Fridge Talk

Laugh with us at some of Carolyn's newfound communication skills! She's eighteen months old now and the language advances at this age are so profound! She is becoming increasingly proficient at telling us what she wants using words.

Feeling Better

I guess I've more than made up for my week off today! But now I'm all caught up with my pictures! :) These didn't make my previous post because the camera was at my in-laws' house.
We are all glad that Carolyn is back to her usual cheerful self!
We tried to get a couple pictures of the Cousins together... mostly unsuccessfully!
Toddlers are notoriously difficult to photograph! One alone is tough enough- but two together is much harder! :)
This one was the best one! It sure was great to see Emily and Doug and Katy! They head for home tomorrow, but we did have a great time hanging out together. :) It's fun to have girls the same age- maybe our #2's will end up being close, too? Who knows?! But I've got the itch again! :)

Ooops!!

We had a very scary experience last night- sort of a nice top-off to my emotionally charged week! We were driving to Brad's parents' house and the weather was rather nasty. We were going around a cloverleaf entrance to the highway when we started to fishtail... and slip... and finally slide all the way down the steep hill and we were stuck! I was pretty scared- afraid someone else might come tumbling down the hill after us and hit us from behind where Carolyn was sitting! We prayed a lot- but I think that Someone must have been watching out for us even before we started to slide- in retrospect, it really could have been a much more dangerous experience. I'm glad Brad was driving and not me because I'm not sure I would have known what to do and we very well could have ended up rolling down the hill instead of sliding slowly without much impact at the bottom! Other than a busted headlight there doesn't seem to be any major damage to the car (although no doubt the Volvo dealership will find something expensive to fix!)
Thankfully, Carolyn handled the whole experience like champ! She asked to "gi-down" several times, but didn't cry at all and enjoyed listening to her "Voggies" (Veggie Tales cd). Her favorite song is The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round. Here she is anticipating the line in the song where the mommies on the bus go "shh! shh! shh!"

Christmas- Barton Style!

