A Few of my Favorite Things

Besides toe lint and boogers, these are a few of my favorite pictures. Since you cannot really start out that way without an explanation, here ya go. I pick my kids boogers and toe lint. Well, boogers I use an aspirator. I just cannot stand to see their noses clogged. The toe lint is just a pet peeve. I started it with all of them because they were trying to suck on their toes, and I did not want them to be dirty. Besides, toe lint is highly underrated. It gets uncomfortable when there is a bunch of stuff wedged between your toes. Rory and Logan used to pick their toes while I changed their diapers. Rory picks them before bed now. Marley will probably also be a picker. I'm not too sure about Kaelyn. She's neglecting so much in her personal hygiene that I have to pick my battles, and toe lint is a lot further down the list than others. When Kaelyn was a baby though, I would pick the lint between her fingers more than her toes. That kid always had something between her fingers. Anyway, now you know. On to the pictures...
This is one of my favorites of Logan. He looks so innocent and gentle. It almost doesn't look like him because he normally has that mischievous spark in his eyes. Here's the other one of these.















This one too is just a close up of the other one.

I know most of my blogs and pics are of Logan and Marley, but that is because they are the two here most. Kaelyn would rather be shot these days than have me take her picture. Although she did get her hair cut off last night, so I'm hoping she'll let me show everyone with a pic. I'll try to get one before she washes it. I'm sure I have time. :) Over and out

My Hot TaMarley

Guess what happened today...Marley crawled! That's not the best part. The best part is...wait for it..I GOT IT ON TAPE! Technically I wouldn't say that this is the first time she has crawled, but I'm still putting it down in her baby book because A) I saw it. B) I got it on tape. C) I feel like it. Check it out...


What I think is so great about this is that Kevin gets to see it. This is the first time I have seen her want something, and then go after it and get it...even though it was Barney. What is with that purple dinosaur?!?! I really should not call it crawling. It looks more like she is hopping. I love the burp when she falls to her belly too. I keep telling Kevin that I want just one kid that has something of me besides my nose. I'll take a good burper. I see many contests in the future for Marley and me. Now Logan was not going to just stand by and see Marley get all the attention with the camera, so here is what he had to offer.










I think his chin looks like Jay Leno's in the pic on the right. It's so pronounced. And now without further ado....THE LOGAN DANCE. Sorry it's sideways.

Survival of the Fittest

This title was going to be "Amanda's Visit." Then it was going to be "Birth Control." We had my niece, Amanda, this weekend. She's three years old. I think she looks just like Michelle Williams, Heath Ledger's baby's momma.



























Anyway it was hectic. Actually, from my point of view, it was just fine. I stayed here all weekend while Kevin ran them around. Saturday was the gym, Chuck-E-Cheese, and a store. Then we went to Nana and Papa's, Kevin's parents, for dinner. That night the girls were right off the sleep. Logan...not so much. Today they went to Chuck-E-Cheese to spend the rest of the coins from yesterday. Then they went to the market, Costco, and the mall. After naps we headed down to my parents for Amanda's drop off. It was such a welcome change for my kids. After the first day though, Amanda's novelty of being here started to wear off, and she missed her mommy a lot. It gave me a good dose of what five kids would be like, hence the "Birth Control" title. I think I'll stick to the four I've got. Maybe a little Filipino boy will find his way here some day too, and if that happens at least I know I will survive. Here are some pics for you to enjoy...
Writing on the whiteboard wall.
Picnicking
Queen of the rock

Running away playing "What time is it Mr. Wolf?"
Three adorable kids

Frustration

I tried to blog many times last night, but it wasn't working right. I apologize. I didn't have the patience for it after it not working the hundredth time. I will try to do it later this morning. Wishful thinking considering my niece, Amanda, is on her way as we speak. It's about to get really busy here!!!! Pray, pray, and pray.

The Closest Thing to Hate and Discord

Upon request by one of my regular readers, this is a rebel post. The theme is hate and discord. I stand to deliver these pictures, which are the closest thing I have to hate and discord.

This is Logan's best impression of a caveman. He grabs Rory's foot and drags her around in a circle, which I'm sure is to confuse and disassociate her. Then he tosses her aside. Rory didn't get the hate and discord memo and smiled in the pictures. She apologizes. If Logan ever decides to impersonate a caveman again, I will make sure she doesn't have fun. :) Now, enough of the hate and discord. How about some warm and fuzzy video?




I love this video because Marley looks like a bug that's been flipped onto it's back and is trying to right itself.

