First Day of School! First Day of School!!

I actually prefer life when school is in session. It's good for the kiddos and I to get away from each other for awhile. I'll be especially excited when Micah goes to preschool next year. He's killing me, smalls.

It was raining pretty hard when Dylan left in the morning, so I let him take our umbrella. He was really, really excited about that:

Yeah, I know opening umbrellas inside is bad luck, blah blah blah. But I'm not really superstitious. Except when I was in fifth and sixth grade, I totally believed that boys paid more attention to me when I had painted fingernails. It was a theory that I tested out many times, and it ALWAYS proved correct. So that makes it a law now, right? When you test a theorem out several times, and it always proves correct? It becomes a law. We'll call it the Law of Painted Nails. I ran out of time to paint my nails when I reached junior high. And I always chipped it off in class, so it was a huge waste of time to paint them. (And I think I finally realized that boys did NOT pay attention to me at all, painted nails or not. Let's be honest with ourselves here.)

Ben loves long, painted nails. I tried to do that when we were first married, but it drove me crazy. I cannot stand to have long nails. I feel like there's all this trapped dirt up under the nail. And then the compulsive chipping of the polish. I just couldn't hack it. So now I am happily short- and bare-nailed.

Sorry for the deviation in the topic.

Here is Sadie-Pooh:

Her first day of school was a nice ease-in. Parents came with the kids that first day. The kids put all their supplies in marked bins and colored a paper to turn in to the teacher. And then parents and kids went home together.

Sadie didn't start riding the bus until the following week. I was so nervous about it that, on that first day, after the bus picked her up in front of our house, I followed it in my car all the way to the school. I think the bus driver thought I was crazy. When the bus and I pulled up to the school, I hopped out and showed Sadie where she was supposed to meet with her teacher. Then, after school, I waited at the doors where all the kids come out. I made sure Dylan found Sadie and walked hand-in-hand with her to the bus. And then I followed the bus all the way home. Dylan actually remembered to look for Sadie even before he saw me there. I thought that was pretty great. Sometimes he remembers stuff. Sometimes.

He has been so good about watching out for her. She really hates walking with him from the school to the bus, and then from the bus stop, home, but I require it. I do NOT want her walking alone. I'm way too paranoid that someone will abduct her. That is my biggest Mommy Fear. I think every mommy has a fear. I think Nat's is someone hitting her kids in the parking lot, right, Nat? And I think Pooh's is having a dog maul one of her kids. We all have our thing. Mine is child abduction. It's probably all of those true crime shows I watch. I really shouldn't watch those.

Anyways. One day, a couple of weeks ago, Sadie slipped away from Dylan when she got off the bus at the bus stop and hid from him. Dylan looked everywhere for her, and then he ran home and came into the house, crying so hard: "Sadie hid from me, Mama! I'm so scared! What if someone stole her???" Sadie made her appearance as soon as I put on my shoes to go hunting for her. She got into huge, huge trouble. It was so sweet that he was so worried. Dylan is such a caretaker. He was home sick today, and he was so nervous that I was going to miss picking Sadie up at the bus stop. He kept checking the time and saying, "Mom, make sure you go and get her from the bus stop. You need to leave in two minutes." It's really cute. He gets his caretakerness from me. And from my dad. Grandpa is a big-time caretaker. Always making sure everyone is comfortable and safe and having a good time.

Lifting the Hands that Hang Down, Part 2

Have I told you how much I love my ward? It's really tight-knit and service-oriented. I often tell Ben that, when we outgrow this house, I'd rather add on to it than ever move out of the ward. Hmmm. Except we hate our neighbors. So maybe I'd rather just move to a better location within the ward boundaries. Yeah. That might work better for me. But I really am in love with my house.

Anyways. There is this gal in my ward named Sheila. She is just the best. She has a granddaughter named Claire whom she brings to church every now and then. Sadie and Claire love hanging out with each other. Sometimes, when Claire is at Sheila's house, Sheila will bring Claire on over so she and Sadie can play. Once, when Claire was over, she came out of Sadie's room and said, "Where are your dress-ups? Sadie has no dress-ups." I told her that I got rid of them in a Feng Shui attack. She looked at me quizzically and went back into Sadie's room. We did have a box of dress-ups, but at the time, Sadie couldn't have cared less about them. They sat around our house for six months, untouched, taking up space. So I gave them to my friend, whose daughter was really into dressing up. I guess I could let the girls play with my Halloween costumes, but then again, there's the whole more-mess-to-clean-up problem. So I keep them tucked safely away in my storage room. I sell Sadie's Halloween costumes right after she uses them, anyways. And I keep Dylan's costumes for Gage and Micah to use later on.

Yes, I am a Nerdy Organizer.

Okay. So, in late July or so, Sheila came up to me in church and said, "Sadie's birthday is at the end of August, right?" "Yep." "Well, so is Claire's! I have an idea. Since you are so sick, and you will either still be very pregnant or have a newborn at the end of August, let's have a joint birthday party for Claire and Sadie, and let me do all the work!"

