Just a few pictures for your viewing pleasure

Here are a few pictures recently downloaded, some came from my camera and some came from Dad's family website. This first picture is our dog Kolohe, her name is Hawaiian and it means Rascal, and it's fitting. She's a pain sometimes, but she is a vey good gaurd dog, always on alert!

Next was a picture that was too cute to pass up, our little Katie right after turning one! This doll is her favorite thing in the world right now, she could be crying and screaming but if you hand her this baby doll, it's instant joy.

Next is a picture i couldn't resist. Katie got stuck under the table and instead of helping her, i grabbed my camera first, then helped her. It was hillarious.


Here is a picture of Adam and his girls. He is an amazing father and the girls love him so much! This is pretty much how it looks every day when he comes home from work, attacked by the girls!

This is GrandDad and Nana (my dad and step-mom) and Katie, she thought it was great fun hanging out in the back of my dad's pickup truck.

Never a dull moment with our family and the medical world

Today was Elaine's well-child appointment to complete her physical to be able to register for kindergarten. They did a vision test and a hearing test and measured her and weighed her, all was perfect and normal. The doctor looked in her ears, throat, and nose, she felt her glands and belly for any abnormalities and all was perfect again. Starting to feel like an easy appointment, well then came time for vaccinations and of course no child likes to have shots of any kind. She needed four shots to be caught up on boosters and ready for kindergarten. That meant two in each arm and of course she cried. I told her what my mom used to tell me, "you can say ow as many times as you want but please don't scream" she understood it would hurt but only for a minute and then it would be better. She was so brave, she said ow ow ow ow several times for each shot, and a few tears escaped, but all in all, she was strong. I didn't have a copy of her immunization card verifying all of her immunizations as a baby, it had been lost in one of our many moves, i know where Katie and Maggie's are, but somehow Elaine's had dissappeared. They were going to need a copy of it so i would have to go across town to the office where she'd had them done as an infant, then drive back so that Kaiser could enter them into their system. I figured i'd go ahead and take Elaine to get the blood work needed to finish her physical for registration and then head off to the office across town to collect her records. We arrived at the lab at the Kaiser Hospital and had quite an extended wait, i've never seen that place so full! Every chair in the waiting area was taken, and a few were also standing. We had to wait around half an hour to be taken back so i asked if we could do the urine sample while we waited. That in and of it's self was a problem because apparently Elaine has issues with peeing in a cup. They wanted a mid-stream sample which meant she had to pee into the potty first then pee into the cup, once she starting peeing in the potty i told her to stop so i could catch the rest in the cup and she did, but then she couldn't make the rest come out for the life of her! It was crazy, we sat there for 10 minutes at least, i tried distracting her by singing and doing some relaxing breathing to get her to relax her peeing muscles, but the rest of that pee wouldn't budge. Ok so i gave up and we asked for another cup to try again later. Then we finally got called back to get her blood drawn and i figured this was the easy part, get it done and go. I told her again that it might hurt, but it wouldn't hurt as bad as the shot and it would be over quick if she sat really still. She agreed but was already looking worried when the lady put on the tourniquette (i'm sure i spelled that wrong) i tried to get Elaine to look away but her eyes were glued on the needle headed her way. The woman held down Elaine's arm and in the exact moment she poked Elaine flinched and the poor woman lost the vein. Elaine was already saying ow ow ow ow ow and crying, and the woman dug around with the needle searching for the lost vein. I could see Elaine was getting more and more upset and this woman kept going. I finally yelled at her to pull the needle out but it was too late, Elaine went unconscious. She slumped over in my lap and i freaked out. It reminded me of when Katie stopped breathing as a 5 week old infant. This is now the second of my children to stop breathing in my arms. It is a scary thing to have happen. The woman who had been trying to draw blood called a "code 2" and the whole hospital heard it over the intercom system. 2 doctors, 3 nurses, a security guard and several other medical people showed up nearly instantaneously. They looked around at the overflowing lab full of people and tried to figure out which old person had passed out. There were old people in wheel chairs, and people on oxygen, but it took them a minute to realize it wasn't any of the usual people, it was my poor little five year old who was unconscious, passed out in my arms. One man started fanning her, another rubbed her and called her name, another was taking notes, while still another was taking her pulse. There was even one man who's job it was to calm me down because more than anything i was crying and calling her name trying to get her to wake up! She finally came to and was confused by all the people standing around her. One person who was trying to make her feel better said " it's all done sweetie, it's ok" but it wasn't! They still hadn't gotten the blood! Her color was quite white so they gave her some juice and had her walk around a little bit before they tried again. When they tried again all of the doctors and nurses and staff were trying to get her attention away from the needle and keep her breathing, she was crying and very upset, but she kept breathing and they got the blood sample. So we were finally done but they wouldn't let us leave until they'd monitored her for a little while. They kept checking her blood pressure and her heart rate and talking to her to make sure she wasn't confused at all. She was finally normalling out and they allowed us to leave. As we walked out i saw Elaine's face as she soaked in the stares of the every person in the waiting room. She started to cry a little more, out of embarassment more than anything else. I felt so sad for her, for what she was having to go through, and all just so she could register for kindergarten. We had to go across town after that to get her immunization record from the other medical office and then drive back across town to bring it back, somewhere in the middle we had mcDonald's for lunch, she started to feel better after she got to run around in their play area and when we headed back to Kaiser to bring in her immunization record i decided to have her try to pee again. This time after a little trickery i was able to get her to pee in the cup. i initially put it under her and she again said she just couldn't do it, so i took it out and said "it's ok just go potty, no cup" a few minutes later she relaxed enough to pee and i was able to quickly get the cup under her and catch it, midstream and everything! So we had to go back to the lab to turn in the urine sample. When we drove up Elaine asked if she could wait in the car, she had tears in her eyes as she said she didn't want to go in there again. I fully understood and while i would normally never leave any of my children unattended in the car, i didn't want to traumatize her anymore than she already had been. I left her and ran in to turn in the specimen. Finally after returning to the car i announced we were going to go home. This day started out at the doctors office at 8:30am, but we didnt' arrive home until 2pm! What a day, we never seem to have a dull moment, especially when it comes to the medical aspect of life. But it's done, and i can now register Elaine for Kindergarten on March 2nd!

