Quick: We're all healthy

Or, relatively so anyway. B still has that death-rattle hacking cough, but he swears he *feels* fine . . ..

Let's see, new developments.

Anna Claire's birthday is fast approaching, with her party this weekend. We've wavered a bit from the Fancy Nancy theme, but only because we had to figure out a way to include the boys too (she was so upset at only including 3/4 of her class - yes, 15 of the 20 are girls!). It's sort of morphed into Pirates & Princesses, but as long as she's happy I'm not going to be too particular about any sort of theme. Pretty much everything is set to go, save my baking her a cake (that won't actually be consumed at the party, they'll be decorating their own cupcakes, but she really wanted this cake and I figured it'll serve as a 'family' birthday cake after dinner) and ordering her balloons (on the docket for tomorrow afternoon). It's hard to believe she's going to be 5. Some of the days seem to take forever, but the years are definitely flying.

Caroline's learning some new 'tricks' too. She loves singing E-I-E-I-O ("yee-eye-yee-eye-yo"), adores Princesses ("pehn-cesss-esss"), and has even begun telling jokes ("nah-nah" "who's there?" "anana" - she doesn't quite get the punchline yet of course, either that or she's really dragging it out for a big "orange" payoff!). Her ENT appointment is tomorrow, so we hope to have some news about her ear infections soon.