Real Estate

Before I talk about Dan's latest obsession I just wanted to tell you all a little story. The whole family briefly went to Target on Saturday while trying to kill some time. We naturally went to the toy aisle where I frequently let the kids wander and look. I tell them its like the library. We just enjoy the toys while they're there and then we leave them there for other kids to enjoy. Charlotte went through every single box of Disney toys and Barbies. Every box. Because maybe that box three back contains something different and she needs to make sure that she sees it all. The zhu zhu pets were on an end cap and I was pointing them out to Dan. Charlotte walks up and says, "What are these?" Not even a week after I finally admit that she loves them she's forgotten. Perhaps next time I want her to stop doing something I just need to blog about it.

Anyway, Dan's new focus is on wait for it, wait for it, you're going to be shocked.......residency locations. Specifically about real estate in each location. Every time a hint of a viable interview invite comes in I could bet money he'll be on the computer later checking about what kinds of houses are on the market in that city and how close or far we'd be from the hospital.

It is daunting and overwhelming. Some places we could get so much home for the money. And other places, well......maybe we should just get rid of half our stuff now. Did you want a kid anyone? Mine apparently take up too much space. We might only have room for one.

And why is it that this move seems to be so much a bigger deal than the last one? I knew nothing about St. Louis before we moved here and now I love it. I could like Siberia right? What about the Wasatch front? It's got perks right?

In the mean time we've got a house to finish working on.

New Obsessions

I got My Big Truck Book from a couple of friends at my baby shower with Greg. It's a big board book with photos of different trucks and each photo is labeled. I put it on the shelf and did nothing with it. That is until yesterday when Greg happened upon it. Since then I swear I have read it 42 times. Since yesterday. He carries that thing around with him in the hopes that someone will read it to him at any moment.

Also, when all the mail that we had a hold on was delivered yesterday the Hanna Anderson catalog also came. My mother in law always buys pajamas from them for Halloween and Christmas and we are always looking forward to those jammies. We also look forward to "window shopping" the catalog every time it comes. I swear there isn't a page in that thing that I don't like. Right now I'm loving the pilot cap and mittens and also pretty much every single sweater romper for little boys. If you don't get this catalog you are seriously missing out on looking at cute stuff.

And finally Charlotte is now thorougly obsessed with Dinsey. I would say Disney princess, but they also have Tinkerbell and though not really a princess she is a favorite at our house. All day long I hear about her being Snow White for Halloween and how next Halloween she wants to be any one of the other princesses or Tinkerbell. They're all on rotation.

Also, Charlotte saw a commercial for Zhu zhu pets sometime last summer and has not let up about wanting one for Christmas. When she first saw them I thought the desire would fade in a week. It has not. I can not for the life of me figure out why she would want a zhu zhu pet, but she does. She points them out at the stores, she brings them up in conversation. Is it something about being three that makes you a little more prone to obsessions? I'm just shocked is all.

Nothing But The Best

We've now been at my brother-in-law's house for about a week now and my children are in cousin heaven. I don't think I could over state this enough. My children think they are rock stars. Highlights of the week include:

• The teen-ager picking up Greg and tossing him on the sofa while Greg is hysterically laughing. Over and over and over.
• My kids waving to the elementary school kids as they wait for the bus and Greg yelling out Bubba! Bubba! Bubba! over and over hoping that would make him decide to stay home and play with him all day long
• Charlotte's never ending pretend games with her new best friend. They have played puppies, princesses, spider family, and a whole slew of other games.
• Greg's eyes lighting up every time he sees his uncle.

There have been so very many small miracles this past week, but they are too hard to write down. What wonderful memories.

Comparisons

This has been such a wonderful trip so far. Unfortunately I feel a little under the weather. I really don't want to make my grandparents solely watch their grandchildren, but they have seemed up to the task. Tonight I talked to Dan a little early because he got off work early and I just decided that I missed him too much and needed to see him. I packed the kids into the car at 6 and headed up to SLC. It took us an hour through pretty heavy traffic, but was totally worth it for the reaction the two of them had when I turned the last corner and they saw their father. He is so wonderful and we miss him so much.

