For The Record...

There are things that our kids do and say that we think we will never forget. There are times that I've thought to myself that I should write that down. But, I guess out of laziness, I talk myself out of it thinking that I could never in a million years forget something that crazy, or funny, or whatever the case may be. So I am noting some recent shenanigans. :)

One that has been providing frequent chuckles in our family circle:  The other day Mason got a small cut on his finger. There was a small amount of blood. I was looking at it when Anastyn came strolling by. She saw it and exclaimed, "Bloody Hell!" I was stunned. What???? I gave her that 'what-did-you-just-say' look, to which she explained, "Well, Harry Potter says it!"  We are really working on which words are appropriate to say and which aren't. It's really hard, because even the cartoons take the Lord's name in vain (which is not okay in our book) and include some inappropriate language. It's really confusing for kids...and its so hard to monitor and filter. It's dreadful. So, if you happen to hear one of my children say a 'bad' word...please know that we are trying to teach them. :) And, yes, I do have to confess that my mouth needs a good washing out with soap once in a while. Shameful.

A week or two ago I had to take Matty to the doctor in Cody. We drove thru McDonalds and got her a kids meal to eat while we were running errands around town. I had to run into Walgreens real quick to pick up her prescription and figured she and Mason would be okay in the car for a second. I forgot she still had the little bag of sliced apples from her Happy Meal. I came back to the car and got us out on the road when I heard Mason make a strange noise. So I asked Matty if brother was okay. She said 'no'. All of a sudden I remembered the apples. I asked Matty if she had given anything to her brother. All she said was 'apple'. Holy Crap!  I freaked out thinking Mason was choking on an apple. I swirved through the opposing lane of traffic to pull into the Holiday Inn parking lot - barely missing an oncoming vehicle - threw the car into park, jumped out of the car landing in a huge puddle of water, and prepared to yank my baby out of the car to get an apple out of his throat! I opened the door and found Mason sitting there....just fine. I talked to Matty. She had never given him an apple. I guess she just felt the need to watch her mother have a heart attack. Took me a while to settle myself down and get the heart rate back to normal after that one.

So, what else is going on around here?

Mason is going on 10 months now! He is crawling, pulling himself up to stand, climbing the stairs, occasionally playing in toilet water, and running around (literally running) in his walker! He is so proud of himself, and we are proud of him too! He is such a joy!

Easter came and went. There were fun Easter baskets left by the Easter Bunny (which I have no photographic evidence of). There were spiffy new Easter dresses and clothes. I have no pictures of those either - probably because we were in too much of a hurry to get off to church. We drove to Lovell to have Easter dinner and an Easter egg hunt at Grandpa and Grandma Tippetts - there were Easter baskets at their house as well! We also visited Grandpa Leithead and the cousins! It was a lovely day.

We drove the kids out to the 91 Ranch to see the baby calves, sheep, and to ride horses. They were so excited about this trip...they could not wait to get there! And they weren't disappointed! The Love's showed us a great time and even fed us a delicious dinner! Big thanks to them!

Adventures In Motherhood...

Most of us would agree that being a mom is both overwhelmingly challenging and undescribably rewarding at the same time. The past couple months in our family have been loaded with lots of challenges and lots of rewards. Here is a summary....

A trip to Thermopolis to visit Aunt Emily, a.k.a Aunt "Enemy", a.k.a. Auntie Em. We don't make it over to visit her and Uncle Pat very often, so I thought it was post-worthy. Especially since my girls have a huge soft spot for their greatest of great-aunts. Children automatically fall in love with this woman. She is spunky and fun and caters to their every whim. We had a fun time visiting for the day and enjoying her and uncle Pat's hospitality!!

