Chompers

I've always been a little obsessed with my teeth, which have always been pretty big and white. Growing up I had a big space between my two front teeth and a bit of an overbite. After years of orthodontic work, the overbite is gone and the space has been reduced from "large enough to park a car between" to what I like to thinking of as an endearing imperfection. It seems the girls have a similar obsession with their teeth.

Luckily, Jayson's sister, Robyn, is a dental hygienist, and we take the girls to her for their cleanings, starting when they were just about a couple years old (and now Charlie, at 1.5 years). They were each a little fearful on their first visit,  but have grown to love going. They like picking out their flavors for toothpaste and fluoride and Lydia loves seeing the pictures of her teeth on the screen. Lydia asks when she can go again and would like to go every day.

Charlie went for her first visit this past week and she was not really digging it quite yet, but did love having Robyn brush her teeth. When Robyn told her all the flavors of toothpaste (mint, bubblegum, strawberry, cookie dough, etc.), Charlie immediately yelled, "COOKIE!" and sat patiently as Robyn brushed. Charlie loves brushing her teeth. Often we will put toothpaste on each of their brushes and tell them to go brush their teeth and Charlie will yell, "TEETH!" and run into the bathroom and suck the toothpaste off of everybody's brush. If we leave the bathroom door open, it's inevitable that we will discover Charlie walking around the house brushing her teeth with at least two brushes, neither of which is her own. Charlie won't let the dentist look at her teeth yet, but the other two have become very comfortable with letting Dr. Mike count their teeth and rave about how shiny and beautiful they are.

Sunday Sillies

I love my job, but I cherish the time I get to spend at home with my family. Sunday afternoons are one of my favorite times of the week. This Sunday after lunch Jayson watched football, Charlie napped, and Lydia and Audrey laid in my bed with me and watched Finding Nemo. The intent was to get Lydia to take a much-needed nap, and it worked. And I got to sneak one in to. Until I woke up to Audrey in Lydia's face whispering her name and trying to wake her up. Luckily, I woke up first and shooed her away.

Often, Jayson and I will just sit back and watch all three of them run around like crazy. Today, Lydia and Audrey were playing some game where they ran from the living room to the play room and back to the living room over and over again, giggling and squealing. Charlie followed them with one dress-up shoe on, clomping down the hall once as they made their rounds at least three times to her one.

We also love to hear them talk to each other and to us. I could go on and on about the funny things they said this weekend. Audrey is obsessed with brussel sprouts and begs for them with every meal. She likes to pick out the smallest one she can find and say in a high-pitched voice, "Look at this cute little baby one!" Charlie says "NO!" to everything and has started repeating many, many words and phrases. Lydia is hilarious. She has been giving her phone number out to boys at school. Today a bunch of people walked past our house and we talked about where they might be going and Audrey suggested they were going to the fair, to which Lydia replied, "The fair? Fair's over, kid." Lydia also asked me yesterday if I wanted to hear all the bad words and I said I would, so she said, "STUPID!," and I replied, "Oh yeah, that's one is really bad!" Then she said, "HATE!," and I said, "Yes, you're right, another bad one!" Then she said, "SHIT!" and I suggested it might be best not to repeat that one.

Updates...

Lydia is a drawing and writing machine. She was writing on random sheets of paper and leaving them all over the house, so Jayson gave her a notebook to use as her journal. She loves it. She draws pictures and writes word and does math problems. She likes to ask me math problems that she doesn't know (like 18 plus 18) and tells me she wants to remember them so she can ask the other kids in her class and she'll know the answer. She must be the life of the party.

Audrey has finally let us change her earrings. We went to Claire's and she picked out three cards of earrings for a total of about 20 pairs and she has worn new ones every day. She walks up to people with her hair pulled back and leans into them smiling until they notice. She was very picky about the earrings too. I figured she'd just pick out the first three cards she saw, but she really pondered the decision. We went to Sear's first and they had some kids character earrings and she wanted nothing to do with them. I asked her, "I thought you liked Dora?" and she told me, "Yes, to watch. Not for earrings."

Charlie is talking up a storm. She spouts out new words every day and has even started saying "I love you ____________" to people. She loves her sisters and yells for "Audie and Id-ya." She grabs the Roku remote and yells, "Roku!" I think her favorite word is "No."

