Herding Cats

A phrase Nick and I have been tossing around recently is "herding cats." This is how we describe just about every activity we do these days.

"I'm sorry, I may be late, I'm herding cats."

"It took me a while to get into the store because I was herding cats."

"It took me a long time getting out of the store because I was herding cats."

"The house looks like this because I was herding cats all day."

"I'm sorry, I'm going to have to call you back, I'm in the middle of herding cats."


You get the idea! Right now, 3 of the 4 of our children are at that perfect age where they simply MUST run, explore, imagine and get into every form of trouble possible. They hear you, but as far as they are concerned, you couldn't possibly, seriously be talking to anyone of them. Don't climb the shelf? Psh! There must be someone else doing it wrong! Don't dump the salt out? Psh! Obviously it was only concerning for the first couple of grains! Don't break up the styrofoam? Psh! But look at all the snow! Mom likes snow right?!

Now along the way here and there we've had some major messes but they were few and far between.

For instance Aviendha:

This is the first major catastrophe we ever encountered. Flour. In the livingroom. On the carpet. It took us a while to clean it up but it wasn't too bad.

Then there was Gage:


This is a video but it's just the picture of it because blogger is ridiculous. But, this is oatmeal. The least of the messes we've encountered and pretty tame in regards to kids messes.

And now we have Alillia:



This is the blank "I'm guilty so maybe if I show as little emotion as possible I won't get into as much trouble" look. Feel free to refer to the Aviendha picture for a comparison.

What could these footprints be made of? If you thought flour again, you'd be oh so wrong.

Baby powder, of course!

Poor Luigi died from inhalation of this fine stuff. And I do mean fine! Don't let these photos deceive you. There is a fine coating over the ENTIRE room. Two weeks later it's still on some parts we haven't had time or energy to get to.

She looks so sweet doesn't she?

Bahahahahaha!
Now lets talk about all the other things she alone did in this very same week, each activity in record time.

~Broke a night light in their bedroom leaving glass EVERYWHERE.
~Dumped out an entire shaker of salt. Twice. Leaving sat all over the entire upstairs. Twice. We won't talk about who left the shaker down.
~Baby shampoo all over the bathroom floor.
And my favorite?
~Getting into Gage's unflushed leavings and playing with it like mud. Fortunately only all over the bathroom.

Never have we had a child of such whirlwind disaster! Until now.

Now some of you might be wondering what we were doing while these things were going on. My defense?

We were herding cats.

Ruh Roh!

This little monster decided it was a good idea to find a bottle of acetaminophen, remove the child-proof lid and then try some. We caught her with a handful and we assumed she had eaten at least a few given the crumbs in her mouth. Crazy girl! But, don't you dare give her the wrong color, size, amount, temperature, brand of candy. How. Dare. You!

So, Nick scooped her up and headed off to urgent care. Urgent care doesn't do poison so he ended up having to go to Seattle Children's Hospital. When they got there he found out that you have to wait 4 hours before they will draw blood and check how much they consumed. This was news to me! So, at about 11:45 that night they finally drew some blood.

A little after midnight they came back and said she had nothing left in her system so we are assuming she managed to chew up and swallow one which was fortunately a very low dose per pill. It was a long and exhausting night for Nick, but exceptionally exciting for Alillia who got to sit on a hospital bed, have them bring her some food (because she missed dinner) and watch Aladdin. Yeah, she's already learning how to work the system!

So far this year is off to a good start!

Bwahahahahaha!

2013! Let's not repeat this one!

It's been quite sometime since I've posted anything but I have a good excuse, many in fact, I promise! Here's a review of the insanity that was last year:

CAUTION: Graphic bloody photos in May! Click on them to make it big if you're into seeing close-ups of that kind of stuff!


January (really since October of 2012) we were house hunting.  We went out multiple times a week aggressively looking at a small selection of houses. We also went through a break-up with our first Realtor. At the end of the month we put an offer down on a house and our offer was accepted! Yay! Our first home after almost 9 years of marriage!

