Michael had sinus surgery the day after Christmas. When I went to pick him up, I expected him to have some nose bandages. I was shocked to find his whole head bandaged. I didn't realize it was simply an ice pack and washcloth over his eyes. I thought maybe there were complications and I'd be nursing a blind man. (There were complications which resulted in some loss of vision for two days, but his vision cleared up by Saturday.) Anyway, he was pretty miserable for awhile, but he's feeling better. Now he just looks like a washed-up prizefighter with a bad cold...
P.S. I wasn't initially intending t0 post these pictures, but he said he didn't mind.
Even though I should be getting ready for bed, I couldn't wait until tomorrow to post this one. Yesterday, Michael propped Megan up on this little chair. It fell over, so my brother, David, turned it around for her. She began to push it away a little, and then take very wobbly steps toward it. Notice her progression in the pictures how she moves from right to left past the background. Very exciting! She got a V-Tech walker today as one of her Christmas gifts. It's a little fast still, but I think she'll be cruising around with it pretty soon!
Her hair looks terrible, I know.
I never think about fixing it before I start snapping away...
Even though the day is almost over, I wanted to wish all of you a MerryChristmas!
I would add more to this post, but I'm so tired that when Michael just asked me a question and I responded to him, a few moments later, he called me by one of my nicknames to see if I had been listening. I realized that I had answered him in my head, not out loud. I need to go to bed!
That is the refrain I've been privileged to respond to a million times a day since Sunday, when Thomas caught the bug Mason introduced to our family at the beginning of December in full force. Yesterday, we had nose blowing lessons so that hopefully I could get a little more leeway in between when Thomas needed his nose wiped. I must be too much of a coddler. I keep telling him he can wipe his own nose, and I try to get him to do it. Yet it seems like such an emergency to him (Mom!!! My nose is running!!!), and somehow I am more effective at it than he is, so I just do it for him and get the agony over with.
Last year, we bought a live Christmas tree at the beginning of December. Michael trimmed the bottom off, and we brought it inside and tried to put it in our pretty tree stand. However, the bottom branches were too low on the trunk, so Michael had to haul it back outside, trim off the bottom branches, and bring it back inside to put it in the tree stand. It was a huge mess and hassle. We didn't know the rule about maintaining a gallon of water in the tree stand on a daily basis, so we accidentally starved our tree for the first couple of weeks by only watering it occasionally, as we would a plant. Long story short, the tree barely made it to Christmas, and really, it should have been thrown out before.
This year, we tried again. We bought a live tree. Michael trimmed off the trunk plus the lower branches before he brought it in to put it in the tree stand. However, this year, we bought a different type of Christmas tree, where the branches go up more than out, so it wound up looking scraggly at the bottom on one side for lack of branches. Also, once the tree was trimmed and stood up in the tree stand, we could see how knarly the trunk is. The tree leans forward and refuses to stand upright. Michael thinks it looks like a bush shaped to resemble a Christmas tree.
We tried to take good care of it. We made sure to water it, and I've been checking the water level almost every day. I realized yesterday that we've hardly had to water it at all because the water is always at the high point. So, today after I checked the water level, I looked at the needles. Sure enough, they are turning brown at the tips. When we first bought the tree, it was nice and soft. Now it feels brittle. Not only do we have to deal with the death of our tree, but our 2 year old keeps stripping the poor thing of its ornaments! I gave up redecorating it after the second day. Now I'm just waiting until the night before company comes to put the ornaments back on. Our fake garlands wrapped around the staircase look better than our "live" tree. I give up. I think we'll go ahead and get that 7.5' tree from Costco and trim down the top so it fits in our room with the angel on top.
My camera broke last Friday in the middle of McKenzie's school activity making candy houses. At the same time, Megan has grown in three top teeth and mastered sitting up on her own. Yesterday she pulled herself to standing, and today she even crawled on her knees!!! (Instead of her usual army crawl. I'm dying without my camera!!!
Mason's birthday was Friday. It turned out to not be the best day to celebrate his birth, since Thomas was contrary from the moment he got out of bed until the moment he finally fell asleep that night. Plus, Mason got sick and wound up with a fever after dinner... and Michael didn't get home from work until after 10pm b/c he was on call. Fortunately, we celebrated M's bday on Thursday, which was Michael's day off. It was relatively low key.
We took him to McDonald's for dinner (figuring that is probably his favorite food at this age). He had a blast playing in the play area. When we came home, we had cake balloons (possibly his favorite birthday gift)and he got a bb hoop and some GeoTrax for his birthday. (Thomas and McKenzie have since taken over his GeoTrax, but Mason doesn't seem to mind since there are three trains now, so at least he still has one to play with.)
