Baby Collins #4

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Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Why It Doesn't Pay To Lie To Your Kids...

So for the past 7 nights, Ayris has gotten to sleep in my bed because Chris has been gone. I reminded her last night that tonight she'd have to sleep in her own room. Of course the dramatics began tonight when we told her it was time to go to bed. She didn't know why she couldn't just sleep with both Chris and I. I told her that Daddy was lucky he even got to sleep in the bed because there was barely room for him and the two cats as it was. She whined and cried for a solid 10 minutes before I finally told her to get upstairs and go potty. By the time I made my way upstairs, she was calling out from under the bed.

Ayris: Mom, I'm just going to sleep under here since there isn't room in the bed with you and Daddy.
Mom: No you're not.
Ayris: Why not?
Mom: Because there are spiders under there! (This was the honest to God first thing that came to my mind! Lame right? What kind of mother uses fear as a tactic!)

(I can hear Ayris scrambling to get out from under there and into her bedroom...)

Ayris: Well, why are there spiders under there?
Mom: Because it's dark.
Ayris: Well how do you know there are spiders under there?
Mom: I don't...maybe there's not? (Trying to backpedal at this point, since I've finally accomplished getting her into her room...which was the initial goal)
Ayris: Well, would the spiders hurt me if I laid under there?
Mom: I don't think so...they might just crawl on you. But maybe there's not even spiders under there right now...who knows?
Ayris: Well what if they are in my room?
Mom: They're not.
Ayris: But you said that the reason they're under your bed is because it's dark...and it's dark in my room, so maybe they're in here too. (SUCH A DEDUCTIVE THINKER THIS ONE!)
Mom: You know what...we probably don't even have spiders upstairs because it's too high for them to climb.
Ayris: But they might be in my room?
Mom: No, they are absolutely not in your room.
Ayris: How do you know?
Mom: Because it was sprayed with a special spider spray to keep them out.
Ayris: When?
Mom: I don't know! It was done when they built the house! Ayris, just go to sleep, there are NO spiders in here!

SO...the moral of the story is that it doesn't pay to lie for 3 reasons: The first, is that I didn't save any time in the long run...I probably would have spent less time coming up with a better way to coax her out from under the bed versus this 10 minute discussion about where the spiders may or may not be and second...the poor child is probably going to wake up screaming bloody murder tonight because she thinks she's covered in spiders (this has already happened on more than one occasion AND on those particular nights, we hadn't even had a 10 minute discussion about spiders) and lastly, I'm sure this whole lie is far from being over with...at some point, you just know she's going to see a spider in her room and then I'm going to be subjected to a million more questions about why the spider spray didn't work and how can we get some more?, etc, etc, etc.

Oh the joys of trying to raise a healthy, happy kid...and all the unfortunate missteps I seem to be making along the way!

New Recipe From Trisha Yearwood

I'm not sure if I could tell you what songs Trisha Yearwood sings...but I know she's country and I know she's married to Garth Brooks...that's about the extent of my Trisha knowledge...but I do know that when I stumbled upon some reviews from her cookbook "Georgia Cooking in An Oklahoma Kitchen", I decided to use some of my amazon gift cards to purchase it. This is the first recipe I made and it was delicious. Really filling...like probably a cup of this stuff will do you in...but it's really good, so I thought I'd post her recipe here. I didn't have green onions so I just used regular. And I cut the recipe in half. I think she summed it up well when she said it's like all the good stuff in twice baked potatoes but less work...I'll post the recipe at the bottom of this blog post.
The kids actually enjoyed the soup too...although Ayris was making faces like it was disgusting the entire time she was eating it (she hates onions but didn't mention them being in there??)...anyway, I thought I'd share how our lunch conversation went too:

