Category: Lily

Fairy Princess

142

148

I am beginning my Year in Pictures project – for 2011, I am going to (try to) blog a picture every day. 365 pictures, 365 blog posts. The blog might not get done each day, but hopefully the pictures will and the blogging can be caught up on frequently.

Cheating a little on the 365 project: these were taken before Jan 1. Oh and since I posted two pics, this will count for both Jan 1 and 2. Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater.

The Tutu is a defining outfit for the New Year. Lily has two big fluffy ones and they complement EVERY outfit.

Mass Hysteria

Last week Sunday mass went very well.  The kids were slightly less squirrelly than usual and I actually heard the homily.

I should have known that couldn’t last.

This week was an adventure.

It began as we started to get out of the car in the parking lot.  It was a cold, rainy Sunday and none of my kids brought coats.

So we got inside, only a little damp, and got seated.  Mass began and Molly decided it was time to fill her diaper.  Loudly.  So I made my first trip back to the bathroom, luggage in tow, and changed the baby who had miraculously not soiled her beautiful outfit. (Yet.)  Back up the aisle, seated again, I fought with Lily who was in rare form (in a bad way) and was making me wonder exactly how to discipline her in a very quiet way in mass.  I seemed to alternate telling her to GET DOWN (from climbing the pew in front of us) with GET UP HERE (as she tried to slink away under the pew to get behind us) throughout the whole mass.

Then at one point she decided mass was over and just LEFT and started to walk out.  I chased her down and brought her back.

Soon after, during the consecration, Tessa turned to Lily and said, “That is Jesus’s blood.”  Lily said, “JESUS’S BUTT? That’s not Jesus’s butt!  It’s Jesus’s BLOOD!”

While all of this was going on Molly was nursing on and off and crabbing about life in general and sucking her fingers.  Which is all par for the course UNTIL she gagged herself with her two fingers and threw up all over me.  And I mean ALL over.  There were puddles on the pew and on the floor and – and this is the grossest part – in my bra, and it just kept coming.  I was soaked.  SOAKED, I tell you.  Thankfully I had two blankets with me, one cotton afghan and one receiving blanket.  So I wiped up everything I could with the afghan and covered myself up with the receiving blanket and back we went to the bathroom.  Just for reference, we sit in the front, the bathroom is in the back.  So I make my way, luggage, baby, puke, and all, back to the bathroom.

I changed Molly and wiped myself off as well as I could and got back to mass, which was thankfully only a moment or two from being over.  I zipped up my jacket over my wet shirt, because we were not going home, we had a breakfast over in the hall to attend, and I was not going to miss it just because I smelled like sour milk.

And breakfast was lovely anyway.

A Sad Day

I have been enjoying Lily’s misuse of pronouns lately. There are few things so cute as their exploration of language and playing with the proper words. Mostly she has just been replacing the word “I” with “my” with adorable results.

For example, when I told her yesterday that I was taking her to Nana’s house, she replied, “My love Nana! Oh yes, my do!”

Another one that has been common for her is that when she wants to show something to me she will grab my hand and lead me to it saying “Show me, show me, show me…” all the way there.

But today she brought me a book and said, “See the spiders? Let me show you!”

One more stage of babyhood left behind.

Aquaphor

When I started figuring out that the skin rash that Lily fights all the dang time is probably eczema, I got lots of suggestions here for aquaphor. But I resisted. I was trying really hard to avoid petroleum based products and just generally had good and healthy intentions.

Her skin has gotten particularly bad over the last few days and last night was really bugging her. So I put her on the bed and slimed her up with her usual stuff (Burts Bees Body Butter) which had been miraculous when we first used it. Suddenly she was WRITHING all over the place, grabbing at her skin saying OWIE OWIE OWIE. Yikes – right into the shower she went and we washed (just water and a soft cloth) all of that off her body. We’re done with that one! Gee, I wish I hadn’t JUST BOUGHT that container YESTERDAY! Anyway, I had a tiny sample of aquaphor laying out so I slathered her up while she was still wet. This morning she woke up and her skin, while not clear, was at least 75% better than last night.

Me!!!

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.

Some weeks are like that.

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.

Lily is ONE!

LilyA 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.

jameslily

Baby Laughter

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.

Baby Sign Cuteness

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.