Insta-Friday

Hello lovelies!

How are you doing?
Me, eh, ok.

I think I have an inner ear infection, hello motion sickness.

Adison didn't have school yesterday or today, yay for lazy days.

Breakfast this morning, some more chocolate delight.

So good.

I've noticed over the last week or so that we seem to be having a major spoon shortage.

Where did they go?

Good 'ol Light Saber spoon has made more than one appearance this week.

If you see my spoon could you please let me know?

We were headed to Adison's parent/teacher conference Wednesday night and the sky was gorgeous.

This picture does not do it justice.

The sky was beautiful, pale blue, pink, orange with a touch of yellow.

The clouds were a purple-ish, grey color.

Simply breathtaking.

Last weekend, on our way out of town from visiting K's family we stopped by Trader Joe's.

We don't have one in our town and I love me some TJ's.

K loves himself some Indian food, the spicer the better.

Me, um, no thanks.

I stick to tandori chicken and nan.

The above pic is some of the nan that we picked up while there.

It was a new try and I think we will get some more.

We had it Wednesday night with some lentil soup.

So good.

Teaching my girl how to give some Eskimo kisses.

Homegirl was a pro.

Obviously.

Look at that little nose, it was made for some Eskimo kissing.

I burned some pancakes the other morning.

My pancake making mojo was off somehow.

This little guy was giving me the stink-eye about it.

Sorry dude.

You did get eaten though, you didn't make it with your other four friends into the gar-bage due to excessive burning.

I hardly ever burn pancakes, I blame it on my possible inner ear infection.

I don't know how, but lets just go with it.

I'm going to preface this by saying that my klutz-o-the year award is in the mail.

I somehow thighed {like kneed, but using your thigh} the brake handle on K's bike.

Holy bruise Batman.

It hurts to walk when I first get up in the morning.

The above pic was taken the evening after I did it, it looks much different now.

K is starting to cringe when he sees it.

It's starting to resemble this bad boy {pictured below} from four years ago, only it's smaller and on the front of my thigh.

See this pretty, albeit blurry face?
She's been following me around even more lately.

She's such a talkative little thing.

Hi Lily!

How has your week been going?

A doozy of a headache

I got a headache this morning.

A doozy of a headache that started off as a small pain above my left eye.

I ignored it as we were on a walk and continued on our walk amidst the sounds of friends talking and small children noises.

Towards the end of the walk the pain was slightly worse, more persistent but not unbearable.

I decided to get a $0.99 Coke from Sonic and head to Toys r Us with Abby to look at a little shopping cart for her.

{that statement needs it's own blogpost. Seriously.}

I reach the checkout lane with my purchase and a now crying Abby who desperately wanted the Minnie Mouse one because it's not in a box and is put together.

The crushing pain hits me out of the blue.

Pain

Sweating

Nausea

More pain

Holy smokes, how did it get bad so quick?

I drank my Coke as I drove and had the a/c on full blast on my face.

It minimized the pain greatly.

But then I had to get out of the car and carry a sleeping Abby in the house.

Head. About. To. Explode.

Seriously.

I called K on the phone to forewarn him of impending puking and to expect to come home.

Finally I was able to pop a few ibuprofen and lay down on the couch while I waited for Lee's bus to come home.

She was a doll and was totally okay with watching a movie with me while I waited and prayed for the meds to kick in and the pain to minimize.

I was even able to doze for a few minutes here and there.

Sleep for me is the key to getting headaches to go away.

Now about 90% of the pain is gone, now replaced by drowsiness and fogginess.

I hate migraines.

Strong words, I know.

But seriously, they are awful.

While pregnant with Adison I got them almost daily during my second trimester.

They subsided and now I only get them maybe a dozen times a year.

We have a family history of them, I am praying our girls escape them.

A first day and a dr's appointment

Today was Ainsley's first day of preschool, or as she prefers to call it, school.

She was so excited this morning.

See:

 

When I finally convinced her to smile, I got this super cheesy grin:

She was so incredibly excited to head off to school.

She has been hearing of and seeing Adison go to school for the last three years and  was ready to experience it for herself.

We had a meet & greet at her school last night so she got to meet her teacher and check out her classroom.

 So she was really ready to experience school.

I managed to get her to sit still long enough to snap this one:

When I picked her up after school she was practically beaming.

