Gabe’s turn

When I came home with Gabe from the dentist’s office this morning, BJay got up to get the camera.  Half way there he turned around and decided he didn’t want a reminder of what Gabe is like on drugs.  Gabe got his turn at the dentist this morning, they fixed his rotten front teeth.  It is a miracle and his  little smile is so much more adorable than it was before.  Gabe was a little too hard to wake up for my comfort.  I hate the idea of sedation.  It makes me uncomfortable, I spend extra time praying about it the night before… With Asher we just wouldn’t go there.  Aside from the expense, it just feels too dangerous.  It was NOT comforting when the dentist mentioned this case about a little girl who died from overdose of sedatives at the dentist.  I like that I get to be there for the entire procedure and actually watch my children breathing and wiggling around.  Gabe was so small strapped to that little board on the dentist’s chair.  When it was time for him to wake up and answer a question, he was so sleepy.  He was actually snoring.  It took a full 15 minutes of blowing air in his ears and tickling him before one of the hygenists went and got some toys from the prize box and had him pick.  Somehow he mustered the energy to nod his head yes and hold his hand out for a little blue ball.  I wasn’t really worried, but oh it felt like a small miracle to see him respond just then.  I enjoyed the time I got to hold him like a baby and he let me.  And we laughed when he said he was seeing two daddies over there.  And then he asked me where he got the ball he had in his hand since we left the dentist.  The drugs made him forget.  I made Gabe smile at me all day today.  At first to see when the novicane wore off, and then later to just see his pearly whites again.  I love my little boy.  I’m overwhelmed with love for him and I feel blessed that he got to have the dental work he needed without being traumatized by having to remember it happened.

 

Christmas photos

This was amid the mayhem.

Gabe was so happy with his candy from his stocking, he didn’t need anything else.

Then he saw his bike.

Hannie was happy to just sit and take it all in.

After trying on her new clothes and Christmas bib (a gift from Asher) Hannah was down for the count.

Asher’s addition to the tree decorations.

We spent the night at my in-law’s house.  It was fun to see the kids so excited they couldn’t sleep.  Gabe snuck downstairs 3 times while we were wrapping presents.  Thankfully, Decker and Christine helped us wrap or we would have been up past midnight.

It was a fun day.  We had Christmas dinner at my mom’s house.  Here is BJay in his silly hat:

 

Gabism

“If you put water on your pancakes, you’ll have molecules on your pancakes.”

 

What does this say about me?

I have noticed a pattern.  I tend to get a little depressed in the last week or two my children are in school before a break.  It is so weird.  I blamed my mini-depression last summer on fluctuating hormones.   Now that I’m pretty stable I couldn’t figure out why I was so blues-ie last week, during my favorite time of the year.  Now that I have all my children home with me all day, the clouds have lifted.  I have more children to feed and take care of while cleaning and doing some last- minute crafting but I love it.  Is this going to be a problem in the future?  Does this mean I really should homeschool my kids?  Am I going to be one of those psycho co-dependant moms who can’t let go when its time for the kids to go to college?  I can’t figure out what this says about me.  I function better when my kids are home.  I think I’m okay for the first month or two of school.  But as soon as there is an end in sight, I lose focus.  All I want is to be with my kids and it feels wrong that school is keeping them from me.   I think it is definately a problem.

 

