Crawling Update?

Nope! The boy is not even trying to scoot. He does get up on all fours in his crib some, but that's about it. I think it's because he has a little "helper" that brings everything to him. Who needs to crawl when you can whine instead? However, he has cut 3 teeth since Christmas Eve and is working on the 4th one. I thought he'd never get a tooth and soon he'll have 4 teeth in less than 2 weeks!

Another Trip

Since we didn't get back home from Christmas in Oklahoma until Sunday evening (the 28th), I spent all day Monday and Tuesday organizing and cleaning to make room for all the new toys. Clint went back to work on Wednesday so I packed up all the decorations and then Clint loaded the attic and took the lights down on New Years morning. Then about noon we got a phone call that Clint's grandmother had passed away. We were expecting it and had been "on notice" for about a week. So, while Clint was at work on Friday, I finished unpacking our bags from Christmas and then did laundry and re-packed over the weekend. Talk about stressful! We left Monday morning and just got back tonight.

We actually had a really good time, though. My parents kept the kids Monday night while we went to the visitation and then several of us went to eat pancakes at 9:00pm. Then the next day there was a big family dinner at the church. I got to see some of Clint's cousins that I had never met and other family members that I hadn't seen since our wedding. (Almost 9 years ago now) We took Ainsley to the funeral and she did really good. I think it was good for her. She understood that the lady in the casket was just Grandma's body and her heart was in heaven "talking with Jesus and singing with the angels" as she said. At one point, she said that Grandma was in heaven now singing "Glory to God!" She understands so much more than I ever give her credit for. After the lunch, we took the kids back to my parents to nap (Thanks Mom and Dad!) and went over to Clint's grandma's house to look through some things. She was Clint's last living grandparent so it was important that we get some momentos to take back home. We got a table from their farmhouse, some old tools, I got a homemade apron, etc.

When my dad got home from work, Ainsley told him that she had gone to "Grandma's fever". She kept calling it that! I guess the word funeral was not in her vocabulary? The only thing that really confused her about the whole event was the difference between being baptized and death. She has watched some baptisms at church and we've told her that they asked Jesus into their heart so now they're going "under the water" to tell everyone else that they're going to heaven. Well, when we started talking about Grandma going to heaven also, she kept asking if she went down in the water. She does understand a lot, but she's still just a 3 year old. :)

I'm glad to be home and hope we don't have to travel again for a while. Grady has been in bed since 4:00pm and Ainsley went to bed at 6:00pm. They are WORN OUT!

Christmas 2008

So, if you're wondering, yes I finished (& started) my Christmas shopping in 1 week! Clint's parents came up the weekend after Thanksgiving for an early Christmas with us. It was a lot of work, hosting Christmas at my house with the whole family, but we had a good time. We got a Wii and Guitar Hero World Tour, so the evening was spent battling it out! Here are the Christmas outfits I bought the kids at the consignment sale. They were super cheap and super cute!

Grady, like all babies, LOVED the tissue paper, tags, etc. He latched onto this one tag on one of Ainsley's shirts and played with it the whole time.

Here's what happened when I finally took the tag away from him! (Yes, I gave it back...I'm a sucker for crocodile tears!)

The following weekend was our Connection group Christmas party. We now have 14 kids (under 7) in our group with 2 more on the way. It was at my friend Jamie's house who had a 14 day old baby! Crazy woman! Here are a few of the kids showing off their presents after their gift exchange. We won an Olive Garden gift card!


Clint was sick the weekend of our group party and I got sick that Monday. I was sick until Christmas Eve! Grady got a little puny right before Christmas too, so Clint met us one day at the Promenade and sat in the car with Grady while Ainsley and I went to meet Santa. She was so excited! She went right up to him and crawled up in his lap, but then gave me this funny, little face for the picture. Typical 3 year old. She told Santa that she wanted "Princess dresses and my baby brother wants toys." :) I thought it was so sweet that she included Grady.

Here are my boys after the Christmas Eve service. This was our second year in a row to be home on Christmas Eve/Day and I think we'll probably always try to be in Arkansas for the service if at all possible.

Ainsley's letter to Santa. She drew the pictures first and then I wrote the words around them.

Christmas morning at home! Santa brought princess dresses and toys for Grady! I actually didn't spend any money on Grady's toys....Santa went shopping in the attic. :) After all the Santa excitement, I was cooking breakfast when I looked over and found this...


So, Ainsley and I ate breakfast and got the presents ready for our family Christmas. We normally do the 3 wisemen gifts, but I had already bought 3 gifts when I remembered that Grady and Ainsley had not bought each other anything. So, since our nativity scene has 3 wisemen and a shepherd, we called the 4th gift a shepherd gift. Ha! This is Ainsley with her gift from Grady. It was BY FAR her favorite gift from anyone. It's a music box with a little ballerina that dances around. She stares at it for sometimes 30 minutes or more!

After presents, kids went down for a nap and I started cooking. Clint's sister was supposed to be bringing a friend that didn't have anywhere to go, but she ended up not coming. So we had a ton of food! I made a huge brisket, rosemary roasted potatoes, homemade cracked-wheat yeast rolls with pumpkin butter, corn casserole and green beans. Yum!

