Baby Tuesday

Since this is about babies, I thought I'd link about my friend and her 20 mo daughter who just had brain surgery.

The situation is crazy, because since she was born they couldn't figure out why she couldn't keep food down. And [stupid Kaiser] thought it was acid reflux and just putzed around and finally when they went outside their insurance, and saw some specialists, after more than a year, she found out it was a tumor pressing on her brain stem(!).
Jenni's older daughter is friends with Kid C and her daughter Riley who is in recovery at the hospital right now is a little younger than Ransom. They are in my MOPS group.

So if you're the praying ilk, pray that she recovers smoothly and that the tumor doesn't creep back. It's non-cancerous as far as I know, but it's obviously not a good tumor.

In the meantime, we are back home in Sockswithsandalsland, but I haven't taken any photos since I got back. My days have gone back and forth between really motivated to clean and organize to doing very little that requires concentration or creativity and just schlepping through.

So all I have are leftover videos and pics from last week:


My mom and her friend came over to Aurora's right before bedtime when everyone was in their jammies, but no one wanted to sleep. 'Spontaneous jumping party broke out.


My mom never lets a dirty garment hit the basket. They immediately go in the wash! The kids were move than happy to strip off their clothes to participate.


Here is the play area at the Galleria, that you've seen before in past weeks. But here it is in motion. I still wish we had this thing here. For reference, the cousins are climbing on the hippo in the center, and Baby R is in the blue shirt on the right hand side on the "rocks."


Baby R rode that pony at the Dallas Zoo like nobody's business. Too bad he hadn't got his birthday cowboy boots from Auntie Dianne yet, or that would have completed it.



We met another mom on the plane right across the aisle from us on the flight back.
She was from Devonshire England and she had kids the same ages as ours, but both girls.
I think she was jealous of Baby R's strapped-down-ed-ness in his car seat.
Here they are watching a movie on my laptop, while we tried to watch one on Kevin's for Baby R, but then the flight attendant busted us for not having earbuds. Like anyone cared(!), the flight had like 12 other people on it, and they had gladly sat themselves away from the kid circus in the back.
Annoying.


Okay, these aren't babies, but I'm their baby, so it counts right?
;)

itunes receipt

I just bought:

from Yahoo news

Too much tussling.

speedos for the whole family!

It seems that they only sell little boys speedos for elementary age kids. Unless I want to pay French or UK prices.
Which I don't.
I mean, how much fabric are we talking about there?

But I did find itty bitty trunks!



I'm considering buying them next month. They are so cute! And no more soggy baggy shorts, right?

I admit, I'm sad they don't come in big men's sizes. Although I don't think Kevin would wear them...yeah probably not.

caught on tape!

Kevin and I will be married 5 years this year.

But it wasn't until Sunday afternoon that we discovered the ceremony had been videotaped.

(!)

Aurora was going through her video camera tapes and it was on one of them. And she almost taped over it to film Baby R's birthday.

(!!)

So we bought a wire and hooked it up to my laptop and now it sits in my iMovie catalog in it's entirety, but I did throw together a very short version of it, for all of you that I didn't know back then.

Baby Tuesday

(Kevin is watching the kids while I do this)

Baby R turned 2 on Sunday!! Woo hoo!


Here he is, just warming up to the idea.
After all, he didn't really know what he was in for.
A big thanks to Aurora who went out and bought all the party decorations and balloons.
And thanks to those who brought food too, all I had to bring was the cake and the boy.

Here he is opening his presents, with alot of help from his sister and cousin.
They simply could not sit back and watch. They had to get in the gift-action.




Since Kid C was planning on going to a fancy dress up birthday party
before we knew we were flying out here, I promised her she would
have her fancy dress party in TX with her cousin.
And I delivered, we melded it with Baby R's birthday. And I bought
the girls feather boas, and brought her princess dress to wear.


Piñata! He was excited, and he didn't even know how it worked.




Yes, very excited indeed.



Right before the downpour....

Here is the happy result.

Daddy made it out for the birthday party. Hooray!

Caught on film, a rare occurance in the wild:

one of my children snuggling.

You may not see this again for many years.

Kid S is a nurturer. She wanted to make sure that Baby R

was as comfortable as possible before she could lay down

and watch Alice and Wonderland at GiGi's.

Alice and Wonderland, a big hit with the preschool set.

Here are the cousins at their ballet class.

The little girl on the left was so cute that I let her stay in the shot.

