The verdict is in...

And, it's tapeworms.

Of all the worms to get, tapeworms is actually the best to get. Apparently. It's still disgusting if you ask me.

Our vet called me back yesterday to inform me of the news. As it turns out, tapeworms are much easier to treat (one single pill vs. weeks of treatment!) and kill off completely than the horrible roundworms that we were afraid the dogs may be infected with.

So, I gave both dogs a pill last night to kill off the tapeworms and then topped it off with a good flea treatment (dogs, and cats, tend to get tapeworms from eating an infected/carrying flea). I've treated two of the three cats with the flea medication, and will try to tackle Twyla sometime tomorrow, now that Jon is back home (yay!) to help me out. We'll also give the cats their tapeworm meds tomorrow too (theirs is a topical, rather than a pill, so I can't do the flea and tapeworm treatment on the same night).

We've washed all the bedding in the house and will be vacuuming the rugs and giving the dogs big baths just to be sure. But otherwise, another crisis deftly averted! WHEW.

Spread Eagle

I was just talking to my friend Amanda who has recently adopted two highly-in-need cats to join her home and I was describing how similar my cats are to the ones she now has (and used to have). At some level, I guess all cats are the same?

Anyway - as much as I bitch and moan about the one who peed on our brand new leather couches Iz, I can't help but love him dearly. I mean, just look at him.


He's so completely black you can't make heads or tails right? But this is him, in all his glory, spread eagle on our bed. This is how he sleeps pretty much most of the time. Not curled up in a neat, cute little ball. No, spread out and taking up as much room as cat-ly possible.

He carries this sort of attitude with him everywhere he goes and I was trying to describe to Amanda just what I meant, but it's really hard to do. He requires constant love and attention - but only when you're sitting on the toilet and at his mercy. He wants in, then he wants out, then he wants in, then he wants out. When he's outside for the night and the sun is just starting to rise, he begins pacing the backyard length of the house, meowing loudly and as persistently as possible, through our open windows (and if we don't respond, he'll station himself underneath one of our bedroom windows for good measure) to be let back in.

His strides are long and slow, full of pomp, with his big fat furry tail held high, swishing ever so gently. He looks regal, and he knows it.

He's our Bruddah Iz.

Doggy Door Installed? Check! (finally)

I wasn't thinking clearly enough this morning to take the "before" pics. So instead, you get the "in progress" pic (with Iz making the final inspection):


And the "after":


Yay!! I don't think I need to remind you how great this will be for Odin, Lola, the cats, and us.

The coolest part of this project is, our contractor (who is a long time family friend of ours), did the work for free! He came over last night to talk with us about the project and toward the end of his visit we all had our iPhones out chatting about them. Mundo mentioned he's been frustrated because he can only receive, but never send, email from his phone.

Jon grabbed the phone from his hand with a "Let me see" muttered under his breath, disappeared into his office and 2 minutes later, voila! All fixed.

Mundo has had his phone for about a year and has never been able to get his email to work (even after asking several "computer savvy" friends to help him). He was soooo incredibly grateful he refused to accept payment from me today saying, "Bree, tell Jon THANK YOU. I am so happy he fixed my email and phone, you don't even know. What he did was amazing. We are even, don't worry."

I argued with him for 10 minutes telling him he was being silly, but he wouldn't budge.

You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. I love it.

Bruddah Iz

Normally I will find Odin hanging out on Logan's rug, while Iz is curled up in Logan's crib. There's something about his room that the animals just can't stay away from.

But this -- this is a first. I came in to put Logan down for a nap, only to find Iz curled up sleeping on Logan's changing table!


Logan seems to be doing a little better as of this evening. We had a really tough night last night - he woke up a couple of times in the middle of the night burning up a storm (hitting at least 102.8 during one temp reading) and we struggled to cool him off enough to get him back to sleep. He was miserable and clearly just wanted to be with us, but no one could get comfortable and I'm afraid we all lost a lot of sleep because of it.

I called the doc's office today to check in and make sure I was giving him the right dose of Tylenol and the nurse said it's quite possible the fever is due to a molar or two coming in - apparently they can hit pretty high temps, more than normal teething, when the molars come in. I asked, how high? She said, nonchalantly - eh, up to 103 for a few days at least.

You have GOT to be kidding me.

I worked from home today (Jon came home by about noon to lend a hand for the rest of the afternoon) and by mid-day it seemed his fever had finally broken. He started walking around and playing with his toys which was a huge improvement, thank goodness! He's still been pretty clingy, whiny and basically just uncomfortable and doesn't know what he wants, but much less than yesterday so I think we're finally on the mend. He even ate a few bites of mac n' cheese, some pretzels and a few graham crackers before going to bed for the night - woohoo! :)

Back in the Concrete Jungle

After only a few hours back home yesterday, Jon commented that we were "back in the concrete jungle". I've never really thought of the South Bay as a Concrete Jungle. San Francisco, ok. Los Angeles, sure. New York, hell yeah. But not the South Bay.

Still, it definitely seemed like a fitting description, having just left the lush jungly backroads and beautiful countryside of New Zealand. There were literally HOURS, even a whole day perhaps, where we'd be driving through farmland and rolling hills without a person in sight. The roads were "sort of" paved, but that was about it.

We had a great trip. We're glad to be home - but we already miss NZ - especially as we tackle all the chores today (we both took the day off today and boy am I glad! unpacking, laundry, grocery shopping, bills, rental house maintenance and yes, even clean up, since the cats were pissed we left and pissed on our beautiful new leather couches. *sigh*)

If that weren't enough, I have hundreds of emails to sift through, 234 blog posts - seriously - to catch up on, about 1000 pics to upload and scrutinize and 15 days of a journal to blog. :)

Since Internet Access was spotty in NZ, I didn't get to post to the blog like I had hoped. I did, however, keep a daily journal so I could remind myself, and you, what we did along the trip and how Logan, especially, fared. He did wonderfully overall, and we couldn't have been happier about our choice to bring him along. Since I still want to capture and share those memories, I'm going to post each day's logs here, one day at a time. And, if I'm feeling extra motivated, I'll sprinkle in a few posts about how life is faring now that we're home too. ;-)

So watchout. You're about to get a flurry of posts over the next couple of weeks to make up for the lack of posts during our trip. :)

A cool midnight breeze

We are back home from our crazy long road trip and the first thing that comes to mind is, thank goodness we're back in the land of cooler weather! :) Also, before I start this post, just wanted to warn folks it's a little long and I have quite a few photos to share -- hopefully you'll enjoy them as much as I have this evening putting them together!

As you saw from my previous posts along the road - we left Friday afternoon, a couple hours later than we had hoped, to drive down to LA. We had a pretty good drive down, even though the weather was ridiculously hot (it hit 107 degrees just before the Grapevine, somewhere in Kern County I believe), and made great time. I was thinking we'd have to stop every couple of hours but not so! Our little guy slept for the first half of the ride, and I kept an ice pack on my back and reclined most of the way. When he woke up, I moved to the backseat to hang out with him and distract him with funny faces and toys until we could find a suitable rest stop to stretch our legs and change him.

After we checked into our (super fancy schmancy downtown LA) hotel, we drove over to Jon's brother's house to meet our new little nephew, Luke! Luke is Curtis and Renee's first child as well, and is only a couple of months younger than Logan. So, it was great fun getting the boys together for the first time. Luke is much bigger than Logan was at his age -- so I think the two look a lot closer in age from sheer size! But, when you look a little closer, you can tell Logan's still a bit older since Luke is still working up to sitting on his own (but super close!) :) Logan and I were pretty beat from the drive down that day (my back was aching like crazy) so we didn't hang out too long, just enough to grab a quick bite to eat and catch up for a little bit before heading back to the hotel to hit the hay.

Saturday, we slept in as long as we could, then went to Kai's apartment to meet up with him and my parents, for lunch. Unfortunately, we were all running a little late and didn't get to tour the USC campus like I had hoped (Jon hasn't seen it before), so we'll have to do that next time we visit. We did get to see his apartment (he's got a GREAT set up) and go to a nearby diner for lunch. Logan did a great job sitting in his own high chair for most of the meal while we scarfed down our food.

Saturday afternoon was Scott and Monalissa's wedding down in Huntington Beach, so we headed back to the hotel to get ready and let Logan nap (I think the heat really took a lot out of him). Of course, we left later than we had hoped (we were never that timely before, but we are now way worse with a baby in hand!) and arrived about 15 min. late to the wedding. :( But, we got there in time to see them exchange their vows so that was cool :)

It was a beautiful setting in a really nice hotel along the beach. Logan really spoiled us all day with his wonderful behavior. Of course, it didn't hurt that he was THE center of attention at the wedding, second only to the Bride of course. ;-) The wedding was also quite fun because my entire family was there (Zane and Scott met at college and have been great friends ever since, so Scott has been a part of our family for some time), as well as some of Zane's old buddies that I haven't seen in years!

