Kids

Tonight as I was tucking Anya into bed, she poked herself in the eye.  I said that eye were not for poking.  She said, "Eyes are for seeing.  And Mouths are for talking and eating.  And Ears are for hearing, and Noses are for sniffing, and Hair is for putting in accessories."  She is definitely the girly-girl.  

Paisley has learned this week to throw major tantrums when things don't quite go her way.  She drops to the floor and actually bangs her head on the ground a time or two until I feel enough sympathy to pick her up.  

Kittens

Whiskers just had 3 baby kittens.  They are so tiny and cute.  I hope they make good farm cats for when we move out to the new place!

  

Trouble with a capital . . . P

Doesn't this face look like she's up to something?  This little girl is busy busy busy.  She is weighing in at just barely over 2o lbs and 31 1/2 inches--following the long and skinny model of several of her sisters, and boy is she on the go.  I've seen similar posts on several blogs by those of you with a toddler in this age range--if she's not being constantly supervised, you can plan on a disaster in her wake.  Paisley's favorite perch is the middle of the kitchen table.  I came home from violin lessons the other night to find that she had climbed up there before it had been cleared off from dinner and decided to test gravity with a glass.  Luckily it had been emptied of juice before she pitched it to the floor.  She uses whatever she can find as a ladder. She likes to try to clean the toilet with the toilet brush and is particularly fond of the dishwasher as well. She has half of her 1 year old molars in and a snotty nose right now, so she's a bit more grumpy than usual. She doesn't sit still for more than about 30 seconds, unless I am in the shower.  The other day she was emptying the bathroom drawers, as usual when I'm taking my shower. I looked out and didn't see her anywhere until I looked right on the rug next to the shower.  With the soothing sound of the water running, she had put her head down right there and gone to sleep.  Cute!

Easter

We enjoyed out Easter weekend.  Due to soccer games, we weren't able to participate in the neighborhood Easter egg hunts, but we did have out own version in the backyard.   We also had fun with a good old Paas egg dye kit.  Tomorrow it's time to make egg salad sandwiches I guess.   For Easter I get a bit obsessed about finding new dresses for all the girls.  I love to search for matching outfits.  However, a few times I have found things that match, only to find that certain children would never where the dress I picked out ever again.  So this year my dilemma was whether to find everyone something they liked, even if it didn't match, or to make sure we all matched, even if the girls didn't like it.  Well, I picked something they liked.  The three little girls coordinated pretty well, but the older ones didn't really.  In some years I've been really ambitious and made their dresses, but that gets time consuming when it's times 6 now.  We tried to talk more about Jesus than the Easter Bunny, so hopefully some of that sunk in.

My Hand

Thanks to all of you for your sympathy and offers of help while I was disabled!  So I took Paisley and Lexi in to see our family doctor for their immunizations and well visits last week.  While there I mentioned my encounter with Jack and showed him my right hand, which was still pretty tender and a bit swollen in one area.  Ryan and I had discussed the possibility that it could be broken, but I didn't have time or desire to go get an X-ray, make an appointment with an orthopedist, etc.   Dr. Kropf felt that it would be good to have the X-ray and at least know for sure what we were dealing with.  Luckily there's an imaging center in the same building as his office and he was able to send an order and I could get it done right away.  He called later to say that I did indeed have a fracture at the base of my 5th metacarpus (pinkie), right near where it meets the wrist bones.  He was even so good as to call the orthopedist and give him the history.  Given that it looked pretty stable, and that I was two weeks out already, they decided that I could just wear a wrist splint until I can go about my regular activities without much pain. I wore the splint for about 6 days until it just got annoying.  Thanks to daily prayers by Anya that "Mom's hand will get better" it feels mostly back to normal now.  The stitches have all healed beautifully and are just slightly tender if they get bumped just wrong.  Here's a picture of your hand bones, if you are looking at your right hand with the palm toward you.  The fracture is right about where you can see the red line that says "hamate" even though that's not the name of the bone.  Enjoy your anatomy lesson for the day.

Sad Days

Well, today was one of those days that doesn't quite go like you plan.  This morning I was putting our 3 1/2 year old lab, Jack, back in his kennel after his morning potty break.  I grabbed him by the collar from behind him (bad form for a dog owner), and he whipped around and bit me--hard, on both hands.  Ryan ended up putting 20+ stitches in my hands, and my function is somewhat limited for a couple of days.  My right hand especially is pretty swollen and tender, but I learned to type one-handed in all my years of nursing babies and working on the computer at the same time, so I can still do some things.  I'm just a bit slower that way.  Unfortunately, this is not the first time Jack has shown signs of aggressive behavior, and we have hoped he would grow out of it, or that we could train it out of him, but that has not been successful.  At this point Ryan decided we would just have to put him down.   So, this afternoon Ryan took both dogs down to the Humane Society--Jack to be euthanized and Jill to go up for adoption.  Jill never showed the aggression, but we just don't have the time to really train her to be a good family dog right now with everything else going on.  Plus, the girls never really loved her because she's so rambunctious and jumps up on them, so they wouldn't walk her or play with her.   Anya is the most sad of all the girls because Jack was her Birthday dog when she turned 1.  As Ryan tucked her in tonight they were talking about Jack being put to sleep and she said, "I wish this was a dream and not real life."   Ryan is in the depths of despair--he had dreams of Jack being his garage buddy and bird hunting dog for many years to come.  A few things to be grateful for with all of this--Jack bit me and not one of the girls; the girls are home for spring break, so they can really help out for a few days until I regain most of my function; it wasn't a busy work day for Ryan, so he won't get behind after not doing much work all day.  So the timing was good, even if I never would have chosen the experience.    

Photo Booth

On our Mac, we have a fun feature called Photo Booth, which is basically a built-in web cam.  The girls love to sit in front of the computer and take pictures of themselves with all sorts of cool and interesting effects.  Here's a sampling.