Jessica

• is taking antibiotics for the first time in a very long time.
• has to take them 3 times a day with food.
• is feeling a little nauseous after taking the antibiotic.
• does not like taking medication.
• cannot talk and type at the same time.
• is wearing a size 8 these days.
• likes bermuda shorts and capri pants.
• is currently hooked on House thanks to her mother.
• is not assertive and hates dealing with people.
• is very thankful to all my friends and family for loving me.
• does not like toe infections.
• can barely reach her toe.
• wants to sleep for a long long time.
• wants to be at home by herself for a few hours to clean, straighten, declutter, and sleep.
• is talking about herself in the 3rd person. Whatever.

Matt

• is going to have to figure out how to let a 2 year old "help" him repair a fence.
• just checked on the 31 cent scoop night at Baskin Robbins -- very long line.
• will watch anything on TV with me.
• is very good at washing dishes.
• is warm natured.
• does not like rainy/stormy weather.
• LOVES his girls, all of us.
• has very few clothes that aren't HUGE on him.
• will rub my feet, knees, back, shoulder whenever I need him to.
• switched phones with me because his is better.
• can eat... a lot.
• types very very slowly.
• loves me.
• is coming to sit next to me!
• puts up with my whiny, grumpy self every day. Bless him.

Natalie

• can roll over from her back to front easily.
• often sleeps on her belly or side.
• has rolled once from her belly to back, but there was a small incline involved.
• smiles at everyone!
• is usually very happy.
• was awake from 8:15 'till 1ish today.
• likes to face out when being held.
• only likes sleeping in her crib.
• will also sleep in the sling when we're out.
• is a really good night sleeper.
• is a poor napper, like her sister.
• still has no hair.
• still has blue eyes, but maybe lighter than when she was born.
• is wearing 3-6 month clothes.
• sometimes smiles at me while nursing... almost makes me cry.
• still loves mobiles.
• sleeps in her bed most of the night.
• joins me in my bed when she wakes up.
• likes to take naps with me on the couch -- so cozy.
• doesn't mind being in her carseat most of the time.
• is getting better at using her hands.
• drools like crazy!
• wears bibs a lot.
• spits up more than Joanna did, but not a whole bunch.
• nurses loudly.
• poops loudly.
• is congested a little, poor thing.
• LOVES her big sister.
• smiles at me when I've been away for a little bit.
• also melts my heart every single stinkin' day.

Joanna

• can say metamorphasis. It's hiliarious.
• can't wait to help Daddy fix the fence in the backyard.
• is still fussing in her bed tonight.
• broke her nap strike of 5 days today!
• LOVES taking care of her babies.
• wants to nurse Natalie.
• can throw an tantrum with the best of 'em.
• LOVES to have Mommy or Daddy sing "You are My Sunshine" to her.
• is now singing in her bedroom -- the ABC's, I think.
• is reading through her children's Bible with Daddy every night.
• has the cutest faces.
• calls her tennis shoes "tie shoes."
• loves to eat yogurt, even with pureed vegetables mixed in.
• likes to watch Ellen with me.
• loves Sesame Street and Thomas and Friends.
• is getting easier and easier to understand, everyday.
• loves big kids.
• likes little kids okay.
• loves babies. LOVES babies.
• just got a couple of new toys for her babies from the garage sale this weekend.
• likes to push buttons.
• can sing Twinkle Twinkle, the ABCs, Winken, Blinken, and Nod, Jesus Loves Me, Head and Shoulders, the clean up song, and many more.
• is not currently having trouble with her bottom -- yay!
• tries to pick Natalie up by her shirt. Yikes.
• Is quiet now -- maybe asleep?
• knows that letters/words carry meaning and can "read" a couple of things.
• just melts my heart every single stinkin' day, even when she's grouchy.

Finally!

Just got back from Kroger with my prescription and a whole bunch of yogurt. I was trying to remember the last time I took antibiotics, and I can't remember! I tried to call my mom to ask her, but she didn't answer the phone. I'm sure I was a child. I just wasn't the type to get that sick. (Or maybe I just wasn't the type to go to the doctor about it.) I've had times in my life, too, that I didn't have health insurance. Usually I just stick it out. I have an incredible immune system. Thank goodness for that!

The last time I even went to the clinic or got a prescription filled was about 4 years ago... except for prenatal vitamins.

