Pre-Christmas

Still playing catch up - I'll get there eventually :)

Kylie had a Christmas choir concert. Rob and Beth went as I was working. Megan babysat Laura and Jack. It still seems odd to me to miss things like that. I'm so glad Rob gets to experience them though!

Rob also ran solo the night they put up the Christmas tree, which was really odd as he usually participates very little in that process. He did an awesome job though and the kids had a blast :) We went with a fake tree this year for the first time ever. I prefer real trees, but the main reason I want one is for the smell. Only certain types smell strongly and those are the more expensive ones and we are too cheap to spend that much money just for the smell. The fake one was easier to put up, significantly easier to take care of, and much easier to take down. I may just settle for Christmas tree scented candles from now on.

We always let the kids open one present the day before Christmas Eve. This year I had to work late that day (sensing a theme here?), so we did it a day early.

Laura picked up a new response to presents from somewhere. She gasps and covers her mouth with her hands. It makes giving presents so much more rewarding! We love it :) She only does it for a second though, so I only got one picture of it and that picture was blurry.

Laura got a musical Leapfrog toy that we bought from a friend. She loves music and sings and dances all the time. (I try to get it on video, but she stops when she sees people paying attention to her.)

Eva, the ultimate princess girl with an attitude, got her very own makeup kit, complete with a mirror and lights.

She wasted no time trying it out. Her results tend to be a bit more . . . dramatic and colorful than I think she realizes, but she loves it. It goes right along with her tutus and high heels :)

Jack decided to open his present from Jojo and Dan. I loved the fist pump, especially as Jojo took all the kids out and let them pick their own presents, so he already knew what was in the package.

Beth got a Hello Kitty stamp set. She loves Hello Kitty and loves creating things, so it was perfect for her!

Kylie decided to open her present from Jojo and Dan as well. Knowing what the present was dampened her enthusiasm about as much at it had affected Jack's. (Notice her shirt? Rob picked out a bunch of t-shirts for her and she now regularly sports t-shirts featuring musicians that she has never heard of, but that Rob likes.)

Megan got a rubber band loom, much to her delight. She had hinted about it enough that we would have had to be as dense as a rock not to know it was the top item on her list. We also got her 6000 extra bands and some charms and hooks and other stuff. Good thing we got so many because as of now ( two months after Christmas) she has made a grand total of three small bracelets.

December '14

Drew's birthday was at the beginning of December. He requested beef stroganoff for dinner as he had never had it before and wanted to try it. I made dinner and Susie made his cake.

 Good thing he had lots of nieces and a nephew to help lick all the candles!

We didn't do Christmas cookies. Again. Everything that isn't essential has dropped out of our lives because of my heart. I really hope that someday we can start adding some of it back in. Jojo invited the kids over to decorate cookies, which really meant a lot to me as I miss being able to do things like that with them. She made two cookies per person (one star and one gingerbread person) and had a table full of decorations for them.

Megan went for realism with her person and candy overload with her star. 

Jack started eating his before I could even take a picture of him with his cookies. 

Laura was in heaven with all the candies she was allowed to eat.

True to form, Beth's were perfectly and precisely decorated.

Kylie loved experimenting with different frosting colors.

Eva was the last to finish. She kept wanting to add more sprinkles or frosting or candy. 

Christmas Photos

Betsy helped me pick out outfits for the kids this year. We couldn't find ones that matched in everyone's size, so we went with red and silver. Laura and Eva came with us to buy the outfits. We stopped at Arby's on the way home. Apparently we wore Laura out. She ate a bit, then turned around in the booth, curled up next to me, and conked out. 

We only took pictures of the kids this year.

After the group picture, I took individual pictures of each child. They got to pick their own poses. I love how much of their personalities came out in their pictures!

Laura

This is a really hard thing for me to write about. 

The Saturday before Thanksgiving, Laura climbed on top of the counter next to the fridge and got into my purse. She discovered the small container I keep OTC meds in and ate most of the Imodium pills and a few allergy pills. Both Rob and I thought Imodium was similar to tums and although we got upset that she had been able to get into them and no one had noticed, we didn't worry much about it.

Betsy had a math test the following week that I told her I would help her study for. Laura asked to come, so I took her along. It was Laura's naptime, so I wasn't surprised that she fell asleep shortly after we got to Betsy's house. I was a bit surprised that she was still asleep five hours later when Betsy and I finished. It was also a bit odd that she kept falling back asleep again when I picked her up, carried her to the car, and put her in her car seat. Usually once something wakes Laura up, she is up for good, even if she's only been asleep for a few minutes.

