Natalie's New Earrings

When Natalie was born (or maybe it was even before she was born), Eric and I decided that we were going to wait to get her ears pierced until she was old enough to decide it for herself. The time came recently, when she showed interest in getting earrings. I didn't discourage nor encourage her, as it really didn't matter to me either way when/if she ever did it. I did explain to her what they would do, and that it would hurt, but only for a minute. And I also explained to her how important it would be to keep them clean and take good care of them. Saturday she'd decided she was definitely ready to take the plunge! It actually worked out well because I took her to church on my own on Sunday (more on that in a minute), so after church we headed to the mall. I let her pick which pair she wanted from the sheet, and told her that after her 6-8 weeks when she could take them out, we'd come back and pick another pair. She chose some a pair of pink flowers (with 14k posts) and was getting really excited. Then when the lady walked off to go get the supplies, Natalie started looking more and more nervous. Her smile faded and she just looked worried. I told her she could back out if she didn't want to do it. She assured me she was ok and still wanted to do it, as long as I held her hand. Of course! She was so patient as the lady came back and explained everything she was doing. First she clipped her hair back. Then she cleaned her ears. Then she marked the spots with a purple marker. Then finally, she got the piercing gun and did the first ear. Natalie flinched just the slightest, but didn't cry at all! We told her how great she did and showed her the first earring in place. She smiled and felt much better now that she knew what to expect. One thing I told her before hand was that once the first earring was done, she HAD to go ahead with the second one. Not a problem at all. She did great for that one as well. Once the lady put some more antiseptic on her ears, she was good to go! She was so proud of her new earrings and couldn't wait to get home and show Daddy! I am so proud of her! It is so excited watching her grow up into such a beautiful young lady right before my eyes.

Before


Waiting patiently


Just after


Beautiful!



The reason I took her to church on my own is because Eric stayed home with Erica and Graham. Graham has a little cold, and Erica has croup. She woke up Saturday morning with a fever and a terrible barking cough. I knew it was croup, so I took her in right away to the ped so she could get some steroids to help her airways. I'm so glad I got her in so quick, because it made a huge difference. Her very croupy cough has turned into the wet productive cough already so I know she's on the road to recovery. So far, Graham doesn't seem to be getting any worse either, so that's a good thing!

Here are some misc. pics I took of him the other day. He was in such a silly mood when he woke up from his nap. Love his bed head.




And I thought this one was funny. He found Natalie's nametag from church and put it on. Our church children's dept. has these labels that you print out each time you go that has the child's info with a code matching the parent's pick up ticket. I think he missed going to church on Sunday and was trying to tell me something lol.

Jan,. 15

I'd planned on us having family pics done this Saturday, but decided last night to reschedule them. Graham has a nasty runny nose and little cough, and we're still working on getting rid of the dry rash on his cheeks. He gets it now and then when it's cold and he drools a lot and it gets trapped behind his paci. A couple days of ointment usually do the trick. I rescheduled for Sat. Jan. 31, when I'll be just shy of 37 weeks. Hopefully we make it! lol Eric is most likely working next weekend, so that was out. Anyway, I'll be sure to post pics of that afterwards.

It's nasty rainy here today so that means it's a perfect day to get some housework done! Dishes are loaded, laundry is going, and there are messy floors all over this house with my name on them!

And I guess I'll throw this out here if anyone wants to offer up some suggestions. At the kids' last pedi visit I asked her about their speech. Natalie can still not say hard and soft th sounds properly, and it's starting to affect her reading/spelling. And Erica can still not say a lot of things correctly. I can understand most of what she says, but other people still have trouble. And I'm trying to teach her the letter sounds, which is not going over well since she can't pronounce many of them correctly. So... the pedi said it would probably be a good idea to have them seen by a speech therapist. I meant to make appts back in December, but didn't get on the ball. This week, I looked on our insurance website and there is not a single speech dr. in all of SA that takes our insurance. So my other option would be to go through the public schools. Even though we homeschool, my kids are still eligible for speech benefits. And it's free! The downsides are that it usually takes a long time to get in, and I've heard from other homeschooling families, that some schools will give you a hard time about using their services while homeschooling and just homeschooling in general. So I'm kind of stuck as to what to do. Do I just fork over the money and get them in possibly quicker with an actual dr, or do I go the free/slow route of the public school system? Quite the quandry.

