Here we go...

I just handed over a deposit check and a signed contract to start the pool. "The pool guy" as the girls call him, just painted an outline in our backyard. I'll be taking pictures of the progress. Finally...and home improvement project that we're NOT doing ourselves!

Grady's Baby Book

He's mobile. He's crawling. Not very fast yet...but he's moving! Now I have to get new gates for the stairs! =)

Grady's Baby Book

Eating applesauce

Ellery's whiny face

This is what we see a lot of lately. But she's still so cute, I have a hard time taking her seriously. She wanted me to take a picture so SHE could see what her whiny face looks like.

Imagination

I am so impressed with the natural creativity and imagination that children are born with. Some days I think my kids have way too many toys...OK, so most days I know this because I'm the one always picking them up. Well, they proved to me that they can make "toys" out of just about anything. Tonight was the first night that my bread machine failed me. (I guess it could have been user error, but I doubt it.) We have pizza night every Friday night, so as usual, I put the ingredients in the bread machine to make our pizza dough. (Side note: it is so easy and SO much cheaper then delivery!) When I went to pull the dough out...it was just not right. I didn't have a backup plan, so we all jumped into the car and went out. Joe suggested we try a new place. They sat us in a secluded corner (What? Walking in with 2 small kids and a baby? Did they think we were going to disturb their patrons?) and left us to look over the menu. The adult menu. The adult menu without a kids section. No crayons, no paper...what is this? A nice restaurant??? Anyway...the point...the girls had unwrapped all the forks (for the mom's and dad's), had made beds and pillows out of sugar packets and napkins, and were saying goodnight and tucking them in. Then waking them up and doing it all over again. It was adorable! And creative. And, as it turns out, a great substitute for the paper menus that you can color on.

Who wants to go to the ER...with all 3 kids?

Short version: Molly has stitches...again.

Long version: The girls were both dressed up in their ballerina costumes (see prior post) and happily spinning and dancing away to the music. I was talking on the phone (Jessica, if you read this...this is why I hung up so suddenly!), when all of the sudden both girls started crying, well, screaming really, the scream-cry that as a mom, without even seeing them, you know its bad. Yup, around the corner comes Molly with her hands up to her face, with blood dripping between her fingers. Ellery was holding her head. Without even asking, I already knew what had happened. (Sidebar: later I came to find out they didn't exactly "spin" into each other as I originally thought, it was more like they were running at each other.) So...I grabbed the first kitchen towel I could find to mop up the mess on Molly's face and find out how bad it actually was. Then I went for the ice pack and the phone, dialed Joe and told him to meet me at the ER because I was taking Molly in. I had to find clothes for the girls (it's 20 degrees out), jackets, get Grady in his seat, put my shoes on, find my purse and keys, get the kids all buckled in...all in about 34 seconds. Well, on the way to the ER, I realized I hadn't exactly told Joe what happened, only that we were going, so I called him again to tell him what happened. (Through the phone I could hear him running to his car, which is parked about a half mile from his office.) Well, we all arrive at the ER, check in and wait, and wait, and wait...finally get called back, then wait, and wait, and wait some more. The doc comes in, takes a good look at her and a few minute later they strap Molly to a "papoose" board (he called it a surrogate mom) and started the stitching. She did fantastic. Not a tear, not a complaint, nothing...she was a total trooper. We are so proud of how brave she was. So, now her beautiful little face will have two scars...one on her forehead and one above her lip....which happens to match the one I have on my lip. Hey...must run in the family!

Note to self

After feeding Grady carrots (or sweet potatoes, or squash, or fill-in-the-blank), not a good idea to put him down on the carpet...unless I'm in the mood to clean the carpet, too.

Footy-jammies

Molly would live in these if she could...in fact, she kind of has since she got these for Christmas. Ellery could care less if she's even wearing clothes, so we're lucky she's dressed. And Grady...well, these are my favorite jammies for him right now and he'll soon be too big for them. I just happened to have them all together this morning before getting Molly ready for school, so snapped this shot. As you can see, Ellery's in the "can't remember how to really smile" phase and then doesn't Grady look oh-so-comfortable?

Grady's Baby Book

He sat up on his own today. He also is up on his hands and knees and rocking...and trying so hard to crawl.

Our Screech owl

Have you ever heard a screech owl? I'm not sure that I have, but I'm guessing I might know exactly what one sounds like. Grady's latest is this screechy-scream, but not in a bad way, per se, in a hey-everyone-listen-to-what-I-can-do kind of way. Well, as usual, I pull him into bed with me to nurse at some point in the wee hours of the morning, but this morning, I was rudely awakened at 6:00 a.m. to this awful noise (awful in an oh-he's-so-cute-but-I-can't-wait-for-him-to-get-through-this-stage kind of way), like a screech owl beside me....which lasted for an hour. I actually dozed of in between screeches, if you can believe it. Anyway, at 7, I finally figured out that I wasn't going to get much more sleep, so plopped him back into his bed, where he promptly fell fast asleep. Hmmm...can anyone say Ferber? It's time...

