Giraffe is Sick

Last night Rosemary told us that her giraffe was sick.  He apparently stubbed his toe at the zoo and it’s all been downhill since then.  He’s been running a fever off and on, and needing almost constant medication.  Today he would only feel better if he could lay on the couch and watch Dora the Explorer with his teddy bear.  He’s had shots throughout the day today, and Rosemary’s kept her cellphone with her at all times just in case she needs to call the pediatrician, which she does about every 5 minutes.  We keep thinking that Giraffe is getting better, but then he takes a turn for the worse.  Please keep Giraffe in your thoughts and prayers in the coming days – taking care of him is becoming exhausting and we all hope he is much better soon. 

In other news, I’ve been a bad blogger but have just been really busy.  The BAMOM Twice as Nice sale was this past weekend, which has taken up a good bit of my time.  My 3-year-old laptop’s screen died on me, so I’ve spent quite some time setting up my new laptop (thank goodness I back up regularly so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been).  Also, last week was the last week of my Lightroom 101 class, and I’m now photography class free and plan to be that way for a while.  I think I need some time to digest what I’ve learned.  For now, the current project is to continue to clean out the guest bedroom so that Henry can move in to his own room.  I’m hoping that Henry will be in there by the end of March, but the end of April is probably more realistic. 

So . . . that’s the short version of what’s been going on around here, and I’ll leave you with a cute photo of the big kids that I took last week:

I Can’t Watch!

I love this photo.  I took it last weekend for my Project 52 photo.  The theme was Emotion.  The kids never fail to have this reaction to Finding Nemo. . . .

Penelope is 18 Months

Penelope turned 18 months old this past Friday.  I absolutely cannot believe that she has been in our lives for that long.  It seems like I just found out that I was pregnant with her.  Speaking of which, an interesting fact is that Penelope is now older then the big kids were when I found out that I was pregnant with Penelope.  I seriously cannot fathom being pregnant with a child – much less three – as young as Penelope. 

Penelope had her 18-month check-up yesterday.  Here are her stats:

weight:  23 pounds 4 ounces (25th-50th percentile)
length:  32.5 inches (75th percentile)
head circumference:  18 inches (25th percentile)

She’s still tall, but she’s still a little skinny.  At her 15-month visit, she was in the 25th percentile for weight, but now she’s much closer to the 50th percentile.  You can tell, too, because her little cheeks are getting fat again, which I love.

Penelope is just now getting in her “pointy” teeth.  Her first set of molars came in at around 12 months, but she’s had gaps – but tonight I felt the first “pointy” tooth on her top right side and saw holes on the bottom where the teeth are about to stick through.  Penelope has always gotten in four teeth at a time, and it seems that this set is no exception.  Maybe that explains her staying up and fussy until 1:00 a.m. this past Friday night.

Penelope absolutely thinks that she is 3.5 years old.  You cannot convince her that she is not as old as the big kids.  And boy can she talk. . . .  I was tickling her the other night and she yelled, “Do it again!”  She has so many words and phrases – please, thank you, cat, door, more, eat, milk, roll, mama, daddy, dolly, sticker, goat, dog, chicken, go, school, zoo, etc., etc.  I can’t even list all of her words.  I’m so relieved that she is speaking so well – after having had three speech-delayed children, having one that is on target is truly amazing.

We’ve signed Penelope up to start playschool (actually, the class that the kids are in now) in September.  If she stays in the playschool class and doesn’t repeat it (she has an August birthday and our school systems currently use a September 1 cutoff), then she will start kindergarten just one year after the big kids.  That’s a lot of school in a short period of time.  Regardless, I know she’ll be glad to go to school herself.  She is so sad when we leave to take the big kids to playschool.  We had to buy her a lunchbox of her own just to make school days a little easier. . . .

I can’t imagine what the next few months are going to bring.  Penelope is already so sassy.  She shakes her booty like a little dog whenever she gets excited, and it is one of the most adorable things I’ve ever seen (you really have to see it to understand the cuteness).  Her personality is really coming out, and I can’t wait to see it come out even more over the next few months.