The curse of FRIDAY THE 13TH!!

Today is Friday the 13th. A fact pointed out to me by my husband this morning. The big girls were out playing in the living room, and Adam and i were getting ready when he brought it up. "it's friday the 13th" he reminded me and i had just been thinking the same thing. "so what," i told him, " Friday the 13th is just a way for people to blame the bad things that happen to them on someone or something else, so that it wasn't their fault, for not being prepared for something, or for forgetting to do something, it's stupid. Own up and take responsibility no matter what day it is!" I don't know why i felt so indignat about this stupid day, but for some reason i did. For a breif moment i wondered what could happen to us or me today that i would even ever bother blaming on the day being what it was. The thought left as soon as it came and i headed out to the living room and kitchen to get breakfast ready for the kids. The baby was already in her high chair, banging her empty cup and making a very loud rucus over her lack of cheerios. I looked down at the table and almost missed it....the empty bottle. You see last night for some stupid reason i left my purse on the dining room table, which i have NEVER EVER DONE! I always hang my purse on the hook by the door, that's why it's there! I happened to have had my hands full when i came in and i walked past the hook with my purse still on and i set it on the table. When i went to bed not long later I even noticed it, noticed very clearly that i had put it there, and thought for a moment that i should move it, but i didn't. So here it is morning, and i notice an empty bottle on the table...an empty PILL bottle! The lid was off and there was no trace to be found of the sweet pink cherry flavored tylenol meltaway tablets that i know had been in there the night before. I'd used that bottle just last week when Maggie was running a fever, i'd put the bottle in my purse because we were headed out the door and i wanted to bring it with us just in case. I remember shaking the bottle and hearing a muffled rattle and being aware that the bottle was at least half full. Half full is 15 tablets out of the 30 count it comes with. I panicked! It took but a breath to realize who'd done it, and when i saw her on the floor with the rest of the contents of my purse i knew that Maggie had been the one who'd opened and obsconded the flavored medicine. Scared out of my mind i instantly asked how many she'd eaten. A fear struck her that whatever she'd done had been bad, as obvious by the tone of my voice, and she clammed up. Afraid of instigating herself in whatever punishment was about to ensue. I looked to Lainey, "Did Maggie eat these?" I asked, fear evident by the break in my voice when it reached peak intensity. She spoke soft, also afraid of what the punishment was for her answer I'm sure and all i made out was "yes." I turned around in a circle a few times going one way and then another, totally clueless as to what to do first. I had a million thoughts in my head, how would i know if they'd eaten too many? Should i call poison control or the doctor, or go to the hospital? I quickly called Adam who'd only been out the door moments before and he came running back. He thought to ask something i hadn't, he asked Lainey if she too had eaten this forbidden "candy." She thought hard about her answer and then replied "only two" She wanted to be honest and admit that she had eaten some, but i think maybe she thought that saying two wouldnt' get her into trouble. There was no way to know if she was telling the truth or not. Now i had an even bigger problem, at first i thought it was just Maggie, but now Lainey too, Adam and I simultanously thought of the next question..."Did you feed any to baby?" Without hesitation they both confidenly responded "NO!" this usually meant they were telling the truth, if they have to think about their answer they're usually thinking of a lie that will get them in less trouble than the truth. Well there was a breath, that was one less to worry about. Again i thought aloud "What do we do?!!" I read the bottle and it said that for overdose you should seek medical attention immediately even if you aren't showing signs of a problem. Well that was all i needed to know, off to the hospital! I called my mom and was able to drop the baby off with her, sweet thing happilly oblivious to the tense nature of the car ride, she babbled away as we sped to grammer's house. I dropped her off in lightening speed, giving instructions as i ran back to the van " she's had breakfast, she'll be tired soon...just lay her down and let her cry, she'll go to sleep!" i called before slamming the door and racing down the street. The girls were quite silent still uncomprehending