I'm stilled worried about the effects that this antibiotic could have on Natalie. Please keep her in your prayers, that the antibiotic won't effect her, that she will be protected even if it goes into the milk a little. Three medical people (a PA, a nurse, and a pharmacist) have all told me the drug is fine to take while breastfeeding. Still, it is a strong antibiotic, one that would not be prescribed for children, and one that warns pregnant women and nursing mothers to consult their doctors before use. My breastfeeding book suggests taking it only if necessary, and watching the baby closely for side effects. Of course I will.

I'm probably being silly, but I'm just sooooo not a medicine-taker, and drugs make me a little nervous.

I should post some pictures soon, including some of the GIANT tree that fell into our fence on Monday. Did I mention it's been a rough week?

Catch up

For whatever reason, the last few days have just been ROUGH! I'm actually sitting down now with two sleeping children in the other rooms, after a little nap myself with one of them. I feel better for the moment. Of course, I don't know what we're going to do for dinner, so there's some stress there. Oh well.

• Joanna's been quite a grouch lately. She's not sleeping enough -- I'm hoping this nap will have her headed back to normal.
• Natalie's got some congestion, maybe a little cold. She's hanging in there.
• For the first time EVER, I feel like the last couple of days of rain actually got me down. Normally, I LOVE stormy weather. Being a mom changes you.
• I have a terrible (maybe a slight exaggeration) infection in my toe due to an ingrown toenail. It's been troubling me for about a week and a half. I visited the minor emer. clinic yesterday since I still haven't gotten around to getting a real doctor for myself. Maybe this experience will urge me onward. Anyway, the PA I saw was nice enough and prescribed an antibiotic for the infection he diagnosed as staph. No swab, he just looked at it. Anyway, I'm paranoid about taking anything while I'm nursing, so I want to thoroughly investigate this drug before taking it. Well, the fax never shows up at my pharmacy (ever), and I'm only pretty sure I remember the name. The pharmacist encourages me not to take it (again, only partly sure I remember the name), but the nurse at the pediatrician's office says it's okay. I don't like getting two different answers. I called TWICE to the minor emer. clinic yesterday, hoping to get him to double check that the Rx was okay for nursing mommas (I think he just checked that it was okay for pregnant women before -- not always the same) and maybe prescribe something else that was definitely okay. No help and no call back. They suck. I just called again. "I'll call you back," they said. Yeah. I've heard that before.
• Anyway, so I'm tired and my toe really hurts and is very infected. I'm concerned about taking the antibiotic and I'm concerned about not taking the antibiotic. That is, if I ever get it.

Lucy Lou's Five

My mom asked me to create a blog just for the kitties. She wants to be able to guide people to info about the cats without giving my blog address to strangers. Good thinking! So, the new blog is http://www.lucylousfive.blogspot.com/. It's linked over to the right. I'll be posting kitten updates over there instead of here. We're hoping to get Lucy and the kittens adopted out (when they're old enough) so this is a way for people to check them out, I guess.

I wouldn't mind some suggestions for kitten names. Remember, there are 3 girls (2 calicos, 1 grey) and 2 boys (orange). At least, we think so. We may decide to ignore everyone. My mom and I have been pretty creative in the past coming up with kitten names. Leave a comment -- I'd love some interesting suggestions.

There are 5 Kittens

We moved the babies over to this little basket where they're a little more contained (and it's cleaner!) Momma joined them for a little milk time. We know for sure the two calicos are girls. There's also a grey tabby we think is a girl and two orange tabbies we're pretty sure are males. Male tabby cats have always been our very favorite kind of cat. Aren't they so cute and tiny?!
Hmmmmm... Mom was using the calicos to determine the other kittens' sex.
Joanna wasn't really interested in touching one.

I think they mystify her. She's always been a look but don't touch kind of gal with regards to animals.

Hmmmm... nope, not gonna touch it.

We're open for tours! Ha, ha only kidding. Although it might be fun to have a playday over here with some supervised kitten time. :)

Now we need names...

