Elisabeth's First Communion

The Saturday before Mother's Day, Elisabeth had her First Holy Communion ceremony. Usually, children take their First Communion classes in 2nd grade, so Elisabeth was a few years older than most of the other kids. Being Elisabeth, though, she made the most of it and was sweet and kind to her younger classmates. She was relieved though when two other girls attended and were around her age as well.

The ceremony was beautiful. All these boys and girls, dressed in the finest, excited to partake in a sacrament they've all grown up watching their families partake in weekly. The front part of the church was packed to the gills with family members and friends trying their best to be as close to the participants as possible.

It's blurry, but I really love this picture:

I got there early enough to get a seat on the end of the pew so I got to sneak some pictures of her going forward to see Fr. Eddy.

Her dress was a Costco find, but, unbeknownst to me, most stores like Target and Kohls sell First Communion dresses. Her veil was a gift from her godparents, Kara and Zach and her shoes were a gift from her Nina because her Nina is the Queen of Awesome Shoe Finds!

 After Mass there was a cake reception. The First Communioners were all lined up by the Parish Hall stage to receive scapulars from Fr. Eddy. I thought the interaction between Elisabeth and the little girl she walked into the church with about their veils was sweet to watch.

Fr. Eddy told all of us that the priest at his home church always gave the First Communion recipients scapulars and he thought it was a tradition that should be brought back. The kids were pretty excited and I know Elisabeth has been wearing hers quite a bit. I actually had to look up were scapulars were and the history behind them because, well, I'm still learning.

It was a great morning. Evan and Vivian are not pictured in the picture below because after she ate her cake (and by that I mean ate all the icing and declared the cake part yucky) she darted around the hall like a crazy zoo animal that had broken free of its cage and Evan was following/chasing/trying to control her.

Julia is really excited to partake in her First Communion in a couple of years. She wants to wear Elisabeth's veil which I think is sweet.

When Evan leaves, things fall apart.

I don't know if you are aware of this or not, but when your spouse leaves for an extended period of time, things that normally would never happen, happen. It's true. Last week, Evan was gone to Virginia (the state) for a class. He left Sunday morning and things were going smoothly until late Tuesday afternoon.  That's when Elisabeth asked if she could go play at a friend's house down our street.  I said sure.  About 20 minutes later, I hear her come in and take off her shoes.  As she's headed toward the living room, I ask her if her friend had to stop playing.  "No. I came home because I fell out of a tree."

Elisabeth and the friend were playing in the girl's tree house (it's actually more of a platform).  They were trying to decide what to play when a bird in the tree flew towards Elisabeth, she panicked, and she fell backwards out of the tree.  It was a good 9ft drop.  The friend asked if she was ok and Elisabeth told her she needed to go home.  When she fell, she fell on her right side, hurting her leg and she hopped all the way home.  Mind you, Elisabeth did not tell me all of this when she walked in the door.  She wasn't crying or freaking out; she's just weird and has a high pain tolerance.

Well, I asked her how her leg felt and she said sore.  She couldn't put any weight on the right leg and after half an hour (and calling Evan and Kyle for advice) I decided to take her to the emergency room around 6:00PM.  At 10:30PM, we finally got to go home.  Elisabeth was examined and had x-rays done.  Nothing was broken, but she definitely had some trauma to the leg after such a big fall.  They gave her some crutches and told me to give her tylenol and sent us home saying to make a follow-up appointment with her pediatrician on Friday.

Well, Ebeth, who obviously is not a complainer about pain, was coming home crying after school about how much her foot hurt.  The ER doctor said she'd probably slowly start to use her foot by the weekend, but by Thursday night, there was no improvement and I was worried that we were making her worse.  When we went to the pediatrician on Friday, the doctor asked if Elisabeth had been given crutch training.  I said no. She was not pleased.  Turns out, Elisabeth needed to be taught how to put some weight on her bad foot with the crutches in order to allow her to slowly start using it more.  She also learned how to properly go up and down the stairs (I had been telling her the opposite of what she should have been doing, but since I've never used crutches, I had no idea) and she learned some foot stretches to help her muscles.  By Sunday, she was walking around crutch free!  I am so glad we went back or the follow up appointment.

