Testing

Okay, so now I can see if I can start posting images on my blog again..

See why I never post pics of myself? Eww! Oh well, like someone so kindly reminded me, "Cameras never lie!" Gee, thanks! In other words, no that is not a bad picture of you, you just always look that bad. :/

Mom, you have a BIG butt.

Just the other day, I went into the bathroom to prepare a mop bucket. My reigning princess was sitting upon her throne (the porcelain one). I bent over the tub to run the water, rinse the mop, and so on. Apparently my rear-end was right in her line of vision so she had no choice but to inspect it...and come to the conclusion that, "Mom. You have a big butt." I replied, "Yes I do. And you, Miss Izzy, have a small butt." She then said, in her little dramatically wistful whine, "Ohhh Mooom, when I grow up I want to be a mom just like you!" Then a pause, then, "Even if I do have a big butt. That's okay, right?" I said, "Yeah, that part's pretty unavoidable. When you get to be a mom like me, your butt is just going to be big."

An outing

Tonight, I decided it was high time to take a couple of my daughters out after the little kids were tucked in. These two fine young ladies babysit every Tuesday and Thursday night while I and the two oldest girls go to our martial arts class. E has been traveling the past many weeks, otherwise he is here when we go but they still do the majority of the work when we are gone to class.

We had so much fun tonight! We first went through MacD's drive-through and ordered small peppermint hot chocolates for them and a peppermint mocha for me. Mmmmm. We just sat in the parking lot in a toasty warm car, reminiscing. They remembered many things, "Remember when I ran away, Mom?" Me: "Um, which time?" "The time you had to call the cops to help look for me." Me: "Uh...yeah, I think I faintly remember that! Yeah, I very clearly remember that!" Also, "Remember when you climbed up on the roof and put Christmas lights all along the eaves of our house?" Me: "Yup. I remember that. I loved our house that Christmas." Fia: "I so badly wanted to come up there with you!" Me: "Yes, and I remember clearly fearing you would. You were a kind of fearless little gal." Fia: "Remember when Dad made you hot chocolate while you were up there?" Me: "Yes. And I scooted over along the roof to that skinny kitchen window and you guys handed out the hot chocolate. Then we drank our hot chocolate together, me outside the window, you guys inside. It was a very chilly evening and my hands were really cold. That hot chocolate was perfect!" Fia: "I so badly wanted to climb out that window and come up on the roof with you and help you with the lights." Me: "Yes, and I remember clearly fearing you would. I half expected to see you climbing out that window once you realized you could. And I remember you begging Dad to come out there."

Then, we took off for a little drive around town. We ended up slowly lally-gagging through this most amazing, idyllic neighborhood with houses that look like giant dollhouses and wonderfully landscaped front patches of yard...almost every house with a darling set of porch rockers or porch chairs on their beautiful porches. So then we dreamed of getting either into a larger house or a place with some acreage to roam...and to have a dog...and chickens...and gardens...and apple orchards. Mmmm, dreaming!

Onward to talk of IF we get another puppy, a Golden Retriever/Husky mix. They are called Goberians, I think. From what I read later, they would be very, very good personality dogs for small children, all people, other animals, etc. THey just require very good exercise or they can be very hyper. We plan to have it as a running companion and a sled puller in our yard in the winter, just to give it "work" to do (pull kids in sleds). We dreamed, we schemed, we planned, we plotted. Mmmmm, dreaming! :)

Then we came home to nearly everyone, including the big girls, sleeping!

What a good outing!

Out of the mouths of....Princesses!

Izzy (lying on the bathroom floor as I was getting ready to go to our martial arts class): blah, blah, blah...lying...blah, blah. And you can't lie, right? Cause that's hell, right? When you lie, that's called hell...right?

Me, suddenly tuning in: Uh...oh, you mean lying is a sin, right?

Izzy: Yeah, it's a sin...and blah, blah, heaven, blah, blah, you can burn there, right?

Me: Oh, you mean if you go to hell instead of heaven, you could burn there. Yup.

Izzy: And there's that Level that lives there. It's that Evil Level guy that lives there, right?

Me: Yup. It's that Evil Level that lives there....

End of Discussion

Someone had a deep discussion with her, I guess.

Well, what do you know?

I'm on a roll. Two days in a row of blogging. I think I will give myself a Diligence Award!

