Visiting Teaching Adventures

These children look pretty angelic in this picture, right? ...But do you notice the bruises on both of them? They were acquired within 5 minutes of each other.

Ellie's is on her right cheek/eye.

Nathan's is on his forehead.

I swear they look worse in person... hmmm....

Anyway, I went visiting teaching this week. (To learn more about visiting teaching and Relief Society, go here.) My companion and I visit teach two ladies in the ward who are both extremely, extremely kind and understanding - thank heavens. I don't know what it is, but I think my kids have a "crazy" mode for when I take them visiting teaching. 

We visited the first lady on Tuesday. Ellie, Nathan and my companion's two kids were playing with a basket of toys on the floor. For some reason Ellie felt like she needed to pick them all up, so she did. Of course the rest of the kids were still playing with them, so they got dumped out again - which made her mad. She came and pouted on my lap and flipped through the Ensign that had this month's visiting teaching message in it. Then Nathan saw that she was on my lap, and he got jealous. So he started whining to get on my lap, too. I moved Ellie to one leg and put Nathan on the other, and I thought that would solve the problem. Oooooooooh no, that did not solve the problem. Ellie started shrieking at the top of her lungs that he was touching her and taking her spot. She kicked Nathan and he started to cry. At this point both kids were flailing, and I was trying to keep them from kicking my companion, who was sitting next to me on the love seat. I wrestled them both like the for about 10 minutes, and it was time to go. So I told the kids they had to help pick up the toys they played with. Ellie would not have it. She threw herself on the floor and screamed while the rest of us picked up toys. Then we left. Awesome.

Yesterday we went to visit the other lady. She also had a basket of toys out for the kids to play with. We were about 10 minutes late because I had come straight from class and picking up the kids, so we hurried in and the kids started to play. They were fine for a little while. Ellie learned how to shoot one of the nerf guns, so she was occupied. Wonderful. Then Nathan found a gun just like the one she was playing with, and she decided she wanted both of them. She took the gun away from him and promptly hit him on the head with it. (That's not where he got his bruise, though.) So of course Nathan started crying, and Ellie started crying too because I made her apologize to Nathan and put the guns back in the basket. Here we were again, me wrestling two flailing, screaming children, trying to keep them from kicking my companion. They finally calmed down a little bit, and Nathan went to look out the front window. On his way back, he tripped over a shoe and landed flat on his head on the tile. That's where he got his bruise. He started screaming of course, and I picked him up to try and comfort him. While he was still crying, I helped Ellie get her jacket and shoes on, and she was out the door. I said goodbye, and took Nathan to the car. Ellie was just playing on the grass, so I thought it was okay to take my eyes off of her for a minute while I buckled Nathan in his carseat. Wrong. When I looked up, she was running down the street at top speed, following my companion home. Our neighborhood doesn't have sidewalks, so she was just running along the side of the street. I yelled to her and asked her to come back, and she turned, looked at me, and kept running. I started to run after her, which I'm sure was a sight to behold with me in my ginormous pregnant state. (Did I mentioned the lady I visit teach is standing on her porch watching the entire thing?) Then she tripped and bashed her face into the asphalt. She started crying, and once I got to her I picked her up, looked her face and knee over, and walked the "walk of shame" back to my car. I buckled her in, got into the driver's seat, waved goodbye, and chauffeured my two screaming children home.

I wonder if the ladies I visit teach are looking forward to next month as much as I am........ 

I'm Gonna Kiss You Mama!

This little boy LOVES to give kisses. He will smack his lips and claw his way up onto your lap in order to get one at any time of the day, but my favorite is when he insists on giving me kisses before I lay him down in his crib for a nap or at bedtime.

I do prefer kisses without boogers, but I will take what I can get! :)

Sick Weekend

Ellie developed kind of a bark-y cough last week, and on Thursday night Nathan woke up around midnight coughing and barely able to breathe. He was wheezing like crazy, and it's safe to say I have now heard what we learned in nursing school to be called "respiratory stridor." Wow, that wasn't fun. But we eventually got him calmed down enough to go back to bed with the baby monitor hooked up so we could hear him really well.

I got sick on Friday, and Sam on Saturday.

After that, this is pretty much what our weekend consisted of. There just isn't photo evidence of Ellie and me. :)

Other activities not pictured: drinking Powerade and Sprite, throwing up, eating toast, and watching movies. 

There was lots of sitting on the couch snuggling.

At one point I was rocking Nathan upstairs and Ellie was downstairs. She came up and told me to come down. I told her it would be a minute because I was rocking Nathan, but she said, "No Mom, come downstairs right now. I did my sick thing." I went downstairs and sure enough, there was a pile of throw up waiting for me. I guess she didn't know what it was called - that made me laugh.

Though it wasn't fun to have the house pile up in messes or to be sick, I enjoyed the time we spent together as a family doing things we don't normally do. 

Mostly I'm grateful that we are all feeling better with the exception of a few lingering coughs.

Balloons

The other day Sam stopped at the grocery store on the way home from work and brought home a balloon for each kid. They were so excited!

They literally carried them around for a week.

Ellie even slept with hers tied to her bed each night. This picture cracks me up - she had socks on each of her hands, the toilet paper roll was around her wrist before she went to sleep, and she was holding onto her balloon. 

Nathan couldn't quite reach his balloon from the ground if it made it to the ceiling, so he would stand under it, reach as high as he could, and yell "ball!" Ellie quickly learned to get it for him, even learning to bring over the stool and climb up to grab it if it got into the vaulted part of the living room.

It is amazing how much entertainment a couple of balloons provided. It is so fun to watch my kids enjoy such little things so much. It reminds me that I need to enjoy the little things in life too!