It has been a while – in the flurry of baseball season, summer swimming and every other thing in the world, I have been lax on updating around here. I am not going to write out a huge, long update post now – it is Sunday afternoon and naptime is calling. But I do plan to jump in a little more here and there.
Oh and baby number 8… is a GIRL.
#8 is on the way.
We have announced on Facebook, Delphi, in person, and every other way, now it is time to add it to the family history on the Blog.
In other news, Lent is in full swing with all the extra singing and masses for Jay, Baseball season will soon be starting up with its own brand of busyness, Paisley is out and on her own now, living in a dorm at her school. She loves her new found freedom and hates coming home and being dragged down by the rest of us now. We miss her though!
It’s been a while.
Here is a cute story to tide you over for now.
We often ask everyone around the house things like, “Who wants popcorn?” or “Who wants to go outside?” of course everyone in earshot will raise their hand and say, “Me!” So when Lily asks to nurse (“Nuh, nuh, nuh) I will ask her, “Who wants to nurse?” and she will raise her hand and say “Me!”
Well lately she has dropped the “nuh” part of it and just starts out by raising her hand and saying “Me!”
It has gotten so ingrained that last night she did it in her sleep! She was in the middle of our bed and I had my back to her. I heard her saying, “me, me, me” so I turned over and she was raising her hand and saying it but was still mostly asleep. As I pulled her in to nurse her she gave a little happy giggle.
This morning I got to sleep in. I got nearly 20 minutes of extra shut-eye and it is a good thing because I needed every single minute of it to get me through my morning.
Lily woke up around 6:45 and I changed her into a new bumGenius and put her jammies back on. A few moments later my 11 year old came up to me and pulled up his shirt, revealing a lovely speckled rash. Hmm… that is a trip to the doctor for sure. I already was keeping my six year old home, she needed a chance to sleep in because she had been up coughing much of the night.
I took some of the remaining kids to their respective schools and returned home in time to grab a slice of banana bread while I waited on hold for the doctor’s office. When I finally got through, they gave me an appointment for both sickies, but I had to be there in 15 minutes. Only enough time to brush my teeth and grab kids and go. I should have changed Lily’s diaper then, but it had only been a little over an hour at this point. Hindsight is 20/20.
I didn’t bring my diaper bag, just my purse. My diaper bag was under a box (don’t ask why) and with my hands full and running out the door… aren’t those famous last words?
So we wait in the doctors office. And wait. There is some problem with my health insurance that takes a while to unravel, but eventually it is smoothed over. And as a pungent scent hits me I realize I am going to regret not having my diaper bag with me.
Normally I would have stashed a diaper, a wet bag, and some wipes in my car, But as luck would have it, I cleaned out my car yesterday and removed everything so that my son could vacuum it out.
My 11 year old is diagnosed with strep and the 6 year old is treated for asthma, which is a new thing in and of itself, and then the 6 year old realizes that this is a Very Special Day at school and she should not miss it. (She missed the last Very Special Day like this.) However she is still in her jammies, not in a school uniform. So I call my mother in law, who goes to my house and gets her uniform. I drop Tessa off at her class – in her red and white striped pants, orange baseball shirt and flip flops and leave to take the rest of the kids home. My MIL bring Tessa her uniform and shoes and Tessa gets to participate in her Very Special Day in spite of being a little tired.
I drop off prescriptions, only adding about 5 minutes to the total morning and head for home and a clean diaper, finally. Lily is changed and asleep in no time.
Then the phone rings. The shoes we left for Tessa to change into are too small. So I have to make yet one more trip to the school to bring Tessa her correct shoes. But Lily is finally asleep! Surely Tessa can live with the shoes she has (the school secretary says she is back in her flip flops since the other ones were so small) until Lily wakes up from her nap.
About 20 minutes later, Lily wakes up and we head out the door – again – to take Tessa her shoes. As I walk towards Tessa across the playground after lunchtime, I realize that I did not send Tessa with either a lunch or lunch money. I totally forgot since she wasn’t going to go to school that day until we decided on it later. So I guess I owe the school the price of a lunch now.
And all of that was before noon.
I need a nap. Seriously.
Sometimes it is a doozy of a day that can get you, sometimes it is a whole week. I have been extra busy mostly because of a week I had last week – it started of with a bang. Tessa came home from school with a fever the bloomed into full blown croup, and by the end of the day Max had it too.
