Thanks for the Information

 Found this little note taped to my toilet this morning. I guess I'm glad she decided to draw a picture instead of just leaving it in the toilet for me to see.

Sock Snowman Sensation Sweeping the Nation

Harley is getting a little cabin fever. Who are we kidding, I am climbing the walls. She seems perfectly content with her life of solitude.  We decided to do something crafty to pass our time. Obviously something that didn't require a trip to Michael's.  We saw these cute little snowmen on Facebook, Pinterest, other blogs, everywhere,  and decided to try one of our own.  For directions visit HANDIMANIA!  

It took her about 30 seconds to name the snowman buttons and then express that he needed a little GLAMMED-up.  So, we made a flower for Button's snow hat.

 

Harley's Hospital Happenings

Saturday morning Harley started throwing up. She did it a couple of times and then after only a few hours of sickness, she was totally back to her normal self-playing, talking non-stop, even asking for popcorn and Mountain Dew. We were all astonished by how quickly she recovered from what seemed like a stomach bug.  Little did we know that this was just a prelude to the big show. When we woke up for church on Sunday she looked pale and seemed unusually tired. I decided to stay home with her.  She soon began vomiting again. I also noticed she seemed a little congested.  She was also complaining of a headache and running a low grade fever. I attempted to give her some Ibuprofen but she would just vomit before it had time to help her. She began coughing which exacerbated the vomiting.  Soon her fever was 103.8 and rising. She was miserable, lethargic and the sickest I have ever seen her.  She wouldn't move or talk. She just lay there moaning softly with her eyes closed sucking her thumb.

There is nothing worse than having a sick child.  You feel completely helpless. Harley has an extremely high pain tolerance so, when she started crying because of the pain in her head, I got really nervous. She was dehydrated and her fever was almost at 104 degrees.  Then she started making no- sense.  It was like she was no longer speaking English.  She just blabbered and cried and didn't have the energy to stand up or even roll over. I took her to the emergency room.  It was so packed full of sick people-mostly children I was astonished.  In all of the boys' adventures I have never seen the ER so incredibly busy.  Harley was in a great deal of pain and her delirium was getting worse. On the car ride she kept screaming about worms in the apples. I was in a huge line to check in, beginning to panic, when two women, approached me. Both knew my name and said they knew me from church, from a ward I had not lived in for almost six years. I didn't recognize them but I am certain they helped me jump ahead in the line because we were called back quickly and seen by a doctor in less than 30 minutes. They were my guardian angels that night. When I went back to thank them for their help, I wasn't able to find them again. It was certainly one of the Lord's tender mercies, that they were there. At this point, Harley was completely out of it! She was having hallucinations or something because she started yelling, "That damn doctor keeps asking me if I'm a Catholic.  I'm a Mormon.  Tell him to leave me alone."  She just kept screaming it over and over totally inconsolable.  Looking back now, it was pretty hilarious. I caught a glimpse of what she might be like in the old-folks-home 100 years from now. Long story short, after a bag of IV fluids and some sort of cocktail that reduced her fever, and something for the nausea, she started making sense again and feeling better. In fact, she felt so much better that she snapped at a nurse who tried to put her in a hospital gown.  She colorfully expressed that the gown was "OBVIOUSLY not her style."  She tested positive for two strains of the flu and will be out of commission for at least 7 days, but she is home now and feeling stronger by the minute. By the way, the doctor expressed that hallucinations are often associated with a high fever. Thank goodness she isn't a whack job-YET!

 

Halloween Crafting with Belle

 

Harley collected sticks in the yard to create this Spider Tree.  She made puff balls for the body of the spider by wrapping yarn around a fork. Then we added eye-balls and pipe cleaner legs.

 

Next we made this adorable little Ghosts-in-a-Jar!

 

 Supplies

She loves creating and is such a great helper when we work together.

I Spy Letters

Harley and I are in the Year-Before-Kindergarten-Crunch. What that means at our house, is cramming everything we should have been working on since birth into 10 months. This is futile effort to catch my kid up to the kid who will be reading Steinbeck novels on his first day of Kindergarten.  I made an I SPY JAR for Nash before he started school to help him recognize his letters. Now the time has sadly come for Harley to take her turn with the I SPY JAR.  It is just rice and letter beads wrapped in a mason jar, with an accompanying packet of alphabet sheets. She circles a letter when she finds it, then tells me what the letter is, and occasionally she attempts to make the sound of that letter.

