The Unborn

This baby has gone from a lima bean to the size of a medium shrimp to a lemon to an apple in 15 weeks. Also, I was confused about where the leg was, thankfully, there is a label for that........



We have like 12" of snow on the ground, its beautiful but I have had to plow the driveway like 43 times. I also took the liberty of plowing 2 neighbor's driveways....It looked like they were snowed-in and I imagined old people in the house looking outside for help and then I imangined myself as a hero on the 4-wheeler plowing the 2 feet of accumulated snow. One lady came out and offered money, I told her the 1st time is free...just like a drug dealer, I know she'll be back...paying me with stereo equipment and oriental rugs to pay for the snow removal. Harsh, I know...but it's a small price to pay to be able to drive out of your driveway in the winter...............

This shot of Sasha is from when I was snowshoeing this morning...This is actually the baseball field for Chagrin Falls...She absolutely loves the snow and was chasing a snowball to eat it.........z

O B A M A

S I X

Ninah turned the mighty age of 6 today. As you all know, she has been sick for the past week or more. She has not been to school for over a week and we finally were going to have her go back to school today. She woke up with a bang, jumped into our bed and requested pancakes for her Birthday (see the #6 pancakes below). We had the apple granola pancakes, opened presents, sang Happy Birthday, goofed off played with new toys and princess outfits (they didn't fit me). Cia & Ninah were silly. Ninah picked out her most-perfectist dress to wear to school, sparkly shoes, 30 cupcakes in a tote for a School B'day party....Meanwhile the snow is falling......Bus is scheduled to be here in 10 minutes....snow is falling....phone is ringing....school is cancelled, no bus, no school party, but lots of snow.

So, we have lots of snow still...a 6 year old who has gone through the ringer over the past week and ready to celebrate....But, she did great and we have a Pirates & Princess party coming up. It will make up for the snow.....eyepatches, swords, & fair maidens can make up for anything.

I can't believe my daughter is 6...probably because I am mentally about 12. She will soon surpass me in both maturity and no doubt height.

Oh, the very last photo of Cia is after she managed to plunge her hand into the cake that looks so nice in the 2nd photo below. There were 10 distinct finger holes and a good, solid forearm drag on the cake....still tasted great (nice job, Rania).

Family Weekend

It was a really nice weekend...the sun actually decided to grace itself with its presence in Cleveland. Of the 66 sunny days of the year, today was finally one of them. Yes 66 sunny days, 97 partly cloudy, and 202 cloudy days....Yesterday was nice too, it's a good prelude to the trip to Florida we will be taking in nearly 3 weeks.


Ninah & Cecilia opted for an early morning tea party on Saturday morning. For those of you have been graced with Ninah and her plastic princess shoes, you know how loud, slippy, and uncomfortable they must be....nonetheless, they are perfect for dress up and cinderella tea parties! The two of them came in to the bedroom to show off their outfits, as you can see below...they are very well put together (all by Ninah). As I am writing this, Ninah comes walking in to the office wearing candy corn pants & a pink spider & bat shirt...I can't wait until she is in her teens. By the way, Ninah is doing MUCH better...fever has nearly stabilzed in the upper 99's. She has been out for the entire week and probably tomorrow. We will have her go back on her birthday on Tuesday.


Cia's new word for the weekend is "funny"...everything is funny, food is funny, Sasha is funny, socks are funny, Cia is funny. I'm glad.

Here are a couple of shots showing proof that there was sun in our yard today. I took a 12 mile road run this afternoon and it was beautiful, sun the entire time....I suppose we are a bit lacking in the Vitamin D area.....we are in need of more....z

Fever & Skunk

So, Monday night Ninah works up a fever of 104. Rania calls me and asks that I stop @ the store on the way home to pickup some Tylenol for Ninah. So, I am telling my Sups at UPS that I am leaving and so forth...Rania calls me again and says "Sasha just got sprayed by a skunk....no kidding." Just when you think things are bad. So I go online for the most current de-skunking method (which is 1 gal H2O, 32oz Hydrogen Peroxide, 1 cup baking soda, & a squirt of soap). I get home, Sasha was in need of a bath...so I de-skunk her then give her a full bath. All is well. Ninah's temp goes down, we all go back to bed around 2am.



