Emilia's wildlife

Emilia likes to act out the shows that she watches. There is a pretty regular rotation of My Little Ponies, Curious George, Wild Kratts, and Barbie/Fairy/Disney movies.  The other day, she came to me and asked if she could take pictures with my phone.  The last time I let her do that, she decided to have a pony fashion show where she took so many pictures (mostly blurry) of her ponies standing in a line that it filled my SD card.
So this time I told her, "Five.  You can take five pictures, okay?"
"Okay, Mommy."
She skips off with my phone, and I probably go to change a diaper or feed someone, because that's what I do these days.
A few minutes later, Emilia comes back.
"I took five pictures, Mom."
"Oh, good.  Thank you."
"Look.  They are of the local wildlife. Just like George.  He takes pictures of the local wildlife for the nature exhibit."
I take my phone and look at the last five pictures. This is what I find:

This is a stuffed frog, if you can't tell.

Wasn't that creative of her? She is so deliberate and thoughtful! She makes connections to the things she sees and hears and reads that amaze me all the time.  I'm glad I get to learn from her as her mom.

I have cute, crazy, funny, stubborn, sweet, sleepy kids and a pretty awesome husband

It was a little bit of a rough week for us, but nothing terrible.  Steve took Thursday and Friday off, partly because he had 6 days off that he needed to use before the end of March, and partly because we wanted to do some work on our kids/guest bathroom.  Maybe I should say I wanted to do some work on our kids/guest bathroom and Steve was kind enough to be willing to work on it with me.  I also thought this would be a great time to work on it because my dad was still off work from breaking his ribs five weeks ago, but was well enough to help us do some plumbing. Well, we did no bathroom updating.  Not a single thing.  We didn't even buy any of the things we would need to update a bathroom. I tend to get a little edgy when my plans change.  Probably because I take so much time making the plans that when they change, it's a lot of work down the drain (that was a pun that I totally intended). :)

Our little ballerinas

Steve did work on our bedroom on Saturday while I braved Costco crowds with 3 kids. You can look at the pictures here and here, but we used to have wainscoting up in our bedroom, which I tore down and put up in Cecily's room.  That was a couple months before she was born, and we haven't fixed the walls in our bedroom yet.  It needed to be done.  But whoever put up the wainscoting was a little trigger-happy with the nail gun and we had probably 50 nails stuck in studs.  I tried pulling them out once, a couple months ago, and was totally unsuccessful.  I in no way have the hand strength.  So it was up to Steve.  It took him 3 hours, but our room is now free of finish nails sticking out of the wall.  Yay, Steve!

Cecily has this way of always looking surprised.

She also smiles a lot. :D

I have a red-head. Yay!

Feeding herself some dinner.  So far, she's not picky like the other girls.  I hope it sticks.

Friday, Steve and I got to go on a date.  One of Steve's coworkers was in a play at Hale Center Theater and was kind enough to give us two tickets to Friday's showing.  Nick and Wilda were good grandparents/parents and agreed to babysit for us. We had a tasty meal at Iggy's and then went to see Big River.  Big River, if you don't know (I didn't), is the musicalization of Huck Finn.  It was rather blah. But dinner was good! And we were on a date sans kids.  I'll take it!

Practicing the art of the "selfie."

Here's a funny story for you:
After our play/musical was over, we went to pick the girls up from Grandpa and Grandma's house.

