July (I know, I'm just a tad bit late!)

July was a whirlwind! We started the month with 2 trips to the E.R. over the 4th of July weekend for Emerson. She had been complaining of tummy pains for several days and on the 3rd the pain seemed to have picked up quite a bit and she was crying and would double over off and on throughout the day. She also started throwing up and she wasn't eating or drinking so I called her Pediatrician and they wanted me to take her to the E.R. They gave her IV fluids and monitored her until they let us go home at 2:30 am. They didn't really have any great answers for us on what was going on but they ruled out her appendix so they thought that maybe she was just constipated (sorry for even bringing this up! I don't like it either!). So she did great on the 4th but later that evening she started puking again and she still wasn't really eating or drinking. She seemed to be much worse on the 5th and was literally throwing up with even a sip of water and sometimes for no reason at all. She was lethargic and not really even talking so we decided that Tony would call in sick and back to the E.R. we went. This time however, she was in pretty rough shape. The pain was awful and she was pale and exhausted. They moved us from the E.R. to the children's wing and told us we'd be staying. The E.R. doc was concerned and he took an x-ray which worried him even more because there was nothing there that would explain the pain. He told us that basically we have two options: a CT Scan or exploratory surgery. I obviously didn't want her to go under a knife but I was also a bit worried about the CT scan and the radiation involved (especially since my mom went through that and I understand a little about the dangers) but we agreed to the scan and that immediately showed the problem. The doctor told us that she contracted some kind of virus similar to a stomach flu and her stomach and intestines literally stopped functioning. Once he discovered that, he knew what to do. He stopped oral intake of food and water and focused on getting lots of fluids into her through her IV. He said he needed to "reset" her stomach essentially. It was amazing because by the next day, we had our spunky child almost back to normal! It was scary and I am so glad it's over! I hated seeing my little girl suffering like that!

So, compared to that, our month was great!

On the work front, I was in a position where I really didn't have much alternative but to give notice at my job but through many conversations with some of the Principals at my firm I decided to stay with the agreement that I won't have a set work schedule, I'll just come in every so often as I'm able. The goal is that I can remain on staff until both kids are old enough to be in school and I can increase my hours at that point. It is truly a great scenario and I'm thankful that it is working out (so far anyhow!).

Emerson had her third birthday party on a rainy Saturday (of course huh?!) and she seemed to have a great time. Now I'm trying to prepare for Ellie's little get-together. It's fun having two summer babies! Though I can't believe that Ellie is almost 1! How did time go that fast?!

Emmy's friend, Gianna (also our neighbor) came to spend an afternoon with us and we had so much fun making homemade cinnamon rolls. We made a mess and it was very worth it! The girls were so cute. They each made their own little tiny ones and them we baked those and they kept checking back to the oven to peek to see if they were ready yet. There was lots of cheering when they finally were pulled out.

We also had the Maas girls over so that Brad and Pam could sneak away for a bit. On this occasion, I felt it was just right to bring out something that my mom put together for my kids before she died. It was a giant chest full of formal clothes, shoes, purses, hats, and jewelry for dress-up. I added my fur coat and a couple of my dresses to the mix and we had a MAJOR fashion show happening at the Fletcher cottage! They had music and dancing and posing. I had the best time watching them enjoying this treasure chest and I know that wherever my mom was at that moment, she too was smiling. That was just exactly what she wanted to happen with all her clothes. After that I set the girls up with an art project in the garage painting ceramic tiles (for no purpose other than it was just down-right fun!).

Late in the month my childhood best friend Jolee was in town from Albuquerque, NM and she was able to come out to the house for a while and visit. Her and her husband have two beautiful kids, Jack and Mary and it was so much fun watching our children play and interact together. A marriage was arranged and Jolee and I are excited that after all these years, we can FINALLY be related. =) Let's just hope that the kids are up for our arrangement!

Emerson also started swim lessons this month and seems to really enjoy them. She has never really liked her face in the water but she is getting more and more comfortable with it.

Whew! I know I am forgetting something but I guess if I did, I'll just write about it when I do the "August" post!

