Pictures!

Secondhand information

So the last few weeks I've been emailing my brother (he's on a mission in Albania), and after I email him I think "I should go blog. But I don't feel like typing it all up again." So this morning I decided I'll just copy paragraphs from the last few emails to him and slap them up here on my blog. It's better than nothing, which is what you'd get otherwise. So be grateful!

From 12/28:
I bet John told you that thing about your mission being the most exhausting part of your life BEFORE he had his third kid. We are EXHAUSTED! Malachi is a great baby. He is happy and laid back and sleeps well. And he loves his sisters! He will just smile and laugh and talk to them for ages, if they'll stay still long enough to engage him. Jaina likes to ay her head on his belly and say "awww". Jaina's vocabulary is growing so amazingly fast. She's picking up one to two new words a day. It is so fun to hear her talk. My favorite is when she drops something and says "Oh no! I sowwy!" and when she loses her balance and says "whoa!" She is a cute little girl. Libby starts primary next week! Crazy! It's a lot of fun to talk to her. You can have real conversations with her now. She's pretty hilarious. Christmas was great. Libby kind of got the whole Christmas thing this year. Her favorite part was the Christmas lights on the houses. She liked to go for drives to "see Christmas and go to the candy store to get candy canes. Mm-mm, yummylicious!" We had a small Christmas, and a quiet one. It was nice. Christmas Eve we went up to Mike and Joyce's to have schnitzel with her extended family. It was loud :) Oh, and we had a white Christmas! In Texas! It snowed all day and night on Christmas Eve, but didn't start sticking until night-time. So we ended up with about an inch. So the girls got to go out and play in the snow for the first time on Christmas Day. They loved it. We are currently on our third round of winter illness. I had a stomach flu a couple weeks ago, and now Libby and I have really bad head colds with fevers. Malachi and Jaina have stuffy noses. John is in the clear so far. I took some benadryl this afternoon about 90 minutes before John got home. Big mistake! It kicked in after about 30 minutes, and that last hour before he got home is a haze. I don't really remember it. I turned a movie on in there somewhere and managed to not drop the baby. When John got home I staggered to bed. I couldn't sleep because the girls kept screaming (Jaina didn't nap today and Libby was up from midnight to 2:30 am this morning), but I couldn't get out of bed because the benadryl had me all loopy and I couldn't stand up. So I just laid there staring at the ceiling for an hour until it wore off. Man!

From 1/12:
Sarah's wedding was beautiful, and she was gorgeous! During the ceremony, she and Luis were holding hands, and Sarah was literally bouncing up and down with excitement, and swinging their hands like they were a couple of little kids. It was so cute! I was really glad I got to go. Malachi did great the whole trip, hardly crying, until the flight home. He screamed the whole flight. It was great. While I was in NC, whenever I called home Libby would say "Mama, come home! I'll come get you!" Ever since my return on Sunday night she's been giving me gifts of scraps of paper, fruit snacks, toys, etc. She'll walk up and say "Mama, this is for you". It's really sweet.