When we get there, Cecily is still awake.  It is 10:30 and she has been up since around 4.  She is so-o-o exhausted.  But that's been her MO lately.  She just does not want to sleep. So, I put her in her car seat and rock her for a little while until she calms down. I then go to get the girls' shoes and coats on, while Steve took our stuff and Cecily out to the car.  Nick and Wilda have two twin beds in one of the downstairs rooms, which is where the girls were sleeping.  I decided to do Emilia first, because she will usually get her own stuff on and walk herself out to the car, but I knew I would need to carry Bubby. I try to wake Emilia up, but she is pretty far under.  She opens her eyes and I tell her, "We need to get your coat on.  We're going to go home." She shies away from me and tries to talk, but can't really, and it comes out sounding like either she is crazy, or she thinks I am and she doesn't want to catch it.  "Uhh.hhhhh.....Ummmmm...Ehhhhhhh...."  I tell her again,  "It's okay, Sweetie.  It's just Mommy, we need to go.  Let's get your coat on."  "Ehhhhhhh..." Shying away.  So I sit her up, and start putting one of her arms in the coat.  She starts making this noise like there is a snake trying to eat her arm off.  She's whimpering.  I feel bad. But at the same time, it's a little humorous.  I'm trying to put her coat on, she has her eyes open and can see me (I think), but she's acting like I'm a cannibal or a snake who has it in for her.  I start giggling.  This makes her even more nervous.  More, "Uhhhhhhh....Ehhhhhh...." while sort of trying to lay back down and go to sleep.  I giggle more, she whimpers more.  This is terrible.  I go get Steve.  Hopefully she won't think he is trying to eat her.  Steve is on his way, so I decide to get Mira's coat on. I go to get her sitting up and realize that she is not wearing any clothes.  Not a stitch! She is cuddled up to her blankie, half way under the covers, her naked little bum sticking out for all to see.  I start giggling again and go to find out what happened to her clothes.  "Did you know Mira was naked?" I ask Wilda.  "No!" "Yep, she's naked as a jaybird."  I go downstairs and find her pajamas and panties in front of the toilet all wet from an accident.  She had tried to get to the toilet, missed, taken all her clothes off and crawled back in bed.  No reason to tell anyone, right? Nakedness is the new PJs. Steve has already taken everything out to the car, so I have to make him go get her clothes that she came in, so I can dress her and get her out to the car.  She wakes up pretty easily and gets dressed without a problem until I tell her that we have to get her shoes on so we can go out to the car.  Apparently, she didn't realize she wasn't staying all night. I finally got her clothed, coated, shoed, and carried out to the car, but by this time she is hysterically screaming, "NO! I WANT NANA!" (We never call her Nana--that's what we call Nana Frohlich, but Bubs insists on calling Grandma Watts Nana, too.) "I WANT TO SLEEP AT NANAS! TURN AROUND.  I SLEEP AT NANA'S. GO BACK, MOMMA! I WANT TO SLEEP THERE!" This ridiculously high-pitched screaming goes on for our entire drive home--which Cecily somehow sleeps through--and continues until after we take everyone and everything else inside.  At which point, she finally realizes that we are not going back and manages to calm down and talk to me.  She cuddles up to me and talks sweetly about how much she loves me.  Ah, that child. We now have a date for them to sleep over at Grandma Watts' house for her birthday.  And somehow, nobody seems to be scarred for life.  Phew!

Tired

I was up at 6:45 this morning because Bubs had an accident in bed and she couldn't go back to sleep after we got it all cleaned up. So I'm tired.  And that means I don't want to find my phone and the cord to get my pictures off of it.  And I've posted a lot lately with no pictures, and that gets boring.

I'll say this: The end of this week was much better than the beginning of it or the week previous to it. You can read about this timeframe on my public blog, if you'd like.  The posts are here and here.

My lesson for church went well.  It was cathartic to talk about family life with a bunch of women who understand (I taught a lesson on family in Relief Society).  The kids are feeling better.  No more problems with bowel movements or bleeding ears.  My depression has receded considerably, and I had a good weekend.  We did some small projects that brought organization to some cluttered areas of our house yesterday, and we had a good evening spending time with my family to celebrate Ben's birthday today.

I hope all is well with all of you.  Here's to wishing us both a good week!

Be Mine

Valentine's Day is kind of like Christmas in that it's really fun when you're really little, kind of gets less fun as you get older (although Valentine's Day gets less fun much faster than Christmas--5th and 6th grade awkwardness anyone?), and then it gets really fun again when you have kids.  Emilia can write her own Valentines now and it made this Valentine's Day super cute.  I love this one she made for Steve.  For those of you who are experts in following the direction of 5 year olds' writing, it says, "I lik yoor flufy her. frum Emi" (I like your fluffy hair, from Emi) across the top.  (The pictured people are all boys because they all have "fluffy" hair.) Along the side and bottom it says, "I love you. I love playing ponys dady. I love hoow you play with me."

We all wore pink or red on Valentines day.  Before taking Emilia to school, they were all awake, so I made them pose for a selfie. :)

As I said in my previous post, Cecily has been having a bit of a problem with poop lately.  See how cute she looks in that polka-dot onesie in the above picture? Well here's a funny story for you:

Cecily and Mira are usually napping when I need to go pick up Emilia, so I have an arrangement with my neighbor that she listens for the other girls so I don't have to wake them up. I also usually wait until the last minute to leave, so the neighbor is bothered for the least amount of time possible. 
On Friday, I heard Cecily cry about 2:40.  Emilia gets out of school at 2:45 and I was going to leave in about 3 minutes.  I decided to wait and see if Cecily would go back to sleep because she is sick and sometimes cries out and then goes back to sleep.  Also, she hadn't been asleep very long.
Well, she didn't go back to sleep, so I thought, "All right, I'll just go in and throw her in her carseat and we'll go."  When I walked in, she was on her hands and knees in the crib and this is what I see:

Covered in poop. I had to strip her down, clean all that poop off of her, get her dressed again, put her in the carseat and then drive to get Emilia.  I didn't get there until 3pm. Argh.

I have no idea why Mira was doing this, but she was very impressed with herself.  "Look, Momma! I walking on markers!"

