Unplanned

 On Saturday I woke up wanting two things. 1) to be alone and 2) to caulk my living room. Unfortunately, my children weren't going to let me have either.

 It turned into a day of unplanned activities. I had a hard time letting go of the things I wanted and didn't enjoy it as much as I could have, but they did. We ended up playing a lot more and the highlight of the day for them was making clothes for their loveys.

 The day before we had been at a friend's house and the friend (7 yrs old) had made a felt skirt for Emily with "appliqued" hearts (they were stuck on with tape). In fact, the whole ensemble was assembled with tape.

So on Saturday, when Emily told me she wanted to make clothes for Missy, I thought she meant with tape. Actually, she meant that she wanted to sew clothes for Missy. And of course, if we sewed something for Missy, we had to sew something for Fraggle (Nathalie's puppy). I was unsure at first because it meant a lot more effort on my part and because I didn't think I had enough felt to construct an outfit that would fit this teddy bear.

But we went for it. And you should have seen Emily's face when I squeezed Missy into her "ballet outfit". It wasn't easy, trying to sew with Em or Nathalie on my lap and the other children standing behind me on the chair. (This is an understatement. I actually despise sewing when my children are awake because they're either standing behind me, holding on to me or in my lap or trying to touch the sewing machine.)

I never did get any alone time or time to caulk. But Missy got a new outfit and Fraggle got a Valentine's Day scarf.

And we all got some precious memories.

Best News of the week

Charlotte had an ENT appointment on Wednesday and her hearing tests came back normal!! The audiologists took "pictures" of both her ears (echos and volume tests) and both tubes are still open and functioning, and the structures in her ears seem normal. Her hearing test results were also normal.

Her ENT doctor say s that we don't need to worry about permanent hearing loss anymore from her accident, and she won't need to see Charlotte for 6 months until it's time to check her tubes again.

Matt and I are so relieved. We feel so blessed that Charlotte's hearing is normal. We are especially grateful for the ear tubes because we've seen Charlotte go from unintelligible talking to complete phrases and sentences in 7 weeks. We just feel really blessed right now.

Emily's reading and writing teacher showed this to me after school yesterday. "This is amazing!" she said. Emily loves to write and create and apparently she came up with this all by herself.

"My bunies (bunnies) and my family are taking a wack (walk). Me and a new baby. I am holeding (holding) my mommy's baby. She is very wigll to (wiggly too). My sisters are holeding my mom's new baby.
                                         Writtn by Emily"

Murphy's Law

That my washing machine breaks at 4 pm on Friday and the Charlotte gets the stomach flu Sunday morning and Nathalie gets it Sunday night.

If the washing machine can't be repaired today I am going to have to go to the laundromat. It's getting desperate around here.

January Life

We are back! It's amazing how nature can ruin one's plans...Matt, Emily and I have all had the stomach flu in the last week and Charlotte woke up this evening and she may have thrown up (I know, that's a weird statement to make but it looked and sounded like she was throwing up but there was no vomit. So we'll see how it goes tonight.) Here are some pictures of our daily life.

 

 We got a dusting in December and played early one morning before Emily went to school. It was 15 degrees outside and freezing. We were only outside about 90 seconds.

 And then today it was 66 degrees so we played Princesses all afternoon.

 Cute girlies with morning hair. Charlotte refused to eat her breakfast unless she was straddling Emily and Nathalie's chair.

 More princesses. I LOVE Charlotte's shoes.

 Look at those sweet heels!

 Ariel is getting married.

 Nathalie is posing for the camera. And hilarious.

Another pose from the funny girl. She thinks this is a "Sleeping Beauty" dress....

 We then got snow at the end of December/early January and it was a lot warmer so we made snowmen and played, played, played.

Funny things said by the girls lately:

Nathalie was being loud (surprise, surprise). Emily said, "Nathalie, let's use a 6-inch voice" but Nathalie wouldn't stop being loud. So Emily leaned over closer to her and said, "Nathalie, use a 2-inch voice!"

Charlotte has learned the word "mean" and uses it whenever she doesn't get her way. This little girl is now more toddler than baby. Anytime she doesn't get what she wants she looks at the offender and says, "Mean! You mean!"

Nathalie is overall obnoxious and hilarious at the same time. Her only volume level is stage-without-a-microphone. Her only energy level is bouncing off the walls. But today she was playing with her exercise ball (she requested one for Christmas and an indulgent aunt got it for her). She figured out she could jump from the coffee table to the ball, which would catapult her into the couch. It was hysterical for her. Every time. Oh my Nan, don't lose the spunk.

It's a busy life around here.

Christmas, beautiful Christmas!

 Our first Christmas morning with just our family!

 

 

 10 inches of snow in Bloomington!

 

 

  The air tube at Wonderlab in Bloomington!