We left the next day for Oklahoma to spend Christmas with my family. My sister, her husband, and my niece, Hailey, were all there too. Hailey is almost 2 now so the girls are finally at an age where they play well together. They were inseperable! My parents are currently remodeling all the bathrooms, basement, part of the kitchen, etc. so the entire upstairs and garage is full of stuff. So, with so many people and only 4 bedrooms, we had to get creative. My sister and brother-in-law slept in one bedroom, Ainsley slept in her normal bedroom, Hailey slept in the nursery, my parents slept in the basement, Clint and I slept in my parents room, and Grady slept in the pack-n-play in the dressing area of my parent's bathroom! He slept really good in the bathroom! :) I got the kids matching pajamas, but they were flannel and it was like 65 degrees. Grady got hot so we took his shirt off...

All the kids with their matching pjs and Mom and Dad with their "World's Greatest Mimi/Papa" shirts...


Here is a video of some after-Christmas dancing Beans for your enjoyment!

Thanksgiving - 2008

I just pulled up the blog to see how long it had been since I had posted, but I had no idea it was this long! So, I'm starting at Thanksgiving and I'll work my way forward.

We went back to Oklahoma for Thanksgiving to my parents home. Luckily, it turned out that my aunts and uncles were in town visiting some other relatives so everyone got to meet Grady! He did so good. My parents had set the crib up in the office (it used to be in the room Ainsley sleeps in) so we all had our own bedrooms. Now that makes traveling easy!


We also got to travel up to see my grandma while we were there, who had never seen Grady either. She adored him and was so glad to see us all.


Clint got up and went Blitz shopping with my parents on Friday where he bought all kinds of things! He really did so good. He even bought me a new bedding set that I LOVE! I really should get pictures of it on here because it's impressive. How many guys can actually pick out bedding for their wife...successfully? We traveled back on Saturday and my parents followed so we'd be back in time for the baby dedication at church on Sunday. Grady looked adorable in his cords and little sweater and big sister was as pretty as ever! She wore her dress I got at a consignment sale for $4 and got TONS of compliments on it. The pictures from the actual dedication were all blurry, so here's a picture of us after service.


While we were in OK at my in-laws home, we started talking about plans for Christmas. Clint's sister was not going to be able to go home for Christmas, so his parents were going to come up here. No big deal...until we started looking at our calendars. The only weekend we all had free was the very NEXT weekend! I had done ZERO shopping, and now only had 1 week...

Careers of a 3 year old

When I comb Ainsley's hair after her bath, she usually wants to comb mine too, but tonight she took it to a higher level...

Ainsley: "Momma, I'm a hair cutter, ok?"
Me: "Ok."
Ainsley: "You want long or short?"
Me: "How about short?"
Ainsley: "No, you want long with yalers."
**She uses the tail of my rat tail comb to part my hair and proceeds to "cut" it. Then she "dips " the tail into the lotion lid.
Ainsley: "This is my paint. You want to change colors like the leaves?"
Me: "Sure, that will be pretty."
Ainsley: "Ok, can we go to Wal-Mart to get some silver paper?" (Foil for you color-illiterates out there)

Ha! It has been at least a month since I've colored anyone's hair, but she was doing everything exactly like I do. I never even thought she watched me at all. So, this sparked a conversation about careers. We talked about what daddy did at work. I just said he helps the people that work on the computers. :) Then I pretended to be a dentist so I could get her teeth extra clean. So, I asked Ainsley what she wanted to do when she grew up. Her answer...

"I'm going to sing, but not very loud, and dance just a little bit." :) Such a silly girl!

Grady had a fever a couple of days last week so I took him to the doctor on Friday...his first ear infection. He's on amoxicillan (sp?) which is staining all of his shirts and bibs bright pink...fun. With his fever, he was such a sleepy baby. So, I was putting him to bed between 4:30 and 5:00pm every day. He'd easily sleep until 5:00am the next morning before he'd wake up to eat. I guess he got used to sleeping 12 hour stretches because the last couple of days he's been going to bed about 6:30pm and sleeping until 7am. What a good baby! Oh, and he's been spitting his pacifier out to go to sleep too! If it's in his mouth he just plays with it, but when he's ready to go to sleep I see him spit it out, roll over, and close his eyes. (I'm SO addicted to the video monitor!)

I have a few new pictures up from Toddler Toes if you'd like to take a look!

I'm back!

Well, it's been a long month...to say the least.  Grady has been teething for weeks now with little progress.  I can see it just under the skin, but it just won't come through.  This makes for a very cranky little baby.  And Ainsley has just had all sorts of problems!  Let me explain...

Somewhere around the end of August I noticed that Ainsley had a rash in her left armpit.  The kid is very sensitive to anything we put on her and allergic to something as common as grass, so she has rashes all the time.  A couple of weeks later, it started spreading down her left side, but still not much to worry about.  In all, she had about 15 little, red bumps.  So, on Monday (10/6) I had taken her to the doctor for another issue and said, "While I'm here, can you look at these bumps that just won't go away?"  The doctor took one look at them and said it was "Molluscum Contagiosum" - a viral rash that is extremely contagious.  They looked like over-sized zits and the white area in the middle was full of thousands of viruses.  (Is that the plural form?)  In most kids, it takes about 6 months to 2 years to go away,  but may be faster if you treat it with this cream called Aldara.  So, we got the cream.  

