Decorated, Funeral for a Hat, Food Glorious Food

I finally got around to decorating the kids' rooms. The kids have finally been moved to the rooms they will be in for a very long time. Sarah's room of course is princess themed. I had to try and match stuff up to the mural I had painted on her wall last year. A little spray paint, a few shelves, some new curtains and bedding and voila. Here's how it turned out:

The new black out curtains Aunt Jill made:Here's the mural I had to try and work with:Had to get a canopy!

The other boys' rooms are still a work in progress. We got some curtains hung up, but I have a lot of painting to do for them to be completed.

Here are the new curtains Aunt Jill made for Noah's room. They were originally supposed to be for Josh's room, but.....it's a long story.

In March after we got Josh's seizures under control, we really needed to make sure he got enough rest since lack of sleep can bring on a seizure. Since I was laid up after having a C-section, Jill took Josh over to the fabric store and let him pick out some curtain material. After that she started sewing the black out curtains for his room in hopes the black out material could help Josh sleep later than the 5 am he kept getting up at. She started them, but as time got closer for her to go home the curtains didn't get all the way finished. The last night she was supposed to be in Utah, she was going to stay up all night and finish them. While she was sewing late into the night she didn't feel very well. She was horribly uncomfortable and in the wee hours of the morning she decided to stop sewing and go to bed--little did she know she was in preterm labor. The next morning she started bleeding and contracting--she was 25 weeks pregnant. That's when she got admitted to the hospital in preterm labor. Anyway, by the time she had Sydney and flew home on the Leer jet the unfinished curtains went with her with her promising to finish them. The curtains finally got finished and hung this weekend. Too bad they are now for Noah's room instead of Josh's room. However, Josh still goes up and looks at them and admires the nice fabric he got to pick out. Those curtains were sure a labor of love!!

Aaron has this hat he absolutely loves. Finding a hat for him that fits him, is comfortable and one that he likes is a next to impossible task. Anyway, he had this one hat he LOVED, however, it was bordering on the gross side. I finally couldn't handle it anymore and threw it in the washer against his wishes. I promised I would put it on a delicate cycle not to damage it. It got washed and I left it in the washer and forgot about it. Unfortunately the next day I threw a huge load of laundry in the washer to get washed--still forgetting about his hat. His hat didn't survive the wash. When he pulled it out he came and found me pretty upset. His hat was totally shredded. I felt so bad I let him go and pick out an early Christmas present for it's replacement. Oops!

As for Noah he has finally decided that baby food isn't such a bad thing. I am glad because that means I can escape for a few hours without him screaming for food since he won't take a bottle only me. He is getting so big!! Anyway I will post some more pictures of the kids rooms soon.