What can I say about today? Hmmm...we currently have some logs being sawed by a few people in this house. I do wish I could join them. I am tired.

Well, tomorrow is going to be a busy day, like usual for Thursdays. I guess it will even be busier than usual. We have PT for Baby at 1pm. That means we need to have this house in presentable shape by then. THat can be a feat in itself. We also need to work a little harder on some of the exercises with her because I don't want the PT to feel like it's a waste of her time to be coming out here.

Also, we have our usual Ao Denkou Jitsu class at 5 but tomorrow night I need to pick up sparring equipment for our karate class and help run the beginners' class as well as our intermediate/advanced class that our girls are in. That means I miss ADJ again....but am still running the girls there, dropping them off and a sis-in-law will pick them up afterwards. From there, I run to another town close to ours, pick up the gear and paperwork, and run to the town we have karate in, set up, run the two classes, get the paperwork together afterwards to send with one of the adult students that lives near our main instructor...

Then off to bed so I can get up early FRiday morning for work....I have a 12 hour shift Friday. Then I'm off for the weekend! :)

Well, I'm being beckoned to help go through some pics my oldest is going to edit.

Ta-da!

Oops! I forgot!

I was supposed to blog every day! I've probably thought about it every day but never realized so many days have slipped by since I blogged last.

Hmmm, so much goes on in this life but when I sit down to write about it, my mind flat-lines.

I was knocked down flat the other night and all day yesterday due to a stomach ailment of unknown origin. None of my kids were sick so that should rule out any tummy bug 'cause I just don't get sick unless I've had all 8 kids rotate through some nasty bug 3 times each, taking turns at it for a week straight, ill with ill symptoms day and night...then finally, after enduring all that goes with tending to children that are ill with ill symptoms, not sleeping a wink for 168 days (as it would add up if each of the 8 children was ill for a week straight then repeated the rotation 3 times..), I finally collapse and get ill, with ill symptoms myself...Since all THAT didn't happen, I wonder if it was a food-borne illness.

It. was. horrible. To say the least. I woke up at about 1:something a.m. with knife-like stomach pain that would double me over. I went to the bathroom and emptied my insides of a pure-water-like-substance...multiple times... I went to lie down for a bit only to have to make a run again for the bathroom. By this time E was up, getting ready to run out the door to the airport for his 4th week in a row work trip. He sat and rubbed my back as I was lying on the couch, groaning, then holding my breath, then groaning, curled up in a ball as wave after wave of knife slices went through my stomach.

Well, to make my long story short, I was curled up in a ball all day yesterday, sleeping, groaning and sitting on the toilet.

Today proved to be a much better day, provided I didn't try push my luck and eat a tiny dabbling of ice cream (that brought on the knife pains again, just not as severe).... I sat out of my martial arts class and watched and learned (a lot, I might say) from the sidelines since I was so wiped out and still had water-like stool throughout today.

That's all I have to say about my stool-laced adventures! :)

Our house is a disaster zone! BUT, I've finally decided that, since it's gotten considerably worse since I've started working again but our finances have finally started to get considerably better, so that we are finally getting caught up again after 2 months of me working again...I'd much rather be losing control of the house than losing the house due to lack of finances. This is a much better option. AND, guess what! I work ALL day shifts now!!! Can you believe after all those years of working nights, I work days? I just got onto that schedule where I work every Friday, 7a-7p and every other Saturday and Sunday, 7a-7p. Then, I have another client that has 8 hour shifts that has many openings every week that I can pick up shifts with the weeks that E's work in slow and he's in town. So, as much as I resisted going back to work, it's actually going pretty well...the kids seem to understand that it's essential and are being pretty good about doing their jobs while I'm gone too. It's just that certain tasks, like dishes and laundry are my jobs while they pretty much cover the rest of the main living area...so my jobs, if E isn't around, get left undone. Usually E is home Fridays, so that's why I've chosen to work them. Then he can help with the homeschooling a bit, although I try to plan most of our work M-TH, with Fridays being independent work day...I assign them Math and then whatever they need to catch up on...usually handwriting and maybe Science.

Homeschooling has been getting more and more random, which makes me nervous at times, but at the same time, I notice a lot of the informal stuff we do has actually lots of learning laced into it. And the girls seem to be loving it and I see a big inner shift in a lot of them when we are homeschooling. Very good character building, self-motivation, leadership skills, self-discipline, super good interpersonal skills have been developed between all of them....all those good things that they actually work on in school. And this is in a very natural, real-life situation where emotions and tempers can oftentimes run high and uninhibited, unlike in a school setting, where most nice kids are on company-behavior mode (and not-so-nice kids aren't).

