Catching up

OK...this will be a post to catch you up on our life (outside of Doggie Wars)...
- Mallory has NOT thrown Doggie out of her crib the last 3 naptimes and 2 bedtimes. WOO HOO!
- I had a brief visit with my mom and sister on their way to and from a wedding up in Fredericksburg, VA. Though they were only here for a total of maybe 24 hours both times they passed through, it was still good to hug them and visit. Here is Aunt Amanda with the kids.

- Patrick was actually off this past Memorial Day and we spent some time hanging out at the house and enjoying family time. He's worked the past 2 or 3 Memorial Days, so it was nice to have him around this year.

- Mallory and Ethan are feeling MUCH better. The meds Ethan caused him to experience a few side effects, but thanks to the advice of an experienced mom (AKA my VERY VERY VERY good friend, Krisitin) I purchased some probiotics to help the good bacteria in his intestines to replenish and re-balance his GI tract. We've been keeping the kids out of nursery and playgroup for the last 2 weeks. I don't know how much longer we'll do this, but both kids have been great in service and we've had NO SICKNESS!!! Yeah!

- Ethan has been trying out LOTS of different kinds of solid foods. He loves just about anything I put in his mouth!!! He and Mallory now eat almost every meal together. Sometimes when I'm standing in the kitchen and look over at them, my heart does a little flip, filling itself more up with love for them. This picture was a quick one taken this morning at the breakfast table.

Will the real Doggie please stand up.

For those of you who thought "Doggie" was Cayman, I wanted you to meet him. The "real" Doggie is on the left. The doggie on the right is a replacement, or as Mallory would call him, an imposter. We have a back up in case the real Doggie gets lost or needs a bath (which is at least once a week), but Mallory will have NONE of the back up Doggie. And we're still dealing with lots of screaming and crying at naptime and bedtime...at least 30-40 minutes each time. Why does she throw the thing out of the crib???? Last night, she threw him out before I even left the room, followed by shreiks of "Doooooogggggiiiieeeeee!!!!!!". Oh, Doggie, Doggie, Doggie. I love/hate you!

We have a love/hate relationship

Oh, Doggie! How I love you! You give Mallory such comfort when she's upset or in a scary place. You are her best friend and there is no doubt. You are so special to her. I love you because she loves you. If you ever get lost, I will be so upset. You are special to me because you are special to her.

But, you are used as a tool of Mallory's manipulation. You get sent over the crib almost every naptime and bedtime...and waketime, for that matter, as Mallory's means to get Mommy or Daddy to come to your rescue. She cries over you, even at 3am when she decides she wants to give you another trip over the edge of the crib. She even got so upset yesterday over loosing you that she gave herself a bloody nose. A face full of blood can scare any mommy's heart, but it was, once again, another one of her manipulative tactics for getting me to come running quicker.

As I'm writing this, Doggie, you are now asleep in Mallory's chair as she's crying with great angst for you to be near. But, she tried to manipulate me again to come running faster to your aid. But no more. You've been asleep for about 40 minutes now while your young charge is crying as hard as she can for you to be rescued. I think you'll be snug in the chair for the remainder of naptime, though Mallory will not like that. Maybe she'll keep you safe in her arms the next time she goes to bed. Or maybe you'll sleep in the chair again. We'll see. But, I'm tired of rescuing you at 3am. I'm tired of putting you back in the bed with Mallory 4 or 5 times a night after lots of screaming and crying. No more, no more.

So, Doggie, may you endure the agony of hearing the screams from your friend. She's learning. As I am learning. We'll figure this out eventually.

Sincerely,

Mallory's Mommy

If Ethan were a Dairy Product

he'd be Heavy Whipping Cream.


He gets this classification not just because I'm SQUEEZING him into size 5 diapers. And it's not just because he's wearing 18 month clothes. And it's not just because he drinks over a quart of breastmilk a day. And it's not just because he weighs almost 24 lbs. And it's not just because Patrick bought 400lb. chains for Ethan's swing set.

It's all of these things.













You know, that little carton of Heavy Whipping Cream contains 32 servings at 5 grams of fat a serving, which means its like 1.5 million grams of fat. And almost a whole carton of that stuff makes enough whip cream for the banana pudding that we'll be having tonight. I'll have Mallory eat an extra helping. Because she's skim milk.

OK, so I can be mean sometimes!

