Communication

My conversation with Cadence earlier:

Nicole: What does your tortilla look like? Does it look like a fluffy cloud? A white cloud?
Cady: No not fluffy. No not cloud.
Nicole: Why because it's flat?
Cady: No, not flat.
Nicole: Cady, I'm going to tell you something because I love you, and I think it's something you will need to know in this life. People don't like it when you disagree with them on everything. They think it's annoying.
Cady: Noi-ing?
Nicole: Yes they think it's annoying. Try to say no, less.
Cady: No-less
Nicole: I mean try not to say "no" as much.
Cady: (looks at me through squinted eyes, then points at me) NO LUNCH!
Nicole: So glad to see I got my point across.

Blink (a writing of random-ness)

I rocked Wyatt to sleep earlier this morning for his nap. It's something I almost never do. Usually he begins to get restless after one verse of "Jesus Loves Me" and just wants to be laid down, and then he goes to sleep by himself. Today, for whatever reason, he let me snuggle him until he drifted off. I loved it. 

While Jake was home over the holidays I started to think about babies. Sometimes I think I would love to have  more children...maybe even a few more. Our kids are so great. I love them SO much, and I just can't help but think that a bigger family would just mean that much more love. I thought about how Wyatt was (at that time) about to turn one and he is getting so big and doing so much himself now. I thought about it, and thought about it, and thought about it. And then, I talked to Jake about it. We talked about the pros and cons for about 5 days... We had a wonderful 12 full days of Jake not working and getting to be with us most of that time. The chaos of our house was so much less than it normally is with just me and the kids. After that 5th day of talking to Jake about expanding our family it dawned on me that Jake would be heading back to work the next day;  where he leaves early, comes home late, and is out of town a lot... 

So for now, the 4 of us it will stay. 

My birthday is next week. Normally I don't tell people that it's even coming up, I just keep my mouth shut. Something inside me just really wants people to remember it, or me..maybe both. Isn't that silly? I know it is. I think it's that human-ness in me; that desire to be recognized by the world. 

So, this year I'm putting aside the foolishness. I am letting go of my need to be recognized by the universe and remembering that even if my sweet husband doesn't remember until the afternoon of, Jesus does, and He is enough for me.

As I rocked Wyatt his morning, and rubbed his soft hair on my cheek, and smelled the banana that he rubbed in his hair this morning at breakfast, I realized:

I'm going to blink and he'll be turning 28.

Stuff and Things

I'm behind...WAY behind. So, here's what's been going on here.

It snowed. Really it's pretty amazing. There was actually enough of it to play in. Cady and her good friend, Mer-Mer, had a blast together. Cady still asks about the snow every day. She wants to know when it will come back. "I don't know," I tell her, "We'll just have to ask Jesus for some more."

Wyatt really liked it outside, but after crawling around in the snow he would get cold and wet. Then he would cry. So snow was not Wyatt's favorite thing.

Wyatt had his 1 year check up last Wednesday. It went really well (other that all the shots!). He is 22 pounds and 9 ounces, and he is 29&1/2 inches tall, which means that he is right in the 50th percentile for both. A good sized little boy. He has 6 teeth, three on the top and three on the bottom (which I think is really weird so I can't wait for the 4th ones to pop in and even everything up!). He STILL isn't walking. As a matter of fact he isn't even interested. When you try to get him to, he just sits down. He did, however, take 3 steps for me on Sunday! It was so exciting!! Since then, nada.

Jake has a new job. It's still with the same company, just a new title. Now he responsible for a whole group of people. I know he'll be great. He's been practicing getting up earlier, because starting Monday morning, he needs to be at work by 6:15. We (mostly I mean I am) are hoping that this will start bringing him home earlier. Only time will tell.

I went to a training this weekend. I have been taking a class at the gym for a while now and REALLY like it. After learning my instructor will be leaving this summer, she told me she thought I would make a good replacement for her. After thinking about it a while, I decided to go for it. I had a blast and met some really great people. I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

Cady is such a sweet little girl. I learned yesterday, that at school, when a new little kid comes in she is the one to help them feel welcome. She will tell them it's okay and pat their back and tell them there mommy will be back soon. Isn't that SO sweet? You're looking at one proud momma!

I'm sure there's more, I just can't remember... 

LAZY

I'm not lazy, really I'm not. I know that someone out there is trying to help me, really I do. But whoever you are, this is me kindly asking you to stop.

There is a reason why, when you come to my house, the rolls of toilet paper are sitting on the back of the toilet and are not on the holder.

It's not the first time this has happened, and it always happens after a group of people has been here, so I don't even know who it is. And whoever you are, you don't even need to appologize... just please stop putting the roll on the holder.

 Toilet paper is expensive!

