Showing posts with label auntie em. Show all posts
Showing posts with label auntie em. Show all posts

Monday, April 12, 2010

Adventures In Motherhood...

Most of us would agree that being a mom is both overwhelmingly challenging and undescribably rewarding at the same time. The past couple months in our family have been loaded with lots of challenges and lots of rewards. Here is a summary....

A trip to Thermopolis to visit Aunt Emily, a.k.a Aunt "Enemy", a.k.a. Auntie Em. We don't make it over to visit her and Uncle Pat very often, so I thought it was post-worthy. Especially since my girls have a huge soft spot for their greatest of great-aunts. Children automatically fall in love with this woman. She is spunky and fun and caters to their every whim. We had a fun time visiting for the day and enjoying her and uncle Pat's hospitality!!

Recently we drove over to Otto to spend a little time with Grandma Great for her birthday. The girls always love to explore at her house. This time they explored in a few places they shouldn't have. I think Grandma was glad to see us go home that day. :) Besides dragging out every toy in the house and pulling clothes out of drawers, they also got into a drawer that had a razor in it. Being the curious little critter she is, Anastyn managed to cut her precious, most beloved thumb (the one she is constantly sucking on). She cut it pretty deep and, oh boy, was there drama. Drama, drama, drama. We had blood everywhere. On the clothes that they had pulled out of Grandma's drawers, on Grandma's carpet. Everywhere. And when we finally got everything under control and the poor thumb bandaged up, we thought it might actually be a blessing in disguise. We kind of thought maybe this would cure Anastyn of her obsessive thumb-sucking habit. You know - since she would have it all bandaged up for a while. Well, that's not really how it turned out. Now we just have an ambidextrous thumb sucker. :)
Somewhere along the way, we had Easter. We dyed Easter eggs the night before with BrookLynn and Elle (which I hate doing, by the way...way too messy). And, naturally, the girls loved finding their Easter baskets on Easter morning and eating candy. Oh, how they love candy. :) It was nice to be able to relax and enjoy General Conference on t.v. and we had a delicious lunch of ham and funeral potatoes and homemade rolls and jello at Grandpa Leithead's house. It was a good day. This past Friday night was Matty and my "all-expense paid" night in the Sleep Lab! Unfortunately, I have no pictures to share with you. I forgot my dang camera. I did get some pictures on my phone, but I have no clue how to get those pictures onto my computer. We were testing Matty for sleep apnea. Now, I knew this wasn't going to be a pleasant experience. And I also figured that I wouldn't get much sleep. But it really was worse than I had expected! Knowing Matty's history of doctor's offices and hospitals, it was no surprise that she was scared out of her mind the moment we arrived. So scared that she did, indeed, hurl all over the carpet in our room shortly after we got there. And her little hands were shaking the entire hour it took to get her hooked up to all of the wires. I lost count of how many wires they had her hooked up to. Ten on her head alone. Don't ask me how anyone is supposed to be able to get any sleep when they have wires attached to every part of their body. It was one of the longest nights I have ever made it through. I am pretty sure I looked at the time on my cell phone at least fifteen times during the night - just to see how much longer before we could get the heck out of there. I spent the entire night trying to make sure Matty stayed asleep, stayed untangled from her wires, and that the wires stayed attached to her through her very active tossing and turning through the night. I did not want to have to re-do the dang test! I do have to mention that I was slightly creeped out the next morning when the guy sheepishly admitted that he had forgotten to have me sign a form the before we had gone to bed. The one that says "Yes, I was informed that we would be observed on video all night long." I patiently signed and dated with the previous day's date and then thought really hard to remember if I had done anything embarassing-like scratch my butt-during the night. We were so happy in the morning when we could finally leave!! And I was so glad that Kyle and Anastyn had stayed the night in a hotel in Billings that night. I am pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to drive us home without falling asleep at the wheel! We haven't heard on the results yet, but we are hoping that we don't have to have this experience again for a very long time!!