Everything was her favorite.
According to her they did puzzles, had a cookie, worked on sheets and sang songs.

She couldn't have been any happier.

It made me very happy to see that she had such a wonderful time.

Even better was that neither one of us shed any tears this morning when I dropped her off!

I was fully expecting waterworks from one of us, but nothing.

She was ready!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On to the doctor's appointment.

I somehow hurt my shoulder a couple of weeks ago.

No big deal, it would only hurt when I moved it occasionally.

Then out of the blue the pain stopped.

Great!

Then last Thursday it started hurting again and got much worse within the last few days.

Today I decided that it was time to go see the doctor.

Turns out I have strained my rotator cuff as well have having tendinitis and bursitis.

The prescribed an anti-inflammatory and said that it should be feeling better within a week or two.

I hope you guys are having a great Thursday!

I bit it again, sigh

I choose to blame the grass, because again, it can't be my fault.

I just feel like I should place some blame before I get into my clumsiness poor choice of where to walk.

It's the morning of the wedding and I was all gussied up for pictures.

 Abby and I pre-wedding, all gussied up.

My shoes.

Beautiful backyard where the wedding was held.

{This is the rehearsal.}

Okay, I just felt like I needed to set the scene a bit.

So...back to the story.

The wedding photos are being taken and I went back in the house to do something.

I wish that I could remember what I was doing although it's not important.

I finished up doing whatever it was and I was heading back down towards where the photos were being taken.

While walking my gussied up self down the aisle I bit it.

Not a little bit, not even a slight bit.

Like, totally bit it.

I ended up on all fours in the grass in my fancy dress while wearing my fancy shoes.

Yep, it was such a graceful moment.

One that I am sure that you all wish that you could have seen.

You know for the support, not to laugh.

Because laughing would not be supportive, although you could have because I was laughing at myself.

I promptly look up to see who saw my demise.

Believe it or not NO ONE SAW it!

I have no idea how I was so lucky, but with easily twenty people there not one person saw me fall.
Of course, after it happened I told everyone and then we all laughed.

I quickly remembered the fancy dress that I was wearing and checked to make sure that there were no grass stains on it and there weren't!

There was a stain on my shoes, but you couldn't see it.

I promptly looked down to see what I had tripped on {because it couldn't be my fault of course}.

It turns out that I had tripped on a clump of grass and it's roots.

Yep, that's me and so very typical of something that I would do.

You would think that I would have learned my lesson, right?

Wrong.

Right before the wedding started I had to run back outside to get something, my flowers I think.

Goodness, I am losing my memory FAST.

While I was rushing back into the house I tripped AGAIN ON THE EXACT. SAME. SPOT.

Who does that?

Well, me obviously.

This time I managed not to fall on all fours in front of pretty much all of the guests.

I instead managed to rip a large chunk of skin off of my toe and needed a band-aid.

I had to ask the mother of the bride, you know, because she wasn't busy or anything.

I felt so bad, there was so much going on.

Anyways, all was well and I renewed my clumsiness card not once but twice in one morning.

Yay me!

Oh yeah, that reminds me of what happened the night before.

{Sorry for such a long post.}

We were at the reception site the night before getting everything prepped.

We were putting the skirts on the tables.

K and I are usually a really good team.

We were opening the bags that had the table skirts in them and had a pretty good routine going.

I held the hanger and the bottom of the bag while K cut the bag open with a {sharp} knife.

We had done it two times already and were about to open the third bag.

I went to reach for the bottom of the bag at the same time as K started cutting it and I put my hand directly in the path of the knife.

K and I immediately pulled our hands back in time that I just had a little cut on my finger but ouch.

Yep, I had to ask the mother of the bride for a band-aid because I didn't have one.

Sigh.

Poor Nancy, I just keep bothering her for band-aids.

Sorry I keep hurting myself Nancy and for being so sweet!

I was attacked by my vacuum cleaner

At least that is the story that I am choosing to go with.

I honestly have no idea how it happened.

I was merrily {ha} vacuuming our bedroom when it unhooked {I have no better way to describe it}, fell and hit me on the leg.

We have a Dyson and when you are using the attachment/hose thing the vacuum has to be standing up with the wheels locked down.

It's not that the vacuum just fell over and landed on my leg, no, a sharp corner of it sliced the back of my calf.