Where was I when this happened, you ask?

I was moving laundry from the washer to the dryer...

1!

 My SWEET little boy turned 1 year old yesterday.

It's kind of exciting, and kind of sad all at the same time.



We celebrated his birthday Friday with all our immediate family, and a few close friends.

It was so much fun!

There were streamers, and balloons, and pinwheels.

There were hamburgers, hot dogs, chips and beans.

And, there were CUPCAKES!



 

It was all  yummy, and made the birthday boy very happy!

Seriously, I can't believe he's 1 already!!

Thank you, Jesus, for the beautiful blessing of Wyatt 1 year ago!

Oh, Christmas

You know how in the movies, everyone wakes up on Christmas morning and it's just this time of awe;

everyone is excited about Santa coming, and there are a lot of magical moments and heart stirring speeches?

Ours was like that, kind of, but not really...

 

After waiting for Daddy and Wyatt to finally get out of bed, we got to see what Santa brought. It was very exciting! We all got new tennis shoes, Cady got a doctor's kit and Wyatt got a huge bag of stacking blocks. There were new jammies, books, balls, movies and candy. We were all having a great time.

We opted to not open presents under the tree until after church, so we began to get ready. Cady was sitting  on the counter helping daddy cook breakfast,

and then suddenly we were here:

Somehow Cady fell off of the counter top, hitting the front of her head on the tile floor, and then also hitting the back of her noggin on the refrigerator. At first everything seemed okay. She cried and wanted to be held. You could tell it had scared her. But then she couldn't stay awake, her little eyes were rolling back in her head, and that's when we got scared.

We got the the ER at about 9:45. They, thankfully, were very slow and they got us right in. After answering some questions and an initial check by the nurse, the doctor came into see us. He said that he was sending us for x-rays. After having those taken, and the doctor looking at them he came in to tell us that he was pretty sure he was seeing a fracture. That was when this momma started not handling it very well.

I thought we were going to show up and they were going to tell us to watch her for the next 24 hours and then it would be over. The thought honestly hadn't occurred to me that it would be more serious.

He decided that to be sure we needed to have a CT. So we waited around for the CT guy to get there, and while we waited we "practiced" being very still so that they would be able to do the scan. Practice was going really well, until we had to take out her earrings. Then she got very upset; not because it hurt to take them out, but BECAUSE we took them out. She yelled all the way down the hall to the CT room, "I WANT MY EARRINGS BACK!", "MY EARRINGS!", and other things to make it clear that she wanted her earrings back in her ears.

When we got to the CT room she was so upset that she couldn't be still. So we had to go back to our room and wait for the doc to decide what he wanted to do. They decided that they would have to give her something so that they could get the scan. Thankfully it was oral and worked really fast and they were able to get the scans done all with in about half an hour.

After 4 hours in the hospital, we were relieved when the doc came back in and said that he must have read the x-rays wrong. There was no fracture, it was a little cluster of blood vessels. Usually, he said, you can tell the difference he just wasn't able to on Cady's x-ray for some reason. So, as soon as she woke up we headed home.

 The rest of the day was pretty good. Cady was a little loopy and clumsy for the rest of the day. We came home and opened gifts, and then headed out to Mom and Dad's where Cady and Wyatt, Jake and I were all pretty spoiled by our loving family, and enjoyed blowing out a candle and eating cake to celebrate Jesus' Birthday. 

Oh, Christmas. Maybe someday we'll have the movie magic. Just not this year.

Funny Words

Jake and I have been shopping for a fireplace screen. We have never actually used our fireplace, but we thought we might this year, especially since my wonderful father-in-law brought us a bunch of firewood. So, we thought we would get our fireplace ready for a fire, even though it's still 50 degrees here every day.
Tonight we learned a lot of new "fire place" words and ideas of things we might need. It was all very educational.

Like:
You are supposed to have a cricket on top of your mantle for good luck.
There are things that you can buy that "hold" your matches for you
There are firebacks that you hang in the back of your fireplace just to make it pretty. They start at a mere $350.
You can purchase a popcorn popper for only $100; for decorative use only.
Andirons are these little stands that work just like a grate, but they have pretty little decorations on them and cost 10 times more.
If you have a fire burning stove, you can put a pot of water on top for a humidifier (really I didn't know this, but Jake said his mom use to do it all the time)
You can purchase a little device that rolls your newspaper into little logs for you. Jake thought it rolled each piece of firewood in newspaper, but I'm pretty sure that's not what it was saying.

But the best things we found were the section labeled: Ash Cans and Coal Hods. We were trying to figure out which one was which.

Me: "I think this is the coal hod and this one is the ash can."
Jake: "I think I'd rather just have an ash hoe"

And it's funny, because there really IS an ash hoe...
Bahaha!