Day of Days

Or, adding in the drama of the Southeast's severe weather and our small drama of our poor cat needing her eye removed (unless someone else out there has the additional $1,000 we'd need to only remove her lens), it's really been the Week of Weeks. With all the ups and downs, I'm so glad tomorrow's Saturday. I only have a baby shower and getting Daddy at the airport Saturday. (Ignoring the laundry, dishes, naps, meals, etc!)

Before blabbing about the two major events in H's life that happened today, I will throw in a note that, gratefully, all my family in AL is safe. My brother in Madison and his family were skipped over by the storm. There were 2-4 tornados in their area. (Need to verify the number, obviously, but I don't want to keep cell phone lines tied up for chit-chat.) I haven't spoken with my younger brother in Montgomery yet, but my mom said he was okay. A family we're friends with have family there in Madison as well, and they are gratefully fine too.

Now, H's day.

At breakfast this morning, H declared, "This is going to be a fantastic day!" Fantastic is not a word frequently used in our home (although S can correct me on that), so if she says fantastic, she means FANTASTIC! She has been waiting and preparing for it for months! So, what was the first big part of her day? Kindergarten Registration!

After arriving, H found her name tag, got her picture taken, and was swept off to play in the gym with all the other so-excited-to-almost-be-kindergarteners while I chatted with the school nurse and joined the other moms and dads in the Little Theatre. (They have a Little Theatre. How cool is that?) She told me that first she read books, and then she did her shapes, (colors?), and numbers. And her cute little friend TK, a boy, from church (and two minutes down the road from us!) was there! They got to ride a school bus together. H told me that as they were climbing onto the bus, T was behind her, so they got to sit together--and they held hands. Too Cute! The bus drove them in a circle around the school, she said. I spoke with T at this evening's activity, and from his excitement, you would think getting to ride the bus was the coolest thing he'd ever done his whole life! "Ah, to be young again!" sighed by my 79-yr-old friend while watching the arrival of London's famous bride certainly fits this situation as well. (She invited me to high tea this afternoon at her new retirement home. They even had tieras for the ladies. Too funny! And certainly yummy!)

The other major occasion of the day was H and her preschool friends performed their "O is for Ocean" dance for our congregation's talent show. Here it is!

Introduction

During the dance, watch for the following:

- mermaids (dancing girls)

- sharks

- swimmers

- an eel

- a cool "freeze!" section where I guess I don't remember what they're portraying!

- waves

- and then, three different kinds of coral and the ways they move (in whatever order each child wants to portray them). The first just kind of sways in the waves, the second is small and pops open and closed, and the third opens up big and then drops down small.

My friend TS did a beautiful job helping the kids choreograph this kids! And I'm so glad she did it! Performing on stage was a dream come true for my H!

Oh, and right after I stopped recording, TS brought the kids back out on stage to take a bow. I SO WISH that I hadn't missed recording the grand moment when H joyfully took a sideways leap back onto the stage. I swear she could have touched the sky, arms and legs outspread as she simply glowed the biggest grin at that cheering audience. Oh, what a moment!

As a side note....Realizing there was no way I could video a two-minute dance while holding a swiggling one-year-old, I dropped Lil'S into the arms of an unsuspecting teenage boy! LOL!

"Here! Hold a baby!" I'd said before disappearing to the back of the filled gymnasium. That kid was a real trooper to take him for me! One of the best compliments I've probably ever received in regard to Lil'S was the teen's response when I returned.

"Your baby is Awesome!"

I certainly agree!

Lil'S's 2nd b-day post

Once again, I didn't finish a post I started, but here it is, as is.

(And it's even Lil'S's birthday post! Sad, huh!)

http://ncspud.blogspot.com/2011/03/happy-birthday-little-man-2.html

Bridals

H told me she was about to be married, so I had to take her bridal portraits, right?

(These are pictures I took clear back in mid-January.)

I love the dreamy look in her eyes!

April's Amazing Severe Weather

It's been an April to remember (or perhaps forget) as far as severe weather is concerned. We've had six major severe weather events, some lasting multiple days.

