Daily Life

Dress up all day long.

Beach baby!!

It took many tries, but she finally climbed to the top of the swingset! Look at that smug face.

Popsicle eating is serious business.

It's pretty tough to push the popsicle up when you're only 12 months.

Adorable schoolgirl.

We grew these potatoes in our garden! One day, several months ago, we had a potato that had gone to seed so we just kind of randomly planted it. The plant grew and grew, then started dying. Matt said he was going to see if we'd gotten anything so we dug it up and we got these HUGE potatoes! The scissors are my Gingher craft scissors, so the biggest potato was probably the size of a small mango. And boy were they delicious......

Birthday Celebrations, a post of photos

Before I forget, I wanted to post pictures from our birthdays in April! Charlotte's was first and her favorite present was a Belle dress from Granny, just HER size. Usually Charlotte has to fit in to her sister's dress ups which are always too big for this little pixie.

It's a hit! Especially with her Belle shoes....

We kept it low key for Charlotte's birthday. We had another birthday party to go to that night and some errands to run, but we did end up at the mall for a Carousel ride...

Initially Nathalie wanted to ride the dragon. Emily and Charlotte chose the tea cup and started spinning. Then Nan saw how exciting that was and hopped off the dragon in a flash!

Oof, it makes me nauseous just looking at this picture. I've never been able to handle the Tea Cup.

Then we went to a friend's house, had some pizza and watched Up. The girls loved it.

Charlotte got in a good butt scratch.

Over the next few days we wore lots of crowns.

On Nathalie's birthday we had another birthday part in the morning, and then after that headed to SCAD's sidewalk chalk festival. This was a HIT and we will DEFINITELY be going back again. They had cool things (like this multiperson rocking chair), TONS of things for the kids to do, beautiful chalk drawings being created on the sidewalk and it was great.

At the kids tent, we had fun drawing.

I love this adorable picture of Nathalie. And by the way, she got lost again. I was waiting for her outside the bathroom and Emily, Charlotte and Lydia were with me. I didn't see Nan come out and she didn't see me waiting, so she headed right out of the building. After 10 minutes had gone by, I sent Emily in to find her. Emily said she wasn't in there, so I went in and couldn't find her either. That's when my heart started racing. Hundreds of people, and I was there with my kids, without Matt! After our experience with losing Nathalie at the Savannah Children's Book Festival, I was panicked. I immediately said a prayer, "Heavenly Father, I'm all alone with the kids. There are so many people here. I need to find Nathalie right now."

I picked up Lydia, put Charlotte in the stroller and Emily and I ran out of the building.  As soon as I ran out of the building, I saw a golf cart driving around with Nathalie on it. She'd gone out of the building, hadn't seen me and immediately found a festival volunteer. She told her name and her phone number (we've been working on that!). I was so grateful. My prayer had been answered right away.

Later on, we were in the kid's tent. I'd told Emily she could do the activities by herself (without waiting for Nan or Charlotte to finish) but she had to stay under the tent. After a few minutes of helping the girls, I looked up to see where Emily was and I couldn't find her. I started feeling really panicky and thought, "What do I do? Do I leave the tent to find her?" I didn't know what to do, but I felt strongly that I should stay under the tent. So I did. Sure enough, not 2 minutes later, Emily runs up to me. She was doing another activity under the tent and because of the multitude of people, I hadn't been able to see her.

God is real, friends. Someone was watching out for us.

There were other arts and crafts too, like making masks or having a kids sidewalk chalk section.

After the stressful sidewalk festival, we went home and got ready for Nathalie and Charlotte's party. It was small party, but I splurged and bought a piñata. And then I filled it with leftover Easter candy. :)

The kids were having a hard time breaking it open.

Finally, Matt took the bat and a friend threw the piñata up in the air. Matt swung as hard as he could and the piñata exploded. Candy everywhere. Most of it was melty.

 The next day was Nan's birthday and she got a Merida dress! She hasn't taken it off since....

Happy Birthday to my girls!

Strawberry Festival

Recently we went to a strawberry festival that a farm on the outskirts of Savannah was having. The kids rode in this silly train!!!

Look at Nathalie! She is hysterical.

Initially Emily was grouchy when I took the picture. Sometimes I think she's 6 going on 16.....

I love this face!!! Charlotte is thrilled and Emily is giving me the obligatory smile.

