April/May Funnies

I didn't have enough quotes from April, so here are the past two months of funny things I actually remembered to write down.

Kyla, talking about our neighbor, Joseph, who is a month older than McKay: "Jofiss still drinks milk out of Melissa's nipple!"

I asked Carter to stop playing with Jeff's iPad. He said, "no MY pad!"

Carter caught on quick while we were playing "Do You Love Your Neighbor?" for FHE. He answered every question with, "mumble mumble shoes" or "mumble mumble 'Ona,"both of which were answers given earlier in the game (I don't like people wearing shoes, I don't like people who went to Arizona). Probably had to be there for that one, but trust me. It was Hi-larious.

Allie, talking to her friend: "You don't know Chance?! He's our angel. He died when he was born and it was so sad." (she wasn't even born then)

Carter asked me what color something I was. I told him "white." He said, "oh, wipe."

Kyla, looking for a ring that holds the measuring spoons together: "Where's the hooker?"

Carter ripped one and said, "I have one gas." I asked him where, to clarify, and he said, "in my bum."

Carter was crying and crying and crying one afternoon and I was doing my best to ignore him, sitting at the piano. He came up to me and declared, "I'm not a bad mood!"

Allie drew me a picture and it said: By Allie To Mom With love and care

Kyla and I were talking about Satan and how he tries to tempt you to do things that are wrong. She told me, "Like how he got Eric to wear undies." (My previously endowed brother no longer wears his garments)

Carter, holding a flip flop high above his head like a Samurai warrior: "Can I hit Bubba?"

Allie, when a baby quail tried to jump out of my hands: "He flew in your bodice!"

Carter, at church one day, looked out the window and saw my van. "Mom van!," he said. Then he looked at me and said, "mom fun."

Cycle of Life

Remember how I said that Jeff has interesting hobbies that keep us entertained? Well, our latest endeavor was to hatch baby quail. We tried last year and failed, so this year Jeff bought an incubator and ordered 24 eggs off of Ebay (15 from one seller, 9 from another). After three weeks of incubating, the first batch were ready to hatch. And of course, Jeff was in Hawaii for his ortho convention and I had to be the hatching mother.

The eggs in the incubator. They are tiny. About the size of your thumb joint.

After reducing the temperature and increasing the humidity (per Jeff's instructions), we waited. And then the baby quail started to hatch. Two hatched before I went to bed and another one had hatched by morning. By the end of the second day, ten baby quail had hatched from the eggs, and we got to see a couple of them actually emerge from the egg.

It may seem silly, but that was pretty amazing. To see new life come into the world is exciting and fun and a little bit spiritual, even when it is tiny quail chicks.

Video clip I sent to Jeff of one of the chicks hatching

Two just barely born\

A few of the quail weren't doing so well. Three of them had splayed legs, where they couldn't get on their feet, but instead showed off a swimming motion that wasn't very effective at all. Two others laid on their sides and kicked their legs, going around in circles rather than standing on their feet. But five of the ten babies looked great. They were peppy and were eating and drinking and peeping and they were the hit of the neighborhood.

One of the ones with splayed legs

We had them in the old lizard cages with a heat lamp and food and water for them. And then they started dying. The dizzy ones went first, and the kids named one Cocoa and buried it in the backyard. The next morning, Friday, Kyla was playing in the cage (something she shouldn't have been doing, but she couldn't resist) and was holding one of the chicks. She came upstairs to show me that it was dead.  And it sure was. I asked her what had happened, and she told me that she had squeezed it too hard. Suddenly having flashbacks to Of Mice and Men, I had to refrain from calling her "Lenny" as I tried to imagine what must have transpired in her little head to make her suddenly morph into a chick killer (it was clear from the poop on the bottom of the cage that she had squeezed it pretty hard). She was instantly contrite, but I was so sad. We all were.

Damon made this "headstone." It says 

Cocoa

bird 2012

Died 1 day old

Family friend

About an hour later, I noticed another chick was missing. I looked around for Carter and he came running out of one of the bedrooms upstairs yelling, "A baby chick!" He came down and excitedly showed me that the chick he was holding was also dead. Sadly, I asked him what had happened. He made a fist and said, "I squeeze it like this!" And another one gone. Another one gone. Another one bites the dust. I tried to tell him that the chick had died and that I was so sad, but he didn't seem the least bit upset. Later, when I asked him what had happened to the chick, he said, "Make die. Frow it in the trash."

How quickly my mood had swung from elated (with the birth of these little chicks) to depressed (with only seven out of ten left). Over the next day, before Jeff got home, the two with the worst leg spraddle also died. They just couldn't ever figure out how to make their legs work (I was also bummed that the two that were squoze couldn't have been the ones that were going to die anyway!). So when Jeff got home, only five of the ten babies were alive. And they seemed to be doing well.

But they weren't. We learned that the heat lamp was not keeping the cages warm enough. There was one mean chick we called Pecker who was picking on all the others, pecking at their legs and making them bleed. And then they started to die. None of them even lasted a week.

Ah, the cycle of life. Usually not 7 days long, but still. The kids are now assured that the chicks are in animal heaven, and we move on as if nothing has changed.

Out of the other 9 eggs we had, three hatched on Friday. Those three are currently living in the incubator, where it's a toasty 95 degrees, and they are doing well. The largest of the three we call Goliath, and he is a spunky little guy. He ran behind Jeff's big desk/bookshelf in his office and it was quite a scene trying to get him out (which we accomplished with a little coaxing from his mama (me) and a broom).

