Triple Birthday Fun!

Sorry for the delay in the big 4th birthday photos. I had the camera next to the computer to upload the photos but our newest photography protege, Carter, decided to take it to practice his skills. It took me 3 days, including one evening of an entire house upheaval, to finally locate where he hid it (the side of my closet I rarely open as I keep my dresses and dress clothes there. I found it purely by chance as it was the morning after the house search but I was getting dressed and glanced over into that side. There it was!) Anyway, here's a rehash of the birthday festivities a little over a week late!

One of the presents Jake and I decided to give the kids was a morning at Zoo Camp at the MN Zoo. I signed them up for "Wild Wolves" as wolves are all Carter has talked about since our last zoo visit.

They both had fun and have been busy informing us of wolf facts and all the animals they saw while on a walk of the Minnesota Trail.

Since their birthday was on a Saturday this year, we decided to simplify matters and celebrate that day. The theme was Rapunzel and Dinosaurs.

Here's Ava with some sparkly nail polish and lip gloss.

Carter got dinosaurs!

Fancy tutu for a fancy girl!

More dinos!

One of two Rapunzel dolls Ava got! They weren't the same doll so now Ava has two!

A train set!

They also got remote control cars, a Buzz Lightyear gun, a Sleeping Beauty doll, and other wonderful things that I can't recall at this time!

Ava and her Rapunzel cake. Runny frosting and the perpetual inability to produce the images that I create in my head resulted in this beauty.

Carter's dinosaur cake, which turned out better only because a dino is easy to shape and the runny frosting worked in my favor.

Jake, the third (or original if we want to be correct) birthday child and his French silk pie.

I think all three had a good day. I made lasagna, my standard triple birthday meal (why change a good thing?!). I still have a hard time believing these little twerps are 4 years old now! Wow, does time fly by!

Not All Child's Play

It's not always fun and games around here. We can't play "Go Fish" all day long.
Or bake chocolate chip cookies every night.
(Sidenote: Carter fell asleep at 6:05 this evening. When he woke up the next morning, there was a batch of cookies! It was probably one of the best batches of cookies I've ever made. He was so excited for cookies and after he took one bite, he asked if Grandma Mary had brought the cookies during the night. That is one of the best compliments one can ask for as Grandma Mary makes the best cookies!)

(excuse the diaper in this pic. She was supposed to have gone to bed around 7 that night but was so excited to be the only child up that she snuck back down and I didn't have the heart to make her go back up. Instead, we baked cookies, played go fish, and had some special snuggle time.)

Sometimes - actually a lot of the time - there is work to be done around the house. It doesn't matter if you haven't reached your first birthday yet. You will still be put to work.

Now if I could only get the older three to help with the chores!

Creative Kids

All of my children seem to have creative attributes.

Ellie is the drama queen. She has aspirations to be an actress (among many other things!) when she grows up. Since Ellie is in school all day, the only recent picture I have of just her is her school photo!
Carter is the singer and musician in the family. He loves to watch music videos and sing along. His favorite group right now is The Band Perry, a sibling group that embodies my dream for my kids! He also likes Lady Antebellum, Pitbull, Adele, Chris Brown, and anything else catchy.

Ava is the artist. She loves to draw, color, and write. Here is her first person drawing.

She's also been working hard at her name. The best way to write a name like AVA is to just draw lots of peaks and valleys and some straight lines across. It works right?!

She is a quick learner and is now able to write the individual letters. That doesn't always mean you get them in the right order though!

Ava's people drawing quickly evolved from the circle person with limbs extending to this rendition of Rapunzel. You can tell it is Rapunzel because of the yellow hair down to the feet. Very talented for being not quite four!Ava is also into photography. Here is "The Lone Sippy Cup".

I would be lying if I didn't say I wasn't impressed when I found this photo on my camera! While I'm sure everything about it was unintentional, I think it is really cool! Might even be frame worthy for Ava's room!

Not to be left out, Hannah has started on her piano skills already. She's also working on dancing. I do have such talented children!

From the Mouths of the Littles

The funny phrases have been flowing lately. Here's a few snippets I've managed to remember and jot down.

*"Boys don't have dreams come true. That's for girls and princesses." - Carter 9/4/2011

*"How do we hurt my dad's friends so they won't hurt him again? - Carter 9/5/2011 (Backstory: Jake came home with a papercut on his finger and told the kids it was from his friends at work. Carter immediately went on Daddy Defensive.)

*"I hate subtraction. I wish I could scribble it out of the world forever." - Ellie 9/24/2011

*"Don't just stand there! Get me graham crackers!" - Ava 9/22/2011

There have been many more but these are the few I had written down. I really need to keep a notebook as the minute I sit down to write them all out, my mind goes blank. But these three have been very amusing lately!

8 Months Old and On the Go!

Hey all! Hannah here. I'm 8 months old today. Can you believe it? I just keep growing and growing.
I'm becoming quite the little ham with my personality. If I see a camera, I get really excited. I love pictures! I'm also starting to get really mad if I don't get what I want. I have baby-tantrums. I have 4 teeth- 3 bottom and one top (not a front top but what we call a fang. Although it really isn't technically a fang/cuspid either. It's a lateral incisor. But without the central incisors, it looks like a fang. Ava popped her top teeth the same way.). The other lateral incisor is almost through and the front top two are hard little mounds so it won't be long before they come through either.

