She strikes again

I have some Christmas photos to upload, as soon as I work up the gumption. For some reason, even since we got high speed internet, I still find uploading pics an onerous task.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share some new Mercy-isms.

I was putting tights on Mercy, and I said "You have such dear little feet. You get that from Daddy, because Mommy has big feet." Mercy got off my lap and looked down at my feet. "You have dear big feet, Mommy!"

Mercy was sitting on my lap eating waffles, and her Grandpops said "Mercy, Mommy made good waffles, didn't she?" Between bites, Mercy said "Actuawee, Daddy." There is something highly amusing about hearing a two year old say "actually." And she was right: Benj did make the waffles.

Mercy was standing in the middle of the den with her hand down her pants. Benj asked her what she was doing. " I just checkin' on my girl parts to make shore dey awright." Ahem. Okay. I thought Benj would fall off the chair laughing.

Well, of course

Mercy came up to me yesterday and begged for her sunglasses. Besides the fact these urgent requests are timed exactly to my being on the phone, there were a couple other factors that made this appeal bizarre. We were in the house; it was dark and snowy; and this is the kid who will scream and whine if the the sun is in her eyes in the car, but refuses to keep sunglasses on.

Taking the path of least resistance, I went and got the sunglasses and put them on her. As she was walking away: "Danks. Dey will keep my eyes warm."

Well, of course. Silly me.

Let it snow, and snow, and snow, and...

(Benj's car in our drive, for comparison purposes)

We have about 20 inches so far, and it's not supposed to stop till tomorrow morning. It's beautiful, but the children and I are quite literally snowed in. Benj had to be at work this morning for a 12 hour shift (and Sunday, and 8 on Monday), so he took the AWD truck with cables on the tires. Besides the fact that I can't drive stick shift, the Saturn is useless in bad weather, so we're stranded for awhile. Benj doesn't mind driving in snow and was planning to come home tonight, but I had an idea that wouldn't happen. Our homeowner's association does contract with a snow removal service for greater than 8 inches of snow (generous of them, right? ) and our lane and drive have been plowed, but that was at noon. A lot of snow has come down since then. I have no way of checking the paved road...I'm NOT walking up through the woods in almost 2 feet of snow. The problem isn't so much getting home. Benj could probably do that. The problem is that he has to turn around and go back to the hospital tomorrow, and it's supposed to snow all night. I packed him a change of uniforms, pajamas, a toiletry bag, and enough food and snacks for 2 days. I'm not sure if he'll just crash at the hospital in an empty room, or if he'll go to a co-workers house to stay.

In the meantime, Thing One, Thing Two, and I are fine. We have plenty of firewood, food, and new movies. We haven't gotten the high winds that were forecast, so I'm not worried about power outages, which would make our adventure a little rough. It would be perfect, if Benj were here.

And why are we in a hurry for them to talk?

One detail about our ER trip the other night that I neglected to mention was Judah's demonstration of his knowledge of animal sounds at an inopportune moment.

While sitting in the waiting room, a very large man (I would estimate at least 400 pounds) walked past us.

Judah mooed at him.

Yeah. The ground doesn't open up and swallow you if you wish it hard enough.

I just can't wait for him to actually talk.

An eventful day

Our day yesterday started out with a fun trip. We buy our milk once or twice a month from an organic farm about an hour and a half drive from home. The fun part is that we have friends who live in the same little town who have three sweet children. The older two are just about Mercy and Judah's ages. Benj drops us off so the children can play together while he goes and gets the milk. When we left there, we stopped by another church friends' house whose goats had just had kids. Mercy and Judah both love animals, and I think we could have left them in the pen for the rest of the day with the nannies and tiny kids and they would have been content. Mercy held on to Patches, the new baby, almost the entire time we were there. Judah was more interested in the nanny goat. He followed her around and kept laying his head on her back and hugging here. These goats were by far the mildest-mannered goats I have ever seen. Boots, the other kid, was a little rowdy, kicking up his heels and gamboling around the pen, but the nannies were gentle and tolerant. The billies, who apparently can be a bit ornery, were in a separate pen. I was proud of myself that in the rush to get out of the house that morning, I had remembered to take the children's boots, since the day was mild and the ground was soft and muddy. I wasn't counting on Judah losing his balance more than one time and falling in the pen...does anyone know how to get goat manure out of clothes?