Waking Up Angry, Daniel's Bad Day, Snowy, Yummy Forehead

Aunt Jill came for a visit this week thus no blogging posts so here's the catch up of this week. Of course Jill can't come here without helping me out with some project or another. This visit's project was to help me decorate the kids' bedrooms. We have lived here for almost 8 years and my kid's bedroom walls don't have a whole lot on them. I wanted to change that. In going around shopping for different things we stuck Noah and Sydney in the stroller together. They did really well together. Noah loved sucking on Sydney's head anytime he got the opportunity. Here he is pulling her head closer so he can suck it:Luckily she was a pretty easy going baby who didn't mind most of the time. If Noah couldn't get a hold of her head he would settle for his fist. We would set them down in different places and Noah would purposefully work his way toward Sydney so he could suck her head. Hey--it got him to somewhat learn how to army crawl. Maybe when he's ready to try walking we can invite Sydney over and use her head for his incentive...They loved being together:The other kids loved having her and Jill around as well. They know Jill as their second Mom since she took full care of them for almost a month around the end of my pregnancy and after Noah's birth. Sydney fit in with all the chaos in our house. Hey, what's one more screaming child? She is a sweet baby, though. She loves to smile and coo.While Jill was here visiting it snowed. It snowed enough the kids were able to go out and make a snowman. Aaron went out to help in his all purpose flip flops, shorts and T-shirt. Why he didn't get warmer clothes on I will never know. After making the snowman it turned into a snowball fight. By the end Aaron was FREEZING!!Sarah saw everyone outside and insisted on going out with them. She was only wearing her pajamas so she grabbed what she could and forced her way outside. She grabbed Noah's coat and her mismatched shoes without socks, but she didn't complain because she was outside having fun with everyone else. I have found a yummy pumpkin cookie recipe that happens to be Daniel friendly. Judging by Sarah's face she seemed to like them. She also waited until our backs were turned and crawl up on the counter and stuff handfuls into her mouth until someone came and stopped her. We have been having a problem with Daniel tearing his sheets off his bed every night/morning. Finally after completely remaking his bed after about the fourth morning I had had enough. I asked Daniel (rather angrily), "Why do you keep ripping the sheets off your bed?" He thought about it for a minute and then replied, "Mom, I just wake up angry." After that I made him remake his own bed. The first morning I made him remake his bed he got even more angry. It took him over two hours with much wailing and gnashing of teeth to finally remake his bed. Magically after making him remake his bed he stopped waking up angry and ripping the sheets off his bed every morning. Funny how that works. Here he is remaking his bed rather unhappily: Daniel had a pretty rough afternoon the other day. He was messing around and knocked the phone and charger back behind the TV. I made him wiggle back there to pick it up. While he was behind the TV he cut his finger on something. Wow, I never thought anyone could howl so loud for so long. He came out from behind the TV and screamed until he got a bandaid on his finger. The bandaid made it magically feel 100% better because the screaming and crying immediately stopped. Right after that he got in trouble for something else and was upset enough he started looking for his blankee to comfort himself. Unfortunately, Noah had purposefully rolled/scooted over on top of his blankee because it was so soft. While Noah was on top of Daniel's blankee he barfed everywhere. When Daniel saw that he was quite upset. Me upon seeing the situation started laughing. Daniel got really mad and yelled at me, "IT'S NOT FUNNY MOM!!" That made it even more humorous, but I had to try and stifle my giggles until Daniel wasn't looking at me anymore. We had to throw Daniel's blankee in the washer so in the meantime he had to find comfort elsewhere.

We were cleaning up the house before Aunt Jill came and Aaron found Sarah's tutu. He put it on her and she wore it all day. She even fell asleep in it that afternoon. Yes she is still in her pajamas. We spent the whole day cleaning so I never changed her out of them because we weren't going anywhere. Anyway she loved wearing her tutu.

Her tutu didn't slow her down in slightest. I had made some Cafe Rio burritos for dinner. I had cleaned everything up except I had gotten distracted and left the salad dressing on the counter. Sarah seized the opportunity. While no one was looking, she climbed on the counter, tutu and all, grabbed the spoon and started shoveling it in, dripping it everywhere in the process. I don't know if you can launder the tulle (the tutu material) but at this point I don't have anything to lose. It's ruined as it is so I will let you know how the washing of it turns out. Oh that little girl!!! For the birthday party Daniel attended at Chuck E. Cheese's the other day he got a photo card. It is a little plastic card with his picture printed on it. He brought it home and was so excited. He told me, "Mom, Mom I have a card. I can buy stuff now." I wish it were only that easy! The next day he was even more excited because he then told me, "Mom I have this card so that means I can go to Dad's work, too!" What an imagination--and what a goofy face!! He is a ham when it comes to taking pictures!

Sarah is not the funnest person to shop with. She likes to play the game hide and seek in the racks as well as lets see how fast I can run away from you. She also screams bloody murder if you try and put her in the cart, too. Let's just sum it up and say shopping with her is definitely not for the weak of heart. However, the other day I was trying to look at something and she was strangely quiet. I looked over to see she had found the shoe section. She was in heaven finding all the shoes and trying them all on. Here's she proudly modeling the huge pair of boy shoes she had found: She got a little upset when she couldn't get the plastic tie undone that was holding them together. She got even more upset when we made her take them off and put them back.

