Katy movies!

So I told you all a couple days ago that I was working on uploading movies of Katy (you'd think she's my first with how many pics & movies I take of her!). I finally got them all done! So here they are!

more Katy knee walking, at the Preschool Play Day


Katy dancing


Katy giving five


Katy saying "yes!"

Something I learned today...

Well, it's a good thing we don't drink, because there are many days that I would find it hard to wait until a socially acceptable time to start.

You know how they say you learn something every day? Today I learned that it is a bad idea to water the garden and leave without taking the creatures with you. I haven't totally gotten everything back to pre-strep status, and I really needed to water the garden. I have a pretty messy house and a bunch of people coming over tomorrow, but I thought I'd go out and do the watering and get that out of the way first. I did the back yard, then went out front, assuming some or all of the 4 creatures (3 kids & 1 dog) would follow. Nobody did. I thought "How nice, I'm having a quiet moment while I water the flowers." Silly, silly Rachel!

The dog finally came out to show me she was covered with mud. I have seen her play in the mud by the blackberry bushes, which doesn't bother me too much, and really hoped that's what it was. So I hosed her off, then went back to find THIS.


Molly was not the only one who could not resist the allure of the muddy garden. My nephew, Joey, is getting baptized this evening, so I had gotten Katy dressed all cute so I wouldn't have to change her later (She absolutely hates getting changed, and screams at me, frequently telling me that she is "all done!"). Silly, silly Rachel!



And no, they hadn't been playing in the blackberries. I now have one empty tomato cage!

Discovery Park

So yesterday, here in Eagle Mountain, the weather was pretty nasty. So when it got to be time to go to the park I called my friend Mitsy. I said "I guess we have to reschedule," and she was like "why?" The weather was fine over across the valley! Yay! I hurried and packed a lunch and drove to the park. We were there for almost 2.5 hours, and had a wonderful time! And actually, when I drove home the weather was still fine in PG and yucky in EM. It started sprinkling on me as I reached our area. Weird!



This is David and Scott from 4 years ago and yesterday. They really don't look that much different, especially considering they're only about 17 months old in the first picture! They had lots of fun together!


I think this is the first time David has really swung on his own on a big swing. He went so high!

Ryan had a good time, too. He played with Scott's little brother, Matthew, some. But he just seems to enjoy playing on his own more than David. David always finds some one and latches on, Ryan likes doing his own thing.


And sweet little Katy isn't so little anymore! She was walking and climbing all over the place. What a big girl!




Oh, and Molly came too. She enjoyed digging in the bark, then laying in it. Dirty puppy!

My attempt at a cute picture of the kids...

I had the kids dressed all cute, the day was nice, and I had a couple different places I thought would make a nice enough background. But the kids didn't want to cooperate. This is the best I got...

Katy kept trying to crawl away...

And when I forced her to sit back down, she'd cry.

Not that the boys were paying attention, either. It just didn't matter, because Katy was the worst of them. And actually, this was shortly before leaving for the baby contest. Maybe I ruined her chances by making her sad! She wasn't really grumpy there, but we can blame it on that!

Stupid weather!

Today was supposed to be such a fun day! The kids & I were supposed to go to a really cool park in Lindon with some friends. And Dan & David were supposed to go to a Salt Lake Bees game (David got a free ticket from his baseball team). And now it's all yucky!
Here's the view from the back of our house. Nice blue sky, beautiful day. The whole sky looked like this when we went for a walk an hour ago.

And here's the view from the front. Scary black clouds. Sad!

Here's the view inside. Much nicer!

Katy's turn for an update!

Well, I wrote about Ryan a couple weeks ago, and David last week, so it's Katy's turn! I kept trying to upload movies (I have tons of Katy doing cute things!), but it didn't always work. And I'd get it started, go do something else...and totally forget to come back. So I only have one for now, I'll try and get more up later.

Remember a month ago when Katy ate 2 batteries and had to have x-rays to make sure there weren't any more? Here's the first one. It's all nice and corroded or something. Poor baby!


And my cute baby put her shoe away! Smart girl!


Here's the one movie I got up. This is Katy's knee walking. As of a couple days ago she pretty much exclusively walks, good thing I got this when I did!