She is an angel. I weakly protested, and then said okay. We set the date and planned it all out. All I would have to bring was some sprinkles for cupcake decorating. An angel, I tell ya.

We planned to hold it at the little park behind our house, but right when it started, we had a downpour. We're talking buckets of rain. Around here, it usually sprinkles a little bit, and then clears out after a minute or two. But this stuff continued forever and ever. We all ran to my house to have the party there. When we came running in, Ben gathered up Micah and Dylan and ran away. I begged him to stay and help with the party, but he said no way. He's such a wuss. Gage had just been put down for a nap, so we kept him down there to sleep.

Sheila, just in from the rain:

We started by decorating cupcakes. Lainey:

Claire:

Sadie (the birthday girls got extra large cupcakes to decorate):

Jenna:

The whole group of 'em:

The kids were so cute. Sheila had made ten million cupcakes, so the kids all kept asking if they could make one for their mom, one for their siblings, etc. We let them go hog wild.

Then we sang "Happy Birthday" twice, once for Claire:

(She looks thrilled.) And once for Sades:

Then Sades and Claire decided to sneak into the living room and start opening their gifts. Sadie opened a few gifts intended for Claire and vice versa, so it was kind of a mess at first. But we got it all figured out eventually.

Lainey gave Sadie the cutest Littlest Pet Shop bathroom set, with pretend shampoo, bubbles, a cucumber mask, etc. It was adorable. After I undid all the little parts (packaging on toys is the pits), Lainey wanted to take a closer look, and Sadie was being the biggest butthead about it. She didn't want Lainey to even touch those things. She is the worse sharer in the entire world. I had to sit there and force Sadie to share, and then baby-sit her to make sure she didn't take the toys away from Lainey. Sades was positive that Lainey was going to steal those things. I said, "Sades, when you play with Lainey, do you steal her toys??" "Noooo..." "Then why do you think she'll steal your toys?" No response. Just a pout. Girls. Such drama. Sorry, Megann. I was really embarrassed about that.

Claire's mom, Diedre, gave Sadie this little toy house, and it has become the house favorite around here:

Micah desperately loves that thing, and he goes to great lengths to steal it from Sadie and hide it from her. Maybe Sadie gets her sharing issues from Micah taking all of her toys. I guess I should try to find some slightly more masculine toy house for Micah for Christmas, eh?

The rain finally let up a teeny bit, so we did the pinata action. Sheila made this pinata, homemade, all by herself:

Isn't that amazing? Sheila is actually an artist. That's what she does for a living. Which is why I think she and I get along so well. We both have artists' souls. For the whole week before the party, she and I would call each other to make sure that we were getting everything done and prepared, and she would always correctly pronounce "pinata." With the whole n with the squiggly over it. I think it's cute. Like how I pronounced crepe when I got back from England. For a couple of years, I still referred to crepes as "crepps," not "craypes." But now I'm back to "craypes."

Jenna, trying to hit the pinata:

And Sadie:

And Lainey:

When it wasn't Jenna's turn, she would grab random girls by the hands and swing around and around with them. That is one of my favorite things about her. She loves to swing around and around. Even with kids she doesn't know:

Anyways. Sheila is wonderful. The party turned out really well, despite having to have most of it inside.

Dollar Massages

Greg and Gloria came down to see the baby in late August:

It was so fun having them here. I can't quite remember all of the things we did. I do remember that Gloria helped to cook and clean, which was so, so awesome.

Greg has fibromyalgia, so his feet are always sore. He offers anyone $1 to massage his feet for five minutes. Sadie was loving this:

Heck, I'd do it, too, except I have a problem with feet. Even feet with socks on them. Ewwwwww.

Permanent.

The kids love to raid my mom's balloon stash whenever they go over there to visit. And then they like to draw on the balloons with a permanent marker. I don't let Micah draw on his, but Dylan and Sadie are competent enough with the permanent markers that I let them go nuts. But there is always one rule - when they're done drawing on their balloons, they have to put the permanent markers back in the basket way up high on my bread box thingey, so that Micah can't get into them.

The kids forgot the rule the last time they colored on their balloons. And this is the result:

Micah drew all over his closet and two dressers. A closer look:

Aaaand he also drew all over himself:

I honestly haven't even had time to try to figure out how to remove the marker. It looks exactly the same as in these photos. Does anyone have any ideas on how to remove permanent marker? I'm thinking the only way out of this is a paint job.

Future Engineer

Dylan is really, really good at putting things together. He can put things together that adults can't even figure out. He inherited this trait from his daddy. Two and a half years ago, when Micah was born, Dylan single-handedly assembled the bassinette, rocker, and bouncer. I didn't have to do a thing. He was only four!! He did the same for me this time around:

He's so amazing. I love how smart he is.