February: Finalizing all the paperwork and down-payment for the house, starting to pack, and starting to get sick toward the end of the month with pneumonia. Yuck! We also found out we were pregnant with baby number 4! Yay!

March: More packing and we got the keys to our new house in the middle of the month. We have to replace all the carpet in the house because it is really really gross. Seriously, it was nasty! Now I'm officially bogged down with walking pneumonia. I'm actually spiking fevers the day we move all our stuff into the house, not my favorite day. Because I'm so sick, I don't know what's been packed into what and put where by my husband and two teenage boys. Yeah, not a good combination for any kind of organizational skills there!  We also begin work on redoing the master bedroom and bathroom. We begin to understand the house is more of a fixer-upper than we realized! We also celebrate our first Easter in our new house!

April: Morning sickness takes hold with a vengeance. I'm still sick with pneumonia. The master bedroom and bath still aren't done, nothing has been unpacked and all I want to do is curl up in a ball and sleep! We also celebrate the first birthday (Gage's 3rd) in our new house. We used tea lights that happened to be around for candles because pretty much nothing was unpacked and we forgot to buy candles.

May: Tekara comes home for her summer break, my saving grace! Nick slices his finger open in the most epic way possible, cutting a major artery and splattering blood all over himself and the deck in a matter of seconds before applying a tourniquet which consisted of his right dirty hand gripping his dirty finger. A tetanus booster and 8 stitches later he was good to go. 

The master bedroom and bathroom still aren't done, I still have pneumonia and morning sickness and we discover our house is an awesome heat trap with no screens or air conditioning. Also we discover the tiny refrigerator is broken and leaking tons of water and needs to be replaced. Home Depot becomes our second home as the kids come to know it better than any store around.

June: Pneumonia is finally going away but I still have morning sickness. The house is crazy hot and we buy paint and task Tekara with painting our master bedroom before the carpet people come. Our master bed and bath are almost done. Scott Wood came over and did our shower which is AWESOME! It has a seat and built in shelves!

Lots more painting and yard work and we get our front door replaced with something much nicer and weather-proof.

July: Our master bed and bath are finally finished, hooray! We spend the 4th of July in our cul de sac with our neighbors and (literally) the thousands of dollars worth of fireworks they bought. They brought them in with wheel barrows! The ugly chandelier over the kitchen table gets replaced! Naomi and her kids come to visit for a couple of weeks of fun and bonding. Aviendha has her first dentist appointment where we find out she has 9 cavities. NINE. What??? She goes in a week later and gets the first of them filled. Talk about bad genetics.... Here she is trying really hard to smile! Hahahahaha!

My morning sickness is just about gone but now I'm dealing with heat and toward the end of the month, what I'm calling "Spider Season" begins. This is where we have ginormous spiders living all around the outside of our house and building huge webs in front of all of our windows and doors. Nick has to ride his mower through webs coming down from the trees and because of how insane it is the kids never want to go outside. Also we still have no screens on the windows so naturally we don't want to open any of them up. We live in the basement where we've put in our window air conditioner. Seriously, the spiders are so big that you can hear them skittering around on paper and cardboard. Ewwww! Tekara and I also begin painting the upstairs. 

August: Lots more painting. We have hot air balloon rides that regularly go over our house and get close enough that the kids like to scream at the people in them. 

We're still mostly hanging out in the room with the AC. Sariah gets married! Yay! 

Gage gets his first huge goose-egg from running into a stone wall at the Temple. I seriously don't know how he managed that but I suppose being a boy pretty much sums it up. 

Tekara and I go through every box in the house and the garage and set everything up. We buy a new awesome refrigerator! Even more spiders turn up which I didn't think possible. Tekara leaves to go back to school. Boo!

September: Still tons of spiders and it's hot. Aviendha starts first grade. My pelvis is hurting really bad when I do too much so I have to rest a lot. I realize my walls still aren't decorated but I have no motivation to fix that. I finally finish the quilt that I started a little over a year ago.