what was so bad about eating a little "candy" as i'm sure it must have seemed to them. At a slow stoplight which seemed red for eternity i took a moment to share with them what had been so bad. I think it was hard for them to figure how something you get to make you feel better can make you feel so much worse. I tried to stay calm, part of me wanted to take away all their toys forever and make them stand in the corner every day for a week...i was so angry i couldn't see straight! but the other part of me saw their scared eyes sitting behind me and couldnt' help but feel that this was all my fault. I'd thought last night that i should put the purse on the hook, and i didn't. I knew i was leaving it out where they could get it, and i hadn't ever stopped to take stock of what was still in it that might be a danger to them. When we got to the hospital we were taken right in, there was no one else in the waiting room, which was nice. The kids still seemed to be fine, but of course the question still was...how many did each of them eat? And worse than that to me was the question...how many would be toxic to their small bodies? The doctor came in and saw them, he read the bottle and dosing info on it and called poison control to verify his own thoughts. He returned with great news, because the dose was so small, they would have had to take 35 or more to have a toxic amount in them, and because i knew that even at full capacity this bottle only had 30, we were in the clear. They'd obviously split some amount, and i had remembered thinking there were somewhere between 10 and 15 last time we used them, so there was no way the amount they took could be toxic. We were released shortly after and i felt like i could breathe again. I was signing our paperwork when i suddenly recalled the date. I recalled my own thoughts on how people blame bad things happening on this date, and i caught myself for a second about to do the same. But i wised up, took my own advice and remembered that the responsibility for safety in our home is the parents, and i take full stupidity blame for what happened. We also found that the exact amount of acetominophen it takes to be toxic to a child is 200mg/1Kg of weight. So if anyone else's child ever ingests tylenol or any generic thereof, feel free to refer back to this blog :) Happy Friday the 13th!!

Let them EAT cake!

So i just realized i hadn't posted a blog about the birthday party last weekend. It went off surprisingly well, i couldn't have been more pleased, i was living on that high for a few days.

For starters many of the people who answered "maybe" to their RSVP ended up showing up which was exciting to get to see people we weren't even expecting! So fun! We had the party at the church and Kim and i got there early to set up, which was good because there was a lot of setting up to do. Kim set up the giant game board for the kids game, and I set up the main party room. There was a long short table and little chairs for the kids, and several big tables and LOTS of big chairs for adults. I think most of our parties will be at the church from now on, so much room, and even a kitchen and everything! We had the building to ourselves so we really spread out, becase we had the game in one giant room, the eating and presents in another big room and the "special guest performance" in yet another very large room. This worked so well i couldn't have planned it better! There was no way this much fun could have fit in our little house :) The food was good, pizza, pizza and more pizza! We had so many pizza's nobody was left hungry that's for sure! Then the kids headed off to the game room. A giant board game was set up and they were their own moving piece. As i had said before a few more people came than expected, including kids, so it got a little chaotic, but it was fun, they had to put on dress up clothes as they went so by the end each kid had a crazy outfit on and got a candy necklace for finishing. It was a pretty cheap game to play, considering i already had paper squares to make up the game board and the dress up came from our own home and the candy necklaces cost about 1.50 at target. It took up some time which was really all i needed it for because i was waiting on the "special guest" to arrive. Lainey didn't know what her birthday surprise was but i kept telling her it was something great and she would be excited. Well the surprise was a little late so we went ahead and had the kids open presents. Maggie was a little sad that it wasn't her birthday because it was both of her sister's birthdays. So we let her help open Katie's presents since she wasn't old enough to appreciate that aspect of this special day yet anyway :) That worked this year but i don't know what we'll do for her next year.

