Friday, December 18, 2009

tomorrow jack turns 1...



we celebrated with a trip to the doctor's office for a well visit...yay shots! oliver jack was a trooper. he sat, holding calvary's hand, on my lap and braved the three shots that were lovingly jabbed into is thick legs. he cried just a minute.

hopefully, we can truly make up for the injustice tomorrow as we celebrate his birthday for real. i love that all of my babies have been born on friday because every first birthday actually falls on a saturday! whenever we have another baby it better cooperate :)


oliver jack's stats:

height--29.5 inches--53%

weight--23 lbs--48%

head--19 inches--90%


Wednesday, December 16, 2009

long overdue...



harper and i finally cut off our long hair...i was skeptical if harper would actually carry out with the plan, but she did it and now we can hardly pull her away from the mirror. i am super pleased with my low maintenance cut as well.

Monday, December 14, 2009

i found the zipper...

i posted a couple of weeks ago about calvary sticking the zipper up his nose. unfortunately at that time, i had misplaced the zipper...i always tell kyle that it is either the stuff or the kids and for the most part he has been happy that i choose to lose the stuff instead of the children...

anyway, kyle told me where i had left the zipper and i thought i would take a picture. but the picture of just the zipper didn't quite do justice to the horrible reality of just how big this zipper truly is. i needed something to give reference. i thought of calvary but i was afraid that he would rekindle some sort of strange desire to stick the object up his nose. i decided the only safe route would be to actually tape the zipper to his nose, snap a quick shot, and then remove the zipper before he could be tempted to put those clever little hands on it. and that is just what i did.



hard to believe that ALL i could see of this giant zipper was tee-tiny glimmer of pink...oh the wonders of the human body.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

the countdown begins

in 10 days oliver jack will be 1 year old...
hard to believe.
even harder to believe that i am the mother of three children. the youngest of which is soon to be 1.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

walking through fire...

lately calvary has demonstrated that simply hearing a warning might not be enough to satisfy his curiosity. he has become a child that has to walk through the fire to realize that it burns...
we've learned some valuable lessons from calvary and hopefully he has learned from them as well...
i cannot believe it has taken me this long to chronicle this moment in our history, but i am kind of glad that i can do this more as a lump picture of calvary's personality rather than a freak incident that occurred...because i am learning more every day that these things happen to calvary more often than others mostly because he has to learn the hard way...
a few weeks ago (or maybe a couple of months) we left a play date with harper's best friend from school. we had a great time and were heading home just in time to meet kyle as he came home from work. i was driving down the road and calvary starts screaming. i, being quite used to hearing calvary scream over every little thing, calmly asked him what was wrong. i never expected in a million years to hear what he would then say: "i lost my zipper in my nose!" i look in the rear view mirror and see calvary with blood on his face. i whipped my car in the nearest parking lot (i'm not really sure what i expected to do at that moment but this is what i did). once i got out of the car i looked in his nose, on his clothes, in the car, and could find no evidence of this zipper. i questioned whether he might have dropped the zipper and thought he stuck it up his nose. whatever had happened he had made himself bleed by digging around in his nose looking for the mysteriously missing finishing. i got home, called the doctor, and they said to bring him in immediately. i called kyle, and he was certain that we could get it out ourselves. i still had not seen the zipper so i was skeptical that it was even in there...so, i asked him to get a tissue and blow his nose...after that, if i would pull his cheek to the side and open his nose and shine a flashlight i could catch the smallest glimpse of the pink zipper he had stuck inside his nose. it totally freaked me out.
i knew i could not get it out on my own so i waited 10 minutes for kyle to get home. once he got home we got to work. i had to send harper to her room with oliver jack...harper was so worried that she was hysterical. and then i had to hold his nose open and his head still while kyle sat across his belly holding down both his arms and legs. after we secured him, kyle used tweezers to fish out the zipper. i called the doctor and she as so impressed that we managed to do this ourselves and said we should go and buy ourselves a nice dinner...after all, we just saved about 150.00 in doctor's expenses! the zipper was about 1.5 inches long....i waited to post because i wanted to take a picture...but i lost the zipper (thankfully, not up a nose). it was unbelievable how i could not see this monstrous zipper. he had shoved the thing so far up that it was barely visible. thankfully, my little fire walker has not stuck anything else up his nose after that fateful day.

other walk through fire moments:
1. climbed up his dresser at naptime after we have repeatedly asked him not to do so only to pull the entire dresser over. thankfully, no one was harmed.