From 1/24
Libby is obsessed with dinosaurs. She watches Land Before Time at least once a day. Most of what she says these days is quoted from the movie. When she sits down to eat, she'll sniff her plate and say "I smell...I smell...I smell...mmm, Ducky". She'll randomly shout "Green food! The Great Vally! I found it! I fo-ound it!" She eats grass in the backyard, claiming she is a dinosaur eating "green food". She calls Jaina "Cera" and says to her "Come on, Cera, I found green food!" after she dumps dry cereal on the carpet. And she asks us to play "Dinosaur", which consists of John and I pretending to be "Sharp Tooths" while she head butts us until we fall over. She calls John "Daddy T-Rex" and calls me "Mother", and herself "Littlefoot". We went to the library yesterday and she refused to look at any book that wasn't about dinosaurs. And they had to be "real dinosaurs", not children's story books. She wants the kind of books you would get if you were doing a 4th-grade science project on dinosaurs. At night when we put her to bed she says to us "Go out and shut the door. I want to read dinosaur books." She's pretty hilarious. I wish I could find a copy of that dinosaur song tape you used to have when you were a kid. She would love that. She just bit John on the butt! Jaina is learning multiple new words a day. It's fun when she throws out a new word or phrase. And she loves to sing. She'll do a mash-up of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", "Old McDonald", and "We are the Dinosaurs". And she screams every time Libby looks at her because she thinks Libby is going to take whatever iis she has. Which is usually true. She calls Malachi "Kai-Kai" and likes to alternately steal his binky and shove it in his mouth. Which is probably why he's ways getting sick :) She mimics a lot of what Libby does, growling, roaring, stomping, spinning, screaming. It's really cute. Libby likes to make her laugh during meal times. Malach is 4 months old now. He rolled over from his back to his front for the first time last night. He'll forget then that he knows already how to go from his front to his back, and he'll cry because he's stuck and doesn't like being on his tummy. He's pretty huge, the biggest of all the kids. He's chubby, not fat. He's just proportionally huge. He likes to lay in the middle of the floor, and the girls will run around him in circles, screaming, of course, and he will laugh and laugh. And he likes to eat his toes. He's becoming a thumb-sucker, too.

From 2/1:
Last week LIbby was introduced to the wonders of chocolate pudding, only she calls it "chocwate pootie". She'll have a whole conversation with you about "pootie". It's hilarious. Another day she told John and I to "sit down and listen!". She held up a peice of paper and did a little presentation. We never really pinned down the subject, but she went one for about 2 minutes about random stuff. It was cute. Jaina and I got sick. Malachi got better, then got sick again. He had a well-baby check-up today, but didn't get any shots because he's all goopy again. We've been put on quarantine. We're not allowed to take the kids out of the house until spring. You'd think that would be hard, but we haven't been out in weeks already anyway. We're technically inactive at church because of all these illnesses. They did a nasal swab on Malachi to see if it grows any bacteria in the next few days. If it does, then antibiotics should kick it out. If it doesn't, then we basically wait until spring. Bad of me to say, but I'm hoping it's bacterial. While Mom and Dad got half a foot of snow, we got 33 degrees and rain, rain, rain. No wonder we're all sick. Today the sun is shining and I kicked the girls out to play. Who cares if it's only 40 degrees? Go outside and play! They didn't last long :) To be quite honest, I'm going a little stir-crazy in this little house!

But they were both of them diseased...

Sorry I've been such a blogging loser. This whole three-kids thing is HARD! I can't believe I totally skipped Christmas! What kind of mommy-blogger am I? I have found myself so tired lately that I'm not even reading blogs, much less writing them. So I have no idea what's going on in my friend's lives. I don't even read Pioneer Woman any more. For you fellow PW fans, you know that's serious.

Anyway, quick recap of the last month-and-a-half:
We de-binkied Libby. She was not impressed.
We got sick.
Christmas came. It was fun.
John took a week off.
I got sick.
New Year's was anti-climatic.
I flew with Malachi for the first time.
My sister got married.
My Grandma had a stroke and went into cardiac arrest.
She's ok.
Malachi got RSV. He is recovering. Slowly.
Malachi rolled over. Now he does it lots.
Jaina got sick.
I got sick.

And that brings us up to today! I'll try to do better, really I will. I've got lots of great pictures and anecdotes to share. Maybe tomorrow, when I'm not so tired...

Dreams

Life is funny. You're moving along, simultaneously hyperaware and somehow, also completely oblivious to the passage of time. One day you wake up and notice that two-thirds of your dishwasher is filled with brightly colored plastic instead of things that break (and match). You ruefully admit to yourself that it's time to put your dreams of becoming a forensic anthropologist and marrying Antonio Banderas up on the "Ain't Gonna Happen" shelf. And then you realize that that's ok, because really, you're actually quite happy with the way things are. You're not rich, you're not living in some exotic locale, you're overweight, your husband is not a Brazilian heartthrob, and, more days than not, your children seem to be the ones in charge. But you're happy. Happier than you ever thought possible. Because you have so much love inside you for your little family, and they for you, that nothing else seems to matter.

