Sugar & Spice or Snips & Snails

Just in case you were wondering, boys and girls are different.

Julia gives her baby dolls hugs, and covers them gently with blankets. Paul used to drag dolls around by the feet. The other day while eating she was looking at a picture of a baby. She tried to feed it her cracker, while saying, "Num, num, num." We have observed her making two of Paul's toy cars kiss each other. I assure you that Paul has never made his toy cars kiss each other. She has taken teething rings and put them around her wrist, flourishing like they are fine bracelets. And I've seen her wrap scarves around her neck as if she were royalty from Sheba. She's cute and she knows it. She has figured out how to wrinkle her nose while she grins in a way that just melts my heart.

She is getting really good with two word phrases. I've figured out that if I ask her a question or tell her something, she will often repeat the last two words.
"Julia, are you a good girl?"
"Good Girl!"

We've gotten hooked on a music CD called Philadelphia Chickens by Sandra Boynton. The CD starts off with "Cows" singing about being in a chorus line. (It continues in that vein.) I just mention the cows CD, and Julia starts calling, "Cows, cows, cows," and doing a little dance.

Paul likes the Cows CD too. I think his favorite song is when the Aardvarks sing an intermission song. They wanted to sing a chorus line song, but Aardvarks don't moo, and nobody knew what sound an aardvark does make.


This afternoon, before naptime, Daddy pulled out his old nerf gun from the top shelf of a cupboard. He showed Paul how it worked. Paul got so excited, he was practically incoherent. He started jumping up and down, asking to play with the shooter. Soon orange foam rubber shells with suction cups were flying across the room. He had to pull on a handle between each shot to line up the cartridge with the next shell. That did slow him down a bit. But he was highly motivated to figure out how to do it by himself. Daddy had to take the gun each time the row of five cartridges was emptied. Paul thought it was really funny with the suction cup actually stuck to the wall or ceiling. Daddy taught him not to point the gun at anybody. Julia, meanwhile, was highly entertained by collecting the shells and refilling the spare cartridges. It was sort of a symbiotic relationship. I was impressed that she could manipulate the little cylinders that well.

Meanwhile I was having visions of antisocial juvenile delinquents.

Anyway, Paul had a blast. And his first words to daddy after nap time were, "I want to play with the black thing, with the orange handles that you pull back, and then you press the orange button, and there's a hole in the end, and then the orange things come out of the hole in the end."

Attack of the goo monsters.

I meant to write more in January. I really did. But between various colds, bad weather, and things being a little busier than normal at work, I just couldn't find time to do much fun writing.

And here we are most of the way through February. I've still got a little chest congestion, but it isn't slowing me down too badly. Steve is just starting to succumb to a cold. The kids are both sick. Up until yesterday I kept saying, "I think they just have colds. It's the sniffles. I think it's just a cold. They both just have a virus that is going to have to run it's course and be done." I thought it was a virus because Paul started getting the sniffles before the antibiotic for his ear infection was supposed to be out of his system. And maybe it did start with just a cold virus.

Then Monday hit. Julia had woken up during the night at 11:00, 2:00, 3:15, 4-something, 5-something, 6:15 and 6:40. Mostly she just needed to be hugged and set back in bed. She had a low grade fever in the morning. (It's just a cold. I had a fever when my cold started too.) And yellow snot flowing from her nose as from a fount all day long. (It's just a cold. We can weather this.) After nap, I picked her up and both of her eyes had bright yellow goo covering her eyelashes.
"Hello, is this the doctor's office? I need to get my baby girl in to see the doctor NOW."

Okay, so I sort of freaked out over the yellow goo. They gave me a doctor's appointment for Tuesday. It occurred to me that gooey eyes had been my primary symptom when I got pink eye last year. blar. I also noticed that Paul had a little more crud than normal in his eye.

The Kuhlmans, as a family, went through an ungodly quantity of Kleenex Monday.

By the end of the day, Julia was quite a sight. In spite of her bath an hour before, she had yellow crud all around her nose, yellow crud all around her eyes, and she looked absolutely wiped out from her fever which was no longer "low grade," not to mention the dark circles under her eyes that indelibly mark her as a Kuhlman.

Today (Tuesday) Julia is doing much better. Her fever is gone, and while her nose is still runny, it is not the little fountain we had yesterday. Paul got up with one eye clearly pink. blar. I called the doctor's office to make our appointment into a double.

Diagnosis: Neither of them have bronchitis (yay!) Both of them have conjunctivitus (pinkeye) and both of them have infections in at least one ear. blar.

It was lunchtime when we left the doctor's office, so I haven't picked up their prescriptions yet. Please pray for Steve and I as we figure out how to talk a 1.5 and 3.5 year old into letting us put drops in their eyes. I think we're going to have to sit on them. And as we try to detox our house. And as we try to keep everybody's hands washed.

I'd rather not end this on a sour note, so here is a list of some of the things I am thankful for in this time of year:

The days are getting noticeably longer.

We've started ordering seeds for our garden and blueberry bushes for the yard.

