Ever After

Joey just had story time with Lucy.  This is what she said:

"Once upon a time there was a golden harp in the happy valley. And then a dark shadow came over happy valley, and then the harp was gone. And they lived happily ever after. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

Trunk or Treat 2013

A few months ago (and I mean probably back in January), as I was browsing Etsy, I saw a really cute parrot tutu costume for babies.  I saved the picture on my phone and knew right then what our costumes would be for Halloween.  The only problem was that when I went looking for pirate costumes for the girls, they were either super cheaply made or looked like they belonged on...well...not on little girls.  So I decided to make their outfits.  Well, their skirts anyway.  I was so proud of the outcome.  They aren't perfect, but I thought they came out pretty cute, especially since I am terrible with a sewing machine.  Lucy's tutu was easy, of course, but I was proud of myself for having the vision to use two different blues in a double layer to make it super fluffy.  I wish you could see the back better- I did some longer layers of dark blue, red, and yellow like the parrot's tail.

This year's trunk or treat was much less chaotic than last year.  I was not in charge of anything and we didn't have any sick kids!  The weather was perfect and the girls all looked so cute in their costumes.

 

 

 

 

Little Pumpkin

Today we headed out to a nearby pumpkin patch.  The girls had so much fun going down the bouncy slides, crawling through the tunnels in the hay maze, and checking out all the wooden cut-out characters. 

 

The Duck Dynasty Crew!

 

 

Also, this little pumpkin turned 9 MONTHS OLD today!!

 

 





 

Someone was just asking me the other day how much Lucy weighed and for some reason I said, "Oh she's like 25 or 26 pounds."  I have no idea why I thought she weighed so much!  When I took her in to her 9 month appointment today she weighed 20 pounds!  I can't remember her height except that I know she was between 75th and 90th percentile for both height and weight.

 

Lucy is so much fun right now.  She loves to mimic us and "sing" "Barbara Ann", blow raspberries, and sing like Ariel.  She is clapping and beginning to wave and say "ba ba" for bye.  She loves baby food, except for the combos with meat in them.  She still doesn't like that, maybe because of the texture.  But she loves fruits, veggies, puffs, crunchies, and yogurt melts. 

 

Music already seems to be a big part of Lucy's life.  As I said, she likes to sing "Barbara Ann" and like Ariel when we do it.  She also loves to dance whenever she hears music playing.  Girl has some moves.  When she was first beginning to crawl, she would get frustrated after one or two steps and lay on the ground and start to cry and we would start singing the chorus of "Pretty Pink Baby Blue" by Outkast and she would instantly start crawling again.  It got to the point where if she wanted a toy all I had to do was start singing that and she would start crawling to it.  Lucy also sleeps with a sound machine in her room.  She falls asleep to "Twinkle, Twinkle" at nap time and for bed.  It is so nice to be able to turn her music on, lay her in her bed, and walk out of the room.  When she gets really upset (which isn't often) and I need to calm her down, I can start singing "Twinkle, Twinkle" and she will stop crying and listen. 

 

We really love this age with Lucy.  The girls LOVE playing peek-a-boo with her and making her laugh, and Lucy loves trying to keep up with her big sisters.  So much so that she took a step last night while I was at mutual.  She also climbed halfway up the stairs.  Today I was on the phone with my mom and Lucy crawled over to me, used my arm to stand up and then let go.  She stood on her own for 15 seconds!!!  I don't think we're ready for this!

Don't Pity the Fool

I literally peed for the first time today at 5:45 pm.  From the minute I woke up at 7:15 it was go, go, go. Conference calls from 8-12, catching up on all my work I didn't do while on the calls, changing diapers, getting juice and snacks, nursing, entertaining, working, working, working, making lunch, working...it's just non-stop ALL.  DAY.  LONG.  And it's Wednesday which means as soon as 5 pm hits my phone starts blowing up with, "What are we doing tonight?", "Can I have a ride?", etc.  Great.  Now my plans of going to the store before mutual are out the window because I'm picking up three young women.  

I made it to mutual 10 minutes late.  I pulled out my cold pizza I had thrown on a plate.  It's the first thing i've eaten since the handful of dry cereal I ate this morning while on my call.  I was already in a bad mood.  I was tired and now I had to go to the store after church.  I have 5,000 other things I need to be doing.  When one of the YW sarcastically asked if my pizza was the reason I was late I almost lost it.

