and yet another reason why money is evil...

So I just pulled a penny out of Ori throat. Yeah. I suppose 1 out of 3 isn't bad, neither of Ori's siblings have ever been stupid uh.. clever enough to actually choke on pocket change. Scary, just the right size to completely cover the airway, and never come out: pocket change. {Rowan E. did however, risk it all for Dorritos. Twice.} As he was suddenly gagging he turned around and gave me the cutest, desperate "save me mom!" look ever. I swiped his throat and couldn't find it but luckily ramming my finger down swiping his throat did seem to induced vomiting which forced the darned thing out. Now all is well, you know, now that there are not any choking babies and I yelled at Teijah about leaving money on the now vomited on floor. I'm just saying things like this aren't helping the argument against the whole money is evil thing...

Lifes a beach...

Once upon a time when our little family still lived at my mothers (after a series of unfortunate events) we would set aside one day each weekend to ride our bikes 15 miles to the beach with our (or rather my) still low in number children in tow.
*ahem* I feel that I should point out that I don't think the addition of one more really puts me in the ranks John & Kate (Though My Love is getting close, his tally is currently at 5) or Michelle Duggar but for some reason (ironically) in our go bigger or go home society people (a LOT of people.. seriously, EVERY time I go out with all of them) start asking "Are they all yours?" once you get to #3. Sometimes I think maybe they are just trying to be nice, you know, because I definitely look like I had three kids. Moving on...
So every Sunday the four of us set off with minimal beach equipment and ample water, the children happily loaded into their cart, My Love and I on our rusty but reliable (and very heavy) bicycles, me in my huge grandma shorts *lol*. It was always awesome, lots of good exercise, Teijah loved the water and eating the sand, Rowan E. freaked out and was scared of the water, and we all were looking tan shiny and healthy. Then we had a fortunate turn of events and were able to get our own house, but it was much to far from the beach and our little family was unfortunately out of our short lived tradition.
And then Mark came to visit....

Sorry I have no idea who's butt that is, I didn't even notice she was there when I was taking the picture *giggles* and now her brightly flowered bum is part of our family memories forever... let this be a lesson to anyone bending over at the beach. It is always better to sit when collecting shells...
*sighs* Of course I'm going to have to name her... or at least her fanny.
Of course Mark, who hasn't lived in Florida most of his life and does not have ocean beaches at his disposal was very adamant about going to the beach. The first day I sent them (Mark, My Love, and My Love's 3rd baby's(our sometimes Y number 1A lol) mama Sara), off with my car. The next day when the boy's wanted to go again I decided to go as well despite my lack of bathing suit. It of course was fantabulous.
The six of us packed into my 5 seat Kia Sephia, and with Mark driving headed towards Sanibel Island. On the way there we paid $7 in tolls made a quick stop to pick up an awesome guitar that Mark found for us on Craiglist for $20 *thanks Mark, and is still totally doing the happy dance* and at a little mom and pop shop to pick up more water and some yummy fried chicken that Mark got a great deal on.
Rory had to go potty of course so the boys went ahead of us.
Walking down the walk to the beach I saw this:


...and a warm happiness filled my heart. I could hear a child crying in the distance, so I looked around and thought "well that's certainly not Teijah! He must be so happy to be in the water again."
as I walked closer I still couldn't figure out where the crying was coming from and then I saw my son's twisted grimace. He was not happy. He was freaked out and most certainly did not want to be in the water. So I did what anyone would do, I picked him up and walking further out into the water laughing and jumping as the waves crashed against it. He bought it too and way belly laughing right along with my, that is until the wave that was taller than his 5'1 mommy and he got water in his face... his current phobia/annoyance. And so that was it, then Teijah spent the rest of his time at the beach like this:


Except for when he "borrowed" someone's beach toys


Oh and yes, all my very musical children can keep a beat/rhythm... Just in case you were wondering.

With in seconds of hitting the sand Rory looked around quickly, like she had a radar device in her head, and found the first kid she could see. Once her target was sighted she ran over and made friends. And her time at the beach was spent as such:


I'm going to have to watch out for that girl...