Lent - I've been making an effort to re-acquaint myself with the God of the universe and the greatness of the Christ's person, and God has been meeting me in heart touching ways.

I get to look forward to a spring reunion with some friends.

I get to look forward to summer travel plans.

I have a good warm house, and don't have to sleep in the cold.
Have you ever taken a moment to consider all the factors that go into having a good place to sleep? It has to be safe. It has to be dry. It has to be warm. It has to be reasonably clean. It ought to be reasonably dark and quiet. We ought to be deliriously grateful each time we approach our beds about all the things that are working together to make a good place to sleep.

Baby Boom

The past few days have seen several friends of ours being blessed with new babies, so we wanted to congratulate these parents.

Congratulations to:

- Steve & Susan Galvin on the birth of their third child (and 1st son), Riley Sebastian!

- Eric & Julie Saladin on the birth of their first child Michelle Kay!

- Petr & Petra Blasko on the birth of their third child Filip!

Praise God that each of these babies was born healthy, and that all three moms are doing well. May God continue to bless each of these families.

Windy Winter

After mostly growing up in Florida, I've now been an Ohio resident for over 14 years (with the exception of a brief stint in Boston). And in the 13 or 14 winters that I've been up here, the last 4 of which have been on the farm, I do not remember a winter that has been this windy. We've had our share of cold, though we've been light on the snow this year (almost 6" below normal for the year). But this year we have had stronger winds and more windstorms in a single season than I can recall in my years in Ohio.

As an example, we had the strongest windstorm I've ever seen a few weeks back. Sometime during this storm, the wind picked up a 4'x6' sheet of 3/4" treated plywood laying mostly flat on the ground and tossed it a good 6'-8' away. Some estimates I heard placed the winds during that storm in the 60-70 mph range consistently, with gusts quite a bit higher.

And there have been several other windy storms that average 30-40 mph winds. Yesterday we had one such storm. It rained on and off during the day, though it wasn't a thunderstorm or anything dramatic like that. But all day and most of the night the wind blew and gusted pretty strongly. So yesterday afternoon I was in the kitchen while the kids were napping and heard something that sounded like it was flopping or banging against the West face of the house. I finally went out to check it around 5:30 or so when I went out to feed the chickens. Well it turned out to be a piece of the aluminum trim between a couple of windows in the laundry room. This piece of trim had mostly peeled back and was flopping around in the wind, banging against the house.

Upon further inspection I determined this piece of trim was previously attached only with caulk...no nails, screws, nothing. Of course, I later figured out this was because there wasn't really anything good to nail in to. Fortunately it was not raining at the time, hadn't been raining in several hours, and looked like it wouldn't rain again for at least another hour or so. Also, it was in the 50's yesterday, so I had that going for me. So after fighting with the first couple tubes of caulk I grabbed, which must've been old and frozen/dried up, I finally found a good tube and re-caulked this piece of trim. It seemed to reattach fairly easily and seemed to stick pretty good. It was at least 3 or 4 hours before we saw anymore rain, so hopefully the caulk had a good enough opportunity to set up. The trim still seemed to be attached this morning when I left for work, so here's hoping it sticks for a while.

Of course, the caulk tube I finally got to work was almond colored, while everything I was working with was white. But at this point, protecting the house was a tad more important than a couple almond colored smudges protruding from around this white piece of trim. If you've never had the opportunity to re-caulk and reattach flopping trim in a chilly windstorm, I highly recommend it....no wait, that's right, it wasn't really that fun at all and I nearly got some nasty cuts from the exposed metal edges of the trim. Maybe this summer sometime I'll be removing this trim so I can add some shims to nail this trim to, just as a backup. Yeah.

UPDATE (2/19/08): Another windy day and night, but the trim seems to be holding. Which is good, 'cause the 50s we saw Sunday have given way to teens & 20s today.

Kid Shots

We've been spending so much time inside battling sickness and such, that we've been largely uninspired to write. Also, it doesn't seem like there's been much to write about.

But I figured we oughta at least get some pictures of the kids up for the grandparents. Enjoy!

Sight Line

After much deliberation, prayer, etc., I've decided to go ahead and pursue getting LASIK surgery done. To that end, I have begun the steady decline back to the blindness that I knew for so long.

You see, with the CRT lenses that I've been wearing, I see good with them in and with them out, provided I wear them every night (or two). But Wednesday night marked the last night I wore them. So, here it is Friday afternoon, and my distance vision is already showing noticeable change. I'm still good enough to drive, but by tonight I'll probably be past that point. The goal is that by Monday morning my eyes will have returned close enough to their original shape that I'll be able to wear my glasses again.

So this is how I mark my 33rd birthday, watching the first noticeable signs of my slow descent back into blindness. As long as I can see my steak tonight at dinner, or find my birthday cake, I suppose its no big deal.

By April my eyes should have completely returned to their old shape, hopefully, so that they can give me the green light to having my surgery sometime in May or June. I'll keep ya'll posted....