2. as we tucked the kids in bed one night he said he had to go to the bathroom. we waited in his room for him to return. he was not gone long, but when he returned he had a bloody spot above his lip. he said he didn't know what happened. i kept looking and had an epiphany and asked, "calvary did you try to shave?" he still denied until kyle said he could give him a special medicine if he did...kyle later called him the worst criminal ever because calvary had left the handle of the razor sticking out of the drawer.

the older he gets the trickery he tries to be. he takes advantage of these brief little moments that he is alone and uses them for his experimentation. hopefully, he will outgrow all of this need to figure things out for himself and just trust that mommy and daddy are not trying to keep him from fun...we are trying to save him from the burn.

Monday, November 30, 2009

a thankful heart...

most of the time i try and think of myself as a thankful person. yet, this week i have realized that i have let the hassles of my life slowly creep in and steal away precious gratitude. i am not sure how it first happened, but i think staying home with my children has to be a daily choice. i have to choose to see the squabbles, the ignoring of requests, the lack of sleep, the elevated voices during naptime, the lack of gratitude for my cuisine as something more than what they are...or at least overlook them to see the big picture...
i think that must be it; the big picture.
sometimes being at home makes it impossible (for me) to see the big picture.
my world becomes as small as theirs and soon i let these small little problems in the grand view become enormous views in the microcosmic view of childhood.
oh, it can wear a soul down... :)
the world is bigger. and i have so much for which to be thankful.
i have three beautiful, healthy children who bless me *every* day with joy.
i have a husband that i adore for so many reasons---i feel safe, treasured, loved, and important with him.
i have a mother who proves that motherhood does not end at 18...
i have a father who is exceptionally good at expressing his emotions and is not afraid to let me know that he loves me and misses me.
i have a mother-in-law that treats me like a daughter.
i have a father-in-law that loves his grandkids with all that he has.
i have been given so much, but most importantly i have been given this life. each day that i have wasted with the poison of ingratitude is a day i have lost. i have lost a chance to let the people i love the most know how much they mean to me.
without a doubt, making a list of things for which i am grateful is cliched, and my list is not even difficult to compose...and i am ashamed to admit that i have been in a ungrateful funk...and cliched or not, this thanksgiving God allowed me to see that and for that i am most grateful. :)

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

oliver jack is 11 months old!!!


list of adorable things he does at 11 months old:



  • blows kisses

  • hugs (he thinks making the "uumph" sound is hugging)

  • gives sloppy open mouth kisses (both harper and calvary puckered up and never did the cutesy open mouth kisses)

  • waves backwards (again, a first for me because harper and calvary mastered the proper wave technique and never did the textbook baby wave)

  • pretends to go night night

  • pretends to talk on the phone

  • says "da da" discriminately

  • says "ma ma" discriminately

  • says something that sounds similar to "jack jack"

  • points and grunts to get his point across

  • drinks from a straw

  • feeds himself pretty well with a spoon

  • potty trained...just kidding

  • lights up when he sees either his brother or sister for the first time of the day

  • plays baby with harper and participates nicely as she forces him to lay down and hold teddy bears and pretend to sleep and eat pretend food and wear baby doll clothes

  • smells people's feet and pretends like the stink...watch out if you do not have shoes on because he likes to smell with his mouth.

  • puts hats on his head

  • plays with cars and balls most of the time

  • "reads" books
  • barks like a dog
  • tweets like a bird


not so cute things he does:



  • stalks anyone that goes to the kitchen

  • eats twice as much (seriously) as both of my other kids...not when they were his age, but now....he eats twice as much as they do now...

  • insatiable hunger makes mealtimes annoying

  • if a door is left open, he will find a bathroom and he will play in the toilet.

  • thinks "no" is a funny word only meant to encourage the behavior he is doing.

the cute list is definitely longer...so i'll take it :) he is the greatest baby and he is so loved by everyone in this family! what a blessing he is to all of us!