TWC Severe Weather Expert, Dr. Greg Forbes (Find him on Facebook) now says April has set a tentative record, with 292 confirmed April tornadoes in the U.S., breaking the old mark of 267 tornadoes in 1974. Keep in mind, an average entire month of April sees "only" 163 tornadoes.

There have been over 5400 severe weather reports (tornadoes, hail, and high winds/wind damage) so far in April. On average, only about 3300 severe weather reports are tallied in an entire April nationwide.

What follows is a recap of each April severe weather event, with maps, notable tidbits, and links to articles, video, and/or photo collections.

http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/april-severe-scorecard_2011-04-18

Pictures!

It's the equivalent of summer in Idaho here in North Carolina, and we're milking it for all its worth before the true North Carolinian summer hits. As I was taking pictures of an iris inside the house this morning, I realized the lighting outside was great for taking pictures of the children too. Here are H's five-year-old pictures and Lil'S's one-year-old pictures. I am so thrilled that I finally got these done and that they took so little time to do!

(And, yes, Grandmas, someday we'll get a family picture taken too! At least I've found matching tops!)

and this last one is just for fun

:)

National Poetry Month

Thanks, lil' bro, for sharing:

		loves National Poetry Month. Check out his love for it atyoutube.com/glotof or check out one of the up-and-coming bests at youtube.com/view_play_list?p=DFBC4DBF7976778A

As it's 12:25 a.m. and my goal is to stick to midnight as the cut off point for my late nights (baby steps, here!), I'll just say briefly that Sarah Kay is brilliant.

Mitzie Kitty

taking over my computer chair

:)

Yesterday was a busy day. I was sick with a cold, trying to stay home amidst everything I was supposed to be doing, and yet I still saw or chatted on the phone with ..... hmm.... how many people was it? There was JK, because I was babysitting Little L*, AM stopped by unexpectedly--such a great surprise, AP with Miss M & Little Mr. E came by because Miss M missed my Miss H at church Sunday and wanted to bring her a necklace she'd made. Who else? Well, in needing to re-arrange preschool so that I wasn't teaching (today) while sick, I chatted with T and AP (before she stopped by) and left messages for B and K. And the husband of a lady in our ward who I've been arranging meals, etc. with for Compassionate Service (BEST JOB EVER) called . . . of course while my brain was fried and I had 3 little kids running and Lil'S crawling around. (Not Quietly) I know I'm missing things. Oh, yes. And there was dropping Mitzie off at the vet and the subsequent conversation with the dr...the whole reason for this post! (Oh, dear....) Gratefully, with my voice about an octive lower than it should be, I was able to just drop her off, rather than stay for her exam and get everyone else sick. (Although, I admit I had a dumb moment where I offered part of the bench I was sitting on in the waiting room to another woman who'd come in. Oops. I certainly don't blame her for politely declining and am actually quite glad that she did.)

Mitzie Kitty's eye had turned a foggy brown color (over the weekend, but from this 3/20 pict, it looks like something was already going on earlier that we just hadn't noticed), which turned out to be glacoma. It could be caused by a number of things, including illnesses or eye tumors. Gratefully she doesn't have Feline Leukemia, and we're waiting to hear back on other blood tests to see if she has any other bug that may have caused it. If not, we're taking her to a specialist in a neighboring town to see if she has a tumor in her eye. However, I did remember while talking to the vet that I had realized earlier she's been eating a little less and sleeping a little more over the past few months. I just assumed this was simply because it was winter, which it may still be. We should find out tomorrow. For now, she's on drops to relieve the pressure in her eye and for something else that I can't remember right now. She's actually very good about the eye drops. Very good. As in, so good I'm impressed. Let's just say that Mitzie is very good at standing up for herself. It was pretty funny hearing the vet say (over the phone) that she seemed pretty grouchy. I just laughed! I'm sure she gave them quiet the talking to!

S has been really awesome: handling further vet conversations and decisions so I could take a break while the kids were sleeping, picking up Mitzie, filling her perscriptions, getting stuff from the grocery store--twice, etc. He's awesome. So awesome, in fact, that he just finished cleaning the kitchen! Oh, how I love my husband!

It's pretty interesting, all this eye stuff, and then how some things just all cluster together in life. Shortly after Miss H got her glasses and eye patch, my Gpa C had to have eye surgery. And now Mitzie. Hopefully that's it for a while!