I've seen a lot of maturing and confidence develop in these guys. And we still have a lot of time to cram in the academics once the snow flies...which we tend to do.

Well, now, off to bed.

The End

This is it! I'm going to blog EVERY day!

Well, I will try to anyway! :) I got woken up this morning by little J, crying and thrashing and so on, at about 4:something a.m. He fussed and thrashed off and on until I finally got out of bed at 5:something a.m., then he quit! He was feeling cramped in MY bed with ME in it I guess!

E is out of town and all of us last night could NOT get our beloved Izzy to sleep after hours of trying. She, as a result, kept the other Littles awake with her noise, and her whispering, and her restlessness. I finally gave up thinking I will stay up late and clean...and tucked the Twins (Izzy and Yodie) in bed by me. Well, I guess there were too many in our bed for Yodie's liking so I had to go! And, I figured, that was fine 'cause now I could clean in a peaceful house....except the minute I start cleaning in a peaceful house, my rustling wakes the Littles up again, no matter what time it is. I decided I would find a quiet activity to do so they wouldn't wake up. THat can't include sweeping, cause they are all sleeping downstairs and you can hear even a crumb crawling up here from down there. I decided I would wash walls...but first need to look up dimensions on a cabinet from Ikea....started reading a blog, and decided it's time I blog again. Well, in my defense, it IS a quiet activity....and not one Little has woken up! :)

Yesterday we had troubles with a syrup jug. We buy almost all foods in bulk now. Including syrup, of course. Well, I opened one of the huge jugs of syrup on Monday morning. Tuesday morning I was juggling jugs of milk around the "milk shelf" in the fridge to try make them all fit and then put the syrup on the front of that shelf, hoping no one would knock it out of the fridge the next time someone came to get milk. Well, I'm sure you can guess what happened! About 5 minutes later, someone went to get milk and knocked the syrup onto the floor. That's no biggie usually, except this time I heard a bit thud, then a, "OH NO!" and a, "Quick, Mom! I need help!" I went in to see one of the big girls holding up the jug of syrup that now was sporting a large gash across the middle of it....syrup just chugging onto the floor. We got it to chug for a bit into a large bowl, then escorted it to the sink, where it continued to chug. BIG cleanup job ensued. Well, The Syrup Story Part II: We went to Ao Denko Jitsu (I KNOW I spelled that wrong but am too lazy to get up and see how it's spelled on my certificate) class, came back and walked into the kitchen to have my feet STICK, STICK, STICK to the floor....my slippers were staying on the floor with each step! That syrup jug had gotten left in the sink and one of my babysitters that had stayed home was kindly doing her dishes turn, took the jug out, walked absent-mindedly around the kitchen trying to find a spot on the counters to put the big jug, not realizing that the whole time she was walking, the jug was emptying onto the floor.....and the mopping job that ensued! ANd she was home dealing with our highest maintenance kids at the time...I don't blame her for not getting all the stickiness. I mean, I had to super-slop-mop it about 4 times before that layer of stickiness came up...and still there are little spots of stickiness my slippers are finding this morning!

Well, that's the end of my story telling!

Do You Love Your Children Even?

This was the random question of the day, asked so nonchalantly of her father by our Princess Izzy G. E looked at her with amusement and just as nonchalantly answered, "Of course I do...Do you love your parents?" Izzy looked at him blankly, batted her eyes, and asked, "What are those? I don't even know what they are." E begin explaining, "Dad is your parent, Mom is your parent..." "..and Molly is too?" she asked.

Apparently her big sister is in the same ranks as her other parents! :)

As I came in the house after karate last night, Izzy was waiting for me. "Mom, while you were gone I was sad and I had tears and blurry eyes....(and when I had no immediate response)...Do you want to know why I was sad and had tears and blurry eyes?" I said, "Yeah, tell me why you were sad!" She said, "I was sad 'cause Hillukka Dorothy died and I missed her and wanted her to come to our house again and 'cause the marks wouldn't come off (gesturing to marks all over her arms from markers).." Wondering why she had said she wanted "Hillukka Dorothy", to come to our house again, when she hadn't ever been here before, I asked her, "Have you seen her here before at our house (thinking maybe she was mixing her up with someone else)?" She said, "No. And neither have you. Right? 'Cause she's never been here before." *Just in case someone reading this doesn't know, she's referring to my mom, who died when I was 8 years old...I'm not sure why she refers to her "Hillukka Dorothy"...I've never heard anyone else call her that before.*

Last night: Izzy started writing her name and as she wrote each letter, they got bigger and bigger...Finally, she just sighed with a big huff to Molly and said, "Molly, I just HATE this pencil! It won't let me write small!"