Harley's Excuses

This is Harley and her friend A. Don't let that cute little face fool you, Harley is a master at getting exactly what she wants. She is full of a million excuses too. She hates cleaning up after herself and comes up with some real doozies to get out of work. Here are a few of her most recent excuses:

1. (Using a Robot Voice) "I'm not capable of that. I am a robot."

2. I'm allergic to working.

3. I'm sick. I think I have type 2 Diabetes.

4. (Using an Asian Accent)  I no understand. I a Chinese people.

5. I can't mom. I'm a lazy person. It is just who I am. You gotta get used to it.

My Tiny Dancer

Adventures of a Fairy Princess

15 Months. That is all I have until my baby girl is in school all day, abandoning me just like her brothers did.  I feel panicked, like we are pressed for time and MUST MAKE MEMORIES NOW! Well, that and learn our ABC's and 123's.  She has been wanting to make a fairy garden for ages and was reminded of this strong desire by her dear little friend "A".  So, we spent the morning gathering moss and rocks and anything we thought suitable for a fairy princess.  She painted Popsicle sticks to make a door and picked out a button perfect for the doorknob. She insisted that the fairies needed a pool so we dug a shallow hole and put a small bowl inside that she quickly equipped with a lily pad. She truly was the engineer and I loved watching her mind, fingers, and imagination at work.

  

In other Harley news, she is taking swimming lessons. I am sincerely hoping this will instill a healthy fear of water in her but so far she is completely unafraid and wild.  She choked on some water the other day and vomited in the pool clearing it for any other swimmers for quite some time and making her swim teacher rethink her profession of choice. Of course it didn't stop her from jumping in over her head unassisted over and over again.

  Last Friday she woke up insisting that we go to the zoo.  She prefaced the request by saying she only wanted to see cheetahs, pandas, flamingos and seals.  Of course we took her to the zoo because she kind of scares us so we just do what she wants.  She was serious about only seeing those four animals because when we stopped to observe some other exotic and equally amazing animal she was very impatient with us.

Luckily we got a great view of the pandas and even saw the baby up in a tree.

Pink Princess

Our baby is 4 years old!  We celebrated her birthday last weekend.  I adore having a girl.  She wanted her birthday to revolve around flowers, the color pink, princesses and cake.  Sounded perfect to me.  She got up especially early on her big day and so we decided to go for a walk while the rest of the family slept.  She spent our time picking dandelions so that she could blow on them to make birthday wishes. I will always cherish the memory of that quiet cool morning walking with her.  She loves nature and has so much enthusiasm for life.  She recognizes the beauty all around her and finds complete joy in it.  She sang songs for the flowers and trees, the birds and the worms and even the weeds in the grass.  My heart felt like it would burst with love for her!

Later we went to Burnside Tulip Farm in Haymarket, Virginia.  She was so excited to get to pick from so many beautiful tulips and daffodils.  

After "brothers" came home from school we had cake and presents.  Grandpa and Grandma Butler were here to enjoy the festivities with us.  In typical Harley style everything had to be pink and she even wore a pink princess crown and dress.

 

Happy Birthday to my darling daughter! May you always know you are beautiful and remember the gift you have been given of bringing happiness and light to all those around you.

Busy Time

I learned the hard way with my oldest that some kids need lots of practice using their fine motor skills. I try to create small activities for Harley to work on while I am busy making dinner or cleaning the kitchen.  One of her favorites involves Cheerios/Fruit Loops, Spaghetti Noodles and an Egg Carton.  It may seem a little bizarre but it is much easier to string noodles than thread and it really hones in on those specific fine motor skills we are trying to further develop.

National Book Festival

Each September the Library of Congress hosts the National Book Festival. Luckily for us it was a couple weeks before the wonderful government shut down that we are all enjoying so much.  It takes place on the National Mall and features lots of author book signing's, story time for kids, free books and tons of other activities.  We had a fabulous time except for the 10 minutes that Nash disappeared in a crowd of a least 10,000. I guess it shouldn't surprise me. He is not one bit interested in reading, which is practically blasphemous to his mother. This year, as is usually the case, PBS Kids had a huge booth where the children participated in Sid's Stinky Smelling Challenge and met some of their favorite characters. They even wrote and illustrated their own little books.

All three of them chose a monster theme for their books, Here is the text Harley made me write in her book next to her illustrations:

 

"Monsters! Help!  It's going to bite us.

I'm going to die.

I need a drink of Mountain Dew. Help! Help!

I want to make a ladybug.

Oh no! There is another monster. We have to fight it.

We fighted the monster and now it's dead.

We have to write now.

Let's play checkers and with sparkles.

That's All!"

 

I am fairly certain I am raising a young Jane Austen.