Ayris: Mom, what is this on my shirt?
Mom: I don't know, you tell me...what did you spill on it?
Ayris: Nothing.
Mom: Well, it kind of looks like chocolate to me (she was having some of her Easter candy this a.m.)
Ayris: NO, it's NOT chocolate. I'm pretty sure it's poop.
Mom: Ayris, it's not poop. How would you get poop on the front of your shirt?
Ayris: Well, one day, a long time ago, I wiped my butt with my shirt and might have gotten poop on it...
Mom: First off, why were you wiping your butt with your shirt?
Ayris: It was an accident.
Mom: How is physically taking your shirt off and wiping your butt with it an accident?
Ayris: I don't know.
Mom: Well what does wiping your butt with your shirt a long time ago have to do with what's on your shirt today?
Ayris: I DON'T KNOW! I just think it's poop.
Mom: Ayris, it's not poop. You would know if it was poop...smell it.
Ayris: Yeah, it's not poop. It smells like goldfish.

OY! I should have started the initial conversation with the words "Smell it!"

And speaking of butts...Asher has started saying this new thing that just cracks me up. Anytime he farts (because neither of my kids mind farting at any given time...Ayris routinely will do it in a store to no avail...but whatever...they're still young enough that it's cute right? Or is that just because they're mine? Should I teach them farting in public is bad already?)...he'll stop what he's doing, turn to the nearest person and say: "that was from my butt." Just in case we didn't know I guess...or maybe like his butt's gift to us...because that's kind of what it sounds like when he's says it..."That was from my butt"..."You're welcome"...I think the fact that he he says it with such seriousness is what makes it so funny. It makes me laugh every time though...too bad he doesn't fart more often!

By the way, our second cat DID come back that same night...so I'm not quite the horrible cat owner that I was prepared to label myself as. It's actually a toss up as to whether I would have ever labeled myself as that in the first place or rather labeled the cats as STUPID for ever leaving this awesome place they call home. It's a toss up at this point. None the less, we're glad they're home.

ALSO, I haven't mentioned Asher's potty training in some time. I'm 99.9% sure he's potty trained at this point. I can't remember the last time he had an accident...he doesn't even get the tiny spot of pee on his underwear anymore like he used to when he was figuring out when he had to go and rushing to get his underwear off. He's such an awesome boy! And he's only 2.5 years old...that's pretty good for a boy right? Just another reason that I think my kids are a smidge advanced =)

Baked Potato Soup

4 large baking potatoes
6 Bacon Slices (I still used 6 slices even though cutting the rest of this stuff in half...you can't have enough bacon!)
2/3 cup butter
2/3 cup all purpose flour
6 cups milk
3/4 teaspoon salt (yeah, I did like 2 Tb but we're a salt family)
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 green onions finely chopped
5 ounces cheddar cheese shredded (I stuck with the 5 ounces even though it was halfed...we like cheese too!)
8 ounces sour cream

Bake potatoes covered in foil at 400F for an hour.

Make some crispy bacon and crumble it up.

In a saucepan, melt butter and add flour, stirring constantly until smooth. Gradually whisk in the milk over medium heat stirring constantly for about 5 minutes. Scoop out the potato insides and dump into the mixture along with the salt, pepper, onions (I added the onions when I started the base just because I didn't want them crunchy...not that green onions would be if you used those), cheddar cheese, sour cream and bacon. That's it!

Are You Getting Sick of Movement Videos?

Because I keep trying to capture the perfect one that shows how absolutely nutso this kid goes...this WOULD have been a good one had it not been so dark. I had purposefully brought up the camera last night because it's at night that he really starts going wild and at that point, I don't want to go back downstairs but I only had my side table lamp on so there's a dark shadow...none the less, you should be able to see him...also, I happened to be talking to Chris at the time and don't know how to remove audio from a video because I've never needed to in the past...I could probably learn but not in this moment =)

Sorry if any of you have kids named Marshall or know someone super cool named Marshall...it's just not striking that awesome chord with me right now =)

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

WOOT WOOT FOR THE FORTIES!

Meet Tammy...she's Crazy. Unfortunately, she's also apparently against being in photos because she had none of herself on her facebook page...she's in the green shirt.


