A Couple Videos of the Older Girls

Gigi is in maroon almost on the end.  What cracks me up about this video is her and the two girls beside her are all within just a few months of age and they are so different in height.  They also happen to both be the daughters of cops.  What can I say, we live in a cop neighborhood!

When Your Mom Only Gave You Three Sisters You Improvise

The hardest part of living in the Midwest for me is the isolation I feel from being so far away from my family.  My sister and I talk about this often, how nice it would be when we were having a bad day to just go and sit with each other.  To be able to take our kids to each others houses and just let them play when we need a break.  It would be great for us and I think it would be great for them as well.  As it stands now we get to physically be in the same room once a year but thanks to apple and a little program called facetime our kids can see each other whenever they want.  Which is awesome, and yes the kids love it!  

 We got a ton of snow last night, a ton, and it is still snowing this morning.  At first the kids were excited and went out to play, but the novelty of a late march snowstorm soon wore off and they came back in to play.  We pulled out some dress ups.  Poor Captain E, when you mom only gives you three sisters you have to improvise to get your Mario. We put Cheetah in a padded lady bug costume to be our little mushroom but we couldn't keep her still for pictures and she wouldn't leave the hat on that Captain E made her.  Oh well.  Viva Mario!

Natural Born Tapper

This year we put Peach in dance.  It is Saturday and because Dr. J is always working I have to take all four kids with me.  Gigi and Captain E spend their time running around with other kids, watching the big ballerinas through the window, commenting on when Peach isn't behaving, and squabbling.  Tiny T is not surprisingly much more of a handful.  Recently I've just come to sitting in the hall with her and watching her walk back and forth.  Today while Peach was in ballet through a series of head shakes, pointing, and grunts Tiny T asked me to put Peach's tap shoes on her, and then she was off.  She headed right over to the hard surface floor and started stomping.  What do you think, do I have a natural born tapper or what?

Bunk Bed Ladder

This weekend Dr. J and I put the girls bed up into the bunk.  They've been begging us to do it ever since they  saw their cousins bed was in a bunk and I figured it would be good prep for the step of moving Miss Cheetah out of our room and into theirs.  I knew the ladder was going to be a problem eventually but I didn't realize it would be a problem immediately.  Then I came into the room and found all three girls on the top bunk.  "How did SHE get up here?" I asked the two oldest.  "She climbed," they told me.  But I was a bit skeptical.  So I decided to film it.  Turns out she did climb.  Silly little baby.  15 months old and she is such a tiny tornado (12 months if you still are using her adjusted age :( )

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My Baby Brother

My family is full of music lovers.  I've been at home when everyone has just broken into popped up versions of Phantom of the Opera or operatic versions of the newest Maroon Five.  Mostly we're just goofy about it and while it is a true a few of us have done some choir or dance here or there and my brother David was in one musical, for the most part we just keep it to our little family unit (The one exception is mom who has sung in Choirs our whole lives).  Untrained, informal  and much more fun are we.  A couple of years ago my brother started playing the guitar.  When I came home for Christmas my mother insisted he play for me the new song he'd written.  So he just started in on it while we were finishing up the last of Christmas Eve dinner.  Typical older sister style I wasn't prepared for the fact that I was going to like it.  In fact that I'd like it a lot.  So after he'd sung about thirty seconds I started frantically looking for my phone, because I wanted to capture the moment when I realized I'd totally underestimated him.  Then half way through I realized I'd left my dumb headphones in, so at second 49 you hear when I pull them and the sound gets a little more clear and you can get a an idea of just how nice his voice is.  Some of my favorite bits of this video, captain E photo bombing at 1:10, my mom's random dancing while eating dinner, she was trying to get Cheetah to dance while I was actually film on her.  My brother Danny acting goofy but then getting embarrassed.  My sister Fleebles acting like a drunk chick and my brother-in-law Johnny licking that spoon.  The photo quality is horrible, and he's probably going to kill me when he finds out I posted this but I just loved it so much.  David I'm so impressed with where your life is going right now.  You are having fun and living the dream out in San Francisco and I'm so proud of you.  And to all the rest of my family, I love you so much.  When I saw Dan in Real Life I thought, man I want to have a family like that, but the funny thing is I do have one.  That's probably why I loved it so much because we are the type of people that would sing a song about a girl with a pig nose.  You guys are the best!