But you still dream, that someday, you'll have horses. And that's ok, because that is a dream that might actually come true.

I'd like a turkey sandwich with a side of DayQuil, please

Wow, what a month November was, riddled with injury and illness for my little family. First Jaina, then Libby, then Malachi. When Malachi spiked a fever of 101.1, I tried getting him in to see our pediatrician, but they were "too busy" that day. John was in Atlanta and I had no internet access because HP had refused to cover under warrenty the neccessary repairs for our computer. John called around to a few different doctors and found one that could see Malachi right away. And as it turned out, Dr. Mafia (not his real name, he just looks like a Latin Mob boss) is pretty wonderful, so it all worked out in the end. Malachi recovered from his cold, and so did his sisters. We had a mini-Thanksgiving with a small ham and some sides, saving the real thing for my parent's visit.

Mom and Dad flew in last Thursady to visit with us. Later that day Libby started complaining about her stomach. She was running a low-grade fever which spiked to 103.3 in the middle of the night. Jaina woke up with a disgustingly snotty nose, and Malachi got stuffed up again as well. John had started a cold Thanksgiving weekend, and it was not getting any better. Friday, Libby woke up feeling better and we hung out, doing a little shopping, some reading, and taking it easy. Dad and I got some firewood so we could enjoy our fireplace over the weekend. Saturday Mom and I did some shopping (and some more, and then a little more) while John and Dad stayed home with the kids and watched football. Dad also cooked the turkey for our late Thanksgiving meal. Mom and I got home and finished up with the fixin's. It was all wonderful. Just wonderful. Then Mom and I went out again after dinner to do even more shopping. Unfortunately, Mom started feeling poorly, and so did I. By Saturday night we knew that the only one of us well enough to go to church the next day would be my dad.

We had planned to have Malachi's naming blessing that Sunday while my parents were here. We still wanted to do it on Sunday, but knew that doing it at the church was out of the question. So John made some phone calls and arranged to have the blessing done at our home Sunday afternoon. John's brother and his family were able to come, as well as a member of our Bishopric. I decided to go ahead and dress Malachi in the blessing gown Mom got for me when Libby was born, since there would be no other opportunity for Malachi to wear it. The blessing was nice, even though Malachi cried through it all. Joyce was able to record it on her phone and transcribe it for me, which I appreciated, since I wasn't able to hear most of the blessing over Malachi's crying.

Monday I started feeling a little better, while my mom felt even worse. She spent most of the day in bed. The only good thing about Mom being sick was that it freed up her Kindle for me to play with :) Jaina was still a little snotty, but Malachi and Libby were fine, so we hung out around the house playing. Tuesday it was time for them to leave. We were sad, especially the kids. It's hard being so far from family. We hadn't seen my parents for 11 months. I'm happy I'll get to see them again in a few weeks when I fly out for my sister's wedding, but I'm very sad that the girls don't get to go with me. Libby really enjoyed her time with "Ana and Papa". And Jaina was just smitten with my dad. I wish we lived close enough to see them more often, but at the same time I know that Texas is the right place for us to be right now. Oh well, I just have to look forward to this summer when we'll all go out to NC for weeks and weeks.

Dental Drama

I have to apologize for my month-long absence fom blogger. My computer futzed out again, but this time HP refused to do the repairs. So now I am without a computer. I can use John's work laptop when he's home, but I'm usually too worn out to be creative by the time he gets home and we eat dinner and get the kids in bed and I finally get online. And now John will be going to Atlanta for 5 days and I won't be able to get online until he returns. I'm going to be awfully lonely this week! Anyway, on to the drama.