Also, while Evan was gone, the girls had a dentist appointment.  This was Julia's first trip to the dentist.  She was nervous.

But, thanks to my sister, who suggested the dentist to us, the staff and dentist were fabulous with her and she was a super patient.  They gave her cool sunglasses so the light wouldn't bother her.  They also had Toy Story 2 playing so she'd have something to distract her.  She was told her teeth were clean and perfect.

 Ebeth was also told her teeth were fabulous except for one cavity that she is having filled this week.  Elisabeth LOVES the dentist, which is why she insisted on keeping the appointment even though it was the day after she fell out of the tree.

 Besides endless doctor appointments (cause I had my own baby doctor appt too), my car's brakes decided to take a dump, causing me to have to take them to Just Brakes.  Don't worry, it wasn't just that pads needed replaced, but that my right back caliber needed to be rebuilt.  I was carless most of Thursday and part of the morning Friday.  It was awesome.

But, Evan came home late Friday night and now all is right with the world.  Elisabeth's leg is better, my car is fixed and Julia has outgrown her tricycle and is now on a training wheel bike!

 She is super proud of herself.

Now that my week from hell is over, I can focus on the important things...like Halloween and Elisabeth's 9th birthday next week and the fact that my parents are coming in a week from Thursday!

The Playground.

In less than a month, Elisabeth will be 9.  (Please be aware that you will get the year blog post with pictures of her much younger and me weeping about how my first baby could possibly be so big.)

I think one of the hardest things about parenting a soon to be 9 year old is explaining to her why some people choose to be unkind and that some of these people are her peers.

Ever since Elisabeth was a toddler, I have been drilling it into her that we don't pick on others.  When she was 4 and in day care, there was a boy (who had been in the 3 year old class I taught) who was still having problems potty training.  One of the girls in the class told all the other kids not to sit by him in center time because he was gross.  Elisabeth came home and told me what the girl had said and that's when I started talking to her about kindness and respect.  The little boy was probably one of the sweetest people you'd ever meet.  He was a ray of sunshine.  I asked Elisabeth how she thought the little boy felt when no one would sit by him. I told her what has become my number one parenting mantra: "You don't have to be friends with everyone, but you do have to be kind."

If you know my Elisabeth, you know she has a big heart.  She's never met a stranger.  And, until Julia started walking and talking and showing us her own personality, we'd never really seen Elisabeth be frustrated or unkind. (Siblings tend to bring out unknown characteristics in each other.) (And siblings of good friends...like Peter...right, Rach? :)

For the last couple of weeks, Elisabeth has been coming home from school with playground issues. It turns out that another girl from a different class has been unkind to Elisabeth for playing with a mutual friend.  She's been whispering (loud enough for Elisabeth to hear) rude comments about Elisabeth when she walks by.  She's been telling Elisabeth that no one wants to play with her. And, as of the last couple of days, she's been seeking Elisabeth out to sabotage what Ebeth is playing or to try to hurt her.

Of course, Evan and I are concerned.  I've been giving her some tools to use (telling the girl how you feel; ignoring and walking away; standing near a grown up so the girl won't bother her), but when it starts to get beyond normal girl squabbles and pettiness and into bullying, then we need to take it to the next step.  Elisabeth is going to ask her teacher to talk about her playground problems and I emailed the teacher last night.  Thankfully, her teacher is marvelous and I know this will be nipped in the bud.

But, what about next year?  What about in junior high when it seems that it gets even worse?  What about in high school? How do you tell your child that some people just suck and there's nothing you can do about it?

I am thankful that Elisabeth is comfortable talking to me and Evan about her problems.  She said one of the girls asked why Elisabeth was tattling to me (Elisabeth told them that I said not to hang out with them if they couldn't be kind).  Elisabeth said, "I'm not tattling. I'm telling her my problems and she's helping me."