They had a huge slide and you slid down it on old feed sacks. It was a hit with the girls!!

 

The slide was a big hit with Lydia too. She would lean over Matt's head to see who was coming down the slide and then get a big smile when it was one of us!!

The farm had homemade strawberry ice cream which was delicious and much needed on this hot day.

And Lydia got her first taste of ice cream! After a few initial hesitations, she fell in love.

The best part about the whole festival was that we received a lot of blessings! We knew the festival was $5 a person, but 4 and under were free. It was before Nan's birthday, so we only had to pay for 3 people. What we didn't realize is that every ride cost tickets, and each ticket was $1. So for an inflatable, it cost 2 tickets per child, or $2!!!! We were inside the festival before we realized this and I felt my heart sink because we're on a tight budget. But then, the blessings started rolling in.....

People gave us some of their tickets as they were walking out. So we had enough for the inflatables.

The guy manning the big slide ($2 per kid, PER SLIDE) let us go on it two extra times, for free!

The train was only $1 per child.

And the best part was the ice cream! I was standing in line for ice cream and I only had enough tickets left to get ONE ice cream to share with all the girls. Right as the couple before me got their ice creams, they turned around and handed me the rest of their tickets! It gave me enough to get FOUR ice creams-- one for each of the girls and then one for Matt and Lydia to share.

I was so grateful that we were blessed this way. I was dreading telling the girls we had to go home because we couldn't spend the money to buy all the tickets we'd need.

The only bummer of the whole day was that all the strawberries had been picked by the time we got there.

Suck suck suck suck suck

I've been seeing a lot of new cars around Savannah, which I am assuming is a result of tax returns and car sales. We also got a new set of wheels....but a little smaller....

We bought a Kirby vacuum!

We knew that we needed to buy a vacuum this year with our tax return. Our old vacuum (a Dirt Devil given to us by my grandmother) no longer had suction under its head, so I was vacuuming with the attachment. The whole house. With the attachment. And then I was STILL picking up things by hand after I finished. I kept thinking, "If I'm picking things up by hand, then I don't even want to know what is left..."

The debate was this: I really wanted a Kirby, but they're so expensive I knew we couldn't afford one. Until Matt decided to check out refurbished Kirbys on eBay. And voila! He found one for $450! That was right in the middle of the range we had allocated for a new vacuum. He snapped it up and we got it a week later.

It is amazing. We have had it for two months and it picks up so much! I love that it's a bag and not a canister, I love that it comes with all sorts of attachments, I love that it is heavy and works on the wood floors. I basically love vacuuming now.

So do it. Do it now. Worth every penny!

No Boys Allowed!!!

The girls are becoming very adamant that we are "girl only" family. When we tell them that Daddy is a boy, they kind of shrug it off. Hey, in their world, even all the rabbits (but one!) are girls! Even so, these girls love to be active and wrestle, chase, tumble-- things that a lot of little girls don't do. Check out this dinosaur that Emily made from Legos. "Has anyone seen my sister Flo?"

Emily's school put the kids' art on display and Emily was very proud of her pond selection. I think it's a pond anyway!

I love the curls on this little girl. Now that it's hot and humid again, we see curls every day and they're only getting springier!

Emily loves to have her hair done too. Here we did a twist-French-braid, with the shape of a heart in the back. Can you see the heart?

We live such a girly life!

PTSD

One of the things I didn't realize after Charlotte's accident was that it would continue to haunt me. August is the two-year mark from when she and I got hit. I would have thought that by this point, the memories wouldn't bother me, but they still do, in unexpected ways.

The first few weeks after her accident, I replayed the scene in my head. There was nothing I could do to stop it; I would be doing something and have an immediate flashback. My mind took me places I didn't want to go, worst case scenarios, the what if's, back to the emotions. Eventually they flashbacks stopped and I was able to hear an ambulance without remembering our ride to Columbus, or go into the ER without looking at Trauma Room 1 and remembering the fear in everyone's eyes.

About a month after her accident, I was walking with the girls to a friend's house. We reached the friend's house and were standing in their front yard when I saw a dad ride by on his bike and he had a young toddler in a bike seat behind him. Neither the dad nor his daughter had a helmet on. I had a minute of tunnel vision-- the only thing I could see was this baby girl without a helmet. My mind flashed through the image of them getting hit by a car and her head being unprotected. I had the urge to run after them and yell, "Get a helmet on her!" I didn't see anything but them, not my children, not our stroller, not our friend's house, not the cars...nothing. Then the father rode out of view and I became aware of my surroundings again. Nathalie was standing on the curb, Emily was waiting by the stroller and Charlotte was crying in my arms. This all happened in a split second and I was disoriented.

