Raspberries

Evie has started blowing raspberries. Her ability to do so has probably been helped by the bucketfuls of saliva dripping out of her mouth since she is also cutting her bottom two teeth.

So, after I came home from the doctor's office last week, I thought that I was going to spend time snuggling with Evie and watching Lost. Instead, I spent much of the night pacing the floor with Evie. We were giving her Tylenol and Motrin at the same time and an hour before one of the medicines was about to wear off, she'd start to fuss. When we did get her to sleep, she usually slept for only an hour at a time, and that was only when both medicines were at full force. Plus, it was a real fight to get her to take the medicine. She would cry and try to spit it back out while I pinched her cheeks, hoping to get her to swallow some of it.

Early in the night (around eleven), we finally got her all dosed up and I could see her start to relax. But rather than doze off in my arms like I had hoped she would, she straightened up and started to blow raspberries. It was a sweet moment even if I was desperate for her to go to sleep.

Throughout the night, Evie was drinking less and less of her bottles. She normally sucks down six ounces, but after she got sick, she seemed to be content with only three at a time. But by mid-morning Thursday, she became even less interested in her bottle. We started giving her formula through a medicine dropper, trying to get her to take at least one ounce an hour. We also tried Pedialyte, but she liked that about as much as she liked the medicine.

At first, she was drooling so much that whenever I would set her down after holding her up on my shoulder, my sleeve would be soaked. But by Thursday afternoon, her mouth was wet, but the drooling had slowed considerably. Her last wet diaper was at six in the morning and she was starting to appear lethargic. So around four, we decided to take her to Primary Children's Hospital. We weren't certain that she was dehydrated, but I figured I'd have more confidence in their ER doctors if they sent us home than I would have with our local ER crew.

Of course, once we checked into the ER, Evie seemed to perk up and she had a wet diaper, but the doctors were nice and didn't make us feel at all overprotective. Instead they referred to us as "motivated" when we told them how we had been feeding Evie with a medicine dropper. They also suggested a "magic mouthwash"--a mix of Maalox and Benedryl. The Maalox works on the acid in the blisters and the Benedryl helps with the swelling, so that Evie would feel like drinking again. With older kids they just have them spit the mouthwash out, but they said Evie would be fine to swallow it. And after being up with her for nearly 36 hours, we were hoping that she'd swallow every last drop of the Benedryl. They had us try out the mouthwash and then feed Evie again. When she drank two ounces easily, they sent us home.

Evie passed out on the way home and even slept through our dinner at Pei Wei. We got home and got both Anna and Evie settled around nine. Mercifully, Evie slept until three in the morning. It was wonderful, but at first I really struggled to go to sleep. Even though my mom had come to help and Dan had stayed home that day, I was too worried about Evie to nap. Then when she finally seemed to be doing better, I was still so wound up, I was almost afraid to go to sleep.

By Friday afternoon Evie was back to drinking her six ounces at a time and by Sunday evening she seemed to do better. That's when I finally realized that she was teething. I hadn't realized that in addition to blisters on her throat, Evie was also dealing with two teeth trying to work their way up through her gums at the same time. But for the most part, she is our sweet, healthy Evie again.

It took me a few days, but I'm catching up on my sleep. Of course, I'm not being very easy on myself though. I've signed up for a 5K this Saturday and I was worried that I wouldn't get a chance to go running at all this week. So when Evie woke up on Tuesday morning at 4:30, I got her fed and back to bed at 5, but then when my alarm went off at 5:30, I decided I wasn't sleeping very well and got up to go running. Needless to say, I wasn't my most patient that day. I took the day off on Wednesday to rest up, and then planned to go running this morning. Evie was a little nicer, getting up at 5:30 this morning and that's when my alarm was set to go off. But I ran six miles and by eight o'clock this evening, I was dozing while reading to Anna. So I should probably stop writing and get myself to bed.

Sick Again

Friday morning, I took the girls for a jog with me and as usual we stopped at the park on the way home. Anna had a good time playing, but after we came home, I noticed her lying down on pillows from our couch. She also was really whiny. Finally I took her temperature and she had a fever of 100 degrees. She fell asleep in my arms. Later that afternoon she puked on me while I was feeding Evie. That was fun and probably my fault since I should have recognized her increased whining as a warning that she might puke. Luckily for all of us, she only threw up one more time, but the fever lasted until early Monday morning.