This is when I wish I could just keep her home in a bubble. But, even if I kept her home in a bubble until college, she'd encounter these same bullies in the grown up world. At jobs and in parenting groups and at social functions, those bullies are still alive and lurking.  They are still just as mean and it hurts just as much.

"Mom, if they don't like me, why can't they just ignore me?"

I don't know sweetie.  But, please know that so many more people love you oodles and oodles and bunches and bunches.  You are a good person and it is their loss.

Curls

Evan and I are both avid foodies. We love trying new foods, restaurants, recipes. When we visit places on vacations or move to new cities, trying out fabulous local restaurants (aka: not chains) is top on our list of things to do. So, when we moved to DeKalb in 2005, we started asking around for great places to eat.

We found a great Thai restaurant within walking distance to our apartment that we decided to make a top eating priority. The inside was super nice and the smells? Oh...the smells were heavenly.

So, one day we walked with our then 2.5 year old Elisabeth to said Thai restaurant.

We ordered our food from a college girl who was not thrilled to see we had a child with us. Here's the thing: If you are a childless person in your early 20s, please don't be rude to the people in their mid-20s with their small kids. Just because we have kids does not mean our taste buds have all turned on the bland switch. It does not mean we don't like frequenting nice restaurants. It also doesn't mean we're going to let our young child run amok in your restaurant. Be kind. Don't look at our kid like she's a parasite. And pray that your birth control is 100% effective because apparently you are not quite ready to be birthing a child yet.

As we waited for our food, the restaurant's owner came out to see us and introduce herself. She was a very small, middle aged Thai woman and she bee-lined it to Elisabeth. She told us how beautiful our daughter was and how much she loved Elisabeth's hair. She then said, "Can I take her in the back? Yes? Good."

And that's when she took Elisabeth's hand and walked her back to the kitchen (which shows you how much Ebeth has always loved people, because Julia would NEVER go anywhere or even talk to a brand new person like that). Evan and I smiled at each other and kind of chuckled at how much the owner liked Elisabeth. After about 5 minutes, we realized that maybe one of us should have, you know, supervised our child while she explored a kitchen in a restaurant we'd never frequented in a town we'd just moved to a few weeks earlier.

After 10 minutes we wondered if they planned on keeping her.
After maybe 15 minutes or so, the owner came back with Elisabeth. The owner told us how much the kitchen staff loved her and then she wandered off. We looked at Elisabeth and noticed that her hair was much frizzier than when she'd left us. "Did you get to see the kitchen where they make our food?"

"Yeah."

"What'd you do back there?"

"Nothing. But, they kept petting me."

After a bit more prying, turns out that the kitchen staff super liked her curls and were petting her much like you would a golden retriever. When we came back to the restaurant a few months later, Elisabeth asked if we thought they'd pet her again and if she'd get to see the kitchen. She told us that she liked seeing where the food was made.

Definitely a first time trip to that restaurant that made an impression.

Fire Station Field Trip

Last week, Elisabeth's class took a fieldtrip to the local fire station. Julia and I met her there. Ebeth was excited to see us.

I always enjoy going on Ebeth's fieldtrips because I get to see her interact with her classmates. She has a sweet personality and it's nice to see that she doesn't become someone else at school (like a nasty little punk). I also find it amusing to see how many parents show up for fieldtrips. I don't remember having that many chaperones when I was in grade school, but maybe I just ignored them all.

Did you know they don't really push the whole "Stop, Drop and Roll" thing anymore? And that they only were telling kids that in the 70s because their pajamas were not fire retardant? Turns out that kids were stopping, dropping and rolling when they saw smoke or weren't on fire but saw fire instead of trying to get out of the house. Now they encourage kids to get out pronto. See, you learn something new every day.

One of the kids asked if fire stations ever need to call another fire station because of a fire in the building. Turns out, fire stations were often frequently in need of help putting out fires in their stations because they'd all leave for a call and leave their stoves on or the grills or whatnot. Now they have timers for their stoves and grills and other things so that they automatically turn off if they all leave in a rush and forget to turn it off themselves.
Julia did a great job participating. She was a dog toward the end and was crawling around and barking, but we were outside, so it didn't matter.