A New Favorite Movie

The kids have been really in The Cat in the Hat movie lately.  We DVR’d it over the holidays and have watched it about a zillion times since then.  A zillion.  Any time we’d tell the kids they could watch some television, that is what they wanted to watch.  Gary and I were okay with it at first, but it is getting OLD.  We’ve been DVR’ing other movies to try to find something to replace it, but we hadn’t found anything that the kids liked as much as The Cat in the Hat.  Until we DVR’d Rio last weekend. . . .

The kids LOVE that movie.  And grown-ups seem to like it a lot, too. 

Singing

For some reason, the big kids (especially Piper) are really into singing songs.  I love hearing them sing, and I especially love their versions of songs.  For instance, Piper sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star like this:

Twinkle twinkle wittle star
How wonder you are
Up above above above the world so high
Like diamond in the sky
Twinkle twinkle wittle star
How wonder you are. . . .

And Rosemary has an excellent version of Jingle Bells (which is still sung regularly around here):

Jingle bells
Jingle bells
All the way
Old McDonald had a farm
Hey!

Other favorites are the Itsy Bitsy Spider, the ABC song, and of course Old McDonald Had a Farm.  Henry will sing along sometimes, and recently Penelope has started chiming in and helping the kids sing songs.  I love it.  Part of me hopes that they never learn the “right” words to all their songs.

Update on the Hammer

For the first time since the big kids were born, Gary and I are getting rid of baby stuff.  Clothes, gear, etc. are all finding a new home.  It is AMAZING how much has entered our house and not left it.  We had 2.5 closets full of stuff, plus we have stuff in the attic, and we had stuff in a storage building.  This past weekend, Gary rented a truck and got everything out of the storage building.  When Gary got home, the Hammer was ready with a swiffer duster to help supervise the unloading of the truck. . . .

About a month ago, we unloaded the 2.5 closets and put all the stuff in the guest bedroom.  I’ve been spending anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours a day sorting through those things since then. 

Just this week I finally saw some progress in that bedroom.  I’m making four piles:  donate, sell (in the local BAMOM consignment sale the last weekend in February), keep, and trash.  Thankfully, so far, the smallest pile is the keep pile.  I hope it stays that way.

Gary is going to pull down the rest of the things out of the attic this weekend, then we’re going to start tagging and pricing for the consignment sale.  Hopefully we’ll be done and ready for the sale in time!  Then we need to log our donate items and get those donated.  Then we can organize the keep items and we are done!

We have several things we want to organize this year, and once we finish our current project, the goal is to get Henry moved into the guest bedroom.  It’s probably going to be a few months before we get him in there, but he’s fast approaching the point where he will need his own space in his own room.  Once we get Henry in his own room, our next goal is to turn the playroom back into a dining room!  These projects may take all year. . . .

On Monday, the Hammer had his first appointment with the neurosurgeon about the holes in Henry’s skull (we originally thought there was one hole, but we now know there are two – one on the right that is a little smaller than a dime, and one on the left that is smaller than that).  It went . . . okay.  Gary went into the appointment expecting bad things, so he left the appointment feeling good about everything.  I went into the appointment expecting the doctor to tell us there was nothing to worry about with a couple of holes in his skull (which, in retrospect, was stupid), so I left the appointment pretty freaked out, though I’ve mostly recovered from that. 

In short, the doctor has ruled out all but a couple of things.  The main thing left that we need to rule out is histiocytosis.   The doctor doesn’t think that Henry has that because he has no other symptoms, but it is something that we need to rule out. Unfortunately, that is something that can only be ruled out once some time has passed.  We started that process by Henry having a few x-rays of his head, which turned out fine.  That means that we wait and go back in 6 months for more x-rays.  Then if those x-rays are okay, then we go back in another 6 months for more x-rays.  Hopefully at that point, we can officially rule out histiocytosis. 

