May photos from Ryan's phone

It was insane how many times we found Ann Marie coloring on the walls in the weeks leading up to our move. I kept any and all writing devices in our room, but despite that she always seemed to find the stragglers and go straight for the walls. We tried having her scrub the walls with Magic Erasers, but she enjoyed it enough that it wasn't exactly a punishment. We were very blessed to have some friends who offered to clean and ended up doing all the wall washing for us and probably used up four Magic Erasers. We might still be there scrubbing crayon off of walls if it weren't for them. :)

Ann Marie's trip to the emergency room

After school a few days after Ann Marie's birthday the kids were playing out in the hall with some neighbors. When Ann Marie woke up from her nap I brought her out and I was watching everyone play while sitting outside our front door. At some point Ann Marie turned around and started running without looking where she was going and she ran straight into the sharp metal corner of a fire extinguisher box. As soon as it happened I knew this was not going to be good. I ran over and there was already a lot of blood seeping out near her hairline, so I told Kevin to run and get a towel and one of the other kids offered to go get her mom. It was hard to tell how bad it was because it was bleeding so much, but I put pressure on it with the towel and after a minute the bleeding had slowed down and we were able to see it better. I think I knew from the beginning that we were probably going to have to go to the emergency room, so when a few of our neighbors looked at the cut and agreed that she needed to go the hospital it was nice to know I wasn't being paranoid. I called Ryan and he was still about 20 minutes away from home, so one of our neighbors offered to take Kevin and Heidi.

I tried going to an urgent care first because it didn't seem like that bad of a cut and I figured it would probably be cheaper and faster, but the doctor said to go to the emergency room because Ann Marie is so little and they didn't really have the tools to restrain her if she resisted (which probably wouldn't have been an issue since in the end the only restraining she needed was for me to keep her hands away, but actually it was probably better that we ended up at the emergency room because the doctors were so good with her). So then I drove home and asked Ryan to drop us off at the emergency room because parking is a pain at UNC and we live just a couple of minutes away. We gave Ann Marie a pancake since we figured we'd probably be at the emergency room for a while and then Ryan dropped us off.

After checking in at the ER they took us right back to our room in the pediatric section, and then we had to play the waiting game. I don't let my kids use my phone at all, so I don't have any kid apps on there, and let me tell you, I was really regretting that policy that night. Let's just say I wasn't successful in convincing my two-year-old that she should sit down and rest because she had a head wound that was still bleeding. The things she wanted to play with the most were the IV pole and the buttons on the supply cart lock. I managed to entertain her for about 3 minutes looking at the pictures of animals and bugs on the walls. Then we tried crackers, which was great until she started jumping and the entire bag of Ritz crackers scattered everywhere, mostly under the bed. She insisted on picking them up herself and despite my best efforts she managed to take a bite out of a few of them, which was disgusting. I also didn't appreciate her lying down and crawling on the floor. We tried looking at pictures on my phone and making a video of her talking, which she then enjoyed watching a couple of times before running around the room again. She clearly wasn't in much pain at all. She was just so excited to be in a new place and wanted to explore everything.

Finally the PA came in and we told him everything that happened. He was the nicest guy ever and so good with Ann Marie. A while later the resident came in to look at the cut. He said it was right on the border between needing stitches and being okay with dermabond, so he wanted to have the ER doctor look at it and we had to wait a while for the ER doctor to be available.

Ann Marie's hair kept going over the cut because it was right on the hairline and her hair wants to grow forward, so they asked if I had a clip or something we could use to keep it out of the way. I actually found one in the depths of my diaper bag. I have to admit that it was an old one with the ribbon mostly hanging off and it had a little rust on it, so that was a little embarrassing, but it did the job.

They brought some graham crackers and water for us, which Ann Marie enjoyed.

When the ER doctor looked at the cut he thought at first that it would be better to do stitches because he thought it would heal better, but then he looked again and decided that dermabond would work fine if he could pull the skin tight while the resident put the glue on. We decided to go with dermabond because it would be faster and less traumatic for Ann Marie.

First they had to clean out the cut really well because that's supposed to be the most effective way to prevent infections, so we put Ann Marie on the bed over an absorbent pad and they poured the cleaning solution (I think it was mainly sterilized water?) over it until it was nice and clean. Ann Marie cried a bit because it stung, but she was very brave.

