To see what happens with all my hella cool formatting when i jack with the website too much and kill it.

WHY OH WHY did i go with the cross-cultural studies degree instead of superwebnerdery4000 like my bro?

I coulda been the next bill gates.

or not.

Ingredients:

1200 keyed up students on the first day of school

5 minutes before school is supposed to get out

3 huge thunderstorms about to converge

1 tornado touching down in front of the school

800 crazed soccer moms in their minivans rushing to the school to pick up their children

Mix all that together, bake in a 95 degree oven at 115% humidity for half an hour – and there you have it.

a nice batch of CHAOS.

I will say – i was PLEASANTLY surprised by the efficiency of our school’s admin and staff. It had to be crazy with all the parents rushing into the school to get their kids, yanking them off buses, the poor kindergartners scared crapless with their butts in the air, heads between their arms, heads down in the hallways, all the storm sirens going off, the police cars blocking the exits, blah blah blah. Thank God Ben had the good sense to take the whole day off to deal with me being the emotional wreck that I already was  – I would have been beating down the doors to get to my baby if he hadn’t been there to keep me calm.

The final bus left the school at 4:35 I guess, an hour after school got out. Total craziness.

Crazier than that  – i actually watched the “tornado” touch down. It was a dust devil. I have seen worse while driving across E. Washington to Moses Hole for work. It was cool to watch – but it was not worth all the craziness it caused. I will say that it going totally dark and having lightning hit about ten feet away from our car made for a cool summer storm. It continued all nite. and we’re supposedly in for more today. I love crazy storms, when I am home safe with my family. since we had no TV last nite we had a fun family nite on the front porch and then just playing games inside. Kinda nice. We rarely take the time for that sort of thing and I am glad we did it.

Today we went to the chiro office for kaylen where she got a great adjustment and hopefully it lasts her through the weekend. Had a WICKED episode of the reflux last nite – to the point where it scared me to death – she was just like ejecting every bit of fluid from her whole body out of any available hole in her head – i swear to you it was coming out her EYES…and it soaked EVERYTHING in about a three foot radius. Gross. So – praying that that resolves itself soon.

So….I have been hearing from people that they VISIT this blog – but YOU NEVER LEAVE COMMENTS!!! Thank God my friend Melanie loves me. She makes me smile with her faithful comments. don’t make me stalk you through my backend site counter. I am a wicked webmaster you know – i got SKILLZ. I can see who you are and where you log on from.Just play nice and leave a comment or something. Tell me i suck at writing, tell me my pictures are gay, i don’t care. Faith, you’re excused since you just recently joined the 20th century, i do’nt want you to blow a gasket trying to figure out too much all at once…but the rest of you have no excuse.

Ok rant over.

blah blah blah…

I feel like i have so much i want to talk about and just not enough time or strength left in my fingers. Plus I think I have real work to do.

I’ll be back later to bore you al with more mundane details about my life.

mwah.

me

Dear Baby Girl -

Tomorrow is a big day. Three years ago on this day I held you in my arms as you cried and cried, watching your friends from the neighborhood climb aboard the big magical schoolbus to whisk them away to a whole other world. You just couldn’t understand why you couldn’t go also. And it hurt me to have you cry like that, so i held you and tried to explain to you that someday it would be your turn. and I knew, even then, that on that day it would be ME crying, while you climbed aboard the big magical schoolbus, whisking you away into the world, forever out of the safety of my arms.

Tomorrow you will put on your brand new beautiful polka dot dress, and your new school shoes, and heft your Tinkerbell backpack onto your tiny little shoulders, and you will walk away from me, into the world. No longer will we enjoy long lazy days of cartoons and Baby Story, snacks and lunchtimes, naptime and funtime.

 For five and a half years I have had you all to myself, with hardly a day passing that you weren’t right by my side.

 For five and a half years I have been able to protect you – from mean people and kids who will laugh at you, and bad days, and tough calls.

For five and a half years you have been my constant companion, my baby, my student and my teacher. We learned together what it was like to be mom and baby. You let me make mistakes, and you forgave me, and taught me to be the mommy I am today.

What will I do without you all day? You are my helper, the one who makes me laugh when I am sad, my strength when I have none, and usually the REASON i have none. We butt heads, and we hold hands.

Tomorrow you will be hardly able to contain your excitement, and I will be hardly able to contain my tears. Don’t get me wrong – I am so happy for you baby girl – to be starting out on this journey into life. But i realize that never again will you be all mine.

Tomorrow you will enter the world. I hope its ready for you. I hope you’re ready for it.

World- I hope you realize the beautiful gift you are receiving tomorrow – this precious little girl with a heart so good and pure it will bring you to tears. A beautiful little girl with a gap-toothed smile, and these huge beautiful eyes that crinkle up and sparkle when she giggles, and oh that giggle.

 If you could hear her laugh at something silly her sister has done, or at a joke I have told her…there would be no sadness left in you. She has this infectious laugh that I can only hope the world gets to hear. And she’s so smart…wise beyond her years truly.

 No she may not remember her address or her teacher’s name yet, and she is still working on being able to spell her last name, but she knows just when to come give me a hug on blue days. She knows special ways of making her sister laugh, and just how to hold her baby sissy when she’s feeling fussy.

