PSF and Stages

If you read my blog regularly, you know that Melody's hair (or lack thereof) is an obsession of mine a topic I've briefly touched on.

When she was a baby her baldness didn't bother me. After all, tons of babies are bald. Who needs hair with eyes that bright and cheeks that sweet anyways?


At age 1, I started to wonder where the hair was. After all, even Jack had a little at 1!
"Don't worry," people assured me. "My baby was bald until one and then her hair came in like crazy!"

Um, yeah, that didn't happen for us. At 18 months, I forced Melody to wear a bow precariously clipped to six stands of hair after several comments of "do you know what you're having?"
And upon answering "boy" would hear, "Wow, three boys. How wonderful!"
Apparently a dress is not a dead giveaway.

As we hit the two year mark, those six long strands had grown a teeny bit more and multiplied into about 36 strands of which I would divide into two microscopic pigtails.
(I know. I have no idea how I got the rubberband wrapped around them either.)
By this time, people had stopped assuring me her hair would eventually come in and just looked on me with pity instead.

Finally at 2 1/2 we started seeing her hair not only get longer but a little thicker as well.
In the past six months all the reassuring promises of "soon she'll have such long thick hair" have finally started coming true!

Kind of.
Yes, I realize this is probably about as much hair as your 15 month old has, but believe me, for us, this is a full head of hair!

So you can imagine how thrilled I was when Melody came in the other day and said, "Mama, mah hair is in mah eyes!"




Hosted by Cecily and Amy

A best friend...

is a shoulder to cry on.

helps you out when you need it.

sticks with you through the good and bad.

laughs with you.

encourages you to make bold fashion statements.

Singing about Jesus

PSF and Snowball Fight!!

If you're a boy, the best thing about the snow is the snowball fight.

Seriously, what boy doesn't love an opportunity to throw something at another person and not get in trouble for it?

My husband started it.

But this guy was prepared to fight back.

He had some pretty good defensive moves too.

Until he became predictable, that is.

And when the snowball hit him right on the neck, and slid down his shirt, he yelled, "I got frozen!"

And then he went from the "duck" method to the "run" method!

Hosted by Cecily and Lolli

The Sickies

Normally I don't like to post about the state of my children's wellness.

I like to think I have more interesting stuff to post about than who coughed on whom.

However, it seems for the month of February, I actually haven't had anything interesting going on because the only thing that's been going on is the fact that they've been sick.

I credit Jack for starting us off strong with a case of appendicitis.


One less appendix later, and the Germ Fairy has sprinkled us with 5 colds, 3 sinus infections and an ear infections that will be resulting in tubes in the near future.

Following all that, we conclude with another ear infection



and pneumonia.



Freakin' fabulous.

Fortunately, despite the fact that I look like an prescription drug addict when leaving the pharmacy, we're all starting to feel better.

However, I'm pretty sure I'm going to skip February next year.

Or better yet, a month long hiatus to Hawaii.

Who's with me?

True Story Tuesday and Chinese syrup

Several months ago we decided to splurge for Chinese takeout. Usually we reserve Chinese for us and give the kids PB&Js but this time we decided to make it a family event.

Our children are not the most adventurous eaters but they. loved. it. We have added it to our list of places we will take our children to eat.

1. ChickfilA
2. Pizza
3. Chinese

In order to get them to try it, we had to fool them a bit.

Oh come on, you know you've done it too.

We told them that sweet & sour sauce was Chinese syrup and that the lo mein was Chinese pasta.

About halfway through the meal, once we realized they would willingly eat this again, we decided to teach them the real names so we wouldn't have to keep up this charade next time.

I said to Jack, "You know, in China they call Chinese syrup sweet & sour sauce."

"Oh," was his reply. "is that what they call it in Australia too?"

Love and Cookies

Around here, we're always excited to make cookies!

(even if we don't really look excited)

But do you know what's even better than making them?

Decorating them!

(And tasting the frosting...notice around the lips?)

Around here, we use a lot of sprinkles.

But do you know what's even better than decorating them??

Eating them, of course!

Even the undecorated ones. Especially when you don't know the difference!

PSF and why are you sad?

Melody is really into her feelings. (Duh. She's a girl, isn't she?)

And one of the feelings she frequently experiences is sadness.

Sadness often occurs when she is forced against her will do to something she does not wish to do, such as pick up toys, wash hands for dinner, or stop climbing on people.

She also has moments of sadness when a change is about to occur. These changes include going from a state of wakefulness to asleep.

When she is sad, she wants to let you know. "You wanna know why I'm sad?" she asks in this sweet voice. She is hard to resist...until that defiant "no" at the end at least. She always takes it one step too far.

This is probably my favorite picture of Melody's sad face. She was about 22 months old and, since Charlie had recently intruded upon her territory, she was frequently sad.

She was sad because the two M&Ms she got apparently weren't enough. You would think she had two dozen considering the amount of chocolate on her face.

I can't really blame her for being sad here. Two M&Ms aren't enough for me either.