Service Day

Today was service day at Christiana, Rory's school. I am service day coordinator. I had a week to organize making Easter baskets for needy children in our community. We took an amount of our tax return and split it up between everyone in the family except Marley. We get to choose what charity that money goes to. I decided to spend my money on making Easter baskets. Other people volunteered from the school to assemble the baskets too. With Marley's weight problems, I decided to stay here and take care of her. She wouldn't have eaten or slept well if I had taken her. To do this, Kevin took the day off from work to take Rory and Logan to put baskets together. Let's hear it, "AAWWWWW." He even took pictures for me.
This wasn't even all of them in the back of the car. There were about 45 baskets assembled. Kevin, Rory, and Logan dropped them off at the shelter. In the end, I used all my charity money and more than half of Kevin's. Not once did he complain or look at me weird when I asked him to do this for me, and for that I feel truly blessed. Thanks babe.

Standoffs and Pictures

I am currently in a standoff with Kaelyn. Her chores today were trash and cleaning her room. I made the mistake a while ago telling her that she had to do a half hour of chores a day. Since then, she's been timing everything. Trash took her 15 minutes today when it normally takes 10 because she knew I was timing her. I told her that she had to clean her room for 15 minutes, but if she gave a really good effort in less than 15 minutes, then that would be all she had to do. First, she took a nap. Then she came out into the living room. I was pumping, so I told Kevin to go get the remote. She tried to hide it when he walked in, but he got it. She shrilled, "What Mommy?!" I told her she couldn't watch TV until her room was clean. Not even 5 minutes later, she came downstairs to ask for the remote. I went up to check her room, and she had picked the stuff up off the floor and put it on her futon. There was no effort made. (Stop laughing, Mommy!...my mommy...not words Kaelyn said) I didn't give her the controller. She just came down again and I saw no change. She's getting really mad now and stomping and banging things. I wouldn't want to be her if she wakes one of the kids. Normally I wouldn't be like this, but she's had a pretty easy couple weeks as far as chores are concerned and getting off from doing them and such. There's only so much I can give before it becomes her taking advantage. She has to give back, and I'm committed to her learning this life lesson. Now, enough of this crap. Here are some pictures.
This is Logan playing Kevin's I-Phone. He has a racing game on it. Rory likes it too.
This is the rite of passage for our kids. Before they can stand on the floor, they have to stand on daddy's hand. Logan wasn't too good at it. Rory and Marley got the hang of it.
This is a really cute picture.
LOOK! She's standing!!! She fell over shortly after this was taken.

That's it. Good night. Oh, and the standoff? I won of course. I am the parent!

Bucy Bedtime

The bedtime routine for all my kids consisted of walking and singing. I would sing certain songs to each of them. Kaelyn was "Fire and Rain" by James Taylor. Rory was "Amazing Grace". Logan was "Hail Mary". You can see as the kids kept appearing, I switched to prayers. :) Marley is "Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley...fitting. As they grew up, new songs took over. Rory didn't want "Amazing Grace" anymore. Nana had introduced her to "Hush Little Baby" or "Hush Little Rory". Logan didn't like slow songs anymore, so he switched to "Goodnight, Sweetheart". Well, since they've been sharing a room, Logan has been starting to switch to "Hush Little Logan".
Even though I've complained about it many times, Kevin insists on revving the kids up before bedtime. It drives me crazy. He flings them around and tosses them all over the place. We each normally take a kid and sing the song and walk them. Kevin started to hold Rory as if she was flying, so I had to do the same to Logan. I started to spin Logan around at the end of the song, so Kevin had to do that with Rory. For the past week, this is what we've ended up with.



Is that crazy or what?! I always tell Kevin to sing faster because my arms are breaking. What's even worse is when Kevin isn't there at bedtime, and I have to do that to both of them. Surprisingly enough, they've never collided. Of course, I say that now...

Primal Fear

It's hard to describe what it feels like when the doc tells you that you're not feeding your child good enough. To catch you all up, Marley weighed 13lbs. 9oz. at her 4 month check up. At her 6 month check up, she weighed 12lbs. 15oz. They gave me 2 weeks to get her weight up, and put Marley through blood tests to make sure she was alright. I cried at how much pain the blood tests caused her because I felt like she wouldn't have gone through it if I were a good mother...if I could feed her. I started her on solid foods, breakfast and dinner. You're supposed to start out with just 1 meal a day. I started breastfeeding every 2 hours instead of 3 and pumping after each time I fed her, hoping to send signals that more was needed. Instead of buying baby food, I made it in my blender mixing it with breastmilk, so she could have more calories. I like making her baby food from scratch. It makes me feel a little better being able to make it for her...feed her somehow. Three times a day I take a fenugreek capsule, an alfalfa capsule, and drink a cup of Raspberry Leaf Tea. This herbel remedy is working WONDERS! I have a lot of milk. She's eating almost 1/4 cup of cereal in the morning, squash in the evening, and I'm making sweet potatoes tonight for her to try tomorrow. Here is a side by side comparison of Marley at 4 months (the pic on the left) and Marley at 6 months. Tell me what you think.



