Grady's Baby Book

He ate sweet potato's today.

Another one about Grady

I have to laugh at this...I'm nursing (maybe TMI?) and Grady's starting to bite. Apparently he hears "NO" come out of my mouth a little too much, because it didn't even faze him. He just looked over at the girls to see what they were doing.

Kids Day Out (read: Mom's free day)

They have a wonderful program down here in the South...I can't believe it hasn't spread all over the world...its call Kids Day Out (or Mom's Day Out depending on the church). One day a week, for 4-5 hours, you drop your kiddos off, and get a few hours to yourself. It cost some money, but who can put a price on sanity? (It's about $12 a week per kid...so really, not that much! =) Well, I drop the Gradinator (as Silly Uncle Jimmy has named him) off this week for the the first time. I've been dropping Ellery off since we moved here...we call it her "preschool" so she feels a like a big girl, but this is a first for Grady. I'm usually racing back from drop-off to get Grady down for a nap, some days I'm lucky if I can run a quick errand. Anyway...I had a lot of little errands to run, so figured I'd try it once. Big mistake, cuz now I'm hooked! =) I didn't get quite as much done as I would have liked, but I made a little dent. Partially because I got an early call letting me know that he hadn't slept nor had he taken any of the bottle that I'd sent with him. Oh well, we'll try again next week...

We are in trouble...

I walk in to our master bathroom last night and happened to glance at the trash because I noticed something funny in there. At closer look...hmm...could that be....what? Molly's dinner? I then walked into the living room so that Joe could give me the logical explanation of how it got in there. After all, he gave the girls a bath after dinner...maybe Molly was just finishing up on the way to the tub and didn't have time to finish. So this morning, I ask Molly how the tortellini got into our garbage. Of course she had no idea. Well, after we had the "lying" discussion, she fessed up that she didn't want me to see her throw it away in the kitchen, so she put it in our bathroom. She's 4 1/2 years old and already scheming! What's next. Wait...maybe I don't want to know.

Grady's Baby Book

He slept through the night, twice in a row. I mean ALL night...no feedings...no wakings...7 to 7. Now, if only I could get in bed earlier maybe I would sleep through the night, too...instead of just through the early morning! =)

Grady's Baby Book

He ate pureed carrots today. Homemade even. Surprisingly yummy. Yes, I taste everything (even medicine) before I give it to my kids.

Ellery and the potty (caution, contains potty talk, read at your own risk)

Ok, so now we leave her naked for a bit when she gets out of the shower or bath. When she's naked, she'll go pee-pee (such an adult word) on the potty (there's another one), but not when she's wearing a diaper. So, while attempting to potty train, naked happens around here a lot. Apparently this was one of those nights and she used her little potty a couple of times, under Joe's "supervision" as I was upstairs working. Well, I ran down to put something in our closet and walked in the bathroom and just about got knocked over with the aroma wafting out of the bathroom. I'm thinking whoa, the toilet must have exploded...but no, there's a giant poop in her little potty which sits right in the middle of our bathroom. The funny thing...she didn't even tell us! Even more funny, Molly (keeper & teller of all things bathroom) didn't tell us!

What is that sound???

I'm chatting away on the phone with one of my dear friends from Bellingham, starting up the treadmill to get my exercise in for the day, (yes, I'm multitasking....you have to do that when you have kids =), when I hear this noise. Grady is sleeping in the crib...so its not him. The girls are in the playroom with me, although they've stopped playing and are looking at me inquisitively...so its not them. What in the world happened to my treadmill, I'm thinking? I stop walking (yes, I'm still on the phone) and listen...hmmm...great, now its broken. I pull the safety plug so it stops, yet the noise continues getting louder and quieter, louder and quieter. OK, so now I get off the phone to investigate. It's not the girls, not the treadmill, not the house alarm, not the smoke alarm. They're doing a lot of building in the neighborhood, so what? are they grinding stone??? Should I be worried? The girls are. They're following me around the house asking what the noise is and right now, I can't give them an answer. I look out the window...well, the tornado alarm is spinning and when it faces us, it seems to match the with the volume of the noise. It's a relatively nice day out. It's January. Is this really happening? Joe's not answering any of his phones, my neighbor's not home, none of the construction guys seems to be running for shelter, so why is my heart racing? Well, at least now I know what the tornado siren sounds like. If I watched any kind of TV other than Dora and the Backyardagains I might have known they were testing today. Lucky for me this was just a test because by the time I figured out what the siren was, the tornado would have been through here and on its way to the East Coast before I gathered up my babies and found shelter!

Grady's Baby Book

He's scooting around and he's putting his pacifier in on his own.

Nanna

Poppy

Pretty ring, dad! =)