"Hush, Little Baby..."

After an...interesting conversation with Daniel in the car about how to shoot a bird and how he is a man and can go duck hunting, I wrote this song during Heidi's colic time tonight.

Hush, little baby, don't say a word,

Daniel's gonna shoot you a mockingbird.

And since that mockingbird can't sing,

Fiona's gonna buy you a diamond ring.

But since Fiona has no money,

Evie's gonna tend you a hive with honey.

But since that hive with honey has no bees,

Daddy's gonna plant you some baby trees.

And while those baby trees grow taller,

Ian's gonna tie Jack a brand-new collar.

While he ties the day grows dark and then

Shane'll tell us all 'about the Mako Shark.

When that story makes you cry,

You'll turn and see that Lula drank your bottle dry.

If Mama sees the chaos and it makes her frown,

You'll still be the sweetest little baby in town.

Stink Bug gets Stitches

Lula's version of the well-baby visit shouldn't be ignored.  Our pediatrician is a nice, sweet, young, soft-spoken mother of one little guy about Lula's age.  She knows her medicine and knows what the American Academy of Pediatrics suggests.  That's two of the four things you need in a pediatrician.  The third is perspective and fourth is experience.  She'll get that with time.

The bath water still dripping, Lula tries to turn on the TV.

I had to fill out an autism screening form with a series of yes/no questions.  Some were obvious: Does your child make flapping motions with his/her hands?  Some not so: Does your child look to you for reassurance when faced with a new situation?

Caught peanut butter-handed!

Does Lula look like the kind of child that looks for reassurance when faced with new situations?

Better add some jelly to that peanut butter hand!

I failed that question, but at least I could explain my answer before Lula was sent for further testing.  I mean, did the pediatrician see that look Lula gave her when she walked in, catching Lula trying to hack into the medical computer system?  The cold stare/shoulder snub combo that she is so good at!

Caught trying to dig in the coffee!

Lula currently has a nasty cold, so she was not in the best of moods yesterday.  Thank goodness I had Shane with me.  He was my Lula-carrier, my Lula-retriever, and my Lula-dresser.  I only had one binky between the two babies.  They both did a lot of crying while

***This post has been interrupted by a Real Life Event***

I left this post so I could take Fiona to dance class yesterday afternoon thinking I would only be gone two hours.  I had no idea that my afternoon would quickly become a lesson in being prepared.  Because Mark was not working at home yesterday, I left Daniel at home with Ian and Shane and brought all four girls with me to the dance class.  Evie was going to be my Lula helper and I was going to go grocery shopping while Fiona danced.  I dropped Fiona off, no problem, and headed to the store.  When we were unloading the girls, Evie tripped over the curb next to the car holding Lula.  Both crashed down on the sidewalk and Lula split her chin open.  I could see that she definitely needed stitches.

I packed the girls back into their seats, all three crying, rushed back to Fiona's dance class to let her teacher know where I was headed, called Mark, called the boys at home, and then spent the rest of the evening at the ER.  My cell phone battery was dead.  My gas tank was empty.  I had only one bottle for Heidi.  And no extra clothing for either baby.  But I did have our health cards since I had left them in the car the day before.  Lula happened to be wearing a pair of pajamas because, for the first time in my life, I decided that the footie pajama/boot combo was the perfect out fit for my crazy-feeling life.  I've seen kids in public with this particular outfit before; I now understand its purpose.  Experience. Perspective. Yes. I'm getting there.

Evie was more traumatized by the events than Lula.  Lula needed to be sedated for her four stitches.  I was asked to wait in the waiting room because they needed a calm, quiet room to work in and Lula could have a bad reaction to the sedation if it was too chaotic.  This was code for, "Get that crying baby out of here!"  After Mark picked up Fiona from dance, brought her home, made dinner, left Fiona and Daniel with Shane, and dropped Ian off at Boy Scouts, he met me in the waiting room with extra bottles.  I informed him that he would be staying with Lula and I would take Evie and Heidi home-after I picked up Ian. It was a crazy night, I tell ya!