Logan slept fairly well each night at the hotel -- it did take some convincing to get him to go down since he was always SUPER tired and just couldn't fall asleep. But, once he did go to sleep (about midnight every night!!) he slept straight through the morning which was great for us. :) Sunday we slept in again, but woke up early enough to go grab some shirts for Jon before heading over to Ralph and Diane's house for lunch. Ralph and Diane are the parents of Bruce (my cousin Shawn's husband) and great family friends of ours. They have been long time residents of LA and have shown us another world down there that we've really enjoyed, as well as taken Kai under their wing while he's been at Grad School. Their son Paul, and girlfriend Monique, also stopped by since they still live in the area (they are the only "famous" people we know - Monique just did an advertising gig for McDonald's and Paul works in the music biz on awesome movies like Four Brothers and Hustle and Flow). We had an excellent meal, great conversation and a celebratory cake for Kai who's graduating from USC (yeah!!).

After a wonderful lunch, we headed over to Curtis and Renee's to spend the afternoon and evening talking kid shop, catching up on family gossip, having the kiddos meet and play together, letting "the big boys" do their brother-bond-watch-UFC-fights-till-you-drop thing and basically hanging out. We had a really great time and only left because the babies finally had enough and were getting really tired and cranky and ready for bed (poor Luke was struggling with his teething - he already has one tooth in and another is following!! and Logan was just plain tired with all the visiting, stimulation and ZERO naps all day long). As much as we loved visiting, it was for the best, since I knew Curtis and Renee had to get up early the next morning and we were pretty tired and needed a good night's rest before our long drive home today. It was a good thing too since we crashed hard and EARLY the minute we got back to the hotel.

Today, we woke up and lazily packed up for our trip back home. We loved all the visiting, but we were also pretty tired of sleeping in the hotel and braving the amazing heat each day, so we were looking forward to getting on the road and going home. My parents were driving home today as well, so they met us at an In N' Out just outside of LA for lunch before we all headed out for the long haul.

Unfortunately, Logan wasn't nearly as happy and content on the ride back home as he was on the ride down to LA. He DID fall asleep at one point, but while I was waiting for Jon at a pit stop, I decided to put a blanket up in the backseat window to help shade Logan from the unbearable heat. Of course, that woke him up and he was then Mr. CRANKY and UPSET baby. :( I crawled into the backseat to sit and play and distract and console him -- which only worked for a few minutes at a time. For the most part, he was unhappy and LET US KNOW IT, for a good hour, before finally falling asleep.

I've noticed him chewing, biting and gnawing on anything he can get his hands on, A LOT more than usual this past weekend. And today finally noticed little teeeeeeny tiny whites under his front bottom gums. When I feel them, they feel rough and agitated. Nothing has broken through yet, but it seems like it may be on the verge. *shrug* I really don't know (never dealt with a teething baby before) so we'll see. At any rate, I took some pictures during his crying session to see if I could catch a shot of his little white caps but it was challenging and I finally gave up. I moved to the front seat and after a little while, our little munchkin finally gave us some rest and fell asleep. We actually stopped at Babys R Us on the way home to get a few teething toys that we can stick in the freezer, to see if that will help him get through the next few days/weeks.....

It's way later than it should be and I really need to get to bed, but a few more things to add. Logan's finally fast asleep in his own crib -- he really wanted to go to bed as soon as we got home, the poor guy. Both dogs had a great time at the Hicksons but are also happy to be home and curled up in their beds. We're pretty sure Iz was pissed we left him "trapped" in the house all weekend long since we came home to pee and poop ON THE FLOOR in FRONT of the litter boxes, as well as a clawed up living room rug. He's now curled up at my feet, the little terd. And, if the smell of cat urine in your stuffy house isn't enough to come home to, how about spoiled food in your refrigerator? The scatter brain that I was before leaving for our trip (remember, this is the same woman who forgot to pack SHIRTS for her husband), I forgot to move the remaining items in our fridge to the temporary fridge we have in the garage.... *sigh*

We were, and are, happy to be home. But, suffice to say, we had a little bit of CLEAN UP to do, the minute we unloaded the car and walked into the house.