Is It Naptime Yet

We had a larger party for Eden on Saturday. It was just family. We had it at the Lee’s, or our adopted family. They live close to us, so I asked to have it there for two reasons: so it wouldn’t be so far away for Jon’s family (or families live on opposite ends of the valley and his parents have a hard time traveling across it), and because our house is too small to fit all our family, so if we had it at there house and then they wouldn’t have to travel to my parents for the party! I live 30 miles round trip from my parents, which mean the Lee’s live about 34 miles round trip. It really eats gas and time.
I designed and made the cake. We just had sandwiches and turkey wraps for dinner.

This was before the candle was lit, but I was taking a video while we sang.
Eden took a while to dig in but she had fun once she did.

Some of the Lee kids. The first one on the Left is there cousin. Then it’s Kierra, Jacob, and Jarom in the helmet.

My dad, he was sleeping before I took this picture.
Brien (BIL) playing with Eden, for whatever reason she liked holding the fork with him.

Ooohhhh, a card and money!
Eden opening gifts.

Family watching the opening of gifts. It’s Dara (Jon’s sister), then Andrea (my sister) and Brien (BIL).

A hat she got. She didn’t leave it on for long though.
Elana(SIL)(Jon’s sister) and Tommy(BIL), then my MIL and Dara.

I still can’t belive she’s one. I guess I’ll just have play with my girls more and do less chores since they’re growing up so fast.

I had my surgery today. They took a long piece of skin, about 1 1/2 inches off of my right shoulder area. I have two layers of stitches. One on the inside that will dissolve in about six months and an outside set that will be removed in a couple of weeks. Jon will be doing the bandaging for the next couple weeks. I’m not feeling any pain, which is good and I’m being pampered by my honey. I’m not allowed to do anything today and I have to be careful of lifting for the next four weeks. It’s already kinda hard because I want to cuddle with Eden, but Jon has to hand her to me and I have to hope she doesn’t pull any acrobatics that would make me do any sudden movements, especially with my dominant arm.
I hope that I can start do minimal type lifting with Eden in about a week and a half. Getting her in and out of the crib and keeping her away from places she shouldn’t play. I’m to teach the Gospel doctrine lesson on Sunday, so I should get going on that. I’ve read over it, but I need to organize my thoughts and get even more familiar with the verses. Hopefully I continue to feel well so the party can be a success and I can teach on Sunday. I just feel bad for Jon. He’ll have to have the diaperbag, scriptures, and Eden. I’ll pretty much be able to hold Lilah’s hand. He’ll also have to take her to the bathroom at church because I won’t be able to lift her onto the toilet at church. I guess we’ll figure all the little obstacles out as we go.
I know this is a minimal surgery, it’s really that it’s on my shoulder and has a high ability for tearing, or healing badly of I do too much. I want to be back to normal as soon as possible with as few problems as possible

So I’m feeling better about the whole not having a second car thing and possibly having a third child, at least for now, when it comes time to making one so I can have one, I may be a little anxious because we still haven’t come to an agreement on when we should have this third child. Overall I think I was feeling better but when the whole car thing happened I just suddenly lost all my positive flow and reverted back to being negative about everything. I admit I wanted Jon to want to help me out of my sadness with with every fiber of his body, and to say ‘lets see what we can do to get us a second car.’ But atlas he felt like he was doing a good job providing, so the fact that I was upset was more, ‘you should find your own happiness, not have me fix it’, at least that’s how summarize his response, and it’s not in a ‘I don’t care manner’ but in the ‘I love you but it’s really your trial to overcome’ manner. He has said that if it is so important to me we can get a second car. I’m very tempted to take him up on this and have us buy a gas efficient Hyundai or Kia, something that has a good reputation but wouldn’t cost a fortune. I have come to the conclusion that I will be much more happier if we get more debt paid off, and money saved, and in exchange I can hopefully get more of the minivan of my dreams, to a point of course. I want a Nissan Quest, I really just like the way they look. I’ve only driven one minivan, so I have no idea how it handles or if really it would be the best. I like some features such has the fold down seat. Jon thinks the Kia minivan might be a a good deal. I agree that they have a good reputation, and if they have some good features I could go for that. Next year when we need to buy one I hope we can get some awesome used minivan, buying new is a waste of money unless it is a really good deal. I will try to remember that it may not work out as I hope. I know I won’t get everything I want, but I do want a cool minivan. I’m not ready to be a minivan mom yet, so I must have a cool minivan. I wouldn’t mind getting the Subaru SUV either. I suppose I’ll keep my options open 😉

