I bought the kids new hats for crazy cheap online and they finally came. Well the kids wouldn’t take them off!
Katherine happened to come that day with her animal hat! So all three of them ran around with their hats on ALL DAY LONG!
Mallory woke up from her nap and came out with her hat on and I said, you took a nap in your hat? She said, no I put it beside me so when I woke up I could wear it again.
On Monday this week it was so warm out. I had to work that day – but I ran in the house and told the girls to go outside and make a snowman because it was a perfect day for it. When I got done with work they had this adorable little fella right out the shop door waiting for me!
They built him all on their own!
She skipped nap that day – can you tell? Zoned out! Snuggling with an ice cold snowman!
Poor snowman didn’t make it 24 hours! It was so warm out that by the next morning when we woke up he was leaning way back and before 9am he had fallen over!
Saturday afternoon rolled around and now Jesse is going stir crazy. He got the RZR out and I woke up Max from his nap and we went for a quick ride out back behind the house.
This is how I woke up Max. He is out cold! Sleeping hard. I whisper…
pssst.
pssst.
*his eyes start to slowly open and he begins to wiggle*
pssst. wanna go on a rzr ride?
*boom! he is scrambling to get up as fast as he can!*
He starts listing off items he needs to go on the ride. “Socks. Jacket. Boots. Hat.”
Mallory loves to sit in the front.
Which leaves Max and I in the back.
Loving every single second of this ride.
So is she.
So am I! It is a lot of fun! More fun in the summer when it is warm – but still good fun in the winter.
Jesse started making new trails out in the woods/swamp. A tree blocking our path… see the concern look on Mallory’s face?
While we backed up and worked on a new path out – I was attempting to take pictures.
But we were jerking around a lot.
And then all of sudden we would take off and and my whole shot was ruined. I really liked this mossy tree and wanted more pictures of it.
She kept saying “don’t go home yet.” if Jesse got too close to home.
The kids need big long rides when it comes to RZR rides. If we come back too soon the tears will come!
We have been stuck in the house for so many days I lost count! I shouldn’t really say that – we have gone places… but like to the grocery store and to places like that. We haven’t seen people we know in so many days! : )
I think it has been two weeks.
But who is counting?
Friday the kids were anxious and needed something anything to do. All week it was well into the below zero temps – so outside wasn’t even an option, but Friday it had warmed up a bit. And it was snowing and pretty outside.
Mallory asked to play, Momma Says. Which is basically Simon Says… but I play military style! She likes to do some exercise routines with me so I’ll shout… do 5 mountain climbers! She gets down and does them. Now remember, I said she loves and requested to play! : ) I’m not some crazy drill sargent mom. Just a pretend one.
So we played some Momma Says and my last one was “Momma says go outside and play in the snow!” Her eyes lit up and she was said, Really?!! Yes! Go!
I thought we could go out and shovel off the driveway. I bought them little shovels on Black Friday and they love them! Well… Mallory loves it. Max just stood in the doorway of the garage with his shovel leaned up against him and he wasn’t moving or stepping out into the snow or doing any sort of shoveling. This day he felt way more comfortable watching Mallory & I work.
So Mallory and I are shoveling. I love to shovel. So it doesn’t bother me to do it. I don’t know how long we were out there. Not very. Maybe 15 minutes. Then Jesse gets home from work, grabs Max, and hops on the lawn mower (which is turned into a snow blower for the winter) and they start blowing all the snow out of the driveway. Mallory yells “Good idea Dad!” Apparently shoveling was way too much work for her!
Then she climbed up on the snow hill and started playing while the boys finished the driveway.
I grabbed my camera and wondered around outside trying to catch it snowing. Very hard to do!
The boys finished the driveway and were cold and went in. Mallory and I stayed out and she made a snow angel.
Then she was done. I snapped two more pictures and we went in.
Last week after we finished working on Mallory’s bible verse I was writing it down on a sticky note to stick to the fridge. I have a horrible memory… so I will forget what it is while I am trying to help her memorize it. Sounds silly doesn’t it. Usually Mallory memorizes before me and she ends up teaching it to me! Terrible.