I think she looks smaller in her 6 month picture too, her face especially. Today was her 2 week check up. She weighs 13lbs. 4 oz. She's gained 6 ounces. The doc says that's good, but it's not enough. She's still not up to 13lbs. 9oz. like she was at her 4 month check up. I'm now to add lunch into her meal regimen. I have to go back in 2 more weeks. The doc wants 1/2 - 1 ounce a day gain. The pain from not being able to feed her is almost unbearable, but the fear that something might be wrong with her digestive track far outweighs that. Inadequacy sucks especially when you've produced these characters...
Wait...I'm not responsible for that last one. :) Those kids eat so good that even when all the food is done, I find them doing this...









That's right. Those are my kids eating the meat juice out of the crockpot because all the meat is gone. We had salisbury steak by the way. How can I go from this to...


She doesn't look like she's enjoying herself, but she ate all her squash. Pray for my Marley.

The Teen Years

Ok, so I'm only 2 years into them, but I still feel like a veteran. I know I probably haven't seen the worst, and I'm sure I don't want to. Kaelyn missed the bus this morning. It was only the second morning I wasn't upstairs to see her off. Not only did she miss it when it went down the street, but she missed it when it went back up the street. Yes, it passes our house TWICE. When Kaelyn started school I told her that if she missed the bus too bad so sad. She had to be responsible to get herself out the door. She has missed the bus once so far, and I drove her in because I was being nice that day. When she missed it again today, out of the kindness of my heart, I asked Nana to take her to school. :) She was taking Rory and would pass by it anyway. Apparently Kaelyn made comments on the way there about how her daddy would've gotten her there on time and what not. Just Rude! Anyway, I gave her a talking to when she got home about how that won't be happening again, meaning Nana giving her a ride. She said she was joking which is the teenage answer for EVERYTHING they do wrong. I should know. So far she hasn't given me a run for my money yet like I did to my mom when I was her age. I'm sure it's just around the corner. It's hard to believe that my little girl who one day was doing this..Oh, you haven't seen this picture? Kaelyn was scratching her ear one day
and a black spec came out on her finger. She swore it was a bug in her ear. I told her she was overreacting and did a bug check on her futon because she swore that it fell on it. After the whole incident this is how I found her at the kitchen table. She had rolled up tissues and scotch taped them to her ears. I can't believe she let me take pictures of it. She's probably kill me if she knew I posted it here. It's just so funny! To keep things symmetrical, I'll post my favorite picture of her.
She looks so grown up here and still innocent. This was on her 14th birthday. I can't believe I'm that old. She's a good kid though. I know my mom's still holding out for the whole karma thing to happen. She's enjoying Kaelyn's teenage years almost as much as Kaelyn. She just laughs when I tell her what she's doing. I guess I had it coming though.

Happy Patty's Day!

I was going to make this post about St. Patrick's Day and the history behind corn beef and cabbage. I thought that was boring. To sum it up, Ireland doesn't eat that to celebrate today. It's an Irish-American tradition. Something really cute today was Rory. I printed out a bunch of printables to color about St. Patrick's Day. All day she was talking about apricots and coloring the pictures with the apricot crayon. Finally I asked what she was talking about with the apricots. She said she didn't know, and I asked if she was talking about shamrocks...the flowers. She was. It was really funny. Guess ya had to be there. Let's talk about Logan for a little bit because he wins the best pictures today. Nana and Papa went to the store to get Rory Indian figures for the village she built in school
last week. While she was there, she got Logan little animal figures, Kaelyn a book of scrap booking paper, and Marley an outfit. Logan loves jungle animals. These are little animals. He took them out and lined them right up. The funny thing about it is the bear at the front is facing the rest of the animals in the other direction. This did not bother Logan one bit. I asked him where they were all going, but he didn't answer me. I asked if he knew, and he said he did. I guess that was just between him and the animals. Here's a close-up... Here's a couple more
because he's so photogenic.














He's trying to be mad here.

Self-explanatory. Ya gotta love him!

Happy Birthday Dita!!!

This is my sister, Dita. It's her birthday today. Dita is eight years older than me, so she was on her way out of the house by the time I knew what that meant. In tribute to her birthday, I thought I would tell you some maybe unknown facts about my sister.

1. She single handily planned, produced, and directed my whole wedding.


2. She has diabetes and manages one of the most stressful lives I've ever known even when sick.


3. We're a lot alike.


4. She's been there for me whenever I've asked for help, and even when I didn't.


5. She's fiercely loyal and loving.

Thank you, Dita, for always being there for me and being a great big sister. Here's to a lot more years. I love you! Happy Birthday!