Yes, Yes, I have a mean streak. I usually like posting the positives of my children, but I have to say they can sometimes be scaredy cats. Mallory was afraid of this toy when she was Ethan's age...and is STILL afraid of the toy. She was off crying in the other room while Ethan was left alone...with mean ol' mommy and the video camera. I couldn't resist.

Who's afraid of the big, bad..."R".

Our little pot o' gold

We've been blessed with LOTS of good rain lately. We had bad thunderstorms on Sunday, especially in the evening, but we were left with a beautiful rainbow to look at. God's promise. I love rainbows. And, in this picture, you can see a hint of two rainbows (one toward the left of the picture and a hint of one coming down on Mallory's head).

Chillin' out back and relaxin' all cool...

A product of the '70s

Well, I have some time, so I'm going to make as many posts as I can while the kiddos are sleeping.

Here are some pics/video that I took of E while we had some mommy/son time a few days ago. He's so much fun to play with now; he smiles all the time, talks his talk, discovers his hands and feet, and recognizes favorite toys and animals. He's starting to sit up on his own and rolls over like a champ. But of all these, I think that his biggest accomplishment is being officially heavier than Mallory. He's a biggun'.

Now, if you're looking at his outfit saying "Gosh, Mel, did you go out in public with him in THAT outfit??? It looks so old fashioned!". Well, no, I did not go out in public with him in that outfit. And I probably won't because it IS so old fashioned. BUT, it was Patrick's when he was a baby. Well, Patrick was more like a toddler when he wore this romper, since it's an 18 month outfit and Patrick was small for a baby. And the words "Ethan" and "small" should NOT be in the same sentence. Anyway, this post is for Gram. I am putting E in some of Patrick's clothes...while we're at home. :-)

Getting better

Well, there is NO WAY I can easily sum up the last few days. We've had an up and down roller coaster of fear with Mallory, mainly that she was getting dehydrated, but she's doing MUCH better. Since my last post about her, she began vomiting again with lots of the "other" stuff. She was also refusing to drink. My mom ended up getting what Mallory had on Wed morning, so I ended up driving home by myself on Wed and drove straight to the doc. I was seriously running on empty, but the Lord sustained! Mallory was showing signs of dehydration, but the doctor thought she was OK based on her actions. And as long as she urinated (it had been 12 hours since she had ANYTHING in her diaper when I saw the doc), he felt as though I should just keep doing what I was doing. OK, let me stop myself before I give anymore gory details. And I said this would be short...And in short, we're all doing better. Did I say that Ethan has a sinus infection? No, no, no...this is supposed to be short.

Last night was the first time I had slept all night in a week...no vomit!!! YEAH! It's the little battles we have to win these days. Mallory has lost 2 lbs in the past 4 weeks (10% of her body weight!!!) which means she's just been through the ringer. So, we'll be keeping her out of nursery and playgroup for the next few weeks in order for her little body to have a break from the illness. She and E are both sleeping now, which means it's time for me to rest. I haven't taken a picture in like 5 days (which is a LONG time for me...), but maybe I'll have some more to post in a few days. Needless to say, we'll be doing some R&R this weekend. We all need rest!

Here is a brief video of the kids on the horses at the Emu festival. This was before we knew Mallory was ill. We thought she was just tired, but she let us know her TRUE feels a few hours after this video was taken...

OKLAHOMA!

I was able to see my mom's production of OKLAHOMA! twice while I was here in Elberton - once with my hubby and dad and once with my sister. It was so much fun to watch her in her element on the stage. She did a GREAT job. I even snuck my camera in and got some great pics of her in action...

That's about as fur as she could go.













The Farmer and the Cowman should be friends, or Aunt Eller's gonna gitcha

The Emu Festival

On Saturday, we went to an Emu festival in Bowman, GA with the fam. It was at a farm that raises Emus, but they also had an ostrich, cow, goats, horses, and chickens. We toured the farm and browsed the vendor booths that were there. We even tried a *gasp* Emu burger. Yes, yes. An emu burger. Interesting.

We didn't really know what to expect when we were going, but it ended up being very interesting. Mallory didn't really show any signs of great interest (see prior posts...), but it was a neat experience. Things we didn't know about Emus and Ostriches
- The females start laying eggs by the time they are 2 and they'll lay like 20 at a time.
- Male emus sit on the nest of eggs while the women go off an lay more eggs...with other male emus. We didn't know female emus were so provocative.
- Ostriches can live for more than 60 years in a zoo-like setting

Crazy weekend...