The other day: Izzy and Molly again...Izzy, writing with a pencil in her workbook, "Molly, I don't like this pencil! It keeps dryin' out!" (the lead was really dull and wouldn't write on one side) Molly, "Go show Mom!" Izzy, "Can she fix it?" Molly, "Go ask her!" She came running downstairs and said, "Mom! I need you to fix this! It keeps dryin' out!" I just grabbed her a new pencil and said, "Here, try this one!" She ran back upstairs and Molly asked her, "Did Mom fix it?" Izzy, "She gave me a new one, with flowers on it!"

Today, drawing pictures in her notebook: "Mom...do you want to know what I'm drawing?" I said, "Yup!" She said, "See? Here's a picture of me in a photocopy with a dress on, with a lollipop and an ice cream cone and really cute hair...." (not sure what a photocopy is in her mind) :)

Testing, Testing, 1-2-3

I haven't blogged for so long, I have to check if I still know how!

I've had an eventful while now. In the beginning of May I signed up for this twice/week boot camp with a friend, Kathy, to whip myself back into shape since I hadn't so much as taken a walk since my baby had been born. There are 8 classes per month. I made it faithfully to the first 5 in May, then for some reason or another, missed the last 3. I was SO bummed!

Well, I decided in June I'll make another go at it and combining this class with Weight Watchers, I will be sure to have a good start to a very sound and healthy life...I made it to the first 2 classes, then my baby got very sick for a week straight. She had very high fevers that kept me up day and night....not straight but I was up so often at night I hardly felt like I slept. During the course of that week, I noticed that I started to have plugged milk ducts on the right side but was able to unplug them here and there with hot packing nursing. Soon I had some red streaking but that would nearly go away when the ducts would unplug. Finally, on Sunday, I realized that the severe aches and pains I had been feeling for awhile were the signs of an impending infection. That night I began burning with fevers and the next morning I called an OB doc to get started on antibiotics.

Long story short: the fevers kept up in the 103's mostly, up to 104, despite the fact I kept myself continuously medicated with Advil and Tylenol round the clock. Finally, Tuesday night I became severely nauseated and began the slow road to dehydration and starvation (or so it felt like) due to the inability to eat or drink anything. By Wednesday, I called the doc and they said it's time to be seen...I, from there, got sent to the hospital and stayed in there through the following Sunday. I didn't respond to IV Vancomycin, which is very strong. So, the oral antibiotic failed, the first IV antibiotic failed....I didn't have an elevated white count, the right side wasn't even warmer than the left, although it was flaming red, swollen, etc. It got the OB doc in the hospital thinking it could be breast cancer. She got a breast surgeon involved, who also said that breast cancer can present in a way similar to breast infection. I had a breast biopsy Saturday morning, which was negative for cancer *whew*.

So, needless to say, I haven't been able to participate in my boot camp all month after the first two classes. I have been so bummed but what do you do? I've lost weight but also muscle mass and such. I'll have to just focus on keeping my nutrition where it should be and when my strength is back, I'll begin working out again!

A Royal Update: The Princess...

The other day at the park:





Dad: (as Izzy is struggling with the button on her sweater) Here, let me help you with that.





Izzy: No. I can do it myself.





Dad: Just let me help you.





Izzy: No. I can do it myself.





Dad: Come on. Just let me help you with that. I can button that for you.





Izzy: *Sigh* Oh-kay. Why do you like me so much?





Dad: 'Cause you're my daughter!





Izzy: *nose wrinkled* I'm not a daughter! I'm a Princess!





Izzy, sitting on the toilet: chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter **toot** " 'scuse me.." chatter, chatter, chatter *toot...tooooot* " 'scuse me. 'scuse me." chatter *toot* " 'scuse me. Um. That's okay if I fart on the toilet, right? 'Cause I say, ' 'Scuse me' ".