Spit Bug

Heidi had her two month well-baby check up this morning.  While we were there she went through one of her typical cycles of eating, being happy, spitting up, screaming, and being soothed by more eating. (Meanwhile, Lula, who was also having a well-baby appointment, screamed at my feet. It was lovely. Not.)  The doctor thinks Heidi has reflux.

That would explain a LOT.  She seems like she is still hungry, but there is no way a baby Heidi's size can consume over five ounces of milk.  That is why is comes back up, sometimes quite forcefully.  The older kids will no longer hold her (both Shane and Evie have been "tagged" by the Spit Bug).  I've become the ounce police ("Don't give her any more! She's already had a bottle in the last 30 minutes! There is no way she is still hungry!" "But she stops crying when I feed her!")  The reflux hurts her esophagus and the milk soothes it, but the extra milk causes more reflux and we are in an endless cycle of sadness.

Tonight she had her first dose of Ranitidine, which is the generic version of Zantac.  It has a peppermint smell, so I'm assuming there is a peppermint ingredient for that soothing, cooling feeling.  She gets her medicine twenty minutes before a feeding to help neutralize the acid in her stomach so when she spits up it doesn't burn so bad.  Well, when she spit up tonight, all over my third shirt, I could feel the soothing, cooling feeling of peppermint on my skin.  Then she fell asleep (propped up in the swing, not on her back) and she has been asleep ever since. I'm supposed to call the doctor on Friday with an update on how the medication is working.  If it works, we will be prescribed more, and if it doesn't...well, I guess we will cross that bridge when we come to it...

Alaskan Adventure

This post is overdue.  Way overdue.  Like so overdue that if it were a library book, I'd pay a hefty fine when I gave it back!

At the slug races

A few weeks ago, my older sister called me from Alaska.  She was coming down for a quick visit because her grandmother was celebrating her 90th birthday!  Wait-how can my sister have a grandmother that isn't also mine? Because she is my half sister...but I never called her that growing up, she was just my sister that happened to have a different mom.  There was no way to have half a sister in my mind.  A sister is a sister, pure and simple.

Nap where you fall

My sister needed someplace to park her two kids during the "adults only" part of the party.  Of course the best place for kids to go is my house!  We have plenty of room, plenty of kid stuff, plenty of extra helping hands, and plenty of baby gates.  But when I agreed to watch the kids, I forgot that Mark would be gone at taekwondo with my four best helpers.  I would be home alone with a four year old, a three year old, two 1 1/2 year olds, and a fussy six week old.  If Heidi were as mellow as Lula was at this age, it wouldn't be too much of a problem.  But she isn't and I needed a new plan!

Lunch time!

I called our other sister, who has a son Daniel's age.  She was happy to come out for the day.  Who wouldn't want to get all the young cousins together for a few hours to play?  At the same time, I asked Mark if I could keep Evie and Fiona home from their taekwondo class.  Their cousin would be so lonely without some big girls to play with!  All in all, we had eight kids, ages eight years and younger.  It was a lot of fun!

Keegan's "smile" for the camera.  Better than Daniel's!

Couch full of cousins!

Three year olds left to destroy the furniture

Tracey and Lula

Fiona, Evie, and Keira

 The kids played and played and played.  We can't wait for our Alaskan cousins to come visit again!

Baby Fun

Notice anything new? On Heidi?  Do you see those little fat rolls starting to appear on her thighs and ankles?  So adorable!

Wednesday

Wednesday, I have conquered you!  Haha!  I have you locked securely in a box and you will not beat me!

Baby, tucked securely in front pack!

Why does this matter? Who cares? I care, because Monday conquered me.  I tried to have a nice lunch with my parents and husband and kids on Monday, but Heidi would not cooperate.  She cried and cried and cried.  In fact, she cries every day.  Most of every day.  She is crying right now.  And we can't figure out what is making her cry.  The only time she stops is when she is eating, but she eats way too much and projectile vomits it all up.  I don't like that at all.

Didn't do the dishes, but hey! He's doing math!

So, Wednesday, even though we've listened to Heidi cry, we've gotten our math done!  The older boys got busy doing math without being told and I managed to get through the girls' math without too many crazy interruptions.  The best part was when Fiona counted to 100 for the first time!

Coloring, counting, and timed tests!