We spent an hour with him. He took us up to the children's hospital where he's been working the past two weeks. He ate dinner and we decided to spill two cups of hot chocolate all over the table. This little adventure was sort of a wake up call for me because I realized that even with having to parent two children and living out of suit cases and this horrible cold that will not go away like I want it too, I've still got it better than he does. He, of course, would never complain, but I could tell how bone tired he was. And tonight he's sleeping in his car because his housing for this trip seems to be one disaster after another. Don't worry, he's got a place to stay post call on Saturday. He still has two weeks left to impress people there and I'm not sure how he's going to get the reserves to do it. He is an amazingly hard worker and I admire him so very much.

Every Time

What is it about Denver that gets my kids sick? Since we're on vacation I'm spending much more time with my face inches from theirs too so of course I'm also sick. It's only a small cold, but it is annoying.

Other than that Denver was awesome. On Saturday Garrett and I took the kids up the canyon to see Tiny Town. A very strange sort of attraction for people to go see, but my kids loved it. Charlotte loves doll houses so this was right up her alley.

On Monday Katie took my kids to the Children's Museum, even though she had a stomach ache. She's that kind of Aunt. Awesome. I stayed home drinking fluids to make me pee and then dreading the actual peeing. But by the end of Monday I was feeling much better.

On Tuesday Greg fell asleep on the sofa at 9 AM and I knew the day would be rocky. I ended up taking the kids on a death march to the park only to play for about 15 minutes so we would have enough time to walk back. What sort of mother consciously decides to NOT take a stroller on said walk? Me apparently. After that the day perked up somewhat because we went up to Uncle Garrett's work where he did brain wave testing on the kids. They did their small part to help children with difficult to help hearing loss. And also they got a slinky and a bouncy ball. What part of that could be bad?

Like I said before my days are sort of blurring together. Here it isn't even one week later and Wednesday-Friday are a bit of a jumble. During those days we went to the botanical gardens. They have a new kids garden on the roof of their parking garage that is awesome. Greg loved digging in the digging area and Charlotte loved wading in the stream. Then Katie and I got to push them around the rest of the gardens in the stroller. We also had a blast rolling down this big grassy hill area they built and wrestling on the grass. I got pretty burnt there. We also went to the zoo which was totally fun. Just before we left we each got a frozen treat. The kids got ice cream cones, Katie got a root beer float and I got a shaved ice. By the end of our frozen treat time both kids had their shirts off and all four of us were covered in frozen treat. I'm also forgetting something that we did during this time, but I'm blaming it on the sinus pressure building in my skull.

On Saturday we watched the morning session of conference and then ate lunch so that we could be ready for the circus. The circus was pretty much amazing. The only unfortunate part of the whole experience was that Charlotte was already sick at that point so she was a bit whiny. Then she decided to take about a 40 minute nap on my lap. Oh well, at least I wasn't holding the squirming one (sorry Garrett).

Now we are in Utah visiting the great grandparents. They seem pretty tickled with the kids. I can't get over how healthy my grandparents are. All I can remember of the one great grandparent that survived long enough for me to remember is that she sat in her chair and by the end of the day the shoes she had put on in the morning no longer fit her feet. These great grandparents roll around on the floor and pick them up and tickle and do ever so many things. My kids are so very blessed to have them around.

Lost Track of Time

Spending most of my days self planned and being flexible to my kids needs I tend to lose track of time. Not only that sometimes I lose track of what day of the week it is. I think that's fairly common. I battle this with structuring my days and weeks so that things come at predictable times. Again, fairly common.

These vacations however are gloriously unstructured. They are filled with things that we want to do and few things that we don't. The off shoot of that is that I have completely lost track of the time I'm spending here. Not only do I not know what time of day it is, I usually can't remember what day of the week. Then today I couldn't even remember what month we are in. Which makes it really hard to figure out how many months old my child is.