Oops!

I forgot to update this last night! Sorry to all (4) of you. :) Kevin and I had a budget meeting last night. It turned into a meal planning meeting and then into a deck flooring research meeting. By the end of the meeting, we didn't have a budget, but we knew how much we needed from it for food and flooring. Dave Ramsey says that there's the geek and the free spirit to every budget meeting. I'm the geek and Kevin's the free spirit. Who'd thunk? Anyway, we were trying to figure out how much we need for the beach, Rory's tuition, and the debt snowball we're trying to get rolling again. We start out with the best of intentions and somehow always get sidetracked. We decided to reconvene the meeting at next paycheck receipt.

Today (Sunday) we went to my parent's house to celebrate Dita's birthday. Marley slept a total if an hour from 630a to our departure time of 530p. She fell asleep in the car for 15 minutes. Rory and Logan were completely excited to play with Tyler and Amanda and talked about how they wanted to play with them some more and when we were going to see them again. It was me and Kevin's eat free day, so we had BK and MacD's for breakfast, Ruby Tuesday for lunch, and steak, lobster and grandma's noodles for dinner. I'm stuffed. So not an eventful weekend, but I'll still leave you with a picture...
My toy box

Pizza, Banana Bread, and Friday the 13th

So today is Friday, and our family doesn't eat meat on Fridays. I opened my big mouth in front of the kids and suggested that maybe we could make our own pizzas for dinner like we did when Auntie Fifi was here. (Auntie Fifi is what my kids called Maria because Rory couldn't say Riri) I had to get everything from the store and was in a panic that the dough wouldn't have enough time to rise. Add in that Marley wasn't sleeping and finally decided to go to sleep in primetime storetime, and that makes for unhappy, wanting to make pizza, kids. I called Kevin on his way home and asked him to go to the store if I didn't get there first. I was going to load the kids in the car and take the banana bread over to the doctor's office to give to the ladies that helped with Marley's test results. And maybe try to finagle them to weigh Marley and see how she's doing. Kevin ends up calling from Safeway while I'm waiting at the light to turn into Safeway. I end up going directly to the doctor's office instead. Apparently, the staff that's usually there every Friday is not there today, so no banana bread giving. This figures considering the day I've had. I go over to Safeway to stalk Kevin. He comes out and we both head home. Kaelyn mentions that today is Friday the 13th. I didn't even remember and thus have a reason why my day went how it did. That works better than saying it was all my fault. Here's a pic of us making pizza.

Ok, so this is us making pizza at my parent's house when Maria and her boys were here in January. It's the same concept just a different house and some different kids. I ended up just getting the ready made pizza dough. Everyone said they really liked it, but Rory and Logan didn't eat more than a bite and asked for pb&j's instead. Kaelyn said she really like hers. I guess 1 out of 4 isn't bad. Marley looked at it like she would've really liked it.

Some things that happened today

Kevin worked from home today to go with me to my Onc appt. The kids are not normal when he is working from home because they see daddy, they want daddy, and that's that. Rory must've asked him a thousand times today when he was going to be done working. He just kept telling her, and it didn't make a differ- ence. I was doing dishes and Marley was playing on the floor in the living room. I heard Rory and Logan playing in their room. Rory said they were putting lotion all over their heads, so I went to check it out and saw Rory rubbing her towel on her head thinking that she was pretending that was the lotion. Apparently, I was wrong.
I walked into their room when I was done the dishes, and they really were putting lotion in their hair. This is Rory in her timeout. This is nothing compared to Logan.
This needs no words. Just take it in.












At 330p I had my Onc appt. I decided to take pictures, so you all could see what happens at these things...in case you're interested. Due to the graphic nature of one of the following pictures, parental discretion is advised.
This is my cancer center. On one side are the Oncologists, on the other is the treatment center.












This is DL. He comes and gets me from the waiting room and weighs me. Then he takes me to a room and does this...










Sorry this picture turned out blurry. While this is reading my pulse ox (amount of oxygen in my blood) and my heart rate...or something that Kevin can't remember the name of, he takes my blood pressure.







Then he takes blood. He uses a butterfly needle. They use them on kids...and people they want to be nice to I believe.










Then comes the man of the hour. This is my Onco- logist, Dr. Lee...not to be confused with Dr. Lee, my OB-GYN or Dr. Lee, the kid's pediatrician. He's one of those people who is really book smart but not big on the common sense. He called Marley "he" the whole appt. Anyway, everything looks fine. He wrote a script for my scan which I'll probably get some time in April. I want Marley to get on solid foods a little better before hand. So there you have it. A typical Onc day. I'll keep you all posted. And to all you non-crazy, non-weird, lots to offer readers and COMMENTERS, thanks for your support. Good night and good luck.