This is Dawn...I just thought I'd give her credit where credit is due. She's responsible for the photo above, that absolutely not one person looks good in. She has a penchant for posting horrible pictures of OTHER people to her facebook site...like the one of me where I look like a whale. Ironically, she manages to find really good pictures of herself to post like the one below:

I was trying to do Tammy a little more justice in the picture department by rummaging through her kids facebook pages. SEEMINGLY, Jake (third from the left in the picture below) has more pictures of hot girls than his mama...where's the love Jake, seriously? I'm pretty sure that when all of my kids get their own facebook pages, I'm going to hack into their accounts and post hundreds of pictures of myself that have captions like "I love my mom because she is so cool", they're going to have TONS of pictures of their loving mom, like any good kid would, right? In all honesty though, I'm going to give Jake small props for at least having this squint-real-hard-and-you-might-be-able-to-make-out-that-this-is-my-family picture because when I went to Jordan's page, she had SO many albums that I finally gave up trying to find a picture of Tammy...Jordan might even lose a few points because Daddy Dearest (Myron...first on the left) had multiple appearances before I even got through her first set of pictures...which again, just screams blatantly to me that moms do all the work and dads get all the credit!

None the less, back to Tammy and why she's crazy...she's crazy in a good way because I'm pretty sure she's second in line on the "excited scale" when it comes to my having this baby (with me being the first in line obviously)...she sends me cute little emails each time I pass another ten days by...titled "Yippee!!!, followed by "We are in the forties!!!"...I can imagine I'll be the same way once my kids are grown because I'm already a nutcase when it comes to my friends having babies and finding out all the details...my friend just had a baby this a.m. and she made the mistake of texting me to let me know...and it was followed by about a thousand more texts chalk full of all my curiosities...when did you go into the hospital? How long did you push? How much did your son weigh and how long? And was he overdue? (Because this Big girl ended up being 3 days late and weighed a whopping 9 pounds 9 ounces, and measuring 22.5 inches long...not only that but my friend has surpassed my rockstar status of pushing out big heads...Ayris and Asher were both 14 inchers and her girl was 14.25)...so needless to say, I'm all about babies and hearing all the stats and stories of other people's babies...so I can't blame Tammy for being excited...it's kind of nice having a little countdown cheerleader. As for being bad crazy...Tammy was the first one who made me question the name Adler...I hadn't really thought about the name much...Chris and I had talked about it way before we ever got pregnant as what we'd probably call our boy (since the next girl was going to be Addison)...but Tammy didn't like Adler...she thought people would call him Adler the rattler (like as in a snake)...which, yes, I know, Adler and Rattler don't rhyme (unless you spelled it raddler?) but we don't have to point that out to her =) THEN my friend Debbie didn't like Adler because of the word Addled, which means "mentally confused"...from there on out, I started questioning Adler...I have been through months upon months now of trying to figure out a stupid perfect name for this little boy and NOTHING has come close to perfection yet...K, so back to Tammy. She recently informs me that if this little man is born on her birthday (May 19th) that she gets to name it. Well, it turns out, my doctor and I have been throwing around May 18th or 19th as the induction date since I will be 39 weeks at that point and she might be out of town the following week (and I'd love nothing more than to have all of my children delivered by her)...I personally would prefer the 18th because Ayris was born on the 18th and Asher on the 28th and it'd be cool to have another 8 (but of course, that'd just be more stress then to have to have the 4th kid on a number 8 day!!) but my doctor works on the 19th...so I'm not sure if she'd lean more towards the day she already has to work or if she'd rather do it on a day she's not scheduled in the clinic so her appointments that day don't get backed up?? All in all, it will come down to if the hospital has room anyway...and even better yet, he could come sooner...that'd be even more awesome! Like on May 8th =)...so back to Tammy naming it...her last two suggestions for names were "A" and "Ginnis"...YUCK. So I told her I'd be pushing for him to be born on the 18th...well NOW she tells me that if he's born on her birthday, she'll cave for Adler because...get this..."it's grown on her"...say what?!?! She was the one who started my big quest to find a better name and now she likes Adler! So that's why Tammy is a crazy woman. I just thought I'd mention her on here because she's also a big supporter of my blog...would like me to write everyday even if it's just about "nothing" and seems to think in that crazy little mind of hers that I could eventually be as big as The Pioneer Woman...who, I'm pretty sure is making money hand over fist with her blog/recipes/pictures, etc...and if you haven't noticed...I'm just not that motivated...I'm pretty good at getting pregnant and making the perfect babies but, I'm not very good at blogging on a consistent basis and coming up with awe inspiring things to say...none the less, her faith and interest in my kids and my blog is nice =) So thank you Tammy...even though you kind of suck at naming babies =P (At least ones that aren't your own!)
But, with all that said, I am now at 33 weeks (49 days!)...woo hoo.
Also, I DID decided to get those two pairs of suspender shorts off of Etsy yesterday and in addition to them, I bought these little lovelies up:

I've always wanted a buttless one-piece for the kids but have only found them for like 40 bucks (it's crazy how expensive newly made throwbacks to old crap can be!)...this little outfit was 7 bucks!

You just KNOW that there will be a picture in this little man's future where his cute little butt is hanging out in all it's glory in these pajamas! Can't wait =)

I'm still a little whatever about the idea of buying used clothes when I don't know where they've been...but maybe I'm turning over a new frugal leaf.
In some unrelated news, Ayris has just chewed her entire toenail off. That just made me want to puke a little even writing it. They told us her toenail would fall off (after dropping that rock on it) but it's been forever coming and each day she keeps playing with the darn thing. She'd excitedly come up and want to show me and I just never wanted to look at it...well today I did and it was almost off, except for the sides...about 3 minutes later, she had it off. I can tell this kid is going to be like me...anytime I had a loose tooth, it was out that day...I wasn't the kid who could just wait until it fell out. I even held up July 4th one year at my grandma's house because I discovered my tooth was loose and I just had to get it out. She made me leave the bathroom mirror to go see the fireworks but by golly, I had it out that night! I am SO not looking forward to my many children losing their teeth...if I can't deal with a toenail coming off, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to want to deal with pulling teeth. Let's just say that Chris better be done with all of this traveling by the time our kids are dealing with all of that fun stuff.

Monday, April 5, 2010

I'm a SUCKER...and Apparently Just Lame On My Own When It Comes To Buying Things In General

I went to Walgreen's today to buy some Starbucks Frappachinos that I could get for 25 cents and 4 can's of olives that I could get for 2 bucks...OH, and 3 packs of some Pilot Pens that were going to make me $4 in overage...and I left about $36 later with a handful of clearance Christmas presents (yeah, I said Christmas and I know it's like 9 months away...but these things were 50% off!) for the kids AND...this is the part where I'm a sucker...Easter Candy and Toys for the kids! THAT is why I hate shopping with the kids. My mom had this brilliant idea to let the kids use some of their Easter money to pick out something of their own...at the time, I told her that I wasn't going to start that yet because then they'd want to spend all the money they get and I've been putting all of it away in their piggy banks since they were born BUT on this particular day, I KNEW they were going to ask for gum or candy or whatever like they always do, so I decided to give them $2 each of their money. Well, Asher stayed within his budget and Ayris went over by 5 bucks...but seriously, how stupid right?! Especially since they still have like 2 tons of candy to finish as it is...I said no to a lot of things but they kept bargaining...I should say, AYRIS kept bargaining.

As for being lame on my own...I'd like to blame my children's begging and pleading for my obvious case of not being able to say no to things BUT, when I started going through Asher's old clothes, I decided the pile looked like it would have been leftover from like 3 boys...not just one child. And keep in mind...this pile is only 0-24 months...I still have the bigger sizes stashed away...the OTHER thing to keep in mind is that I have donated A LOT of the kids clothes and toys...if I'm not particularly crazy about it, I'll give it away...I only keep the stuff that I thought was really cute on the kids...so with that said...look at this crazy pile:

It looked a lot bigger in person...AND while I'm at it...if you also consider that my children only stay in clothes up to 24 months until they're like 6 months old...that's a lot of clothes for 6 months! Good thing I've only bought baby Collins like 15-20 outfits so far! Looks like I'll have plenty to keep him clothed!