She knows how to climb up on the counter to get snacks for her and her sister, and she can fold a mean basket of laundry. She’s strong too. She’s such a good helper and I do’nt know how I am going to make it through the day without her.

so little girl of mine – put on your pretty new dress and your cute new shoes. We’ll do your hair pretty and get your backpack. And I will try to not embarrass you with my tears as I walk you into school and hand you over to your teacher, entrusting her with my most prized possession. You. My jewel. My baby.

I love you so much.

i hope you have a wonderful, amazing, oh-so-fun first day of school.

love,

mommy

Trying to get stuff done today – but kaylen is really not having any part of that.

I have at least gotten the vacuuming done, and three loads of laundry folded and put away. Now to just finish the floors, the dishwasher, and start on the bathrooms.

Kaylen’s meds are definitely helping, but she is still adjusting to them, and her system is still trying to work out the kinks. At least most of the Painful Screaming is gone – and i don’t get that look of desperation from her. She seems to be more comfortable throughout the day and is now trying to interact a little more with the world around her instead of spending every waking minute crying. So – we’re all slowly adjusting. I miss my Coke’s every day. And chocolate. And spicy food.

Ok once again i am not watching the time. We have to leave to go to the chiro’s office. Note to self: blog about the pigeon living in our garage, the tornado that hit near home last nite, karissa’s fever, the hospital bill, and back to school shopping questions.

To survive on about 20 minutes of sleep a night apparently! Survive being the key word. Not function, not speak coherently, not be dressed in a matching outfit…just….survive. But at least we are surviving.  I figured this would be the hardest part – getting used to this whole, lack of schedule, being dictated by a wriggling little 6 and a half pound ball of demands, not really having a rhyme or reason to life thing – especially after having a pretty portable and self sufficient 3 and 5 year old. We are adjusting pretty well though. Ben is on his second week gone, and we did it all by ourselves this week just fine. Even in SPITE of Kaylen suddenly turning into this TOTALLY crazy baby.

I have no idea what happened, but starting right after she turned a week old, she has started going downhill. Getting fussier by the day, harder to feed, sleeping less and less with each day and night that passes…I started to suspect she might have reflux, but then worried that the Ped would just try to put me off, saying, oh, she’s colicky, she’ll grow out of it. Kealey was colicky. i know colic. I can deal with colic. This was getting CRAZY. i mean, top of her lungs SCREAMING in pain, almost to the point of passing out, every time she ate, and then for an hour or so afterwards. And that’s AFTER i spent 20 minutes trying to get her to latch on. Then the only thing that would calm her back down after that hour of screaming was more nursing. So we had our 2 week checkup yesterday and the FIRST thing out the ped’s mouth when i tell  her how kaylen’s been acting is – “sounds like a refluxer!” So we started meds last nite and maybe its just the placebo effect, but I got more than an hour of sleep (three whole hours!), so for now, the meds are working! Sometimes just knowing what the problem is, or at least having your mommy instinct validated, makes such a huge difference. I can attack this now with all I have, to fix her, to stop the pain, or at least make it more bearable for her.

She hasn’t really smiled or interacted with us much, cause she spends basically every waking minute in bad pain – so hopefully now that we can help control the pain for her, she’ll start to perk up. today already she seems to be really studying our faces more, which is an exciting thing – just that the medicine seems to be helping, and my small changes are already making a difference. Well, not so small to me…as part of helping Kaylen lessen her refluxing episodes, we have to find her trigger foods. Which means my new diet consists of……

Chicken

Brown Rice

Water

And yes that’s pretty much it. Some iceberg lettuce every once in a while for variety if i’m feeling real daring…but otherwise yeah. Eliminating EVERYTHING. And then SLOWLY adding it back in once we have her stabilized on her medication dosage. Now i am not normally one of those lucky lucky women who lose weight while breastfeeding. No no, my body doesn’t use its current fat stores to produce milk. It wants NEW fat to make milk from. Lucky me…

although, the drastic drop of 15 lbs i usually see once I wean my babies is nice! But anyways – if i STILL don’t lose weight cutting out all this crap i normally eat, i will be HIGHLY upset!!! Seriously though, if it helps make Kay-kay happier, it will be worth it. And i am quite sure I need to cut out a lot of the stuff I currently indulge in anyways, for my own health. But MAN just the thought of it is hard. I know this is horrible, but I have one of the XL $.89 cent cokes from McD’s almost every day. They make me happy! i LOVE mcD’s coke. It has its own special flavor. And come on – i can get one with the spare change in my ashtray!!! But I have a sneaking suspicion that the coke is one of the things making kaylen feel bad. So ….farewell sweet coke. i hope to see you again very very very soon. I really don’t understand this though, I mean, Kaylen was GROWN on McD’s cokes. Its got to be like, 78% of her DNA I swear. So how can she be allergic to that which once sustained her???

Well….we’ll give this the old college try. it can’t make things any worse surely…and it can only help continue to improve things I am sure.

In other news – I got a BUNCH of pics and LO’s printed at Costco today. That always makes me happy, to see my digi layouts live and in person and slip them into those album pages to flip through with my own two hands. The pics I printed are for a few hybrid projects i am wanting to get done soon. If i can ever see straight again, or if i ever get more sleep, neither of which seems like it will happen anytime in the near future. 

MAN there is so much cute digi-stuff out there lately! My paypal is all abuzz and my hard drive is groaning to keep up! I have to do an EHD dump/dvd burn like YESTERDAY. TWO 80 gig hard drives, and i still get low disk space errors…ridiculous….

uh oh. I jinxed myself. Baby’s awake now – gotta run! more to come later!