ONE-derful!

Last year on this very day I looked a little something like this. My water broke at 5:00 a.m. and Kelly Anne Foster was in my arms at 10:53 a.m. Can any mom write something like that without tears? Not this mom, especially not today. My world was forever changed in the best possible way. No longer a mom of one, now I had a perfect baby girl to add to the mix. What did I know about raising a girl or raising two kids? Nothing. I remember feeling nervous about that. Oh, my baby girl! I love you more than you can know right now. Thanks for peeing out of your diaper at almost exactly 5:00 a.m. so that I could rock you back to sleep and think about all of the joy of the past year with you in my life. That was a perfect gift to your momma on this very happy day!

All I could think while I was holding you this morning, was
"How in the world did this beautiful tiny lady.......turn into this much bigger *but still little* beautiful lady so quickly?!"Oh, Bo-Belly, I love you more than you know!
I am excited to keep watching & loving you as you grow. Happy, Happy Birthday!

A few things I know fo' sho'

Max is a little piece of heaven *most of the time*. The other night he picked me to be the one to read him stories and sing songs before bed. He likes to prolong the routine by asking to snuggle or to hug. Smart boy. It always works. "I want to give you a hug, Mom." He wrapped his arms tightly around my neck and said, "I love you, Mom" to which I replied, "I love you too, Max, sooo much." He said, "I love you too so much. *deep, adorable sigh* We love each other, Mom." We sure do, buddy, but I don't think you know how intensely and completely I love you. You will, though, when you're tucking your oldest child into bed one night and they wrap their little arms around your neck and tell you that they love you. Actually, you'll know the minute that they are born and you see their little face and body for the first time. You'll know then, Maxwell, Kelly, and all future children of mine, just how deeply I love you.

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I was born to goodly parents. Today my momma turns 50...finally! :) The woman has twelve grandchildren (ages 6 and under) and two on the way. I think she should be at least 50. She doesn't think so. My mom has always been young at heart. I consider myself incredibly blessed to have been born to such a woman. She has great faith, a great sense of humor (and laugh), loves her family, landed herself an awesome man, and has always been one of my best friends. I love having babies for many reasons, but one of those reasons is because of the visit I get from my mom right after. She takes care of everything. If she's not hanging with me and the rest of my little fam or holding the baby then she is cleaning or cooking or crocheting the babe's blessing blanket. It is such a sweet, tender time and is filled with treasured memories. I love you, lady! Happy, Happy Day to you! Have fun on your romantic getaway with Dad.

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I should not let Max play with the camera while I'm exercising....

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I have a couple of adorable kids who want to wish you a Happy Valentine's Day!

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An eleven-month old little girl should NOT have to deal with a yeast infection. However, if she does, then she should at least have a mom who doesn't think it's just a diaper rash and try to treat it as such in several different ways for three weeks before she prays and gets a very clear voice from heaven while she's walking through Target telling her matter-of-factly that, "It's a yeast infection!" Do I ever feel like a horrible mom! My poor little woman. She was SO not herself those three weeks and I thought that we had entered a new stage and my sweet, all-smiles baby was no more. She would shriek often and cry more than usual. Even people who see her every week at church were asking if she was getting a tooth or something. Which, she actually did, but that wasn't what she was trying to communicate with those shrieks. The girl was in serious pain - I know because I've had a yeast infection before. A few days is misery - three weeks would be awful. However, we got her into the doctor the day that I heard heaven in Target and she is on the mend. My happy babe has returned. I'm sorry, Bo Belly!

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My friend, Janet, rocks. She rocks for many, many reasons. One of those reasons is that she

passed on the outline for the BEST Valentine's Party several years ago. We threw it in New

York as NEWLY newlyweds and it was super fun. It's seriously the coolest party and if you want to throw your very own next year, please contact me and I'll e-mail the details on how-to. We invited 12 couples and 9 came. Perfect. Our house is small-ish and so we were semi-hoping that a few wouldn't be able to make it. :) We had to move out some furniture as it was. We put up red heart-shaped mylar balloons everywhere, turned down the lights, lit tons of candles and got the party started. Our Love Tree - where all of the couples got to "carve" their initials - was constructed by the ever-talented Mr. Foster. Have I ever mentioned how amazing I think he is? We had a perfect mix of younger and older couples. I think it's best with both. My cheeks hurt from smiling/laughing just 1/2 hour into the shindig. Then there were a few tears as the

husbands read their surprise love poems to their wives. One of the hubbies even broke out the guitar that he just started taking lessons on in January. Oh, so sweet. And, of course, my husby wrote me a rockin' poem to get it all started. I feel lucky to be wed to a poem-writin' fool. I've received many-a-poem from this wonderful man in our four years of bliss.