So... without further delays, here is Christmas 2007 in Pictures. We started out with a solid three and a half days in Troy with the Barton side- a wonderful change from our usual 24-36 hour whirlwind Christmas! :)
Christmas goodies are pretty messy! This picture was actually taken at our Sunday School Christmas party, but I thought it was too cute not to make the blog. :)
Friday night of Christmas weekend, Brad and I took advantage of the free, quality childcare and went out for our annual Christmas Date- a tradition these now-eight Christmases we've been together! We had a lovely dinner at PF Chang's and then went to an actual movie in the theater! I'm not sure why, but even though it costs more than twice what it would cost to actually BUY the DVD, I still love the experience of going- and since we make it to the movies about four times a year, I think it's still worth it to be able to sit in the dark movie theater, munching popcorn and holding hands. :) Maybe not very creative, but still one of my favorite date nights. :)
One of the best things about having children is getting to pass down some of what made your own childhood so special. Mom and Dad saved the tree decorating for us (hee hee :)) so I got to introduce Carolyn to some of my favorite Christmas ornaments- these Precious Moments animals were the privileged ornaments on my family's tree. There were exactly three of them and exactly three of us, and I remember each of us getting to hang just one on the tree. I think there was one of the ornaments that was more highly prized than the others, but my sisters will have to help me remember- I've forgotten which one! :)
Here, Carolyn plays with "The Magi," so named because that was what I (or one of my sisters) called the nativity scene when we were first learning to talk. The Magi could only come out each year after Thanksgiving, and their arrival was one of the things I remember looking forward to each year as a child. Carolyn's favorite part of the set was the donkey ("gockey"), though she could also identify the Baby Jesus- hey, it's a start! :)
Maybe next year we can share this family tradition with Carolyn- the Making of the Candy Cane Cookies- a complex process of ball rolling, hot-dog-forming, cane twisting, and, of course, plenty of cookie dough eating- along with the occasional cookie dough food fight (a addition of more recent years :))
As you may have learned by reading my eternal post from this morning, Carolyn was not feeling well over Christmas, and though there were many frustrating tearful moments, there were also many other moments like this. You can imagine my mom just ATE this up! :)
Saturday night, we visited with our friends Charlie and Rachel. They were some of our first friends in Phoenix and we enjoyed many happy Euchre games since we were both from Michigan! They've since moved to Minneapolis and we of course live here in Michigan, but their family lives near mine and we try to see them whenever they're close by. :)
Their daughter Leah is just a few days older than Carolyn. This is the happiest picture I have of the two of them that night since Carolyn spent most of the evening in tears... but bananas proved to be a great solution and here they both watch each other stuffing her mouth! :)
Monday was full of preparations for the Big Christmas Eve Celebration! Tradition mandates that each stocking contain something Edible... these cookies were hiding upstairs in one of the bedrooms, awaiting placement in Bryan's stocking... when Carolyn disappeared for a moment, a quick search found her here! She didn't even dig in right away- she waited for me to come and then asked if she could "pss" have a cookie! What a sweet girl! Of course she got one, even though it was right before dinner. It's Christmas after all. :)
Here, Carolyn inspects the gifts. She was most interested in anything that was not for her. :)
It was fun to have my Granddad (dubbed "Da-Dad" by Carolyn) up from North Carolina to celebrate with us. I love how children are so free with their affection and love so uncomplicatedly. Granddad looks and sounds a little different from most of the people we're around, but right from the very beginning, Carolyn seemed to have a very real and genuine affection for him- perhaps helped along by the fact that he allowed her to play with his keys every time she asked. :) It warmed my heart to see her give love so freely and I'm sure it warmed his, too.
One of my favorite things about Christmas this year was the sing-along we had all together. Since Carolyn wasn't feeling well, we couldn't take her to the church nursery, so we improvised our own Christmas Eve service with lots of carols, sung in harmony around the piano. :) Even the boys jumped in!
This picture pretty much sums up the way Carolyn felt about the whole present-opening experience. Can you see the "NO" on her face?! I'm sure she won't be saying NO to presents next year! :) And hopefully she won't be sick, either! :)

Christmas- Irving Style!

Christmas Day we drove back home to spend a couple days with the Irving side of the family. Doug and Katy and Emily were up from Raleigh and it was really great to see them again. We so often wish we lived closer!! Both girls had really grown up since the last time we saw them even just 6 weeks ago!Carolyn loves the little rocking chair at Nana's house! She was constantly in and out of it whenever we were in the living room. I am going to have to find a way to get a small rocking chair for her- she loves to "bock" so much! :)
I've been getting a lot of pictures of Carolyn like this lately. Whenever I pull the camera out to take a picture, Carolyn immediately asks to see "Hay-na! Hay-na!" This is her version of "Carolyn" and she dearly loves to see pictures of herself!! She likes to see the picture immediately after it is taken so she comes up to me with this goofy sideways head look and says "Hay-na." :) One time I let her sit on the stool at the bar and look at this blog- she was delighted!! Now she frequently asks to get "up up!" so she can see "Hay-na" and play with the beloved Mouse. :)
Here Carolyn opens her first present... probably the best present-opening picture I have since she dissolved into tears soon after this (hence, not very many pictures! :))
She did love the little baby and bottle I got her. She's not a huge fan of the basket bed I worked so hard on, though. I think this is because the first part of our morning routine is putting the Pipes to bed- and she thinks that when she puts something to bed, she can't have it anymore. We'll have to work on that... I'm sure she will enjoy the bed and blanket soon.
She loves taking care of the baby! This is a good thingbecause thanks to our friends Steve and Carolyn, Little Carolyn now has four new babies to take care of (in addition to the one she already had!)- they gave her a set of triplets!! It was a perfect present because Carolyn absolutely loves her babies. :)
Emily, at just 10 weeks older (and also not sick), seemed to enjoy Christmas quite a bit more! She's such a little cutie!
Here the girls are enjoying a Touch and Tickle book we have- where you peek behind the flap and tickle all the animals. They got such a kick out of it! In retrospect, I should have known that Carolyn's mouth was hurting- in looking back over my pictures to decide what to post, I noticed now that about a third of them feature Carolyn with her fingers in her mouth! Poor kid! It's tough having such clueless parents!
The gift that got the most play, however, was this awesome Nintendo Wii that Kath managed to procure for the family! We all (even those of us who don't golf!) enjoyed learning to play and it was a great thing for everyone to do together. I'm sure there will be many more happy family evenings in the basement to come! :)

Let the Pictures Begin!

Here's one picture so it doesn't look like my blog is nothing but text! More to come: the Princess is awake now! :)

Delay in Processing

Those of you who have read my blog for any length of time will realize that whenever we have an "event" (like, say, Christmas...) I never really feel as though it's happened until it's on the blog- hence, I usually beat everyone else in my family to the blogosphere whenever I have pictures to post. :) So maybe you're wondering what's the matter with me this week- no posts at all for a whole week! Let me tell you about our week.

****Warning: likely to be long-winded. Feel free to skip- writing is an important "coping" mechanism for me- I need to see my thoughts "out there" in order to sort through them and get things back in order in my mind, and I'm posting them here because I thought maybe sometime they might encourage someone else who's gone through the same thing we did this week and feels as confused as I have. I have most of the pictures (left the camera at Nana's last night) and a day completely off so I'll post a "real" update later today. :)*****

This week was a triple collision of Toddler, Life, and Holiday factors that left me feeling more clueless, powerless, and discouraged than I've felt in a long time. To start with, Carolyn has now officially exited the Honeymoon Phase of Toddler development- no longer a walking, talking, compliant baby- she has now discovered the multiple uses for the word NO! My sweet, easy-going little girl has a will of her own now, and when she doesn't get what she wants, she's already started to throw a few tantrums our way! We feel thrust into a new phase of development without much warning and new battles are before us that I don't feel very for- how did we get to this point so fast?! I so badly want to get this "right" because I feel very strongly that these early months of limit setting and limit testing are so very important for her development and for the formation of a healthy parent-child relationship. But just like the feed on demand vs schedule debate or the confusion over whether and when you should institute "sleep training" there are even more "answers" than there are questions and I get the feeling that as long as love is the motivating factor behind whatever you do, there can be lots of right ways to discipline and teach your child- it's another challenging process of figuring out a game plan, and being consistent and loving. I read a lot, but when it comes to the real life challenge, I feel a bit unsure of myself. I know I need to respond when Carolyn is defiant, but I feel a bit uncertain as to exactly how to do it. So, Factor #1- an 18-month-old coming into her own, dragging her parents behind her! :)

Factor #2- Carolyn ended up, like a lot of little kids whose parents are dumb enough to allow them to play at the mall play area the week before Christmas, getting sick over the holidays. She started with a cold that developed into a fever a few days before Christmas. So since I have a Dr. for a husband and we had no wish to visit an urgent care center on December 23, Brad called in a prescription for some amoxicillin, figuring that she had an ear infection or something and this would at least hold us over until we got home. In general, she seemed okay except for being more tired, fussy, and fractious than usual, with a corresponding escalation in the little battles we'd been having for a few weeks now.

Enter Factor #3. It's the holidays and we're first-time parents of a toddler! We made the mistake of thinking that she could kind of "go with the flow" while we did a bunch of Christmas parties the week before Christmas, then traveled to visit family and traveled back home to visit more family... and maybe she could have if she hadn't been sick to boot.

So, the inevitable collision of factors. Carolyn cried through most of Christmas this year. I was sad for her that she couldn't really enjoy opening presents, but she was just too overwhelmed by the complete disruption of her schedule and being sick. But the worst of it all was Christmas night. She woke up crying after being asleep for a few hours, we helped clear her nasal passages (which she hates), and tried to put her back to bed... but all of a sudden she started SCREAMING. Not just a cry, but a completely out-of-control, thrashing about SCREAM! I rushed her down to the basement of Brad's parents' house so she wouldn't wake up Emily, and suffice it to say that the next 45 minutes were some of the longest of of my life. She shrieked uncontrollably and completely inconsolably, kicking and screaming on the ground, saying NO NO NO NO NO! I've never seen her come this unglued. She would not let anyone come near her and seemed genuinely afraid of us. It just broke my heart to see her suffer like this and to have her unwilling to let me comfort her. It was horrible. My first thought in that moment was that she must be in unthinkable pain. I should have listened to that thought and gone with my first instinct; it might have saved us days of confusion, tears, and hurt.