I just wish he were old enough for nursery.

Blazing Good Time

Nothing says super fun vacation like a bladder infection that wakes you up at 4 AM.

Katie: Can't you just drink some cranberry juice?

Me: No.

Vacation Again

So we are now in Denver. We're visiting my sister and then visiting family all around northern Utah for the next month while Dan does a rotation in Salt Lake. I hope it goes well. I hope it goes as well as our vacation seems to be going at Aunt Katie and Uncle Garrett's house. They are ever so gracious hosts.

The big news for me so far is that I drove from St. Louis to Denver. Half of Kansas was driving rain and we had to go 40 mph and it was scary. Also we were driving until 2:30 or 3:30 if you count from our original time zone. Considering everything we did really well.

Here's hoping that this month of living out of our bags goes as well as last month.

Must Love Books

What do you think it says about me that I can rattle off my library card number at the drop of a hat and yet, for the life of me, can not seem to manage to correctly remember my checking account number? I have to look it up every time I go to the bank.

I Fall To Pieces

We flew home. Was it just yesterday? Yes, I think it was. And you know the most wonderful thing happened on the flight....nothing. It wasn't amazingly good, but it sure wasn't amazingly bad. And also my son has a super-power. He makes old men happy. Ridiculously happy. Happy enough that they stopped us to tell us goodbye when we passed them on our way to get the our bags. Multiple men. It was funny.

So there are the three of us. I'm the Sherpa carrying bags and stuffed dogs and a buffalo that turns into a blanket and pushing the stroller. Charlotte spies the restaurants and says we should really stop for dinner because she's "so so so so so so hungry," and Greg is wanting to get out and run his little self around and my answer to everything is, "Just wait until we get to Daddy." I keep telling myself I just need to hold it together until then. My mental outlook was much like what I had on the way to the hospital giving birth to Charlotte. Just get to the end point and then you can relax, knowing things are taken care of. (Oh how naive I was then.)

We were wandering around baggage claim and I couldn't even find where our bags were supposed to be coming out at and I looked around for familiar faces and I couldn't see the people who were on our flight and I'm tired. And then, in an instant, things changed. Daddy was standing in front of us. And I had butterflies in my stomach because I'm reminded of the times I flew to see him while we were engaged. And I ran and hugged him. Then Charlotte tore out of the stroller and ran and hugged him. Greg was a bit concerned about being left alone buckled into the stroller until he saw Daddy. He started attempting to tear the straps and buckles apart to get to Daddy.

It was like when Dan took all the pieces of luggage I was trying to carry and hold together I also let go of all the little emotional pieces that were being held together by my last energies as a mother. He makes our family whole and we're blessed to have him with us.

Daniel spent the rest of the night carrying both children who would not let go of him. It just made my heart happy to see how much they love him and how they missed him. Greg just cuddled himself right onto Dan's shoulder and stayed there as long as he could. We are sure happy to have him home.

Hard Hitting News

I desperately wanted to post a photo or two but managed to forget my all the necessary tools needed to transfer photos from my camera to the computer. So you'll have to use your imagination.

Our vacation is going well. We've had a lot of time to relax. But one point that didn't go well was my very first trip to the ER with my child. Greg fell in Nordstrom and hit his head on the tile floor. It had an amazing amount of blood that came gushing from the wound and all I could think was we need to get him to the doctor. So I started saying (my mom says I was yelling) we need to leave now. That was the only thing I could think to say. My mom told me to take him to the bathroom. I managed to carry him across the floor to the bathroom and not get any blood on my white pants or new jacket. I had him pretty calmed down while my shaking hands were holding paper towels to his head. I was just thinking wait for help which I was sure my mother would bring. To my surprise Nordstrom has a medical response unit which arrived in less than a minute. The lady came in and started to get his head to stop bleeding.

At that point, knowing someone else was helping him, I sort of lost it and started to hyperventilate maybe because the lady told me I had to go sit on the sofa in the lounge. That helped me, but freaked Greggie out. He started to kick and scream as hard as possible. Knowing we'd have to take him somewhere to be fixed I called my father in law (a surgeon) and asked him what to do. He called ahead to the urgent care and told me to take him there.