Dear Eden,
You’re one!! I can’t believe you’ve been with our family for only a year. You’ve been so much fun, that’s it’s hard to imagine what we did without you. You have such an infectious smile and you are so kind to almost everyone. You’ve recently started doing a little dance when we sing songs. You’re favorites seem to be “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands” and “Roll your arms.” You’ll dance to anything as long as we dance with you. (Your dance is holding your arms out and doing a little twist at your waist. We’ll get a recording of it later today or this week.) You have so much fun with your big sister and you want to be just where she is, even if that means laying on top of her. You try to build blocks with her, but you’re just not coordinated enough. You can be demanding, but you are still so easy to care for. I can usually read your needs, though you like to throw me for a loop every once in a while. You love staying up at nap time with Lilah and you guys talk to one another. You’re just starting to gain more confidence on standing and walking with our help, and I’m sure you will take off walking as soon as you realize that you’ll be able to keep up with Lilah better. You’re always happy. You do get grumpy, but you happy around 85% of the time. It’s only when you’re frustrated because we took something away, or you’re in timeout that you’re unhappy. You love blankets. You’ll crash your little head into an blanket you see. You love you’re parents. You go crawling to the door whenever you hear that Daddy’s home or Mommy. (It may be that you like to go outside too.) You are a joy to have. I can’t wait to see how your personality grows this next year.

Love,
Mom

Here are some pictures of your birthday. We just had a cake because we’re having a party this Saturday.
You loved your first taste of cake. There’s also a picture of Lilah’s finger with frosting. For some reason she wanted your Daddy to take pictures of her finger with frosting, and for some reason he did. I thought it was funny so that’s why I’m posting it.

Jon’s parents were going to give us there old car. An 88 Chevy Caprice. When I went on Saturday to get it smogged we made the discovery that it had recently been hit with, what we guess, a ball, which broke the windshield. It’s on the driver side. It has a shattered portion with lines going through the rest of it. Dad wanted to get it smogged anyways, but I decided, well Jon and I decided, that it might be better for them to just sell it to whomever wants to buy it and let them replace the windshield. We drove it around also, and the air didn’t appear to work either. It was a disappointing day.
I want a second car. I want to have some since of freedom or feeling that I can go and do things without inconveniencing Jon or my family. I want to be able to go and socialize with other mothers, but it’s hard to do with one car. We could afford another car, but we want to pay the mortgage down. I could also drive Jon to work and pick him up, so I can do things with the girls and other people. It’s such a pain, and it uses a lot of gas though. I guess I feel isolated and I was hoping a second car would liberate me and give me freedom and a new hope at finding more happiness at being home with the girls. Some days are great other days I get so annoyed with Lilah. I just don’t know what to do to entertain her sometimes. right now she’s sitting on the couch reading her books to herself. It’s quite cute.
I don’t know what it at the root of all this glumness. I want a second car, but part of me is relieved that the problems with the boat have happened. Part of me is desperately sad that they’ve happened. it’s more, is it worth it to fix the problems or should we just pass it on to who wants to fix it. Jon’s mom thinks that with all the little problems that we’ve had, maybe we’re not suppose to have the car. She may be right. I guess we’ll cut our loss. The semester will start and hopefully I’ll find something to focus my energy on. I should focus more on the girls, but it’s nice to not always be a mom. We’ll secure our finances and pay off the house debt so we can buy a minivan next year, either when one of the mortgages is paid off, or for when we have a third child. Which brings up my anxiety about having a third child.
I don’t know if I’m ready. I fell unhappy often enough as a mother that I worry about having a third and bringing it into my negative environment. I feel overwhelmed with two on days. Am I ready for a third? Part of it is also space. Where would we put a third child? Mostly it’s me. I’m so keenly aware of my shortcomings has a mother that I just don’t know if I could mentally handle having a third. I want to be happy with the two I have before I have another. I know that I have a lot of work to do. I do find that I am having more patience with Lilah, but I still need to work on it. I am enjoying my time with them, but I feel at a lost of what to do with them, as in to keep them occupied and happy, hence why I wanted a second car so I could go to libraries and other places of interest with them.
We’re also trying to get Lilah to stop whining. She often whines a question and then we tell her to ask nicely and she says nicely please….and whatever she wanted. She also repeatedly asks things even after we’ve said no or given her an answer. Our new line of defense to these problems will be to ignore her until she politely asks, and to ignore her after we’ve given her an answer. I think the asking politely without whining will take practice and it may take a few times of explaining to have her understand that we’re not ignoring her but trying to get her to ask politely the first time rather then whining the first time.
Anyways
I also need to get the spiritual part of my life in line. I’m horrible a reading my scriptures, but I do try to pray everyday. I need to find myself relying on the Lord more and bringing the teachings of Christ more into my home. I went to a fireside last night for our ward missionaries. It was to encourage and help us to have faith to share the gospel with others. I found myself thinking about how I need to get the gospel more into my everyday life so I can have faith to share it.