Getting to go on fieldtrips is just another reason that I enjoy staying home with the kids. I like being able to help out with school functions and not having to use vacation time to do it. Speaking of, Evan's taken the day off for Elisabeth's next field trip to see Disney's Big Cats. Ebeth is sooooooo excited that Evan actually gets to come and meet her class.

Ear trouble.

This was taken in the spring of 2007. Elisabeth was almost 4.5 years old.

Last night, the 8 year old Elisabeth came downstairs and said that her left ear hurt when she laid on it. Elisabeth is not a complainer by any means, so we got a flashlight and looked in it to see if it was red or swollen. We saw a buildup of wax way down in the canal. I told her I'd make an appointment in the morning, that the doctor had a special scoop to get excessive ear wax out of ears and to sleep on the other side. She was happy and went off to bed.

We get to her doctor appointment and the doctor goes to look in her ear and immediately sees the build up but says, "I don't think that's wax." Ok. So, the doctor has Elisabeth lay down and she gets this little tool that looks like a stick with the smallest little loop on the end. She tells Elisabeth that she's just going to try to scoop it out. As soon as the scoop goes into Elisabeth's ear, she starts steadily screaming, "Ow! Owowowowowowow!" louder and louder. The doctor looks up at me and says, "I can't get this out. I'm going to get a nurse who is great at getting things out of ears to come and spray some water and hydrogen peroxide mixture into it and see if she can get it out." I ask if she knows what it is. "It looks like a bean."

Now is where I need to tell you a story. When Ebeth was 4.5 years old, she was in daycare at The Growing Place in Dekalb. One day she came home saying she had stuck a bean in her ear. She was playing during naptime and there were pinto beans from the sensory table near her cot. She stuck one bean in her right ear, but it kept falling out. She stuck a different bean in her left ear and pushed it in and it didn't fall out. We checked her ear and didn't see anything. We talked about not putting things in her ear and said that it wasn't in there anymore and went about our business.

For four years, Elisabeth has brought up this story about the bean that is still in her ear. She'd say how sometimes she could feel it when she itched her ear. She was always insistent that it had never fallen out...

When the nurse came in with the water to get the thing lodged in Ebeth's ear, she asked me to sit next to Elisabeth and put my arm around her so I could hold the cup to catch the water and the object in the ear. She then whispered very softly, "You're going to need to restrain her."

As soon as the nurse started squirting Elisabeth's ear with the stream of water and hydrogen peroxide, my very mellow eldest daughter started screaming like I haven't heard her scream before. She was crying and trying to run from the room. She was screaming, "Stop! Leave me alone! Quit hurting me! I want to go home!" I was holding her with everything I had, whispering to her that it was almost over. I was sobbing. Her crying reminded me of when she was an infant and had to have her heels pricked for jaundice. She was a week old and I felt helpless watching my child cry from pain with my only way of comforting her being hugs and crying whispers. That was how Elisabeth cried today.

While I was holding her, Elisabeth suddenly cried out, "It's not funny!" Confused, I looked at the nurse who told Elisabeth, "Honey, your momma's not laughing, sweetie, she's crying. Momma's cry when their babies cry." Elisabeth looked at me, her mother who almost never cries, for a second before focusing again on her pain.

After 20 minutes of squirting water and using the tool to try to scoop it out, the nurse was able to dislodge...a pinto bean. A pinto bean that had been in Elisabeth's ear canal for four years. A pinto bean that had finally started falling apart in Elisabeth's ear and started causing her some mild discomfort.

I was completely appalled and kept saying, "But, it's been in there for FOUR YEARS!" The nurse said that she's seen weirder things come out of ears. I decided not to ask what those weirder things were.

Elisabeth will have to have ear drops in her ears for 5 days to help kill anything the bean may have left inside. She doesn't feel like she can hear any better, but said her ear is sore from getting the crap beat out of it.

While we sat and waited for her prescription number to be called, Elisabeth calmly said, "I told you I had a bean in my ear."

Yes, she did. She'd told me that for four solid years. I believe I've apologized a million times today.