We didn't plan on doing much to celebrate, but I did make us a nice dinner and decorated the table.  Here is my cute family just before we ate.

We also ate sugar cookies and chocolate cake and watched A Monster in Paris which was a very strange cartoon about a flea who gets enlarged (is that the opposite of shrunken?) and given a beautiful singing voice.  Of course the flea is unfairly targeted by the ambitious commissioner and branded as a "monster." The heros and heroines know the truth about this very nice flea (who apparently never needs to eat even though he is incredibly large) and save him while revealing what a terrible person the commissioner is. So. Weird.

At least we got to watch the weirdness together, right?

I hope you all had a good Valentines Day, too!

Worry

Seriously? Cecily has been sick for 6 days.  Two days of a mid-grade fever before a gravelly cough and a nasty runny nose. In the last three days, she's gotten diarrhea. EVERY time she eats, she blows out her diaper and I have to change her clothes. She hates having her clothes changed almost as much as she hates being wiped up with wet wipes.  All that poop means a nasty rash that has gone from her butt up her side and over her shoulder, I'm assuming because that's where the poop has gone on so many occasions in the last three days. I'm having to give her probiotics and pedialyte so she doesn't get dehydrated and let's not mention how many kleenexes we're going through. 

Emilia got the same cold two days ago--mid-grade fever since Saturday morning. Then, this morning, as I was doing her hair I noticed something on her cheek by her ear.  Turns out her ear had a bunch of dried blood in it. That usually means they have an ear infection bad enough that it has ruptured the ear drum.  I'm taking them both to the doctor in about 1/2 an hour.

Hopefully Mira stays healthy so I don't have to worry about *all* of my kids.

Crankiness abounds

Cecily hasn't been sleeping well at night lately, and my attitude has been suffering because of it.  It probably doesn't help that it's been rainy and grey for most of the week either. The last two nights, for example, Cecily has woken up at (around) 11pm, 2am, 5:30am, and 8am. Mira generally wakes up at least once a night and is up for the morning by 7:15am.  Which means that during my 6-8 hours of sleep, I get woken up for 20 minutes or so every 2 to 3 hours. And that's if Steve is good and doesn't snore at all. I wish I was more like Steve who can be chipper on 6 hours of sleep.  But I'm not. Especially when that 6 hours interrupted 3 times.  I'm praying really hard that she starts sleeping better, so we can all go back to being happy.

Emilia had her "best friend" from school over on Friday.  It went pretty well.  I had to remind her that Mira is her sister and is just as special as her best friend.  Once I reminded her, though, she was so very good about finding a way to include Mira in their play.  She amazes me.

To be fair (and sleep-deprivation-induced cranky) she also drives me crazy sometimes.  Like tonight on the way to Grandma and Grandpa's house, when she was sobbing huge tears over the fact that I brought Mira's blankie (because Mira hadn't napped all day and I knew was going to need it) and not her's (because she is 5 and only asks for her blankie when she goes to sleep at night). Oy.

A day early

Decided to do my Sunday post tonight.  My last two posts were mostly boring because I haven't been taking a lot of pictures lately.  So I made a concerted effort to take pictures this week.

Not a whole lot going on this last week.  I volunteered in Emilia's classroom on Wednesday afternoon and Steve had Ben and two other friends over to play a game that night. Today I helped Alison unpack some of her boxes in her new house.  I was supposed to help her move, but I got there late and they had already finished packing up her old apartment and drove over to her new apartment.  So then on the way to her new apartment, I had to make a quick stop to pick up some goat milk, got stopped behind two Trax crossings, drove like 15 blocks past her turn-off and finally made it there when all the rest of the help was leaving because they were done unloading.  I'm such a slacker.  I stayed and helped unpack her kitchen to make up for it. But then she let me have some leftover pizza, which my family ate for dinner. So now I owe her again.

Cecily keeps waking up 3 or 4 times a night to eat.  She's been doing it since Thanksgiving.  And I'm tired. zzzzzz.....

I have decided that I must not be making enough milk for her to get full, so we decided this week that we're going to do most of her feedings with goat milk.  (Hence the stop to get goat milk.) I'll try to breastfeed her twice a day and see how that goes.  Hopefully my milk won't just dry up, but if it does, oh well. I won't miss breastfeeding.  Just the savings. :)

So here are some pictures from this last week.
Mira being goofy:

The cute and smiley Cecily:

Me feeling skinny.  I've lost about 20 lbs since Cecily was born. Skinny jeans are a fad that's grown on me, I guess.

Cecily having some cuddle time with Daddy right before bed. 

And these videos are adorable.  I hope all you family members who are getting these posts through email are clicking through to watch these videos.  My kids are awesome! And adorable.  Have I mentioned adorable? :)
A chat with Mira
Cecily Crawling!