Little Ori loved the water and My Love even boasted that he laid flat in the water (Which is a big deal to him, Teijah never did he always was trying to keep his head out of the water, you know; because he has survival skills and this would never happen to him.)


When he grew over stimulated and was done with the sun he hung out like this in the stroller:

And because I always think of little Stellan every time Ori does something for the first time (they are close in age) before we left I couldn't help but to write his name in the sand:


And on the way home we stopped at a Chick-fil-A drive thru so we could finally see what the big deal was. After we got home Mark and My Love got dolled up to go have a boys night out with My Loves poppy and the kids and I settled around our coffee table to munch on our yummy Chick-fil-A feast (which came complete with shakes which were so worth the suffering) and watch Princess Protection Program.

We have totally decided to readopt our family tradition, but if we're planning on adding Chick-fil-A to our beach fun we'll have to switch to Saturdays since they are a Christian run corporation and are closed on Sunday's... which is as neat as it is inconvenient. *grins*

Now I seriously need to find a job to support my newly found Chick-fil-A habit... and you know, so I can buy car seats.

And this is why crib bumpers are important...

... And also why they should be bigger.

And a very merry half birth day to you..

See that? yep that's me with my preggo clone army when I was about 8 months pregnant with "little" Ori. I was also still riding a bike 8 miles a day to work... anywho...
Six months ago today my not so little third child made his exit from me and entered this world. When I think about it now I envision a caricature of myself bent over with legs spread in my bathtub. My face is twisted into some exhausted grimace as I grasp the tub’s edge, white knuckled and holding on for dear life as my companion and my midwife stand on each side of me – with one hand on my son’s cartoon-ishly large head, and a foot on their (my) respective butt cheek for leverage as they try to pull him out. The baby, of course, has a huge grin on his face - (because as everyone knows children plot against us… and he finds the whole thing hilarious.) and my mother is standing by with the oxygen tank. The whole ordeal seems rather humorous now.
Though I suppose it wasn’t so dramatic…
no one planted their feet on anyone’s butt cheeks.
Sometime close to noon the day previous to Ori A.'s arrival I suddenly felt the need to move all the furniture in my house around. I deny that this urge was nesting. Characteristically, I am a messy person and I knew that this baby was going to be here (hopefully soon) and I was going to have a lot more to deal with and I wanted to start off ahead, and I also kind of hoped that all the activity would start labor. So I spent the whole day in a (seriously until 2 in the morning) furniture moving, grout scrubbing, organizing, laundry doing/folding, bathroom bleaching frenzy. Then with some cramping (that I probably had all day but Braxton Hicks contractions were c.ra.zy through the whole pregnancy so I did not pay much attention to it) I decided it was time to try and get some sleep. I took a shower and decided I should try to spend some time with My Love because I had a feeling baby would be there (here) soon. I spent the rest of the night trying to sleep, and getting up, walking around because whatever pains I was having were too much to sleep through, then the nausea hit. It was awful and with it came diarrhea. The nausea and a fever lasted into the afternoon when I finally vomited and felt a little better. *lol* The My Love came to tell me goodbye since he was about to ride his bike far far away to tutor his middle school children. I told him he could not leave me, after a discussion of whether it was time, whether he would be able to get back in time, and how I did not feel capable of taking care of the children he called and rescheduled. After awhile it became apparent that I was actually in labor - terrible labor where all the contractions felt like end stage contractions. I spent my time walking around, and alternating between the bath, the shower, the rocking chair, and oh yeah screaming there was lots of screaming. Worst labor. EVER. Seriously the contractions never intensified right from the beginning it felt like those right before you can push contractions, that is until those contractions when, you know, I was pretty sure I was going to die, and/or something was terribly wrong... but I didn't want to look like a sissy so when the urge came (and it came often) to scream out what the f*** is wrong with you people take me to the hospital and cut this thing out of me I told myself to suck it up or at least keep quiet, you know, besides all the screaming. I told My Love that I wanted my mommy so he called her and let her know it was time to come (she took an eternity BTW, love you mom). Then eventually he called the idiot midwife who shall remain nameless. Active labor was filled with lots of screaming, crying, and giving up... I would even try to stop breathing and just float in the bath. Anything I tried to do to cope with the pain only worked for a moment. It. sucked. At last I could feel the baby's head crowning. I Thanked God! quite loudly and announced the accomplishment. I thought I had finally come to my sweet relief, that wonderful pushing stage where all the pain seems to subside in natural childbirth... but not this time. Crap, it was strait crap. I pushed and pushed, Idiot Midwife was no help. After what seemed like an eternity my sons huge head was finally birthed, in the process My love had hoisted me out of the water so I was now standing up bent over the bath. I pushed and pushed but our sweet baby was very much stuck. I pushed they pulled, but it felt as though they were trying to push him back in, so I asked why the hell possibly f*** they were pushing on me - like I wasn't having a hard enough time holding my exhausted shaking body up. Eventually (and I mean a really long eventually) or baby was out (I scream OH Thank GOD!) and not screaming or breathing just making some very low rattling noise. I was dying to turn around and sit as opposed to being in that damned 'on all fours position' but Idiot Midwife felt the need to put baby on my back (like I'm a table or something). She sent my mom to get the oxygen tank and asked if it had a name, we asked what it was, A boy she exclaimed. We told her Ori and then for what (again) seemed like an eternity we all talked to the baby and slapped his back. "Come on baby" over and over again. Then he cried his loud foghorn cry that lasted for the first few months, pushing me past my sanity threshold... I think he misunderstood what we were going for. And we had our second son. Our 10 lb 23-24in (the Idiot Midwife didn't stretch out his leg when she measured)son Ori Azariah who's name in Hebrew means "My Light" "Is helped by god". He was a black and blue mess after all that being stuck and not breathing, I do have one terrible picture that was taken on the wrong settling just as my battery died:
I know terrible, right?
Eventually the bruising went down and he got a nice red colour to him, *lol* then he turned orange - but what can you do?
Here he is looking less like a boxer that lost the fight and died (thanks to the camera setting) and more like Mr. Magoo the next day.