Last week Jaina and Libby were playing on our dining room table. That is a no-no in this house, but as I said to my dad "just because it's against the rules doesn't mean they don't do it". Our table is an oval pedestal table, with one large leg in the center. Apparently (I was unaware that this was going on), theyw ere both on one end and the table tipped over. John says Jaina was on her hands and knees and he thinks she slid off face-first and smacked her mouth on the floor. When he got to her, blood was running out of her mouth. I ran in and looked in her mouth and saw her right front tooth kocked backwards, almost flush with the roof of her mouth. I grabbed the phone and called the kid's urgent care to see if they did dental (they don't). While waiting for them to find the number of a pediatric dentist, I was online looking at websites, hoping to find one that had an emergency number. I came across one website and got a really good feeling about that dentist. I got off the phone and called the office number, and was happy to hear an emergency number on their voice mail. I gave John the phone because I was about to lose it, and he called the emergency number. The dentist was really nice, talking to John for about 15 minutes. I was surprised, since we weren't patients of hers. She told him that there wasn't anything that could be done that night, but to bring Jaina in first thing in the morning.

John took Jaina in bright and early. He says the dentist was really nice and the office very kid-friendly. She said the tooth was almost completely out of the socket and couldn't be saved. It would have to be extracted. She called the oral surgeon next door and they set up an appt for Jaina later that morning at their Plano office. John didn't want to bring Jaina home because she wasn't allowed to eat anything before her next appt, so he took her to a park, I think. When they got to the surgeon's office, John found that their anesthesiologist was in our old Allen ward. He wasn't allowed in the office during the extraction, but it made me feel good to know their was a Priesthood holder in the room while Jaina was put to sleep. The extraction itself went very quickly. They had to moniter Jaina for a bit after she woke up, then sent them home. She was disoriented for a while after coming home and couldn't walk or hold her head up very well. It was pretty pititful.

Since Malachi was asleep, I took Libby to Target with me to pick up a few things. We ran to Babies R Us after and Libby picked out a stuffed duck for "Jaina feel better. Fall down, hurt mouth, go doctor". Jaina really likes her new "duck-duck". She wasn't allowed to have sippy cups, straws, bottles, or binkies for three days. We quickly nixed the no-straw rule, because Jaina wouldn't drink out of a normal cup. And the no-binky rule only lasted two days, because the constant crying at bedtime and waking up in the middle of the night just wasn't cool. But now she's well healed and not bleeding on her sheets any more. She even drank out of a sippy cup today.

She looks pretty cute with that little gap in her teeth. But it's sad to know that it could have been prevented. We said months ago that we needed to get a new table. We knew it was just a matter of time before it got tipped over. But we were waiting until we could afford a new one. Dad said it would have been cheaper to buy a new table than to pay the anesthesiologist. True statement. Hindsight is always 20/20. We are very thankful that it was just baby tooth that was lost. The oral surgeon said that there was no damage done to any other teeth, baby or permanent, and that her permanent tooth should come in just fine with no problems. The table is now in pieces in our garage, and we're trying to figure out the next step.

The other drama - I chipped one of my crowns eating a jawbreaker the same day Jaina knocked out her tooth. Thankfully, my dentist appt consisted of a free 10-minute repair. Thank goodness these suckers are under warrenty!

Three Weeks

Malachi sleeping soundly this afternoon. Cutie.

We had our three-week check-up at the birth center today. Malachi weighs 11 lbs, 6 ozs with his clothes on. The midwife figured he'd be right at 11 lbs naked. Big boy! I'm a couple pounds below my pre-pregnancy weight. Let's keep that up, shall we?

He's still a great sleeper, waking only once or twice a night. Now if I can get Libby to fall asleep before 11 pm I might actually get enough sleep :) He's got a bad case of baby acne, but it's starting to clear up. And his clogged tear ducts are clogged no more. He's more alert now, and looks around when he hears my voice. His sisters still love him a little roughly at times. He better get used to it!

My laptop is busted again, so I won't be posting much until it's fixed. Can I say again how I hate HP?