We ended up taking him from urgent care to the pediatric ER in a nearby hospital. He was amazingly good and sat very still while everyone inspected his wound. Then they gave him a topical anesthetic and conscious sedation and then he got really loopy and everything he did was hilarious. He was fine until they had to drape the wound with a sterile cloth. That he hated and also the anesthetic they injected into the site. He started to get mad. The funny part was when the male medical assistant came in to give the doctor something, Greg calmed somewhat to his voice. They made the guy stay in the room and told him to talk. He didn't know what to say so they had him sing a song. The only song the guy knew was the theme song to the Love Boat. So there we are Greg getting his wound irrigated and they guy singing the Love Boat, until that failed to work anymore and they let the guy leave.

Four hours after the initial injury Greg emerged from the pediatric ER with one stitch below the skin and six stitches across the top.

You'd think that would slow him down and make him a little more cautious.

And you'd be wrong.

Best Self Photo Ever

Charlotte it turning into quite the photographer. Here's her self portrait. And here's the little beuaty she took of me the other day. Is this really what I look like to my children?
Oh well, I thought it was funny.

Stories to Tell Dan (When I see him again)

Two days ago Charlotte picked out a cute little shirt that her Aunt Rachael gave to her. It's a white button up shirt with thin purple stripes. She put it on all by herself and was very proud of the outfit she was wearing. She turned to me and said, "I look like Daddy!" And I suppose she did.

Yesterday as we were in the car Charlotte asked me, "Why does Daddy sleep at the hospital now?" I thought that was funny.

The Destroyer

My son makes messes faster than I can clean them up. Not little messes either. Messes like pooping on the floor and walking through it. Messes like emptying an entire sippy cup of juice on my comforter. And messes like destroying his crib.

I'm sure you're wondering what I'm talking about when I say he is destroying his crib. I mean he's eating it. You know how a lot of kids chew on the top bar of their crib when they're teething? My son started when he was getting his first teeth, and hasnt' stopped. He has literally chewed pieces off the top of his crib. It sort of blows my mind that he is eating his crib. Clearly we're going to have to sand the rail down and restain it for the next child, but what do I do in the meantime?

A Very Very Very Fine House

I was waiting to post photos of all our work until it was done and everything was clean. What a joke. I decided to stop waiting and just post them.

First the best before photo I could find:

As you can see the walls were peach with dark green above the chair rail. The wood was partially stripped. What you can't see is that the wall was in despirate need of resurfacing. I also didn't have a very good before photo of the bench, which was beautiful, but also partially stripped. Here's the new view as you come in the front door.


We repainted the wall a much better green. The first green we painted was beautiful, but matched nothing else in our house. This looks much better. We also stripped, stained, painted, and put down a carpet runner on the stairs.

We also installed this new hall light. Previously this hall had a gross pull string light. Now it has this little beauty that we got on clearance at Lowe's. I enjoy the area so very much now. All that is left are the details and decorating it. I hope you enjoyed the update. I sure did.

Feeling Bad For Him

Yesterday Dan woke up at 4 AM, ate breakfast by 4:30 and was out of the house by 4:45.

He was in the OR most of the day. He didn't make it home until 6:30 PM. At which point he ate dinner, his second meal for the day. He was so wiped out that he just laid on the floor at the top of the landing until it was time to put the kids to bed. I assumed he'd be going to bed at the same time.

He probably thought so too.

At 8 PM one of the women in our ward called us frantically searching for people to help her husband move them from their current apartment into their new place. They had to be out of the place that night and nobody had shown up to help.

Dan wasn't home until 10 PM.

He said he needed some water so he sat in the kitchen while I did dishes and talked his head right off. He is so patient and loving and hard working.

He's superman.

As a little pick-me-up I showed him the video of Greg dancing at the concert we went to a few weeks ago. I can't figure out how to flip the video so you'll have to tilt your head.