And here he is looking less puffy (and rocking his baby legs) on day 4.

Now just for fun here are pictures of Rowan Elíse (sorry this picture was taken when 3 megapixel was alot and i had a 1.5 megapixel camera*lol*):

And Teijah Matthias

When they were around six months.



and if I find my camera I may add one of the little half birthday boy here. stupid missing camera.
These were his first socks (and Babylegs):

and this was supposed to be his first hat:

but it kept falling off so he wore the bigger pink version that I made, you know, just in case he was a girl.
and here's his bed that is about to get lowered, and switched to the hungry caterpillar sheets in preparation to move him into his brothers room.

Ah they grow up so fast and this little man is certainly no exception to the rule! He is my go, go, GO! baby and is in such a hurry that he is far ahead of where his brother and sister where at this point. *sighs* Now I'll spend the rest of the day reminding myself that I want to wait for the next one, and that I do NOT actually want to be the next Michelle Duggar. :)

the attempted return of supermom...

There was a time where I was indeed supermom - if not to the world then to all the kiddies I came across. I would dance, sing, play games, and randomly burst out in song -I was like all those t.v commercials: the kid's loved me.
*heh* but now well.... now is a different story. I suppose something happened the last time I was pregnant; perhaps I lost my patience, perhaps too many kids stole my toys and broke them - who knows... nothing can be as wonderful or as frustrating as a child... especially your own. My days have become full of threats (crazy ones) that I know I would never carry out, constant distraction from everything I am supposed to do, I can't even remember when the last time I planned out a days worth of meals was... and I am at constant battle with a mess... (*lol* okay I've always been messy so we'll cross that one off and switch it to the lifetime goals list)
I want to be supermom again! I want to have planned out "school" times and commit to them! I want to be equally great to both my children! I am so taking it back! No longer will frustration, lack of patience, and general adult hood get in the way of good parenting! No longer will I end sentences with "or I'll spank you"! No longer will I eat a whole bag of Reese's Cups in one day... wait a minute... *lol*
I'm going to own this mommy thing. *heh* somebody get me a cape... or at least a T-shirt.