Horrible Mom Award

The other night Lydia and Audrey were running around being goofy. I was sitting on the loveseat in the living room, which backs right up to a shared wall with the kitchen. The girls walked around the corner from the kitchen into the living room and I peeked around the corner and said, "Boo!," giving them a little scare and they laughed a lot. Then they kept asking me to scare them again, and I kept telling them that if they knew I was going to do it, it wouldn't be a surprise, and they wouldn't be scared.

Later that evening, Lydia was in her room on Audrey's bed. They have bunk beds that are T-shaped and Audrey's bed (which is on the bottom) is flanked on each side by a dresser/bookshelf and a desk. So, she it's a cozy little nook. Lydia was looking for a book on the shelf. I took this opportunity to sneak into the room without her seeing me and hide by the dresser. She was yelling for me to come help her find the book she was looking for. I peeked around the corner and yelled, "Boo!"

Certain things hit the fan. She looked at me with a look of shock and terror, screamed, and started crying uncontrollably. I immediately picked her up and hugged her and apologized about 1,382,976 times and tried to calm her down. She sobbed as she begged me never to do that again.

The next day, I asked her, "Hey Lyd, remember when I scared you last night? It was pretty good, right?" That was a definite no.

Halloween!

Lydia really looks forward to Halloween. This year, she decided pretty early in the year that she wanted to be a mummy, and shockingly, she stuck with it. Lucky for me, Audrey wanted to be a pumpkin just like she was last year and Charlie really had no choice, so she was a dinosaur just like Lydia and Audrey were when they were one and a half. Jayson's mom made both the pumpkin and the dinosaur costumes and they've held up well.

I made the mummy costume. It took way longer than I had anticipated. I got the cheapest white sheet I could find and I ripped it into strips. I hand-sewed it onto a white sweatsuit, being careful to put a nice edge along the zipper, hood, and pockets. I left long strips on the hood to wrap around her face (I know, not exactly safe, but it looked great). Unfortunately, the stitches weren't strong enough and easily broke, especially on her butt when she sat down. So, I reinforced everything with machine-sewn stitches. Unfortunately, I could only sew the top and bottom of the legs because there was just too much material to try to get to the middle of the legs. So, the top held up well, but the legs kind of unraveled. Luckily, mummies aren't exactly tidy, so as things unraveled, I could just re-wrap them and tie them in whatever way worked.

We live right on the border of two cities. One has trick-or-treating from 1:00pm to 3:00pm and the other has it from 4:00pm to 7:00pm. SCORE! While Charlie napped, I took Lydia and Audrey in the afternoon. It was rainy, but not too cold, and it was bearable. The weather kept a lot of people home. We barely saw anybody out. One of the first houses we went to held their bowl out and told the girls we were the only ones they had all afternoon and they could take as much candy as they wanted. Audrey very delicately picked out two pieces. No, no, no. We had a little huddle and I explained to them that if they are offered as much as they want, they grab a handful. And go for the brown, orange, and red wrappers. Stay away from that fruity stuff. They got a pretty good haul and despite the how miserable it was, they happily thanked people and skipped back down the driveways yelling, "Happy Halloween!"

We went home to eat some healthy food and then went back out in our neighborhood with all three girls. By then, the rain was coming down a bit more, the temperature had dropped, and it was windy. Charlie didn't even get out of the stroller. We definitely had to make it at least to the house that gives away king size candy bars every year. Then the girls started to get tired. They fought over who got to ring the doorbell (or ding bell as Audrey says). Audrey got tired, but Lydia insisted we keep going. Finally, we made our way home and changed out of our cold, wet clothes and took inventory. The girls got a nice selection of candy and no junk. They don't normally eat candy, so it's a special treat for them and Jayson and I help them out. Yesterday they got three pieces each and bedtime was an absolute nightmare, so we'll scale that back. Overall, a successful Halloween!

I'm here, really I am...