It’s almost ten and I haven’t feed Eden her breakfast yet, she has nursed though. I suppose i should go and take care of my two darling girls.

On Monday I asked Jon out for a date. We went last night. We went to a restaurant inside the New Orleans Hotel and Casino. Koji, I think. Anyways I had my first taste of Sushi. It was Snapper. It was….well….raw fish. It reminded me of something I’ve had but I never figured out what. Jon had ordered the tuna sushi so he let me try his second piece. I found the snapper to have a stronger taste than the tuna, and I liked the tuna a little better. I also had a cashew chicken dish which was yummy. We had the strawberry ice cream desert they serve there also. I don’t know how to explain it. It was strawberry ice cream encased in this strawberry…chewy…casing. Obviously I’m a savant with words. It was tasty also. Our dinner was delicious. We had about another hour before we had to be home, so we went to UNLV. I know exciting. I wanted to go to some mall and go shopping, but since we decided we shouldn’t spend anymore money, we decided to go walk around campus. We also visited Jon’s new office area, so now I know where to find him. It was a beautiful night and I truly love certain parts of UNLV’s campus. The trees are mature and the grass is green and it’s has some beautiful buildings, others are nicely hidden by the mature trees. We came home and Eden crawled as fast as she could to see me, then I had to leave her to take our wonderful babysitter home.

Money- so how much do you pay a babysitter? This is only the second time we’ve had to pay one. The first time I think we gave her about $4 an hour. We have two wonderfully behaved children, I really didn’t feel like I was taking advantage of her, but when you’re only gone two hours, and that’s all the cash you have on you…it seemed okay. Last night she got just over $6.50 an hour. Both times we also feed her dinner, our specialty of frozen pizza. When we were talking about how much in the car, I only had $13 on me, so it would be $13 or $20, since that’s the least amount you can withdraw form an ATM, and we don’t like doing cash back at grocery stores. Anyways, Jon’s point was that she’s taking care of our children and we’re only going to pay her $4 an hour. I also thought, heck for our two angels that’s pretty good. (Lilah truly is better behave when she’s around others, so she’s not that hard to watch and neither is Eden.) Either way, our babysitter is great and doesn’t charge a certain amount, it’s whatever you can give her. She also loves kids. I guess sometimes she’ll get $4 an hour, other times it might be $6, either way we truly are appreciative of her watching our children so we can have alone time. The funny thing is that the connecting moments don’t come when we’re out, at least not for us, but late at night when we should be sleeping, and one of us just needs to talk, and then we talk about so many things until it really is time for bed. I love to go out though and just have my husband. No bags in tow. No kids in arms. Just us holding hands, that swing back and forth and sometimes run into the others rear end. 🙂 (well that happens with Children in tow anyways)