...6am Rania takes Ninah's temp and it's above 105. We call the ambulance (for fear of a fever induced seizure), and we now have Officer Brian (from the Safety Town in Bainbridge), Firefighter Mike, and 2 paramedics standing over her in our living room....scary for a 6 year old.....They were great, calmed her down, made her laugh and then took her to Hillcrest pediatric ER. Long story short, the ER didn't do much so we continued to Ninah's doctor who tested her and confirmed that she had Type A Influenza (Type A is the most common and also the scariest of the three influenzas, causing the most serious epidemics in history)......great...... Ninah was doing well, fever was down but very bummed that her 6th B'day party Saturday needed to be post-poned. She's been takin it easy for the rest of the week and is currently watching Beauty & the Beast.

So, Ninah is getting better, party postponed.....Sasha does not smell, no one else in the house is sick (knock on wood)................z

Da Dance and the drive.

Kalindi's dance performance was excellent. She and her friend, Marie choreographed and put together the entire performance at the Cleveland Public Theatre. Put it this way, it was good enough to keep the attention of Ninah and Cia the entire time...It really was impressive.

On the way to the CPT, the low gas light came on in the car on the way there and it wasn't the best neighborhood to run out of gas. We were running late, didn't know where to get gas....Assuming there was a gas station on every corner in Downtown Cleveland was the wrong thing to think....We kept driving toward the interstate and figuring that there had to be something somewhere......Anyhow, we saw a guy using a slim-jim to open up his crack-ho girlfriend's car in complete broad daylight and shortly thereafter felt relieved to find a gas station...only to find that it had been abandoned and now had bars covering the windows. We managed to find an open one, got our fuel and found our way to the freeway without being car jacked.....Meanwhile, I can hear Rania saying "Oh....this neighborhood isn't so bad (in her very feminine fairy voice)..." So, I look around and say....did you not see the crack ho and the slim jim situation over there? Oooh look honey, gang-bangers....let's look for some land, maybe we could build here and they could be our protective neighbors?!

Anyhooters...we made it home safely, cleaned up and then met everyone after the dance at this awesome Indian restaurant the Saffron Patch. Great ending to a great day...................z

Weekends...

There are 2 main squirrels that eat from our bird feeder stand that is directly outside the kitchen window. This one is Click...the other is Clack (ode to the NPR car guys). Having grown up mostly in Fla & TN where the squirrels are the size of big chipmunks, the squirrels here look like groundhogs to me. This pic is too close to get a good perspective of his size....but take it from me, this guy is a biggun. I added him to the blog because the cats spend a good portion of their time looking out the window at these critters. We spend a good portion of our meals with them next to us. Anyhow, we like the company.
So, take a gander at this shot of Ninah, her Americal Girl doll and Cia's ba-dunk-a-dunk. I mean, really take a look at the shape of it, it just starts to stick out for no apparent reason. I'm pretty sure that booty has got to come from the Burrell-Johnson side....

So today, we are off to see Bill & Heather Stone's little baby girl Olivia, she's about 2 weeks old, little peanut. Then we are going to a dance performance with Kalindi (she's performing), it'll be a good Sunday afternoon on this rainy Cleveland day-which has warmed up 15 degrees to about 41. Still a good amount of snow on the ground.........z

13 Weeks

So, our unborn child is about the size of a "medium" shrimp according to Babycenter.com. I would venture to say it was closer to a jumbo shrimp, but they're the experts, right? It's about 3 inches long and the head still makes up about 1/3 of his/her body....funny looking shrimp. I love this shot of all my girls, everybody loves Rania.

Took Sasha to the vet today for some shots...she is up to 50lbs now. The vet thinks she has good bone structure but I bet he says that to all the bitches. That's right, bitches....pimpin' ain't easy in Chagrin Falls, ya'll know what I mean.