I felt the pain before I knew what happened and looked like a non-bleeding flesh wound appeared on my leg.

The pain and the incident quickly left my mind although K forewarned me that I would get a nasty bruise from it.

This morning though I scraped the back of my calf on our shoe basket and *pain* reared it's ugly head.

That's when I looked down and saw this:

Please ignore the weird grayish-purple color of my calf.

I have no idea why it looks like that, other than to blame it on the weird light coming through my blue curtains and the fact that I took the picture with my cell phone.
I promise that I'm not a zombie or anything.

Yes, I took a picture of my bruise and texted it to my husband.

Why?

That it is a very good question.
Um, I have no reason other than to garner his sympathy, ha ha.

I could blame my clumsiness for what happened.

Or my inability to apparently do more than 5,000,000 things at a time.

Instead though, I'll just blame the vacuum.

I think it makes the most sense.
Don't you?

We had a storm, did some swimming and played at the park

Our small group met last night.

It is always a wonderful time to share, learn and be together.

There are questions asked, answers learned and life lived with some amazing people.

K and I have an app on our phones that goes off whenever there are weather warnings.

Last night it seemed to keep going off.

We would check the weather and the radar to see what exactly we were in for.

As we left we all looked up at the sky and saw something new.

I have never seen clouds like these before. 

 As K was driving home I was snapping some pics.

I mean, this sky was crazy looking.

Plus, I apparently dream of writing a weather blog or something with how many weather related posts that I write.

Sorry guys.

Back to the story.

K is driving home and I have the window down to snap some pics.
Genius right?
The wind suddenly picks up really fast and I am getting pelted in the face with sand.

Trust me when I tell you that it didn't feel good, at all.

I start telling K:

Roll the window up.

Quick, roll the window up!
I am getting hit in the face with sand.

{The windows were locked so the kids couldn't mess with them.}

He finally replied that he was trying to avoid the road sign that was flying through the air.

Oh, okay, well that makes sense.

Sorry honey.

The girls had swimming lessons this morning and did amazing!

Woo hoo!

Afterwards we went to the park with my friend Jennifer and her kiddos.

Good times!

It was a tearful morning

My baby is now 18 months old.

I know that I have requested it before, but can we PLEASE pretend that 18 months = baby and not toddler?

Thank you very much.

Abby's 15 month appointment was an abysmal affair.

She cried and cried and cried.

It broke my mama heart into a gazillion pieces.

Today there were a lot of tears too.

She HATES going to the doctor.

Hates it.

Every single stinkin' minute of it.

I feel really awful for our doctor.

Luckily he doesn't take it personally.

He even said so...and it's not his first time mentioning it...I really hope that means that a lot of his patients cry the entire time.

Right?

My girl is now 21 lbs 11oz.

She is in the 10th - 25%, but on the chart she was a tiny bit above the 10th %.

Yep, my baby is a tiny dancer.

She is now 32 inches tall.

50th to 75th %, right there in the middle.

She has a typical large noggin like my other girls, although hers is the smallest.

75th - 90th %.

Her umbilical hernia is getting smaller.

Yay!
Everything else looks amazing.

She is developmentally right on track and doing great.

Then came the part where he asked about her being sick the last couple of weeks.

After hearing her symptoms he decided that it would be a good idea to clean out her ears so that he could get a better look.

It was torture.

The first ear she kicked and screamed and was attempted to flail her arms all over the place.

It took the doctor, a nurse and myself to hold her down.

For the second ear she put up a bit of a fight, but not as much.

{Let me tell ya, it feels absolutely awful to have to do this. Knowing that it is necessary and helps eases the guilt, but ugh, mama needed some cuddle time with her afterwards.}

Luckily her ears look fine.

After that came time for her vaccines.

Ugh, yep.

She got shots.

She again cried and cried.

I wanted to cry with her.

Now she is sleeping.

I hope that when she wakes up she is feeling okay.

It's just hard since she was JUST starting to feel and act better, that this could mean more not feeling good for her.

Sigh.

Remember this photo from a couple of weeks ago?
I am praying that she doesn't feel this bad for a long time.

While there, one of our wonderful nurses gave Ainsley a talkin' to about not eating rocks.

I may or may not have cracked a grin when this happened.

Ainsley looked properly instructed and repentant.

Let's just hoped that it actually worked.