So, my plan to post on my blog a couple of times a week has hit a wall. A wall called teaching, coaching, and parenting when I can. Luckily, this is a three day week so I have less planning to do, and the cross country season ended on Saturday with a very disappointing conference meet. I finally have more time with my family and even got to see Lydia get off the bus today! We went to Lydia's conferences tonight and were happy to learn that she's smart and is doing fine socially. She talks too much, but no more than any other five year-old. Lydia's teacher showed us a grid with 20 squares on it that they filled in with as many numbers as they knew, and Lydia got all the way to 20 and her teacher asked her if she could do more, and she said yes, so she gave her another grid and she just started with 101, 102, 103, etc. Ha! Just skipped 21-100 and started over with a 1 in front of each of them.

So, here are some things we've been up to...

I finally ran my marathon. After months of training, including long weekend runs, I accomplished something pretty huge, and was happy to be done and have more time for the girls. They came to support me at the finish.

We went to the Elegant Farmer and rode the train to East Troy.

Audrey waved the whole time.

The girls and I visited the Milwaukee Public Market, and then walked to the lighthouse on Lake Michigan.

We walked along the river on our way back to the 3rd Ward and the girls loved looking through the cracks at the water.

Our First Scar

We have never taken any of our kids to the ER or urgent care. I know we've been lucky. We came close this summer when Charlie fell off the couch. Lydia and Charlie have both fallen down the stairs. Lydia made it to the doors of the ER when she was about two. I was convinced she had meningitis. She had a fever and hadn't been feeling well, then complained that her neck was sore. I immediately called our doctor's after hours number and the doctor on call told me that if she couldn't put her chin to her chest, I should bring her to the ER. I asked her to put her chin to her chest and she couldn't and complained it hurt too much. Now, you have to understand that Lydia has always been an actress. I wasn't entirely convinced, but after several more attempts to get her to put her chin to her chest without luck, I called Jayson, who was at softball, and told him to get home and watch Audrey while I took Lydia to the ER.

We got in the car and she seemed to cheer up quite a bit. I kept asking her to put her chin to her chest, but then she would start to get more morose and wouldn't do it. We finally got to the ER, and knowing that if we went in there it would be possible she would need a spinal tap, I asked her one more time to put her chin to her chest. Nope. So, we got out of the car and headed to the doors of the ER. Then I had an idea. I pointed to a monkey on the front of her pajama shirt and said, "Look at this silly monkey! What's he doing?" She giggled and looked down at her shirt, putting her chin to her chest. I swooped her up and we headed home.

This weekend, my insurance plan changed. I went from a $300 family deductible to a $4000 family deductible. There is a wellness program that will be put in place to reimburse a large part of the deductible, but it won't start until January 1. Also, our deductible starts over January 1. We were told that our best bet is to just not need a doctor until next year. So, on Saturday evening, the first day of our new insurance, I was going upstairs to put Charlie to bed and Jayson was getting Audrey to bed. Lydia was brushing her teeth. I heard a loud thump and Jayson yelled, "Holly! Get down here now!" I threw Charlie in her crib and ran downstairs to find Lydia screaming and crying and Jayson holding a rag to her chin.

Lydia had somehow fallen off the bathroom stool and hit her chin on the bathtub, busting it open. She later told me she was goofing off and had forgotten to calm down for bedtime. I held her in my arms and held the rag to her chin. When I pulled it away, I saw a 1 cm cut that was spread open pretty wide. I put the rag back on and told Jayson, "I think she needs stitches." I'm pretty certain that had we taken her to the ER or urgent care, she would have gotten a couple stitches or they would have at least used that fancy glue. Jayson pointed out the fact that we would be paying in the neighborhood of $1000 or more if we went. We opted to call his mom and she brought over butterfly bandages.

After she fell as I calmed her down, she was making a gurgling noise and I couldn't figure out why. I thought maybe she was bleeding in her mouth, but looked inside and saw lot of spit and no blood. I told her to swallow, but she refused. I held a towel for her and she spit into it and yelled, "I was using your minty toothpaste and I'm not supposed to swallow it!" While I held Lydia and calmed her down, Audrey gave her kisses on her head and Lydia asked her to stop, so Audrey just stroked her arm, and Lydia said, "Audrey, will you please stop touching me?" Awww... she was very concerned about her big sister.

So far, we can't tell how it's going to heal. The butterfly bandage held it shut, so I'm glad we didn't go to the ER (I also ran a marathon on Sunday and was dreading the thought of Jayson spending the night in the ER with her and me being up all night worrying). I'm sure she'll have a little scar, but I think it will make her look pretty tough and give her a little character.