Eliza's big day

Eliza was blessed on Sunday. She wore the most gorgeousest dress ever. Oh, funny you should ask, actually I did make it...It is thread crocheted, similar to how doilies are made (real doilies, not fake store-bought ones) and took me about 4 months to complete. Jerel blessed her along with his dad, Dave, Jeff, and our Bishopric. She was wrapped in a white blanket that I bought years ago in Bethlehem (as in where baby Jesus was born). Zay used the same blanket. She was pretty much the darlingest baby ever, and the blessing was beautiful. You can see more pictures here, courtesy of Glimpses by Erika.  [NOTE:  you actually can't see more pictures yet.  I can't find them so once Erika resends them to me I'll post them]

Cousins

Zay had lots of fun having some cousins visit last weekend--13 of them to be exact--because he always had someone to play with. Somewhere during that time one of them taught Isaiah how to use his race track. We bought it for him for Christmas, but he isn't strong enough to push the button that makes it go. One of them figured out a different way to do it and taught Isaiah, so now he can play with it by himself. Of course he still prefers to have someone playing with him, but he loves that he can make the cars zoom all by himself!

Twins (born 8 years apart)

Zay only has one church outfit right now so he wears it every week. Then my nephew Mason showed up and his sweater was almost identical to Zay's! I was so excited by the cute darlingness of it. Jerel decided we needed to change Isaiah's outfit immediately because matching is dorky. One of these days Jerel and I will agree on something...

Please leave a comment to vote for whether this is the cutest thing ever, or dorky.

Grandma Sunny

My paternal grandmother came down for Eliza's blessing. We chose Eliza's middle name--Mae--after her. She moved up to Bremerton (WA, where the rest of my family lives) last year so now we get to see her more often. My great-aunt is moving up there next month and once they're all settled in, Grandma has invited me to stay the night with her. What kind of crazy 80-something-year-old invites two crying babies to stay the night? Grandma said she figures she'll probably get kicked out of her old people housing since they're not so kid-friendly, but she doesn't seem to care. I think when you've lived that long you can sort of do whatever you want!

Grandma is an old pro at hosting big dinners so she jumped right in and helped with the prep. We had homemade enchiladas (including homemade enchilada sauce) and tacos. We tried to get Dave to serve himself before everyone else. See, when I was pregnant with Eliza and Jerel and I were already arguing over names, Dave suggested the name Eliza. Neither of us hated it, so Dave said if we ended up using "his" name then he wanted to be first in line for food at the blessing. But when it came down to it, he let all the kids eat first, so I guess we still owe him a dinner for saving our marriage (naming Isaiah was near disastrous for us).

Family Photo

Here we are on the morning of Eliza's baby blessing. This is the first (and only, so far) picture of the whole family.

Altitude sensitivity

Some people get sick at extreme altitudes. Eliza is sensitive down to a few inches...if you're not standing up with her, she's crying. So you stand, bounce, and she finally falls asleep. You carefully sit down without moving any muscles that are touching her so that she won't know you sat down, but she somehow knows you're comfortable and instantly wakes up screaming. Well my sister in law Ivy was holding her sitting down and it didn't make any sense for her to not be screaming. Then I realized it's because Ivy is 6 feet tall (a whole foot taller than me) so basically when Ivy's sitting down holding Eliza, Eliza is at the same height as when I'm holding her standing up...

Ivy came down with her three boys (Mason & Asher here, and Cooper who was upstairs playing) and she brought my grandma down too. It was fun to see them! The boys are getting so old--9 and 11--but I still remember them as the little preschoolers who stayed the night with me and fell asleep with silly putty in their hands...and it had been such a pretty blanket...

