Getting our tails kicked.

It hasn't been a good week. In fact, we have been under attack. A few weeks go I made a critical error and announced with some arrogance that we had been spared the wrath of our annual stomach virus.  Upon hearing these stupid words as they left my mouth, my friend said, "When will you learn just to be quietly grateful?"  Seriously. When will I learn?

In the days since, I have made three trips to Lewisburg Pediatrics.  Not for a stomach thing but for an ear infection for Josh, strep throat for both Lauren and Mara, and given the picture below we are looking pretty good for a trip tomorrow for Josh. There has been much puking over the last 12 hours and it is showing no signs of waning any time soon. 

This picture could have been interchangeable over the past week or so. Each child has had his or her turn. Mara mostly snuggled with me. But Lauren had a solid day on thr chair in between spells on my lap. And Josh has been back and forth between me and the chair.  

Mara has not taken well to the attention Joshua has been getting today- reverting to tears more times than I care to recall. And it is 12:00 pm. Long day ahead of us. And night I am afraid. 

Lauren, on the other hand, has been a gem. She busied herself all morning making this castle in the playroom. She keeps emerging to check on Josh, but seems wise to run away from the germs. 

Hopefully your weekend has looked NOTHING like ours. 

The Weekend in Pictures

Joshua's final Upward game of the season!  He had a lot of fun. 

Outside playtime always lifts our spirits. It was chilly, but that didn't keep us inside. We saw sunshine and decided to go for it. 

And these were from our special day to celebrate Grandma Shirley as we finally laid her ashes to rest.  It was her first birthday in Heaven, and we all were together to cap off what turned unexpectedly into the most difficukt 7 months our family has faced. Pap passed so suddenly on August 9th, and then Grandma's struggle began, ending in her passing on New Year's Day. Just so much for us all to soak in. But together- we did it just as they bkth would have expected us to-- as a family all together and with homemade ice cream. It was a very special day. 

2 years (+ 2.5 months)

You can tell Mara is our third child-- since her 2 year well checkup at the doctor's office was well past when it was actually her second birthday. In my defense, it's not like she hasn't had plenty of attention from the doctors in the past few months, what with her incessant ear infections and resulting complications from her antibiotics. I mean, really. 

But last week, Mara finally had her checkup. She was so much more charming than normal- usually she is screaming her guts out at the mention  of her name- and was jabbering like crazy to the nurse and the doctor. She measured 27 lb 3 oz (50th percentile) and was 37" long (96th percentile). Funny how out little midget who gave us such fits in the growth department is suddenly turning into the girl who won't be wearing high heels to her prom.  

The whole way through her appointment she was asking the doctor to check specific things. "Docor check Mara's heart?  Docor check Mara's ears?  Docor check Mara's beyee?"  It was sweet, and he declared that she is advnced verbally. And tbat made me laugh right out loud. I assured him that it wasn't something I would have expected to hear from him since all of her verbal development seems to have happened at warp speed over the past two months. 

Mara still is obsessed with all things baby related, and spends nearly all of her time taking care of her beloved purple baby. She rocks her, sings to her and dresses her up. She feeds her, gives her bottles and tucks her in at bedtime. I have said in recent months that it is a shame we didn't have her first because she would have been a big help with the other kids!

She is talking in multiple sentence thoughts at this point, and although it is still sometimes pretty choppy, she is getting her point across with pretty adorable personality these days. You can just tell how much less frustrated she is now that she can communicate a little better.  I think we are all relieved about that!

A Happy Weekend



We had a great weekend- lots of fun things going on.  I managed to do a better job than normal of catching at least a few of them on the camera!  And also decided to START the day with a blog post instead of waiting until the end of the day, since that always seems to roll around long before I've reached the end of the list of things that need to be done.  We'll see if I can get a streak rolling here under this new program.

