manlie or manly?

The following is an excerpt from an email I sent to Brian yesterday:

"I love you. I think you are wonderful. What an amazing husband I have. You can fix things in the house, outside of the house, you can build things, you can fix the car, you can cook some pretty mean scrambled eggs, you can fold towels even if it's not exactly how I would do it, and you can change diapers and comb a little girl's hair. Wow. You are definitely a real man. My manly man..."

And here is his an excerpt from his reply:

Ok, I had better get back to work.

Have a nice evening. Love,

Manlie man (I think it gets spelled that way when you know how to cook meals, brush girl hair and father lots of girls- hopefully after tomorrow I’ll be able to change that to Manly man again)

Hence, the question of the day. Manlie or Manly?





I kept telling him it would be a girl. I told him that he shouldn't get his hopes up. I told him he wasn't allowed to be too disappointed. I told him three girls before any boys. He had plenty of time to prepare himself. I warned him. I told him we were having a girl.









I was so wrong.

We're having a boy. Yep. It was very apparent. I blurted out very intelligently, "Oh! That's not a girl. That's a boy." Unfortunately for all of you who wanted to see and be sure for yourselves, our little pile of ultrasound pictures did not include any pictures of our little guy in all his mini-man glory.

Brian is beaming. I don't think he really expected to get a boy. He was just clinging to his waning hope. He is in the mood to celebrate and is planning to take us out to ice cream tonight. I've gotten kisses and shoulder pats along with, "Good job, honey. You're doing a great job making our boy." I recall him telling me that I could have something I wanted on condition that I produced a son for him. But I can't remember what it was. I think I'll think of something...

So we are excited in the Taylor home. Yes, I'm excited too, though after two girls I'm a little nervous that I won't know what to do with a little boy. But I think that really I should be nervous about not knowing what to do with three children 2 years and under, regardless of gender.



We did get a good picture of his cute little legs all stretched out along with a great view of his bladder. When Brian was looking through the ultrasound pics he was saying things like...

"Look at those muscular little legs. Oh, yeah, he's a good looking kid. You can tell he's going to be tall. He's going to look just like me."

I added, "And so intelligent and super talented and the like, right?"



Here's a thumbs up for his Manly Daddy. 'I'm a boy, Dad. We're going to have fun.'

a funny kind of fish

This afternoon Cumorah got to try out the big foam animal stamps Auntie Amy sent out with Grandmommy along with the new jumbo (and washable) ink pads. She loved it and was so excited about the different animals. I loved it because the ink really was very washable. Cumorah picked up the whale stamp and looked at it a moment. It had water spouting out of its spout hole. She laughed and said, "Mom, it's a helicopter fish. That's so funny."

lucky

Today we caught Rivers morning poop in the potty just after breakfast. Yeah! I know she's way young, but trust me, if I can figure out when she will probably be filling her pants, I'd much rather catch it in the potty and clean that out then wrestle with her and wipe it off her bum. The girls and I were very excited (Rivers just because Cumorah and I were) and we did a lot of clapping.

While I was in the bathroom cleaning out the potty, Cumorah came in and looked quite sad. I asked her what was wrong and she put her hand to her mouth and looked ill. I asked her if she felt sick and she nodded her head, "I have spit." I asked her if she needed to throw up and she nodded. So I opened the toilet and said, "It's OK sweetie, if you need to throw up then just throw up in the toilet here." So she threw up, quite a bit, right in the toilet. No mess, no fuss, no crying. We just flushed it away and brushed her teeth. I call that lucky.

Then she got to lay on the couch with a bowl (just in case) and watch the car movie. The WHOLE THING. Cumorah calls that a miracle.
(Of course, her attention span didn't last the whole way through it and we were eating lunch during the end of it, but she was really happy anyway.)



We've been having a lot of bodily-function-type posts lately. You know, there's just a lot of bodily-function-type stuff to deal with as the mother of young children. As an update to Cumorah's potty situation, the accidents didn't last long. Grandmommy and Uncle Johnny and Auntie Lora came to visit and Cumorah must have decided it was no longer convenient to have accidents. She also was getting a jelly bean almost every time she went potty in the potty. (I never did that before so I figured, why not give her that now?) Rivers now knows what jelly beans are too, and where they are kept.

the making of a first memory

Here is a darling picture of Cumorah at Adam Ondi Ahman this last Sunday. Isn't it so sweet? What is she doing in the tall grass? Picking up her first tick.