Me, almost snorting with laughter: "Um. Yes. It's perfectly fine to fart on the toilet. Even if you don't say, ' 'Scuse me.' 'Cause that's just what you do on the toilet. But that's very polite of you to excuse yourself on the toilet. Those kind manners show me that you really are a princess!" *still stifling a snort*





This morning in church:

Me, trying to distract a very tired and ornery little Izzy: Hey. I have to tell you a little story. That is, if you want to hear one.

Izzy: struggle, struggle....struggle...then still

Me: K, ready? See Pete sitting right there? You know, your uncle Pete...Katie's Pete?

Izzy: looking in Pete's direction, nodding very slightly

Me: Did you remember that your uncle Pete is my brother? Kinda like Jo-di is your brother? As a matter of fact, Pete is about a year younger than me, kinda like Jo-di is about a year younger than you. And you know what? Pete got bigger than me when we were still pretty young, just a little older than you and Jo-di are now....just like I tell you that your little brother soon may be bigger than you. And you know what? Pete and I were friends. We did fight sometimes, like you and your brother do, but mostly we were just friends. And guess what! Since we were friends when we were little, and since I was nice to him when we were little, he was so nice to me when we were older. Just like I tell you that Jo-di will be nice to you when you are older if you are nice to him now. Pete would fix my bike if I needed him to, he would help me if someone was mean to me...
..AND, guess what! Pete is still my brother. And, he is still my friend...

Izzy: ...and he still fixes your bike?

Me: again, stifling a laugh: Uh..well, he would still fix my bike if I needed him to. I mean, now your dad fixes my bike but I know Pete would still fix my bike if I needed him to!

Midnight Madness!

Last night I had to bring one of the girls to Target, then Walmart, to get a couple of items for a field trip she is going on from tomorrow until Friday. I also had to get a couple things for Baby that I've been putting off getting 'cause it's so hard to take her out still. So off we went with Baby and a couple others along as well. First stop: Target!

When we left Target, I suddenly got hit by a severe stomach ache. The kind that feels like you are going to throw up any minute. I think I was suffering Chocolate Toxicity 'cause I had eaten an excessive amount of chocolate that had been kindly left in my basket from the Easter Bunny. Well, we trotted off to Walmart and then on to home. It was already nearly midnight and I still had Baby's diaper to change, a few night diapers to get on, or have someone else do, a neb to give to my baby, nurse her, get myself ready, and such...

Well, after finishing most of my duties and on my way over to throw a blanket over one of the younger kids, who had fallen asleep on the couch while I was gone, I noticed she didn't have a night diaper on yet. At the same time, I was struck by a sudden, severe cramping in my stomach and knew I had to get to the bathroom. I threw the blankets on the sleeping one on the couch, crossed my fingers she wouldn't pee while I was in the bathroom, and ran. I finished up pretty quickly, grabbed a diaper, went out to put it on her and saw a fresh, huge wet puddle on the couch. I just cringed and woke her up to strip down while I began to remove blankets, start washing up the couch and send her in another direction to sleep so I could let the couch dry overnight.

I washed my hands again, got fresh blankets, threw wet ones in the tub to wash in the morning, and tucked in....only to see Baby's oxygen saturation level drop from the lowest they want her to be, at 90%, to the upper 80's. I was SO exhausted and felt SO sick that I tried first to just get her to shift around, which would hopefully make her wake up enough to draw deeper breaths and get her sats up again. For the next hour, from 12:45 a.m. to 1:45 a.m., I would drop to sleep, only to be harshly awoken to the alarm of her desat'ing...push "silence" button, wiggle her, fall asleep, and jolt awake again to the "beep-beep-beep-beep!!!" of the alarm!!!

I finally realized her sats were just sitting at 89% without going up and when it would drop, it was going down to 84% or so. I got up, got her oxygen tank set up (switching the gauge from an empty tank to full one, checking the level, get tubing on it), got her little cheek patches ready on the nasal cannula, and then had to get them set up on her without her whipping her head around and rubbing them off kilter with her fists (she hates wearing them). I managed all this, got her oxygen started and to a flow that brought her back to mid-90's, and tucked back in...only to be hit again by horrible stomach cramping.

Back to the bathroom...then on to get a cup from the kitchen for use for stomach content...back to bed....back up again seconds later, puking. Finally, some relief from the stomach ache!!!