Definitely a day I will never forget.

It's kind of like fall in July here...

Because the temperature is hanging out in the low 60s, but last time I checked, it was July 30th. Am I right? Well, it doesn't help that we're over 6000 ft. above sea level and that if the clouds cover the sun, we get no warmth whatsoever. Elisabeth is outside in pants, a long sleeve shirt and a jacket. Brr...

Yesterday, Elisabeth's little friend came knocking on our door announcing, "Elisabeth got hurt." So, I go out to see what happened, and here hobbles Elisabeth with blood running down the bridge of her nose. She's definitely been crying and her other friend is helping to walk her home. When we asked what happened, Elisabeth replies, "I fell when I was chasing my friend." Yep, she totally face planted while running. The girl is such a klutz!!!! Well, we wiped her up and nothing was broken (thankfully) or in need of stitches (again, thankfully). See, we're trying to go the whole month of July without an ER visit. It'll be the first month in a LONG LONG LONG LONG time where we haven't been to the ER (please see other months' postings). She does have some major road rash on her face. While eating dinner (with an ice pack over her face), Evan asks her why she didn't use her hands to catch herself. Her response--"Because I fell on my face." Of course. So, later in the week when I get around to posting more pictures, that is what happened to Elisabeth's face.

So, the other day I happened to get upon the scale in our bathroom and almost had a severe heart attack. What is up? Oh, just my weight. It's not anything that hasn't been up since I had Elisabeth, but you know what, I'm finally sick of it. I'm finally sick of dealing with this weight. The other day Elisabeth said she was bored and headed straight to the pantry. Um, not good!!!! And I know I totally do that. It made me really sad and self conscience that I'm showing really poor eating habits. So, Monday I did something about it. I joined Weight Watchers (again) and am not kidding around this time. So far, I've lost 4 pounds in 4 days, which I know isn't going to be my every week and is because I'm actually watching what I eat and exercising twice a day, but it's a nice incentive to start out with. I did not realize how often I was heading to the kitchen to graze until I had to count everything in my food journal online. I also started walking twice a day, once in the morning with the girls and once at night when Evan gets home and lets me go by myself.

Now, I'm not good with really long term goals. I tend to get frustrated and forgetful about them. Right now, my goal is just to be 1o pounds lighter by my birthday (Sept. 23). Then we'll take it one step at a time. And now that I've told you guys, I'll feel even more compelled to meet that goal so as not to let you people down!!!

Wish me luck!!!

Elisa-birth story!!!

At one of the parenting groups I am apart of (I enjoy meeting other mommies who boob their babies...we are way cool), the monthly meeting was about birth stories. Now, birth stories are exactly as they sound--stories of your baby's birth. I was inspired and have decided to share my birth story with you (they encouraged that at the meeting as well). To keep your attention, I will put pictures at the end. We will start chronologically with my lovely Elisabeth!

Baby B. #1 (as we called her in those days), was due November 9th, 2002. By my 8th month, my blood pressure was ridiculously high and I was told to be a "lounging lizard", which meant I was to lay on the couch all day and only make maybe one trip out. I hated it. I was so grumpy and bored. I was in my last year of college, and my professors had given me all my assignments early so that the majority of them were done for the fall semester by the time I was ordered to couch rest. On Friday, November 1st, Evan and I had our weekly doctor appt., and Evan drove us there in the trusty Nissan Altima (may it rest in peace). When they took my blood pressure it was the highest it had ever been, I was 1 centimeter and was having contractions that I wasn't really feeling yet. My OBGYN was extremely concerned for me and told me that he wanted me to go straight to the hospital because my BP was too high and he wanted to monitor the baby. I started crying because I hadn't eaten lunch yet and was starving. I asked if we could eat first and the Dr. stared at me for a few seconds (apparently determing if I was worth receiving lunch), and then said, "You have one hour. If you aren't there in an hour, you're in trouble." Then I asked if I could have french fries (because I was told no salt due to my swelling that made me resemble something of Jabba the Hut) and he laughed and said yes.After a joyful car ride to Arby's (where I purchased a roast beef sandwich, CURLY FRIES, and a Dr. Pepper), we went to Evan's house to make phone calls and pack up. The Dr. told us that if my BP didn't go down we'd be inducing, so the baby was coming within the next day or so.