So the "special guest" arrived during the gift opening so i left to meet with her. "She" is a ballerina who performed in the Nutcracker, she is with Central West Ballet. She was willing to do this performance for free but there was no way i was going to let her so i gave her $40 because it's what i had in my pocket at the time, although after seeing how amazing she was i should have paid her $100 or more! She came in full makeup and hair and got dressed in the bathroom at the church. She wore a costume from the nutcracker and brought music to do her performance. After all the gifts were open we brought every one into the large multi purpose room where we had chairs set up in a semi circle for the adults and the kids sat in front on the carpeted floor. She came in and introduced herself to everyone. Her name is Elease Carlson, and she looked beautiful in her costume and crown. Then we started the music and she danced. It was so beautiful and Elaine was so excited she looked like she might cry! The kids loved it and most of the adults too i think. She danced the whole song in slippers instead of toe shoes because she didn't know how well they would work on the carpet. It was still awesome! So after her performance she let the kids see her toe shoes and feel the hard part at the bottom. Then she put them on and showed them how the stood on point, that is awesome to see by the way! Then we brought in the ballet bar which Lainey had gotten for her birthday from Kim. Elease showed all the kids (and a few brave adults) how to do a few things at the bar, which Elaine thought was great!

After that Elaine asked me if the ballerina was her special birthday surprise, i said yes and she told me it was the greatest surprise ever. She was smiling so much after that, it was wonderuful to see. Then we did the cakes. Elaine had a barbie ballerina cake and Katie had a small round cake with a big 1 on it. Katie's cake was actually free because apparently savemart gives out free cakes to babies turning 1. That was great so we actuallly gave her the whole cake to eat, so we could get some pictures of her making a mess of the cake. Well boy did she!! Katie picked up the whole cake and buried her face in it! She ate most of it and smashed the rest of it all over her naked little self. (well she had on a diaper so she wasn't completely nakey) We had a tarp under her although surprisingly it had maybe only one or two little pieces of frosting on it. The cake was all either eated by her or crushed into oblivion and stored in her diaper. We got lots of great pictures of her and the cake. And just to be clear this wasn't a cupcake or a tiny cake, it was a little bigger than the styrofoam plate it was on and about 3 inches tall! Quite large for a baby to completely devour the way she did.

I came prepared and gave Katie a bath in the kitchen sink after her she ate the cake. She loves baths and thought it was great to splash water all over the counter in the kitchen! what fun. The party started to wind down at this point and the clean up began. All in all this was a blast from start to finish. I think everyone involved had fun, parents and kids alike. This one will hopefully be one Elaine remembers for years to come. I don't know how we'll ever top this, but maybe someday!

Peeling Popcorn

our new ceiling!

sheets of popcorn falling down!

oh the popcorn!

this was the before shot!

These are pictures of our ceiling. The last is our ceiling as it used to look. Before it is a close up, check out that popcorn! Nasty! it was dirty and ugly as all get out. We have been wanting to be rid of it every since we moved here. Adam took down some of it when he put up ceiling fans in a few rooms, but he said it was not easy to scrape off so we had put it off. He's on vacation this week and i thought we'd try a method i'd heard about. We sprayed the ceiling with warm water and then attacked it with putty knives, low and behold it just fell off! The warm water made all the difference, it began to come off in great sheets, there is a picture of one of the sheets, then the first pic is our bare naked ceiling. We'll be painting it next month probably, but i'm happy even to look at bare naked ceilings over popcorn.

You know scraping the ceiling was strangely satisfying. I can't explain it, i mean i suppose part of it was the fact that i was getting rid of something i hated so much. But mostly it was like that feeling of peeling sunburned skin. it feels so good to reveal the new perfect skin underneath, or in this case the beautiful bare FLAT ceiling, it was like peeling skin times 100! I loved it so much that when Adam took Lainey to ballet and took the other girls with him, i did the hallway by myself....loved it!