Mallory, Ethan and I are in Elberton with my folks for the next few days as Patrick is in Nashville on business. We arrived here on Friday night and Patrick left yesterday for Nashville. Our plans changed a bazillion times, though, as we dealt with yet ANOTHER sick little girl.

Saturday dawned (yes, DAWNED) with awake children, even though they only had a few hours of sleep. Mallory usually does very well at Grandma and Grandpa's, but when her Aunt Amanda, Uncle David and Aunt Teresa (well, actually my cousin...and Mallory's second cousin once removed...) made an appearence she was a bit overwhelmed. There was so much oooing and ahhing over the kids, so much excitement over the Wii my dad got, so much excitement over family time that I think Mallory got overwhelmed. But, mommy didn't really see it. We packed the kids up about 10:30 to take them to an Emu festival (um, an Emu festival, you may ask? I'll explain later...) though Mallory probably needed a nap. I pushed Mallory's limits and later that afternoon, the vomitting began. She couldn't keep anything in her tummy, poor girl. And on Sunday, with more running around, getting ready for church and the Mother's Day/ birthday celebration, there was more vomitting. She had no other symptoms, so we made our own speculations on what was wrong. But when she woke up from a dead sleep that night vomitting again, we called the nurse and got her opinion. She didn't think anything was wrong with Mallory, she just thought she might be over-tired and anxious about her surroundings (which is what we thought). She did fine for the remainder of the night and yesterday morning. We were on the phone with the Ped that morning, who perscribed an anti-nausea suppository (yes, suppository) which Mallory has been handling very well. We were preparing to head back to JC in case the Ped thought she needed to be seen immediately, but they thought she was fine.

My dilemma was that if we went back home, Patrick was going to leave for Nashville the next day and I would have to deal with Mallory on my own with only 4 hrs of sleep under my belt for the last 3 nights. The lack of sleep and stress was drastically effecting my milk supply for Ethan, which became another element of stress. I knew that if I went home, the stress would have escalated and my precious milk would dwindle and my patience with the kids would probably be strained. But, I knew that if I stayed here, there could be a chance that Mallory would get worse and I had no way of getting home until Wed night. Patrick and I stressed and worried about our decision until we finally agreed it was best that I stayed here to get rest and have help from my mother. And if Mallory got worse or vomitted again, I promised to take her to the DR here. So, as soon as Patrick left, I took a 2 hour nap and felt 500% better. And my milk supply is back to normal. And Mallory is doing MUCH better (just very tired from the drug). She's kept what she's eaten safe and sound in her tummy.

So, Patrick called me when he got to Nashville saying he wasn't feeling good, so he went to bed early, only waking an hour later to vomitting and, well, you know...the "other" stuff. He had a few bouts of that during the night. Poor guy. He's been exhausted, too, and I'm sure very stressed about what the best decision was for the family. He called me this morning saying he's feeling much better, though VERY tired. I hope that he gets some rest and doesn't over-do it. He wasn't required to do much today in Nashville, it's tomorrow that is his primary responsibility. So, I'm hoping that he's resting. Rest, rest, rest.

Anyway, to put an end to this long story, I'm making an appt for the kids to see the dr. on Thurs. Mallory has been sick a lot these last few months and I want her to have a visit. Ethan, too, since his nose is starting to run AGAIN. It's stressful having sick kiddos. It's the pits.

Keep us all in your prayers. I'm glad to have the help of my sacrificial mother. It's going to be nice to have this time with her and I think the quietness of the house is a balming effect to Mallory, who has trouble with large crowds in the first place. Pray that the DR appt on Thurs will have good results and that our suppositions about the cause of the sickness is just that...overtiredness and anxiousness.

So, Mother's Day and my birthday were a bit stressful. Our celebration was interrupted a bit, but it was nice just the same. VERY memorable.

It's the end of an era...or shall I say the beginning of the rest of my life.

So long twenties. Hello thirties.

As of Mother's Day (May11), I entered a new decade of life, leaving an old one behind. Many people say it's depressing to be 30, and though I don't necessarily say I'm "depressed", I'm sad to think that my 20s are over. My 20s were good. Very good. So many drastic changes happened in my 20s...