Jolee and I met when we were 4 or 5 and we grew up together.

It was fun seeing "little girl Jolee" in her kids and she thought the same about seeing "little girl Kalle" in mine.

Art project with Jamie, Paige, Emmy, and of course me.

Dress-up time!

Oh the posing! (If only my black dress fit me as well as it fits Emmy! That's lots of cleavage though...) LOL!

My Mama

Mom on my wedding day, July 23, 2005.

July 1978

(I still have this baby outfit.)

Is there anything better than a girl's mama?!

If there was any question whether or not I was born in the 70s, just check out the wall paper!

Making homemade cinnamon rolls was such a good memory for Greta and I. We did this fairly often (even though my mom was a complete health nut!) and our favorite part was putting the yummy stuff on them and then rolling them up. We would do this in our jammies at the end of the day. I have recently picked up this tradition with my own girls and plan on continuing it. In fact, Emmy and I made the dough tonight and we will be finishing them with her girlfriend, Gianna tomorrow. This is what memories are all about.

Once you get past my totally RAD outfit, mom and I weren't too bad at fishing! Like her, I was never really afraid of getting my hands dirty. She is holding a Pike and me, a little sunfish. This was at our cabin in Bigfork, Montana.

My third birthday party. My mom ALWAYS went out of her way to make our birthdays extremly special. She spent a lot of time making sure it was just right. I will try my hardest to make my girls feel that same love and specialness on their birthdays too.

For some reason I see Ellie in my face here... Maybe it's the eyes?

It's ironic in a bittersweet kind of way, I started my life depending on my mom and my mom ended her life depending on me. Thank you God for letting me repay my mom in some tiny little way.

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Just feeling a bit wistful tonight and thought I'd post some of my most favorite pictures from when I was little and my mom was my age. My mom and I both had our first babies when we were 30. We both had girls.... Both wild, crazy, fun girls! (I'm speaking of little Kalle and little Emmy of course!)

Anyhow, I have an entirely separate post that I will try to get to in the next couple of days that talks about what we've been up to this past month but felt like doing this instead...

Emmy Turns 3!

Dr. Elliot Fletcher- Future Chiropractor

"WHITE PANTIES"!


"Isn't this where the bottle goes?"

This is exactly what Emmy wanted for her birthday. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Fletcher (and uncle Eric for the helmet).

She looks like a pro!

Other than a bike, all she wanted was a strawberry flavor flower cake.

Anxiously awaiting her cake.

Emmy also got "Hungry Caterpillar" cupcakes. It's one of her favorite stories (that she knows completly by heart!)

Safety First (which isn't always the Varholdt motto...) LOL!

She had so much fun opening gifts. She got so many wonderful things and I can honestly say that she has literally played with EVERYTHING already and it's only been a couple days!

One of the games we played was musical numbers. I think Em and her friends had fun. They were a little shy to it at first but warmed up.

Zoo Life

The pure joy of riding on Papa's back.

Ellie's first top right tooth popped through today!


Since the Zoo Keepers wouldn't let Em and I pet the bears, we were happy enough to roam among the goats!

Blueberries!

Playing the African Drums at the Zoo.

Fletcher women!

It's an Emma-saurus!

I suspect even the biggest Grizzly would meet it's match with Emmy! =)

Chicken watching! Who knew the zoo had chickens?!

Yeehaaa!

My little Wildflower

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What a fun day we had today! Tony was home so we got up early (which is normal!) and picked up Tena (Tony's mom) to head to the Oregon Zoo in Portland. We had such a great time looking at all the animals and showing Emerson everything! She seemed to be the most taken with the giraffes and the goats. Ellie has been teething heavily the last couple of days so she has been fussy but I put her in our front pack and she was happy as could be all tucked against me looking at the world around her. We brought a picnic lunch and left shortly after so that the kids could have a decent nap at home this afternoon. We had two VERY tired girls, but what fun!

After nap, Tony and I dropped the kids off with Ron and Tena and we went out on a date. It was very nice to just visit with each other and not worry about the time or what our girls were up to! We went to dinner and a movie and it's crazy how fast it went and now we are back home, jammies on, and I'm waiting for Ellie to wake up for her late night snack.