And in other absolutely ridiculous news...I have managed to lose our other cat. I'm too annoyed to go into the story...but I'm crossing my fingers that she's not really lost...and that she's just hiding somewhere.

Etsy Suspender Shorts!

Yea! So, when I found out I was pregnant with Asher, I couldn't wait to get him into some of those old school shorts with suspenders on them...I fell in love with them when I saw this picture of J.F.K.'s little boy in them:


Chris, of course, right away told me that our child would get beat up if he ever wore them...I reminded him that 2 year olds generally don't get beat up by other 2 year olds...they're not usually focusing on what the other kid is wearing! However, I never got around to finding a pair for Asher...and though The Best Dressed Child website has a few, along with Janie and Jack...I don't care to pay 60 bucks for one! Needless to say, I stumbled upon these two gems this morning on Etsy and they are only 10 bucks! I'm assuming they are used since they are called "vintage" and I'm not too crazy about that...but for 50 bucks less, I might just cave. Of course, these would be for the new baby because they are 18/24 month size BUT...What do you think? Super cute, or are you with Chris?


THIS is why I was on Etsy in the first place...I've been watching this little bear hat for a while...it just looks so soft and snuggly...and I've had a paypal credit I've been itching to use...so I finally used it this morning!


That's it...I just wanted to take an opinion poll before I shell out 20 bucks for two pairs of suspender shorts...unless there is someone reading this that knows how to sew =) If so, maybe we could sew a matching set...one for Baby Collins and one for Chris...his birthday IS coming up in September...how fun would that be!!

Another movement video...

Like I said, I was too lazy to get up last night...but he started going crazy again this morning. I resisted grabbing the camera for about 10 minutes but after his nonstop action, I decided I'd get up. This wasn't as crazy as he had been, but you can see movement pretty good in the beginning. I mean, doesn't it just look like he wants out?



Anyone else notice that I'm almost in the 40's??? It's getting close!

Thursday, April 1, 2010

A Few Quotes and Pictures...

A couple of things the kids have said lately...

Ayris: Mom, I'm just going to sit like this, real careful so I don't hurt my toe more.
Mom: Okay, good.
Ayris: Yeah, but when it's all better, I'm going to start doing all of the stupid things that you don't like me doing again.

Good to know. Ayris has been wanting to move the couch cushions to the bottom of the stairs so she can jump from 5-6 stairs up...she's also been jumping off the couches, etc...and I keep telling her that she needs to settle down since she's got this toenail that is hanging on by nothing. Well yesterday, Asher drove over it with his dump truck and it started bleeding everywhere...then at the zoo, it was rolled over by a stroller and then someone stepped on it and it started bleeding again...I'm not sure how it's EVER going to heal, short of purchasing some kids size steel toed boots...but it's good to know that Ayris is already planning in advance all of the "stupid things" she plans on doing once it's all healed.

This was a few weeks ago, but as I was getting out of the shower, I heard Ayris say "Asher! Daddy's home!"...when I walked out, I told Ayris that Daddy wasn't home, to which she replied "I know, I just didn't want Asher bothering me anymore so I told him that Daddy was home" (Anytime Chris gets home, both kids run and hide and then he's supposed to find them...so Ayris, being the smart one that she is, decided she'd just tell Asher he was home, so he'd go hide and leave her alone) =)

And then, Asher, as I was typing this up, just proclaims, "Mom, I'm going to go pee on the couch!"....Um...no you're not buddy, go get on your frog!..."Okay, mom" (with a bit of defeat in his voice)...it was nice of him to give me a heads up though so I could decline his generous offer of allowing me yet another thing to clean up after today. I've got to give the kid props though because twice now, I have caught him wiping up pee on the floor after he's gone potty. If he doesn't hold it down enough, it shoots out and over the toilet...the sucky thing is that I'm not always in the bathroom with him...so I'm not convinced I've caught him each time he's wiped up pee in the bathroom, which...leads me to believe, he's probably had some pee covered fingers poking at my face...or even worse, going into my mouth when we play the "biting fingers" game. YUCK.

