A Pickle, A Pirate, and A Little Something Extra: Generous.

Alexis saw her new ENT on Wednesday. "Wow," said the doctor. "Yes, those tonsils are...generous."

Before we would resort to something surgical (because removing tonsils on a child as young as Alexis is not fun) we are trying a couple of other things.

First, because she has reflux (as evidenced by the constant smell of sour milk in my carpet and a large quantity of stain remover in my laundry room) the doctor prescribed a medication to help prevent the reflux. The acid from reflux can cause tonsils to become enlarged. We return to the ENT in 2 months to see if the new medication has helped.

The next possible step will be a sleep study. I can't imagine doing a sleep study on a child so young, but apparently it can be done. If her tonsils are still large when we return to the ENT, he wants to be assured that the tonsils aren't causing bigger problems like sleep apnea.

And now on to more fun topics: Blake's 6th birthday party.

For two years in a row, Blake has had a pirate-themed party. This year I was ecstatic when he agreed to my suggestion: a Lego theme! And I don't know who had more fun with it: Blake or me. Who doesn't love Legos (except to step on)? I can't wait until April when we get a Lego store in Castleton! And incidentally, Legos make great packaging material. When I was 5 years old and we were traveling home from spending a year in England, Mom and Dad packed up all our stuff and then crammed Legos in every spare suitcase and trunk corner they could find. (What's not fun is when you get stopped by customs because, well, apparently we're shady. And they open your overflowing trunk and Legos scatter to all corners of the terminal.) But I digress. Back to the party.

I downloaded a Lego font to make Happy Birthday signs, cup labels, and bookmark favors.

I put Pop Pop to work building a stage to display all the Lego characters Blake and Nick have accumulated.

It's amazing the ideas that can be found on-line. I made candy Lego heads by putting marshmallows on a skewer and dipping them in vanilla candy. The kids then used edible markers to make faces on them. Unfortunately, the markers didn't work very well, but the kids still loved doing it.

I had to order the Lego plates and napkins on line, but I made something to put the forks in, out of--you guessed it--Legos.

Another thing I found on-line was candy that looked like Legos. They tasted like Sweetarts and could even be stacked like Legos. The kids loved them (as did several of the adults) and I added a baggie of the candy in each of the gift bags.