Mother's Day

I know, UCMama. It's been too long since I've blogged. I think of things to blog about. But then life gets in the way. The only reason I'm blogging right now is because Sweet Pea is sleeping in the room I have scheduled to pack today.

I wanted to recap Mother's Day. Our children have this idea in their minds that Mother's and Father's day=breakfast in bed. The problem being that BA had board review from 8 am until 6:45 pm. So they all woke up at 7:00 and made me breakfast. The rule is that even though I'm awake (before anyone else), I have to pretend to be asleep until breakfast gets brought up to me or the kids are devastated. So I waited. When they came up they had presents for me (from the dollar store- I'm low maintenance:) Here's a picture of all my presents and breakfast:

The flower thing I'm holding up is a fly swatter that K-K says can double as a back scratcher. And, Sweet Pea love my hat so much she played with it through much of the morning.
Doe gave me a craft he had made at school. It has these flowers coming out the top. When you pick a flower, it has a chore on it that he will do. This is what he says to me when I opened it:

That's for when you need any of us to do stuff around the house.

I laughed pretty hardily at that and we cleared it up that it was actually when I wanted him to do stuff around the house.

Later on he says, "You know the best part about what I gave you mom? You can only use each flower once." Apparently he knows I will take him up on the work offers.
Up at the top of my most favorite gifts, was this:

Doe made it at a stake Valiant boys activity a week ago. It's so funny to me that he thought I would enjoy a framed picture of *Pokemon*. Then again, what mother wouldn't.

From 8:00 until 12:00, I cleaned the whole house (amidst cries of "We aren't supposed to clean on Sunday!! To which I replied, "Well, if it would have been cleaned yesterday, we wouldn't have to clean it today!") and got all the kids and myself ready, including my long process of curling my hair.

BA was able to come home from board review for Boo's violin recital. Here is a picture of Boo and her teacher. After I post this, I'm going to go back in and try to upload the video of her performance. She did a wonderful job. This song is called "Witches Dance" and it has quite a few low and high fingers in different spots, making a little more difficult song.
After the recital, we (without BA Baracas- who went back to board review) hurried over to church in time for primary. I love being in the primary and will miss it when it's time for us to go. Third hour all the women got to go to Relief Society. It was great...except that I had a 15 month old walking/stealing terror with me. Kind of makes it hard to relax and enjoy.

After church, I made dinner and we ate. K-K took this picture of Boo and Me.
And, everything was cleaned up when BA got home.

Part of me wanted to be outraged that on Mother's Day I didn't get pampered. But, I try not to get worked up about stuff like that. So, I got to the end of the day and was happy that I was able to serve my children and husband the whole day...and not put my feet up. At all. Except for the 10 minutes of breakfast in bed. Does that count? Ya. Life is good.

Wow, this uploaded much faster than I expected. Here she is:


I do want to mention a couple of things. First of all, how amazing she is at using so much of her bow! Most violin students like to use 1 or 2 inches of their bow. Her teacher has worked a lot with using different parts of the bow for different sounds, etc.

Second, I am puzzled as to why the quality of this video is so poor. I have a wonderful digital camera. And I've never had quality this poor before. Here is my only guess as to why it turned out like this: The battery was low. In fact, at the end, I didn't even push the off button. The camera turned off because it had no more power to stay on.

If I had to choose between getting a second or two of great quality pictures and having a video of the whole thing with poor quality, I choose poor quality. The sound is great and that's really what matters. So enjoy the talents of my amazing, talented daughter:)

Being Obedient

Earlier this week I took Sweet Pea to her 1 year check up. Everything went just fine.

Later I read the "12 month developmental" paper they send home with you. Everything looked normal except one thing. Your child should be able to obey one step directions.

So, I tried this with Sweet Pea today. I told her to go balance my checkbook. No response. So I went for something a little more simple. I told her to go get her diaper. And she didn't do it!!! Can you imagine a 12 month old NOT being obedient??? And not only did she not obey, she looked at me with a blank stare, being blatantly defiant! As if she had no idea what I was talking about!!!

Apparently she is so brilliant, she speaks other languages, just not English. Either that, or I have a long ways to go as a parent.


(P.S. And please don't leave comments and/or tell me that when your brilliant child was 12 months old they did all sorts of one step directions. I won't believe you. In fact, I will know you are outright LYING!!)

Sweet Pea turns 1

One year ago (yesterday), our Sweet Pea was born. And thus, my labor story:

The day before she was born, I had an appointment with my midwife. I think she must have stripped my membranes. I had more painful than usual contractions sporadically throughout the day.

That night BA and I took the children to the school skate night. I told BA on the way that I was in the first stages of labor.

That night I had 2 hours of 7-8 contractions an hour and then 3-4 every hour until morning. I slept on the couch, tried to sleep, watched a little TV, and timed my contractions.

BA got up at 6:30 to get ready to go to a final. I ventured off the couch at 6:50. And my regular contractions started. We took the kids to some friends and went to the hospital.

My first words upon entering my room were, "I would like an epidural ASAP." I was told they had to get 1 1/2 liters of fluid in my IV so my blood pressure wouldn't get too low. The first IV they tried burst as I was throwing up. So they put it in my left hand. I was actually pretty dehydrated so it took much longer to get fluid in me than it should have.

At 9:00 I finally got an epidural. Relief. For an hour. Then I started feeling pain. Slight at first. But it got more and more intense. "We have our anesthesiologists put the epidurals in in a different spot so our patients can feel more and help out in the delivery process more," I was told.