On Wednesday the littles were still sick, nothing new there. But then James was hit by a car on his way to school! Talk about a heart stopping phone call. Thankfully, he was the one who called me – laying in the street, waiting for the paramedics, he called me. So I knew he couldn’t have been too hurt. Still, I rushed over there and saw my poor baby in a lot of pain, being loaded into an ambulance. After a short stay in the ER, we discovered that he is very bruised and has a hairline fracture in a lumbar vertebra. There isn’t a whole lot they could do for that, just tell him to get lots of rest and not jar his spine around.
Thursday began bright and beautiful with a visit from the vomit fairy. Three kids down with that one. It was a short virus though – only about ten hours. But still… little people who cannot understand that we puke in the toilet or a bowl can make a HECK of a mess.
It was interesting to discover that Max had some kind of vomit sensor for Lily. He would say, “Mom, Lily is going to throw up!” and 30 seconds later, I kid you not, Lily would fountain up her stomach contents. By the end of the day I learned to listen to him when he said that.
While it sounded like a horrible week, it was an easy week to focus on the good and to be thankful. James accident could have been so much worse in so many different ways. But he is fine (if sore) and the kids are all well again.
A slightly belated one year update for Little Lil.
Like I mentioned in my last post, things have been a bit on the busy side, so Lily got her one year check up with the pediatrician at 13.5 months. Oh well, close enough to call it good.
Her official stats:
Height: 28.5 in (15%)
Weight: 19.1 lbs (10%)
Head: 18.25 in (75%)
So now we know why she is always falling on her noggin! She is top heavy!
Lily is fantastically smart. (But I am sure all parents think that!) She knows lots of signs and even more words. She loves to run and – even better – climb. She is upwardly mobile in the worst way. She is absolutely driven to scale anything that is near her and is even remotely climbable. She also likes very much to empty things, which you would think might be a help in getting the house unpacked, but it really isn’t. It really, really isn’t! Any time I walk out of the room for even a moment to do something frivolous like change the laundry she immediately commences one of her search-and-destroy missions. She has great talent with toilet paper and can get it to reach nearly across the house without breaking.
At this pediatrician visit we discovered that she has genuine doctor anxiety. She started freaking out the very moment we walked into the exam room. Poor baby. We postponed any shots just to keep this visit light and easy for her.
She is still nursing at least a hundred times a day and still happy to spend most of her time in my arms when she is not climbing. She loves being outside and she loves all of her big brothers and sisters, but she especially loves James.
The short version of this post is that yes, we have finally moved. We are (slowly) settling into the new house and trying to fit all our stuff in with slightly less room than before. Tricky job, that one!
The long version…
Nah, I don’t even want to give the long drawn out version of our house closing because it was pure hell and I never, ever, EVER want to move again. Good thing too, because this house is about the perfect location. We closed on this house six WEEKS (and one day) late. Six very long weeks. But they are behind us now and the relief everyone in the family felt about it was palpable. So if you don’t have our new address and want to send us a Christmas card this year, be sure to contact us and get the new info!
We are still living with a lot of boxes around, but lets face it, life with 7 kids can be kind of BUSY. Yes, it’s true. I haven’t even had time to write lately. I hope to get back to it. For now I will just tell you that there is some BIG NEWS on the way. (No, I am not pregnant. Yet.)
We were waiting for our food this evening in a fast food place. It was just me, Lily and Posy out at the mall (buying glasses). I was playing with Lily, eliciting a string of giggles from her. Everyone around us was just transfixed by the sound of baby laughter.
And I realized that there are so many people who don’t get to hear baby or young child laughter every day of their lives.
I thought about how empty my life will feel when that sound is not something that I hear every single day. Thank God I can hear it today and many years to come. I hope that when I have grandchildren they are nearby so that I can hear their laughter as well. You just can’t be sad when a little one is laughing.
Lily has really caught on to using baby signs and several words in the last week. She regularly signs more, eat, drink, all-done, bye/hello, book… there may be a couple more but I can’t think of them right now.
This afternoon I was putting her down for her nap and she didn’t want to nurse because she knew that would make her sleepy. So I turned her around and just held her on my lap and she starts signing “All Done” over and over while trying to slide off my lap.
Current words she is using are mama, dada, cat, dog (says is and signs it at the same time), cheese (chs), shoes (shs), brother (bubba) Tessa (Tuh) and probably a few more that I can’t think of. She tries to say a lot of things but doesn’t use all of them regularly.
Me: Max, why is your shirt off?
Max: Because my shoulder was hot in it.