“Aren’t you glad that you did your chores and got your Dora toy?”

“Mmm, hmm!”

“But you know that you still have to do chores.”

Jaw drops open, “But I finished my chart!”

“Do you like to live here?”

“Yes, silly.”

“Everyone who lives here has to do chores.”

“But mom…”

Yesterday Eden walked out of the bathroom and said to me, “Mom, my butt just exploded.”

Later on that day the light bulb burned out in the bathroom and she came and told me, “Mom, the batteries died in the bathroom.”

It’s beyond time to start potty training this boy. I’m done holding my breath for extended periods while I try and wipe up a poop explosion. So I’ve decided that this week will be a crash course in sitting on the potty for Honor. The problem is that his brace is so hard to get off. And if I put it on under his diaper/pull up, it just gets disgusting. So this week will be brace free. My hope is that I can get him to get good enough at sitting on the potty that he can start to wear his brace under a pull up or, dare I say, underware (I wish I could find little tiny boxers) and we can keep his brace clean.

And just now as I paused from writing to make him sit on the potty, I realize that I’m crazy. I should just succumb to the fact that he’s going to be wearing diapers in High School. Even though I’ve done this before, it seems like all my old tricks don’t work. If he sits on the potty and goes, he gets a piece of candy. He could care less. This boy could care less about bribery motivation. I guess that I should not be surprised that my children have very strong opinions about things, although I don’t know where they get it from?

The other night Jim was doing dishes and chucked a wet, slimy paper towel at me. I peeled it off my arm and chucked it back at him and of course, missed. I went to go clean up my arm as he continued to do dishes and I assumed that he’d peel the towel off the wall. He didn’t. I just found it today. yuck.

Honor is feeling much better today, and the rest of us are feeling fine. I could tell last night that he was starting to feel better because the space between the times he was getting in trouble great decreased.

Honor came down with a fever around dinner time last night. He fell asleep on my shoulder a few minutes later and I transferred him to his bed. A couple of hours later he woke up, so I put a movie on for him and Eden in my room. Awhile later Eden came out to tell me that Honor was puking all over my bed. yum. He puked all night long, trying to get some sleep on the pallet I made for him on our bedroom floor.

Today he’s still got a little fever, but is keeping food down (so far!). He’s relaxing on the couch with his Batman pillow and Batman blanket wearing his Batman jammies. The puke bowl is close at hand. And I’m tired.

I’ve hardly had a chance to play around with my camera yet, but I took these a couple of weeks ago.

First let me say that these photos are taken with my new Nikon D50. I got an AMAZING deal on ebay for it brand new, with a Nikon case. And before I spend this whole post gushing about my new camera, I’ll move on to the birthday pictures.

She wanted a pony cake and a pony cake she got. Fancy.

They had a torturous time waiting until it was time to eat the cake.

She named this groovy girl after my mom. Note the 40 dollar car in the background. At least she’s still playing with it.

I woke up on the 11th at about 8am to what I can only describe as a rush of water. I remember reaching down to check if anything was wet, and when I realized nothing was, I figured that it was just a dream. When I stood up the water all rushed out. I was soaked. Jim had been laid off from his job two weeks before, so he was in the basement working on his computer. I yelled down at him and he came up to see that my water broke. We were both so excited, we knew that this was the real deal.

I took my time getting ready and packing for the hospital. I wasn’t contracting, but barely having cramps. When we got there, the midwife checked me and told me my options. The baby needed to be out within 18 hours of my water breaking or there would be a risk of infection and I’d have to be on antibiotics. She wanted to go ahead and induce labor at that point, but I was determined to not be induced. We decided that we’d go home and try to get labor going and meet her back at the hospital at 5pm if nothing was happening by then.

We walked and walked and walked. Nothing happened. We sat and watched a stupid movie. I was just not going into labor. So I finally decided that I didn’t want to wait until 5pm and we headed back to the hospital around 2 or 3. My midwife put some gel on my cervix. It sucked, I had to stay laying down on the bed for an hour. Labor started, but it wasn’t anything productive. The contractions were coming, but they weren’t progressing. I think it was finally around 8 or 9pm when I gave in and decided that I would go to the next step of induction. She put a 1/4 of a pill called cytotec on my cervix. Then was when the contractions started really coming.

I got in the hot tub for awhile. The contractions started to get really bad. After having Honor and knowing how fast I labored, I think that at this point things would have gone really fast. But not knowing that, and thinking that I had hours to go, I requested some IV medication. It knocked me out, but didn’t do anything for the pain. It probably slowed things down, but I think it was enough that I could finally sleep between contractions.

Sometime after midnight, the nurse came in to tell me that I could probably have another dose of the medication. She decided to check me first. I remember the amazing relief I felt when she told me, “You’re ready to push!” She called the midwife who had gone home to sleep for awhile. Everyone was so surprised that I was pushing already. And push I did, for over an hour. I was still so out of it from the drugs that I actually fell asleep between pushes. At one point, someone exclaimed, “I think she’s asleep.” It woke me up and I said, “I was dreaming about Bill Clinton.”

Eden was finally born at 1:41 am, Feb. 12. The midwife let Jim help deliver her and when she was almost out, she told me to pull her out. I pulled her onto my chest and she started crying. I remember being so relieved that she was out that I didn’t even ask what sex she was. My mom finally asked, “What is it!?” Jim checked and said, “it’s a girl!”

She was born with the grumpy face.

It still seems like it just happened, and it was four years ago. She’s gotten so big.

I can’t imagine what my life would be like without my little peanut. She has completely changed our lives, I love waking up to her little grumpy face every day. (And I’ll have to remember that when I tell her to do something and she replies, “Whatever.”)

I just finished putting Honor’s brace on. He cried and cried the whole time, saying “I don’t want my brace.” It was sad. When we were all done I told him he was a big boy and he said, “I not big, I widdle.”

And onto more cheerful things…

I sewed this! With a lot of help from my mom, who designed the pattern.

And I finished this modified cabled purse. I’m looking for test knitters, so let me know if you’d like to knit this! Thanks, I’ve got lots of test knitters now!

with broach

with bow

I also finished a shawl for my grandma, but this was the best picture I could get of it. The photo really doesn’t do it justice. It’s Kidsilk Haze and a Japanese yarn.