Almost

The past few days, if I could sum them up, would be best described by the word almost.

Reni can almost say a few new words: adding to his current repertoire of "mama" and "oops" he is adding (I think) the word "this" (as in, what is this? Gimme this! I want this! Can I have some of this? This looks really interesting!) and "Anika." Awwww. Really. Today I heard him say it about three times, and it seems pretty distinct, but I'm putting it in the almost category until we know for sure.

We almost got our one-year shots in today at the doctor's visit, too, but the lucky bugger gets to have an additional doctor visit with shots tomorrow thanks to his eczema and the doctor's concern that it may be caused by some sort of strep virus that we need to get checked out first in case he'll need treatment. The initial results were negative, but we'll wait for tomorrow to know for sure. I then went to Wal-Mart, my current love-hate relationship, to spent a small fortune on skin cremes and bath potions to help the little guy's skin improve. We are ordered to keep him out of the pool for a week or so, as the chlorine seems to really set off the eczema.

Anika is almost-sick, with a low-grade fever and snot everywhere and is chewing on all of Reni's toys, which makes me think this could be teething of some sort. Reni is sniffling this evening, however, which makes me think it's a cold, especially since we were just on an airplane and we always seem to come home with some sort of illness. Between the two of them, Armando and I were shuffling back-and-forth between their rooms at least 20 times last night between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. Have I mentioned how annoyingly time-consuming an almost-cold can be?

Yet, I'm almost truly happy to be back here in ABQ -- I say almost because we had such a great time with the grandparents, despite the ridiculous heat (like, DC and St. Louis and back-country Mississippi hot), and we missed Aunt Becca and Sarah and the cousins. We did, however, have a nice visit with Great-Grandma (ask her cat, Maggie, if the visit was nice or not ; she has almost made up her mind, and I still have the vision of the three of them -- the cat, streaking across the living room; Anika, running and screeching close behind; and Reni, speed-crawling and giggling -- causing quite the scene at Great-Grandma's painstakingly NOT baby-proofed house. On a related note, sorry about the broken bits of orchid and the cat toy and the lamp).

Here are a few pics from our midwest adventures.