 

  Bling bling boots! Nathalie's are purple!

 New Christmas outfit!

 Books with Oldemor!

 Cuddle time with Oldefar!

 The snow was really too deep for Nan and Charlotte to play comfortably.

 Nathalie got to wear a special apron of Oldemor's to make cookies!

Nathalie's special Christmas outfit!

  Santa brought more Legos.

Snow baby who absolutely refused to wear snow pants. In fact, she walked out in the snow for a few minutes barefoot and didn't even mind.

Where I Get Back On The Wagon

 Proof that my girls do actually happily play together!

 A little fun with play dough. Emily's creation.

 I love that Emily made letters with play dough.

 Oh Charlotte, my Charlotte. You have no idea how much this drives me crazy.

What do you do with an empty diaper box? Make a Barbie house!

it was fine until the jam...

Today started out fine. We took the van in to the mechanic this morning to find out the cause of a terrible grinding sound when I braked.

2 hours later we get the call that all our brakes are shot and that grinding sound was metal on metal. $482 total. "That's okay," I thought, "this is why we listen to Dave Ramsey. And we were protected on our trip to IN when we only had 10% of our brakes left. There is the power of prayer."

The girls and I make jam. I leave during a crucial part and the whole pot boils over leaving a huge mess on our gas stove and scorched jam residue in my pot. "That's okay," I thought, "I'll just clean it up and we will move on. And we still have delicious jam."

Matt tries to make dinner but we don't have BBQ sauce for the ribs. He tries to make a substitute but the Worcestershire flavor is a bit strong and he didn't cook the ribs slow enough so they are too chewy. "That's okay," I thought, "we just slow cook them for a few hours and we can use the meat in a casserole. And this is a very uncommon fail on Matt's part."

Then we ate some of the jam from earlier in the day. It is the leftover stuff that didn't,t fit into a jar. It tastes burned. "That's okay," I thought, "it's from the bottom of the pan so it is going to taste burned."

Until I open up a random jar from the middle of the bunch. Burned. And another. Burned. And a third. Burned. Half the jars. All burned.

Goodbye, 14 pints.

Highlights from December

December was a busy and fun month for our family. I didn't blog much because of the busyness, but I don't want to forget some of our happenings!

In no particular order:

Charlotte got ear tubes. And we have noticed a big difference. She never got a lot of ear infections so we haven't noticed any difference in that, but she doesn't have a continuously runny nose anymore. We have also noticed a big difference in her ability to hear and talk! She's been talking up a storm and speaking much more clearly and she also responds when we call her, which she didn't often used to do. Yay for tubes!

Nathalie started preschool. She enjoys it, mostly. She's a strong personality and occasionally has conflicts with the other children or doesn't want to listen to her teacher but since that's why we sent her, Matt and I feel like this is good for her. On the first day, during a transition time when her teacher had asked her several times to finish her activity, Nathalie put her hands over her ears and said, "I don't want to listen!" Ah, my beautiful Nan.

Emily figured out how to make books. Meaning she staples together pieces of paper folded in half and makes books. We have about 10 "Emily books" running around the house right now. What do I do with them?

We found out we're having a girl. For the record, when the ultrasound tech announced it was a girl, I laughed. She stared at me and I said, "Well, I already know what she looks like!" I thought it was hilarious. Still do. We're struggling over a name, but we'll get there. We are girl specialists!

Matt graduated with his Bachelor's in Nursing. Yes, you heard me! After many years he has a BSN! Now he's working on applying to grad schools and we're thinking about what it'll mean for our family. He did get a raise too!! His raise is 50 cents per hour. Woot woot!

It snowed. We had an incredibly mild winter last year and the girls were so sad that we never got enough snow to do anything. This year already we've built 4 snowmen and had two snowball fights! The snow is patchy now but we've had a lot of fun.

My sister had a baby. This is a big deal. The biggest part is that her baby had a negative diagnosis (he may have some special needs) and he has beaten every odd so far! He was 4 lbs 7 oz when born (37 weeks) and struggled for a few days but he's home, no feeding tubes and no oxygen! We're so excited at his progress.

Matt had a record of 3 days off right before Christmas. Matt's been working a lot so that we can meet some of our financial goals and the weekend before Christmas he actually had Saturday, Sunday and Monday off! He did work Christmas Day but since he had Christmas Eve, we didn't feel jipped. That's the longest time he's been home (and awake) since Thanksgiving.

I turned 27. Whoo! I'm an old lady! Actually, I feel like I'm not old enough for the life I'm living (mid-30s?) but it was a great birthday. We didn't have any cake (since it's so close to Christmas) but I got some really thoughtful gifts (28 spools of thread from Matt!!) and the girls were sweet to me all day.

Our first Christmas as our family. And we loved it. It was fun and special and I'm glad we could start some traditions that belong just to us.

Now on to 2013!