**fingers crossed**

P.S. after her appointment and getting her down for a nap, I totally needed to rest.

Lee and I laid in my room and watched a movie.

Taking the kids to appointments wears me out.



How to feed a llama

Ainsley asked me during lunch today:

Mama, how do you feed a llama?

Me: I don't know sweetie, I've never fed a llama before.

Lee: Well, first you put your hand out.

Then the llama smells your hand.

Then it licks your hand.

Then it licks your hand again.

Then it eats the food off of your hand.

Then you get more food on your hand.

Then it eats the food from your hand.

That is how you feed a llama Mama.

Me: Thanks Lee, now I know how to feed a llama if I ever need to.

Lee: Yep, that's how you feed one.

Yes, this is a typical coversation with Ainsley.

She truly says the most random and funny things ever.

Earlier today I posted on Twitter another one of her gems:

Mama, would you be sad if someone put me in a telescope.

Me: Why would someone put you in a telescope.

Lee: Welllllll, some mean guy could put me in a telescope.

Would you be sad Mama.

Me: Yes Lee, I would be very sad if someone put you in a telescope.

Yesterday out of the blue she said to me:

My name is Princess Princess Princess oh Princess

{Picture from this morning.}

She is constantly cracking us up!

Yesterday at dinner we were talking about Ainsley having "zombie eyes."

She thought it was REALLY funny.

I posted a close up of her eye below, it's kinda gross though so scroll down at your own discretion.

Turns out that it isn't pink eye but some sort of eye infection.

We got her some new drops and HOPE that she is feeling better soon.



P.S. Two little ones that are dear to my heart are struggling right now and could really use some prayers.

Annabelle

Bennett

Wow, last night was a night

Yesterday after picking Adison up from school we went over to my friend Jennifer's house for a little play date.

Yes, it was for the moms as much as for the children.

That you see, is the joy of our children being friends!

We all had a lot of fun.

After that we headed home to make some dinner, do baths and homework.

No biggie, normal evening.

As we are finishing dinner it dawned on me again that next Wednesday marks 5 years since we found out that we lost our Emma Grace.

It's not that it's shocking or anything, but 5 years seems like a big deal to me.

I mention it to K and my heart breaks to hear his response.

He doesn't want to think about it, it is still too painful.

I can't stand the thought of my husband hurting.

That got me thinking about that time and it suddenly flashes to mind that I. have. no. idea. where. her. sonogram. picture. is.

I feel myself start to panic.

How could I lose this?
How could I have misplaced it?

You see, I know that it is simply a sonogram picture.

But I have no other memory of her.

I don't have any other picture or idea of her.

As a mother, I need this.

I need this small picture of her.

So, I panic.

I rack my brain trying to remember where it is.

K gets up and looks on the computer, he thinks that he scanned it.

Nope, it's not on there.

Suddenly I remember that it was in the square, silver picture frame.

But, the picture frame isn't on the fireplace.

Where is it?

At this point I am near tears.

How could I have lost it?

I think it might be in the basement, packed away.

I start digging through all the tubs that I think it could be in.

Nothing.

I go back upstairs and tell K.

Now I am even closer to tears.

He mentions thinking that it could be in my scrap booking tub.

I race downstairs.

Hope spirals anew.

Nope.

I do however find a bunch of Ainsley's sonogram pics.

{They were really cute, btw.}

Then I spot a tub that has a bunch of picture frames in it.

Eureka!

I start tearing through all of them.

I find the picture frame.

But then I hear Abby SCREAMING.

It's the scream that strikes terror in all parents.

I knew that something was very wrong.

I grabbed the pile of picture frames and dashed back upstairs.

She had gotten her finger SMASHED in the door.

I don't mean little smash, a serious SMASH.

Her finger nail had a purple line across it and she was inconsolable.

After giving her some ibuprofen and that not helping I decided to take her on a bit of a walk.

That always seems to help.

So walk we did.

It instantly cheered up my little sweet.

It's definitely Spring around here, there was so much beauty to look at.

Abby was doing much better so we headed home and I get her in bed.

Happy as a clam.

I looked in the picture frame and it isn't in there.

I started to lose hope on finding it.

Then it dawned on me that I had a little scrapbook for the cards and such that we received after we found out that we lost her.

I tore through my bookshelf looking for it and there it was.

The worst picture that they took of our precious little one, the only one that we were given.

