Mmm...Rice Cereal

How To Handle Strangers on the Telephone: A Guide

Evan was learning about stranger safety in school yesterday.  He brought home an unfinished worksheet to work on at home.  He was supposed to finish sentences.  I found one he had already completed.  The sentence was "If you answer the phone when you are home without an adult, never say that you are alone.  Tell the callers that ________________________."

Evan had filled in the blank this way:  Tell the callers that "my mom and dad are in ther bedrom with the door loked."

Awesome.  I laughed so hard.  I didn't have him change it.  I think it will give his teacher a chuckle too.  In fact, come to think of it, the whole teachers' lounge may be laughing at Evan's parents this very moment!

And here is what happens when mom and dad go in their bedroom with the door "loked": 

Along comes Lydia in a baby carriage!

(Stuffing her in a doll carriage would be her big brothers' idea, of course.)

The Amazing Lydie!

Warning to you grandmothers:  You will not approve of the following outfit.  It is not pink enough. 

(And when Kendall stopped in over his lunch break, I could tell he didn't "approve" either.  I heard him tell Lydia, "You look like a boy."  Seriously, this man has more opinions on baby clothes than I do!  I secretly love that, by the way.  One night we were getting ready to go to friends' house.  He thought her outfit was silly.  So I decided to amuse myself by changing her into something else he would inwardly roll his eyes at.  It was a brown teddy bear outfit that she inherited from Evan.  She was so cute and looked like her big brother.  It made me laugh at our get-together that people really thought about it that she looked like a boy.  Especially 4-year old Hannah!  She definitely did not approve of my little girl lacking all pink and purple!)

Anyway, I show these photos because our little boy girl is amazing!  Just 10 days ago, she would not have been able to do either of these things as well as she can today!

Sitting supported by a pillow-

And standing with me-

I find it utterly amazing (and scary) how quickly she is changing!  I love it and I really don't like it.

By the way, Mom and Dad, does she look like me in the first picture?  Maybe if she was wearing a pink dress?

Lucky Girl

Yes, he is reading to his little sister.  Yes, she enjoyed the storytime.

I love it!

I recently told Evan that one of the things that makes me happiest in the world is how much my kids love each other.  It's the best.

Catchin' Some Rays

So yesterday Lydia and I got all dressed up to go to the pool for Aquatots.  We had our bathing suits on, along with various layers for the cold, snowy weather.  Our road was super-icy.  I drove slowly, hoping that they would be cleared once I got into town.  Made it to town and the roads still looked bad.  I still had a ways to go to get to the pool, so I decided it would be smarter for me to go back home. :(  So we missed our first day of swimming.

We got home and Lydia was just so stinkin' cute in her bathing suit.  So I put our beach towel on the living room floor and let her catch some rays.  (I know, I'm a dork, but don't judge until you see how cute she is.)

Here she is, pretending it's a hot summer day at the beach:

See?  Totally worth it to let her hang out in her cuteness.  Don't worry, she's appropriately clothed for the season today.

Dance Party!

All dressed up for a late-night dance party.  (Well, 8:00, which is late for us these days.)

We heard that some of our teenage friends were having a blacklight party.  So the kids and I dressed up in our grooviest white clothes and crashed their party.  We danced and ate their snacks for half an hour, then came home.

Fun was had by all.  Well, Lydia seemed a bit weirded out by it all.  Eli claimed he was only going for the snack, but he appeared to be having fun demonstrating gangnam style.  Evan dominated in the
sprinkler dance.  And I dazzled everyone with my Running Man from the 90s.  (Though I was horrified to look up from my awesomeness and see one of them video-taping me.  I was sure the humiliation would show up on facebook, but so far we're good.)

Chaotic Suppertime

All of the sudden, our little girl is just seeming so much older.  She is really enjoying her toys and reaches for them with both hands.  Everything goes straight to her mouth. She watches us eat and reaches for my coffee cup.  She is still nursing and I just feel so happy and fulfilled when I see her getting positively chubby little legs!  We've just started giving her little tastes of food.  She loves it.  Here she is getting a bit of applesauce and sweet potatoes at supper the other night.

We've had to work to get her to laugh, usually with some tickling involved, but in the past week she has been finding humor in the boys. She's learning that laughing is fun. So often before, she would chuckle if we strongly encouraged it, but she always looked like the chuckle startled her and she wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not.  The other night at bedtime I took her into the boys' room. She took one look at Eli and started cracking up. Then bedtime was greatly delayed as they snorted and sniffed and made all manner of noises and contortions to keep her laughing. The next night I took her into their room and she thought it was funny again. So sometimes now she'll start laughing, though it seems to take her a bit to remember how. We think she's thinking, "Oh yeah, I remember those weird noises I made were fun...Now how did I do it?" So she starts out haltingly and then remembers and takes off again.  Enjoy!

Eye Update and Scary Kids

I guess I should give an update on the scary eye situation.  I am happy to report that it is looking much, much better than it did.  When we took the bandage off last week, I knew that the redness and swelling wouldn’t last, but I just couldn’t see how it would ever look anywhere near normal.  It was pulled really   tight to bridge the gap that had been cut out.  Then there was a large bump of skin below that where my upper cheek had been pulled together under the gap.  That makes no sense.  Just know that it made my whole face look misshapen. 

Anyway, it has gotten better every day.  I get the stitches out next Tuesday.  Not really looking forward to that.  Especially since I overheard this one nurse say, “None of the doctors are going to want to take the stitches out.  They’ll probably have to dig.”  DIG!  Anyway, you know nurses, they just get so jaded and medically-minded that they forget that the patient doesn’t want to hear the word “dig” in conjunction with her eye.  But you would think he’d think about it when the patient is his wife!

But anyway, I’m so thankful that the eye seems to be healing well.  I just wish someone at the hospital last Wednesday would have sat me down and said, “It’s going to look awful when you take off the bandage tonight.  But it will get better.”

It's not hurting much anymore.  (Though I did like when I had a good excuse to take a nap- I just needed to close my eye and let it rest.)  I've weaned myself off of the addictive Tylenol with codeine.  (Just kidding- I'm just disappointed that it never gave me a buzz, as long as I needed the drugs anyway.)  And my kids have survived being seen in public with me.  I even showed up at their school twice in the past week.  I told them some kids at the school were being bullies and I just aimed my scary eye at them and told them to bug off!  (That was a joke, but it could come in handy sometime.)  And I wasn't a pirate or a zombie for Halloween.  I was just a Mom.

My kids were scary, though.

And this is how sweet little Evan came home from school: