Chloe the Chocolate Monster!

The other day we were out and about and picked up a chocolate milkshake. Chloe seemed to like it, but every other mouthful she'd let dribble out onto her shirt. Maybe it was too cold? Not sure just what it was all about, but I put a stop to it quickly. There's no sense wasting a perfectly good chocolate shake on a baby who doesn't appreciate it when I could drink it all myself!

See how perfectly pleased with herself she looks!


We've been having fun, just Chloe and I since Caleb and Camille are still on vacation. Chloe has really enjoyed having mom and dad at her beck and call. She has started to do this thing where if she wants to go outside she'll grab our shoes to give us the hint. The other night right before bedtime she decided she wanted to go outside. She gave me one pair of shoes but I didn't budge, so she brought over another. Before I know it, my lap is full of shoes and she's making a beeline for the door! She is truly a funny child. It looks like she has been learning from her brother and sister!

Outshined by the Television

So Caleb and Camille are spending a couple of weeks on vacation with my mom and dad. My mom called today to check and see how I was feeling and then passed the phone to Caleb.

"Hi, Mommy," he said, sounding dejected.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"I want to watch Franklin and not talk on the phone."

How sad is that? I guess it's a good thing that's he's not crazy homesick for his mother.

Getting Better Again

For those of you who are wondering, Chloe is totally back to normal. She's eating food again (and eagerly!) and drinking from a cup again. You'd never know that she was so sick.

Also, for those of you who are wondering, I had my surgery today. Everything went fine. I am home - I didn't have to stay overnight, which is nice. I'm fairly mobile but really tired. I suppose being up all night two nights before didn't help anything. Rob doesn't have to go back to work until mid-next week, so he's around and at my beck and call.

Chloe spent most of the day with our friends the Finneys, who were kind enough to start babysitting her at 5:30 this morning! By all reports, she was really good there and had fun, but was she happy to see her mama this afternoon! My big challenge is going to be avoiding picking her up for the next couple of weeks. If anyone wants to come over and help out with her when Rob does finally go back to work, let me know.

Getting Better

Just a quick update:

Chloe is feeling a lot better. She seems almost back to her old self. She has stopped throwing up (miracle of miracles!) and is starting to (slowly) regain her interest in eating.

Personality-wise she is almost as spunky and silly as ever. She is getting better at communicating, although she chooses to do it through pointing and grunting instead of learning to say the words she needs. She knows the words for a lot of things and can follow instructions such as put the shoes on the shelf. Or, come get your Cheerios. But try to get her to name what she wants is funny. She has different grunts - ha, for instance, means hi. Haaa means hat. Her favorite word is "dada" and she loves to talk with her dada on the phone. When we were in the hospital, she pointed to the phone and grunted. I asked her if she wanted to talk on the phone. She grunted again. I asked her who she thought we should call. "Dada, dada."

Caleb and Camille have been playing together fabulously all summer. They have their moments, of course, such as this afternoon when Caleb decided to sprawl out in the driveway, right in Camille's bike riding path. He didn't want to move and she didn't want to go around. So she kept ramming her bike into him and he kept whining about it. Or this morning when they were doing play doh and she wanted to make little play doh balls but he wanted to make big ones. You'd think that was almost a cause for WWIII! I'm just glad moments like this have been fairly few and far between this summer. They have enjoyed being able to play all day and to pretty much be able to play whatever they want. Rob and I like to sit back and see what they come up with to do. It's always something interesting.

Sick Baby Update

So after all my efforts to get Chloe to drink something yesterday failed (and I'm talking a bottle, a sippy cup, a regular cup, a cup with a straw, my cup, a medicine dropper, a freeze pop) I finally broke down and took her to the ER. They put an IV in her and gave her a whole bag of fluid before deciding she should stay overnight. They got us in our room around 8:30 and we tried to settle in for the night. The funny thing is that the nurse who tended to her actually graduated nursing school with Rob, and the Intern who came to check up on her is new in our ward and he and his family came over last week for dinner.

Anyway, after a very long night of sleeping with Chloe in a little folding chair bed (not the most comfortable or deluxe accommodations by any means), with her all hooked up to wires and what not, she was noticeably better. She showed marked improvement by 5:00 so they let us come home. It feels so good to be home and I can totally see an improvement in how Chloe feels just being at home.

She was really funny around 4:00 when she wanted to get up and stretch her legs. She had three little disk thingies on her back that hooked up to a machine. I guess they were sensors for one of the monitors. Anyway, she made a beeline for the door only to be yanked back when the cords weren't long enough to allow her to go that far. The surprise on her face when she plunked down on her bottom was priceless!

While we enjoyed our night at the hospital, Rob and the kids had an equally enjoyable night at home. Camille picked up the same bug Chloe had (and that I have had all day) so she was up all night getting sick. Fortunately for me Rob kept the laundry going so there isn't a backlog of dirty clothes and sheets to wash. I think we may have done more laundry this week than we did during the lice situation last September.

Anyway, to make a short story a little longer...we're all fine. This is just a bug. Not a nasty disease. Chloe is fine. Camille is fine. I am fine. Caleb is fine. Rob is fine. So far the boys have been totally fine. Let's hope it stays that way!

Sick Baby

So our baby is sick. She came down with some kind of stomach bug on Monday night and has been throwing up since then. She won't eat. She only wants to nurse, but each time she does she just throws the milk back up a little while later. A friend of ours brought over some gatorade, but she won't touch the stuff. I made her some homemade pedialyte following some directions I found on the web and she won't go near that either. I've offered it to her in a bottle, in a sippy cup, in a regular cup, in a cup with a straw, in my cup, even squirting it in her mouth with a medicine syringe. I'm waiting on a call back from the doctor. I hope it's just a bug that she'll get over soon, but I have clothes to fold. I have done about seven loads of laundry in the past two days - several sets of baby bedding, a ton of towels, eight or nine of my shirts (she likes to throw up when I'm holding her so it ends up all on me instead of her), a few pairs of my pants, a couple of her outfits, a set of my sheets...

Any suggestions on how to get her to drink something she might be able to keep down? She won't eat anything either.

Silly Faces

Chloe makes the funniest faces, and they're all made funnier when her curly hair sticks up all crazy!





Why, do you ask, is Chloe running around the house in just her diaper? Classy, I know, right? Well, she was dressed this morning but her clothes met with disaster when she and Camille went out to play. The poor girl was drenched (but it was her own doing). Here's proof:



This is our old sandbox that is doubling as a wading pool until we get around to buying a new one. We left it open last night and it collected all of the rainwater. I thought we could use it for the garden. The girls had other plans.

Don't you just love Camille's snazzy outfit? She picked it out herself. The whole ensemble was complete when she added her pink cowgirl boots, but she took those off because she didn't want to get them wet.

The Field Trip

So Rob and I decided to take the kids on a little field trip this past Saturday. We drove to a little nature center about a half an hour away from home - the same place Caleb went to on his kindergarten field trip this year. We looked at some animals - mostly snakes and other little animals in terrariums (is that what those little glass cage things are called?) and played in the touch tank. That was pretty interesting - you could touch (but not pick up) starfish, crabs, mollusks and other assorted water creatures.

Here are Rob and the girls looking at the red-tailed hawk that did not make it into the picture.


And some shots of the kids playing with the creatures in the touch tank.





Afterwards, we went to lunch and then headed home. It was the first trip we've taken in a while and we all had a blast!