I wanna be sedated

I took Hila to the dentist this morning. She had a lot of cavities so the dentist had suggested sedation. I won’t go in to how bad my kid’s teeth are because it makes me feel like a failure as a mother. Her first appointment wasn’t going to be until February, but they had a cancellation so Hila got to go in this morning. First of all, let me just say, seeing your 5 year old on drugs is creepy. It is so weird how fast the drugs take hold. And then its bizarre how they disconnect your mind from your body. She couldn’t walk or talk and her head was wobbly like a newborn. If you didn’t know she was on drugs, you would probably have assumed that she had severe cerebral palsy or something. It made me think about how primitive we must be in medical science. We can unplug the brain but we can’t put it back together. If it is so easy to disconnect ourselves from our brains, why can’t we connect it back up in children who are born with brain damage? I’m on a tangent. Anyway, I got to go back with her since she was out of it and watch the whole procedure. She was only having 1 side of her mouth repaired today. Two crowns and 2 fillings. Yeah, I know, its horrible. Anyway the other thing that I was amazed at was how fast all those procedures happened. I’ve been to the dentist for a crown before and not only does it take more than one appointment, but each one probably lasts at least an hour. Hila was in and out of the dentist chair in about 20 minutes. (That included strapping her down to a restraint table and getting her to respond, verbally to a question afterward.) The whole appointment was 1 hour and most of that was spent in the waiting room. Why can’t the dentist be so fast when I need something done?
On the way home from the Dentist, Hila was still pretty out of it. She insisted she wanted to go back to school. She can’t even walk, but she wanted to be at school. And then she kept batting at imaginary strings in the car. She is home now watching TV with some milk. She asked me a while ago, “There are two of everyone on TV, do you see that?” Poor thing. She still can’t walk strait. They said she should be back to herself by lunch.

 

Hilaism

Last night we were driving home in the dark through this old, creepy cemetery on our way home from some friend’s house.  There are these wrought-iron archways at the entrance and exit and all the gravestones are very old.  So are the crooked black trees.  I’ll admit I felt a bit spooked but I was amused when Asher piped up in the back seat, “Mom, I hate the dark, its scary.”  Then Hila said, “I wish the earth would stop rotating when we’re in the light so that we don’t have to have night anymore.”

Pretty astute, huh?  She wasn’t just hoping, she actually understands what physically would have to happen to make it not get dark at night.  Kids are amazing.

 

Happy Birthday Hannah!

One year ago today I gave birth to a beautiful 10 lb 11oz round little pink baby girl.  Yikes.  And I got to do it after my epidural wore off.  It was all worth it though, she is a sweet, good natured, healthy little girl who has been taking her first steps the past few days.  She started sleeping through the night consistently at 2 months, a first for me as a mom.  I like to think of it as Hannah’s gift to me.  She’s sweet, patient, adorable and her siblings love her like crazy!  We only took video of her pink cupcake eating and bewilderment at her little gifts.  She’s sleeping peacefully now in her new pink pj’s she got from Grandma and Grandpa Juett.  The box of tissues didn’t go over as well as I’d expected.  I guess I accidentally taught her that it wasn’t okay to pull all the tissues out.  When Hila presented her with her own box of tissues she just stared at it.  Oh well.  The kids loved winding up her new jack-in-the-box for her.  And Hila made a book about Hannah’s first year that I’ll have to take pictures of.  I think Hannah would rate her 1st birthday at a 6 out of 10.  Here are a list of the good and bad points:

Good:

Cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

Bad:

Being woken up to eat cinnamon rolls in the car.

Good:

Taking Asher and Hila to school (she normally stays home with Daddy)

Bad:

Going to the Dr. for shots

Good:

Eating at McD’s with Daddy and getting her very own ice cream cone.

Bad:

Being over tired from too many errands and not enough crib time.

Good:

Having her brothers and sister so excited for her to eat her pink cupcake.

Bad:

What was mom thinking putting a lit candle in her face?

Good:

Homemade pink butter cream frosting…mmmm

Bad:

Getting washed up in the sink to look pretty for present opening pictures…brrrr.

Good:

Having everyone in the family pay attention to her while opening presents.

Bad??

What are presents?

Happy Birthday Hannah Claire!  We love you!

 