Back to bed finally after being up about an hour....only to hear our young son wake up screaming, then his pounding feet coming down the hallway to find me. I pulled him into bed with me, got tucked in again, only to have him spy my puke cup and insist on having a drink of water. I hustled back out to the kitchen and got him some water and Cheez-Its, since I figured he was probably a bit hungry too (I knew he probably fell asleep without anyone that was at home with him making sure he got a snack before sleeping). He finally settled in about 10 minutes later.

A short while later, Izzy woke up crying and came to find me. I got her tucked in by me too and finally got to sleep about 3:45 a.m., in time to hear my hubby's alarm clock starting to beep. I passed out...only to be woken up by E about 4:15 a.m., letting me know he was leaving to work, then on a trip for the week.

Next wake-up call came at about 6 a.m. or so from my baby, needing to eat. I got her settled back in again about 20 minutes before having to start getting my school girls up!

Needless to say, I pretty much got nothing done today until this evening...now I'm finally getting some cleaning done with some of my middle girls.

Whew! Sometimes you have to wonder if you'll ever make it through all this!!! :P

But, I'm actually pretty surprised how good I feel finally...no hint of stomach flu or anything...only a trace of a headache left. Now, only hoping that my kids will go to bed early tonight!

Morning Izzies...

Morning started out with me peeling my eyes open to Izzy pounding Yodi on top of his head. I scolded her severely as he howled. She left with a royal frown, not to be seen again. Yodi and I ate breakfast and then went wandering down to the bedrooms to start stirring the household up a little. Izzy was just on her bed looking at a book, so as we were leaving the bedroom, she came cruising after us. Yodi did a little fast trot to get out of her way. I'm sure she was thinking he was afraid of another pounding so she quickly assured him, "I'm just going to the bathroom and then I'm going to get my Morning Dress on!" Sure enough, she went bathroom, went down to retrieve her Snow White princess dress, came up with it on a hanger, stared it up and down, and declared, "I don't like this dress, Mama!" I looked up and said, "Oh. Should I put the collar back on? Then will it be better?" She scowled and said, "No. I still won't like it. Even with the collar on." She stomped back downstairs and found another beautiful dress and came back up again, "Should I just wear this one again, Mama?" It was one she had taken off yesterday. She is just a princess, through and through, just like all little girls her age, I'm sure!

Baby has finally been baptized!

Well, Baby is six months old and FINALLY is baptised! We were supposed to have a joint baptism with E's sister's and her husband's new baby but our little lady ran a low-grade temp yesterday and, that, combined with the fact we had two other kids run temps earlier in the week, we thought that it was probably best not to take a chance and get her baby sick.

Some funnies this week: Izzy tells me, as I was lying next to her on the couch, hoping she would fall asleep so I could keep cleaning the basement: (as she was rubbing my eyes lightly) "That's okay if you fall asleep...'cause you're the Queen!!!" Yes, my dear dolly. I like that mentality! Now if any of the other kids ever question any of my commands in the future, instead of saying, "Because I'm the Mom, that's why!" I will say, "Because I'm The Queen, that's why!"

Last weekend, after we came home from the homeschool conference we attended a few hours away, and picked up kids from various places, our Princess Izzy flounced out of the van, pigtails swinging, and announced, "I feel like I'm never gonna cry again!" What a cute way of saying she is just that happy! We know we weren't the only ones who had a marvelous weekend! She and her cousins are Princesses and they had a royal blast together for the weekend! :)

And, the other night while we were celebrating our little guy's second birthday, Izzy announced to anyone who was interested, "Hey! Hey, I'm not three anymore! Hey, you guys. I'm not three anymore, it's not my birthday! I'm not three anymore 'cause it's someone else's birthday now!"

My Life...