We had to wait a while because the ER doctor had to deal with a life flight that might be coming to UNC hospitals, then he came back and they got ready to put the glue on. We reclined Ann Marie to the side on my lap and the ER doctor pulled the cut closed by pulling the skin tight to the sides while the resident put the dermabond on. Ann Marie whimpered quite a bit, but the PA talked her through it and distracted her by asking if she had liked the graham crackers and offering to get her some more when they were done. They did three applications of the dermabond and then they let it dry for a few minutes before putting a band-aid on. After that we were done, so I called Ryan and a few minutes later he was there to pick us up. Kevin was passed out in the backseat because when he goes to sleep he really sleeps.

When we got home we found that the neighbors down the hall had brought over some sidewalk chalk and a little stuffed animal as a get well present, which was so kind of them. Ann Marie was so excited. It was interesting because while we were in the emergency room I had been praying for Heavenly Father to help Ann Marie be okay, and when I said the prayer I heard the words, "I already helped you," and the images of our neighbors coming to help us filled my mind. I had never talked to one of the moms until that afternoon when we were both picking up our kids from the bus, and then that very evening she ended up being a big help as we were cleaning up blood and deciding what to do. We've actually talked several times since then and I'm wondering why I didn't get to know her sooner because she's so great. And the other neighbor who watched my kids is a good friend and she was so eager to help with whatever I needed. It was nice to know that Heavenly Father had put some great people there to help us out.

[This paragraph written a couple of weeks after the ER trip, in mid-June.] It's been a couple of weeks and I think the cut is going to heal pretty nicely. The glue is still there, but the cut is just a little pink line about a quarter inch long, so I don't think the scar will really be noticeable. We have to try to keep her wearing a hat or sunscreen because sun tends to make wounds scar worse, so I'm trying to encourage Ann Marie to keep her hats on by telling her they're cute (her favorite word of late) and they'll help her owie (with mixed results). She probably should be wearing hats and sunscreen anyway because with her red-head complexion she's even paler than the rest of us if that's possible, so she burns more easily.

So that's our first-time-to-the-ER-with-a-child story, in excruciating detail. If you made it this far you must really love Ann Marie.

Here are some pictures. Fair warning, there's a little bit of blood.

Waiting for the doctors:

Snacking on graham crackers, with her hair clipped back (this was a functional hair-do):

Waiting for the dermabond to dry:

Ryan wrote this post on Facebook that I thought was funny:

"Last night in the emergency room Ann Marie was seen by three doctors, 14 residents, 85 med students, 468 administrators and a nurse. Between the lot of them they couldn't decide how to fill out the billing information so they were going to call in a few more administrators, accountants and legal counsel to figure out how much treatment would cost. The nurse slapped a band-aid on her and sent us home. No stitches were needed.

"I think they also glued her head back together.

"As can clearly be seen in the photo, she was extremely traumatized by the event and has sworn to never go into health care administration, and her parents fully support her in her decision."

Halloween 2015

Happy Halloween from Superman, Anna (from Frozen), and a lady bug.

In the past I haven't done a lot of sewing for Halloween, but this year I thought it would be fun. I sewed Heidi's cape and dress, Kevin's cape, and Ann Marie's ladybug wings. They all turned out really well. I think the zipper on Heidi's dress is my best yet. (It took me a few days to work up the courage to start on the zipper. They're still challenging even though I've done it four or five times by myself.)

When the kids woke up in the morning they were as excited as they would have been on Christmas morning. We had a fabulous ward Halloween carnival at the church in the morning. There were breakfast, carnival games, and a fun spook alley with "gross" things to touch (like spaghetti for guts and a jello brain), then trunk or treating at the end. Ryan said that Ann Marie figured out the concept after three cars, and after that she insisted on carrying her own bucket and going to the cars herself. Kevin didn't figure out the point of trick or treating until he was four.

In the evening we went trick-or-treating in our apartment complex, which was very fun for the kids. Ann Marie figured out that people loved it when she waved and smiled sweetly at them, which might explain how she managed to get more candy than her older siblings. You should have seen her when we tried to take her candy bucket away when we were getting her ready for bed. She screamed bloody murder and held onto the bucket with a death grip.