I think he's got some pretty awesome moves.

Patience

For the past two months or so James 1:2-4 has been circling my brain.

"My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing."

I guess it comes as no real surprise that I've been trying to work on having patience this time as well. I've been getting so upset at the crying, screaming, lonely days I've been living with the toddlers of the house and just wishing I had the self control to not be so frustrated. Because I do love what I'm doing. I love this wonderful life I have and my amazing kids. There isn't a day that passes where I'm not amazed at their lovely beings. Over and over to myself I've been thinking what is it that I'm missing? what am I not seeing here that is preventing me from being more patient with my kids, myself, my husband, and my situation? What part of my faith is being worked on?



On Sunday I was particularly focused (or shall I say nervous) about the upcoming three moths where Dan will, for all intents and purposes, be gone from our family. I was worried about trying to be on top of everything all on my own and how I don't really think I can do that. Then that scripture came again to my mind. Only this time I realized something. I don't know if it really connects to this verse, but it whispered peace to me.



I realized that patience is such a Godly trait. He has so much patience with me. These months he has not been trying to tell me to be patient with my progress, with what I'm doing, but to be patient with my children. Something, my very wonderful sister-in-law said to me while they were here on spring break in April came to me as well. She said, in essence, its hard for moms to not think of their first child as a little adult. How often I have thought of my children as little adults, getting frustrated with how much they blow things out of proportion. Of course the color of the Popsicle is important to you. Of course you care if you get to wear that shirt backwards. What the Lord wants for me is to see that. And to settle into it.



It came to me that in order for me to be where I want to be, to be patient and to have a loving home I needed to sacrifice something. I need to be able to stand back and sacrifice my control of the daily situations. In order for me to lead my family the way I want them to be led I need to focus more on serving my family and taking the time to listen to them. Because when I do I am blown away by the things that I learn from them. What a wonderful blessing it is to be a mom.

Mean Girls

My daughter has figured out the power of words. Specifically mean words. It's so disheartening to hear her say calculated things to get a reaction out of her friends. After one loooong week of trying "discipline" her about it I finally just sat down and talked with her about it on Saturday. At church on Sunday I asked the nursery leaders to keep their ears open and notify me if anything was said and then again at playgroup today and they said she was great. Hopefully that little streak was broken. It just makes me sad for the time, which I know will happen, when she's the recipient of that sort of behavior. Hopefully that isn't any time too soon.

Turning Around

Maybe I'm getting old (which compared to the 3 and 1 year olds I spend my day with isn't that far off). Maybe it's the passing of a good friend whom I really should have kept in touch with better. Confession: I thought seriously about calling her the week before she passed not even knowing her health was failing and then blew it off. Maybe it was hearing another good friend from high school is pursuing a career that I think is perfectly suited to her. I don't know what it is, but lately I've been feeling like I really want to gather all my old friends around me. Not just to check up on their facebook status or the random email here and there, but really truly talk to them face to face. And I'm not longing for a high school reunion because honestly besides a handful of very wonderful people I don't really care about much of what happened to the graduating class of 2002. But there are a whole lot of people from the town I grew up in that I'd love to see again. To meet their spouse and children if they have them and to see what they're up to. I want to see them all having success and being wildly happy. I have in my mind that they all are, but honestly who knows?

And it isn't just from my home town. I would love to see how some of the people I went to college with are doing. I would love to go to lunch with them and ask them about the things they are passionate about. The things that keep them going.

Probably I'm being overly romantic about things and logistically insane but wouldn't it be nice if you could gather those people up together and just get a chance to see what they're up to? To say the things you perhaps should have, and the things you hope they are doing, and wish them the success you hope they are having.

Anyway that's what I've been thinking about on this very rainy St. Louis day.

Warning

I just thought I'd tell everyone that just for today, I hate medical school. And also I hate the green color we painted the front room. It's putting me in a bad mood. So it would probably be best if you just stayed away.

Tomorrow things will be different. I promise.