We were also at Ikea earlier in the week. Jill and I were looking at something when she snuck off. I finally heard her say, "It's broten (broken)". I looked to see she had crawled up on a desk and was trying to push the buttons on a fake computer. When nothing happened with the computer and no one came to get her she must have figured the computer was broken. She's a crazy kid!!

A Transformer Died, Eating Daniel UN-friendly, Parent Teacher Conferences

To start out I had to add this comic because I thought it was really funny because it seems to painfully apply to us. Cash.....what's that?!Anyway, Daniel had a birthday party on Wednesday night between 4-6pm at Chuck E. Cheeses. We were pretty excited because that meant we were going to be able to eat at the most Daniel unfriendly restaurant in the world without fearing for Daniel's life. We went to Texas Roadhouse while Daniel was otherwise occupied. It also helped that we had two free child entree coupons that Josh and Matthew had gotten from school that we needed to use. We went and enjoyed our nut and dairy filled dinner and didn't feel too guilty because Daniel was having fun somewhere else. However, while we were there I did realize we need to teach our kids about how to have manners at a restaurant. Josh tried buttering his roll with his steak knife. I nervously watched him because it looked like with one fatal move he would have stabbed himself or cut off his fingers. Anyway, Sarah hadn't seen cloth napkins before and thought they were the table cloth. She insisted that her napkin needed to be spread out across the table the whole dinner and would get mad if you tried to move it. Good thing they had complimentary rolls because between Sarah, Matthew and Josh they seriously ate about 5 rolls apiece. Our server really earned his tip that night!! For Veteran's Day Aaron had the day off. It kind of threw me for a loop because it was a random Thursday instead of the usual Friday or Monday. That made the day seem like it was Saturday only the kids had school. Daniel had preschool that afternoon and the older kids were in school so Aaron and I along with Sarah and Noah went out for some ice cream during the older kid free time. Sarah loved it as you can see by her filthy shirt and ice creamy face. We have to live it up while we can--well at least while Daniel is having fun somewhere else. The other day while I was running errands, I stopped by home to pick something up. I was only going to be a minute so I left the kids in the car while I ran inside the house. I didn't realize I had left the radio on the talk/news station while I ran inside. When I came back outside I found a very somber Daniel. I asked what was wrong and he told me (in his very serious Daniel face) a Transformer had died. I asked him where he'd heard that. He pointed to the radio and said he heard it there while I was inside the house. I put 2 and 2 together and figured out he thought it was the action figure Transformer that had died. However, it was only an electrical transformer that had died, but Daniel didn't know what that was. I tried not to laugh, but it was funny.

As for parent teacher conferences things went as I had expected them to go. Josh is doing fabulous. He is a model student except he doesn't like to listen to directions before starting his assignments. That means that occasionally he will get frustrated when he can't figure out what to do because he didn't listen the first time. He is also a lefty, but doesn't always know to look for the lefty scissors so sometimes he has a hard time with that. Other than that he loves school and his teachers love him, so all is good.

Matthew on the other hand is.....well.....Matthew. His teacher is the same one as last year and let's just say she is not my favorite. She doesn't have as much patience with him as I would like, but she gets the job done more or less. However, as Matthew gets older the gap between him and his typical peers in their academics is getting larger and larger. In 4th grade they make the big change from learning to read to reading to learn and Matthew's reading understanding and comprehension has not always been his strong point. Now it is starting to slow him down and that is really hard to see the disparity between him and the other kids. Until he can get that comprehension down he will continue to fall more and more behind his typical peers. He is also struggling with the social aspect of school as well. Matthew has his idiosyncrasies he has to do like flapping his hands, asking silly questions, and his VERY rigid routines, which, unfortunately, makes him stand out. This consequently has led to some of his typical peers making fun of him at school. His teacher has talked to the kids twice, but she can't always be with Matthew to make sure it doesn't happen. Thankfully, Matthew is blissfully unaware of this for now, but who knows how long that will last. I know I need to look at Matthew for who he is and not what he can't do, but parent teachers isn't the best thing for that because it painfully shows me how different he really is. Even though we have known about Matthew's autism for about 8 years now it doesn't make things easier. I had a social worker tell me it is ok to mourn the loss of that typical child, but don't dwell too long on it. So for the last few days I have been having a pity party for myself, but I am pulling myself together and getting ready to put on my happy face--until the next parent teacher conferences.