Now for the non-picture update. Katy will be one next week, and she already says lots of words! On Monday I asked her if she wanted her water, and instead of pointing or grunting or something, she said "yes!" It was nice that she chose a holiday to do that, it was fun to have Daddy hear it, too. And she does it a lot now! It seems to mean "yes I want that, even if you haven't asked me yet." Yesterday I took the kids & the dog for a walk, and when we approached the park she started saying "Yes! Yes!" And we kept on walking right past, and she started crying a whole bunch. So, sucker that I am, I took them to the park at the end of the walk. But not right away, I don't want to enforce the fit throwing that she's started lately!

Also, the doctor's office I took David to on Tuesday had a giant fish tank, and Katy saw it and started saying "dish!" And she did it at Walmart yesterday when I was looking at puppy stuff and she spotted the fish behind her. And she does it for our goldfish if I point them out. Super cute!

So, at slightly less than 1 year old, Katy says "nk" for milk, "da" for dog, "yes," "dish" for fish, and she sometimes says "a da" for all done. Smart girly!

Quick David update

I took David to the Child Psychologist again on Tuesday. He seems very careful not to label him as actually having ADHD, but says he certainly has lots of ADHD symptoms. Good enough for now. I told him that Dan is pretty anxious to get him on meds, and he was fine with that. He can't prescribe them, though, so I have an appointment with a pediatrician tomorrow. He also wanted to make it very clear that ADHD meds don't cure ADHD. They just make it more manageable. So he spent pretty much the entire time talking about parenting. I could read a book on that without having to take 3 kids, drive 27 min, and pay a $20 copay, but hopefully it'll be more helpful. He had some different ideas than I've used before (say what they're doing wrong, say what they should be doing, give two choices), hopefully it'll work!

Frumpy old ladies should not be judges

I should inform the readers of this blog that our Goo was not chosen as the winner of the cutest baby contest. She wasn't even a top three finisher (she was a finalist...but whoop-de-do). I should point out that the judging was done by 2 older than Methuselah myopic grannies with little sense of cute. Old...like..."remember when the flying air mobile was invented?" old. They wouldn't know cute if I were to slap them in the face. I should send the assassination monkey after them. How do they not call this cute?!

THE GOO!

Quick update related to the post about a cute contest. The Goo has been put through as a finalist, and will have her in person meeting with the people in charge next Tuesday.

The Aftermath of the Sick Mommy

I should never get sick. And not just because it's no fun to actually be sick, but because the aftermath is always miserable.

First, there's the housework. Yesterday as I started feeling better I started doing laundry, and I'm almost caught up with 4 loads. I loaded & ran the dishwasher, and it should only take one more load to finish the dirty dishes that have accumulated. I charged & used the roombas, so I no longer have to worry about Katy eating old yucky crumbs (I don't really mind if she eats same day crumbs).

Next, there's the yard work. I mentioned before how much I love playing with my flower gardens. Well, some of my little baby annuals are not well enough established yet to survive a couple days without water. I watered them last night, and today is cool & rainy, but there are several that I think are past hope. Oh well, that means I get to go buy more, right? Danny Love, I want no complaining from you, you could have watered them if you didn't want them to die.

And as an obvious result of me being sick, I now have a sick child. I called Dr Peterson (down in Orem) this morning, told them I have strep & my baby now has a fever and is quite whiny & clingy. They made me drive all the way down there & pay a $20 copay just to look and see that her throat was red. I'm glad she didn't have to be swabbed, it was miserable for me yesterday. But if they aren't going to be too scientific about it, couldn't they have given me the prescription over the phone?

And lastly, when my sweet Danny picked the kids up from preschool on Monday, he forgot to pass along the news that David was supposed to dress up for graduation today. I thought it was weird that they hadn't said to, so I put him in khakis & a blue polo shirt. Not so nice that he couldn't wear it on a normal day, but every bit as nice as the other kids in his class last year (he wore a suit and looked a little overdressed). So when I showed up today, one of the only 3 other boys in his class walked up in a white shirt & tie. And then the girls started coming in in very nice dresses. So, after driving all the way to Orem for Katy's appt this morning, I drove all the way back home to get something nicer for David to wear. And now I'm almost out of gas, and I have to get back by 2 for the graduation (earlier, I guess, so he can change!). So I guess I should address the situation rather than whine about it!