I've starting pulling myself up on things. I like to show off how strong I am!

I'm getting pretty good and if I could find something taller, I'd be able to stand upright!

And in the final piece of news, I finally figured out how to get moving! Watch out everyone, here I come! Nothing is safe on the floor anymore with me around. There have been some tears this past week when I get to something that the others didn't want me to have but that's their own fault! Don't leave anything precious on the floor because I will get it! And chances are, if I reach it, I will chew, eat, and slobber whatever it is I've found. Yum!

PS- Sorry for Carter screaming in the background of the video. It was bedtime and he wasn't done with his movie. He has a temper too!

Ava and Her Appendix Part 2

Our picture journey through Ava's appendix adventure. Many of these photos were taken on our cell phones but I figured out how to get them to my computer for your viewing pleasure or discomfort.

Ava not feeling good Friday 9/16

At the peditrician's office 9/19
In the ER, 9/19

ER, 9/19

Post-surgery, night of 9/20

Following ng tube removal on 9/22

Band-aid not necessary but made her feel better!

In the playroom on 9/23

Even riding the tricycle on 9/23

Feeling much better on 9/24

Her 3 incision marks

IV out! Going home on 9/24!

Incision marks again

The crew back together again 9/24

It was quite the ordeal that I hope to never have to repeat again in my life. However, we are all happy to have Ava home and be together under the same roof again. As you can see in the photos, she progressively and rapidly improved after the doctors took out her appendix. She even came home prescription free and is only taking Tylenol and Ibuprofen for pain. Our little girl is home and almost back to her normal spunky, precocious self! Hooray!

Ava and her Appendix

Ava and her appendix have separated ways. How did we get to this point? Thus begins the long ordeal:

Wednesday night (9/14) Ava complained of her tummy hurting. She had a hard time falling asleep and wanted me to lay with her. After she tossed and turned for several hours, I finally moved back to my own bed at 12:30. She followed me in there, curled up with Jake, and a few minutes later, puked on him (feel free to snicker to yourself here. I still do, primarily because Jake doesn't do well with bodily fluids). She threw up a few more times during the night and into Thursday.

Ava threw up one last time Friday morning but did run a fever all that day.

Saturday she was still warm but towards the end of the night, seemed to be on the mend. One thing that we noticed was that she walked hunched over and still complained a little of her tummy but we attributed this to her lack of food consumption the previous few days.

Sunday morning, Ava was still warm but her fever wasn't as high as it had been and she seemed to be her spunk self. As the day went on, she started complaining of her tummy hurting, cried when she tried to potty, and wanted to be carried everywhere as it hurt too much to walk. We decided that if the pain continued, we'd take her in on Monday.

After a very restless night with Ava fidgeting and moaning all night, we decided to make an appointment with her peditrician. Our guess at this point was a bladder infection because of her crying while trying to potty.

At the peditrician, she showed obvious discomfort when Dr. Earles pressed down on her tummy. Her strep test was negative, her white blood cell count was high (indicating that she was fighting something), but her urine analysis came back crystal clear. Dr. Earles decided to refer us to Children's ER since it was not something she could diagnose in her office and she didn't want to wait a night and see how Ava felt on Tuesday.

We headed up to Children's and after a 2 hour wait, finally got back to a room to be seen. The resident doctor was guessing it was her appendix but needed to confer with the supervising doctor. The head doctor wanted to do a chest x-ray to rule out silent pneumonia (Did you just scratch your head? So did we. Tummy pain = chest x-ray?). Ironically, the chest x-ray was clear. At this point, the doctors decided to admit us for the night to see what the blood cultures would reveal the next day.

Tuesday, the decision was finally made to do an ultrasound of her tummy. The ultrasound didn't reveal much but there were thoughts that it showed an abcess. Next up was a CT scan to see what the abcess could be. Turned out the abcess was really just a full bladder but the CT scan did not get a clear image of the appendix. This fit with our entire experience to this point as there were no clear answers, we spent hours waiting for 5 minutes of not-problem-solving news, and still didn't know what the issue was. The doctor was in favor of exploratory surgery to look at her appendix and if that wasn't the issue, to find out what was. We were on-board with this idea so we could finally figure out what the problem was. After waiting several hours for the surgeons to come and talk with us, we were finally on our way to the OR.

Sure enough, the surgeon came out to tell us that it was in fact Ava's appendix. It had preforated in several spots and was oozing out some pus. This wasn't the nastiest appendix the surgeon had seen but he put it up there with some of the gross ones.

So here we are. Her surgery wasn't until after 8 pm on Tuesday so most of Wednesday was spent laying around with regular morphine doses. The nurses and I did give Ava a sponge bath Wednesday night, which I think made her feel better since she hadn't been cleaned since Sunday night. Today, her coloring is much better and we did get her up out of bed and made her go potty on the toilet (we'd been letting her go in a pull-up to this point to minimize the moving around). The nurse also made her walk back to her bed with a little help. She's resting now and we hope to get her moving around again this evening.

I'll keep you updated as our stay goes on. We are praying for a quick recovery and hoping to be home either Sunday or Monday if all goes well. Keep our sweet little girl in your prayers too please!