As it happened, though, we really just didn't know what was going on; how much had to do with physical discomfort, how much to do with the massive schedule disruption, and how much was due to the increasingly strong will of a toddler. Over the next few days, poor Carolyn continued to have these "episodes" of complete hysteria and though none was as bad as the first night, each one left me feeling so confused, frustrated, and incredibly powerless to do anything to change the situation. I was so drained from these experiences that one night I actually went to work unscheduled because at least there I would have problems I could fix- and I'd be somebody's hero for coming in, even though I couldn't seem to solve anything at home. I was SO discouraged!

We took her to the doctor on Wednesday and found out that she has a viral throat infection (so of course the amoxicillin did nothing) and finally a couple days later when things didn't seem to be improving, we called them back, told them that she seemed to be in truly genuine pain. FINALLY, we got something that worked! They gave us a little bit of Tylenol with codeine to give her and it worked like a charm! She was a different child and 100% herself again within about an hour of her first dose! What a relief! So, all in all, not the most wonderful, magical Christmas ever, with maybe more tears than laughter at times, but it was a time in which we were very thankful for family! :) And for good drugs! :) And I think we learned a few things, too.

Lots of Laughs

We've watched this little video about five times today and laughed so hard every time!!



Everyone's here now (LaLa, Em, and Bye arrived today) and we're having a great time. :) Carolyn's picked up several new words this weekend- most notably, "gockey" (donkey from the nativity scene), "bite" (doesn't want food cut up anymore; only wants to take "bites" from other people's food), and "Poe" (Pooh Bear)- we've also heard an awful lot of NO! NO! NO! lately!

Helping Garrett Walk

Today we went to Garrett's house to play. Garrett is just learning to walk, and Carolyn got such a kick out of "helping" him by holding his other hand. :) Check out this little video.

The Hat and the Baby

Carolyn is very interested in Opposites right now- she likes to take the hat Off and say "off" and then put it back on again and say "on!"She is growing very attached to her baby. She is so very kind and gentle with it, it's really quite touching. She's already a very motherly little soul.
She loves to rock the baby (perhaps a little unconventionally, but maybe it works better that way :)) and burp the baby. Yesterday she had the baby lying on the ottoman and told me the baby had a poopy. She lifted the baby's little legs and asked me for a "bep" (wipe) to wipe her! She has the beginnings of an imagination! :) YES!
Here she is taking the baby and a "bot" to bed. She insisted last night on taking Baby to her own bed with her... but things didn't work out so well- she pitched the baby over the side of the crib (along with all the pipes) and then cried and cried until I came in the room and she said "Baby! Pies!" I returned them to her, but after another repetition of the same game, I told her, to her great grief, that the Baby was going to sleep out in the living room.
I think she will enjoy her Christmas present- I copied the idea from a baby/bassinet combo that costs about $45- I got the baby really inexpensively and made a liner for this basket! I'm not really much of a seamstress, but I think it turned out great! :)

Parties and Projects

Last week was the Week of Parties! I think we had 5 parties all in one week! It was a very busy week, along with the usual "life stuff" and some special projects that we were working on. I think those who look back may call this "Craft Christmas" because I've actually made a lot of things for presents- pulled the ol' sewing machine out of the basement and managed to produce some things that are (I think) far from the "gnarled messes" that my first attempts at new projects typically resemble.