Lucy Lou is a Momma

We've been checking on her every day, waiting for her to have those babies! Here she is a couple of days ago... pregnant. That's me in the background below, and I was taking the picture. I had to rotate it due to the camera being upside down. It's hard to take a picture of her -- she just wants to be at my feet! Frankly, she makes me a little nervous. I'm not a big animal gal to begin with, and she bit my mom! She's also kind of gone after the bottom of my pants/feet as well as my mom's. She has socialization issues; she's not mean. I think she doesn't want us to leave when we're out there!
My mom set up a little kennel for her hoping she'd want to have the babies in there, instead of somewhere scary in the garage. She did!
I can actually see the babies better in the picture than in person; it's pretty dim out there, and the flash illuminated the little kennel.
I had checked on her late this afternoon and freshened up her food bowl. I almost decided to go to bed without checking on her this evening, but Matt encouraged me to. I'm glad he did! I opened the door just to check her food and water. I didn't see her, but boy! I could hear her motor running (purring). I peeked in the kennel, and hmmm... I think there are babies in there. They're very close to her coloring, so I wasn't sure at first that it wasn't just part of her. I think I see 4 little heads a drinkin' away in the picture. We'll look more closely tomorrow. If her purring is any indication, Lucy likes being a momma!
Once my animal friendly/more knowledgeable mom is here, I will attempt to get better pictures of the kittens as well as discover how many there really are. I will try not to disturb the new little momma. :)

The Cat

Many of you know my mother. You may recall that she is an animal rescuer by nature. She can't help herself. I've heard stories from my grandma about Mom doing it as a child. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) my poor mom does not have a place of her own to fill with stray animals needing a home. So I let her talk me into this. She says it will be educational. For a few days now we've had a pregnant cat living in the garage. The vet says she won't be pregnant long. She'll probably have those babies some time this week (which unfortunately means my mother will likely be gone). Of course animal mommas are not like people mommas. They don't need so much help. They don't need any help, actually. My mother was describing how the momma cat (this gets kind of gross, fyi) will eat the placenta after the kittens are born and chew off the umbilical cords. Occasionally an unexperienced momma will chew off an arm or leg by mistake. Ew. We think this will be "Lucy Lou's" first litter. Hopefully parenting will come naturally to her. We've got her set up in a little area of the garage, but we're a little worried about losing the kittens when they come. Our garage is so crammed full of stuff there's all kinds of nooks and crannies that Lucy may decide to have the babies in. Apparantly the kittens can kind of scootch around (to find the milk) and they might scootch where she can't reach them out there in the mess. So we're going to attempt to get them all into a little basket where Lucy can take care of them. We called her Lucy Lou because it sounds so precious when Joanna says it! (You-C You) We're being cautious with Joanna and the cat. She actually bit my mother, but mom thinks it may have been a fluke. She purrs like crazy and is very friendly. I'm willing to risk my skin, for sure, but definitely not my kiddos'. I hold Joanna so she can look at Lucy, which she begs to do regularly. I'm looking forward to the little kittens, but glad I'm only a temporary home for Lucy and her offspring.

My sister would be so much better at this.

Officially stuck, but not unhappily so

I'm officially to the point where I have exactly 3 pair of pants that fit. I have plenty of clothes for heavier and lighter me. Very few clothes for middle me. I'm not sure I'm going to end up as thin as I was after Joanna, but I'm not ready to say good-bye to those size 4s yet! Hopefully I'll never need my 10 and 12s again either. Although I am going to hang on to them 'till I stop nursing. You never know...

So here I am at size 8 officially now. I like size 8. It's average; you can just about find anything in that size (except in my closet). I actually skipped size 8 and size 6 after I had Joanna. I went almost directly from my baggy 10s to some brand new 4s with only a brief stop at one pair of size 8 jeans and one pair of size 6 capris. I say I'm officially an 8 today because I got back into those 8 jeans this morning. Whoo hoo! They'd been too tight even though I had a couple of new bermuda shorts in size 8 that fit okay (maybe a little snugly). So I'm not ready to invest a bundle in this size (even if I had a bundle), although my 2 pair of shorts and 1 pair of jeans are getting a lot of wear. My tops are okay; they fit differently now than they did at size 4 or size 12, but most are still wearable. Some will need to wait 'till I stop nursing, though! I find myself in t-shirts a lot. I'm back to wearing my own. I steal Matt's when I'm pregnant. :)

Perhaps this is weird rambling post, but I think it's something I'll want to remember later on. And I don't mind sharing that I'm a size 8!

There are 4 new posts. Don't miss any of our weekend happenings!

Morning at Old Town Spring; dinner at Chuy's

Monday morning we decided to make a quick trip over to Old Town Spring.