Once we rule that out, we are left with Henry having holes in his head due to genetic or hereditary reasons.  There won’t be much to do at that point, other than follow Henry just to keep an eye on everything.  Henry’s brain looked good, and the macrocephaly that he had as a baby (when he had his first CT scan) has completely resolved itself on its own.  Probably, and hopefully, these holes in his head will never affect Henry.  I just hate that we have to wait at least a year to know for sure.

First Trip to Chuck E Cheese!

This past weekend we were invited to an awesome birthday party at Chuck E Cheese!  I told the kids about Chuck E Cheese before we went.  Henry and Rosemary were both pretty excited about seeing the big mouse, but Piper said right off the bat that, “I no want that big mouse to talk to me.”  Once we got there, Penelope was the only one who would get very close to the big mouse. . . .

Regardless, the kids had a great time and enjoyed the pizza, and really enjoyed playing the games at the party.

Then there was the part where Chuck E Cheese came out to see the birthday girls.  Piper didn’t love that part too much, but she made it through just fine in her safe spot. . . .

Pedi Day!!

Miss Sally has been really sick last week and this week, so I’ve stayed home with the kids three days between last week and this week.  This past Monday while we were hanging out at home, I gave the girls pedicures.  I just lined them up on the bench for our new table and did one set of toes at a time.  Then when I was finished, I told them all to blow on their toes to dry their polish. . . .

They take their pedis very seriously, and I like that.

“That Why You Sit On You Bottom”

Piper has always been somewhat of a model child.  She was definitely the easiest baby, and she truly, sincerely tries to do what she is supposed to do.  She listens carefully to what she is supposed to do, and does all that is in her control to do it.  She is a rule-follower.  And I get that, because much to the amusement of my friends, I am a rule-follower, too. 

Piper wants everyone to know that she is doing exactly what she is supposed to be doing.  When another child is out of control, Piper will say, “Mama.  Mama.  I minding you.”  Though I think it’s sweet, and I very much appreciate the fact that at least one of my children is minding me, I’m sure that her brother and sisters will tire of that sort of thing quickly.  In fact, after last night, Rosemary may already be tiring of it.

At dinner, the kids will wiggle a lot.  Sometimes they wiggle too much.  One minute you’re talking to a kid, the next minute their heads just drop out of sight as they fall off their chairs.  That happened to Rosemary last night.  She scooted a little too far over and fell down in between her chair and Pipers chair.  Rosemary’s bottom hadn’t hit the floor when Piper looked down at Rosemary and said:

“Rosema-wy, that why you sit on you bottom.  If you sit on you bottom, you not fall off you chair.”

Rosemary didn’t seem to appreciate Piper’s advice, but at least I know that I have one child that listens to me. 

Hiking Weekend

The weather was, again, unseasonably pleasant this past weekend.  We decided to spend it doing one of our favorite things – hiking.  The kids were so excited to be going hiking again!  We decided to go to Tannehill State Park, mostly because they have a bit of everything: some water, bridges, trails, picnic tables, etc.  We had a picnic lunch when we got there, then took off on the trails.  Penelope still loves her backpack. . .

I started a new photography class on Monday.  It’s not so much a shooting class (as my other three photography classes have been) and instead it is an editing class.  I learned (what I thought was) a lot about Lightroom when I took my Shooting 201 class back in October.  I’ve been in class since Monday and I already see how much I don’t know about editing in Lightroom.  I can tell that I’m going to learn a ton, but it’s definitely going to take a lot of time. . . .

That’s all to say that I’m starting to really love some black and white photos.  I’ve never really used black and white that much, but for some reason lately I really like it – many times it makes my photos look the way I wanted them to look in my mind.  Here are a few that do that. . . .

So, I’m going to continue to work on my black and whites and see if they continue to speak to me.  I think they will.

And just for fun, as we were leaving the park, Piper started swinging from a fence chain and talking to the ducks swimming by.  For some reason, it was particularly funny to me.

These kids are so much fun!