Caught between a SOCK and a hardplace!

last week my washing machine died. I was very upset, that thing is only 3 years old! Before it were a long line of washing machines which had also bit the dust, or the lint anyway. I was beginning to feel like i had the kiss of death for washing machines, i mean how could i kill so many in such a short span, and yet our dryer is still going at 10+ years? Anyway it had been a few days but luckily i was quite caught up on laundry and i only had one or two loads waiting, but as the days ticked away, the laundry began to pile up and my frustration over the matter grew. It seemed like i brought it up to everyone i talked to, i was stewing in my own anger at the broken washer, at wondering what we were going to do about it. Well at first Adam's solution was to just buy a new one, which shocked me because he wanted to go out and buy a big expensive set! That was very unlike him but i think he thought maybe if it was really good quality it would last longer. I saw it just the opposite, i thought there was no point in waisting big bucks on something i was fated to kill early in it's expected life span! So we hemmed an hawed about it for a day or two until i began to get seriously concerned about doing something or the piling laundry was going to take over. Well finally monday he decided to call about getting it repaired, he'd looked at repairing it himself but simply had no clue where to start since he didn't know what the problem was exactly, just that if it sat for a while and you turned it on it would work for about a minute, then stop and not work for a while. It was so strange, because he just didn't feel like it was really broken if it would work sometimes but not all the time. I had to wring out many items of clothing that had sat in the orignal load when it broke, that was not fun. Anyway our appointment for the maytag repairman was for thursday, several more days of laundry were going to pile up before then and i was a little annoyed at the thought of living without a washer until then. So Tuesday i was talking with some friends from church and of course i brought up my frustration over the washer. Kim Underwood said their washer had often died and when they called out a repairman he had pulled several different things out of it's "motor" things like bobby pins and apparently most often it was baby socks. Well i thought it odd but figured i'd tell Adam to try to look in the motor and find anything that may be caught in it. So he did, he had to turn the washer upside down to get to the moving parts but he did and while the motor was completely enclosed and there was no way possible for anything to get in it, the pump was not. And while Adam had been at a local hardware store earlier that day they told him to check the pump and see if anything had gotten stuck in it. So apparently everyone else knows that things get caught in washing machine pumps except us. When he got to the pump he stuck the vaccuum up to it to see if anything came out and quite quickly the vaccuum became clogged with something it had sucked out of the pump.....drum roll please....a BABY SOCK! the most chewed up baby sock on the planet!

Now that the sock had been removed and the washing machine restored to perfect working order, we began to wonder about lost socks. You know so often we hear about the evil dryer which eats our socks, but now we are left to ponder if the dryer has been wrongly accused of sock sucking, and if the supposedly innocent washing machine is the true sock snatcher! I put forth a bold new theory, i know it will probably shake the world's way of thinking, but due to recently discovered evidence, the true origins of the missing sock is your washing machine...not your dryer!!

A Broken Baby Nose

So saturday we were getting ready for game night, our weekly ritual of friends coming over and playing games after our kids go to bed. It was around 5:30 i suppose and I was just walking in the kitchen to start dinner, i heard a tumble in the living room which probably meant that Katie fell, she is still trying to master standing and walking and takes several tumbles a day. However it wasn't the usual wimper when she fell it was a wailing! I turned around and picked her up, she was near the window so i assumed she might have hit the window sill, but she seemed fine, then as i was holding her, her nose began to bleed...and bleed...and bleed! I was shocked none of my kids has ever had a bloody nose, the only one who's bled any significant amount was Maggie at 2 years old when she took a header into the book shelf and had to have stiches in her forehead. Well here is my little tiny baby, only a few days away from turning one and she has a gusher of a nose bleed. So i was a little concerned but i kept her leaning forward so she wouldn't swallow the blood and within a few minutes it stopped. Still a little worried i decided to call the advice line, we have Kaiser insurance and it's kind of handy to be able to call a nurse any hour or day. So the advice nurse asked me all sorts of questions but it came down to the fact that i hadn't seen her fall and didn't see where she hit. If she hit her nose it could be a broken nose, but if she hit her head and had a nose bleed that's a much more serious matter. So just to be safe i took her to the emergency room at Kaiser in Modesto. Well we (Kimby and Katie and I) were there for about 4 hours before a doctor finally saw us, and it was about 10pm and she hadn't shown any signs of a head injury, but her nose was swollen. The doctor took one look and said she probably broke her nose but the amount of bone in a baby nose is so tiny that it's impressive she was able to hit it, and since her nose wasn't crooked or anything there was really nothing they were going to do about it. Katie was very good despite being quite tired she was more than patient as the doctor gave her a full check up anyway, she sat and let him look in her ears and eyes and mouth and listen to her faint heart murmur, sat there like a pro. When all was said and done there were no major injuries to speak of, just a funny story about how a baby managed to break such a tiny little bone.