Adios Amigos

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A Mess of Happiness

Hard to Swallow

The other day Fiona was found riffling through the medicines in our house. I didn't think she could get into any of it... Child proof containers right???? Well seconds later she had eaten and swallowed a cherry flavored Unisom... which is a sleeping pill. My initial thought was... "maybe she will take a long nap today?" Chuck did not share this thought and was quite upset. He took Fiona into the bathroom explained that she just put something poison in her belly and told her she needed to throw up. I was a little worried at what the reaction of a two year old would be to a finger in her throat to induce vomiting. Yet after the fact she exclaimed "All better" and resumed her usual activities... and took a normal length nap.

This little incident which now makes four phone calls to poison control in less than two years got us thinking about what we have in our house. We made the decision to drastically clean out the medications and pills from our house. I was surprised at how much stuff I had that was really potentially harmful to her and NOT hard to open. Also much of it was expired and needed to be thrown out anyhow.

Fiona sat and watched as I opened all the bottles and poured out the brightly colored contents. She was convinced that I was getting rid of a candy stash and cried to be able to eat medicine. She even picked up an empty pill bottle and carried it around like a dolly for awhile. I kept trying to explain that medicine is not candy... but how can you convince a kid of that when pills taste sweet and are bright and colorful. I understand that sugar and sweet coatings are given to pills to make them easy to swallow... but I think it makes it too easy for kids to be confused and ingest things that are poison to their little bodies.

In nature poisonous things are bitter tasting and foul... a built in protection system to prevent us from ingesting harmful things. I think pills should not be flavored and brightly colored and coated to serve as a warning to kids taste buds. But then again my kid sometimes licks the bottom of shoes...

With that said, for us we feel the best medicine is *no medicine!

*We are now using more essential oils, flower essences, herbs, and whole food vitamins to deal with the physical ailments of life.

Toast

I always laugh in Nacho Libre when he invites his love interest, Encarnacion, to his quarters for toast. Perhaps it is because my father is the self proclaimed King of Toast... as growing up it was one of the only foods (besides hamburger helper) that was completely fool proof. Not that my dad is a fool, he just tried to put mashed potatoes inside hamburgers once and will never ever live if down.

Randomly I found myself making this video today and it keeps making me laugh.


If you enjoyed that you may also enjoy this little jem... Last night Chuck came home from work, let a stray cat in the house and then promptly left, as he was going to find the missing cat signs in the neighborhood and see if this one was a match. So there I was with the dirtiest stray cat wandering around my house and two babies. I couldn't set Daphnie down any where because the cat would immediately run/jump to her, and it was hard to keep Fiona from touching/kissing/hugging the cat. At the end of the video you will see that the cat started to nip a bit... I suddenly felt like there was a lion in my house and wanted to hide us all in a bedroom (I am not an animal person so to speak). But Chuck came home, gave the cat some Tuna, realized that it was not the one from the reward posters and let it back out into the wild. Then today when I was out for a walk with the girls we found the cat again two blocks over and it followed us home for Tuna round two... Fiona could not have been any more pleased.



Oh and just a word about the blue painters tape all around my child's midsection. Some days it is my only method to restrict diaper access.... I have tried multiple methods to stop "diggin" as I will call it, but as of yet this is the most successful, and I like blue painters tape cuz it's not too sticky. If anyone out there has other suggestions... I would love to hear them :)

Just us

This was our very first Christmas that was just us, and Chuck's sister Megan. We ate diner by candle light on Christmas Eve (a tradition from Chuck's family). Julia Child's lemon chicken, roasted red potatoes, stuffing, green beans, a light soup, french bread, and lots and lots of "bubble juice" as Fiona calls any thing with carbonation.

It was kind of weird not to have the mass chaos of all the aunties and uncles and kids etc. But I did stop up to my neighbors to enjoy their chaos for a moment... I think now that I spend so much time at home alone with the girls, I crave being around lots of people.

We decided that this time off of work for Chuck would be a good time to start the co-habitation of the girls... up to this point Daphnie had been in our room. I was super nervous about it... I wish I could say I have all the kinks worked out... but alas from about 7:00 to almost midnight Chuck and I find ourselves trying to get one or both of them back to sleep (the writing of this post has been interrupted twice thus far). But it ain't all bad...lately I have been trying to be present... you know like in the moment and enjoying it without thinking of what you still need to do or what happened last Saturday...etc.etc. So when I can actually be in the moment I enjoy my late night babies and the fact that I can hold them and rock them and hear their sweet little voices and soft breathing. 

Just look at those luscious cheeks!

Christmas morning was great... I had been trying to build Fiona up for it for weeks. But she opened one present... a hot pink electric keyboard from Grandma and then she didn't want anything to do with anything else. I ended up unwrapping all of her presents and just showing them to her and she was less than thrilled. However, since Christmas morning she has thoroughly enjoyed all of her new toys which are much more age appropriate and challenging for her.

I just wanted to post this pic because I love her little outfit.

I am in the process of uploading some videos of the festivities to YouTube... so be sure to check out my account for all the live action footage :)

The 23rd as many of you may know was my birthmas. I am now 29 years old. Maybe I will go do something crazy this year... just maybe.  