Yep. And when did I finally find it? Oh, Tuesday night when the girls finally got another bath since their last one on Saturday night. Really, usually they get baths much more often, but we didn't get home until midnight on Sunday and then on Monday Brian offered to take me grocery shopping since we had no food and I was exhausted after saying goodbye to our much loved guests. It was just wonderful of him. It made shopping so much easier, but we did get home too late for a bath again. So I found the little bugger last night.

Having Daddy pull it out with tweezers was so traumatic that I wouldn't be surprised if it's her first clear memory. I've heard memories are often related to strong emotions. Brian got his desk lamp set up next to the changing table so he could see well. I held Cumorah's arms and tried to calm her by talking to her and giving her kisses (she wasn't very calm but I think it must have helped a little) and Brian held her legs down the best he could while he pulled it out of the front of her upper thigh. He did a good job and got the whole thing out and everything was much better after a Hello Kitty band-aid and a chocolate tootsie pop. Poor Rivers was traumatized a little as well. Nobody bothered to get her dressed after her bath and she was screaming like Cumorah and attacking her Daddy's legs during the whole procedure. I don't think she liked that Cumorah was so unhappy. But she ended up with a little bowl of smarties candy at the end and was pretty happy with that.

I called the pediatrician's office this morning and after confirming that we got all of the tick out, they gave me a short list of symptoms to look for in the next couple of weeks, just in case. The spot doesn't look infected at all. The majority of tick bites are harmless, so we should be just fine.

tomorrow was better...mostly

So many posts on so many mommy-family-type blogs I see out there, including mine, are about happy/funny/cute/proud/craftsy accomplishments/anecdotes/activities/milestones. This post is not one of those posts. This post contains an honest and straight forward confession.

We had a bad day. That happens every once in a while. I like to think that it happens in other people's homes sometimes, too. I hope.

I think it really started on Thursday night when the girls were all tucked in and I came into the living room to rest on the couch a bit before getting ready for bed myself. I saw a book on the shelf that I had forgotten I was reading. That's how often I find the time to read these days. I love reading. I decided to read for a few minutes which turned into a few hours, and sooner than I thought possible into several hours. So I didn't get enough sleep. What was I reading? The Three Musketeers. Is that funny? I'm not sure. It's one of the very few books on my shelf that I hadn't read. Most of the books I haven't read are about submarines sinking or bush pilots in Alaska (aka Brian's books).

So Friday morning came and after I sleepily go into the girls' room and greet my sweet princess daughters, opening the blinds and singing sunshine songs, Cumorah starts the day off by peeing on the bathroom floor. Lately, this has been an increasingly frequent happening. We don't even have a new baby yet. I thought that reverting was supposed to happen when they start a new preschool or a new baby arrives or some other big and possibly traumatic event. For whatever reason though our Cumorah has decided that really it sometimes is too much of a bother to get her potty seat set on the toilet. I know that for a kid her age it really doesn't seem strange that she would have an accident but she's been potty trained for over six months and has rarely had accidents. In the past I have never made a big deal about accidents. I just say, "That happens." (I must say it a lot because now Cumorah comes to me and says, 'I color on the wall', or 'I push Rivers over', or 'I burn the house down'. And then she puts her chubby little hands out, shrugs her shoulders and says, "That happens.") We just clean up and life goes on. But this time I wasn't so happy because I was really tired, accidents are becoming a habit, and when she pees on the bathroom floor it doesn't just stay in a nice easily wiped up puddle. Nope, within a matter of seconds it flows along all the grout lines and fills the entire bathroom floor and even threatens to spill over into the hallway. In other words, it's a really big pain to clean up and I'm a little weary of doing it. So I asked her one of the stupidest questions that a parent ever asks a toddler, "Why did you do that?" She knew I was exasperated. And if she didn't know from my stupid question then she knew from my very short and very dignified fit of foot stomping. Begin crying. There was a lot of crying on Friday. There was a lot of whining on Friday. There was too much wailing of 'I want my daaaaaddyyyyyyy!' on Friday. By the end of the morning I was ready to pack a snack and a water bottle into Cumorah's backpack and send her out the door in search of her beloved daddy. I tried to be a good mother. I really did. I sang to my girls. I fed them yummy lunches. I even fed them vegetables along with their chicken salad sandwiches and fruit, and they ate the vegetables. I did dishes and changed everyone's sheets and even started a load of laundry. I played with the girls. I sent them outside on the deck to enjoy the good weather. We worked on cleaning out the car together. But there was always something to cry about. Like the time when I put the red bib on Rivers when it was really Cumorah who wanted to wear it. She couldn't handle being at the lunch table with us for a few minutes after I told her that I was sorry but it was Rivers' turn for the red bib and tomorrow could be Cumorah's turn. Friday was a highly emotional day. Way too many girls around here, and one of them is pregnant which can make it even worse.

Towards the end of nap time I heard Cumorah start crying. Loudly. I rushed in to see what the matter was. The matter was that her pink potty was not in her room when she woke up (totally my fault) and she had peed on the floor. Again. And I was unknowingly standing in the middle of it, my pants slowing soaking it up. Nice. So I'm taking my pants and shoes off, getting a towel to mop it up and I'm a little frustrated. (Remember this whole accident thing is a fairly new issue.) I asked Cumorah in a frustrated and pleading voice why she hadn't called for me. Second stupid question of the day. She starts crying even more because I was frustrated and then she starts expressing her desire to see her daddy again. Now we have come to the part where I lose it. And I scream (yes, I really mean scream, a not very effective calming technique) at my precious two year old, "Stop crying!" That's when the doorbell rang. Cumorah's room is right next to the front door. Whoever rang the doorbell heard my shameful outburst. To make it worse, I couldn't really answer the door right then as I had just removed my pee-soaked pants and was trying to clean up and calm a two year old (this time I was employing more gentle and effective ways of calming even though I was still frustrated). I think I know who my visitor was, as I was finally able to make it to the window and see a glimpse of a red car just finishing pulling out of the driveway, and I want to apologize to you. I also apologized to my daughter, of course, but you deserve an apology as it is never pleasant to find yourself in the middle of someone else's less-than-perfect behavior. So somehow everything got cleaned up and everybody got clean pants and I found myself crying. I was crying because it really had been a sad day and because I was so upset that I had lost it, again. I was crying and wondering why on earth my Father in Heaven is blessing me with a third baby because I certainly don't deserve any more children because I'm such a horrible mother, etc., etc. (My mother hates it when I say things like that.) So how did the day end? Well, as usually happens in life, we just kept going and we just kept trying. I stopped crying and stopped thinking negative thoughts. We went to Wal Mart to pick up some groceries that we needed and some new big girl shampoo with conditioner for Cumorah (how exciting is that? it smells like strawberries) and a new $1 ball that we had to dig for in the $3 ball bin in an effort to alleviate contentious sibling encounters surrounding Rivers $1 ball from her birthday. Then we came home and had pizza night with Daddy which was very nice. And Cumorah peed on the bathroom floor again, but this time when she wanted Daddy, he was here. Mommy was very glad that Cumorah at last got what she wanted. Then we had baths and kisses and stories and prayers and the girls went to bed. And Cumorah peed on her bed. She was gleeful in relating the story. Quite pleased with her ingenuity. When asked if she had peed in her bed she whispered, "Yeeesssss." in her Daddy's ear, relishing the moment. We were calm about it and just switched the sheets and said goodnight. And we said, "Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow always is."

Tomorrow was better. Except for the part in the morning when Cumorah pooped in her pants (I was so shocked, she has never done that) and it fell out while I was escorting her to the bathroom and I didn't realize it until Rivers slipped in it on her way to see what was going on. My determination to remain calm rather failed me and I let out an "aaarrrghh!" worthy of any fearsome pirate captain. Brian came to investigate the matter and found me cleaning the floor and Rivers sitting in the bath tub waiting for her feet to be cleaned. But other than that it was a long and busy and good day that found the girls playing quite well together on the back deck while they were being ignored by their parents who were fixing and deep cleaning the minivan. Oh, and we even made and played with kool-aid playdo. See, I'm really not that bad of a mom.


Brian and I decided that our new tactic in dealing with Cumorah's current difficulty is non-emotional clean up with very little conversation. We're getting quite good at it as we've had two accidents this evening. They're not really accidents, they're more like on-purposes. (Brian wants to put her back in diapers, but I don't like that idea just yet.)


And I have decided on my own that my first born and I are most likely going to be the best of friends and the worst of enemies throughout her childhood years. We are both alike in many ways and just enough stubborn, proud and mean spirited to really go at it. Oh well, hopefully we'll be just enough loving, humble and compassionate to really go at it, too.


**My brother says that when you sit down to read my blog you feel like you really need to settle in and get comfortable. You know, put your feet up and get your cup of hot cocoa. He is commenting on the length of my stories, obviously. I'm not always very good at summarizing. But I figure, really, I'm not forcing anyone to read this. It's for me and my posterity and anybody else that cares and/or is interested or maybe just really bored. If you need clif notes, just ask Jared, he has experience in writing them for my ramblings and he's really quite good at it.

reality

I had my 16 week appointment this morning. During this appointment the baby cooperated and we actually got to hear the heartbeat. My uterus is growing and is where it's supposed to be in terms of growth. I can feel it now when I lay on my tummy. I lost weight earlier, I'm assuming because of how ill I felt, but now I'm back to where I started so that's good.

Sooooo... I guess I really am pregnant. Despite the horrible nausea of the last couple months, this pregnancy has been sort of a surreal pregnancy for me. It's kind of strange, not sure why. I am excited to have another baby, and I do want this baby very much. I love it when Cumorah kisses my tummy and laughs, "I kiss your baby!"

Our ultrasound appointment is June 30th, we'll be sure to let you know if we're having a boy or if Brian was embarrassingly disappointed during our appointment again. (I know I've said it before, but I'm thinking girl. I think it would be fun for my three under three to all be girls and grow up together. But I'd be ecstatic to have a boy as well.)

on ducks and trees

We went on a quick trip to feed the ducks last night. In the rain. It was a pleasant evening. We just stood under a tree at the edge of the pond which kept us pretty dry. Rivers was loving it. She recognizes, points to and verbalizes at the sight of dogs and birds. She even makes a noise that is supposed to be woof! woof! when she sees a dog. The other animal that she recognizes is ducks, in books. One of her favorite new words is 'Quack!', which she says quite well. So we thought she'd like to go see the ducks, and we were right. After a little bit of struggle she accepted the fact that the very stale crackers were for throwing and not for eating. Cumorah always loves feeding the ducks. She was excited to see a duck family, the daddy duck, mommy duck and their little baby ducks.

On the hill we walk down to get to the duck pond are some pine trees. When we walked under those pine trees a warm smell of damp pines needles came suddenly in with my breath. I was immediately filled with homesickness for the Sierra Nevadas. While I grew up below the pine-covered mountains in the foothills with mostly scrubby oak trees with prickly leaves, I love the smell of the pines and for some strange reason really want to go camping right now. Brian loves the smell of pines too. He grew up in those trees. He's some what of a mountain snob actually. According to him if it's not at least three times the height of your (three story) house and a pine, then it's not a tree. All these huge gorgeous old shade trees in our yards here in Des Moines? No really, they're mere bushes, that's all. While I love my husband very much and I do love pine trees, especially the sound of the wind through their upper branches, I have more respect and appreciation for the many different kinds of trees in the world. Except those darn prickly-leaved oak trees. I don't have much respect for them. Why do the leaves have to be prickly and make it impossible to run outside barefoot?

an update

on the fireflies...
The fireflies came out while we were visiting with our neighbors across the street in their enclosed back porch Sunday evening. Cumorah grew nervous and wanted to go home (because of the fireflies). When we did get home a firefly followed us inside. I saw the little guy flying through the living room. We caught him, took a good look at him, and carried him outside. While we were on the back porch, he flew to Brian's foot where he would light up periodically. Cumorah thought that was pretty funny. I think seeing the little black bug up close in the house helped Cumorah get over a large portion of her fear. Maybe it helps to know what you're really dealing with instead of wondering what's behind all those mysterious little lights. Oh, and the mosquitoes are out with the fireflies. I have five bites. They itch.