She wanted to write her verse too. So she wrote love.
Then I had her practice her name again.
Then she drew a picture of herself.
Circle head and two lines for legs.
I seriously can’t get over this stage of drawing and writing! Love it!
Today was totally better! Amazing! I still heard more then enough whining today – but the yucky gross stuff… NONE!
We forced ourselves to stay home and oh man! I’m so out of creative ideas to entertain these kids! Legos anyone?! I know we have looked at these legos a million times this week… but maybe today they are different!
Seriously! How cute are legos now?! And the colors!
Mallory was building a tower… a flat tower I guess. And Max was in the process of being Total Max as I snapped this next picture.
Then we had birthday parties and I had to sing “Happy Birthday” to Mallory.
I have a serious cupcake craving! Like serious! And apparently she does too – as she is licking this lego one.
I got these below farm legos for Max for Christmas. CUTE!
Love this next picture! That Max can’t stay out of my pictures – but I’m loving them!
Ah! He found his own toys! Take a look at the placement of his pants!
When he is really concentrating or focused on doing something he opens his mouth like this!
We are ready to have a more healthy week! : )
Well. Thursday night came. Midnight rolled around and a little blonde girl is beside my bed telling me her belly hurts and she wants to sleep in my room. She brings her blanket and rolls into a ball on the floor beside my bed. 3 seconds later. Momma. I think need to go potty. Run!
30 minutes later. Jesse is now sicker then sick. Sick. Full on sick.
30 minutes later. I hear Max coughing in his crib. Then I hear crying. I need to get to him but Mallory is sleeping on my floor right beside my bed and I can’t see her (I swear I have night blindness – I so can’t see in the dark. Jesse actually makes fun of me for it.) I some how get out of my room safely without waking her or squishing her beneath my feet.
I flip the light on in Max’s room because I have this horrible feeling. Confirmed!! He threw up! I take him to the bathroom set him on the stool in front of the toilet… as if he knows what to do. Leave him there and run back to his room get all the blankets out of his bed and for some (we’ll call it act of God) he missed his precious blankie! I scoop him back up and snuggle him. All he wants to do is get back in his bed and sleep. Whew! So he went right back to sleep. Off I went to do laundry. When I came up from throwing blankets in the laundry I glanced at the time and I thought… only a mom would be doing laundry at this hour!!
Well Jesse was sick for a good chunk of the rest of the night. And I had such horrible heart burn and felt queasy and was just restless and uncomfortable.
7:30 Friday morning Jesse says… We are not going on our trip are we? Nope!
I was feeling the best between Jesse and I so I went to work out in the shop (the huge downfall of a business owner – you must run it no matter what!) and Jesse laid on the couch while the kids watched a movie.
I’m not kidding. The amount of television these kids have watched would make a person sick! hahaha! No pun intended!
I checked in on them around “lunch” and snuggled them and then tucked them down for naps. I so didn’t want to go back to work. I was exhausted. But I made a piece of toast and apple juice and sucked it up! It actually went very well! I was starting to get better! I did shut down the business an hour early and we laid around some more.
Saturday rolled around and I made pancakes and Jesse made bacon. Everyone ate. We were all feeling somewhat better. Nothing like jump up and down lets party. However, we were all stir crazy and would probably hurt each other if we had to have one more day of laying around. (We are an active family.)
Jesse had a great idea! We could just drive around for a bit and look at campers. (We would like to do some camping this summer – and tent life is so over for us.) We could get the portable DVD player out and they could watch a movie. This would force them to rest and relax and maybe even nap!
It totally worked! The kids were all for getting out of the house. Then we pushed it too far and decided to drive a little further to look at trailers.
Before we head home Mallory announces that her belly hurts. Um. Okay. Do you have to go to the bathroom? Yes. Perfect. We are right by a gas station. I take her in and holy wow! That’s all I will say.