Mr. Popular

You know those people who make friends everywhere they go?  I've heard of them, but never been one myself, probably because I generally find it annoying when people talk to me...Anyway, Theresa, my mom, and two of Theresa's kids came to visit last week and we went to Out of This World Pizza to get some energy out.  (The kids' energy, we were already out).  There is this huge play structure and Zay likes to climb up it and then go down the slide.  But he's about 2 feet too short to do it on his own, which means mom has to haul him all the way up and then slide down with him.  Repeat 27 times. 

So we were playing and this little boy, probably 8 years old or so (seen at right in blue shirt) came up and was talking to him.  Then he started following us, in a friendly non-creepy sort of way.  The HE started hauling Zay up the play structure and sliding down with him.  After a few times I let them go without me.  Then the boys' friends came over and told him they were going to play somewhere else and he said to them "Oh, I can't come.  I'm with Isaiah."  So all his friends stayed and they ALL hauled Zay up the play structure and down the slide.  The slide had three humps and they would even make sure they stopped just before the last hump and let Zay do that one alone, which he absolutely loved, and which had absolutely never occured to his boring mom.  Zay tends to like playing with kids, especially older ones, and mom tends to like it when other people do the hauling of the children, so it worked out great.  Later on the boys had gone to do something else and then they kept coming over to me to find out where Isaiah was so they could play with him again.  So thank you, mom of stranger boy, for raising such a nice son who helped my son have a fun day!

Farewell, Lil Red

When Jerel and I got married, I was driving The Squeezebox--a Honda Accord that I loved. But the frame was bent in a car accident and we had to get rid of it. Since we knew we weren't going to do anything crazy like have kids, we decided to just get me a small car. A tiny car, in fact. A two-door, no back-seat access for installing car seats or for installing children into aforementioned car seats, and no trunk space for groceries, strollers, and diaper bags for the children installed in the car seats. In fact, no trunk at all. All I can say is it seemed like a good idea at the time.

My favorite part when we got her was that the hood of the car is so teeny tiny. I was telling Jerel's mom about it and she said it was like Little Red Riding Hood, since my car is red and has a little hood, and thus the official naming of the car was completed.

4 and a half years (and 2 babies) later it's time for something bigger. It didn't seem too urgent until I was quite pregnant with Eliza and suddenly didn't have the energy, or the requisite narrow waistline, for climbing into the back to buckle Isaiah into his (still rear-facing) car seat. And so that task fell to Jerel. After Eliza was born, I couldn't put her car seat into the car for a couple of weeks because of the c-section, so again that task fell to Jerel. And suddenly a 2-door car was definitely too small! And although the "make it do or do without" pioneer woman inside me would like to think that I could have managed with 8 kids and a couple of oxen to get us & Lil Red around, it's probably not true. Just this once Jerel might've been right, and we might really have needed a new car...

So Tuesday was the big day. Our car-buying-helper-guy drove up in the new Acura MDX (new to us, not new new) and drove away in Lil Red. I'm surprisingly a bit sad to see her go. I mean we drove both kids home from the hospital in that car, and now someone else will be using her for boring, non-sentimental, plain old commuting. I told our car-buying-helper-guy to please let the new owners know that her name is Lil Red and to please take good care of her.

Time for an intervention

Someone in our house has a serious addiction, and I'm not talking about me & my stash of Halloween chocolate out in the garage...

Zay is only supposed to have binkies when it's naptime or bedtime, but sometimes he's not very cooperative. He has a Mo-Mo for nighttime.  You can see the silly product here.  We got it because when he was little (you know, back when he was just a baby, not a big grown up kid like he is now) he would go to bed with 5 binkies in his crib and by halfway through the night he'd have lost them all through the crib slats.  So this "binkie blanket" as we call it attaches right to the binky and keeps it from falling out of the crib.  I realize we are pretty much attaching a blanket to his face, and I also realize that "blanket" is just another word for "suffocation hazard" when it comes to babies, but he doesn't seem to have been harmed by it yet. 