Here are a few pictures from the zoo today:

Yes, those are Ayris' pink shoes that he's wearing...had it been up to him, he would have been wearing her pink ballerina underwear as well...he was bummed that his spiderman ones were in the laundry so Ayris' were his second choice...luckily I persuaded him into some lovely spongebob ones! And watering some flower pots outside yesterday...

Not sure what was so funny here...

Posing in the kitchen...

Doesn't it look like they're heading off to their first day of school? Remember when they were babies? Yeah, it's starting to escape me too...sucks. Notice Asher's shoes...one of them is the boy crocs I bought for him and the other is his sisters mary jane crocs...at least he got them on the right feet though!
Ayris decided she wanted the entire page of tattoos put on her back...after seeing them, I told Chris that it wasn't going to bother me when/if the kids got tattoos, to which he responded that of course it wouldn't because it would be hypocritical of me...I told him that had nothing to do with it because I planned on being hypocritical in plenty of other areas...things I might have done in the past or tried but would prefer them not to do.

Sophie unfortunately had what seemed like a hundred knots in her fur so we took her to get shaved...I'm sure she feels MUCH better. And no, I don't normally feed the cat her treats on the kitchen table but I wanted to get some pictures of her and Asher had been sitting and scooting bare butt naked all over the table previously...so it was going to need some washing anyway =)...of which, I will admit, has yet to be done!



And this last picture I just thought was cool because it blurred out Asher's face but made his tiny little fingers crystal clear...

Monday, March 29, 2010

Just A BIT of Complaining and a Bunch of Pictures...

I'm not super excited to be pregnant anymore. I'm tired...I feel like this kid is already about 8 pounds and it doesn't help that he seems to want out as much as I want him to get out. With Ayris and Asher, I remember being uncomfortable with all of their activities on the inside but they rarely were able to make me flinch in pain. This guy seems to seek out random organs and push on them so hard it's painful. Couple that with the fact that I'm pretty sure my entire pelvic girdle could just slide out at any time (if that were possible...I know it's not but it sure feels like it could) and the fact that just rolling from my left to my right side induces all out panting as though I had just worked out for 20 minutes...I'm just kind of over it...and done. LUCKILY, we're almost in April...which means that I only have a good 4 weeks to go before I can start my whining/crying about how my baby has something against me for not getting the heck out of there. I was thinking back to when I was pregnant with Ayris...right around 37 weeks, I found myself crying at my desk on multiple occasions because I thought she was punishing me by staying in there...and I have a friend on facebook who two weekends ago was saying the baby could come any day now and that she figured she'd come that weekend...I never ended up seeing any pictures, so I went to her page and saw that she was only 38 weeks! And here I thought she was at 40 since she was assuming the baby would just come...I think what ruins it for us women whose children seem to think our uterus's are the best things on the planet, are the women who go into labor 3 weeks early with their babies. We get in the mindset that if it can happen to them, it should happen to us...and obviously, I don't think too many pregnant women are in their right mind towards the end...None the less, I feel like in 4 weeks, I can really kick my complaining into gear (lucky Chris! =) and hopefully just talk this little BIG man into making his appearance early. I'd really like to NOT induce at 39 weeks...but in order for that to happen, I need him to decide on his own that he's coming early. That is an interesting fact in itself...it's not the mom's body that decides when to start labor...it's the baby...he/she will send out a signal to start labor...I think that's pretty cool (and cruel at the same time).
Anyway, enough of my complaining. He'll be here in no time and then I'll be wanting to put him back in so my nightly wakings consist of 4, 30 second trips to he bathroom! On to the pictures...I LOVE the colors in this first one...it makes me happy...along with this weather lately!

Here are some shots of Ayris...before and after her little mini facial...


I was trying to get some good shots of the two of them so I could update the main blog picture that is along the top...but unfortunately, Asher is not into taking pictures lately...



Some of these are blurry but I still thought they were cute...









