Hair cuts...and extentions

Yaya

Naomi

Leah

After fighting the hair brushing battle for the twelve millionth time, I finally put my foot down and busted out my scissors. I cut about four inches off both girls hair. And Yaya, well, that's another story...as usual. She has started a new fashion trend. Fortunately for society it hasn't caught on yet. She wears a pair of pajama pants on her head. All the time. To the library, to the grocery store, she won't leave her bedroom in the morning without her head adorned. I'm hoping this is a quickly passing phase, as if her outfits weren't unique enough without it :)

"Sausage Links"

So these are Heidi's legs. The kid is a chunk. She even has another rather large leg roll hiding in her diaper. Which, by the way, I had to move her up to size 3 diapers because size 2 diapers would not fit around her thighs. What can I say, she likes to eat and I make good milk. I'm anxious for her upcoming doctor's visit so he can tell me just how many pounds of love she is at four months!

A trail of drool...in case you get lost

I put Heidi down for a nap on my bed and left the room. She generally falls asleep very quickly but she was fussing a bit this time. When I went in to check on her she had scooted and DROOLED across my whole bed. Sick.

Can we PLEASE differentiate?

My girls all like to take "bath-showers". This means they all crowd into the bathtub together, turn on the shower and plug up the bath. Sometimes I think this is a great idea because all my children (who can stand) get bathed at once and so does my bathroom which always needs a cleaning. Well, today they all piled in as usual and I was in the next room when I heard a truly panicked scream. Not just one, but several screams steadily increasing in frequency and volume. Immediately my mind flashed back to when Leah was about eighteen months old and we were bathing her in my father in law's bathtub. I turned to get a towel and she found a razor. She got a tiny cut on her finger, but it was bleeding so much and she kept wiping it all over her body so when I turned back around, my baby was sitting there covered in blood. Ok. So i'm imagining a repeat, except it would have to be much, MUCH worse to constitute this type of reaction. I bolted into the bathroom, honestly knocking over Naomi who had just gotten out of the tub, left her sprawled on the floor, ripped open the shower curtain to find Leah...with a bit of shampoo in her eyes. "It's burning! It's burning! I can't even open my eyes!" Really? So I got her a cold washcloth, turned off the water so it would stop flowing into her eyes and she immediately calmed down. After a minute she opened her eyes and said, truly relieved, "It's a good thing I didn't go blind!" Good thing honey. Oh, and the next time you scream like that, you had better be running from a bear.

This is a problem. Seriously

One of Yaya's outfits.

And yes, that is Heidi's dress being used as a jacket.

Yaya loves clothes. She has the most clothes because my cousin gives me bags and bags of clothes that are just her size. I try to go through them and keep only a reasonable amount, but one Mom can only do so much. Yaya changes her clothes honestly every hour. And when I say hour, I really mean every ten minutes. Her outfits are always "creative" and her other clothes never make their way back to their drawer. My house is littered with size three clothes in every bedroom, the kitchen, bathroom...but somehow my laundry room stays clean. Go figure. Anyway, short of taking all her clothes away, or barricading the closet (which I tried...it turned into a "fort" and they still got in the closet) I don't know what to do. Any suggestions?

Lesson Learned

I was holding Heidi in the kitchen and Naomi kept coming in, playing with Heidi, and then running away screaming, "EWWWWW, slobber!!!" Heidi does drool excessively, to the point that she saturates all of her clothes so by the end of the day they smell musty because they have never dried out. Yeah. Anyway, so after a few times of Naomi running in and out, I thought it would be really funny to hide right around the corner and down on my knees so that Heidi would be eye level with Naomi when she came into the kitchen. Well, Naomi ran in, I thrusted Heidi forward and yelled "slobber monster!!!" Naomi SCREAMED her amazingly loud high pitched scream right in Heidi's face. Needless to say, Heidi nearly jumped out of my arms and Naomi just about fell over and I spent the next five minutes comforting my poor baby. I suppose had I put any forethought into my actions I could have foreseen the outcome and avoided this emotional distress...but I didn't...and it was really funny.