Laura asked me to take a picture of her on the way over to Betsy's house -

Rob and I were supposed to go on a date that night, so he was making sure the kids were bathed and had eaten dinner when I got home. I tried to have Laura eat something, but she kept falling asleep on my lap. At that point, we started wondering if something was wrong. Rob took her upstairs to give her a bath and I decided to call poison control just to check and see if the allergy pills might affect her like this.

Poison control asked how many of each pill she had eaten. I hadn't added them up and was surprised to realize that she had probably eaten about 40 Imodium pills. I kept them in the small pill container specifically so I wouldn't have many in my purse. They are small enough that a lot fit in those small containers. The lady from poison control told me it wasn't the allergy pills she was worried about - it was the Imodium. We needed to get Laura to the closest ER ASAP; we didn't even have time to drive her to Cooks in Fort Worth.

I ran upstairs and grabbed her out of the bath. Rob tried to quickly grab anything we'd need as I buckled her up. She threw up. I yelled to Rob that we were leaving. As we drove to the hospital, I tried contacting Christy or Susie or Betsy to watch the other five kids. Christy texted back that she would be right there and not to worry about them.

(I found out later that she and Dan were walking into a holiday party and she turned around and walked out when she got my text and they spent their evening taking care of our kids instead. I am so grateful for a friend and sister like her. She is always there when I need her and that means so much to me.)

At the ER, we were told that Imodium is actually an opiate, and considering how many Laura ate, it was significantly affecting her body by slowing down each system - including her lungs. They put in an IV and gave her a dose of Narcan, a medication used for drug overdoses. It pulls people out of drug induced comas in minutes, but it sends them to the opposite extreme. Within a minute of the small dose they gave her, Laura was awake and crying.

She settled back down again and we were told they were sending us by ambulance to Cooks (the children's hospital). Rob ran home while we were waiting for the ambulance and grabbed things like a cell phone charger. He made it back as they were moving her into the ambulance, then he headed home to spend the night with the other five kids. I rode in the ambulance with Laura. 

Laura and I waited in Cooks ER for an hour or so until they had a room for her. She seemed much better after getting the bag of IV fluids in the ambulance.

When we got up to the room, they hooked her up to all sorts of monitors. Laura is not big for her age - she is 25 pounds and looks very delicate. She looked even tinier in the middle of her huge bed with wires coming out everywhere. They monitored her breathing to see if she started struggling again. One of the nurses turned on "Frozen" for her - that is her very favorite movie.

She finally fell asleep around midnight. The nurses came in and sat with Laura and sent me down to the cafeteria to eat something since I hadn't eaten since lunchtime.

A children's hospital is a horrible place to be. Children should not be sick enough to be in a hospital. I looked around the cafeteria and saw all the other parents, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, hair unbrushed, clothes wrinkled, looking lost and trying not to fall apart. I have so much respect for people who work there. I couldn't do it.

Not long after I got back, her breathing slowed down again. They had told me that she'd be in trouble if it dropped below 12 breaths per minute. Several times the alarms went off signalling that it had reached that. The room would fill with nurses and they'd wake her up and try to get her breathing again. An hour or two later, it dropped to 8-9 breaths per minute and I overheard the doctor in the hall tell the nurse to go get more Narcan. The nurse asked "0.5?". He said "No. Two." Shocked, she verified the amount. I'm guessing it is a much higher dose than they usually give 25 pound babies.

It took a minute to get into her system, then she was up and screaming and writhing in pain. She kept screaming and screaming. I climbed into the bed with her and held her. We turned on a movie with images of kittens set to classical music and I stroked her hair as she screamed for what felt like hours. She finally fell asleep and I drifted off.

She woke up a few hours later, around 6am, perky and bouncy and cheerful. The Imodium was finally completely out of her system. I called Rob and he came and picked us up.

I try not to play the "what if" game in my head, but . . .
What if I hadn't stayed with Betsy for five hours? Megan wouldn't have questioned Laura taking a long nap.
What if I hadn't taken the one pill for my heart that I had kept in my purse for emergencies out of my purse a few weeks earlier? I mentioned that to the doctor and he said she would have ended up in the ICU - at best - if she had taken that pill.
What if Rob and I had gone out that night and just assumed Laura was tired?