Ahh, relief.

Abigail felt better and I found my picture.

What a nice end to a stressful evening.



She cried so many tears

I took Abby in for her 15 month check up.

To say that she hated it would be the understatement of the year.

She vacillated between crying and screaming the entire time.

With good cause I might add.

Abby is a "Mommy and Daddy Girl."

Meaning, in the realm of adults, we are pretty much the only two that she likes.

She will eventually warm up to other people, but in reality, it is the two of use that hold her heart.

(I kind of like it. Who am I kidding, I LOVE it!)

That being said, visiting the doctor is just short of torture for her.

Ainsley doesn't really like new people either.

We now have a new pediatrician AND he is a BOY!

Ainsley is especially shy around men.

The majority of the appointment Ainsley was hiding underneath chairs or in the corner.

Abby on the other hand was crying on my lap the entire time.

She cried with everything.

Listening to her heart.

Looking in her ears.

Checking her hernia.

Checking her lymph nodes.

Measuring her.

Weighing her.

You get the picture, right?

She also had to get her flu booster shot.

Poor thing cried and cried.

The big crocodile tears that slip down her cheeks and land on your lap.

The tears that when she looks at you you want to cry along with her.

Those tears were nothing, I repeat NOTHING compared to what came next.

They had to draw blood to check her lead levels since we live in an older home.

My heart broke y'all, like into a million billion gazillion pieces.

Luckily she only had to be poked once, good veins, PRAISE THE LORD.

All in all, she is well and excelling.

Homegirl is FINALLY above 20 pounds, yes she is 15 months.

She is our tiniest by far.

She has caught up on all of her milestones and is now exceeding for her age.

The morning wore her out so much that she had fallen asleep in the car before we had even left the parking lot.

All of this showed me yet again how very blessed we are for healthy children.

I read blogs and hear of people who have sick kids that are fighting for their lives.

I cannot even begin to imagine the pain and the fear that this must bring.

I praise the Lord for the gifts that He has given us.

For our children.

For health.

It makes all of the little things in life that are annoying or difficult seem that much smaller.

It makes my complaints seem so inconsequential.



I fell and fell hard

Literally.

I am not known from my grace.

I am more known for being klutzy.

If a person can possibly fall or somehow get hurt, I am your woman.

Yep, see me here, raising my hand.
For years my Dad used to make me crawl up the stairs since I was so prone to falling.

I was the kid while playing volleyball that had some sort of brace or support on every possible joint.

It was such a fashionable look.

The first real doozy that comes to mind is when I went jogging with a friend in high school.

We run running through our neighborhood when out of nowhere I found myself on the ground and bleeding.

A lot.

I had fallen on a stone driveway and ripped the skin off of my knee.

There was blood pouring down my leg.

Would you like to know what I was most upset about?

Probably not, but I will share anyways, it's just the type of person I am.

I was most upset about getting blood all over my brand new socks.

It really is all about priorities.

It was so bad that he had to carry me back home.

*****

The next one I actually have photographic evidence of.

This is your WARNING, it is BAD.

As my friend Sarah said when seeing the picture, it makes her butt hurt.

This picture was taken a few days after the incident, it was SO much worse at first!

Now for the story.

I was getting Ainsley, who was then a 6 month old baby up from her nap when I slipped on the stairs.

To this day I have no idea what I slipped on.

I simply remember falling, hitting my leg on the edge of the step and being certain that I had just broken my leg.

I also bruised my right arm.

The baby though was perfectly fine.

By the grace of God, in my falling state of mind I thought to protect her.

*****

My third and final experience that I will share with you had to do with being arrogant or prideful.

Hubby and I were visiting his family.

His parents have a steep enough driveway that when it ices or snows a lot you are in trouble.

On this day, his dad was on the way back from the store and couldn't get up the driveway.

He called us inside and asked if we would help push the car up the drive.

Sure, no problem.

It was slick folks, really slick.

Hubby slips a couple of times and I start thinking how great for once I am doing.

Ha!

While I am mentally patting myself on the back, I start to slip.

Think Scooby Doo style slipping.

I fell flat on my behind and promptly burst into laughter.

It was hysterical!!

Note to self: Don't ever, EVER get arrogant.

You will promptly fall on your back side and get really wet.

This post was written using one of the prompts at: Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop. Check it out, so much fun!