When I was in school (way back when) we learned about the Kubler-Ross 5 stages of grief. We also learned that you can regress and go back to any step at any time and Aaron and I have our moments when we do this. Here's the 5 steps that we like to cycle through:

1. Denial and isolation

2. Anger

3. Bargaining

4. Depression

5. Acceptance

Most the time we are at acceptance, but on the hard days we seem to cycle through the other steps. I just want what is best for Matthew and for him to be happy, but it has been a hard road to hoe to say the least. It is hard not to ask, "Why me?", but that doesn't make it any easier. I take comfort in knowing that Heavenly Father is in charge and this is what he has planned for us. He must think we can do this even though I question our ability at times. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?! Since I am not dead, I keep wondering when am I going to get those bulging muscles from being stronger?? :)

The Dentist

Yesterday the kids all had an appointment with the pediatric dentist. Before we went I made sure to really scrub their teeth and to floss them really well. The kids actually let me scrub them pretty well which I was surprised about. I took a big sigh of relief when there were no cavities for anyone. YAY!! Josh's front teeth are chipped pretty badly. They got chipped from his two different falls on them in the summer. They are also super sensitive and very sharp (to the point of cutting his tongue) so the dentist decided it would be best to patch them. I made the appointment to patch them in January so our flex spending account will be reset because it is not going to be a cheap fix. Hopefully, Josh will stop using his teeth to break his falls from now on!!

We weren't sure how Sarah would be at this visit since last time all she would let them do is take a minute look in her mouth before she was screaming and jumping out of the chair. This time it looked like it wouldn't be any different. They wanted to try and get some X-rays of her teeth. I jumped up in the chair and put her in my lap to try and help out. Once they laid a finger on her she was bucking, kicking and screaming. She jumped out of the chair and ran down the hall screaming because she did not want anyone to mess with her. However, I let her come and watch Matthew get his X-rays done. Once she saw Matthew got it done she couldn't wait to jump up in the chair for her turn. I didn't even need to hold her in my lap either. She jumped up in the chair without a whimper--crazy girl!! She just has to be just like her brothers. She thinks she is 2 going on 20!! She sat and let them take 3 different pictures. Afterward we let all the boys go first for their cleanings and exams and let her watch them. After seeing her brothers get it done we didn't have any problem with her cooperating. If it was good enough for her brothers it was good enough for her.

Daniel was more than happy to crawl up in the chair because he wanted to watch the movie that was playing. Really my kids are such couch potatoes. The whole world could blow up around them, but if the TV were on they would never know. If I want anything done at home the TV has to be off or else they would be too transfixed by the screen to do anything. Anyway, Daniel was more than happy to comply with anything because the movie was on. Josh is the same way about TV. He could be watching the test panel and still not notice anything going on around him.It was pretty hard to get Matthew to stop talking long enough to let the dentist have a look in his mouth. He was telling him all about the freeways, going to the cabin and about the brush car wash.Sarah couldn't wait for her turn. She kept trying to crawl up into the chair while Daniel was finishing his exam. When it was her turn she crawled up into the chair and got comfy.She let them brush/polish her teeth.
She even let them floss her teeth--every single one without fighting them.She got a little nervous when the dentist came to take a look. However, she figured if it was good enough for her brothers it was good enough for her and let him take a really good look. I was so amazed about how cooperative she was I had to take the pictures to document it!! Well all the kids are good until their next check up in June--except for Josh who goes back in January to get his front teeth fixed. What an adventure!!