This is Asher "fixing" the bed with his syringe...We got a bunch of syringes when we filled Ayris' antibiotics for her toe and I'm pretty sure Asher has had a syringe in his hand ever since...it's his new favorite thing right now


Ayris took this picture of me...I want you to notice that when laying on my side, my nonexistent boobs are now starting to touch...and it's disgusting. I don't know how women (especially the women in my family who have ridiculously huge boobs) live with those things. I go to bed in a tank top and Chris' boxers and I sweat at night (meanwhile Chris still suits up like an Eskimo at night...he even went downstairs to sleep on Saturday because it was "too cold" in our room)...now that these disgusting things are touching and my only option is to lay on my side, I now have a sweat streak right down the middle of my boobs at night...GROSS!!! Thank goodness they don't touch at any other time aside from laying down...although, another crazy thing happened a month or more back...I was about to get into the shower but decided to go pee first...as I was going, I decided to lean down and pick something up off the floor and freaked myself out thinking there was a spider on my stomach...no, it was just my yuck bigger boob coming in contact with my overgrown belly...that grossed me out too...can you tell I'm not into boobs? I mean, if other people have them, that's fine...but I'd rather not have them myself! At least nothing bigger than an A.
Okay, this next picture is SUPER hot, I know...but I'm posting it because I have decided that going forward, I will be letting Asher take all of my pregnancy photos! I was editing photos on the couch when he picked up my point and shoot camera and took random shots...when I was going through them later, I saw these and noticed that he actually made my big fat self look slightly on the thin side...obviously it was the angle and how my shirt/arms were laying but still...I like it!

He even managed to make my fingers look thin...

Okay, and to recap...the picture below is at 23 weeks I believe? That's when I posted it on the blog anyway...

And this is at 32 weeks.

P.S. Right as I was posting this, I looked over at Ayris and she was pinching her "boobies" because she wanted them to grow bigger like mine...and I asked her if she wanted them like mine or like Grandma Sooner's...and she said Grandma Sooners because she likes how they "hang" and how BIG and CUTE they are. Obviously we're not on board with the same boob philosophy...but there you go Grandma Sooner...as gross as I might think they are, Ayris thinks they're cute...and by the way, she'd like for you to come over and show them to her so she can see if they've grown--no kidding. She just told me that. Feel free to just show her next time she's at your house =)

Thursday, March 25, 2010

A New Day

I am amazed sometimes at how a new day can bring such a renewed sense of everything-is-going-to-be-okay...at the end of yesterday, I was emotionally drained and felt haggard...but this morning is already so much better.

So yesterday...I decided to get the kids hair cut. After an hour and a half of sitting in the salon, I was so over trying to wrangle the kids to sit still and quit spilling water on the floor, etc...but as soon as we left, my mood was lifted because of this gorgeous weather...so it didn't matter...

I should mention that BEFORE going to get the kids haircuts, I had taken them outside to get a few pictures before Ayris was going to chop it all off...as we were coming in, the kids wanted to bring some rocks in with them. I said NO and told them to leave them on the doorstep...that we could go outside once we got home and they could play with them then. And we did...we went back outside later in the afternoon. Again, they asked if they could bring the rocks in. Well remember that mom who commented a while back about saying NO a little less and YES a little more? She should have just stuck to saying NO.

I asked Ayris if I could wash her hair because they had put pink stripes all in it and I wanted it out. While we were doing that, Asher decided he wanted to give his rocks a bath...at which point, Ayris decided she wanted to give her rock a bath. Ayris' rock was about 10 times...maybe more, the size of Asher's little rocks. After bath time, I was getting Asher set up on the bedroom computer to play some PBS games while I dried Ayris' hair...she had asked if she could dry her rock off because it was wet...sure, whatever...no big deal. Until the rock fell from the counter down onto her big toe. Long story short, I took her to the emergency room to get it checked out...after about 2.5 hours of being there, nothing was broken and she only had a surface scratch/tear underneath her big toe (that they finally found after about 45 good minutes of them peeling back her entire toenail) that was causing it to bleed profusely. She was sent home with 10 days of antibiotics and some Tylenol with codeine.