My big David

When I posted about Ryan a week & a half ago I had every intention of posting about all 3 kids. And here I am, finally getting around to it. So here's what's going on in the life of David...


David is on a baseball team through Eagle Mountain (he's third from the left in the back). And here they have them do coach pitch at 5 years old! If they don't hit it after several tries they can hit it off the tee, but I remember being much older than that and ONLY hitting it off the tee!


Also, I took David to see a child psychologist, May 6th I believe. He also thinks ADHD is likely, but wants to make sure that we have all the symptoms first. I think this doctor is exactly what I've been looking for. He isn't going to give me meds just from one conversation, but he isn't going to make me wait until David hates school and grows up to be a delinquent. He wants to try some natural type things first, like cutting sugar out (oops...not sure if I'm supposed to be doing that yet!), which sounds good. The only problem is that there are so few child psychologists and so many children in Utah county, the next appt I was able to make was 3 weeks out. Hopefully we can get this all under control by school starting in the fall!

Oh, and David learned how to ride his bike without training wheels! He had a friend over that was doing it, so I took his off to give it a shot. He couldn't do it and got really frustrated. Two days later, I took this video!

Life with our pup!

I'm not sure if the antibiotics are working already or if it's just the ibuprofen, but I'm feeling a lot better! And that makes me feel like I should catch up on some of the things I'm behind on, but I don't want to overexert my poor sick self, so I'm going to do some catching up on here. I don't want this to become just one more thing I feel guilty about not getting around to!

First I'll update you on our adorable little puppy, Molly! Most of the time we are really happy we got her! Sometimes she's quite high maintenance, but no more than you'd expect from a 2 month old pup. We just have to take the time to play with her & wear her out when she starts driving us nuts. She's a very good doggy! She comes when I call her, and goes potty when I take her outside (and sometimes when I don't, but not often). And she likes snuggling! I think that's part of the reason that she's made me okay with only having three kids, at least for a while.

This puppy gets a lot of loves!
Not sure what Katy is doing here, I just like the pic of these three together. Molly tries to play with Marzipan a lot, which she doesn't like. But she doesn't hide from her or anything like she did when we had kittens.
Last night my smart puppy went and found her toy & brought it to me to play with! What a good girl!
And this is where she goes to cool off now that we finally passed into AC time. Sorry her eyes look so creepy!

Oh, and I have to add, that Katy absolutely loves Molly, as long as she isn't currently attacking her. I was just looking at these pictures with her on my lap, and she said "dah!" Last week at Costco I was looking at cute little touchy feely books, and she didn't care about the kittens or chickies, but when I held up the puppy book she started saying "dah" and grabbing for it! And today I turned on Blue's Clues, and she said "dah" and got all happy. Katy likes puppies!

Sick mommy, part 2

So I don't know why I was feeling better yesterday, cause I woke up this morning feeling awful again. I loaded the kids into the car & drove to the instacare. They swabbed my throat, but didn't seem convinced it was strep. He kept asking if I had other (cold) symptoms. I remember the doctor doing that last time I had strep, too, back at the BYU Health Center. He went to get the results, and the strep test was positive! Danny Love, you are in TROUBLE for not taking me on Sunday! Now I have a miserable day of taking care of 3 kids & a puppy with strep throat. Fun, fun! Oh, and my visiting teachers are coming in 13 minutes, and I don't know their names (it's their first time, we get new routes a lot in our ever growing ward) to call and cancel. And the RS Pres won't call me back. I feel uber rude, but what else can I do?

Oh, and the mess has continued to grow, I didn't want to overexert myself yesterday when I thought I was recovering. Maybe I'll force myself to run some dishes & laundry...we're going to run out of both soon!

Edited to Add - I knew one of my VTers first names, so I finally just looked down the entire ward list. There are two Leahs, and I know it's not the one I know (who also happened to be my visiting teacher a year or two ago), so I found her number! And...it was busy every time I tried to call. And they just showed up, and I had to just run out to tell them. I feel so bad about it!