Raising the Standard on Tooth-Removal

Nat's fam came over when Gage was maybe a week old or so to hold him. Her kiddos hadn't been allowed into the NICU, so they were really excited to hold him and kiss him. I wanted to follow through on my promise to Jake that he could be my Gage Holder:

Troy:

Gage's hands are enormous. I think he's going to be a big boy. If we could get him to chunk up.

Ivy (with Pete helping her):

I love Gage in that picture, like, "No more photographs, please."

Brock:

Gage was definitely doing his angry snorting thing at this point. Dude, he used to have so much hair. Now he is as bald as a cue-ball.

After awhile, the novelty of baby-holding wore off for the kiddos, so we sent them out back to play while Nat snuggled Gage and the adults chatted. My two-doors-down neighbor, Carolyn (a neighbor that I actually like), has a daugher who was getting rid of a basketball standard. It's plastic and pretty short - good for little kids. She asked if we wanted it, and we said, why not? So it was on our back patio. Dylan and Jake were playing with it, and Dylan wanted to adjust the standard so that it would be taller. We were all watching this go down through the back French doors.

So Dylan goes to raise the standard, and it pops out of the base and hits him right in the mouth. We see him mouth, "Ow..." (You know, because we couldn't hear anything through the doors) and put his hands to his mouth. Then we see him remove his hands from his mouth, see blood all over his hands, and scream in total terror. His mouth was large and contorted, but again, we couldn't hear him. It was actually really, really funny. It was a total American's Funniest Home Videos Moment. We would have won the $10,000 prize if we had recorded it, I'm pretty sure.

So we definitely heard him by the time he ran to the back door and opened it. He was screaming like a siren. We took him into the bathroom to check out the damage, and lo and behold, the standard had knocked out his front tooth! Here it is:

I must make a parenthetical note here. I was holding the tooth, right? That's me, in the purple shirt. See that mole on my neck? The gross, knobbly, huge one? It is no longer there. I got that one, plus three others that my dermie was nervous about, taken off on Tuesday. I'm so dang excited. I hated that neck one. Almost as badly as I hated the one in my armpit. Almost. But not quite. I now have a little scab on my neck, and one on my chest, and then two huge craters on my shoulder and my back, where he had to take out quite large chunks of tissue. They're sore. For sure. But the biopsies came back, and none of them were cancerous. Hooray!

Okay. Back to the tooth stuff. Here is Dyl:

That picture cracks me up. He's never excited to lose a tooth. It's always very traumatic for him. That was only his third tooth lost, and he's seven. He's been slow to lose teeth. He was also slow to get his baby teeth. I wonder if those two are related, the getting and the losing of baby teeth.

He is just the best.

Here are just some random shots of my teeny man. They were all taken in August.

Sometimes I worry that Gage isn't chubbing out enough, but when I see these pictures, I can see that he has definitely grown. Outfits that were drowning him in August are now getting very snug indeed. So that makes me feel relieved. I'm so very paranoid, after all of the failing-to-thrive business we had with Mikey, that the same thing will happen to Gage. He's still on the small side - he weighs 10 pounds or so and is 21 inches long - in the fifth percentile. His head... yeah... it's in the fiftieth percentile. For reals. He is officially one of ours. :) We have large-headed children. I expressed my concern about his tiny-ness to his pediatrician, but she said that we have to remember that Gage was a month early. So we need to pretend that he's a month younger than he is. So, if we pretend Gage is 1 1/2 months old, instead of 2 1/2 months old, then he's doing pretty well - in the 10th percentile. I still worry. All of my friends have nice, chunky babies, and mine is still so skinny. But we're feeding him the exact right amount, and plenty of times in a 24-hour period, so hopefully he'll chunk out soon. And he is growing. He's almost four pounds heavier than he was when he was born, and two inches longer. That's really pretty amazing growth, if you think about it.

He slept sooo much that first month. Almost constantly. When he wasn't eating, he was sleeping. He was just still in fetus mode, I think. But now he's playing for a good half an hour per eat/play/sleep cycle, which is great.

He was really congested that first month or so, too. His docs said that's normal for a newborn. So we had to suction his little nose out quite a bit. He did a ton of snorting. If he was mad, he snorted instead of crying. It was really funny. He's cleared up quite a bit now, and now, when he's mad, he does this squeal thing, which I also think is really cute. Everything he does is cute at this stage, really.

The kids had the flu last week, and he got it worst of all, poor kid. Lots of barf and lots of diarrhea. We had to fit in a few pedialyte feedings, in addition to his normal formula feedings. Luckily, he didn't get dehydrated and has finally pulled through it.

He starting to smile and goo, and I love it so much. I'm just reveling in this stage, because I know it will go so quickly. He is my last, and I have to milk this cute little newborn stage for all it's worth. I could snuggle him all day. He is so stinkin' cute and sweet. And mellow. Which we really need in our house.

We love this little man. We're so glad he came to us.