Bow Explosion

So Krista has recently dropped all things including scrapbooking, card making, bread baking, and husband nurturing so as to pursue her most recent love. . . making bows. She sits for hours and hours sometimes looking at over priced bows online so as to ascertain the precise makeup so that her daughters' heads may be richly adorned like those of greater means. Who knows what her inspiration is, but certain people suspicion it is her daughters' lack of hair and desire to adorn said bald head. Her journey to her current aptitude for the art was not without its bumps in the ribbon road. It all dates back to her 9th and 10th year of age. She tells me that she would make bows even back then using all manner of creative medium with her specialty being plastic bows carefully glued and heated so as to contain skittles on its interior. She would sell those 10 at a time at her Father's work, which is on a chicken ranch, so you know it had to be good product if people going to a chicken ranch would buy some bows. She took a 14 year hiatus to pursue other interests, get married, and have kids. Then two years ago, with the emergence of daughter number one, her interests were re-kindled and she started the bow making process. They took her a few tries to get the touch back, but after some steady practice, yards and yards of ribbon, and a secret little tool, she now makes bows by the dozens. I had no idea of the extent to which she devotes time to this hobby until I happened upon a box of at least 50 bows. What is more amazing is that she still tends to the affairs of the home and children and the occasional haircut. If she could only find a way to popularize bows for boys then she would probably go into business for herself. But with the current state of child fashion she must be satisfied with bows for her girls. So, chalk up another talent to her already lengthy list. Maybe one day I will catch up, but probably not.

We had the girl’s pictures taken in their cute Christmas dresses. The others are Addyson's 6 month pictures. Unfortunately we do not have Brynlee's 2 years pictures available to post digitally.

Vomit or Diarrhea, take your pick

So Addy has now officially contracted her first virus. It all started on Wednesday with Brynlee as the fish crackers she ate that morning did not want to stay down; rather they wanted to end up on our white carpet. After one day and a low grade fever, Brynlee recovered nicely with minimal vomiting episodes.

Addyson was another story. The day after Brynlee's emesis episodes, I knew Addy was next seeing as Brynlee felt it necessary to allow Addy to suck on her right big toe for extended periods of time for no reason other than she said it made her feel better. Weather it was the precipitating factor, I know not. But I do know that the next day Addy was tossing her cookies all day long, every hour on the hour. She looked miserable as she just lay on her blanket ready for the next wave of vomiting to arrive. Fearing dehydration, we pumped bubble gum flavored Pedialyte into her via bottle and hoped for the best. Gratefully, she came out of it with a low grade fever as well that passed in 24 hours.

All this vomiting reminded me of an experience when I was a kid. I believe I was 8 or 9 years old and my brother woke in the middle of the night, he being 6 years my senior, and proceeded to regurgitate, from the top bunk, all over our room. I remember marveling, even at my young age, how much of our room he could hit from the aerial advantage point. My good parents woke that night, I assume somewhere in the time of 2-3am, offered comfort to my brother, woke me up seeing as my brother's episode did not seem to rouse me from my deep slumber, and proceeded to tackle the arduous task of cleaning out vomit from shag carpeting. For days and days our room stank of bile and vomit, so much so that my brother and I slept in the living room as we let our room air out. I appreciate now more than then how much love a father and mother must have if they are to wake in the middle of the night and clean up after their sick kid.

Thus, after this week I have learned four things:

1. Why is there no flavored-COLORLESS-pedialyte out there?

2. Teaching a child how to throw up in a bucket in invaluable.

3. Krista is becoming an expert carpet cleaner as she has now added partially digested fish crackers, apple sauce, and breast milk to her repertoire of items to extract from light colored carpeting.

4. If I were to take my pick of body product to clean up, I would choose vomit over diarrhea any day.