- I graduated from college (University of Georgia w/ a degree in Management Information Systems)
- I moved to Charlotte, NC and got my first "real job"
- I bought my first home
- I got married
- I witnessed A LOT of my friends getting married
- I birthed my first child
- I moved to TN
- We bought our second home
- I birthed my second child

And those are just the major things. Patrick and I were talking about what are the "major" life events that would happen in our thirties and we both agreed that the milestones will probably now happen mostly with our children (going to school for the first time, playing sports, etc). It's exciting to turn over this new leaf, but I'm sad to say good bye to the old leaf; the one that was started out green in college and began to turn colors in Charlotte, getting more vibrant as a husband and child entered my life, and gradually matured into it's beautiful brown as we headed to TN and baby #2 arrived. That leaf is now off the tree. And a new one is developing. I wonder what this leaf will look like? Only the Creator of the leaf will now. I hope that the beauty of this life I have will please Him.

So, I'm 30. My mom's baby is 30. My children's mother is 30. My husband's wife is 30. I hope that in my 40's, I'll look back on my 30s as fondly as I look at my 20s now, but more than that, I hope that my relationship with Jesus is far better then than it was in my 20s.

The sister and the brother

6 months...already?!?!?!

I can't believe my little E is already 6 months old. He's such a sweet delight and joy in my life. I never thought I'd love a little boy as much as I do, but man oh man, I'm in love.

Ethan is such a smiler. He loves to flirt with me while he eats (which is a lot of the time!). He's a sweet little boy. My buddy-roe. Daddy's "Big Heavy", AKA the "Heaver", AKA the "BH". Your sister loves you. Mommy and Daddy love you. Don't grow up too fast, OK?

23 lbs, 28.5 inches long

BTW, the "Patrick" shirt used to be Patrick's. Go figure.

A slideshow!

Here are pictures from Mallory's Birthday. To recap the day, Mallory ate breakfast with Ethan and then made her birthday cake with Grandma. She got dressed in her "2" outfit and fed the fishies with Grandpa, talked on the phone with Gram and Pops, and played with some of her toys outside. We then went to Papa's Pizza To-Go, where Grandma gave Mallory her first pizza uniform and made her first pizza (shaped like a "2")!!! Mallory had so much fun making her pizza. After lunch, we took naps then opened presents. We had such a great day! It's hard to believe she's two!

(I'm sorry these pictures are almost a month late! I couldn't decide which ones to post, so I posted all of them...I'm trying out Google's slide show feature...)

Mallory talking to Gram and Pops

This video was taken on Mallory's birthday while she was talking to her Gram and Pops, who called to wish Mallory a happy birthday. Now, Mallory's vocabulary has grown leaps and bounds in the last few weeks, but she still jibber jabbers on the phone. Here she is in her element.

And by the way, Patrick's mom's name is Peggy (this is significant towards the end of the video).

OKLAHOMA!

This post is in honor of my mom's debut in the Elberton Community Theatre's rendition of OKLAHOMA! tonight at the Elbert Theatre. She'll be playing Aunt Eller and she's really excited to be in 6 showings of the play over the next 2 weekends. Here's the write-up in their local newspaper.

For those of you who don't know, my parents knew each other in middle school and then started dating in high school. But, it was on the set of OKLAHOMA! in their senior year of high school where they finally fell in love. Soon after graduation, they married. Mom played Laurey and Dad was in the company. Anyway, there's a lot of history with this musical and my folks. I guess I can say OKLAHOMA! is a little part of my being, too.

Anyway, good luck, mom! I can't wait to see you next weekend!!!

At long last, a picture

OK, so it's been a while since I've blogged (please see prior post for WHY). It continues to be busy on the homefront, as it usually is with children under 2. Mallory is feeling MUCH better, though we're still working on her appetite. She was at a point where she'd eat pretty much anything I'd offer her, thanks to a dolup of ketchup on the questionable items; she had even tried talapia and ate her entire portion. But now, we're back to the pickiness. She doesn't have a favorite food. Eating is really just a necessity for her and I don't think it's something she looks forward too (unlike her mommy and daddy...and her brother!)

Ethan is a chunk-meister. He and Mallory are just about at the same weight right now, since he's gained a few ounces and she's lost over a pound with her illness. Ethan's feeling much better on the Amoxicillan and is sleeping like a champ. I haven't had to wake up in the middle of the night for about a week, and before that it was just for a diaper change. He's a good one. Cute as can be!

Here are a few recent pics, though I have lots in the history to sift through and post. We got Mallory a swing and a slide for her birthday and since she's been under the weather, she hasn't been able to enjoy them much. But, we bundled the kids up in their "M" sweats (thanks to Grandma's sewing skills) and they had a blast!