Anyway, the other morning I changed his diaper and was getting him dressed and he refused to let go of the binky blanket long enough for me to pop it out, put his shirt on, then pop it back in.  So he kept the binky in and had the little blanket stuffed underneath his shirt for a good hour that morning.  I am already picturing putting him on the schoolbus as a kindergartener, making sure he has his backpack, his shoes are tied, and his binky blanket is tucked in... 

Life in the short lane

Can you tell we need a bigger car? I snapped this after my most recent grocery shopping trip. If you look carefully you can see Isaiah's head peeking out on the right, and the top of Eliza's car seat on the left. It's a tight squeeze. In fact as I was loading up the car, this lady stopped (to pick up the sippy cup Isaiah had thrown on the ground) and said "Oh sweety--you need a bigger car!" Yep. I need a bigger car. My little Yaris has been great, but it seems to be shrinking. In between the two carseats in the back is about 4" of space, definitely not enough for a 3rd person to sit back there, but luckily enough space that it keeps Isaiah from reaching (and assaulting) Eliza while we're driving. And then there is the issue of how the carseats take up so much room that neither of the front seats can be pushed back, so you have to drive hugging the steering wheel (more on that later). So in case of a crash, Jerel and I would both die instantly from being too close to the airbags, but our babies would be fine thanks to their car-seat paranoid mother! I think the headline would read "Orphans saved by martyr mother" or something like that...

So we are looking for a new car. Something with room for kids AND groceries. Or kids AND a stroller. Or, dream of all dreams, kids AND grocerise AND a stroller! Jerel and I aren't ready to bite the mini-van bullet so we've been looking at crossovers. First we wanted a Nissan Murano, but it's only a 5-seater. Jerel panicked when I told him we need at least a 7-seater--I think he thought I was secretly pregnant with triplets--but it's just because a bench that seats 3 doesn't really seat 3 when the 3 are in enormous carseats, and I plan to leave my children in enormous carseats for as long as possible. So if we got a 5-seater then when we (someday far distant) have our 3rd (and last) kid we'd have to get a new car again. So a 7-seater it is.

Jerel wanted an Acura MDX and I wanted a Mazda CX-9. Fortunately I had the brilliant (and apparently radical, it took some convincing to get Jerel to agree to it) idea that we should test drive some and then decide, rather than deciding and then being stuck with something we hate for the next 10 years. I hate test driving because I hate driving. I've only driven maybe twice with Jerel as a passenger, and we both feel good about that as we share a mutual dislike for my driving (I also dislike his driving, but that is more one-sided). Test driving is worse because you have a stranger in the car.

The sad part is that cars don't come in petite. Normal people don't worry about being able to reach the pedals (without being so far forward that the airbag is about to kill you) or see the speedometer through the steering wheel or being able to read the back liftgate to close it. Sadly I'm not normal people. Every car we drove, Jerel would laugh as I held down the "slide seat forward" button for a good 20 minutes until I could reach the pedals. Then he would insist I was too close to the steering wheel, as evidenced by the fact that my knees were touching the underneath of the dashboard. So I would slide it back until he said it was good and then point out that I couldn't reach the pedals. The best was in the acura I moved the seat forward until I could comfortably reach the pedals, and then when I went to fold down the sun visor, it hit my head. Okay, maybe a little too close. In my defense I am used to driving a stick shift and you have to be able to reach farther to get the clutch in...It was also funny when we drove the Toyota Highlander. It has this cool mirror up near the rearview mirror that shows you a view of the backseat (so you can see the kids). I thought this was awesome and was ready to buy the Highlander just for that feature until I drove it and once I had my seat up far enough, I was basically right next to the mirror so I couldn't see anything in it at all...Yep, wo is me, cars don't come in petite *heavy sigh*

After the test drives, the only one we drove where I could see out of the car was the acura so that's what we're going with. Now we're just waiting for the right one to come along and then it will be goodbye for Little Red (the Yaris).