I keep trying to wait until I have a minute or 30 to sit down and post a right proper post, one that has a title, a purpose, a direction. Now, I don't consciously think of it that way but I know myself well enough to know that is basically what I am waiting for. Well, if I wait for all that to happen, I might as well never plan to blog again. So here it is, quick, to the point, and with no real sense of direction whatsoever. Last night: Rocked baby to sleep in the bedroom, came out about 9:30pm to start chasing the rest of the little urchins to bed, only to find my sweet little Princess Belle (3 y.o.) standing there looking at me and explaining, "Um, Mom. I peed AND I spilled my milk." I look beyond her to see a puddle the size of Lake Superior of pee and another the size of Lake Michigan of milk. I veered straight into the bathroom for papertowel and straight back out to wipe up the mess, only to see my 2 y.o. boy running through the puddles on his way back from running through it a millisecond before. In other words, I saw two sets of his tracks going through all this wetness! This morning, after 2 poopy diaper changes of my young son's and hearing my infant daughter loading her second diaper of the morning, I hear my Sweet Princess Belle squealing in distress. I turn to see a few hard balls of poop hit the floor, following closely by diarrhea. The beauty: we have no carpet, so it landed on linoleum and hardwood. The unbeauty: the liquidy stuff also landed on the small, 1" gap between the linoleum and hardwood of subflooring...yeah, that stuff that isn't exactly non-porous. Yeah. So, I grabbed her very quickly, after depositing Infant Daughter into a (now feverish) daughter's arms (then I didn't realize she was sick...and, mmmm, Infant Daughter really shouldn't be getting sick for fear of hospitalization...oh, I never blogged about that but she's been hospitalized 3 times since beginning of Feb.), ran her to the toilet, ran back out to Young Son running through the diarrhea! That's my life. Oh, and as I'm blogging about it all, I still children up. At 12:45 am. Why? I don't know. I would ask them but I don't think they would know either. So, I will just sign off and go to bed. =)

Well Child Check

So, an addendum to my previous post:

I had noticed with my baby that since birth she had a really low-pitched cry. Then I began to notice that she sometimes struggled to get air...kind of like her airway would stick when she tried to draw air in. This is normal right in the first few days or week or so after birth but when she was about 3 1/2 weeks old, I noticed it really noticeably and felt like it should be resolved by then, or at least getting better.

This has been noticeable to me and when I ran it by a sister (Kristin), she seemed to agree that she seemed to be struggling a bit (right? if I remember right...at least you agreed that I should have her checked if I was noticing this issue). Then just before her well-child check, a cousin saw her for the first time and almost right away after taking her in her arms, asked if it was her normal cry to cry so quietly and also that she seemed to have pretty poor neck control and also seemed to be so uncomfortable or unhappy for some reason.

Well, at her check-up 2 days later, I asked the pediatrician about this. As she was examining her, she noticed what I was talking about (although, of course, she wasn't half as bad as she sometimes could get with the struggling to get a breath). She said that this condition is called tracheomalacia. It can be quite normal for babies to have and they typically outgrow it within a few months. It's just a softer, "flappy" airway. Most babies have a stiffer airway but some have a bit of an underdeveloped trachea that can then make the airway floppy when they especially are upset, eating, congested, or lying on their backs...seems to get better if on tummy or upright.

Long story short, it doesn't seem to be anything to worry about typically. I spoke with a pediatrician in church this morning too and she said that she's only once had a patient they had to trach for the condition to improve. All others that she's seen with this condition eventually outgrow this.

I looked it up also online on a site that my cousin sent me and it looks like some things to watch them a little closer on is when they are congested or have upper respiratory infections...these can more easily develop into pneumonia on babies with this condition.

So, hopefully she will get better all the time until she no longer has to struggle at all. When she's calm though, she really is fine and doesn't have to work at all at breathing...it's just when she gets upset or sometimes when she's nursing that it gets a little worrisome for me.

Alright, on to bed!!! :)

Baby's doing better...

She's been such of a fussy baby so finally, when I went to the chiropractor on Monday, I asked her to check her out. I had her gently adjust our 3 y.o. when she was such of a fussy one and it seemed to help so I thought I don't have anything to lose at least.

She said that her pelvis was twisted as well as her spine and one shoulder, just normal birth trauma. After one adjustment, she was much better. After the second adjustment, she was a different baby!

This baby has been one that requires almost constant holding, day and night. Now, she can nap for a couple hours during the day, even when awake she is content and just looks around and smiles and coos. Of course, not always, but so, so much more than before.

Just a minor detail, as I began typing this, she began crying and of course found her way to me, via a big sister's arms. Needless to say, I can't really concentrate on this too well with her crying at my elbow! She's hungry! :)

She also is pooping and burping so much better than before. The chiropractor told me, as she was adjusting her, that she was crinked up in her GI area.

Well, since she needs me, I better go. She also had a well check Tuesday, which I have to write about, but.....

Later!