Who Can Tell Whose Baby Is More Content?

You can all shout, "Me! Me!" As evidenced by a sudden flurry of postings! :) She is much more content now, although she does still spit up volumes at times! She still spits up a lot but maybe not as much as before. She is finally taking pretty good naps once to twice a day and sleeps much better at night! Yay!!!

photos compliments of Miss Greta...pretty good action shot of her spitting up!

Frenzied Friday

Kaisa: "Mom, do I have a temperature? Mom, do I have a temperature?"
Me: "I don't know. Do you think that you do?"
Kaisa: "Ummm, yeah!"

I pull out the thermometer, have her open her mouth, lift her tongue, I put in the thermometer, have her drop her tongue onto it, close her mouth and explained very clearly, "Now leave it under your tongue with your lips shut tight!" I kept noticing her rolling the thermometer from one side to the other under her tongue...or so I thought. I had her open her mouth for a second. There it sat, on top of her tongue. It was nearly done reading and it read 98.6. I inserted it under her arm, deeeep into her armpit. There it read.....98.6. I decided to check my own temp.......under the arm: 95.9. Diagnosis: Hypothermic. (Alternate Diagnosis: Thickening Layer of Adipose Tissue -Layman's Term: Too Many Fat Rolls Under Armpit) Then orally: 98.6. Then I decided to check Isabella's temp under her arm. 98.6! Conclusion: Thermodynamically Correct Family! What more can I say?

Kaisa: "Mom, I have a sore throat!"
Me: "Oh, really? Where?" thinking right after, "Duh, where do you think, Mom?"
Kaisa: "Right........here!" rubbing her tummy and leaning way over to inspect her tummy, lifting her shirt and finally landing with pointer in belly button! Good thing I clarified that! I was just ready to go get her Ibuprofen and tuck her in! I think we've had too many sore throats and temps in this household lately! That's how my dear 3 y.0. gets attention...she has seen that it works!

The Sympathetic Family

(These pictures are supposed to give the "picture" of my post below...Sofi not feeling well, Holli-and the others-rolling their eyes and not really believing her. And, Sofia saying, "phooey to you all!")

Last Saturday night, as Sofia was running a temp at night, she suddenly came bolting into our bedroom, eyes wild and panicky-looking, babbling something about a cake. Something about, "cake in my hands...it keeps getting bigger and bigger...I keep trying to eat it and it just keeps getting big so fast I can't keep up! It's getting heavier and heavier...I can even feel it in my hands, and see it! I keep trying to tell my mind that it's not real but it doesn't help!" She was clearly hallucinating and was in a panic! I've never had a child hallucinate before. I shot out of bed, asking her again what she was talking about. She said that she woke up and started looking out at the moon and the snow and then started seeing dots begin to appear. Suddenly it was turning into blobs of cake and next thing, they were in her hands. She could see dots all over the top like frosting and she couldn't eat it fast enough. All night she kept getting this same "vision" as she was trying to get to sleep. Eric just moved over to her room and let her sleep by me. She spent most of the night up and on the computer in our bedroom cause she didn't dare fall asleep. Then whenever she started to get this hallucination, she would come to me in a panic, I would rub her hands, she would get grounded again, go back to the computer and then eventually back to sleep.

After the first episode, after we established the fact that she is okay and is probably having a fever-induced hallucination, as I was leaving the room with Sofi to tuck her back in (this was before we realized this was going to go on all night and Eric relocated), Eric just rolled over, looked over at Sofia and said, "Sofi?" Sofia said, "What?" Eric said, "Now if that happens again, with the cake thing, toss me a piece, would ya?" She just smiled and said, "Okay."

The next day, I was trying to explain to the girls that Sofi was really sick, and now don't they feel bad that they were basically saying she was probably lying about not feeling good just so she could get out of karate (which Sofi now loves). I reminded them that it was so serious she was 1/10 of a degree from going to ER according to the lady at Minute Clinic Friday night and she was hallucinating Saturday night.... After I explained what hallucinating means and told Holli how Sofi was battling this huge cake that she just couldn't eat fast enough, Holli kinda gave a little smirk and said, "Gee, I wish I would have that happen to me! That would be good to have all the cake you could eat!" I just gave her a look of pure hopelessness and she just smirked and shrugged, like, "Well, it would be!"

