March Madness

March is my busiest time of year at work. Where I normally process about 4-6 health insurance renewals each month, I have close to 40 that renew on April 1st. Add to that a two week delay on the release of April rates by the carriers, and I basically go into a small group renewal hole sometime mid February, and don't get to come out until April. I prefer being very busy over not having enough to do, but this time of year is almost silly and I feel, more than normal, like I'm living in a pinball machine, every few seconds being shot in a different direction and trying to accomplish what I have to do there before being shot in another direction. Also add to this craziness one Lexi school vacation week, one Zach daycare vacation week, and the big end of the month topper...wait for it...YES! Lexi's preschool was destroyed in a flood on Saturday. That's right, destroyed. A main sprinkler system pipe burst on Saturday afternoon and quickly filled the basement level preschool with 4-6 FEET of water. The school lost everything - their equipment, files, books, toys, and Montessori (read: ridiculously expensive) materials. Needless to say, Lexi is out of school indefinitely and Gigi the Great saves the day (er...weeks) again by taking Lexi everywhere she goes until we can figure out what will happen with school. Here is a link to an article about the disaster.
So, I know my blog posts have been a little bit light lately, and that's why. Hopefully by next week my work schedule will settle down a bit, and we will have a clearer idea of what is going to happen with Lexi's preschool. Then I'll come back and update with all the amazingly adorable and funny things my kids have been saying and doing.
But for now...as Zach would say, "Buhbye! Mwahh!"

Zach is 15 Months Old!

Okay, so technically this is old news. He turned 15 months on February 24th and had his 15 month visit with Dr. Martin last Wednesday...but life has been busy so I'm just now finding the time to report on his 15 month old genius.

It was another wonderful visit with Dr. Martin, though Zach (who got stabbed twice) would not agree. She is quite pleased with his development, and just two days after I "complained" to her that while Zach is totally capable of walking alone, he just refuses to...he decided to make a liar out of me, and has FINALLY started walking around without a finger to hold on to. Hooray! This will make life in our house much easier - if he's happy walking alone, then I can have 30 seconds at a time to get stuff done with two hands.

He's started saying a lot of words now, and seems more interested in learning what things are called. I think he's learned that if he knows what something is called then he can ask for it...and if he can ask for something, he is very likely to get it rather than everything else around it while we are trying to guess what it is he wants. This is useful for all of us - my goodness, look at all the time we're saving these days! :) His favorite word remains "catch" which is still "atch", but here is a list of some new (and old) ones:
The cutest - "Oh wow! Good catch!"
ball
juice
hi
bye bye
Dad
Mama
Uh oh
No
(can nod and shake his head too)
Whoa
Up and down (when singing Ring Around)
"row row row" (as in, "your boat")
cat
woof (for dog)
today he said, "pig"!!
He's also working on bear (which currently sounds a lot like "ball")

So, he really has quite a handful of words now, and uses them all pretty consistently. Gross motor-wise he's still doing quite well. He is really walking now, stands on his own, can walk while holding a toy (seems to prefer this to walking with nothing in his hands), climbs on everything, pushes himself on a bike, throws a ball, sometimes catches a ball, and has become very good at dribbling a ball as well! As you can tell, our lives pretty much revolve around balls these days. Maybe he really does have a future in baseball...basketball if he gets the Duda height.

Here are his stats from his visit last week:
weight - 22 lbs - 20th percentile
height - 32 ins - 75th percentile
head - 47.8 cms

I'm going to try to load up some pictures soon. I'm having a hard time with videos, so I am going to try to load videos onto our picasa web album and then I'll post the link to the blog once they're on. Right now I have to take Lexi outside for awhile. While I put Zach down for a nap I let her watch cartoons...I think I let this go on for too long today. What alerted me to this problem? She just came in to tell me all about the benefits of the space bag. She wanted me to know that the space bag can hold up to 11 sweaters, and that any vacuum cleaner with a hose can remove the excess air. It can help us save space in any room of the house. Oh yea...t.v. time is over...time to enjoy the 60 degree day in early March.