Poor Daniel and Silly Sarah

Lately, knock on wood, our family events have been pretty quiet and boring. I like that!!As you can see Sarah is up to her normal tricks. She can now open the fridge and pull things out. Oh goody! Anyway, she was thirsty this afternoon and decided to get herself a drink without asking for help. She likes the soymilk because she is able to undo the cap without help. Here's what we found: She couldn't get it in the glass only on the floor. Being as thirsty as she was she decided to drink it off the floor anyway. I guess I will be mopping sooner than later--Thanks Sarah!

In other happenings Friday night about 10pm Daniel came upstairs crying and told us he didn't feel well. When I guessed what "not feeling well" meant, I was greeted with Friday nights dinner making a second appearance in his bed and on his shirt. I got him into the shower and his sheets in the washer. Side note: his pillow pet washed up rather nicely since he got it all over that as well. I ended up staying up with him the majority of the night. I helped him rush to the bathroom when he needed to throw up which happened a lot during the night. Saturday morning he woke up with a raging fever, but thankfully, his throwing up had pretty much stopped. He spent the rest of Saturday laying around with a stubborn fever that only went down a little after both Tylenol and ibuprofen were given. I thought it was something that would pass until he woke up this morning really complaining that his stomach really hurt. He came and crawled into our bed and hardly moved saying his stomach hurt. Daniel can be quite dramatic at times, but this seemed to be pretty bad even by his standards. We then decided to take him to the Instacare to get him checked out. There they took some blood, which he was not happy about as you can see in the picture: and then started an IV because he was extremely dehydrated. They also told us they might admit him to the hospital because he was so dehydrated. They gave him some anti nausea medication and gave him juice along with the IV fluids to get him re-hydrated. They then just watched him for a little bit. His labs came back showing no appendicitis, thank goodness. They ended up sending him home and told us to make him drink, drink, drink--which we have been trying to do. He has perked up quite a bit after the IV fluids and him drinking so I am not too concerned about him anymore. Whew, glad it turned out with no hospital stay!!

Noah's 7 Months!!

I can't believe Noah is 7 months old!! Wow time has flown. He is getting so big. We have started food, but he HATES it. He will only tolerate a few bites of a pureed banana and that's with a lot of gagging on his part. Anything else he will clamp those gums down and not open. He is a very happy and laid back baby which I am very thankful for!! His siblings all love him ton especially Sarah who won't let me leave the house without him. When I try to buckle the kids in if I don't pick up Noah she will try to pick him up and scream until I come and get him--I guess she's afraid I will forget and leave him. He can roll places and we are working on sitting up. He still is somewhat delayed in motor skills, but that's to be expected with his prematurity. He sleeps through the night most nights which is awesome. Good news is I got a call from my insurance company last week. They informed me they are going to cover the entire cost of the Synagis (RSV) shot minus the $25 office copay. The shot itself runs from $1600-1700 for a single shot. That is truly a blessing come true because there was no way we were going to be able to pay the $500 copay every 28 days through RSV season. He should be receiving his first RSV shot in the next few weeks. I got his pictures taken a few weeks ago and he was all smiles. He is a really sweet baby! This morning Daniel and Sarah were playing with him through his crib slats. He thought they were funny because he was just giggling. I love baby laughs and so I recorded his this morning:

I love this guy!!

Busy Girl!!

This morning we were having a relaxing day at home doing laundry and reading. I of course was in the middle of a good book and couldn't put it down. Whenever I am reading a good book the whole world could collapse around me and I wouldn't notice. I paid the price for that this morning. I thought Sarah and Daniel were playing so well together because I didn't hear any fighting. Now I know exactly why there was no fighting--they were busy decorating my house. It seems Sarah's favorite color is orange since that's the marker she always gets a hold of.

She seems to like the greens and oranges on the cupboards:

dining bench: her hands: and feet: and on the counter:
She also got it on her face and clothes, but I didn't get a very good picture of that. After coloring all over everything in the kitchen she went over to the bookshelf and pulled out the top shelf causing all the books to fall. After they were on the floor she scattered them as far as she could.Good thing I finished my book today. I don't want to see what she would be capable of tomorrow without as much supervision!!