I thought I would also write about our latest "adventure" with Emerson as I can already see a particular theme with my entries and it gets me thinking "what next?!"... Here's the latest:

The other morning I woke up before everyone else and went downstairs to get breakfast started. I kind of smelled something odd after a while but couldn't really put my finger on it, so I ignored it. Then, I went to the front door to let Sydney out and the smell was really strong and and yet it STILL didn't really occur to me what it was! I heard Emmy talking quietly to me from the top of the stairs but I wasn't paying full attention until I heard her say "I DID IT MAMA! I DID IT ALL BY MYSELF! COME AND LOOK MAMA!" and then it completely hit me what that smell was...NAIL POLISH! The realization made me run as fast as I could up the stairs (this darn fracture boot really slows me down though!) and when I got to the top I admit, I freaked out. "NOOOOOOO" "OMIGOSH EMERSON!" Tony yells from bed, "WHAT HAPPENED?!" I was still not of sound mind and couldn't even form into words what my eyes were looking at! I think I was just stuttering! I did recover long enough to grab one of the tipped over bottles and put the lid on it and two others but by the time Tony got to the scene, Em was crying, and I was wanting to! Looking at it now, I feel bad that I lost my cool because Emmy really was so proud of herself for painting her own toenails (and she did a REALLY great job!) but our carpet is relatively new and we never even let anyone wear shoes in our house so the fact that we had nail polish all over the carpet was upsetting. Especially knowing that it is one of the worst things to spill on a carpet! I was also mad at myself because it is MY fault that she even had access to my nail polish! I should've know better!

Anyhow, Tony scrubbed and scrubbed and got some of of up but I think we are just going to have to live with "Glamorous Gold" and "Not Just A Waitress" red as part of the color scheme for our carpet.

Now, true to form, Emmy never does anything just once, we had to have TWO things go wrong that morning! So about a half hour later Emmy came up to me to let me know that we needed to buy her more toothpaste. My red flags started raising but denial is a funny thing... So I said "Em, we just bought you toothpaste". She responded, "My toothpaste is all gone Mama! I made a BIG mess on my bed". I looked at her and asked "Are you kidding me?" (knowing full well that Em can't even comprehend how to "kid" at this point in her development!) She calmly replied "I'm not kidding Mama!"

I did the execution walk slowly to her bedroom knowing that I probably wasn't going to like what I was going to see. Sure enough, toothpaste was finger painted all over her sheets and comforter. She is artistic, I'll give her that!

But, THAT can be washed.

If anyone doesn't think that God has a sense of humor, has never met my beautiful, strong-willed, independent, artistic little wildflower named Emerson! I wouldn't want her any other way...

Tony and I think we heard my mom's laughter that day... =)

Yogurt Anyone?

Tonight the three of us girls were having our dinner and I got up to finish making the rest of baby Ellie's food. When I turned back around, there was Emerson sitting in my chair feeding her! I was so surprised! It was so funny because Ellie for some reason doesn't like me spoon feeding her and will hit the spoon and yet watching my two daughters, I realized that Ellie is so smitten with her big sister that she was gladly accepting spoonfuls of yogurt from her and often smiling and laughing in the process. I may just have Emerson feed her every night!

Now if only I could get Emerson to eat!

I also have a quick comment about my previous post for those of you that might have been offended in some way to me saying I never wanted my house destroyed by my children. I certainly didn't mean to insinuate that ALL my friends with young kids had destroyed houses, I was simply trying to drive the point home that Tony and I had certain expectations of what parenthood would be like and in reality, it isn't that way at all! I also want to mention that Tony and I are in no way "Parents of the Year" EVER! We try hard, we have fun, and boy oh boy do we mess up sometimes! I was simply writing for fun and being dramatic and satirical. Please forgive me if my writing style doesn't come across in the light-hearted manner in which I intended.

On that note, I thank you all for even taking the time to read this blog because I really have a great time writing it and I always appreciate feedback! It's fun sharing our lives with our friends and family in this way!

Good night everyone!