After all, she did the best "cheese." :)

Aurora arranged for Kid C to "audit" her cousins' ballet class, since

she's missing two of her own classes at the Sockswithsandalsland rec center.

Baby B, cute as ever. And very patient.

Here they all are, right before class started.

This is a suveillance shot of Baby R.
I smelled something funny when I went in to check if he needed a blanket, before I went to bed. So turned on the lights...

What he needed, I guess, was a diaper change.
But he went ahead and took care of that himself, apparently.

Without a peep, no less.

Baby Tuesday

Right now I am sitting at my mom's house and Ransom is the only one here with me, because we had to leave early from dinner at Aurora's house, because he had a full out tantrum. Big time meltdown.

He is of course better here, toddling around and cooing at Wendy the 16 yr old deaf/blind dog, drinking his beloved juice, and asking me to show him photos of helicopters on Flickr.

I can hear him coming for me right now so I can't type very much.\


Feel free to make up your own captions until I can get online again. The computer is in the room where his crib is, and you can see how that might be a problem.


Galleria playground. Beats the Valley Fair playground easily.
Oh, and Baby B fell over. She's a trooper.


See, she's back, no sweat.

Baby Tuesday

Well it's been an intense week since last Tuesday.
Amazingly the kids are letting me have this time to blog.
Ever since we got here, Baby R has been acting odd.
Usually in a bad way, but right now, he asked that I put him in his porta crib
and leave the door open. He's looking at his new favorite book and talking to
himself. And Kid C was eating a plate full of grapes leftover from the memorial.


Here he is, excited to finally be on an airplane, studying the exit


Kid C, also fascinated.


Triple threat in the bathtub!! The ladies were not happy about a tiny naked man crashing their bath party, but I thought he behaved himself, all things considered.


Or not.


Here are the ladies dressed up in sparkley princess/fairy dresses watching Sleeping Beauty.


The sleeping situation is a constant puzzle with these 4 kids, so the night before last I moved Emmitt the pug away from Baby R's room to my bed. But listen to him! Honestly, that's insane! I figured it was better for him to keep me awake than the baby.

Okay, Baby R asked to get out of his crib, and he has done his 3rd poop before 10am this morning. He's got diaper rash and the squirts. Oye.
I'm gonna try to walk us up to the grocery store now for blueberries to counter the bad pH...


UPDATE: I walked up to the Tom Thumb and I was the only non-octogenarian at the place. And there were no soy dogs, the produce guy looked at me like I was speaking Chinese, and there was no fair trade tea. So I just bought mini corn dogs and some random tea that said "all natural" heh. And then we walked home, and again, any one we saw was straight from the cast of Cocoon.

we miss you

quick flight post

In response to Joanne's comment/question, the flight went pretty good. Sandi and bringing the carseat onboard for Baby R was critical. As were the movies on the laptop, but to a lesser degree.

What I didn't anticipate was "re-entry."

Since they didn't sleep on the plane, and it was really late when we got in, they fell asleep in the car, and then when we got home they were *refreshed* and ready to stay up for hours.

Baby R did have a crib in the other room which was pretty good except when Kid C started tripping out about not wanting to sleep, not being tired, and wanting to turn the lights on and play... at 1:30am
...3am
...5am

Yes, 5am, she finally fell asleep after I used up most of my laptop arsenal and one children's Benadryl. She woke up all psycho at like 4am and it took Aurora to come out and help me get her back to sleep.

Oye.

But they are up and cheerful now...

rough

Right now Kid C is screaming at the top of her lungs (really, it's horrible), and she's running around completely naked from getting out of the bath by herself. And that's just at the present, I don't even want to talk about what happened earlier today. It's been a rough afternoon. I have no brain capacity or energy or anything. I'm near-paralyzed now.

But I have my laptop loaded with rented itunes movies, I bought plenty of legos, and puzzles, and drawing boards. Sandi is the most important thing I'm bringing on the plane tomorrow.

And thank you to Joanne who is driving us to the airport tomorrow.

I hope something drops out of the overhead bins and knocks me out once we're in the air, and I don't come to until we touch down at DFW...

I'm sad

There's always something stiff about a lyrics without hearing the song.

But this song is in my head today. It's not making me any less sad, but...

"..I remember you like yesterday, yesterday
I still can't believe you're gone
I remember you like yesterday, yesterday
And until I'm with you, I'll carry on..."

Baby Tuesday

This weeks installment is brought to you by my reconnected-through-Facebook-friend Sky.
We realized our daughters are the same age so we set a playdate.
And whaddya know? He's also a photographer with a really nice camera.




