a blue moon ice cream cone and then walked around the carnival. Lily went on the carousel three times! She also played pick-a-duck three times and won a fish hammer, rubber duckie, and a yellow elephant.
See video of Lily on the carouselHERE
Next we went to Perkins and had a really good dinner. We picked Perkins because we hadn't been there in a long time and we have bad luck with going out on special occasions (got sick from both Grazies and Applebees on our birthdays)
We went to my parents house and hung out for a little while. My dad showed Lily a big thing of packing bubbles so she had fun stepping on them and making them pop! [See video of popping bubblesHERE
Now we are home and Lily went to sleep at like 9:30. She didn't really have a nap again today. She's been better this weekend...not as psycho about her teeth. We are going to start putting her to bed early now because we think when we try to put her to bed at her normal time now she is too tired.

Took Lily to the doctor today to make sure she was just teething and nothing else was wrong. Turns out we were right. The doc looked in her mouth and saw a tooth coming in. He was mostly concerned that she hasn't been sleeping well so his suggestion was to give her 4ml of Benadryl 30 minutes before bedtime. We did that and sure enough 30 minutes after we gave it to her she fell right asleep after only a little bit of singing to her.
We are in Stratford this weekend. We finally got to try out the new hot tub and it is super sweet. There are all these different seating alignments that you can choose from. I really like having the jets massaging my poor back! Lily really likes taking a "bath" outside under the trees. She gets all excited if we turn the jets onto high.
Sunday is our 2nd wedding anniversary (yes, we celebrate the original wedding date not the wedding renewal date) We have a fun-filled day planned so far including going to the new Holiday Inn's Waterpark, Pacelli Panacea, and a nice dinner.
Update: Here are two hot tub pictures from Saturday

Today was my first night of Volunteering at the Family Resource Center. I made some copies, did some filing, and then I got to go through a bunch of childrens books and decided which ones to keep and which to get rid of. Basically, I had to decide if I thought kids around 1-3 years old would like the books. This is going to be a weekly thing for me...Thursdays from 6-8pm. I also dropped off my application for anothering volunteering gig as someone who reads local newspapers on tape that they will give to people who are blind.
Lily is still crazy...still screaming alot, still won't use a nuk. I'm going to call the doctor again tomorrow to make sure that something isn't wrong. I still think it's some sort of teething situation but I can't assume that that is the only reason that she is acting out so much.

The morning started off normal. Lily insisted to watch today's "Elmo's World" for an hour and a half (Keep in mind that Elmo's world is only a 20 minute show) Adam came home for lunch and we had tortillas and queso. A little while later Lily turned from normal to insane. She was crying ALOT and wouldn't stop for anything. She wouldn't eat, drink or even take her nuk. She'd cry harder if I tried to give her the nuk! I called Adam for some advice and he suggested a car ride. Luckily that did the trick and she fell alseep pretty quickly and I drove back home and put her in bed. About an hour and a half later she woke up SCREAMING and of course wouldn't take the soothing nuk. I talked to my parents and they could hear Lily in the background so they suggested taking her in to urgent care. I quickly got Lily ready and I gave her a cracker to see if that would help. She actually stopped crying but definitely wasn't herself...she was kinda dopey. I met Mom and Dad at urgent care but since Lily wasn't hysterical anymore we decided to call the nurse instead of actually going inside. We waited for a while for a callback but that didn't come until an hour later (we had left the parking garage at that point and I was on my way to my parents house) Of course when the nurse finally called Lily seemed fine...just like when you take your car to get fixed. The nurse suggested that it's probably a tooth coming in (which is what I was assuming too even though she never has cared about teething) and she said to give her some Ibruprofen and call them back if we have a rough night. We hung out at my parents for a while and ate labor day leftovers and Lily was running around like a madwoman (her normal behavior) When we were just getting ready to leave she was getting fussy again so we all went to Wal-Mart for some motrin because I knew my bottle at home was expired. Putting Lily to bed tonight wasn't very fun she cried for quite a while. Finally, after putting some oragel on her (which she was smacking her lips cutely after we did that) gave her Elmo to cuddle with and then I hummed song to her she finally fell asleep. I hope she is better tomorrow because her yelling combined with this headache/backache I have had for 2 days isn't very fun.

After we got back into town we all got ready and went to my parents house for a Labor Day cookout. It was Mom & Dad, Grams, Ron & Billie and Adam, Lily and I. We had brats, hamburgers, & zucchini pie. Lily had fun playing outside with the toys and blowing bubbles. Today was the first time she actually blew the bubbles herself. Lily also learned to 'honk' a nose [See video Here]
We all hung out and chit chatted all day. It was a nice relaxing way to end a nice long weekend.

We ended up going to Stratford this weekend. Adam's parents just bought a new hot tub so at first we were envisioning tubbing. But then they found out that they couldn't get it delivered til Wednesday. Adam's dad needed Adam's help reinforcing their patio deck so the tub didn't fall through. So, Lily spent the weekend looking through the screen door at Grandpa and Daddy and also begged to go for a ride on the bike (4-wheeler) She also had fun throwing legos everywhere, playing with poker chips and hanging out with the fam in general. I got alot of sleep as usual when we are there. Adam took Lily Sunday morning so I got to sleep in until like 11. Then, Lily and I took a 3 hour nap later that afternoon! Adam's Mom and Dad, Michelle & Brandon and Adam and I all played poker. It was kinda funny because every time I was almost out of chips I would go all in and win...So I came back from the dead a bunch of times. Adam's mom ended up winning after it being just her and Brandon for a while.
Now, keep in mind the whole time we were there Lily didn't demand to watch Elmo at all. We just got home a little while ago and when Lily she was still in the car and saw our house she said "Elmo! Elmo!" Oh dear...

I have nothing against the red monster, but there is such a thing as too much Elmo. Lily is completely addicted to him right now and I don't know what to do. I think it's great that she likes to watch Sesame Street because it's educational and everthing but watching "Elmos World" over and over and over every day is driving me a little nuts. Adam and I are considering giving Lily a tv just for elmo stuff because we can't use our tv at all without hearing her whine "Elmo Elmo!" repeatedly.
In other news it's Labor Day Weekend! We really don't have any definate plans yet which kinda sucks. I just hope we aren't going to sit around all weekend doing nothing (besides watching Elmo of course)

So, Lily and I were at my parents house just hanging out. She was playing mostly with her buddy, the chihuahua named Chico. He was kissing her any chance he'd get and she'd even grab him by the face to pull him and and give him a kiss. Then, cookies came into play. Chico had somehow got one of Lily's oatmeal cookies and was under my dads chair eating it. Lily went to take it back and Chico must have felt threatened because he attacked! We quickly got her out of there and she was bleeding a little. That stopped quickly but she has lots of scratches and bite marks now. She actually recovered pretty quickly and started playing with the first aid kit my dad got out for her. Dad locked up Chico but a little while later Lily went into the dog room and stuck her fingers in Chico's cage and told me to open it up. So, at least she isn't scared of dogs. After the initial crying which I'm sure was mostly just her being frightened of what happened she doesn't even care about it. She just looks terrible. Here is a picture but let me tell you it looks worse in person