When I get stressed I have two types of dreams-- cockroach dreams (seriously, and they are HORRIBLE) and dreams where my children are harmed. Since Charlotte's accident, a high proportion of my stress dreams are of my children getting hit by a car. Sometimes I can save them, sometimes I can't, sometimes they are fine, sometimes they aren't. When I start having these dreams I know I'm really stressing about something.

About 6 months ago I was grocery shopping and had Nathalie, Charlotte and Lydia with me. As we left the store, a man in a motorized wheelchair began backing up. Charlotte was right behind him and he didn't check to see before he started backing up. For a moment, I panicked. I grabbed her arm and hauled her out of the way. Of course, as soon as I did that, I realized that it was a motorized wheelchair, not a car, and so I probably didn't need to panic since I could stop the wheelchair with my hand. But I had had a flashback of her falling again.

About two months ago I was at the same grocery store with all four girls. We had left the store and were walking out to our car through the parking lot. As we passed a handicapped spot, the car started backing up. The woman wasn't looking behind her. Charlotte was between me and the car; she would have been hit first and she's not tall enough to be seen over the car. I flipped out. I smacked the back of the car over and over until it stopped (it's the same thing I didn't when we got hit and it saved our lives). No one was harmed, the car had probably only backed up one inch. The driver apologized and we kept going to our car.

My heart was racing, I was sweating, I felt like I was going to scream or throw up, I was breathing fast. The girls were staring at me because I was obviously agitated about something. Rationally, I realized that Charlotte hadn't been in danger, that I could have scooped her out of the way. But I couldn't ignore my body's reaction and I couldn't stop the flashbacks of us getting hit, over and over.

Right at the moment, Matt called me. "Why am I still reacting? Will it ever get better?" He told me it would. That it would all be okay. Eventually I won't have these involuntary reactions anymore and I'll be able to remember without the feeling of panic rising in my throat.

This is a strange thing, because I don't walk around in a state of panic. I rarely think about her accident anymore, unless I'm dealing with her settlement or I'm at the doctor's office filling out paperwork and answering "Has your child ever been hospitalized?". I rarely dream about it, and I certainly don't stress about it every day. It's just these isolated incidents that have made me realize that perhaps I was more affected than I knew, and that something as positive as an accident where she was fine could create such a strong reaction. The only thing that I really think about on a daily basis is when my children ride their bikes without helmets, because then Mama Bear comes out and I make them wear helmets.

Any thoughts? Has anyone else experienced something like this? Writing it out helps me process my reactions better, and allows me to quantify my associations between memory and feeling.

Going crazy for Nan

And last but not least.....Nan had a birthday today! Nathalie is the spice of our family. She brings joy and hilarity and enthusiasm and a sheer passion for life!

She also loves to alter her appearance, as you can tell by the stamps on her arms. And her chopped chunk of her on her forehead. Oh Nathalie, when will you stop cutting hair?!

Nathalie is my most easy going child. When she's upset, her emotions are right out front. The storm passes quickly and she's back to blue skies so easily.

She loves absolutely anything girly. Princesses, hair, nails, makeup, shoes, jewelry...you name it! She desperately wants me to do her hair fancy so we compromise with accessories to spruce up her short hair.

Nan is so creative. She has a huge imagination and doesn't need anyone or anything to have a great time. Some of her best imaginations have been all by herself. She loves to create with everything. She thinks outside the box.

Nathalie absolutely adores the outdoors. This girl needs to be on a farm. She loves animals, plants, growing, creating...she just has this huge zest for life and we love it.

And she's a sweetheart. She is such a sensitive soul, worried about people who are sad, scared of the dark, heights, and wasps. She loves to love passionately. She has so much love to give.

Nathalie has the best smile and laugh. We love to get her going because her laugh is absolutely infectious. She loves to be silly and sometimes she's so clever about it that we can't help but crack up. She is incredibly bright and we try to channel that into constructive forms, but even we have a hard time keeping up with her!

Oh Nathalie, we love you so much. Happy Birthday!