On our way home (like an hour away) all we hear is Max, “my belly hurt. my belly hurt. momma. momma.” At one point I told Jesse… I don’t think he is faking. I think he is feeling sick. Sometimes I wonder if he just repeats what he hears and he has been hearing a whole lot of ‘my belly hurt’ this week.
Then.
It.
Happened.
He threw up! In the truck! All over himself.
What do you do?!
So we pulled over on the side of the road and we stripped him. Now mind you. We are in a wind advisory. 55mph winds!
It was horrible! It was so disgusting! This is so much harder to do when your stomach is not feeling well either!
I tucked his naked little belly into his blanket (that some how once again [by the act of God] was usable – not perfect, but usable) buckled him back into car seat and we continued home. He didn’t say another peep. He felt so much better. He even feel asleep!
So when we get home I grabbed him. You know that hold of grabbing him under the arms and holding him as far away from you as possible. Yup. That is what I did. I took him straight to the bathroom for a bath!
Mally wanted one too, of course. Fine. I get the water going and they get in the tub while it is filling up. I ever so sneakily grab both their blankets and take them to the washing machine. Thinking I can get these suckers washed and dried before either of them notice. Come back to the bathroom. Now mind you the tub is not even full yet – I’m still in the process of filing it up, but they are in it getting the toys out and playing already.
I look in the tub and well gasp and see horrible horrible horrible colored water! I say, Mallory! Did he throw up again?!!? She was playing with her toys and then looked over at him and said… I don’t know. OH! I guess he did! Max, did you throw up? He didn’t say anything. Just sitting there with yellow gross water swirling around him. NOOO! He full on pooped in the freaking tub!!! MAXWELL!
I shut the water off. Scoop up Mallory and throw her into the shower (so thankful for separate tub & shower) and get Max out into the shower.
Now. What. Seriously. Am I in the Twilight Zone?!
I scrub the heck out of them and I’m thinking… how am I going to tell Jesse this. He is upstairs scrubbing a carseat.
So… um… I don’t know what else to say. I was totally dumped into parenthood this week. That is all I could think this week. This is being a parent. This is totally being a parent. No one else gets this. Unless you are a parent. You get me. You totally get me. You totally feel for me. You want to hug me – but then you don’t because you don’t want our germs to get to your kids.
I have no idea where we picked this nasty bug up at… but we are going to show this bug who is boss pretty soon!
This past Saturday the kids & I went to hang out with my sister and her kids. We don’t do this very often so my kids were SO excited to see their cousins. We met up at McDonalds and had the kids play and burn off as much energy as possible. Then we went to my Mom’s house to do some pinterest projects. Which I tried to take pictures of but I never took pictures of the final outcome!!! So the pictures I do have won’t tell you anything! Grr! We made jewelry holders out of old plates (but Shannon just used her REAL plates from her CUPBOARD!) and old tiny glass vases! Then we took our old t-shirts and turned them into infinity scarves! How cool!? I know!
Anyway.
The kids and I got home and Jesse and our sales guy were out in our shop working on the RZR for a show we have this weekend. Of course the kids wanted to go out there and see our sales guy and to see Jesse. Well I couldn’t get Mallory to come in – she wanted to stay and work with them. They were letting her hold the flash light!
Max and I came in and we ate supper together just the two of us and he was being so damn cute! I couldn’t stand it! I grabbed my phone and took a video of him without him knowing! Because if he knows I am taking it – he just wants to watch it and there is nothing to watch because he wouldn’t let me take the video! : )
So here he is eating his cookie & chatting with me.
Yes my boy drinks out of pink cups! I can’t keep track of his cups. I think we left this one at a Grandma’s house because I don’t know where it went.
And my phone would not let me stop recording the video. So I apologize for the awkwardness of the end but I couldn’t stop it and finally just had to hit all kinds of buttons and it eventually stopped.
How many of you want to come have cookies with my little buddy? I know! He is totally precious! : )
So Monday when I talked about the kids being kind of grumpy and turning into couch monsters and tv zombies… well… I should have known!!
