Is It Naptime Yet

My girls love pictures and videos of themselves and well, any young child or baby.
If I’m looking at pictures they come over and ask who the pictures are of and if I start a video online they come running to see what I’m watching.
Today I used this to my advantage.
Eden likes to play the computer but after watching Lilah play games she often likes to play games that are like her sisters, but she’s just too little to do them on her own and the reason I let them play the computer is so I have time to do other things, though I do help them every once in a while, I want it to mostly be a learning tool for them to have independence and figure things out themselves.
So when I had to check some e-mail and cut into their playing games I thought I’d let them look at some pictures of themselves.

Am I raising narcissistic children or what?
Anyways we have windows media center where they can do a slide show of all the pictures you have, just in any random order. So as Eden sat crying because Lilah hurt her leg and Lilah complained about wanting to play computer games, pictures of themselves and our other family members slowly filled the screen and they guessed who it was.
Lilah’s really good at knowing who the pictures are of, except some of her as a very young baby, and Eden is pretty good too, though I did see her getting confused with some Lilah pictures where she’s wearing what Eden likes to wear now, or when Lilah was two.

As I sat watching I reminisced in what little children they once were. Lilah was once a small toddler that was ever so gentle with her baby sister and Eden was once a small, bald baby.
(All the pictures of Lilah are when she was at least 1 1/2 years old when we finally got the camera, except a few that we had taken with a borrowed digital camera when she was born.)

My family has grown so much and I worry about how fast time will go and that I’ll soon have two very talkative and inquisitive little girls. Maybe I can make them ask and answer each others questions instead of coming to me.

When I see the pictures of when they were smaller it makes me a little sad. I want them to stay small forever.

They loved the pictures and Eden didn’t want to leave the computer for lunch.

I think I’ll turn it back on after lunch, or maybe it should become my secret weapon of how to occupy them so they won’t come bother me.

A lot of people are happy about fall and winter coming. I’m just a little sad that the summer passed so quickly.
I had planned on taking the girls swimming weekly.
It happened three times.I would have taken them this week but Lilah’s had a fever for three days straight and now we’re getting to just 100, instead of 110 degrees, which seems cool right now, or at least not hot enough to swim in. Anyone need the swimmer diapers next summer? I have about 20 left and Eden better be potty trained by then.

I had planned on finishing my drapes.
I still have one bare window.

I had planned on reading some books and maybe organizing more.
I haven’t even completely read the book I chose for book club and we’ve had like 3 months to read it. And my house is no more organized than when I did this months ago.

Summer passes to quickly.

The girls like hot chocolate as a treat after dinner and tonight I made them and myself some.
As I sipped my hot chocolate in my 81 degreed house I thought about how I love to drink hot chocolate on a cold winters night, and how much I want to splurge and buy Stephen’s hot chocolate in like every flavor. I was sweating a little as I drank my Kroger brand hot chocolate, but the winter will be coming fast.
How I wished we had fall colors in Vegas, but we don’t unless you go to UNLV’s campus for the two days a few trees turn red across from the LDS institute of religion.
We just get cold and then leaves fall off and it gets colder and when you think it’s just gonna keep getting colder we start warming up.

Ahh Winter, it’s like Fall all Winter long in Vegas.

Today I took Lilah to the doctor.
Ever since the wedding Lilah’s had symptoms that have made me think she has a urinary tract infection and then they went away and then she got a fever Monday night and has been using the bathroom a lot. So I bit the bullet and took her to see the doctor, well the nurse practitioner, to have things checked out.
According to the in office test she doesn’t have a UTI but she does have a lot of protein in her urine, which is bad if it turns out to be something because that means something is going on with her kidneys.
It might have been a fluke. But they’re going to have some test run to make sure she doesn’t have a UTI and to see if the protein is a sign of something worse. I should know the results by Friday but I may have to bring in a sample from the first urination Lilah does Friday morning, guess where it’ll have to be stored, and then bring it in. If the protein is still high they’ll do blood test.
The nurse didn’t seem too worried, but at the same time right now there is no reason to really worry, though I kinda do anyways.

The reasons why I brought Lilah in are the following: one, she either really does have something wrong with her and I want to know, in which I feel like something is going on, or two she’s fine and I don’t have to feel guilty when I don’t want to take her to the bathroom 2 minutes have she’s gone just to have her sit there and do nothing. It’s not a problem at home because she’s on her own but when we’re out it’s kinda annoying. I missed different speeches at the wedding because it started right then that night.
I’m mostly worried that something is wrong and what it could be. She did say that it’s possible to have protein in the urine if the child’s been playing and what not, but she also said it was bad to have protein in the urine because of what it might mean.