Being a sick mommy is no fun!

So yesterday morning I woke up with a sore throat & headache. During the day it progressed to include a fever & a general awful feeling. I would have gone to the instacare, but the Saratoga Springs one isn't open on Sundays! Ridiculous! And since I didn't feel well enough to drive myself to somewhere far away, and we certainly didn't want the whole family to go, we decided to wait. Which is good, because I'm feeling better today. I was starting to be sure it was strep, but my fever is gone today. Once in the night it was 104, and I even collapsed or something while walking down the hall! That was weird!

My Danny Love called in sick today, so I was able to sleep in until 8:30, which I'm sure helped a lot! I don't know what I would've done if he hadn't! It's supposed to be his first day working his new schedule, so he would've been gone around 6:15. Well, Katy woke up and nursed around 6:30, then got down & I fell back asleep. Dan came in a little while later to find her playing with cough drops & little hair bows! And I was sound asleep! That's really scary!

Anyhow, Dan has been very helpful through all of this, but he just isn't a mommy. I don't even do a very good job of taking care of the children AND cleaning, and I practice every single day! I realized last night that I spend a lot of time feeling guilty about that. I took a bath right before going to bed, and every thought process I had ended with me feeling bad about something. There's a pile of dirty clothes in the bathroom right now, which made me think of the piles of clean clothes that haven't been folded. The bathtub is a little dirty, which made me think that I really need to clean it. And that actually progressed to me thinking that we really need to move to a house with more than one bathroom (so I can take a bath in a tub that I don't share with the children), which means that I really need to organize the entire house so somebody will want to buy ours. And our garage is a disaster, even though we spend money on a storage unit to avoid that. Speaking of money, I really need to pay my mom for the cell phone bill. But I can't go in the office while Katy is awake because it is a giant disaster. Which leads me back to why am I such a failure at housekeeping? The next door neighbor's house is spotless every single time she opens her door. Why can't I be like that?

I think I spend so much time feeling bad about it that I feel too overwhelmed to actually do anything about it! A couple days ago David asked me why our house is always messy! I don't know if he came up with that on his own or if he has heard me say it, but that made me feel awful! A five year old should not have to notice how messy his house is!

Opinions needed!

Okay, really quickly...I'm entering Katy in the Eagle Mountain Baby Contest, which picture should I use? Or should I scrap them all and start over? They only call in the top ten in each age group!

The Magic Word

I have so much I want to blog about, but I'm just going to write this for now...

Ryan (talking about the last piece of bread, that he wanted but had to eat some of his pasta first): Is it still hot?
Me: No
Ryan: Heat it up.
Me: Ask nicely.
Ryan: Mommy, will you heat it up?
Me: What's the magic word?
Ryan: Abracadabra?
Me: No, "please!"
Ryan: Huh! Well, abracadabra IS a magic word.

Puppy!

In one of the most impulsive moves I've ever made, I bought a puppy today! I took the boys to the Fire Station for the preschool field trip (I have pics I'll post later!), then had some errands to run. On our way into Walmart we saw a lady selling dogs, and stopped to look. And I couldn't resist! Her mother is a papered Chesapeake Bay Retriever, and her dad is a purebred (but not papered, so she isn't either) Black Lab. She is very sweet! The lady said 7 weeks, born on March 19th. Then she said she'd be 8 weeks tomorrow, but that doesn't add up, so I'm sticking with the first stuff she told me. That would've made her 7 weeks last Wednesday. She's a cute little thing!

I tried to get her to sit for a picture, but she laid down. So Ryan tried to show her how to sit.


playing with David




Marzipan watching from a "safe" place

helping me blog!

My big Rynan

Ryan is getting so big. It isn't quite as noticeable most of the time, being between a baby & a big brother, but I've really noticed it lately. For one thing, last night he kept his pull ups dry! He's going to be 4 in 2 months, it's about time, but he's really struggled with potty training. So yay for Ryan! He kept checking to see if he still had his stars, and was very proud of himself!