My Creative Child

Saturday Leah asked me if she could make a Teddy Bear for Heidi. I gave her some fabric and no more instruction than to cut out two pieces at the same time for a front and a back. Leah drew a bear, cut it out, sewed it, stuffed it, (i sewed the buttons on) and then tied a little bow around it's waist. She was SO excited that Heidi loved it and immediately started eating it's face off. Not too shabby for a six year old 'eh?

All I Want for New Year's are my five front teeth...

Leah was quite excited the whole holiday season that she could sing "All I want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth" including the lisp that comes naturally when missing them. She was also missing a molar and then on Christmas Eve she pulled out another tooth, right next to her missing front teeth. That night she put her tooth who knows where...she said under her pillow, but neither Lars nor I could find it. So in the morning she came out with two dimes and her tooth. Confused, she asked why the Tooth Fairy didn't take her tooth. Lars quickly came up with the explanation that the Tooth Fairy must have been in a big hurry so she didn't run into Santa. "Ohhh," exclaimed Leah with greater understanding, "That must be why she ONLY left me two dimes." And we thought we were being generous. Apparently the Tooth Fairy has to keep up with inflation.

Before church this morning, Leah pulled out another tooth! I really hope they start growing back soon or she'll have to go on a liquid diet because she won't have any teeth to chew with!

Close Call

Last Friday, while we were at my mother in law's house, my girls and their cousins were running around crazy. Eventually this lead to making a fort in the bedroom and then inevitably jumping off the bunk bed. Well, after a while we hear a scream, crying, oowww my foot, tears, drama...what could you expect? Naomi comes crawling out of the room clutching her right ankle dramatically. What happened, I inquired? "I fell off the bottom bunk." Really...you weren't jumping off the top like your sister? "No." Well then it can't be that bad. Off to bed, here's an ice pack for good measure. (Eventually the truth came out...)Well, the next day Naomi crawled all day refusing to put any pressure on her ankle. Sunday we bring her to church where she hopped to class on one foot. One of my friends who works at the hopsital passionately urged me to take her in for an x-ray to make sure she hadn't broken her growth plate. Apparently the rule of thumb for kids is if they baby it for more than six hours, it's broken. I must have missed that day in parenting school because we were going on 36 hours...oops. So Monday I called the Dr.'s office to have him take a look. Well, I haven't brought Naomi in yet since we moved here so that would require a "new patient exam" and the first available time was January 12th..."Will that work for you?" Um, no. So I called around to find an urgent care. Nearest one...24 miles away. Now my paranoia about Naomi's hypothetically broken growth plate in her foot was compounded with the fear that if my child were to ever stop breathing it would take me 37 minutes to get to someone who could help me. I finally resorted to taking her into the Emergency Room in Dallas. No, not Texas, although it may as well have been. I felt a bit foolish hauling her in there on one hip with the baby on the other while she's giggling and not looking like she is in ANY amount of pain at all. She was playing around the waiting room...laughing at Sponge Bob on the TV while I'm casually tring to explain to the receptionist that my daughter really did need to see a doctor. As soon as they called us back, however, the water works started. I'm sure more out of fear than anything else. They did x-rays and plopped us in a room until the ONE doctor on staff got to us. Two hours later were discharged with an ice pack and an ace bandage. No break, just a good solid sprain. One week to the day Naomi started limping around on her foot and today attempted to jump off the kitchen counter...with a crash landing. Easy there tiger. Healing takes a bit of time.

zzzz...happy new y...zzzzz

Last night we took advantage of the time difference and welcomed the new year at 9pm...since it was midnight on the east coast! Our dear friends came down from Portland and spend the evening with us. We had some good grub and pleasant conversation. They have a little boy and the girls just loved on him the whole time. He ate up all the extra attention and did a fine job filling the role of "king" in their role playing games! And as much as I hate to admit it...we were all in bed before midnight...lame. No illegal fireworks, no disturbing the neighbors with banging pots with spoons and shouting out the front door, just the peaceful sound of four little angels breathing steadily...but really, who could ask for anything more. I am so blessed.