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Kelly is a total dancing queen with a sweet side-to-side move she started about 2 months ago. Her dance reflex seems quite involuntary. No matter where she is or what she's doing, that little body HAS to groove when it hears music. Oh, and she has a really cute older brother.

A little bit of this...

Let's see...not many exciting happenings around here. We are revisiting potty training with the Maxster. I guess I never reported, but we went back to pull-ups on our long trip in November. It was too much for the little man to remember to go to the bathroom when he was having so much fun with his cousins and we were forgetful in asking him if he needed to go. Way too much going on. When we got back from the trip he had ZERO interest in starting again so I had ZERO interest in forcing the issue. So here we are again...he's doing really well thus far. Man, I love that kid! He's been giving me some stress lately - acting out and doing things he knows will get a response, albeit negative. SO not like my Max. Sure, the kid has his moments, but he is a pretty great little boy. It's thrown me for a bit of a loop because it's out of character for him. The past few days I've been making sure to spend some really good time just the two of us and he's been much better. I think that maybe it's because Kelly is learning so many new things these days and so there is a lot of attention going her way and he wants a piece of it? That's what I've come up with. We're making sure to include him in helping us to teach Kelly new things as well as doing big boy activities with him when she's down for a nap. But at the same time I want him to understand that he doesn't get center stage all of the time and that he needs to share it a bit. I want to raise a really good, decent, kind kid and I hope that I am doing okay. *sigh*

Yesterday, during Kelly's nap, Max and I did some fun crafts. I got this idea off of a friend's blog. Meet Priscilla the Puppet and Rufus:This was Max's first time using scissors - I'd just never thought of letting him before. He LOVED cutting. Then we made valentine's for all of his cousins and he got to do a lot more cutting and drawing. I love creating stuff with him like that.

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Kelly's two top teeth FINALLY broke through. Man, that girl must have some thick gums or something. Poor little woman. The teeth seem to sit just under the surface for about a month, making her gums look swollen and painful. Then the actual cutting takes about a week. Max's came in much easier and faster than that. She's had some frustrated squealing moments where you can tell she's in pain, but mostly she's been herself. She has more defined likes and dislikes than Max did...well, maybe she just has a louder way of telling us about them. :) Oh, she found her first joke. She learned a few weeks ago where her nose was and so she would point to it every time we asked her. We're also working on ears and eyes and mouth. The other day I asked where her nose was and she pointed to her ear. I thought she was just confused and I said, "What? That's not your nose!". She laughed and then pointed to her forehead so I repeated what I'd said. She laughed again and we kept doing it as she got closer and closer and then finally pointed to her nose. So now she loves when I ask where her nose is and we have to do it just like that every time. What a kidder! Check out her long 'lashes and all of that hair:

What a babe!
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Do I have any fellow Dr. Suess lovers? The man's books crack me up. Here's my favorite line right now: "And oh! Just suppose you were poor Harry Haddow. Try as he will he can't make any shadow! He thinks that, perhaps, something's wrong with his Gizz. And I think that, by golly, there probably is." That's from Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? What is your favorite Dr. Suess book? I've been amazed since becoming a mom and going to the library at just HOW many books he's written and while many of them are the same style, he's got some real thought-provoking themes to many of them. Ever read The Butter Battle Book? Kind of dark, actually.

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Like I said, not much going on. Just a few thoughts for the day!

Oh, brother!

Oh, brother, I have a lot of past stuff and some new stuff to post about. Hold onto your hats, ladies and gents. Actually, I think there are very few 'gents' who read this...

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Oh, man, I am going to learn how to sew *sentence typed with much trepidation*! Ty bought me a very nice, middle-of-the-road, perfect first-time Brother sewing machine for Christmas. I have been wanting a sewing machine for a long time. I have SO many projects in my pretty little head that I want to do with it. I was beyond thrilled when I saw the box! But then I sat down to sew up a slit in one of my skirts - the simplest of projects to start on, I thought - and I came away nearly in tears and totally defeated. I have NO idea what I'm doing! I watched the instructional DVD, I read a lot of the manual. Ugh! My mom tried for years to get me to learn. She's an awesome seamstress and she always tried to get me to sit down and watch when I needed her to do something for me. But I was never interested. "I will never want to know how to sew." Let that be a lesson, Kelly Anne! Listen to your momma. So there it has sat, with the unsewn skirt bunched up next to it, unused and lonely for about three weeks. I know that I need to try again. I got some tips from my mom over the phone and I know what I was doing wrong. My friend, Ann Lacouture, had me all inspired to make my own comforter and curtains for my bedroom. Now I am paralyzed with fear. But don't worry, folks. I have given birth to two babes, I've run triathlons, I've finished a marathon....I will learn how to sew! And Kelly will sit and learn all of the skills I acquire before she leaves my home. Even if I have to hold her down just like in the picture below. :)