I almost didn’t blog about this because it may be nothing, but it’s what’s on my mind today.

(I did some research and it looks like their is a benign kind of proteinuria, in which this information brings a little bit of ease to my day to know their can be a reason for protein in the urine without it being serious. )

After the doctor’s appointment I dropped off tupperware to Carolyn and then went to Kristi’s house to let Lilah and Kaitlynn play, only to have my mom take Katy after we’d been there an hour to get her hair cut. Though Lilah’s fever had begun again and she just wanted to be cuddled on the couch in a blanket.

The excitement of the day was this though:
I went to get Eden and she’d climbed onto the changing table and was taking the wipes out, something she loves to do.
Kristi was putting Adrianne down for a nap so I just took Eden and got a bag to put the wipes in. I hear Kristi say she stepped into something wet and then she picked it up to discover it was poop! So gross! but I just laughed and kept laughing to myself. She asked if Eden was poopy and she didn’t look poopy from the top of the diaper near her waist, but then at the leg you could tell she was poopy and a little had leaked out. So I kept laughing because Kristi stepped in Eden’s poop! Oh so gross.

So Jon’s going to say I’m a total nerd, but I want you’re input, for all those who read my blog, yes I know there are more than two of you, to help me decide what we should wear for our family pictures that I have yet to make an appointment for, but need to so we can get in before the holiday rush. I will do that after I post this blog.
I usually get new shirts for the girls and try to get things that might go with our wardrobe. The problem being that Jon doesn’t have anything that really goes, at least not with what I wanted originally for the photos.
So here are our choices in no particular order.

One

two

three

four

I won’t say what I’m leaning towards.

I bought the girls shirts in pictures 1 and 2 on sale. One is a 5t for Lilah next year and the other is a 2t for Eden because it seems like she doesn’t have a lot of clothes.

The shirts in 3 and 4 I bought with the intention of using them for the pictures and me in orange but I had no idea what to put Jon in and he doesn’t like to buy shirts for these things, so I have to work with what he has. I may end up returning them if we don’t use them for the pictures.

He wanted to put the blue shirt in 1 with our shirts in 3 and 4 and I’m not going for it even if it would be a nice contrast.

I often play teasing games with my girls. Like I’ll ask what should we have for lunch and suggest we eat Eden and then they say “Nooo, we don’t eat Eden!” and then I’ll suggest Lilah and they say “Noo, we don’t eat Lilah!” and so forth.
I think I’ve also mentioned how I like to substitute the girls names in songs. Like in Ba Ba black sheep I’ll say one for the little Lilah/Eden who lives down the lane and they always reply “No, that’s not how it goes! One for the little boy!”
I really love it.
Lately I’ve been playing a game with Eden to ask her what she did at nursery or in her class.
Did you go swimming? No! Did you color?  Yes!
But I’ve realized now that I can ask her an open ended question and know that she probably is giving me the correct answer which means I’m having meaningful conversations with my two year old and she’s expressing to me her day when I ask questions.
Which means she’s growing up.  🙁
Yesterday I asked her what she watched at Carolyn’s house and she was able to tell me Fox and the Hound.
Then this morning I asked what she had for breakfast and she told me oatmeal.
Communication is great, but it makes me a little sad to see her growing up.
I really love the age Eden is at. She’s still little but she’s talking and responding and knows what she wants, though knowing what she wants can be a pain.

My baby is growing up.
Of course if Eden heard me call her a baby she’d say “Noo, I’m not a baby! Naia a baby!”

So I taught my lesson yesterday and I helped Lilah give her talk.
Now I just have to focus on enrichment and possibly getting costumes made for the girls, Halloween is just around the corner.

Yesterday my lesson was interesting. We had a visitor. Anyone who visits usually go to gospel essentials because of a couple reasons, one to help teach lesser doctrine to those who don’t know the gospel, or receive the milk before the meat, two as to not distract the gospel doctrine class of the topic at hand. It seems a little mean to banish those who have not been members for a year to the gospel essentials class, but I think it’s so we can keep on topic in this class.
A man brought his friend who was Catholic. I have no problems with Catholics and I have no problem with him being in the class. I just thought his beliefs were interesting and to me a little sad.
He gave some input that was a little off topic, well very off topic, but all classes get off topic and he didn’t dominate a lot of time, in fact by the time I would have cut him off he stopped talking. If anyone were to dominate the time of the class I would want to cut them off, so it wasn’t just that he wasn’t Mormon.
During class he mentioned some of his thoughts or beliefs.
What I got out of it was about a certain saint that he believes in. It dealt with the thought that we’re all preordained to go to hell or heaven. We have no say. God just chooses. Those who are going to hell, such as homosexuals, usually have an easy life, he used Elton John as an example. Those who are destined for Heaven need to even out there sins, or pay for them. So they get punished, he used the example of physical ailments and I think even situational things, such as wealth. I interjected that the ailments were to strengthen us, but he said no it was just to balance out what wrong or sins we had done.