(Did I mention that our children love animals?)

After we pulled reluctant children away from the goats, we headed home. It was hours past naptime at this point, so both of them dozed for about a half hour in the truck. After we got home, I was just getting ready to put supper on to heat (leftover chili), and I walked into the living room where Benj was watching the (grouchy) children play. While I was standing two feet from Mercy, Judah tackled her, and I mean launched all his considerable weight at her, and bowled her over head-first into the sharp-edged leg of the oak table. The crack of her head against oak was sickening. I grabbed her up as soon as she hit, and held her while she screamed. I didn't see any damage and assumed a bump and bruise would show up later. As it turned out, I was holding the injured part of her head against me. She had a swollen, bruised line from her hairline, down over her eye, and across her cheekbone, and over her brow bone was split open. Oh, my poor girlie! I almost lost it. I've dealt with all sorts of gross wounds working in the hospital, but when I saw that on my toddler, I wasn't very calm. Even though the area where the skin was broken was short, it was deep. So we piled the children in the truck with no naps, no supper...you get the idea...and drove to the ER, that cesspool of infectious disease, for stitches. We had to take two separate cars because Benjy had to be upstairs to work at 7 pm. The Reader's Digest Condensed Version is that I forgot no children under 18 are allowed in the hospital unless they are receiving treatment, so Benj had to wait in the waiting room with Judah in the stroller and entertain him (poor Benj!). Mercy's head was so swollen that the ER doctor ordered a CT scan of her head, at which point I had to go find Benj in the waiting room to trade kids since I couldn't stay in the scan room with Mercy because of being pregnant. After the scan was finished, we traded again, and I had the fun of helping hold Mercy while the doctor stitched her head closed. At some point in the story, I had to call Mom to come meet Benj in the waiting room since I couldn't bring the stroller back into the ER with me and Benj had to go to work. Mercy did fantastic. She did cry when she had the CT scan (she told me it was "scally"--scary) and when we had to lay her on the stretcher for stitches, but she didn't fight or try to get up off the stretcher. The nurse numbed it with gel before they even did the deeper numbing injections, so I knew they weren't hurting. The things she seemed to mind the worst were the nursing holding her head still and the sterile drape over her face. Even the doctor told her how great she did. I had to bring two tired, hungry, grouchy children home late by myself. I wanted to just put them in pajamas and throw them in bed, but they HAD to have baths, between wallowing with the goats and being exposed to the ER germs. It was 9:30 until Judah was asleep, and nearly 10 until Mercy was in bed. The good news is that when I went in to check on them after Benj got home around midnight, my normally restless sleepers looked like they hadn't moved since I put them there.

This morning, Judah got up with a 101 degree fever, which eventually ended up at 103.2. Besides wanting to sleep all day...a sure sign something is wrong with my sleepless wonder...he has no other symptoms, so I'm sure it's his ears. These two seem to always end up with ear infections when they're teething, and Judah's been trying to get his one-year molars for a couple weeks now. I guess it's off to the doctor today. Just another day in paradise!

Giveaway!

In a purely altruistic move, I am giving you the link to MckMama's blog: http://www.mycharmingkids.net/ where she is giving away an HP TouchSmart computer. And the fact that I get a second entry for posting HER blog on MY blog has nothing to do with it.

Let it Snow

We were surprised to wake up Saturday morning to heavy snow. The weather forecast had called for an inch of snow, but we rarely get snow this time of year. It's usually oh, late February or March until we get significant helpings of snow...just when everyone's sick of cold weather and eager for spring. Our usual winter precipitation is ice. When we get ice here, such as is forecast for tonight, the rest of the tri-state area has a slippery evening. We are iced in for two weeks. Even if temperatures get warm during the day, our lane is shaded enough by trees that it takes forever to melt. Add to that the fatal hills and curves of our half-mile lane, and we might as well live five miles off the paved road. I hate ice. But I digress. We were very thankful to get 5 inches of snow rather than a coating of ice, and the children had fun playing in the white stuff. Well, Mercy did, anyway:

(It's not easy to see in this small picture, but Judah is red-faced and tearful. He spent most of his time outside crying. Benj finally sent him in)

(Mercy's first snowman. Notice the acorn belly button that she insisted Benj put on him. The coat she is wearing was Benjy's when he was little.)