It's Friday....and it's been a long cold week, I 'm sure tomorrow we'll wake up and it will be bright, sunny, & warm. We're off to grandma's (Borrelli) house tomorrow to make good on our Christmas gift (Zack to paint the kitchen and maybe bathroom, Rania to clean cabinets etc...). It will be fun, she went with Daffodilly yellow..........z

Cia

It's freakin freezing

Okay, I know when it's cold everyone talks about how cold it is but it's freaking freezing outside. This morning when Sasha the dog & I went for a run at 5 degrees, my nose hairs froze and got prickly...Sasha had a really cool snow beard thing going on. I told her that the boy dogs would dig it. We were running the Frohring Meadow loop (pronounced with an long drawn-out affluent lisp) and saw a coyote run by, Sasha & I just stood there in the snow wondering why it made no noise whatsoever....it was borderline creepy. So, to the right is Sasha...she's almost 6 months now...We have carefully deliberated that she is a mix of Malamut and Shepard = Malamutt. The vet thinks she'll be 65-85 lbs....she's not quite there yet......The other pic is from a recent night run I did in the South Chagrin Reservation where most of my trail running is done. I have been training solo for some time now, but as I was telling Rania today, it is such a joy when Sasha runs with me...especially the trails, she loves it!



By the way....Rania is fine from the fall that she took...she still wants cosmetic surgery...but she can't get an x-ray while she is pregnant so we'll have to wait to see...

Sick Days

I managed to finally get sick, took Thursday evening, Friday off from work even with the UPS guilt/cult. Rania & Ninah went to a womens basketball game today with Jess & Patrick, so Cia & I hung out watching movies. I was feeling a little better by the afternoon and the sun even came out for a few moments.

Rania shaved her head

Ballet

I think it has finally hit me that I am destined to be surrounded by women and girls which is not a bad thing at all. But it came to me when I was helping to catch up the laundry and realized that I was actually making piles clothes that were entirely pink, not sheets or towels, all clothes, little girl clothes....piles of pink clothes. It was at that moment, standing there surrounded by piles of clothes that I saw the years ahead of me, clothes, make-up, accessories, jewelry, cars, boys, boyfriends, oh my, it will never end..it's just begun!

Ninah has been taking ballet for the past 2? years now with Mrs. Viluna (sp?) and she does wonderful. Its a great environment for building confidence, teaching discipline, and all those things that go along with ballet, art, sports, etc...It's good stuff. The pic here was taken while she was waiting for their last piece of the evening....Her best friend, Patrick came to watch. He kep asking when Ninah was going to dance. She was so excited to have him there....below is a shot of Patrick getting chosen to pick the winning raffle for the evening. After he went up, picked the name, he came back to his chair and Jessica (Mom) told him what a good job he did....he paused and then asked what just happened.

Cia loves to go poo

You should have seen what came out...She actually pooped an entire firetruck.

Nose Job?

6 weeks....Florida, it will be very nice to see the sun. This photo was taken the last time we were down there. They are more interesting to me in photos than they were in person (flamingoes), a virtual cacauphony of avian hierarchy in a teeny little pond. The weather was nice today since it warmed up to a boiling 39 degrees...jeez, I nearly brought out my thong (that's how I roll).

Rania took a fall today....She was out for her walk for the day with Sasha and slipped, or surfed & slipped on the ice and landed squarely on her face. The owner of the house (Dan) @ 283 E.Washington offered help, called me...Ninah, Cia, & I were just starting lunch. He said my wife "Crainia" had fallen in their driveway and may have broken her nose. I quick turned the stove flames off, killed the oven, grabbed Cia and told Ninah that Mommy might be really hurt. Everyone surged into action and I swear we made it there in no less than 38 seconds.

There was bright blood all over. Really, she bled a lot. I didn't want to make a comment about it when we pulled out because I didn't want to make it sound any worse than it was. It was a lot though. Later in the day, I ran by there (careful not to slip) and marveled at the bright red oxygenated blood on the sidewalk, driveway, etc...Anyhow, she's hoping for a broken nose so she can get a nose job out of it, we'll hope for the best.......z.

It Starts...

So...here it is, the Johnson 5. Rania, Zack, Ninah, Cecilia, & ?. To the right....Cia's little piggies.