I have decided now, after this night of hell, that it'd be easier to be like that mom on the Chuck E Cheese commercials that sends her kids outside all wrapped in bubble tape to protect themselves. Or better yet...just get something like this for all four kids...

We'll obviously need a bigger house if they're going to be riding around in bubbles.

In all seriousness though...I'm THAT mom who doesn't want her kids skiing or snowboarding, motorcycling, etc...as I'm pretty sure people die doing stuff like that...but Chris of course has always countered those thoughts with the idea that we're going to have to let them try new things...yesterday's incident just goes to show that it's possible for them to hurt themselves even if I were to lock them in the house all day.

These are the parts that suck about being a parent though...as I was laying in bed last night, I was questioning why I wanted 4-5 kids in the first place...its always seemed like a good idea but now it was occurring to me that I was going to have to go through these types of things with not only two children but 4 or 5...and last night, I wasn't sure if my heart could handle that...because I'm honestly convinced at this point that my kids hearts are pretty much tethered tightly to my own. Now that it's a new morning, I'm on board with the fact that, at the very most, her toenail is going to fall off as the new grows out...but last night, I was a mess with the idea that something this horrible had happened to my child. When you're sitting there with a kid who is screaming at the top of her lungs because they were hurting her (when they were giving her shots to numb her toe), it kind of seems like the end of your world. I felt sick and couldn't help but cry right along with her. And of course, there's the part about keeping it together. MY mom was always the one who was supposed to keep it together...when did it become MY turn to keep it together? I personally felt pretty distraught yesterday as the whole thing was going on but apparently, in the eyes of Ayris, I must've been pretty stoic. She asked why Grandma Sooner and Daddy both said "Oh my gosh!" when they heard about her toe (unfortunately both Chris and my mom called while we were driving to the hospital and that stupid car function that makes my phone go through the entire car made Ayris aware of their reactions)...apparently, I never seemed scared to Ayris...I just kept reassuring her that everything was going to be okay and that her toe wasn't as bad as it looked (it totally was nasty looking but she was FREAKING out so I didn't know any other way to calm her down)...none the less, it's nice knowing that even though I personally felt like I was falling apart, Ayris must've thought I was fine.

But again, today is a new day and Ayris is enjoying it. She was served breakfast in bed and thought that was pretty cool in and of itself...I also made her favorites for lunch...hard boiled eggs and jello...and I told her she could pick dinner (She chose KFC because she wants chicken, mashed potatoes and macaroni)...and all day she gets to pick movies that we are watching as a family in her room so she can keep her foot elevated (she could probably walk around but I personally would prefer her not until we change her dressing tonight and see what her toe looks like...it continued bleeding all through her dressing last night and that was 5+ hours after she dropped the rock on it).



I must admit I am feeling guilty for never thinking about devoting a day to each kid before...instead of waiting for something crappy like this to happen...after seeing how much enjoyment Ayris is getting out of it though, I think I may try to make this a weekly thing...maybe make Fridays a kids day...and go every other for each kid...so next Friday would be Asher's day and Ayris' the following, etc...

In some less depressing news, the other day when we were in the car, Ayris just told me out of the blue that when she was a baby in my tummy, she knew she wanted to pick good parents to love her and now that she was out of my tummy, she was glad she had us as her parents. Isn't that so sweet? Of course, this was all before the toe thing! But it's those random comments like that that make the hard days all the more worth it.


Here are some of the pictures that I had gotten yesterday before everything went down...

I LOVE LOVE LOVE how vibrant this scarf is in these pictures...I'm using a trial basis of Lightroom for editing my pictures right now (in addition to the wonderful camera/lens that is allowing for these blurred backgrounds).




Doesn't she look SO grown up?




And this is my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE! What a beautiful girl...seriously, Chris and I did that!!

Asher...not looking ANYTHING like a baby anymore. Boo for growing up babies =(

And these were just some pictures I shot after getting this lens to try out the blurred backgrounds...





Ayris' choice of outfit/head apparel...


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