Do you want to tell me why you're sad?

Hosted by Cecily and Mamarazzi

the sweetest thing to hear

This absolutely precious little girl came up to me the other night and said, "I love you, my sweetest Mommy?"

Have you ever heard anything sweeter?

And then she asked for a cookie. That's my girl!

True Story Tuesday and don't take that

While last week was certainly a stressful week for our family, it was not without a few laughs.

As I was anxiously awaiting for my little guy to come out of surgery, I walked into his recovery room to find him like this.

Still groggy and mostly asleep.



The nurse wanted to show me his bandages before he woke up.

So, she pulled back the blanket and lifted up his gown...

And guess where his hand was?

That's right.

He's a boy isn't he?

It's almost like he was saying, "you can take my appendix, but leave the important stuff alone!"

Swinging

Even when you have to share a swing



with your brother

it's better than not swinging at all!

PSF and Unnecessary Organs

If you tweet or facebook, you probably know by now that this was not your run of the mill stomach bug.

After a night of watching Jack writhe around in pain, we ended up here.

Waiting for surgery.

(Seriously, why do we even have appendixes?)

Thankfully we caught it early and his appendix was able to be removed laparoscopically.

It was a crazy 30 hours.

By 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, I had met with the surgeon in our ER room. Jack was given an IV and some morphine for pain. Seeing a 5 year old on morphine was quite entertaining. Especially when I asked him how he felt, and he poked at his stomach then said, "Hey. I feel gooood."



At 9:00 they took him into surgery and he was in recovery around 11. (While they did want to get him into surgery pretty quickly, there happened to be a cancellation in the OR that day and he ended up being the first case of the day.)



He got up and walked for the first time just a little after dinner time.

And by Thursday morning he was ordering pancakes and bacon for breakfast!

We were discharged around 11:15 and he's now at home

already torturing playing with his little sister!

I guess that's a good sign.

(Sorry for the poor quality photos...some of them were taken with my Blackberry.)



Hosted by Cecily and Robyn

Sick

This was Jack all day yesterday.

I'm sure you know what the garbage can is for.



On the upside, I got to have my car detailed.

True Story Tuesday and The Hunter

I try not to over-do candy at our house at Easter time since I end up eating it all in one sitting don't think kids need it. So we usually end up doing books and/or dvds in their Easter baskets.

Last year, the Easter Bunny brought Jack the Disney movie Bambi. This was despite the fact that Alex thinks Bambi is "liberal propaganda trying to teach children that animals are like people and hunting is bad." Blah blah blah.

However, we're also not big movie people so we didn't actually watch it until one day that summer.

Jack and Alex were hanging out while the other two were napping and I suggested they put it in. I reminded Alex of the hunting scene and told him to prepare Jack for what happens. As it turned out, that part didn't phase him one bit.

Later that day, I asked him what his favorite part was.

"The part when the hunter comes and shoots that deer!" was his excited reply.

Yes, the murder of poor Bambi's mother hunting scene.

I don't think Alex has ever been so proud.

(He's not actually hunting. This was his Halloween costume. And he told everyone he was a hunter because Bambi is his favorite movie.)


Head on over to Once Upon a Miracle for some more True Story Tuesdays!

Breakfast at Melody's

Well, some came close but no one guessed the exact theme. Well, except for a certain cheater who shall remain nameless.

Our party theme was Breakfast at Tiffany's Melody's!

Unfortunately, my pictures aren't that great. It was a lot of work chasing around 7 three year olds while trying to socialize with the other moms attend to other party duties.

We had our cafe

And our Bloomingdales where the girls could dress up.

Here is our birthday cake cupcakes. I really wanted a cake shaped like a Tiffany's box, but Melody wanted cupcakes with hearts on them. I figured it was only fair to let her choose at least one party detail!

She's ready for the party to start!

Apparently her birthday dress wasn't fancy enough. Belle's dress was much more her style.

After all the girls dressed up, we went on a jewelry hunt. After all, what's an outfit without fabulous accessories!? The jewelry hunt was a lot of fun but you'll have to use your imagination since I neglected to take pictures of that activity.

After our jewelry hunt we had fun playing freeze dance. I don't have any pictures of that either. It's hard to take pictures and be a dancin' queen at the same time.

Then it was tea time. The girls were so cute at their tea party.

And then presents! Melody's friends were all so cute and sweet wanting to help her open their present. It was quit a scene to watch.

Finally it was time to sing to the birthday girl. She was wondering why we were singing when there were cupcakes to eat! Priorities, right?

Melody has a blast and after her last friend left, she promptly said she was ready to nap, grabbed as many of her presents as she could carry and hauled on up to bed. That's a sure sign of a rockin' party!

And a big thank you to my mom who helped. I couldn't have done it without her. She used her mad preschool skills to think of all the activities and party favors as well as did most of the work for the party. She got the tables set up while while we playing and then cleaned up as well. There's no way I could have done it without her. Thank you, Grammy!