Our activity tonight was karaoke.  The Mia Maids were in charge.  We decided to break into groups and "battle", which meant choosing a song and performing, complete with choreography.  Our group took foooooorrrrrreeeeevvvveeeeerrrrr to choose a song.  There was lots of complaining about how dumb or goofy they would look.  We kept trying to tell them the more into it they got the more fun it would be, but still, they complained.  They wasted so much time complaining that our group really had nothing planned when it was time to perform.  That made me angrier than I already was.

The music came on and everyone kind of stood there.  We did a few turns that we had planned, but that was about it.  Then the chorus started and I just gave in and jumped in front and acted my goofiest.  I made a complete fool of myself and it felt great.  The girls laughed and I felt like that made up for all the craziness of the day.  Well, not all, but some.  I hope it taught the girls not to take things so seriously.

Somewhere out there, there's a video of me shaking my booty to "Call Me Maybe".  It better not get posted to Facebook.

Chocolatey

I recently heard someone say, "I hope those words were written with chocolate so they'll taste better when you have to eat them."  Well, my words weren't written in chocolate, but I did speak too soon.  I just got a call from the nurse saying my EEG came back abnormal and that the doctor wanted to double my dosage of seizure medicine.  She had almost hung up when I said, "Oh, um, wait...um...what does that mean?  I mean, is he concerned?"  She said it could be because of the migraines, or it could mean I am at an increased risk for seizures, but that he would go over everything with me at my next appointment (which is in two months).

That really isn't sufficient for me.  I really need to know the doctor's opinion and that everything is ok.  So I called and left a message asking for him to call back.  PLUS, I need to make sure the new dosage is safe while breast feeding.  If not, that means I will be weaning Lucy about a month earlier than planned.  As it is, she isn't nursing all that much anymore, and is really eating more table foods, so I don't think it will be too rough of a transition.  (I hope.)  Anyway, just another chapter in the saga...

Relief

The past three weeks have been stressful, to say the least.  After 5 years, I FINALLY went back to the neurologist for a follow up.  I know I should have gone back sooner, but I finally made the appointment when I started having some strange symptoms- tightness in my forearms/hands, dizziness, seeing "tracers" or "floaters", memory loss, slight stuttering, etc.  So I met with the neurologist and he was concerned and ordered a barrage of tests.  Blood work, an MRI of my head and neck, an ultrasound of my carotid artery and heart, an EEG, and an EMG.  (By the way...EMG's are not very fun.  Basically they shock you and it charts the reactions.) 

I tried to remain calm throughout the testing process, trying not to think too much of it.  The first two weeks I really couldn't think about it- Jeremy had two business trips, and then his boss was in town one week so he was with him every night, I had a week of meetings every day, plus our normal crazy day-to-day routine.  But this last week was hard.  There was more time to sit and think about the possibilities.  I knew that he was testing for MS (which my great aunt, dad, and sister have) or ALS (which my grandpa had- he died on my 8th birthday).  On top of that, this doctor's office has an online tracking thing, which can be really helpful in terms of setting up appointments, getting refills, etc., but part of it actually shows you what they put on your chart from your appointments.  I had been so busy the first two weeks that I didn't register until this week, and when I did, I saw that he had written down that I could be having mini strokes, which is really scary considering I have Factor V. 

Put all of this together with my very vivid imagination and you can only guess what a mess I was.  Suffice it to say it was not good.  I knew if it was mini-strokes or MS I could handle it.  But ALS?  That is scary and terminal.  I cried thinking about Jeremy re-marrying and the girls not remembering me.  I thought about how I would write letters to them but that wouldn't be enough. 

I finally had my follow up today, and EVERYTHING IS OK.   Ahhhh...relief!  He even compared my MRI to the one I had 5 years ago, and he thinks the issue with my pineal gland that was spotted then was a fluke because the MRI now looks great.  I do have some bulging discs and probably arthritis in my neck, which might be contributing to the pain I am having in my arm, so he is sending my to PT for that.  What a blessing though for that to be the only issue!  I still don't have an explanation for the other symptoms I was having, but I am just relieved right now and really thankful for answered prayers.

Labor Day 2013

We had such a great (and exhausting!) day today.  It started raining last night, which we were really thankful for because we really needed the rain, but we were worried it was going to completely ruin our plans of going to the aquatic center.  Thankfully the rain ended around 11 am.  We headed over to the pool around 1 and it was perfect.  The rain seemed to have deterred a lot of people from going out so the girls got to go down the water slides as much as they wanted.  The lazy river wasn't super crowded with floats, and we got a nice picnic table in the shade right next to the kiddie area.  The girls seriously had so much fun. 

 

 

 

 

We finished off the day with some yummy BBQ from 3 Stacks where Lucy learned how to drink from a straw.  I love laid back days spent with the family!