Top 10 of 2009*

I thought I'd take a second, as the New Year approaches, to look back over 2009 and list the best things of this past year.  So, in no particular order, here is my Top 10 of 2009:

1. Rory's birth
2. Teag and I celebrating our 10th anniversary
3. Maisie starting kindergarten
4. Mine & Teag's trip to Denver
5. Uncle Matey's Wedding
6. Enjoying all the fresh produce from our garden, and others'
7. New bathroom 
8. Bayly family camp out
9. Free vacations for Teag's work
10. Birthdays/holidays

And here are the Top Things That Weren't So Great This Year:

1. Dany being hospitalized in February with MPV
2. Maisie getting hit by a car
3. Me getting into a car accident while 8 months pregnant
4. Trying to get the bathroom finished before my due date
5. Teag having to be gone for a week three days after Rory was born
6. Missing out on most camping trips with family
7. Teag not getting to fly the airplane he trained for
8. Dany being hospitalized with RSV the day after Christmas
*UPDATE
9. Rory being hospitalized with RSV on New Year's Eve

Based on my assessment, the good outweighs the bad, though admittedly we made way more trips to the emergency room than any healthy family should have to in a given year. And that right there tops the Things I'd like to avoid in 2010 list.

I Hate the Hospital

Well, despite my efforts in this post here to convince the universe to keep us out of the hospital for the rest of the year, some perverse fate seemed to think it needed to squeeze in at least one more visit before the end of 2009.  And who was the lucky recipient of that several-day visit?

That's right, the little sicky herself.  She woke up with a fever from a nap Wednesday afternoon, and things just went downhill from there. Christmas Eve she got really bad, her cough and fever causing her so much grief she spent most of the evening laying on the floor at various families houses, not even tempted to run around with cousins.  We prayed hard that she'd be feeling much better by the next day.

Christmas morning dawned, and none of our kids woke before nine; a miracle in our house.  They don't sleep that late on a good day, let alone Christmas morning.  She rallied a little bit that morning, and at least seemed excited about her presents.  Most of Christmas day for her was spent on someone's lap, rather than doing any real playing though.

By Saturday morning she was back to feeling terrible, and got to a point where she was coughing every few minutes.  She was acting really unlike herself, and seemed to take awhile to respond to questions or instructions.  Her appetite was also non-existent, and since the fever hadn't broken after four days, we were obviously getting concerned.  We called an Instacare, and they recommended, based on her symptoms, that we take her to the hospital.  Joy.

Teag took her up there, and they started running some tests and stuff.  Her oxygen saturation levels were good, so they didn't have that concern at first.  They called in a respiratory therapist to give her a treatment, and took a chest X-Ray to make sure she didn't have pneumonia.  They figured out pretty quickly that she had a double ear infection though.  While waiting for some other tests, Dany fell asleep and her sats dipped to the low 80's.  Pretty much from then on, it was clear she was being admitted.

Over the course of the next three days, they began pumping her full of steroids, both liquid and inhaled, in order to try and open her airways to treat her "asthma".  Teag and I were both quite frustrated with this treatment, as she doesn't really have asthma.  She never uses her inhaler unless she's sick, she's never been slowed down, or been unable to participate in activities because of an inability to breathe, unless she's sick.  In fact, we both felt like they were telling us that she'd only been admitted because we'd somehow mismanaged her "asthma".

The steroids made her jumpy and restless, and they were so adamant about giving her the treatments that they'd wake her up multiple times in the night, despite the fact that she was so exhausted she could barely function.  They also gave her "roid rage", and she got really mean and unreasonable with both Teag and I.

Sunday evening Teag and I helped give Dany a bath, and getting the canula out of her nose perked her up for a few short minutes, as well as getting clean.  We let her watch some Signing Times on an Ipod.

Finally, by Monday the attending told Teag that they didn't really think it was asthma after all, and that the steroids weren't really doing any good. By then she'd been weaned down to .12 liters of oxygen, and had started talking more, and even eating slightly.  It was quite miraculous in fact, because the night before she'd been moved up to 1.5 liters.  To be able to wean so quickly was really pretty amazing. 

Thankfully she was able to come home that same night.  Only three days this time.  A doctor I spoke to on Sunday afternoon said that it was rare to admit a kid her age with RSV.  Dany's just lucky I guess.  So far, she's been to the hospital three times, has had RSV three times, and MPV once.  All before her third birthday.  Let's hope the third times a charm, and we're done with this forever.

Merry Christmas!

 We had a pretty decent Christmas this year.  Here are a few pics from some of our favorite moments. This is Maisie's reaction when she opened her much-requested chess game.

And this is Dany when she opened her new Snow White dress ups.

 

 

Think she looks like she's not feeling well in this picture?  Well, refer to my next post to find out why.  Later, Dad helped Dany learn how to use her new letter-writing toy:

And Maisie playing with her new "girly" legos.

 

Rory loved her rings that Santa brought her:

For the most part Christmas was nice and laid back, it was only the day after that things got a little crazy...

First Food

Today we fed Rory her first solid food.  Predictably, she looked a bit perplexed with the first bite, and didn't seem to know what to do with it.  I figured she'd be like our other two girls and sort of push it out with her tongue as she learned how to work it to the back of her mouth to swallow. 

That wasn't what happened. 

Instead, she started to cry and just sat there with it in her mouth.  She wasn't swallowing, spitting it out, nothing, just sitting there and crying. 

Here's hoping it goes better tomorrow.

Why I'm Ill-Equipped to Raise Three Daughters...

 

 

Cuz I can't fix this:

 

 

Maisie decided to give herself a haircut yesterday.  Ironically, this haircut took place while she was grounded for some other not-so-stellar behavior. Apparently she thought her bangs were too long, and thought she would cut them herself with her blunt tipped, child-proof scissors.  Child-proof.  Right.