REALLY?!?!?!? I've done it both ways. I wanted to feel NO pain!!! Note to self- never have a baby in that hospital again. By the end, the pain was the same intensity as if I'd never got an epidural. My theory: the epidural didn't work.

After a LONG time pushing (ok, not for you it wasn't long. But I'm used to 2 pushes for the whole baby to come out) the midwife realized the baby was sunny-side-up. And thus ensued all sorts of methods to turn her. They hurt. And she didn't turn. I was later told that if I'd had one of the OB doctors he would have done an emergency c-section. Thank goodness I had a midwife.

By the end, however, I was pleading and even demanding them to just take this baby out! Sweet Pea was born at 11:27 am. My longest active labor. 4 1/2 hours.

I got to hold my precious baby for only a few minutes before they checked her out and found her breathing to be to fast. After a few hours her breathing was still too fast. So we allowed some blood work to be done. It showed an infection. A friend came to the hospital and helped BA give Sweet Pea a blessing. Then within 5 hours of being born, our beautiful baby was taken to a different floor to the NICU.


I felt calm during the whole ordeal. I knew something was going to be wrong when she was born. No, I wasn't just paranoid. But I knew. I had been praying for almost 9 months that this baby would somehow know whatever challenges would face her at birth and be extra strengthened for them. And she was. And there were angels with her. Both seen and unseen. The NICU nurses were some of the most amazing, kind, loving women I've ever met in my life.

My recovery was the quickest of them all. Since Sweet Pea was in the NICU, I tried sleeping there, but couldn't. So I slept at home. All night. I would wake up at 3 am to pump. And sleep peacefully the rest of the time. Now I'm not advocating babies to stay in the NICU. All I'm sayin' is- look on the bright side.

I do have to insert about her name. Many of you know. But some of you don't. I have ancestors who were in the Willie handcart company. Daved, Robert(17?), and daughter/sister (15?). They met up with the wagon train where another daughter, her husband and children were. David gave up his food each day for his grandchildren because they were starving. He died of malnutrition. 8 days later when the teenage daughter went out to gather sagebrush for the fire, she was found unconscious and later died. (We come through Robert.) She gave up all she had to come to Zion. This was the legacy we wanted our little girl to have.


So yesterday our sweet little girl turned one. She has been such a joy in our lives. She is patient as she gets her arm and leg pulled over who gets to hold her. She laughs and plays. She is so happy. Yesterday afternoon, some friends stopped by to give her a present and she backed away from Janel to come closer to me. She's just learning that everyone is not her mom or dad.


Her newest trick is to play peek-a-boo. I got it recorded. She'll hold up whatever she can find in front of her face and then lower it and laugh.

She's starting to not like baby food that we feed her. She'd rather feed herself. She's a great traveler.

She sleeps all night. She slept through by 3 months. Then around 5 months started getting up. After a few months of that, she got to spend a few nights in a room in the basement. She had really long morning naps for 3 days. But now she sleeps through.

If Boo's Polly Pockets are out and I let Sweet Pea play in the basement, she goes straight to them. She puts everything in her mouth, but doesn't swallow things that she shouldn't. At least I don't think she does. I let her explore a lot.


She can hold her own. Countless times she has fought for something she wants (usually it's something I don't want her to have).

She loves baths. Which is good because she gets about 2 a day. Yep. Two. I know I'm a mom. And I should "enjoy" slober and food all over in her hair. And snot. But I don't. And the best way to clean her all the way up is a bath. So she bathes. Lots.
I love my Sweet Pea so much!

A Nice Surprise

One week ago, Sweet Pea couldn't stand. Two nights ago, she took 15 steps. All in a row. I've never had a child do this. She still can't really stand. She falls over within 5 seconds. How is this possible? All three other children stood for at least a month before walking.

I was also noticing last night when she was playing with Danyo (a neighbor boy), that she really can hold her own. He brought her a toy and she put it in her mouth. He got "giver's remorse" and tried to grab it back. She held on good and put up a fuss when he was trying to wrangle it from her.

Good. I like my kids to fight for what they want. (Don't remind me of this when they are teenagers.)

Last week, Nobody posted about some problems she'd been having with her child. I read the comments and noticed someone had posted something about a book called "Learned Optimism". I checked it out from the library. I took the test (of how optimistic you are) and then gave the test to Doe and then Boo.

I figured that Doe would be very optimistic and that I might have to do some interventions for Boo (you shouldn't give the test to children under 7). So, Doe took the test. He got a score of 12. The average for boys is a 5. The higher the score, the better. No surprise. He is the happiest, easiest going kid I know.

Boo took the test. She got a 10. Average for girls is a 7. So I started thinking. Maybe Boo is normal. Maybe 10 year old girls are sometimes emotional. Maybe they get frustrated with their parents sometimes. Maybe they think their little brothers are annoying. And maybe it's all normal and Boo is within the normal range. As I have mentioned before, my mom says my emotions were much more like a boy. I rarely remember getting emotional growing up. Maybe I was the odd one.

In any case, I am now breathing a little sigh of relief. I always get on Boo for being a "drama queen". Perhaps I am the drama queen- thinking that her behavior was abnormal. Oh well, at least when she's in counseling later in life because her mom always told her she was a drama queen, she'll be optimistic about it.

"Sweet" Pea?

This is one of my favorite videos. We took it about 3 months ago when I realized we could record with our camera. Enjoy.