(Just a pic to show how pretty our woods looked in the snow. The snow was wet and heavy, but it was so calm that it stuck on the limbs until well into the next day. It was beautiful)

Changes

We have had some big changes in our house recently. Big to us, anyway. First, Mercy is finally weaned. I think. I haven't nursed her in around three weeks, but she still asks. I was planning to nurse her till she turns three next March, but it was just getting to be too much and I needed to wean her. I'm feeling a little guilty about it since I really wanted to do child-led weaning and she was clearly not ready to be weaned. I have been nursing continuously for 33 months, and almost 16 of those months were tandem nursing both children. Neither of them were supplemented and would not even take a bottle of pumped breastmilk, so I haven't had a break at all during that time. Don't get me wrong, I love to nurse, and I'm good at it, but for my mental wellbeing, I felt like I needed to at least stop nursing Mercy before the new baby is born. Judah is still nursing, but he is much less demanding than she was, and can take it or leave it. And besides, I only have two...you know.

Second, both children are sleeping in one room now! We've been wanting to do this for some time, but since both of them are sleepless wonders, we knew it would be ugly. Judah finally started sleeping mostly through the night a few months ago, but previous attempts to put them in the same room were disastrous and ended with me moving furniture at 11 at night and Benj being greeted with two shining faces (and one grouchy mommy face) when he got home from work at midnight. I was tired of Judah sleeping in the guest bathroom (I hope no one from social services is reading this). I mean, the bathroom is large, so it's not like he was sleeping in the tub or something, and the exhaust fan muffled noises, of which Judah is acutely aware. But it was inconvenient when Benjy's mom and dad came to visit. They couldn't have a bathroom to themselves and had to time their showers around Judah's sleep schedule (actually the showers weren't so much the problem...other calls of nature couldn't be so easily adapted to Judah's schedule). We could have put Judah in the guest room, but I really didn't want to give up my guest room yet. I've been thinking it was finally getting close to the right time, since Judah wasn't relying on us to go to sleep. He likes to be rocked and held, but he doesn't fight sleep like he did for the first year of his life. I was putting him down awake most nights, and he would sit up and fuss halfheartedly for a couple minutes, then pass out. With bated breath, we moved Judah's bed into the nursery. The first night went really well. Judah fussed for a little longer than usual, as he is sensitive to any change in environment or routine, but Mercy was still awake, so it didn't really bother her and then it all got quiet, and stayed that way till 7 the next morning! I thought that it surely couldn't be that easy, but it has continued to go very well. My only complaint is that they're both getting up earlier than they used to. Mercy used to sleep till 9, and Judah was doing better about sleeping till 8, but now they're both up between 6 and 7. I'm hoping that improves. But...SUCCESS!

Finally:

(Seriously, someone should really feed the boy.)

Yep, we finally took the plunge. We are cloth diapering. I've held out for two and a half years. We bought compostable, chemical-free diapers. But it was starting to get prohibitively expensive. After doing hours of research, I discovered Softbums http://www.softbums.com/ (If you're interested, please use this link, or at least make sure you type the URL correctly. I typed softBUNS one time and it took me to a soft porn search. Oopsy). They are a one size two-in-one diaper. We love them. There are the colored outer covers, then snap-in organic bamboo velour liners. We use hemp doublers at night, since he sleeps 12 hours. The best thing is that they fit babies from 6-35 pounds with a clever hidden toggle system in the legs, so we will be able to use the same diapers on the new baby. I love these diapers. I thought using cloth diapers was a sacrifice I was making to take one big expense out of our budget, but it is very easy. I was into a routine within about a week, and it's not a hardship. These rarely leak, are easy to wash and use, and are absolutely adorable on Judah's chubby bum.

It's a...

I had my 20 week ultrasound (actually it was 22 weeks, but...you know...we aren't too exact about theses things since my babies never are). The ultrasound tech asked if we wanted to know the sex. Drumroll please.

It's a...

BABY!!!

Heh, heh, heh. You really didn't think we were going to find out, did you? She asked me twice if I wanted to know and even said if I changed my mind to call her, but I held fast. Finding out the sex before the baby's birthday is like opening a gift before Christmas. I love that with the first two, our midwife said to Benj, "Well, what did you get?" after the baby was born. I was so shocked that Judah was a boy! And having one of each, I really have no preference or need to know to be "prepared." I can't wait to find out...in4 months.