And on the topic of speech, Graham does not say any words. He can say mama and dada but he doesn't always use them in correct context. He mostly just does caveman grunts. He *was* signing more, milk, and all done, but hasn't signed anything for weeks. He is almost 15 mos old, so I'm not worried yet at all, but just wanted to throw that out there as a reference to look back on.

Check-ups

Just a fly by update of our check up appt this morning for Graham and Erica.

Graham is 22.75lbs and 30.5". He is hitting all his milestones as he should be. Doing great!

Erica is 34lbs and 39". I'm going to take her to a dermatologist for her eczema. We're doing all the typical things and it's just not clearing up. She also has a mole on her scalp, right in her hairline, that doesn't seem to be getting any bigger, but the dr. mentions it at each appt, so it's worth getting checked out too. I'm also going to be taking Erica and Natalie to a speech pathologist to get checked out. Erica is still pretty hard to understand by most people. I can get most of what she says, but it's hard sometimes. She just doesn't pronounce things right. Natalie has outgrown all of her mispronunciations except for her hard and soft th sounds. She still says them wrong and it's starting to affect her reading/spelling because she tries to spell words the way she says them. Like birthday is birfday and that is dat. Erica did get her hearing checked and she passed just fine. I was a little worried about that. She has the speech issues, she sits really close to the tv, she talks REALLY loud, and she makes us repeat ourselves a lot. Any of those things on their own I wouldn't worry about at all, she is 4 year old afterall. But all together just made me go hmmm. The dr. did say that there is more extensive hearing testing they can do, but to see what the speech pathologist has to say first.

It was a long appt, but the kids did great. Erica and Graham both got some shots, so they weren't happy campers at the end. And then they were out of lollipops!!! End of the world! I told Erica she could pick whatever she wanted for lunch and we'd get it on the way home and she said she just wanted to go home and eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Love her!

11 mos/19w/and other news

Holy Cow it's been a long time since I've updated! When we moved on Sept 1, it took us a couple weeks to get internet hooked up and I have just been so busy since then I haven't had a chance to get an update posted. I still don't have everything together, but figured I'd go ahead and blog *something*.

Graham is 11 mos old. I totally missed his 10 month update.

At 11 mos, Graham:
drinks 3 bottles a day
eats 3 meals a day consisting of baby food and table food
drinks water well from a sippy during snack time
sleeps 12-13 hours at night
takes 2 naps most days
wears 18 mos clothes, but not for too much longer
wears a size 4 shoes (but is almost in a 5)
wears a size 4 diaper
has 6 teeth, with at least one more close to erupting
loves to wave at himself in the mirror
claps at everything, all the time!
is WALKING!!!
finally has a "hair do"




Natalie lost her first tooth today! It was loose for almost a week and finally came out today at lunch. She is anxious to see how much the tooth fairy leaves her tonight!
You can see where it's missing in the 2nd pic, but the new tooth (actually both bottom teeth) is already growing in behind it.



I'll be 19 weeks tomorrow and so far everything is going GREAT. We are close to having a name for this little girl (that's right, GIRL, for those of you who hadn't heard yet), so stay tuned!
Here she is at 18w - face profile on the right, with her hand above her face


And here is a cute one I took last week of the girls. Eric and I had put the girls to bed and then went in our room to watch tv. Before we went to bed, Eric went to check on them and found them in the hallway in front of their door just like this! lol

13w update

I went for my 13w appt. last week and forgot to update about it. Everything was great! I lost 2 lbs, which puts me at a net loss of 1 lb. YAY! Beat's beat was perfect and everything else checked out. I go back in 4 weeks and should be hearing from the high-risk dr. soon to schedule an appt.

I signed Erica up for dance class this year and she was so excited about her first day!
She had such a good time.




Here are some of my growing little man.
Modeling his sister's sunglasses.

Climbing on the picnic table. You can see my nephew Noah in the background climbing on the chair.

Graham's First Haircut

It was finally time. It was actually probably a bit past due. Graham's hair had grown into quite the poufy spectacle. Every time I took him anywhere I got comments on his crazy hair. So I figured it was time for a cut. I am certainly not brave enough to try to cut it myself, so I took him to a cheap little place in the mall.

Before: I think he had about 2-3" of extra height because of all that hair.





After: It's still wet and combed down in these pics, so it looks ok. But once it dried, it stuck straight up again. But at least it's just little short pieces now. lol




And bonus: Here's me at 12 weeks. :)