We only applied it with a toothpick to the individual bumps because it burned a bit, but after just 2 treatments, she had gone from the measly 15 bumps (now 6 weeks old) to a whopping 200 or so!  We did one more treatment on Sunday night and when she woke up Monday (10/13) morning, she had about 300.  They were spreading like wildfire!  Now, I have to tell you, they are NOT pretty.  It was SO, SO sad.  They itched, they burned, they looked scary.  So, we went back to the doctor.  This time we saw our pediatrician.  She took one look at just Ainsley's knees and said it was the worse case of Molluscum she had ever seen in all her practice and that there was nothing else she could do for us.  So, she made a referral call and got us in with a dermatologist the next morning.  

We saw Dr. Summerlin - a fantastic dermatologist if you need one.  Ainsley loves him.  (We still see him weekly)  He immediately diagnosed Ainsley with Atopic Dermatitis.  It's a skin condition that causes an immune deficiency (which is why the molluscum took over), causes her body to not create it's own moisture, and also causes all of her heat to escape from her head because her pores are too small to sweat everywhere else.  It explained so much...the super high fevers all of her life, the random rashes every week, the wet hair all of the time, slow hair growth, etc.  Before you think your child might have it, you should know that the parents have to have a combination of a penicillin allergy, asthma, and hayfever allergies in order to produce a child with AD.  Because of her immune deficiency, her body was just not able to fight off the molluscum.  It continued to get worse for the next few days.  We began treatments to burn the spots off with acid and a toothpick.  It was very painful and required Clint to come home in the mornings just to help me hold Ainsley down.  Needless to say, we didn't leave the house for several days.

So, it's been a long process, but we're finally seeing results.  ALL, I repeat ALL of the molluscum is dead.  She's no longer contagious and only has some dark red spots that might scar, but they're under her arms and on her knees so a scar is not the end of the world.  We're still treating her skin for the AD outbreak, but this is something we'll have to do for the rest of her life.  We go to the dermatologist weekly and he's going to start training Ainsley on how to take care of her own skin.  Since she can't really moisturize herself or sweat like she should, she'll have to learn how to artificially apply these things.  I can't tell you how humbled I am about her recovery.  It truly was a miracle.  It should have taken up to 4 years to heal on a child with AD, but her's are already dead and healing in less than a month!  (I'm trying to upload some pictures of what it looked like, but blogger is being especially stubborn tonight!)  

So, my sweet baby girl is back in school and in the public again.  We know what to look for and how to treat it if it happens again.  Our only fear is that she got it from someone who she's in regular contact with and could get it again.  In most kids it just looks like 2 or 3 chigger bits and goes away on its own.  In Ainsley, however, it can take over her body.  So, prayers of protection over her little body are much appreciated!

What else is new?  I have maxed myself out, once again.  I started way too many projects.  I was making burp cloths and wipes pouches like crazy this month!  I also made both the kids Halloween costumes, a costume for a friend of mine, a dozen bows for 2 other friends, and gave several haircuts.  I have a real problem with saying no.  I just want to be able to help everyone that does so much for me, but it always seems to come all at once.

Grady had his first 1/2 birthday this weekend.  My baby is growing up!  He's almost sitting up and he LOVES to sing.  Some nights, he wakes up in his crib and sings himself back to sleep!  With the exception of the bad teething nights, he's still sleeping about 11-12 hours before waking up, then eating and sleeping another couple of hours.  He's a really excellent little boy!  We're going to dedicate him next month at church too.  Look at the blog below this and leave me a comment telling me which of those 3 photos you like best, if you have time.  The photo we send in will be in the bulletin.  We also started giving him baby food about a month ago.  He does pretty well with it, but just always prefers to nurse over anything else.  Not going to happen, Grady!  You have to learn to eat something else before kindergarten!

That's about all the time I have right now.  I'll end with a funny Ainsley moment:

Me:  "Ainsley, do you know what happens in 2 days?"

Ainsley:  "I grow up!"

Me:  "Well, yes, but it's Halloween too."

Ainsley:  "Oh, and I'm gonna say 'trick or treat' and get candy for me!"

Me:  "That's right, if you're a good girl."

Ainsley:  "What are you going to be?"

Me:  "How about this?"  I showed her my t-shirt with a pumpkin on it...

Ainsley:  "No, I think you want to be a witch."

Me:  "A witch?"

Ainsley:  "Like a witch at Wal-Mart.  You'll be so scary - ooooooo, but I won't be scared because you're my mom."

Me:  "Thanks, I love you Ainsley."

Ainsley:  "And I love witches!"

Yeah....all of this after she saw a witch costume at Wal-Mart.

  

6 Month Check-up

Weight:  16 lbs. 11 oz  --  45%

Height:  27 1/2 inches  --  75%

More to come....