Then yesterday Evie became really fussy and had a bit of a fever herself. She was sleeping a lot too, but around four in the morning, she stopped sleeping for more than thirty minutes at a time. Since she had just had an ear infection, I decided to take her back into the doctor.

Turns out that she has hand, foot, and mouth disease and that's probably what Anna had too. Neither of the girls ever got a rash on their hands or feet, but Evie has blisters on the back of her throat. I feel so bad for her. The doctor said to give her both Tylenol and Motrin at the same time to help keep the pain under control. I'm just hoping she feels well enough to sleep a bit more tonight, but I guess were back to survival mode again. So, yeah, I'm exhausted and wondering why I ever thought I could train for a half marathon at the end of this summer. Oh well. At least I have something to work towards when the kids are healthy and sleeping through the night. And in the mean time, I'll just enjoy snuggling with them and the excuse to finally watch all those Lost episodes stored on my DVR.

Moab and Arches

On May 20, we drove down to Moab for a family reunion. I'd never really been to Moab before except just to drive through town on our way up from Texas. We'd heard it was worth stopping at Dead Horse Point and we made it there just as Evie was waking up and ready for a bottle. Evie didn't really want to wait for us to pay to get into the park and she was even less interested in waiting until we made it all the way out to the look out, so we stopped at the Visitor's Center. While Dan and Anna wandered, I fed Evie. I think we were the youngest people there. I guess Visitor's Centers are more for retired people, but they loved Evie.

After Evie had her lunch, the rest of us stopped and had our lunch. We tried to take as long as possible to actually get to the Point.

The Point was beautiful, but one of the first things I saw was a line of white RVs and other cars. Someone said Microsoft was down there shooting a commercial. So I feel like my view was marred by The Man. On a more interesting note, when we finally did make it out to the look out point, we saw all these women in sundresses and some men in ties. They didn't seem to fit in with the khaki/olive colored t-shirts and shorts that seemed to be the dress code. Then we heard whisperings of a wedding and as we were leaving, we saw the bride. I guess the couple decided that they wanted to get married out on the look out stand. I wanted to stick around, but Dan's not into people watching like I am, so we decided to head down to Moab.

After all the cold weather up north, we wanted to take advantage of the eighty-degree weather and go swimming, but the pool heater was broken and the water felt like snow melt. Of course, Anna didn't mind, so Dan was nice enough to get in and swim with her. We finally took her home when her lips turned blue.
Friday morning we made it into Arches and started off with Sand Dune Arch. That was probably a little anticlimactic, but it was nice to start off with a short hike for Anna and Evie.
We didn't stay at Sand Dune Arch long because the wind was kicking up a lot of sand, so we decided to go check out Broken Arch.



In the afternoon, my parents watched Anna and Evie during nap time so that we could go hike Delicate Arch with my siblings.

It was crazy windy up there by Delicate Arch. I was much more impressed by Delicate Arch than I thought I would be. I guess there's a reason why it is the iconic arch, but I just figured that it wouldn't be that cool.
And like most people, I underestimated the size of the arch, assuming that we could get a photo of us under the arch and still be recognizable in the picture. I guess I thought everyone else wasn't smart enough to get a little closer.
After a nice hike, we came home to a hysterical Evie. She had started crying an hour before we got home and continued to cry all evening. She was inconsolable. Finally after three hours of screaming, I thought to give her some ibuprofen and to call the Kids Care nurse in Salt Lake City. After the ibuprofen, Evie finally fell into an exhausted sleep. Anna on the other hand woke up around nine-thirty and didn't want to go back to bed. I think the sound of the wind scared her. So we took her to bed with us to get her settled. Around midnight, she finally fell into a relaxed sleep and we put her in her bed. Then at three in the morning all the smoke alarms in our condo started going off. We never found any sign of fire and after everyone (but Anna, thanks goodness) got up and out of bed, they mysteriously turned off. Evie went back to sleep fairly easily after I gave her a bottle and some more ibuprofen.