9/11

I get a little gloomy around September 11.  I had no personal connection to anyone who died in the terrorist attacks, but all the same it makes me sad to think about.  And not in the way that it was sad on that day 7 years ago.  It was devastating and horrifying then.  Now I’m just completely puzzled.  I was searching YouTube the other day for a tribute video I’d seen a few years ago.  I found all kinds of videos of September 11, none were the one I was looking for.  But what I found troublesome were the ones created by conspiracy theorists claiming that our own government was in league with the terrorists and they allowed, or aided in the attacks.  I don’t get their motivation.  I mean, to the point of being infuriated I don’t get it.  If it was something asinine like that woman on Fail blog who is all freaked out about a rainbow in her sprinkler I could easily laugh it off.  But the fact is, September 11 was something so sinister, so horrifying I just don’t get how people can insert their idiotic need to be “in-the-know” about it.  And I also don’t get why these people, cynical as they are–feel good about suggesting that the government was involved in this attack and still continue to live here.  If the government was really so evil it would explode its own city, its own people…wouldn’t you get out?   Granted, some of them are probably insane.  When we lived in California I got a huge kick out of walking through our neighborhood to this man’s house who was a total nut job.  He posted all his conspiracy theories in a plastic tube on a palm tree outside of his house.  He was convinced “they” were after him so he’d only be at home one day a month.  Among his conspiracy theories were that all CIA agent’s wives were purposely infected with cancer.  And government officials had a device that could infect you with any kind of disease if they shook your hand.  I was amused and disturbed at the same time.

The truth of the matter is, terrorists perpetrated this attack on our country.  They murdered thousands of innocent people.  They murdered children, mothers, fathers, siblings, friends.  People who died and left a huge hole in their communities, in their families.  Some people jumped to their deaths to escape being burned alive.  Some people didn’t have a second to react before they were pulverized.  Some people, when they realized what the hell was going on decided to fight back.  Some people were climbing up dozens of flights of stairs to rescue people trapped in the buildings. To focus on anything but these people is just pointless and insane.

9/11

The ashes spread a clear mile in an instant.

Groaning and shuddering into oblivion.

Unceremoniously cast over the city streets, cars, people…

People who are so easily compartmentalized.

Except they are some father, some mother, somone’s child…

Its ugly to think anyone, anything could think so little of human beings to do this…

to take pleasure in causing death. Unthinkable.

In shock and desperation we watched it happen, over and over, blacked out in our minds.

The millions of papers, fluttering like ghosts.

Billowing clouds of ashes and concrete showering down, exploding outward.

The moment of impact, once, twice exploded, exploded a hundred times, three hundred times over.

The moment where two thousand nine hundred and seventy four people died, its like some familiar old

cartoon.

 

Summer is over

We just got the letters in the mail from the kid’s school telling us that school will start 15 minutes earlier this year and which teachers our kids will have.  Tonight is back-to-school night.  Hila is so excited she slept with her backpack last night.  I told her that her teacher’s name was Mrs. Duncan and she said, “Duncan rhymes with Pumpkin.”  Good way to remember!  I think she’s ready for Kindergarten despite being just shy of 5 years old.  Asher will have his same teacher from last year.  We were hoping the kids would get the same teacher, but alas… nothing can be easy with public school.  I think I’m more bummed than the kids about summer’s end.  I know I’m starting them out in school but I’m so tempted to just not show up on the first day and decide to home school.  I hate giving up control of my children’s entire day.  And I’m not super happy with the way kids are being pushed to be little adults so fast.  Writing prompts in Kindergarten?  I remember those in AP English in HS.  Anyway my days will be sans two of my kids in the near future but 100x’s more complicated.  Why whine about things you aren’t doing anything about?  PTA meeting tomorrow night… blah.

 

Marketing test

If you want to know which commercials are most effective for marketing a product, bring some young children with you to Wal-Mart.  You don’t even have to enter the toy isle to do this test.  Any isle will work.  I use the Wal-Mart pharmacy and I’m surprised every time we go in that isle how my children’s precious little minds have been brainwashed into thinking that we need Zyrtec, Mucinex, and Prilosec OTC.  The candy section at the check-out is of course a favorite place to spot a well advertised candy.  Nothing about the packaging or description of these candies is at all appealing, but they recognize it from some fun add so they want it.  More surprising though is the cleaning isle where they beg for airwick air freshener and sundry toilet wands.  ??  Now I can get in to a good cleaning product, by why and how do children get convinced they need them?  I bet you are judging me for how much television I let my kids watch.  Probably too much, but oldest automatically turns off the TV after about an hour.  Someone convinced him that TV rots your brain so he doesn’t want to over do it… Apparently even an hour at a time can get in and take hold.