Next. I was hoping that we would somehow be able to avoid this common childhood crisis. But that was not in our stars. Last night Anastyn found scissors. And she knew exactly what to do with them. I wanted to cry when I saw her bangs snipped off at the scalp. Luckily, she left a few longer strands on the top layer so we can camouflage them. :) It wasn't until this morning that I discovered that she hadn't stopped at her bangs. When I took yesterday's messy bun out and started brushing I realized that we were missing a lot more hair. Then I started taking out Matty's messy buns. This is when I realized that the scissors did not stop at Anastyn's hair. After brushing, Matty was actually missing a significantly larger amount of hair than her sister was. I was not happy. You can see the pile of hair in the following picture. I was extremely upset. And Anastyn could sense that. I heard her in the other room a little while later saying, "My Mommy doesn't like me." I had to explain to her that I did, indeed, like her. I just didn't like the haircuts she gave herself and her sister...
Anastyn is very aware of the upcoming arrival of her baby brother. She is so excited for him to come. She loves to rub my tummy and feel the baby moving. She and Matty came in to show me that they, too, had babies in their tummies this morning. I thought it was so cute. When they unzipped their jammies to show me, I discovered that they were actually expecting kitties. :) Too cute.

Oh The Joys!!!

Monday, June 22, 2009

Funnies...

I have had a miserable cold the last few days. Saturday we were traveling in the car and i was sipping on a fountain Pepsi. Anastyn wanted me to give her a sip, but I told her she couldn't have any because there were "sick bugs" on my straw. With a look of curiosity on her face, Anastyn said, "Let me see 'em, mom!"

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Saturday the girls and I rode to Thermopolis with my parents. My aunt Emily had invited us to come down for a Father's Day BBQ. Auntie Em is just a really fun lady that loves little kids and so they love her in turn. The girls had a blast at her house - she had filled up a little swimming pool for them to play in and provided fun toys and movies to make sure they had a great time. When we pulled up in front of her house, Matty exclaimed in her most excited voice, "Aunt Enemy's house!!!"

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The other day I needed to run to the grocery store for something. I was just going to leave the girls at home with my mom because, well, that's just easier. :) While I was getting ready, Matty came in and asked, "What you doing, Mommy?" I explained to her that I was just going to run to the store for a minute and be right back. Then she asked, "Mommy...Matty go a store?" I couldn't resist her cute face, and I figured it wouldn't be so bad to take one child to the store, so I told her that she could come with me but she would have to let me brush her hair because it was full of snarls. Matty doesn't especially enjoy having her hair brushed out and so she replied, "No! Matty cry!" I had to giggle to myself that she already new that it was going to make her cry. :)

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Anastyn is really good at remembering things and is a pretty good talker. So we have fun teaching her things and then asking her about them later to see if she remembers. She can rattle off her birthday, Matty's birthday, her full name, Matty's full name, the names of her grandpas and grandmas and her mommy and daddy, what town she lives in, what town BrookLynn and Elle live in, and she even knows the name of our President. We will ask, "Anastyn, who's the president?" and she quickly replies, "Oooooo-Bama!" It is really cute how she says it. Makes us laugh every time.

We ask Matty some of these same questions and she does pretty good, too. The other day I asked her what her sister's name was......she said, "Sissy Belle Leithead". So cute.

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This one isn't a very good reflection of the kind of language that escapes my mouth occasionally...but it was pretty darn funny...

We went to Powell with Kari, Kaleb, and Kristin and her girls to have dinner at Grandma Marla's house last week. We were all sitting around after dinner teasing the kids. Somebody threw Anastyn's favorite blanket at her head and she said, "Don't mess up my hair, damn it!" Yikes.

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I often have my nose in a book. One day Anastyn was trying to accomplish something naughty, but I kept looking up from my book and giving her "the look". She was getting really frustrated because she wanted to make her trouble without me interfering. After a while she shouted, "No Mom!! READ-YOUR-BOOK!!!"

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Because I have had this cold, my voice has been very hoarse. It is very frustrating to try to have a conversation because it hurts to talk and it sounds so annoying. The other day I was trying to explain something to Anastyn. She looked at me, scowling, and ordered, "Mom....STOP TALKING!"