They both went down for naps and slept great. Max slept hard. I usually wake him up at 3:30 (that has been a 3 hour nap) and I decided I would just finish up the laundry and put away their clothes in their room and that noise would probably wake him up. Nope! Sleeping hard!
He woke up about 4 and was very clingy again and I was holding him and Mallory wanted help writing a number so I bent down with Max in my arms to help her. Max coughed. Then I noticed… he threw up!! I run him to the kitchen and threw up again – not to get into details but it was all over him and me!! I literally stripped right down to the nitty gritty in my kitchen with the curtains wide open and booked it to my room! Ugh! City life!
After all that he wondered around for the next hour complaining of being hungry! Hungry? Yes, he kept saying hungry over and over. I wouldn’t give him anything because supper was so close to being done and then he could eat. I don’t think he actually ate too much when it was finally time to eat.
Tuesday was library day and he seemed to be totally fine. He never had anymore episodes and was in good spirits. So we went to the library and did our normal day. Tuesday night, put the kids to bed and Jesse and I just finished up our exercise routine and Jesse sees Mally sneaking out of her room down the hall. He says, “Mallory time for bed.” She says, “My belly hurts.” I make my way to her (I was on the verge of passed out exhausted on the floor from our exercise routine) thinking I bet she doesn’t feel good. I’m just going to go sit in the bathroom with her. As I am making my way to her Jesse says to me “I think she is faking she was just in there playing with Max. UUUUGHH!!!”
She lost it! She threw up right there in the hallway!
And she didn’t stop!
We put her to bed with a bucket and she kept throwing up. After about an hour of it I told Jesse I was sleeping on her floor. I’m such a solid hard sleeper that I wasn’t going to hear her and I didn’t want Jesse getting up with her because he needed to be work at 6am the next day. So I made myself a nest on her floor and their room is tiny and when I laid my head down and opened my eyes… my face was inches away from her bucket! OH MY WORD! I’m gonna catch this! So I flipped to the other end… now I was few more inches away.
The last time I checked the clock it was 1am and she was still throwing up. By then she had nothing left and was dry heaving. My heart was broken for the girl! And she was so bound and determined she was not going to get any on her blankie!! She had already witnessed me taking out arm loads of pillows, blankets, sheets… that her precious blankie was not going!!!
After she finally stopped and really truly fell asleep… I got it! I had that funny feeling all along that I was next. And I was! About 4:30 I was up!
I crawled back into my nest on the floor and tried to sleep until Mallory was up at 7 something ready to start her day. Thankfully when we got up Jesse had not gone to work yet and he called in and stayed home to take care of us.
Mallory seemed to do pretty well on Wednesday. They watched a lot of shows and just stayed low and tried to push the fluids.
Today (Thursday) she woke up so hungry. She wanted cereal. Then she wanted a waffle. Which she pawned most of her waffle off on her brother to eat… to which she proudly proclaimed “That’s being a good neighbor! (Sharing with her brother.) Her bible verse this week was about loving your neighbor. Side story – it is amazing how quickly she picks up on this stuff! We did her bible verse and story and then we went to read library books. One of the books was about a duck driving a truck and gets stuck in the muck. All these friends come help him get out of the muck and the duck leaves in his truck with his friends still stuck in the muck. Mallory says, “That was not loving your neighbor!” Brilliant! You are so right!
Well probably 30 minutes after breakfast she is laying on the floor in a ball under her blankie and she doesn’t move. Then Max starts attacking her and she doesn’t like it, which usually she will play right back with him. I went over and I touched her and she was warm! I put her on the couch with her blankie and she never moved.
I asked her if she wanted to take a bath and she did. She got a little glimmer of excitement for it. She wanted bubbles. I showed them how our jet tub makes more bubbles. BIG mistake! Now they want the huge mountain mega bubbles every! single! time!