Stressful Sundays

I was under the impression that the sabbath day was supposed to be full of peace and rest. Not true if you are a Mormon in charge of primary kids. 

I currently team teach five year olds with Chuck. They are cute and sweet yada yada yada BUT they seem to have an attention span of about 2 minutes... so you can imagine that after an hour being quiet in sacrament meeting, listening to talks that don't make any sense to them they are not ready to sit quiet and still in a huge room with all their friends. Despite my best efforts to maintain some sort of classroom order (because that is what the primary presidency and other teachers expect of me), they just wanted to jump around, laugh and talk about belly buttons.

If we are going to make them stay at church for that long they should be able to run around and play. I am sure some would consider that breaking the sabbath day.... I remember getting yelled at as a kid for running in the gym when church was over. People would say "No running in God's house." I wonder if God would have a problem with little kids running and being happy and playing in His house. I submit that he would not. I mean Jesus told us to be like little children. So why do we spend so much time each week trying to make them act like little adults? Someone gave a lesson in sharing time a few weeks ago about being good... she noted that "wiggling your feet in church was BAD" Are we seriously trying to shame kids for having the wiggles. Movement is important for young kids growth and development.

I seriously want to bring a bag full of toys and games next week... have a two minute lesson and then just play. 

Number two review

I am just recovering from my second bout of strep throat in the last month. That makes, one cold/nasty thing, one mastitis attack, and two cases of strep in only a short month and a half. Honestly I have never been sick so many times in my life in such a short period of time. It has made things interesting at best and horrible at worst with a new born in the house. I can only blame myself for a few reasons... one because I committed the cardinal sin of stopping my antibiotics before they were finished (I will never do that again!!!) and second because sometimes I don't know how to stop moving around and take a break. My doctor told me I have exhaustion... she told me to get some sleep (sometimes easier said than done) But Chuck has been helping me get some extra ZZZZZ's and Daphnie is getting better at sleeping through the night.

Speaking of Daphnie, she is delicious. She is soft and plump, smells like heaven (and sometimes a fine baby cheese), she makes the cutest faces when she cries, has the most tiny mouth... and makes a little poutty lip that kills me.

Funny how different the baby experience is the second time around. Daphnie really helps to slow things down around here in comparison to the Rambunctious Rhino Rumble that is my toddler. Which makes me feel really torn. I love playing with Fiona, she says funny stuff, and laughs, cries, dances, eats my food (sometimes) and enjoys a good book almost as much as I do. BUT Daphnie likes things nice and quiet and to be held near constantly. It's hard to know if I am giving each child what it is that they need, because right now they need really different things, and I am only one person and can only do so much.

I still scratch my head every time I try to imagine my mother in law with a house of eight kids. What a women.

The Bizz

Well... good news. Chuck got a job!! Can you guess from the poster above which Village Person looks like Chuck when he goes to work?

If you guessed construction worker you are correct! Only his helmet doesn't have a lightning bolt on it, however I do feel a slight temptation to put one on there now. And where he is working it is much too cold to be leaving his shirt undone. (I just have this thing for the Village People and couldn't resist the photo... in college I actually found a LIFE SIZE poster of the group for only $5.00 at a antique shop... It was so big it covered an entire wall of my apartment, and it made me laugh every morning:)

I like my construction workin hubby. Today he came home all dirty and stinky, and I just wanted to smooch his face. This job will help us get through the next few months and help funding for Chuck furthering his work with my brother in law.

We are gearing up for winter. Fiona has been out in the snow, but her favorite place to be on cold days is in front of the computer, watching Barney, drinking a bottle, with her hand in her diaper.

Currently that is cool with me because Daphnie does not handle the cold very well... she likes to be nice and toasty warm at all times.

We do try breaking up the video watching with some hands on fun. We made homemade play-dough the other day which was a real hit. I was boring and didn't color it or anything. It was her first time with it and I just wanted to make sure she wasn't going to eat mass quantities of it. She passed the test with flying colors and play-dough has been added to Santa's List.

Now to answer the top two most frequently asked baby questions: 

1. Daphnie is two months old

2. She sleeps pretty well, wakes up twice but goes right back to sleep. She actually sleeps in a hammock which my sister and law loaned us. It is the coolest thing, and gently rock them with the slightest push. They are from Australia called Natures Sway.

Daphnie continues to be a pleasant addition to the crew. We love her dark brown hair, and the little coos and goos she is starting to make. She also has some great fat rolls and is super snuggly... I just wanna squeeze her all day. But I make sure to set her down for some good Fiona time.

And what about me you ask.... Well I just finished reading the Lord of The Ring trilogy by J.RR. Tolkien. They have been a nice escape for me when I can't actually physically leave the house. I am going to do a movie marathon now to celebrate... but as usual the movies never do justice to a great book and a good imagination. This is the next book on my reading list.

Other than that life is great (minus my occasional meltdowns... I threw an orange across the house the other day in a fit :) but I have scheduled in weekly meditation in the closet which I use to release my crazy).

And that's The Bizz.