I almost forwarded this to a bunch of people in my email, but then I decided to just post it on my blog, and those who cared enough to check this could get a laugh! ;-)
~ Tough Love vs. Spanking ~ (a psychological conundrum)
It seems that these days most Americans think it is improper to spank children, so over the years I tried other methods to control my kids when they had one of 'those moments.'
One that I found effective is for me to just take the child for a car ride and talk.
They usually calm down and stop misbehaving after our car ride together.
This worked so well for my children that I now use the method on my grandchildren.
I've included a photo below of one of my sessions with my grandson, in case you would like to use the technique.
And look who's ready for a nap! I took these pictures a few weeks ago when Megan just started sitting up. I just thought they were so cute. Mason was concerned with a hangnail, and kept pointing out Megan's eyes, ears, mouth,and nose. Megan was simply enthralled with the brush. I'm so grateful for cameras. The only way I'll remember these days is through photography.
Here are the same pictures in color so Michael can see them at work. (Love you!)
This year, the award for Most Creative Costume goes to... Thomas, dressed as none other than Spiderman Scarecrow! McKenzie wins Most Spellbinding, Megan gets the Hottie Award, and Mason wins the Cutiepie Award. I forgot my camera when I took the kids out trick-or-treating. They were so fun to watch run up to the doors. All I could think of was that I wish it could last a little longer. They grow up so fast. Mason was adorable. He'd yell "Trick or treat! Thank you! Bye!" in his cute little kid voice. Even when he got cold and his nose had started running, he didn't want to stop. He was very upset when it was time to call it quits.
Here are the kids at the Trunk-or-Treat: These are the spider cupcakes that I made for the ward halloween party. They remind me of the slugs from Flushed Away. (Poor, poor Roddy, flushed down his own potty, Rita can't you find it in your heart.... to help him.)
And here are some better pics of the kids in their costumes.
Yay! I have my laptop back in service! I am so excited! So much so that I've been perusing and editing my photos for the past hour... rendering this post quite short. However, I can't let you go without any pictures, so here are some of Thomas. What a trip. He vacuumed the stairs last Saturday and wouldn't let anyone walk on them when he finished because he didn't want the carpet flattened down. Finally, after explaining (again) that that's just the way life and chores are, I asked if it would be okay for us to walk on the stairs if I took a picture of them so we could always remember how nice they looked. He agreed, so here they are:
Here is Thomas explaining that he doesn't want anyone trampling all over his hard work...
expressing his great dismay at being ignored...
and showing what a great job he did vacuuming the stairs.The end.
I'm learning. Slowly. Today I forgot to shut my laptop when I ran upstairs to take an opportunity to shower. Mason was napping and Thomas was putting together puzzles at the dining room table. (Megan came with me to hang out in the bathroom.) This is what I found when I returned about 15-20 min later.
Mason does the same thing to Michael's computer if he manages to sneak into the office for any length of time. We don't know how they do it so quickly.
We need to implement some new rules in our house. 1. No ball playing in the house. (Too many close calls) 2. No running in the house. This is why:
Thomas split his left eyebrow open a little last night while running around the house with his siblings. He fell against the piano bench. Michael was at a work function, and our car was with the mechanic, so I had to call him home for help. Mason was still pretty wound up, or I would have taken more pictures. I held ice on Thomas and kept him from rubbing his wound until we could get it patched up. Michael called a friend of ours, Sam H., to come help glue his cut together so it won't scar so bad. I thought it would need stitches, but they just used Dermabond and steri-strips. Sam is the same person who fixed Thomas' tooth when he knocked it out just after he turned 2.
McKenzie's class took a field trip to a local pumpkin patch this morning. It sounded like a lot of fun, so I took the boys and Megan, and we met up with her class. First the kids went and climbed a hay pyramid. McKenzie ran full tilt and climbed all over it with her friends. Thomas climbed to the very top. The wind was blowing so hard that I was concerned he might get blown over and fall off. (He did get blown over once, but it was in the center of the summit.) Mason didn't want anything to do with it until the end. We were quickly herded over to the animal barn, where the kids could pet little horses, see a duck, look at pigs covered with flies, and pet some other animals. Mason was enthralled with the duck. I think he was amazed to see a real one up close. His favorite book is Duck on a Bike. After the petting zoo, we sanitized our hands and then the kids ran through a haybale maze a few times. Next, we were sent over to sit on more haybales in a covered area for some punch and cookies. Afterwards, we went on a hayride to the pumpkin patch where the children selected their own little pumpkin. We had a great time.