*JK's in the school of thought that the more bugs her kids are exposed to the better their immune systems will be, so she doesn't care if H or I have a cold when tending her kids. Although, that's hit me the other way around on a number of occasions, like now. I ought to be asking if L's sick whenever JK calls to see if I can babysit her, and I can't believe I haven't made that a habit by now.....

Battlewounds

I eat snakes for breakfast.

(The scratches are from Mitzie. She's nearly found herself a new home. Swipped him 2-3x in the face in the same day! Excuse me, kitty. I rather value my son's eyes.)

SLEEP!!!

Those of you who know me really well understand how obsessed I may seem about sleep. For a number of reasons it's something I've struggled to get my entire life, but I just figured I didn't have much control in that area as any and all attempts to get more usually failed miserably. (Except for that one time in college when I finally had success teaching myself to fall asleep on my own by repeating some phrase over and over in my mind to keep myself from mulling over everything and anything until all hours of the night.) Then my lovely daughter H was born. I loved her more than anything--and still do. However, she was also unable to sleep. Period. It has turned out to be a blessing in disguise, in a way, as it made me desperate enough to search endlessly (ha, certainly not tirelessly, though!) for information on infant sleep. This road actually has lead me to find the puzzle pieces I've needed for understanding and improving my own sleep. (Not that I'm actually in happy land yet, as you'll see from the previous posts! Like I mentioned, there are many things that affect my--and anyone else's--sleep, and lack of knowledge was only one of them.)

Just now I came across what felt like the entire, completed puzzle explaining infant sleep--the jack pot, the pot of gold, whatever you might want to call it. The recently updated (Nov '10) webpage on child sleep (which I know wasn't this updated when H was an infant!) from the University of Michigan is so beautifully stunning that it brings tears to the eyes of this absolutely exhausted mama. (Okay, so not really right this moment as *BOTH OF MY CHILDREN ARE PEACEFULLY SLEEPING* but I'm sure that it'll make me cry tears of joy the next time I'm that absolutely exhausted mama, which I probably will be in about 10 minutes if I don't go take advantage of that fact that my children are asleep .)

The webpage fully covers--or provide links or book recommendations and/or reviews for--practically everything sleep-related that I've read up on the past five years of my daughter's life. And, what's even better, it has just pointed out to me a very likely reason why my daughter's sleep has been so completely and terribly awful her entire life.

After Lil'S's arrival, and after observing his beautiful way of understanding that he's supposed to sleep for a couple sleep cycles in the morning, a couple sleep cycles in the afternoon, and then one more sleep cycle in the evening (when younger and now when desperately needed as catch-up), I decided that the differences between H and Lil'S's sleep just had to be--not me doing something different--but the fact they were two different people and it just must be a compete difference. Well, that may play a part into it. However, there were major differences between how I was when H was born and how I was when Lil'S was born.

I wasn't as depressed with Lil'S as I was with H.

Check out this UM study linking mother's depression and infant sleep.

Okay, now I think I am going to cry thinking about it. Time for my nap! (After I go put Lil'S back to sleep!)

Sigh....

So, why is it 1 a.m. and not only I

but also both my children are still awake?

Guess it's just all part of being a mom, huh.

At least they're cute, right?

;)

Oh, and I just posted a brief saved post from H's birthday!

http://ncspud.blogspot.com/2011/02/birthday-fun-ii.html

oops!

I think when my next child comes, I'll be blogging about things a year after they happen....if I ever get them blogged about to begin with.

Now back to my shrieking (with glee) one year old, stuck in his chair at the kitchen table, likely wearing strawberry yogurt all over his mouth thanks to Sister's kindness.

Too cute.....even at 1:43 a.m.

Why am I still up?

Maybe because between my husband and my kids I've fallen asleep around 2 AM every night since Tuesday....

Yeah, I guess that would explain it.....

And I do still have more to post from Lil'S's birthday celebration--the celebration that actually happened on his birthday. (yay! more fire and smoke!) But, obviously, now is not the time. Good night, children, Mom is going to bed.

Oh, yeah, I have to put them to sleep (again) first, huh.....