I'm prepared to teach the kids the first lesson in Artistic Pursuits Book 2 and have a page opened on the computer with Google images of Cimabue's work.  Watercolor project, here we come!

Shane has a hard time finding quiet space to work in

Lula is busy watching Baby Einstein.  She can watch Baby Einstein all day long!  But it keeps her happy and out of trouble.  Her teeth are cutting (she is the worst teether of the bunch) and she has a stuffy nose, so she is even more cranky than normal.

Of course it is only 9:30 in the morning and I've only accomplished math and thinking about art.  We still have a trip to the YMCA for our first day of Homeschool PE.  This will be Daniel's first class.  Daniel.  The one that has trouble taking directions from people and is easily overwhelmed by his emotions when he makes a mistake in public.  The three older kids are dreading running around the lake.  I will be sitting on the sideline of Daniel's class with crazy Lula and cranky Heidi in the double stroller.  I know I'm setting myself up for disaster, especially when Fiona is the only one excited to go.  I should just stay home in my jammies.  Okay, I can't say for sure if I have conquered Wednesday or if it will conquer me...

Edited to add...

Art projects: complete.  They were supposed to paint their house.  From top left going clockwise we have Shane's red house (our house isn't red), Evie's brown house with purple flowers (we don't have flowers), Fiona's purple house with a dinosaur in the sandbox (I wish our house was purple), and Daniel's swirl (close enough).  Evie's house looks the most like our actual house, but Fiona's yard is the most acurate (check out the leaning madrona tree!)

Sitting on the stove eating leftover oatmeal.  The burner was on.

Daniel's first day at the YMCA class went just as I predicted.  He wouldn't participate at first, but after I told him he could play on the new play structure if he participated, he went back.  I thought everything was going fine, so I left to walk the track with the little girls.  When I looked in on Daniel the first time, he was already back on the bleachers.  I went down and sat with him and had to take away his play structure time.  He had to watch Fiona, Evie, and Lula play as he cried and told me he was "going to get lost" and "go home with a different person."  When we went out to the van, I gave him a choice of holding my hand or me holding his arm because parking lots are dangerous and he doesn't get to choose to walk alone.  He made the best choice: the one that didn't make me look like I was dragging him across the parking lot.  I made the choice to not stop at the store for milk and did not set us all up for failure.

I didn't throw away our glue projects.  Ian and Evie's are almost dry!  Evie's might be dry by tomorrow.  Mine probably has another week to go.  Fiona's got flipped over by Lula and got thrown away.  This has definitely been a project that teaches patience!

Ian eventually got all the dishes done.

Wednesday: Conquered! (It's only 7:30 PM, I guess we still have a few hours left...)

Three Year Old Boys

I have a little boy who can't keep himself from kissing his baby sister:

 But you know, he isn't the first three year old I've had who has loved his baby sister:

They grow out of kissing their sisters, in fact, they get quite irritated by them.  But I hope that deep down inside, that affection remains and when they grow up they will be just as close as they were in the beginning.

Superbowl Adventure! [Turn back the clock]

Okay, so I'm not a huge football fan.  I can't even remember the last time I actually watched a professional football game.  Honestly, I think the only games I've even partially watched have been Superbowl games and I really only watched the commercials.  However, it is easy for me to get swept away by the enthusiasm of my friends and family who do love football and are excited that the Seahawks are once again headed to the Superbowl.  We don't have cable TV, so we tuned in the old-fashioned way to hear the end of last night's game: AM radio.

This took me back in time to eight years ago...the only other time the Seahawks headed to the Superbowl.  I didn't have a blog then, so I'm going to have to tell the story so our adventure doesn't get lost in my memory....

We lived in Ferndale and didn't have cable.  Back then, waaaaay back in 2006, the only way to get regular TV in Whatcom county was to have cable because the Chuckanut mountains blocked the network station signals.  But down here, Grandad could get the standard stations via the antenna attached to his chimney (this was before all the TV channels switched to digital).  Because Grandad would be able to get the Superbowl on his TV, we decided it was time for trip down here to Twin Firs for Superbowl Party!