McKenzie's teacher and some other moms offered to help hold Megan or carry my bag, which I really appreciated. I learned some things from this, though: 1. Babies would rather sleep than shlepp through a pumpkin patch at nap time; find a sitter. 2. Field trips are not leisurely outings; They are timed activities where you move quickly, so be ready to be mobile. (Read - don't weigh yourself down with large baggage, and don't even think about bringing a stroller. I left mine in the car. Better yet, get a sitter.) 3. Thomas did well, but Mason seemed a bit intimidated by the large crowds. I had my hands so full with the little ones that I wasn't able to get any really good shots of McKenzie. Lesson learned: leave the kids with a sitter. They'll have plenty of opportunities to go to the pumpkin patch with their own classes.
9/21/07 I've been working on painting my bedroom since April. I finally arranged for a friend of mine to watch the three younger kids for a couple of hours in the morning while McKenzie was at school so I could finish painting. I was only able to prep the area and paint around the trim before my time was up. I took a second opportunity to work on my walls when the kids were napping. It turned out that Thomas wasn't asleep. He soon came to investigate what I was doing and wasn't content to just sit on the bed and watch. Unfortunately, I didn't think to change his clothes. Those were his best shorts. Anyway, here are some pictures of him helping me. He's very excited for the next time we paint. McKenzie was chagrined when she came home from school and found out that he got to help me, so I promised her that she can help, too, when we paint other rooms. My room still isn't done -- I have the ceiling left to paint and then we're going to install crown molding. I'll post pictures of the finished product... one of these days. (I hope!)
9/24/07 We went bowling for FHE with some good friend of ours. Mason was 21 months old. He threw a temper tantrum whenever he WASN'T bowling... which was quite often. We had fun, but we resolved not to go bowling with anyone under the age of three again. (Check out the last picture on the slideshow.)
9/29/07 I was trying to occupy Mason while Thomas and McKenzie cleaned (played in) their rooms and I cleaned the bathrooms. I gave Mason some wrapped rolls of toilet paper to stack and make towers with. It was one of the ideas in a book about how to keep kids busy (presumably so I can get something done). At first, everything went great... until McKenzie came to alert me that Thomas had joined Mason and they had unwrapped all 15 rolls of toilet paper and decorated Mason's room with it. Who was the person who came up with this activity as a great idea? We had to use toilet paper out of grocery sacks for the next week, at least.
10/11/07 We had one of our little friends over for the afternoon. I took the garbage out while the children were in the backyard. It didn't take long to put the garbage in the can and wheel them up to the side of the house, so when I returned to walk into the house, I was surprised with this sight and busted up laughing. Kids move so quickly!
10/12/07 McKenzie went in for surgery for an adenoidectomy and ear tube placement. She was very excited to have it done so she would be able to hear better. She had a lot of middle ear fluid. So here she is pre-surgery: And here she is with her doctor once the Versed started to kick in: She wasn't too happy when she woke up from the surgery. She was upset that her throat hurt. After the nurse gave her some pain medication, she asked McKenzie to point to the face on the pain scale that showed where she was before the medicine so she could compare it to the one that showed how she felt after the medicine. The nurse said "Point to the face that shows how you felt before." McKenzie pointed to the happy face. Sure, she was happy BEFORE the surgery! Fortunately, her paternal grandparents happened to be passing through town on the same day and stopped by the surgery center to visit with her. It was a real treat to have her Grandma there as she came out of anesthesia! (And Grandpa, too, but Grandma is in the picture.)
Grandma also brought some halloween pillowcases by for the three older kids with a heart on them that says "Grandma loves you." The kids loved them
10/15/07 McKenzie found a mushroom in our backyard. The mushrooms are kind of cool because they grow up almost overnight to impressive sizes. But they are also not kind of cool for the same reason. I'm starting to send the kids out on mushroom missions now to make sure we don't have any new ones. 10/17/07 I just thought these were funny pictures. Thomas exclaimed "Look at me, Mom! I'm upside down!" So, I grabbed a camera.
10/2007 And this post wouldn't be complete without some pictures of Megan. So, here she is in her highchair. She looks so little in it to me! I'm used to seeing her brothers in it. Thomas and Mason still use the other highchair intermittently. Thomas likes to use it more as a novelty. We use it to trap Mason during dinner, although he can climb out pretty easily.
Here is a collage of Megan eating pureed corn. Yum yum!
Now that you are finally updated, I will try not to get so far behind again.
Michael had sinus surgery the day after Christmas. When I went to pick him up, I expected him to have some nose bandages. I was shocked to find his whole head bandaged. I didn't realize it was simply an ice pack and washcloth over his eyes. I thought maybe there were complications and I'd be nursing a blind man. (There were complications which resulted in some loss of vision for two days, but his vision cleared up by Saturday.) 
Anyway, he was pretty miserable for awhile, but he's feeling better. Now he just looks like a washed-up prizefighter with a bad cold...