We are hoping we can keep these ones alive and keep them as pets. Because, seriously, who doesn't want a quail that thinks he's part of the family?

Therapy

People who know Allie casually (from church or school, etc) are often surprised to find out that she isn't always a sweet and happy girl. Far from it, in fact. Allie has always been a little moody and not great at controlling her emotions. She has always had to go in another room and "cry it out" when she gets upset, because she just can't seem to get herself under control any other way.

She has also had a lot of phobias over the years, starting when she was really little and was afraid of shadows on the wall. Then it was stink bugs, spiders, mosquitoes...really any type of insect. I remember one day two summers ago when she saw a stink bug in the back yard and wouldn't move, peeing all over herself with hysterics. Or after we moved into our new house and she was afraid of the shadows in her closet and wouldn't go in her room by herself for months. Or the time she saw a spider in the van and, hours later, flat out REFUSED to get back in, even when it was long gone, instead running around screaming like she'd been attacked.

But no matter how severe her reactions were, she always seemed to be fairly short-lived. And so, while I worried about her, I figured it was just something she was able to get over in time and didn't need any professional help.

Times have changed. Her anxiety has gotten worse and worse and now it is affecting her life (and all of our lives for that matter). Mostly she is scared of things at night. For several months, we were able to get her scary feelings under control by reminding her to breathe, pray, sing songs and think of good things. For the past few months, though, she hasn't been able to get herself under control and instead has spent a lot of hours (usually at night after the other kids have fallen asleep) crying, then screaming, then getting hysterical.

Jeff doesn't understand what it feels like to be anxious, so he doesn't know how to deal with it. I am much more empathetic, as I can relate to what she is feeling, but it has gotten beyond my abilities to help her. When she gets hysterical, she is also completely irrational. She throws things and kicks the wall and door and SCREAMS. She says she CAN'T get control, she CAN'T stop crying, she's TOO SCARED. And if she isn't at least somewhat calm, there is nothing anyone can do to help her.

Like I said, this has been happening 3-4 times a week (occasionally even in the middle of the night if she gets woken up--one time she came in and said she was worried her heart was beating too slowly), and there are no longer any triggers that I can recognize. There's not a specific thing she is scared of, she is just scared. Saturday night was the worst night yet. After 30-45 minutes of screaming (her), threatening (me), kicking and hitting (her), and some filming of the incident (me), she still couldn't calm down.

It was going on 11:00 pm and I was losing it. I'm ashamed to admit that I was a little rough with her, trying to snap her out of her insanity, which obviously didn't help anything. I told her I needed to take her to the hospital, hoping to scare her out of her hysterics, because "if you can't get control of yourself, we need to get professional help." She tried to run, threatened to run away (ha, as if she was seriously going anywhere in the dark) and I put her in the car and started driving. We drove around and I tried to get her to just listen to me. Still, it didn't help. She was saying mean and hurtful things and I ended up taking her back home (because I had left the rest of the kids home alone and I knew Damon was scared when I left).

I called my mom and she and my dad were still up. I asked if they would just talk and see if Allie would listen. And finally, for the first time in nearly an hour, she stopped screaming. My dad talked to her about how important it is to get oxygen to your brain so you can think clearly and he got her to try to breathe deeply. I took her up to her bed where my parents continued to talk to her and got her relaxed enough to say a prayer together and fall asleep.

Phew. It was draining, physically and emotionally. And I knew that we needed professional help. I scheduled an appointment with a counselor that specializes in children and I met with her yesterday. Allie will meet with her every week for a while and hopefully we will all be able to start resting easy around here.

I don't know exactly why Allie has such a struggle with anxiety (genetics, definitely. And maybe the fact that I was not exactly in the best place emotionally when I was pregnant with her had something to do with it--LONG story for those who don't know. I was dealing with the after effects of losing Chance, and struggling with some bad anxiety myself. I was going to counseling and taking Zoloft while I was pregnant with her), but I do know that she shouldn't have to feel so afraid all the time. And I had a good feeling yesterday that this counselor will be able to help her be the happy girl that everyone else sees.

Allie's Seven!

Allie turned seven on Monday. After changing her mind repeatedly over what she wanted to do for her party, she finally decided that she wanted a Skittle cake. Easy peasy. And so delicious (according to all the guests).

We also came up with the idea of a "makeover party." My niece and her friend came and helped with the party. We painted fingernails and toenails, did hair and makeup and had a fashion show. It was seriously fun and the girls looked awesome! I asked them all questions (favorite color, what they wanted to be when they grew up, etc) and read their answers as they walked the "red carpet" and posed for some pictures. Here are the shots of Kyla and Allie as they posed for me.

The crew

The makeup artists

McKay

Allie is a fun girl. We have our battles (more about that soon), but I sure love her. She is smart (WAAAY smarter than I gave her credit for), tender-hearted, and loving. 

She loves spaghetti and breadsticks (her request for her birthday dinner), reading and writing stories, singing at the top of her lungs (when she thinks no one is listening), and playing. She has lost 12 teeth and is going to need a lot of orthodontic work (good thing she has a good orthodontist!). She loves makeup and side ponytails and pretty dresses. She reads Spanish with great expression (says her teacher), and even though she doesn't understand much, she has a great accent. 

Of all the girls at her party, she was the only one who said she wants to be a mom when she grows up.  I know she'll be a great one. If we can only survive the next 15 years or so until I can convince a great young man to take a chance on her! 

I do love my Allie girl. And she has made me a better mom.