What a sympathizing family we have! All concerned about the right things!!! They just make me proud! :s

Tidbits

Couple fun things either during our tea parties of late or about the tea parties:

Couple days ago, Sofi, Kaisa and I were wrapping up our food and Sofi was trying to ask about having a popsicle for dessert without actually saying the word "popsicle", just in case I didn't want her to have one, the idea wouldn't be lodged in Kaisa's head. With Kaisa, we all know, when something gets parked in her head, it's there to stay and none of us will have a moment of peace until either that request is satisfied or something better comes along. Sofi started out trying to spell the word and was getting stuck, so I decided to help her out a little and spell it for her, "you mean, p-o-p-s-i-c-l-e?" Kaisa says, without even looking up from whatever she had in her hand, "I want a popsicle too!" Sofi's and my jaws dropped and we looked at each other in utter disbelief, with our eyebrows about at our hairlines, as Kaisa swung a sidelong glance at us with a smirk on her face. It was clearly just coincidence that she figured out what it spelled because we tested it out yesterday and she had no clue what we were talking about!

Yesterday, Sofia and Greta were both home from school. Tuesday evening, at 8pm, we got a call from the clinic we brought Sofi to last Friday for a strep culture telling us her culture finally finished and was positive for strep. Greta, despite the fact she was "fine" all morning and getting ready for school, after saying a couple times that she's "freezing", I checked her temp and she was 101.7...still insisting she felt just fine!!! So, as lunchtime was approaching, I asked the girls if they were ready for the lunchtime tea party. Sofi grumpily said, "NO! I don't want a tea party!" I kinda looked at her funny cause the day before, she kept telling me, "This is the best tea party ever!" and, "Mom, how do you do such good tea parties? This one is just the best one I've ever been to. It's so pretty and fun.." so on. As I was looking at her, Greta sneeringly said, "Yeah!! And yesterday all she did was brag about the tea party you guys had. She told me that it was the best tea party ever!" Sofi just grouchingly said, "Well, I don't want her to be here for it! I want to have a tea party again without her!!!" We did have a very enjoyable tea party again though, despite the fact she was there!!! :)

The Various Faces of Sofi...

And throughout it all, Kaisa was quite amused!!! Can you tell which of our kids has a little extra flavor to them? At the same time, she is very deep and thoughtful...she just doesn't show it to most people. Because she can get hurt very, very easily, I think this side is just easier for her to show. Fun is never far away!

The Tea Party.....

Dogs and all! We had a special guest today...Sofia! She's just finishing a nasty flu bug so she was home today.

As my daughter likes to say, "Whew-fta!"

Now we have located our camera battery, only to find the charger has gone missing! As Kaisa likes to say, "It's disappeared!" Everything lately, from her stuffed doggy to Olivia, has "disappeared." Oh, woe is me! I guess I will just have to be descriptive to draw the picture that I am unable to take.

My three-year-old and I have taken to tea parties every afternoon. And we have fun. We send the last school girl out the door at 11:10a.m., potty the dogs, tuck the baby in for a nap, and we settle in for a candle light, fancy ol' tea party in the kitchen...minus the tea...and minus the fancy, actually. Except for today there was green tea for me. On the menu today was, green tea for me, apple cranberry juice for her, buttered wheat toast, and steamed fiesta vegetables. I liked it. She was a little leery about the veggies. First, she was keenly interested when she saw the kidney beans and thought they were jelly beans. Then she tasted them. Then gave em to me! Needless to say, with such of a skimpy tea, we had to add more food within a few minutes of its completion. For me, a 3 Muskateers bar. For her, peanut butter/honey on potato bread toast, and more juice. For this week our house has become exceptionally messy. What we do then, to escape having to look at it, we avoid the dining room table. We clear this old butcher block cupboard we have in the middle of the kitchen for a center island (for now. We move it back and forth, for variety's sake, as it so moves us, from under the bay window in the kitchen to the center of the kitchen as a center island), wipe it shiny-clean, and lay out our spread. It usually takes about 1.5 minutes and we're set! I've taken to drawing lately (I've been blessed with too many inspirations lately..first the home care business, then the ideas for a kids' book finally materializing after years of bubbling on the back burner of my mind...I even had the title, just wasn't sure of how I was going to write it...now suddenly I've rediscovered my passion for drawing and would love to illustrate my own book...which, I might add, will probably take me years to actually complete, and I'm perfectly content for it to be that way). Kaisa tells me to draw friends for her (poor deprived girl...she has to be by herself with no siblings to fight with for a couple hours every day) and we chat and chat and chat! I've discovered that she is a very, very tenderhearted little girl, despite the fact she has been driving me insane since the baby was born with her sudden demanding ways. I've really come to enjoy her and her very, very good sense of humor and bubbly belly laugh! We ignore the phone (unless it's Joni, my hubby Eric, or Becky...or my sister Kaisa or friend Eija...maybe, maybe if it's someone else...for the most part we let it go). We ignore the dogs...we usually have one at each doorway, staring at us eating as dogs tend to do. And Kaisa has learned to ask for "dinner" along with our tea party.

So has been our life in our busy little household of 8 people, 2 dogs and a telephone (to connect with those that we aren't already tripping over)!

And now, off to "window shop" into other people's blogs to catch up!