And a couple days ago, I found this. He is an exceptionally messy eater, so spilling wasn't a big surprise. But this time he tried to clean up his own mess!
And this was his "funny face" he made when I tried to take a picture of him. When he tries to smile, he makes a weird grimace. When he tries to make a funny face, he smiles and squints. Weird kid!
Oh, and I almost forgot a funny story. A couple days ago I had Katy in the bathtub, and I was cleaning the bathroom. Ryan was in his room, and I peeked around the corner & asked him to do something (already can't even remember what). He said "No! You're not the boss of me!" He has never said that before, and David hasn't either. I clearly remember a sudden urge to spray him with the windex, which I was holding. What is he, a naughty cat? So I quickly decided not to do that, and instead growled "Yes I am!" Here's the funny part - his response was a surprised sounding "Oh!" He thought for a second, then told me that he was the boss of himself - I guess he learned that in preschool. I told him that yes he was, but that I could also tell him what to do. Okay, so it doesn't sound that funny, but it really was. I expected a "No you're not," but he just said "Oh!" Really, it was funny...

Organizing the playroom pays off!

Our playroom has been a complete and total disaster for a couple weeks. We're talking lots of bins of toys spread out evenly across the entire room. The boys just can't clean it up when it's like that! I don't know if it's David's probable ADHD (more on that later...) or just being kids, but it is such a cleaning up is such a difficult task for them! And it takes so much more work for them to pick up and toy, resist the urge to play with it, AND figure out which bin it goes in. They have way too hard of a time with the first two parts, adding the last is just asking for lots of frustration on everybody's part. We started yesterday, but it just didn't seem worth it. And Katy kept anti-helping - putting stuff away in the wrong places. So I decided I'd just do it myself, throwing away & DIing stuff along the way. And I realized that our toy bins didn't have any labels on them, so I did that, in the hopes that it will help them with future cleaning up. And this morning my efforts were rewarded!

Kids are so weird. I rotate their toys, and I understand that being exciting to see new toys they haven't seen in a while. But this time all I did was reorganize things. I moved the train table 10 feet to the left and turned it 90 degrees. And while I was riding the exercise bike this morning...

...it was all Ryan played with the entire 20 minutes!

(Katy was very happy when Mommy was done exercising and ready for a hug.)

Even David spent the whole time playing with his blocks & GeoTrax, both of which have been out for a long time! Just cleaning up makes them more interesting!

And all the toys downstairs are new to Katy. She pretty much only goes down there when I ride the bike, so everything is so fun! She spent a lot of the time this morning playing with the school bus. What a big girl!

In typical Rachel fashion...

In typical Rachel fashion, I got really excited about blogging for a while, then moved on to something else. I am really starting to think that I have ADHD. Anyhow, I've been spending any spare time lately working in the yard. Every year around this time I get really excited about my flower gardens. I really love planting lots of pretty flowers, imagining how beautiful my garden will become as everything grows. It hasn't worked out quite the way I've planned yet, but maybe this will be the year! And one of these days we're going to really try to sell our house, and a beautiful garden will definitely help the curb appeal. So I'm not wasting time, I'm helping sell our house! Anyhow, that explains the lack of posts lately. Sorry!

Also, I've had some sick little ones this week. David had a fever & tummy bug on Monday. Katy came down with the fever last night, but hasn't done any barfing yet (thank goodness! David makes it to the toilet, Katy would definitely not!). Poor little thing was being fussy, so I decided to give her a bath right after dinner. I noticed how hot her head was while I was washing her hair, and when I got her out she had a temp of 103! I gave her some tylenol, which didn't help. Poor little girly!

So, silly parents that we are, we woke her up to take her temp & give her more tylenol at 11:15. It was up to 104.9! I don't think I've ever had a child with a temp that high, and it freaked us out! We were worried that the cell batteries that she ate last week had caused some sort of intestinal infection or something! I called the doctor's office, and he wasn't worried at all. My poor baby was so, so hot, but he said we just needed to make her comfortable. So I tried to take her to bed with me, and she thrashed around for a while (and talked, which was very cute and reassuring!). Finally, I took her to her bed, and when I put her down she didn't cry at all, just laid there nicely. She just wanted to sleep in her own bed! Sweet little girl. This morning she's at 103 again, and crawling around getting into things. So if we hadn't woken her up last night we probably would have never known that her fever got that high! Silly us!