One of the more successful of the Christmas Projects for this year was the Christmas Cookie Forest. With some help from great friends, we made hundreds of star cookies on Saturday morning- then with a careful mix of balance and frosting, managed to stick them together to form these really cute Christmas trees!! We took some to a party and brought others around to share Christmas cheer. But I'm glad Brad took a picture because they turned out even cuter than I'd expected! A bit labor-intensive... but I think this may become a tradition over the years because it's so much fun! :)Saturday, we had a party at Heather, Rich, and Rachel's house to celebrate Christmas with our Friday playgroup. It hardly seems possible that we can have been playing together every week for almost 18 months now!! On the one hand, it feels like we've been friends a long time- and on the other, I just look at the kids and wonder what happened to the babies we used to sit around and cuddle together?!
Everybody had a great time. :)
We managed to get a halfway decent group Christmas photo.
We were experimenting with a new mode on our camera (since the flash seems to wash everything out, but unless the light is really bright, pictures seem to turn out blurry any other way), so this picture is blurry, but I love it because it shows just how our kids play "together" at this age. Everyone's trying to get some of what someone else has and there are occasional teaching moments where we have a lesson in politeness... but they do seem to have a good time together, and goodness knows, we mamas do too! I'm so thankful for these girls! They've brought so much fun into my life and I'm blessed to have them as friends. In so many ways, I was really quite lonely before Carolyn came, working full-time, odd hours much of the time, and new to the area, but she brought with her so many opportunities to get to know other moms and my heart is full this Christmas with love and friendship and belonging. We are blessed and we know the One to whom thanks is truly due. :)

A Much Needed Update

Hello from the land of merry Christmas parties, sewing projects, cookie baking, crazy pharmacy shifts... and the stomach flu which has struck us each in turn this week! I'm still trying to catch up on all my regular stuff, not to mention the many "projects" I seem to create for myself each year- it sometimes stresses me out, but most of the time this is my favorite time of the year; I love the hustle and bustle of it all- but I do feel pretty tired when it's all over! I could do without the stomach flu, though I seem to catch it every year! :)

Friday we went to the Meijer Gardens for a "different" inside place for the kids to walk around and play in. They enjoyed the freedom to roam around (supervised of course) in the large, warm, "tropical" garden area. We tried to take some pictures- mostly unsuccessfully. :)Git-down! Git-down! Carolyn knows exactly how to tell me what she wants. :)
All 4 of the kiddos on the bench.
I found these pictures when I downloaded from the camera this morning... I think Daddy's been doing Carolyn's hair again! And this explains why I found nearly all the bows we have scattered around the changing table the other morning (rather than arranged neatly clipped on long ribbons, organized by color and pattern :)).
Here's a top view! :)
If you get our Christmas letter, needless to say you won't be getting this failed attempt at family picture! I have to laugh at how furious Carolyn looks here! :)
Here are Carolyn and Christian, the son of my wonderful Dr. They were born just 3 days apart! Here are a couple of their other moments together. :)
Me and Dr. Judy, just days before the births of Carolyn and Christian
Just a few weeks old! :) Wow, have they changed since then!

The Tree

So someone (well, I) had the bright idea that going to cut down a Christmas tree would be a fun family event this year... So we got everyone all bundled up and looking cute... halfway hoping that there'd be a chance for a great family picture for our Christmas letters... but it didn't last long... not five minutes after we got out of the car, poor Carolyn experienced her first "Frosty," falling face-down in the dirty snow. She then proceeded to cry for the rest of the time we were there! Poor kid! I think the boots might be too big.
We felt so bad for her! When I finally got her back in the car and dressed in regular clothes again, she was still upset, looking at her hands and saying, "Dooty! Dooty! Dooty!" It took me a minute to realize there was sand on her hands from one of her falls! She's so sensitive to dirt! I'm afraid she may become the motivating factor for me becoming a better housekeeper someday... guess that can't be a bad thing. :)
She was considerably happier after a nap and a snack. Here she is dancing to the music from the Nutcracker. :)
We tried for a family picture with the tripod tonight... here are a couple of the out-takes. :) It's hard to get a wiggly little toddler to look in the general direction of the camera- and be still while it takes pictures! :)