So a couple of weeks ago I had a mole removed off my back. It turns out that it was precancerous, or severely abnormal, whichever you want to call it. As the doctor put it, it was one step away from becoming cancerous. So now they basically want to do a surgery on my shoulder as though it was cancerous, or Melanoma. After the surgery I’m not suppose to lift anything heavy afterwards, yeah right, Eden has become kinda needy lately. I’m getting it done on a Friday, so I’ll have the weekend to recover, but I have Eden’s first birthday party the Saturday afterwards. 🙂 I’ll just have Jon bake the cake and I’ll frost it. I hate that it’s on my back though. I sleep on my side and my back, so it will be quite annoying to avoid my back. I was a little scared that it was precancerous, I mean what if I hadn’t gone and seen the doctor and it had become cancerous. People die from Melanoma. In reality it was just precancerous and it may have been two months, two years or even twenty years, though I doubt that long, away from becoming cancerous. They lacerated another suspicious looking mole on my arm yesterday. I’ll get called for those results, and when we do the follow-up appointment for the surgery they’ll do another full body check and remove any others that are suspicious, like a second one on my back. I just want to say get any suspicious freckles or moles checked out. It was close, but not to close for me. The thought that I had the potential of having a cancerous growth on me is kinda scary, but I’m grateful that I just did it and now I can be free of any strange growths, though I still have plenty of noncancerous moles.

I think my second child is growing up faster than my first. I don’t remember being so out of the loop on her little developments. I knew her top incisors were coming in, but I don’t check often. Carolyn loves checking Eden’s mouth, it seems she does it every time we see her, so she discovered that both incisors had broken through, this was Friday on the trip.
Eden is also folding her arms by herself at appropriate times and at times we’re not saying prayers. The first time she did it by herself Jon and I were saying our morning prayer. We had Eden lying down on the bed because it was the morning after she threw up. We weren’t folding our arms because we were holding hands and the other set was on Eden’s leg. Shortly after we started she folded her arms and for a little while stayed that way. It was so amazing to see her learn and do it at the appropriate time. She did it at breakfast and lunch that day. She continues to fold her arms for prayers, and she still needs help from time to time, but she is also doing it on her own. She’ll just randomly fold her arms and I see her mimic me quite well at times. I try to do baby sign with her, but I’m not always successful, and I don’t always remember. This morning I was asking her if she wanted a drink and doing that sign or if she wanted applesauce, and I just did the sign for apple. She seemed to bring her hand to her face after me doing this a few times so I got her applesauce. I guess there are times when you feel that your doing things over and over and they’re never responding, and now I remember that the days come where they grow and express themselves through leaps and bounds. I’m just so excited at seeing her grow. I love being a mom.