We arrived at the hospital where I was immediately hooked up to machines to monitor my BP and the baby. Baby was doing super. I was bored, but, fear not, I brought crocheting! (Ahh...the joys of yarn) Nothing too exciting went on concerning the baby. My BP was still very high, but otherwise, there was no reason to start any inducing. The doctor told me that I could go at it naturally, but if my BP went any higher or hadn't gone down by morning, then we'd start pitocin. Evan and I had some visitors Friday night including, Brian, Bryan, Kyle and the Jimmy John's Turkey Tom. Yum.

Ugh...I look super bleh in that picture.

Evan slept in a pull-out chair bed (which he did complain about, in case you were wondering), and I tossed and turned all night. I was starting to feel slight contractions...nothing like what they would be, though. I was also really nervous. As much as I wanted the baby to no longer live in my belly, I wasn't so sure that I was ready to be a mommy. At 6:00AM on November 2nd, the nurse came in to tell me that the Dr. had said to start pitocin at 7:00. My BP wasn't going down and, in fact, had gotten a smidge worse. For some stupid reason, I decided to shower before they put the IV in. Why, you ask? I have no idea. Maybe to smell good before I sweated and stank for hours on end? Maybe so my wet, curly hair would be completely and utterly crazy by the time the baby arrived. After my dumb-idea shower, they put the IV in. My contractions immediately intensified and my body went into defense mode, which for me, is sleep. I slept between contractions and don't really remember too much about labor except that if I didn't talk or move, I didn't cry or scream. I remember telling Evan that I still didn't want drugs (even in labor, the thought of needles completely scared me), that my mom was in the room with me, that Terra walked in with fast food and I screamed at her that she was going to make me vomit, that Evan held my hand, fed me ice chips, and wished for magazines because he was bored. :)

At 1:30PM, I started feeling the need to push. The nursing staff were wonderful this whole time and they went to get the mid-wife, Chris, who would be delivering the baby. Having a baby is really hard to describe afterwards. There are no known words in the English language for the pain or thoughts running through your mind. I remember not opening my eyes the entire time. I remember yelling, "Don't cut me!" when I saw Chris with scissors (turns out she was getting them ready for when Evan would cut the imbilical cord). I remember wanting to give up because it felt impossible. I remember Evan whispering me encouragement. Finally, I heard, "One more push", and then what sounded like a baby lamb. I was crying by now and asked, "What is it?", because we hadn't found out what sex the baby was (because the baby was uncooperative). Chris said, "Tell her Dad," to Evan. Evan said, "It's a girl!" and the entire waiting area outside of the room burst into applause. My parents, his parents, Terra, Kyle and Matt (and Shaman), my aunts and cousins, and my grandma were all out there waiting for us. And then they handed her to me. She was gorgeous; with her little cone head and her lamby cry and her perfect face. Evan cut the cord and then we introduced ourselves to Elisabeth Jennings. It really was nice to finally meet her.

We stayed in the hospital another night. Ebeth did not take to the boob very well, and I was very frustrated by that. We ended up leaving the hospital with her not ever getting a good latch. She only lasted 6 weeks with breastfeeding, something I still struggle dealing with today. Besides that hiccup, Elisabeth started out incredible.

The view from our hospital room.

Introducing ourselves to Elisabeth.

Her first "professional" picture taken at the hospital.

I think one of the things that I always come back to when I think about Elisabeth's birth, was that I was so unprepared. Not just unprepared for the responsibilites of parenthood (because no one is ever ready for that, despite age, finances, life experience, intelligence), but unprepared for how easily we got used to her. It was like she'd always been with us, always been apart of our lives. Watching her grow into this insanely smart, beautiful, weird, loud, amazing girl has been absolutely incredible. And the fun part is, she's only 6. We have a lot of time to go still (and some days feel even longer than others!).