Grandad got all excited and bought two large coolers full of party food.  Laura decided to drive down in her own car and bring a friend.  The rest of us (Mark, Ami, Ian, Shane, Baby Evie, and I) would ride down in the minivan.  The day of departure, Friday, there was a massive windstorm that knocked out the power at Grandad's.  No power meant no TV.  No way to keep the party food cold.  And no water. Longbranch is the last place on the KP to have power restored usually.  But we persevered and kept on with our plans.

Original 1980's Seahawks Sunglasses! (Mark and Evie, 2006)

Then Ami had a fever, but she didn't tell us about it until we were getting into the van.  She didn't really want to go to Longbranch for the weekend, but she never wanted to go to Longbranch because she hated the car ride.  Once she was there she was happy.  Usually.  So we kept on.  But...an hour into our three hour trip she got sick.  Like, the kind of sick where I had to dump my knitting project out of a ziplock bag and give it to her sick.  Mark and I debated...head home? Or continue on and chalk it up to carsickness?  (Ami was the first member of the carsick club)  Carsickness won because we really wanted to go to our Superbowl Party.  So we kept on.

About the time we reached the SeaTac airport, Ian got sick.  And since he was not even four years old, he wasn't able to warn us.  And he was strapped securely in his carseat.  And he had eaten a peanut butter sandwich right before we left.  And he almost choked on the slightly-digested sandwich because he couldn't lean over out of his carseat.  I was quite scared.  We pulled of the freeway and tried to find a public restroom.  The guy at the gas station we stopped at tried to tell me the bathroom was closed to the public, but when I held Ian up for him to see, the two of us covered in peanut butter vomit, he felt compassion and let us clean up.  I left that bathroom cleaner than I found it, let me tell you!  So, Ami was sick and Ian was sick and we were headed to a place with no power and no water.  Not a good combo.  This was when we decided there was a tummy bug in our family and headed home to Ferndale (Laura and her friend were already there).  But now that I have all these years of experience, Ian was probably carsick too.  Because neither one got sick again and no one else in the family got sick either...

The next day, Saturday, the power was still out at Grandad's, so he sent Laura and her friend home to us with the two coolers of party food.  So we had our Superbowl party...at home.  Mark so wanted to watch the game that I offered to call all my friends to see if he could come over to one of their houses.  Anyone who knows Mark will know that my idea was a terrible one; he would never want to impose on people that were strangers (to him).  He brainstormed all sorts of crazy ideas including getting cable for one day (they wouldn't be able to install anything in a few hours) or trying to install an antenna that could receive a signal despite the Chuckanut mountains or just going to Best Buy and hanging out in the store for a few hours.  But instead, we just listened to the radio:

Mark and Evie, 2006

It just goes to show that a true football fan can listen to the radio and enjoy the game as much as someone watching it.  I, however, felt like I was listening to a foreign language.  Same as last night.  "What just happened? Is that good? Are we winning? Now what's going on? What's a down? I don't even know what a quarterback does!"

Art [FAIL]

I found what I thought was a cute art project.  I don't want to link directly to it, but if you google glue suncatchers, you will see a link for a blog about art for kids, yada yada yada.

Before

All you do is pour white school glue into a plastic food lid, add color, swirl with a stick, and let dry.  When it's dry, peel the lid away, punch a hole in the top, and hang in a window to brighten up the dreary winter days.  And we need some brightening, let me tell you. The site said it could take up to three days to dry, which is no big deal...

...unless it has been four days and the glue is still so wet it sticks to your finger when you test it and the colors have all run together in a big nasty mess.

After

Luckily we have reached the weekend and the kids are all wrapped up in their video games and can't remember anything anymore.  Maybe I can toss them in the trash before Monday...

Happy, Happy, Happy

This last week has been full of ups and downs, happys and sads, cutting teeth, sleepless nights, too many video games and sugar, a new job for me working for my dad, a return to our old public school program, and also a birthday-mine!  The picture was painted by Evie and the rope trivet was tied/woven by Ian (with a little of Mark's help). 

Smiles from the Spit Bug

 What makes this baby smile? {Spit Bug is her new nickname}

You would smile too if you had Shane for a brother (unless you are Ian, then you wouldn't ever smile)...

...But you would probably stop smiling when your instincts kicked in...and Shane started sharing his toys...