 

Saturday morning we headed to Joshua's 6th Upward basketball game of the 8 game season.  Most of our Saturdays have been spent wrangling children, buying hot dogs and swedish fish at the concession stand and finding ways to pass the hour with Mara without her running off, disturbing the rest of the spectators, or having a fit.  This particular week was a special one, because Grandma, Aunt Sheri and Jai, and Gage came to watch Joshua play.  So with a few extra hands to occupy the girls, I was able to snap a few pictures.  Joshua has been having such a great time playing this year, and he really has made a lot of improvements.  He is dribbling much better, taking smarter shots and making a few baskets each week.  It's so much fun to watch him enjoy himself so much.  On most weeks, I also get a little bit of social time with Emily and their girls as well, so that's never a bad thing.

 

 

Saturday evening, Jason and I went to the annual banquet for the fire department where Jason has been volunteering for the past 8 months or so, and had a nice time.  I was so proud of him when he was named the Rookie of the Year for the department!  He's donated a lot of time for training and classes he has needed to take, as well as for the few calls there have been in recent months, so I was glad to see him be recognized for the time he has volunteered.  And it was really nice for me to get to meet some of the guys that he has been talking about working with.

We muddled through the whole "spring forward" disaster on Saturday night, and all of us woke up grouchy and tired on Sunday morning.  I opted to let the bad attitudes resolve themselves at home rather than in front of an audience at Sunday School, and we went just for church this week.  I think that proved the right choice.  All three kids woke up on the wrong side of the bed for sure.  I'm convinced that the people responsible for Daylight Savings Time do not have small children.

We pushed through our Sunday afternoon with a special visit from my parents.  The kids were thrilled to have Nana and Pap come to see them.  Mara was especially outgoing with them- she always seems to be more so in our house rather than at theirs, but her very quickly growing vocabulary has given her a lot more confidence to say what she wants to say.  I honestly don't think she stopped jabbering the whole time they were there.  She's starting to now string two or three sentences together-- they're choppy, but if you pay close attention you can totally get what she's saying.  I think Mom and Dad got a kick out of her.  She certainly isn't lacking in the personality department, that's for sure.

After Mom and Dad left, we all decided that we were going to celebrate spring, whether it is here or not.  When the temperature hit 38 on Saturday afternoon, I said to Jason that I thought we should bag the plan I had for dinner on Sunday night and get some steaks to grill.  So I made a trip to Byerly's and we had a delicious steak dinner last night with some homemade apple crisp.  Oh how it made me ready for warm nights of grilling and being outside.  The kids spent the afternoon running around in the driveway playing basketball and writing with sidewalk chalk.  I think the fresh air did them all a lot of good.  But Mara quickly crashed when we came back inside.  I wouldn't normally encourage a nap at 4:00 in the afternoon, but she couldn't help herself and slept from then until it was time for dinner.  Because she was all wacked out by Daylight Savings Time, she didn't have any trouble falling asleep at bedtime (nor did I as I rocked MYSELF to sleep from about 9:00-11:00 in her room last night).

In other news, I was thrilled in the past few weeks to have reached my 40 pound weight loss goal.  When I really started working on this in January 2013, my goal was to lost 40 by the time we left for Disney World LAST MAY.  Needless to say, it's been a bit more of a project than that.  But about two weeks ago, I finally saw that goal to completion and can start to focus on getting to the final goal I have-- only about 19 pounds to go.  I was thrilled on Saturday morning to finally fit into a pair of jeans that I haven't been able to get into since before I got pregnant with Joshua.  This highlights a few things--- 1. Wow, I haven't cleaned out my drawers in a long time!  and 2. I'm a hopeful person.  I KNEW I'd get back there eventually!  It felt great to comfortably wear those jeans.  Everyone else probably thought I was just way out of style in my 2006 jeans, but it was a moment of pride for me.  Sadly that steak dinner and apple crisp probably set me back a bit, but life goes on.  And since I don't weigh in until Friday morning again, hopefully I'll be able to undo any damage by then!

And just for fun, here are my two favorite girls from this morning before I took Lauren to school.  So sweet- both of them.