The next morning we decided that rather than race back to Salt Lake to take her to the doctor, we'd just take her into the urgent care in Moab. It didn't open until noon so my mom stayed with Evie, while Dan, Anna, and I hiked Park Avenue.
By this time, Anna was pretty tired of the wind and so was I. Every time the wind would blow, it would kick up sand and dirt, often blowing into our eyes. Anna would burrow her head into Dan's neck and cry. For almost a week after we got home, Anna was constantly rubbing her eyes and crying that she had something in her eye. And if the wind started to blow, which happens a lot at our house, she'd freak out.


Doesn't ice cream make everything better? When we got back home, Dan took Evie into the urgent care while I stayed with Anna. I guess the doctor took one look at Evie and said, "I know what her problem is--she's malnourished." Anyway, he couldn't find anything wrong with Evie and she was doing pretty well on the ibuprofen, so we decided to head home after dinner like we had originally planned. And I took Anna out to get ice cream.

Anna never naps well while we travel, and we hadn't even made it out of downtown Moab before Anna was crashed. She slept most of the way home and so did Evie, making the trip much easier. By Sunday evening Evie was getting fussy again and she was up several times that night despite the ibuprofen and the acetaminophen. I was pretty haggard looking Monday morning and decided I had to get some help, so I took Evie into the doctor again. She said Evie's throat looked irritated and found some fluid in one of Evie's ears, but I think she would have waited to write a prescription if I didn't look half crazed with exhaustion. Evie started doing better almost as soon as we got her on the antibiotics, but she decided that she liked waking up in the night, so it was a pretty rough week. I think it's always harder to go back to night wakings when they've been sleeping through the night. We were in survival mode all week, just trying to stay on top of the laundry and keep everyone fed, but by the weekend, she started to think about sleeping through the night again. She's still not sleeping through the night every night, but last night I put her to bed at 5:30 p.m. She woke up around seven and I rocked her back to sleep and then she slept until 7 a.m. I'll take it!

Sisters

Anna still loves Evie although I have noticed that whenever Evie wakes up from a nap, Anna often starts crying "huggy!" But when Evie cries, Anna will often stroke her face and say, "I sorry Evie" or pat Evie's back. She has also started calling her "Evie sweet girl."

Tulip Festival Again

The day before Mother's Day, Anna, Evie, and I met Heather at the Thanksgiving Point Gardens. There were even more tulips in bloom, so it was fun to be back and see all the new blooms. I love tulips.

This is what Anna looked like most of the time: running ahead of us and occasionally looking back to see if we were still there.

Evie's shirt says "Mommy Loves Me" which seems especially appropriate for the day before Mother's Day. But it was also spotted with blood from her finger where I had cut it while trying to cut her nail. As Heather pointed out, that was a bit ironic.

I miss all those bright pretty colors.

May's Snapshots

On one our our chilly days in May, Anna decided that she needed a hat, gloves, and her snow boots to go outside and play. Never mind the jacket. She reminds me a little of my sister Erica who never needed a jacket either.

Anna found this attachment to one of Dan's tools, stuck it on her finger, and started calling it a finger puppet.

Sandy found this cute apron for Anna. And there she is again in her snow boots, her favorite shoes. I finally hid them in the basement.

Anna stuck her foot in her toy train and thought it was cool to slide around on it. I tried to tell her that they make special shoes for that sort of thing, but since she doesn't own any of those special shoes, she didn't much care.

Evie kicks and wiggles so much that I gave up using her little plastic tub and now she takes her baths in the big bathtub. She doesn't like it much because water is often getting splashed in her eyes, but I love to watch her hair swirl in the water.

Last Sunday Evie met my dad's parents for the first time.

More Hair

Now that Anna's hair is longer, and she's become more patient with me playing with it, I've had some fun trying out new hairdos on her. Most of the time, we just stick to pigtails, but on Sundays and when I feel like I have some extra time, I try something new. There's a gal in my ward who has a hair blog and it's been a great resource since my hair knowledge is pretty limited.

Mindy calls the hairstyle below "Twistbacks."

These are just two french braids around the crown of the head.

I still don't know what to do with Evie's hair, mostly because I love how it sticks up. I've had some success with putting a clip in, but I thought it might be fun to try a little ponytail. She doesn't seem to mind.