Wednesday, December 16, 2009

“Remember Tape”

Micali with the help of her mom and dad has decided to she wants to stop sucking her thumb. I read several different things online about how to help a child to stop sucking their thumb. Interestingly I found a lot of posts by grown adults saying “I am a proud thumb-sucker for life” GROSS!!

I did however find one post that was helpful. They suggested putting band-aids or tape on their thumbs because if they try to suck the thumb with tape it just doesn’t have the same effect.

Micali has a serious fear or hatred of band-aids so I knew I couldn’t tell her I was putting actual band-aids on her. The first night we all put on our “remember tape” (using athletic tape) on our thumbs and had a little, “Where is Thumbkin?” sing – along. I was glad when Micali finally fell asleep so I could take of the tape. It was super sticky and very annoying. Micali did great—it took her a little longer to fall asleep but she only woke up once in the night.  In the morning she seriously wanted the tape off and wasn’t about to let me put anymore on her.

So, we went to the store in search of new “remember tape.” I was hoping for Disney princesses, or Hello Kitty or something but the only girlie band-aid there was Barbie. Micali thought it was wonderful and totally bought into it all over again. She slept through the night last night without waking up so I think we are getting somewhere.

Here are some pictures of her, all smiles,   excited about her thumbs being taped up! 

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Sunday, December 13, 2009

Best of Friends

Micali and Eli get along so good. I am always amazed at how long they can entertain each other.  I stopped in the middle of my cinnamon roll marathon last night to snap these shots of the two of them.

They were going for a hike to do some exploring! ---at least that is what Micali told me. (Micali had been doing a lot of taste testing. Her face isn’t always this dirty!)

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Wednesday, December 9, 2009

My mom, a country farm girl…

It is always fun to go home to Kansas and enjoy the wide open spaces. My parents live on 40 acres so there is plenty of room for everyone to spread out and enjoy the fresh air.

Throughout the years, we have had at some point and time, pigs, goats, sheep, cows, chickens, ponies,horses, cats and dogs. Right now the farm count is 3 chickens, 2 cats, and a dog. Micali and Eli totally loved chasing the chickens around the yard. Eli even treed a cat all by himself. I don’t think he was being very nice to it.

My mom is an amazing dutch oven master and loves making food over the fire. The grandkids love hotdog roasts and smores while she has the fire going.

Over Thanksgiving we were able to get these pictures of my parents on the 4-wheeler. They make me smile. They are still so young at heart and I am sure totally enjoyed their turn to have a ride.

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Our sweet Micali girl

Micali is LOVING everything Christmas this year. She is just an awe at any lights she sees. And can’t help but go look closely at any Christmas tree she finds. On the 1st of December we helped her decorate her little tree for the dresser in her room. She couldn’t stop looking at it and kept saying over and over again, “Thank you for my Christmas tree, I LOVE IT!”

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She is also really enjoying our new snowfall from yesterday. She even talked daddy into buying her, her very own snow shovel so she could help him.

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After she warmed up from this little adventure she turned into a model and insisted that I take more pictures of her. Here are a few of them hot chocolate stains and and all.

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Elijah Update…

He is feeling much better and is sleeping most of the night now. I never did start him on antibiotics since the Dr. wasn’t sure if it would help. I decided to just give him Tylenol for the pain and was planning to take him with me to my appointment and have our regular Dr. check him out. Monday was a great day for him so I never even had to take him in. Not sure what caused the ulcers but so glad he is feeling better!

A picture I just have to share of one of the days he was sick. He was grumpy so I just let him watch his favorite show, “signing time” and this is how I found him a few minutes later:

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Here is a picture of him from yesterday:

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And a blessing came from all of it. We don’t see Eli doing this anymore:

Eli sucking his thumb

It actually kind of makes me sad. But glad I have this picture to remind me how cute he was doing it. Now, we are working on Micali to see if we can get her to stop. ----not having any luck so far.

Monday, December 7, 2009

A few random pictures

thanksgiving pic Eli and Micali 

Micali and Eli on Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving pic black and white

A couple family pictures my sister took. We were freezing and the wind was blowing like crazy!

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I think my belly has grown a little since I posted pictures 10 weeks ago. This is from tonight at 30 weeks. Wow time is flying.

 

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Micali snuggling with her daddy this morning. She was totally trying to pretend she was sleeping! 

That is all for now! Have a good week everyone! We are excited to start some Christmas goodie making and baking!