They weren’t in that tub for 5 minutes and she was wanting out. She never wants out! I said, why do you want out? I want to go play with my blankie. oh no! She is sick! Really sick!
I got her out and she did. She took her blankie and crawled back on that couch and didn’t move. I put a movie on and she laid there and actually fell asleep. It wasn’t very long – but just long enough that I think she was able to break her tiny little fever. Because her blankies went flying when she woke up and she sat up and moved to her chair to color.
As she is sleeping on the couch – Max can’t stay away from her! He keeps yelling, Maayee. Up. Maayee. Sleeping. And petting her like she is some sort of animal!
They both went down for naps and took good naps. Jesse got her up and she must have had a bit of an appetite because they ate a few snacks – cheese & pickles. Who eats cheese & pickles when you have the flu? Gross. I wasn’t as sick as Mallory and just the thought of it sends me gagging!
She seems to be better tonight when I put her to bed. She was running around here playing hide & seek with Jesse and then kicking the ball around. She tried to eat supper but she said her belly didn’t like it. And we didn’t force it. : )
Here is to hoping for a positive flu-free weekend! : ) We have a hotel booked with a swimming pool! Mallory is working hard on getting better so she can swim!
On Monday the kids woke up with little tiny runny noses. Nothing major at all. However, they were very fussy and emotional on top of it. And they didn’t want to do anything besides lay around and veg in front of the TV.
I distracted the fussiness and couch junkies by getting out the box of playdough.
It totally worked!
Do you think her hair will be normal before she graduates high school? I was doing her hair for church on Sunday and she requested curls… well I had the flat iron plugged in so I just straightened it (she had a braid in the day before so she was a kinky mess) and curled the ends under a bit. She is standing on her stool looking in the mirror watching me and she says “I have a mohawk!” Um, yes, my dear you do! I got it to lay down – but I’m out of hairspray right now. Then we put a headband on her, but she takes it off in the truck on the way to church and we always (every. single. time.) forget to put it back on her when we get to church!! ugh! This day she let me put in a ponytail because I bribed her with “Mallory I won’t comb your hair if I can put it in a pony tail.” She by far hates getting her hair combed over getting a pony tail! So that trick worked! However, she has been known to take her ponytails out too! She also insisted on dressing herself this day too! OMG! This girl! I put her in this cherry shirt which is longer – so I thought leggings would be so cute! I put her in leggings, but they were capri length leggings. Oh my! You would of thought those leggings had teeth and were eating her legs! She was freaking out because they were too tight and were hurting and she wanted them to cover her entire leg! I asked her to just try them for a bit and if they still hurt she could take them off. Off they came and she went in her room and put on a too-big skirt. Um… Mallory… that doesn’t cover all of your legs either? I know, but I like this one. I’m cute in this one. Well then an hour later the skirt came off and she put candy cane pants on! Dang ugly Christmas parties – I need to put the ugly Christmas clothes away, but I don’t they end up back in her drawer and then she wears them! I let her.
And that is the life of Mallory! Back to the Playdough. : )
They got all kinds of new playdough tools for Christmas. Popsicle Making and Breakfast Making!
Love this next picture of Mallory “pretending” to eat her popsicle in the background. She tells me she is pretending – but she really licks it!
Little Maxshwell found my lap. He didn’t want to sit on his own chair today – wanted to be right on my lap.
The breakfast tool kit makes smoothies… but if you put the brown playdough in there it looks like a chocolate shake! Here is Mallory with chocolate ice cream!
Playdough tools from one end of the table to the other!
I came in for lunch one day last week and before I headed back to work… Max was relaxing on the couch watching an episode of Mickey Mouse before he took his nap. Belly hanging out and everything.
The girls had locked themselves into Mallory’s room with a note outside the door…
And this bell tied to the door with part of her curtain.
I love love love love when they play like this! Their imaginations run wild! They were both squished into Mallory’s toddler bed pretending to sleep.
I did ring the bell. To say goodbye to Mallory before I headed back to work. She didn’t care. She yelled bye. And went back to sleep.