You wouldn't believe how much hair was on the floor, and how widely it was scattered.  It looked like the scene of a massacre.  As the night wore on, we kept discovering more places on her head where she'd lopped off a chunk.  If you look in the first picture, you can see a rather sizable section of bangs missing.  No possible way to hide that!

I called my friend Sonia, and begged her for help.  After giving me some suggestions on how to fix it, I quickly realized I didn't have the tools or the know-how to pull it off, and she graciously offered to let me bring Maisie to her in-house salon.  She eyed the damage, and managed to pull of this:

Still pretty jagged on the one side, and like I said, there was no hiding the missing section of bangs, but she worked wonders with what she was given.  Some of the shortest pieces were up near the top of her ear!  Maisie was quite excited about her new haircut, but not so much about having her scissors taken away until the end of time, and having to earn back the cost of the haircut.

All kids do this, I know.  I cut my own bangs once, and right before picture day even.  I know it's a rite of passage.  I'm also sure I'll laugh about it later.

Once it's all grown out.

A Hunting We Will Go

 This past Saturday we headed out despite the bad weather, up past Kamas and Woodland, to find our perfect tree.  This is a tradition that I look forward to every year, though we usually go the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  It's getting a little trickier with three kids, and all of them still pretty small.  Teag and I endured a fair amount of whining this time around.  Still, we persevere because the end result is so worth it in so many ways.  

In order to include our whole family in this adventure, I strapped on a Snuggli with Rory inside, and then zipped her up underneath my coat.

Seemed like she stayed pretty cozy inside there, and she loved being outside seeing the sights.  My sister-in-law, Meg, opted to keep her six-week-old Owen in the car for most of the time, despite his tiny, toasty green jacket :)

 

We didn't want to wander too far with the little ones in tow, and luckily we found some good trees pretty quickly.  Before too long, Teag was cutting down our pick:

And here she is:

Nice and full and pretty.  After returning to the parking lot, we found we were one of the first families back.  The girls decided to make good use of their free time, and did some impromptu sledding, minus the sled.

 

Last night Teag got all the lights put onto the tree, and we all helped decorate it.

 

 

Rory seemed pretty fascinated with the whole thing.  She watched the goings on, and end result with a lot of mesmerized interest.

And here's the three little elves, with the finished product:

Nothing makes it feel more like Christmas then decorating your tree, and seeing it lit up every night.  That and snow, which we've also had a fair amount of, as late.

And just for fun... The Santa Showdown:

Thumbsucker

We've never had a thumbsucker before.  Maisie used to suck on her two middle fingers, but she grew out of that quickly.  Both of our older girls have been big fans of the "plug".  But not Little Miss Rory.  She's been trying to get that thumb in her mouth from day 1.  Now that she's older, and finally has a little more coordination, she's able to get it there with much more success and frequency.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.  After all, you can't take away a thumb.  Our little niece actually has a callous from sucking her thumb.  On the other hand, you don't have to worry about forgetting it, or dropping it on the floor.  I don't know, pluses and minuses I guess.

Now here's a picture just for fun:

The Hair Club for Babies.

Rory's Blessing Dress

This past Sunday we blessed our new little girl, Rory.  Unfortunately, the star of the show was not too cooperative after church was over, so we didn't get any pictures of her until today.  The dress she is wearing was created, in part, by three people: I designed the crochet insets, my mother crocheted the insets, and Jan put the whole thing together.  The gown was absolutely beautiful, and Rory looked as though she were in a tiny wedding dress.

We took a zillion pics, trying to get that perfect one.  Towards the end, she finally started to cooperate and we managed to get these two:

 

But then this happened:

 

And we were done.

 

Little Miss

Little Miss Rory is a week shy of 3 months old now.  It's amazing how quickly that three months have passed.  When I look at all the craziness that was packed into the past 11 weeks, I'm shocked we all came out of it whole. :) Here are a few pictures I've snapped of Rory to help keep track of all her little cute moments.

One day while in her swing, she just kept smiling up at me, these big huge grins that melt your heart and make your mouth hurt from smiling so much.

 

When Teag returned from Florida, he made sure to bring back little prizes for all his girls. Maisie and Dany both got Princess pens and notebooks, but being as he was so close to Disney World, Rory got these:

I know, I know, you can't hardly stand the cuteness :)  In some ways Rory seems like she's so much bigger than her age would imply.  She's very alert, and she's tried to hold her head up almost from the second she was born.  I snapped this pic a few weeks ago:

And this one today:

Our good friends in the ward made a shirt for us for Rory to wear, declaring her intentions for her future companion:

One of the things Teag and I really love is how much Rory loves her sisters, and the feeling seems to be mutual. There's something infinitely sweet about this next picture.  It just makes me happy.

We're so happy to have Rory as part of our family, and you can look to my next post to see more pictures of her in her much collaborated-upon blessing dress.

Fall Leaves

It's become a yearly tradition to take pics of our girls while Dad is raking up the leaves.  This year with all our crazy goings on we almost missed it, but we managed to snag a few cute pictures of the girls for our album.  Something about the colors of the leaves contrasting with their rosy-red cheeks makes for one cute picture:

Every year Maisie loves us to bury her up to her neck and get a picture of just her head. It's amazing how much she's changed since the first one.














Dany on the other hand hates to be covered with them.  She prefers to sit safely on top of the pile:

Rory got her first taste of playing in the leaves this year as well.

One of my favorite pics, though it's blurry, is the one of them "in flight".

Taking pleasure in the simple things.  It makes me wish I could do that as easily as they do.  Hours of time spent jumping in the leaves, at no cost whatsoever, making memories that last a lifetime.  Ahh, happy Fall.