I also start Emberlee's baby blanket but don't have time to sandwich and quilt it. This is finished later by my awesome RS Prez. I still have to add the little thingies (yes very technical name, I know!) that go in the middle of the pinwheels but, it'll happen eventually...sometime next year. Hahahaha!

I have to start doing the usual Non Stress Tests a couple times a week. The insanely ugly chandelier in the entryway and sconces in the house finally get replaced. I have a feeling the baby will be coming early. And, surprise of surprises, Aviendha comes down with the Chicken Pox.

October: More NST's, 3rd trimester exhaustion, and insane pelvic pain make the month painful and busy. Two weeks after Aviendha, Gage and Alillia also get the Chicken Pox. Gage got it the worst!

Fortunately it missed Baby by a few weeks! Phew!  I spend the month trying to prepare for baby. My fluid drops toward the end of the month and won't come back up drinking large amounts on my own. I end up in the hospital the last week to try to bring it up with IV fluids. It doesn't work (boo!) so they try to get me to 37 weeks on the nose before doing a c-section. People I never met came to watch my kids and see my messy house but I'm so grateful for all the help given! Hopefully my life slows down enough that I can remember to get a list of names and write thank you notes! I'm also grateful I didn't have a baby on Halloween!

November: On the 2nd Emberlee Josephine comes to us (yay!) but the c-section was the worst one of them all. Boo! 

Not enough pain meds during the surgery, and then right after being stitched up someone thought it was a good idea to try to push out a clot while I screamed in pain on the table. IT. WAS. THE. WORST. PAIN. EVER. I'm still traumatized. The recovery was the most difficult of them all. Fortunately Nick had 7 weeks paternity leave so I didn't have to suffer through trying to take care of baby and 3 other kids while recovering. My awesome sister Eleasha came and took care of my kids for a week after baby came, cleaned my house insanely well, and made a butt-load of frozen dinners for me. She is seriously the shiz! It takes 3 weeks for Emberlee's umbilical stump to fall off and her belly button sticks waaaay out. We're told it's just a granuloma and a little bit of an umbilical hernia. We take her to the doctor just before Thanksgiving to see what's going on. The doctor says that the oozing we notice should dry up and heal like normal. It does dry up, but then on Thanksgiving day it looks like a raspberry exploded out of her belly button so we take her to the doctor again. He says it probably needs some silver nitrate to help the insanely large granuloma scab over and heal. The scab oozes over before we get home. We take her in again the next day and repeat the process. The scab doesn't last through the night. 

December: We have her blessed on the first.

We take her in again on Monday and repeat the silver nitrate again. No progress so we're referred to Children's Hospital in Seattle to see what's going on. Our first visit the Surgeon tells us it's not a granuloma but likely a vitelline duct that connects her belly button to either the intestines, or the bladder. They want to test this out by having us come in again and putting an infant feeding catheter into a tiny hole we found in her belly button and see if it goes anywhere. On Aviendha's 7th birthday 

we go in again and the Surgeon puts the catheter in the hole and is able to put it in 10 centimeters before she finally decides to stop on her own without meeting any resistance. She determines that it is connected to the intestines and will need surgery to remove it before the intestines wrap around the connection and cause a blockage. Hers looked like the middle one on the right.

The surgery is set for Friday the 13th. A day which is becoming momentous for us as we were married on a Friday the 13th. Between then we have 2 more birthday's (Mine and Alillia's 2nd) 

and lots of Christmas shopping. We also get a live Christmas tree and the kids and husband decorate it. We arrange to have Carisa come and watch our kids while we stay at the hospital for 3 days. The surgery is a success and she recovers well. We loved the little heart bandage :)

We finish Christmas shopping the next week and Tekara comes the next Saturday for winter break. We all get sick with the Flu from Satan the same day she comes home and have it through Christmas. Again, Tekara is our saving grace through the holidays! 

So, here we are now, the beginning of 2014. 

Here's to hoping and praying that we can actually enjoy something this year, for reals, without any kind of physical illness, heat exhaustion, house insanity, or major injury. Also, maybe I'll decorate my house or blog a little more often.....Hahahahaha!

Hey, I can dream right?