I think I mostly found it sad that we’re predetermined for heaven or hell. To me it seems pointless to be either good or bad. Jon mentioned since it doesn’t matter or you have no say where you go it could be good because then you just live you life without worrying about heaven or hell, or you don’t do things out of fear because you’re going there anyways.
I just find that sad to have no say in where you go. Also to be punished physically for sins goes against the New Testament. Such as the story with Christ and the man born blind.

John 9:2 And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?
3 Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

After class he started talking to me and mentioned how he didn’t want to go into deeper thoughts and how he also believed we have a certain number of sins while here and once we use them up we die.
He used the example of a lot of people coming here to Vegas to gamble, drink and participate in immorality and that he believed about 20% of the people would probably be dead by next year because they’ll use up their sins.
In a way I can see what he says, but I guess it still seems strange that we only get so many sins and for each person it’s different. I suppose it balances out that we’re preordained, so you’re going to Hell but you don’t want to get there too quickly so you don’t sin a lot.

I don’t know many devote catholics. I just found these two beliefs to be so opposite of my own. I’m not sure if since the beliefs came from a saint if you have a choice to believe them or not, or if it’s universally taught within the Catholic church

Today was Andrea’s baby shower. Not many people RSVPed and there was another girl from UNLV who had a shower today also, plus it was a holiday weekend. So we had about 5 guest to start out, then us 4 Harvey girls and my mom, then after I did games and Andrea began opening presents 1 guest came with her daughter and grand baby and then 2 more also showed up.
So it was small and got off to a slow start but I think they had fun. I hope anyways.

We played a game where I had 20 questions about Andrea and her pregnancy, we measured the belly and then we did a price is right game. Instead of doing the memory game we had the products and they had to match them to one of the prices listed. Most of what I bought I got on clearance, so in total I paid about 65-70% of what all the prices came to. People were surprised to actually look at the normal retail prices of things, it was kinda funny.
I didn’t do the pin game, though I think it might have added a little fire to the group had Julie been on the look out for those who had their legs crossed or said baby, depending on the twist we gave it.

I think it went well overall and once the presents were done with there was a lot of conversing.

I was a little sad that it was a small turn out. I tried to get good gifts for the games, also things that were on clearance but nice, and have fun food, we had chocolate fondue. We also had chocolate covered popcorn for the guests to take home. I guess all that matters is that Andrea had a good time and that those who were there did too.
Since we had it on the other side of town, Carolyn’s new house is at Mountain’s Edge near Blue Diamond and Rainbow, I think some people may have been deterred to come. Part of me feels bad if that was a reason, but the valley is so big now that no where is going to be convenient for all and so I guess if you wanted to be there you were.
I think once everyone was there, a total of 14 adults, 3 toddlers and 2 babies, it was just the right size for Carolyn’s house.
I had Jon come with me so he could keep an eye on the girls and so those who know the girls, but don’t see them, could see them. Such as Veronica from UNLV, who brought her granddaughter so Andrea could meet her, and Deniece, whom Andrea use to work with and knows me too. I also think they’re cute and like to show them off.:) So kids were not not aloud but we did want to keep it to where they would be supervised by their parent since Carolyn and Derek’s home isn’t exactly child friendly.

Over all I think it went well. We actually had one person show up after all the guest had left, but that’s when she was able to come.
I’m happy Carolyn let us use her house, and I had fun going over there the night before and putting together furniture and rearranging furniture so it would be ready for Saturday. I tried to put the couch chair back to where it was but I’m sure Derek will have to fix it.

Eden feel asleep on the way home, in which she had to sleep on our bed because her bed is covered in toys from before we left.
Lilah feel asleep and then Jon and I feel asleep on the couch. We woke up about 7 and got dinner, which was cereal, around 7:30.
I actually haven’t eaten yet.

I now need to go over my lesson a little for church and write a talk for Lilah.
Even though we killed Derek’s printer my sister Kristi has an extra one that they’re willing to give us. Hopefully we don’t somehow kill this one too! (knock on wood), but it is a really nice one and fairly new.