A Mother's Intuition

Three days ago the girls started running a fever. It was low grade, just over 101.  We choose not to do anything about it except keep them home, keep them hydrated, and keep them comfortable while we waited for it to run it course.  Early this morning though Petite Sweetie woke up in a horrible mood.  She was screaming.  She refused to nurse, which for her is a big deal, major comfort nursers here.  She kept banging her head on me or rubbing it on the sheets.  Later when we got up and I put her down on the ground I noticed that her balance was especially bad.  She would stand but then stumble a few steps.  It made me wonder if she had an ear infection.  We have an Otoscope but of course it was not currently charged, and the doctor in the house was on his way out the door.  So like every other person on the planet I had to wait until 8:30 office hours to call the pediatrician.  At 10:30 we were there.  I told the nurse what was going on and she said, "Hmm, sounds like she's having night terrors."  Alright nurse, thanks for you opinion.  The doctor came in, took one look, sure enough it is an ear infection.  Poor baby girl!  This is only the second my kids have ever had.  The last one happened about three years ago to Gigi.  We didn't even realize she was sick until her ear drum burst.  Way to go parents!  It makes sense now why Rosie has been so hard to comfort.  I had an ear infection once when I was flying home from college.  It hurt so bad on the plane I was crying.  I couldn't for the life of me figure out why no one else had tears in their eyes.  Go figure.  Anyway crossing our fingers this clears up soon.  I don't know what I'm going to do if I have to go through another night of baby slamming her head into my face.  Poor baby, but poor mommy as well.  In her happier moments today I caught this little video.  She loves the dishwasher.  She is also a climber.  Definitely is her father's daughter when it comes to temperament.  If you look real close you can see her shake her head no at me.  She does that all the time when she doesn't like what I'm saying :)

Preemie Life - Day 42 Five Week Old Video

So I can say that my daughter definitely does not like to sleep during the hours of nine and midnight...which would probably be ok if I wasn't trying to get at least a little sleep in there to make up for all the crazy driving around I do.  Last night I spent most of my night sleeping in the hospital recliner....I'm thinking this is going to be a must have for this little one.  Tonight for our Advent Activity we are going to the ward party, and then I'm heading off to the hospital.  Just a week left of this crazy schedule and then Davy will be gone and Dr. Daddy will be on night shift and it will be Christmas and the kids still won't be allowed in her room and this schedule won't work anymore.  I was really stressed about it.  Like, she had to get it right this week and next and come home because I just couldn't let this happen.  And then I just let it go.  You know ideally she would and I'd bring her home and my kids Christmas vacation would be a dream of just hanging out in the house with the whole family.  But I realized it is up to Cheetah and I can't force her, beg her, or really do anything to help this along and so I just had to let it go.  I'm doing the crazy schedule this week and next to give her the best chance but if it doesn't work and she has to go on the bottle and she doesn't come home for Christmas and I can't go and see her nearly so much, well it is just going to have to not be the end of the world.  There is one month until her due date and I have to hope that for sure she'll be home by then.  

Preemie Life - Day 13

Today I watched them pull the PICC out of Cheetah's head.  The worst part, getting the tape off her hair.  Apparently they used to shave preemie heads before they put the lines in.  Then when they pulled the line the babies had a nice little bald spot.  Heaven forbid they have to do more then one line, apparently some kids got a little patchy.  Now they leave the hair on, which works out fine until you have to pull it out.  Kelly the nurse practitioner told me, "You are totally welcome to stay, but I am going to warm you, she will cry."  I asked if it hurt to pull the PICC.  She said, "Nope, it is the hair pulling that get's the kids.  We have stuff to loosen the glue from the hair, but there is always a little pulling.  I'll go get some sugar water to make it go down a little easier."  And I just had to laugh because isn't it funny how from birth on we are taught that food makes everything a little more tolerable.  I can attest to the fact that I've been consuming more than my fair share of deserts.  It is hard to feel guilty though when you are under this kind of stress.  I'm down 16lbs since Cheetah's birth though so sugar consumption is probably the only place I am up.  Cheetah definitely cried during the hair pulling, but the pulling of the PICC itself took less then a second and didn't get a single cry out of the girl.  Then Kelly covered her head with iodine and as she rubbed it off Cheetah fell into a deep sleep.  The girl reminds me of myself.  Cry yourself out over the initial pain and then fall asleep exhausted, so deeply that maybe when you were eleven when your baby sister and you locked yourselves out of the house, and you broke your arm, your sister told your mom she thought you were dead because you were sleeping so soundly in the lawn chair she couldn't rouse you for hours.  Anyway I'm excited for the PICC to be gone.  One less thing coming out of my daughter's body, one more step toward normal, healthy, one more step toward coming home.