By the way, I am completely aware that this post is entirely too long and rather uninteresting, but it's the most exciting thing happening these days.  When you have two tiny kids in enormous carseats, the prospects of a car that fits everything is thrilling!

Future model, for sure!

Here's our cute boy modeling a hat I made this morning. I make hats for my friend Erika to use as props for newborn/baby/children photography and she's been encouraging me to set up a shop on Etsy to sell them because she's had people ask where they can get them. The problem is that tax season is upon me, and so are Eliza & Isaiah, so I think the hat shop will have to wait until April. In the mean time I'm making some here and there so I'll have a few to sell when I do get it all set up.

And just in case you thought Isaiah might not be Jerel's kid after all, what with all this cooperation with photo taking, here's a picture that will ease your mind.  It's very Jerel-esque...

The latest stats

Mom had a really fun day on Friday taking both kids for their checkups (Zay's 18-month and Eliza's 2-month).  I figured it would be rough, but what I hadn't counted on was Zay remembering getting shots.  As soon as the nurse came in (it's the same one every time) he started screaming.  It was pretty much a disaster.  He wouldn't sit down on the scale to get weighed, he just stood there in his nakedness crying and doing the sign for "all done."  Then I diapered him and she and I held him down for measurements, which apparently in Isaiah's head are fatal.  I put him down and he continued to cry all through Eliza's measurements, but luckily she didn't cry too!

After the nurse left (she comes back at the end to do shots) I sat down to nurse Eliza.  Zay took this as an invitation to empty the contents of my purse throughout the room.  After that he took the doctor's chair (on wheels) and pushed that around for a while.  Then the doctor came in.  Wait.  Then the doctor TRIED to come in...Zay had left the chair behind the door, wedged between the door & Eliza's car seat, which were both pushed against the wall.  So I hollered at her to just push harder and eventually she made it in and there we were, both kids in just diaper, credit cards & chapsticks all over the floor, and instead of  a panicked look on my face she saw just my normal "I've given up" look.  Fortunately she's nice.

Anyway, after Eliza ate half a feeding I had to hold Isaiah down for his exam.  He refused to go on the exam table even with me up there with him, so instead she did his exam on my lap.  He wanted nothing to do with any of it.  She went as quick as she could while we chatted about how he won't eat anything that looks like a fruit or vegetable but is always eager to eat dirt.

Next was Eliza's turn and she did fine.  When I came home Jerel asked what the doctor had said about the holes in her heart and if she still heard the murmur that was there before.  Ooops.  Forgot to ask about that...how do you forget to ask about holes in your own kid's heart?  I don't know.  Try taking two screamers to the doctor and see how on top of things you feel...(did I mention between them they had FIVE stinky diapers at the appointment alone! I was barely keeping up!)  Eliza hasn't gained as much weight as they'd like, but she doing okay.  Actually she said from her birthweight her weight gain isn't good, but since she lost quite a bit right after birth, her weight gain from that point is good.  She's 9lbs 14 oz (Zay was that much at his two WEEK appointment and over 12 pounds by 2 months, so we're still adjusting to having a small one.  She's around 25th percentile for all her measurements.)

Anyway, they are both healthy and (now that we're not there anymore) happy.  Both got shots and both screamed.  I promised Zay a treat for getting shots so we went to Krispy Kreme on the way home.  He ate like 1/4 of one sprinkle from his donut.  Luckily he's done with shots until he's 4 (except for flu shots).

Jerel is very worried because Isaiah is so short.  He reported recently that Isaiah is the shortest kid in the whole nursery class.  The whole class of like 5 kids, among whom Isaiah is absolutely the youngest...Zay is still in the 65th percentile for height, so I'm not worried, but Jerel thinks back on the glory days when Zay was in the 93rd percentile and gets sad about the 65th.  Plus I think he extrapolates the downward trend and forsees the 1st percentile fast approaching.  Paranoid?  Yes.  But it's kind of endearing.