I actually bought pumpkins this year. The kids were talking about carving pumpkins and I thought it might be a family home evening activity or something. But after I brought the pumpkins home the pumpkin-carving talk changed to, "Mom, when you carve my pumpkin I want it to look like such-and-such," which is when I realized that the kids weren't planning to carve their own pumpkins, which should have occurred to me much sooner. I didn't want to touch the slimy inside of the pumpkins at all. So we did put the pumpkins outside our door on Halloween, but other than that they ended up sitting on the kitchen counter with all the other clutter and not really being decorations. Then they got moldy spots on them and we threw them away.

some photos

Kevin seems to be enjoying first grade.

Heidi and Ann Marie sometimes have a lovely time playing together.

Heidi really wanted to have painted nails. Unfortunately she only had watercolors and markers, and she has used both (the Crayola Ultra-washable markers really do wash off easily, by the way). I finally got some cheap nail polish for her, and she was thrilled and did a good job of waiting for it to dry the first time I painted her nails.

Kevin and Heidi had a thing for sleeping on the floor for a couple of days.

Ann Marie in August

We got home from a library trip and Ann Marie immediately joined the kids in browsing the big stack of books. She's become a lot more interested in reading books in the past couple of months. She likes to have one book to hold and play with while we read another book aloud to her. A favorite is Moo, Baa, La La La. The Sandra Boynton books really have a special charm for the 1-2 year old crowd.

Ann Marie loves carrying bags around these days, but it's very important that the bags have stuff inside, so of course my purse is her favorite because all the receipts are so much fun.

She's started saying words and meaning them over the summer. The words she says are: Mama, Dada, hot!!, milk, book, ball, dog, woof, moo, baa, neigh, fish, peek-a-boo, uh-oh, and probably some others. She'll often copy you if you tell her to say something.

She's developed a blood-curdling scream and uses it liberally whenever she's even mildly upset or when she's excited about anything. She's transformed from a very mellow baby to a little spit-fire.

Everyone seems amazed at what she can do. She started walking at 13.5 months (mid-July) and a week after her first steps she was fully converted from crawling to walking. She can go both up and down stairs confidently and she can also climb onto the table, which is a huge pain. Nothing better than turning to find your toddler sitting on the table with watermelon or someone's soggy unfinished cereal spilled down the front of the clothes you just put on her. She's also starting to figure out how to pull chairs away from the table, so a lot of the time I'm starting to have to keep the chairs on their sides. She can climb onto playground equipment pretty easily, which of course is fun for her but a little scary for the ones that are tall. She gets into everything and she's really busy, but how can I be mad when she looks at me with these sparkly eyes?

July pictures

Ann Marie finally started walking in the middle of July. After a week walking was her preferred mode of getting around, and it didn't take long for her to get very good at it. It's always fun to see babies when they are just learning to walk. They're always so proud of themselves for figuring it out.

Here is a very forlorn-looking Heidi hoping that we won't send her back to bed.

Standing by herself

Ann Marie is getting very close to walking. She will walk with help even if she's only holding a finger, and she has learned to stand up without help by herself. She can even get to a standing position from the middle of the floor. Here is a video of Ann Marie being so excited and proud of herself for standing up.

Ann Marie's first birthday

It feels like a big accomplishment that this child has made it to her first birthday. She has gone from being a mellow, easy-going baby to a very active, determined, opinionated, resourceful one. She seems like a bottomless pit these days when it comes to eating, and she can shove an impressive amount of food into her mouth. She had another tooth start to pop through recently, and it's apparently a sweet tooth because all she wants is fruit and ice cream! (She doesn't generally get much fruit other than bananas because the result is terrible diaper rashes.) Despite all that eating, though, she's still a little thing at about 18 pounds, which is between the 10-25th percentile. She loves exploring cupboards and drawers. She's starting to enjoy reading books. She copies me when she watches me clean up. And she has no interest in walking, even with help.

Getting presents is interesting when you're the third child and it's your first birthday. We have a house full of toys and I didn't want to get more baby toys. So I opted for practical yet slightly frivolous and bought her some adorable new Sunday shoes. She had so much fun trying shoes on at the store. When the shoes were on her feet she grinned and rubbed them against each other as fast as she could.

Here are some highlights from the birthday party. We just had a quiet family party at home, just the way I like it.

My friend Elizabeth said that their tradition is to give their kids their first ice cream cone when they turn one, and I thought that was a great idea, so that was what we did for Ann Marie. Here is a video of her first ice cream cone experience:

At first she was a little surprised and didn't know what to think about it, but pretty soon she thought it was great.

Oh, and I totally forgot to put her bib on.