Recently we drove over to Otto to spend a little time with Grandma Great for her birthday. The girls always love to explore at her house. This time they explored in a few places they shouldn't have. I think Grandma was glad to see us go home that day. :) Besides dragging out every toy in the house and pulling clothes out of drawers, they also got into a drawer that had a razor in it. Being the curious little critter she is, Anastyn managed to cut her precious, most beloved thumb (the one she is constantly sucking on). She cut it pretty deep and, oh boy, was there drama. Drama, drama, drama. We had blood everywhere. On the clothes that they had pulled out of Grandma's drawers, on Grandma's carpet. Everywhere. And when we finally got everything under control and the poor thumb bandaged up, we thought it might actually be a blessing in disguise. We kind of thought maybe this would cure Anastyn of her obsessive thumb-sucking habit. You know - since she would have it all bandaged up for a while. Well, that's not really how it turned out. Now we just have an ambidextrous thumb sucker. :)
Somewhere along the way, we had Easter. We dyed Easter eggs the night before with BrookLynn and Elle (which I hate doing, by the way...way too messy). And, naturally, the girls loved finding their Easter baskets on Easter morning and eating candy. Oh, how they love candy. :) It was nice to be able to relax and enjoy General Conference on t.v. and we had a delicious lunch of ham and funeral potatoes and homemade rolls and jello at Grandpa Leithead's house. It was a good day. This past Friday night was Matty and my "all-expense paid" night in the Sleep Lab! Unfortunately, I have no pictures to share with you. I forgot my dang camera. I did get some pictures on my phone, but I have no clue how to get those pictures onto my computer. We were testing Matty for sleep apnea. Now, I knew this wasn't going to be a pleasant experience. And I also figured that I wouldn't get much sleep. But it really was worse than I had expected! Knowing Matty's history of doctor's offices and hospitals, it was no surprise that she was scared out of her mind the moment we arrived. So scared that she did, indeed, hurl all over the carpet in our room shortly after we got there. And her little hands were shaking the entire hour it took to get her hooked up to all of the wires. I lost count of how many wires they had her hooked up to. Ten on her head alone. Don't ask me how anyone is supposed to be able to get any sleep when they have wires attached to every part of their body. It was one of the longest nights I have ever made it through. I am pretty sure I looked at the time on my cell phone at least fifteen times during the night - just to see how much longer before we could get the heck out of there. I spent the entire night trying to make sure Matty stayed asleep, stayed untangled from her wires, and that the wires stayed attached to her through her very active tossing and turning through the night. I did not want to have to re-do the dang test! I do have to mention that I was slightly creeped out the next morning when the guy sheepishly admitted that he had forgotten to have me sign a form the before we had gone to bed. The one that says "Yes, I was informed that we would be observed on video all night long." I patiently signed and dated with the previous day's date and then thought really hard to remember if I had done anything embarassing-like scratch my butt-during the night. We were so happy in the morning when we could finally leave!! And I was so glad that Kyle and Anastyn had stayed the night in a hotel in Billings that night. I am pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to drive us home without falling asleep at the wheel! We haven't heard on the results yet, but we are hoping that we don't have to have this experience again for a very long time!!

Next. I was hoping that we would somehow be able to avoid this common childhood crisis. But that was not in our stars. Last night Anastyn found scissors. And she knew exactly what to do with them. I wanted to cry when I saw her bangs snipped off at the scalp. Luckily, she left a few longer strands on the top layer so we can camouflage them. :) It wasn't until this morning that I discovered that she hadn't stopped at her bangs. When I took yesterday's messy bun out and started brushing I realized that we were missing a lot more hair. Then I started taking out Matty's messy buns. This is when I realized that the scissors did not stop at Anastyn's hair. After brushing, Matty was actually missing a significantly larger amount of hair than her sister was. I was not happy. You can see the pile of hair in the following picture. I was extremely upset. And Anastyn could sense that. I heard her in the other room a little while later saying, "My Mommy doesn't like me." I had to explain to her that I did, indeed, like her. I just didn't like the haircuts she gave herself and her sister...

Anastyn is very aware of the upcoming arrival of her baby brother. She is so excited for him to come. She loves to rub my tummy and feel the baby moving. She and Matty came in to show me that they, too, had babies in their tummies this morning. I thought it was so cute. When they unzipped their jammies to show me, I discovered that they were actually expecting kitties. :) Too cute.

Oh The Joys!!!