Saturday, December 5, 2009

A rough week for the little guy

……………….and me too I guess.

We got home from our trip to Kansas on Sunday morning and quickly got ready to go to church. We teach the primary and it was also our turn to do sharing time so we really had to be there.  Church went good once the kids made it through sacrament meeting and were able to go to nursery.

We all came home and took a long family nap. Monday morning I unpacked everything and got a lot of laundry done. I was feeling really good about my progress I just needed to fold the laundry and wash a few dishes and the house would be back in shape.

Well---that is when it happened Eli came down with the stomach flu. He needed his mommy and I didn’t get off the couch much the rest of the afternoon.

Tuesday he seemed to be getting better although he still wasn’t eating much. He didn’t sleep well that night at all and was up at least every hour. (this is where I should get the “BAD MOM” award) I thought he just needed to adjust back to sleeping in his own room after vacation and made him cry for a half hour two different times before I went in to check on him again. I couldn’t see that anything was wrong with him and was getting frustrated with him.

On Wed. morning when I was changing him I noticed a little white patch underneath his tongue. I decided to just keep an eye on it see what happened. He and I were totally exhausted but he was still not sleeping for more than an hour at a time night or day.

Here is what his tongue looked like by Thurs. afternoon when I took him to the Dr. to find out he had tongue ulcers. A sick Elijah 018 A sick Elijah 020  A sick Elijah 022

The Doctor appointment went horribly. I wasn’t able to get him in with my normal Doctor so I just accepted who ever at the clinic still had appointments available. My appointment with a very GRUMPY Eli was suppose to be at 4:15 by 5:30 I was still out front in the waiting room and Eli had been crying and fighting me holding him for that entire time. I thought I was going to go CRAZY. They finally got sick of me out there and put us back in our own room and said the Dr. will be right with you. He finally came in about 6:00, Eli had been either in my arms crying or on the floor crying this whole time so I also started crying mostly for the fact that I couldn’t do anything for him and I was running on little sleep.

The Doctor was less than nice. I had finished the crying and dried my tears awhile before he finally got there but when he came in he asked me if I had been crying and it started again. He asked me dumb questions like if someone was hurting me, if I was okay and safe….blah blah blah. I was just like will you please look at my screaming child and leave me alone. He spent just a few minutes with Eli. Said those were just tongue ulcers. Gave us a prescription for an antibiotic he wasn’t sure would help. Told me these ulcers could last up to a month and sent us on our way! Wow thanks so helpful!

Anyway, we did have some fun with Eli between his meltdowns and him sitting in front of the TV watching Signing time. Grandma K gave the kids their Christmas presents while we were back in KS and I decided we needed a change of pace and pulled one of them out of the closet. Micali and Eli both had fun with the musical instrument  set and Eli even smiled a couple times. Micali is quite talented with drumming, marching, and playing her kazoo.A sick Elijah 012 A sick Elijah 003 A sick Elijah 005  A sick Elijah 007A sick Elijah 009

*Eli did have a clean shirt at least 10 different times throughout the day. He has been drooling like crazy since these ulcers showed up. It is kinda gross.

Now it is Saturday and things are definitely looking up. Eli slept for 5 hours straight last night so I am hoping he is on the mend!  Remember those clothes I mentioned washing on Monday? They finally were folded and put away last night too. I wouldn’t have made it through this week without my amazing husband who helped out so much and washed a lot of dishes too.

Monday, November 30, 2009

All of us together

So let’s put this into perspective so you can see what ALL of us really means:

2- parents

12- children

6-spouses

14 grandchildren

For a total of 34 people.

This is what it looks like:

 

the whole family

 

Some of the things we did:

* ate a lot of food—I was seriously amazed at how fast anything edible could disappear

* spent a lot of time outside enjoying the amazingly warm weather

* Micali and Eli had so much fun with the animals on grandma’s farm—chickens, cats, and a dog

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*played the piano

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* tied up Uncle Danny (micali’s new trick while wrestling her daddy, she pretends to tie him up so he can’t move) Thanksgiving Break 2009 028Thanksgiving Break 2009 032

* paintballing some of us played some of us enjoyed the game watching from the truck

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* Brother Devin leaving to go back to Fort Bragg—He is seriously BUFF!   

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* Star’s baptism, family dinner, and a little basketball

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We had so much fun during our time in Kansas and are grateful for the memories we were able to make.

More pictures to come when I figure out whose camera caught the other fun times we had!