Ugh. That little girl is one of the most precious things in my life. We try so hard to protect our children, but no matter how hard we try, things happen. The doctor and nurses at Cooks told me that only having this happen once in 12 years with six kids is amazing, but once is more than enough for us. I have to think that she was kept safe through divine intervention because there are too many realistic "what ifs" for this situation that would have ended really, really badly. So thank you to the guardian angels who kept my baby safe.

November '14

We started off November by making turkeys. They were supposed to be for the front window, which we used to decorate every month, but they never made it to the window. All the tape had been used up making art projects and performing "experiments". The price of having creative children I guess :)

Megan's is the brown one at the top. She went for a realistic look. The next row is Eva's and Beth's (Beth did a cheerleader turkey). The bottom row has Laura's turkey, then Kylie's Mexican ninja turkey complete with a sombrero, and finally Jack's rainbow ninja turkey.

Facebook statuses from November -

Rob, age 39, ate a bean burrito for lunch. Apparently there are some results of such actions that remain hilarious to males of all ages. *Sigh*

Benefits to having 5 older siblings - at the age of 2 years 3 months, you have the vocabulary to tell your mom she's mean and it's not fair that she rolled up the car window when you tried throwing things out of it.

Laura asked Rob if she could brush his hair. He agreed. She climbed up behind him and brushed and brushed, telling him with each stroke of the brush "Oh, you're so pretty! You're beautiful, Daddy!" :) I love that Rob let her do that and I love that she's heard those types of phrases enough, even at the age of two, that she's repeating them :)

4 pads of post-it notes cover a surprisingly large area (Mark's office) -

My now-four-year-old requested a French picnic for her birthday dinner. Christine pointed out that it's funny that my four year old wanted a French picnic, while our 23 year old sister, Susie, wanted mac & cheese with hot dogs on her birthday a few months ago.

(I'll post about Eva's birthday in just a minute)

One of the best things about being a parent is being able to surprise your kids with trips to Sonic for ice cream and getting to listen to them sing Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer in a very unprofessional, but amusing, harmony all the way home

How you know you've married a nerd - when the new Star Wars trailer teaser is watched, he not only notices that the Millennium Falcon has a new, different shaped, radar dish, but he also recounts the scene in which the old one was torn off. This coming from the man who still doesn't know all of the birthdays of his children.

*******

We had Beth's friend, Caitlin, and her family over for dinner. Beth and Caitlin have been best friends since last year, but we had never met her family. Beth asked that we take a picture of the two of them.

Eva turned four! We had two birthday parties for her. The first was with Christy, Dan, Susie, and Drew.

Eva got a set of four crowns (she got four more crowns - and two tutus - from Jojo and Dan), a toy make up kit, and a set of "high heels" (which broke within 24 hours). 

She picked out a cake from Kroger with lots of ribbon curls.

Christy, Susie, and Drew took her to Build-a-bear for her birthday a few days later. She wore one of her pink crowns and the pink tutu from Jojo and Dan. She picked out an Olaf doll . . . and dressed him in pink and sparkles. I'd bet Olaf would have been fine with it :) 

She even got to ride the carousel in the food court!

Betsy's birthday is very close to Eva's, so we had a party for the two of them.

Betsy got bath salts and a foot massager.

Betsy got Eva a rainbow tutu. My friends know Eva very well - she got 8 crowns and 3 tutus total. Eva picked out the cake for her and Betsy to share. She thought Betsy would like the flower. 

Betsy's birthday was actually a few days later, so Eva, Laura and I took her out to lunch at Cheddar's. Laura proved the existence of genetics by ignoring her chicken fingers and eating her ranch dressing with a spoon, just like her great grandpa K would have done :) 

Thanksgiving was low key. We did an early Thanksgiving-y dinner with Christy, Dan, Susie, and Drew as Christy and Dan went to Houston for the holiday. Susie and Drew joined us for Thanksgiving. I loved having the kids home for a week :)

Favorite quote from Thanksgiving -

Susie used a bottle opener to open a bottle of sparkling juice.
Beth (age 8 - very excited to see the bottle opener in use): Is that a lever?
Susie: Ummm yes?
Beth: Does it have a fulcrum?
Susie: . . . .

Parenting should require a PhD.

Megan and Kylie's recycled robot and his dog -