He took a handful of dirt and popped it right in his mouth.
I couldn't believe it. I think I must be denying him some essential minerals or something.


Kid L was a "runner." She would take off and then Kid C was like "huh? where'd you go?!"


I forget what was so funny.
If you look in the background you can see Baby R trying to make peace with another little kid on the playground.


She's making a crazy face here, but I thought I'd include it anyway.


"Now that I've eaten dirt, now I'll have a stick to chase it down."
He's teething those 2 yr molars. :/


Kid L taught Kid C to log-roll. It's a valuable kid-skill.


Sky thought it was really funny that right after Baby R had eaten dirt and chewed on a stick, he demanded hand sanitizer. I don't use it alot, only when handwashing isn't an option. But he fished it out of my purse and insisted.


Drooly and muddy, that's my tiny guy.

I think I might ask Sky to take our family portraits one of these days. I like how some of these came out. And he wasn't even really trying.


In other news, it's time to register for fall preschool classes and this morning I realized that I can't have Kid C just go for 2 mornings a week when she's 4 (!!!)
I have to have her in at least 3 mornings a week at her current school which is another 140 bucks on top of the 240 they already squeeze out of us.
Ugh!!
380 a month for 3 mornings of preschool, omg, I don't want to pay that!
But I don't want to switch schools, I like her school.

I'm at a loss.

A friend of mine homeschools her son, but I really like the system we have now. She's always trying to sell me on it, but the thought of doing it makes me sweaty and tense. At this point, I think I'd rather work a night shift at a 24 hr restaurant once a week, to be able to afford real preschool instead of doing that.

I really don't know what we're going to do. It may come down to us taking her out and putting her in another class at the rec center while she's 4. She could be in dance class, and maybe an art class as well? Or swimming? That's something, right?

Because she's gonna have to be in preschool when she's 5 too, so maybe we'll revisit an actual preschool then. Oye.

peru young life shirt

One of the missionaries we support down in Peru, Christen, hosts teams to help with her ministry there.

She asked me to design the shirts for her teams to wear and here's what I came up with.

I took the ideas she had for what she wanted on there and tweaked it a little bit.

land of goats

This is how you know Christians are the minority in the Bay Area:

HILLSONG UNITED is coming to California for 4 nights of worship.

April 16 - SACRAMENTO
April 17 - BAKERSFIELD
April 20 - LOS ANGELES
April 21 - SAN DIEGO

I don't even like Hillsong, I just thought it was funny.

I mean, even Bakersfield gets a show. Wow.

Baby Tuesday

This morning, Baby R was that kid, which makes me that mom.

You know, the 2 year old boy who is a complete maniac in public, that the mom has to pull a wrestling move to hold on to him and dive out the door of the library/restuarant/bank/store for common courtesy's sake.

The kid that has the snotty boogery nose and a shirt with big drool/food stains.

Yes, it's happened. And I'm a little depressed about it. I hope it only lasts until he's 3. I can deal with it for a year.

Kid C didn't really have terrible-twos. She has always been on the difficult side since she was born, so I didn't notice a distinct change in behavior when she turned 2.
Baby R is no longer the teddy bear he once was. I love him just the same, but he can turn on "wacko" now like nobody's business.

My mom and I are considering going to Disneyland while she's here in about a month. And I'm up for it, as long as I just bring Kid C. Baby R is a Disneyland powder keg. It depends on whether Rich feels up to it, and if Kevin is willing to use his gardening-vacation-days to tend his son as well.

And as of 8am this morning, I scored Baby R's birthday gift on eBay. I like the tiny n' tuff megabloks sets. This can kinda connect to the one he already has.


Camera phone pics, because I'm too lazy to charge the batteries for the real camera.
This is my viewpoint in most of Baby R's waking hours.
Couple this shot with the sound of "uppa uppa uppa!"


This is also pretty common. It's fighting and whining.


he's saying "cheese!"


Here is Kid C as mayor of Crazy Town


Lotta love fo' the Olive



I know this is a random shot, but we went to the Great Mall a couple of weeks ago, with his little friend Baby CB to go to the H&M there. We have an H&M here in Sockswithsandalsland, but it's only women's clothes. The Great Mall one has kids clothes! Baby CB got some boy skinny jeans, tre chic, and Baby R got a sweet snap shirt and Kid C got some Hello Kitty skivies.

Okay, gotta go, Baby R has stripped himself naked and is hitting the projection screen with a magnadoodle board...