It was really sunny behind Joanna, so I had my hand up to sheild my eyes. Much like this: So serious!
This is SUCH a Joanna face!

Natalie is just smiling away at her sister!

Everybody headed home for some rest (except me, of course, and Joanna-no-nap)

For dinner, we decided to hit Chuy's. It's very kid-friendly and yummy!

Matt and Natalie toward the end of the meal:

Nana took a bunch of pictures, which she's going to send to me. I just took a couple. Our waitress asked if she could bring Joanna a push pop -- sure. They were out, so she brought her a scoop of ice cream the size of my fist!

Guess who ate every last stinkin' bite?! She was SO happy for like 20 minutes spooning that ice cream into her mouth.Outside Chuy's. We said good-bye to Nana and Popo, but just couldn't make ourselves go home right away. We miss them!

At Grandma's House, then swimming

Playing with Popo's hat (a favorite pasttime). Doesn't she look like a little Amish child here? :) The spread: Our most wonderful friend David cooked the meat for us. It was soooooooooo good!!
I bet you'd be hard pressed to find many pictures like this in the world:

My dad and my step-mom; my mom and her boyfriend. Isn't it nice we can all just get along!

Pop, Mamma, and Joanna:

Later on, Pop and Joanna went for a little stroll. He's so tall and she's so tiny -- it's so cute!

We had lots of fun visiting with family. Thank you Grandma for having us all over!

After going home and letting Miss Natalie have a nap (Joanna would have nothing to do with them), we headed to Nana and Popo's hotel for some swimming.

I managed to bring everything except Joanna's swimsuit. Oops. She was very happy in just her swim diaper and swim vest though. Big girl!Oh Joanna is so blissfully happy in the water.

This was Natalie's first swim!

A fan, just like her sister.

Just chillin'

What a fish!

I'm so glad Matt was there. She would have worn me out!

One more post to go from this weekend!

Natalie's Baptism: Getting Wet

My handy work up on the screens. Another little baby was being baptized at the same service.

She was just as happy as could be!

Natalie Marie Pence was baptized on April 19, 2009 at the 11:00 Sanctuary service at Kingwood United Methodist Church. Rev. Jim Welch performed the baptism, assisted by Rev. Patrick Evans.

A few shots after we sat down:

After the service, we posed for some pics in the sanctuary. David, mom's friend, and Renee (aka Nana) both had their fancy cameras. Thanks guys!

Oh it's hard to keep Joanna's finger out of her mouth for pictures these days!

Look at that cheeseball smile of Joanna's!

I like this shot:
3 generations.

Keep posted -- lunch at Grandma's house is coming up!

Natalie's Baptism: Getting Ready

I decided I just had to put Miss Natalie in her dress the day before the baptism to make sure it fit okay and get some shots of just her in the dress. I actually bought two sizes of this dress because it was a few weeks ago, and I didn't know exactly how she'd grow. I kept the receipts, of course, and we'll be returning the 0-3 month size. The girls were baptized at about the same age (3 months, give or take a few days), but there's no way Natalie could have worn the dress Joanna did -- newborn size!

Hard to tell in the picture, but the dress is white eyelet, simple and pretty.

Morning of, we stopped into the kitchen at the church for some snacks. Joanna's dress doesn't techically match, but it's a similar style. I found it just this week (on sale!) at Children's Place. Oh, how I love my Children's Place! Joanna's dress is pink eyelet.

Natalie took a little snooze in the sling (naked except for her diaper), and I had to wake her to put her dress on for the service.

Beauty is such hard work!

Look closely, you'll see that she's grinning with her eyes closed.

Momma and Natalie:

In the Sanctuary, waiting for the service to start, looking at our family.

You can see some of our peeps in the background:

She was a happy girl, even though we were messing with her routine.

A better shot of our peeps: Let me see if I can name everyone who was there. Matt, Me, Joanna, and Natalie, Nana and Popo, Gran, Mamma and Pop, Grandma, Aunt Gail and Uncle Steve, Andy and Christiana. If I'm not mistaken, that may be the exact same crowd as was at Joanna's baptism (minus Natalie). I think it's funny (good funny) that Aunt Gail and Uncle Steve happened to be in town for both girls' baptisms -- they live in Illinois!

Cute shot of Joanna chillin' with Mamma during the first few minutes of the service.

Stay tuned for pics from the actual baptism and right after the service.