On Saturday we visited my Aunt and cousin while we were in Utah. One of my Aunt’s grandkids is 12 days older than Eden and she was sick. We didn’t know this before we got there and weren’t informed until after we had been there for a little. She and Eden had already shared some toys and plenty of slobber. I suppose we could have left once we knew she was sick, but the damage had been done so we stayed.
Now neither Eden or Lilah was eating well on Saturday and neither have eaten well since being home. Eden threw up what she had nursed on Monday morning, and was eating lightly that day. Tuesday they both we’re not their complete selves but okay. That night Eden threw up around 1:30 am and Wednesday both her and Lilah were little zombies and cuddle bugs. They both were sleeping but at different intervals and when awake they mostly just wanted to be held or lying down. Today, Thursday, they both seemed to be doing better. Eden slept in a little after I nursed her and Lilah even ate breakfast after I warned that I was going to eat the cheerios if she didn’t. Eden ate a little applesauce later in the morning which was also a big improvement. So I thought everything was looking up and that my girls were getting out of the clearing. Wrong. Eden I think is doing better, but Lilah is not. I had her go to the bathroom before her nap and while on the toilet she started to complain of her belly hurting and she wanted me to hold it. I was okay with this. After we got her pull-ups on she was more antsy and she wanted me to hold her to wash her hands, instead of standing on a stool that is next to the toilet, I thought this very odd, and I had her go lay down aafter I washed her hands. Right after I finished drying my hands I thought she’s probably going to throw up and I came into the room just in time to see her throw up onto her bed. So now I have one on the mend and the other sick. It’s just upsetting to me because this could have been prevented had we been warned. We may not have visited, but I would possibly have two healthy girls instead of two sick ones. I suppose it upsets me more because this is the first throwing up sickness Eden has had since she was really little, so I don’t like it.
I don’t mean to offendthis is to everyone: If you have a sick child tell others who are going to visit so they can make the decision to expose their child or not. Some people think hey, the more the child is exposed the better their immune system, but I’m not completely convinced. Viruses change and mutate themselves, so why should I be okay with my child getting sick if they don’t have to when they might get sick again by the same virus. I’m okay with two healthy babies sharing germs and toys, but when one is sick and her mother was throwing up, please tell me. We try to take precautions to not needlessly get other peoples children sick, so please be considerate and do the same for our children. One of us stays home with the sick child even if they’re on the mend when Sunday comes around so not to expose other’s children. I know there are circumstances when the sick child has to be at church and they only have a runny nose, or the parents can’t leave them home.
I don’t like the sharing of germs, so please let me know so I don’t have to worry each time I see you that you’re child might be sick and you may not be telling me. I find it offensive that you’re not thinking of other children’s health when you share the harmless virus. I find it very harmful to my child when they are throwing up and sick. Now, they may not have caught this from my cousin’s child, but I’m pretty positive they did. I love my Aunt, but please tell me when they’re sick because I don’t like sharing viruses. I do believe she didn’t mean to purposely not tell us and that it mostly slipped her mind because the grandchild was not continuously showing symptoms, and it was only when she stared coughing later that we were aware and they told us of the virus that the mother had had and the child. If she did know and didn’t care, then I find it very offensive.

So this past weekend we packed up a rental car and traveled up to Salt Lake City, Utah to attend a family reunion. It was for my mother’s family. We took Carolyn with us. The traveling went well no crying or fussing. I believe this was due to Lilah who helped to entertain Eden, Carolyn who also helped to entertain the girls, and Carolyn was able to feed them snacks while on the road. It was fun to have her with us. I wish she would come to our next reunion, but it’s for Jon’s family. I guess I’ll just have to be in the back seat far a little while during the next trip.

Friday we ate dinner at the park with some of the family. Saturday we had breakfast played, lunch, played, and then we went back to the hotel about 3:30. Jon took all the pictures. When we got home we realized that there were nearly none of adults, and none of the extended family. Jon’s excuse was that kids are more interesting plus he was taking care of Lilah most of the time which included her partner in crime, Katy, and the adults really were just sitting around talking, so sorry it’s mostly pictures of my little family and a couple with Carolyn and Andrea. We’ll have to be more diligent at the next reunion, or maybe I’ll have the camera. 🙂

Here is Lilah and Katy running around. The boy is my cousin Jason’s son Zach, which I guess makes him mine once removed and thier’s twice removed? The tall girl is Jason’s “adopted” daughter Katelyn. (I have no idea how she spells Katelyn since everyone spells it differently. )

Here they are throwing sticks into the water, at least that is what Lilah just said.

This is my cousin Michael and his son.Lilah often just climbed around them…sorry.
I just loved these shots.

Our two artists in the sand. Lilah and Kaitlyn ( Katy)

The girls had a fun time finding trees, as Lilah called them.
I just thought it was cute how her bangs are a little sweat soaked.
This is Eden and her cousin four times removed (?) It’s my cousin Jan’s granddaughter Katelyn (again the spelling.) She liked Eden and I’m not sure if she wanted to share her goldfish with her, or if she just wanted to show them to her. She’s a cute girl though.

Cute baby in the grass.

Here’s Andrea and Carolyn playing with a slingshot. We were going to do skits and this was one of the props, but the activity was overlooked. 🙁

Carolyn getting Lilah.
It was a fun adventure. We’ll see if I’m not too pregnant to go next year, or if there are any other road blocks to prevent us from going.