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Since Ty would mutter 'Oh Brother' every time he had to take out one of the glued-in bows that I insisted on sticking in my daughter's hair, we have entered the CLIP phase. Goodbye, bows! Okay, it wasn't really because Ty hated it. Let's be honest. That was irrelevant. He knows that had nothing to do with it, but he's grateful all the same. It's because my baby girl's hair is getting long and thick and was starting to fall over her eyes. Plus the other day when I got her up from her nap the bow was upside-down because it was ONLY attached to hair and her hair had gone all crazy. I decided that it was time to move on.

And if you think, after looking at the above pictures, that she's not a fan of this clip business, think again....----------------------------------------------------------

Oh, brother, this little brother is one dapper dude in his new Sunday duds. This outfit brings me great joy. Sure, it's cute enough from the front....

...but the party starts where the elbow pads begin. That HAD to have been what sold Santa on this particular set of duds.------------------------------------------------------------

Oh! Ty's brother, Adam, and his wife Laura came for a short visit the week after Christmas. We love visitors! It was cold, but we wanted to show them some water since it's cool that we live by so many little bodies of water :) so we bundled up and headed out. They were so fun to have around! The kids - Max especially - loved having them here. They are going to make fabulous parents to the little girl they have cookin'! We had them here for New Year's Eve, which was really rockin'. Fondue in our pj's, sparkling cider in plastic wine glasses, and missing the ball drop because we got confused with pausing live TV. Jealous? You should be. It really was a nice night.

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Oh, brother, I disliked our boring laundry room. That was one room that had remained untouched from all of our remodeling and painting before we moved in. I always meant to get to it and Ty has the week off between Christmas and New Years so we tackled some of those "we really need to get to that" kind of projects. We painted our white laundry room in stripes, pictured below. Yes, Janet, you were totally the inspiration behind this. We thank you. We also made-over our master closet, but I didn't get any pictures really of that. Nice, eh?

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So there you have it. Caught up. Stay tuned for some real excitement since we are entering the month of February which, of course, is the birth month of my beautiful baby girl. Plus we're just a really exciting family. :)

Oh, happy day!

Today has been oh, so much better. I finally feel like I really am going to recover. I know it sounds dumb, but in the midst of that pain I really couldn't imagine that someday I was going to have a pain-free mouth and be able to eat normal again. Thanks for letting me vent yesterday - I so needed to do that. The edge is totally off of the pain today. Still on the soft foods and liquids, but I'm able to do foods with a little more substance now. Yesterday just felt like one day too long of feeling miserable and I'd had it. So I vented on the blog, cried through the second half of dinner when I couldn't eat, took a few minutes to recover by myself upstairs, hung with my sympathetic fam, put the kids down and ate almost an entire box of chocolate pudding all by myself while Ty was reffing. Just the ticket.

All week we'd been holed up in the house and today I felt good enough to go to the library, the mall (even shared a soft pretzel without salt from Pretzel Time with my kids...so soft and yummy!) where I spent my Bath & Body Works gift card from Mickey & Margaret, and then finished off the morning at Costco. I have make-up on and am wearing a shirt that makes me feel cute. I stepped on the scale this morning and it looks like I lost the few pounds that I'd put on since finishing my marathon and being rather stagnant *that's a story for another day*. Thought about how great my husband is and about how he stayed home from work on Tuesday to care for his ailing wife who could barely keep her head up all day from her vicious cold. Played with my kids and realized that they really aren't whiny when I'm feeling good and can play with them and make them laugh. Such a good day. And it's only 2:00 p.m.

Life is better. Sorry about the pity party for one. Thanks for the words of love.

MISERABLE

That's how I feel.  I have no idea why I thought I should get those stinkin' wisdom teeth taken out.  Just leave 'em there if you have the choice, people.  I am in some serious, throbbing pain (more on the left than the right).  I want to cry all of the time.  I take the ibuprofen but feel too out of it to take the stronger stuff while I'm home taking care of the kids.  Plus on Monday and Tuesday I came down with a horrible cold/flu that did nothing but exacerbate the ever-present pain.  Every time I sneezed it felt like the cound was being ripped open again. I thought this would be a walk in the park.  Not so.  I would rather recover from childbirth ten more times than go through this again.  I can't talk/smile/eat normal...which makes mothering a little tricky since I am always talking to and smiling at my kiddos.  I can't help myself.  But by the end of the day I pay for it. My whole head hurts.  I am a total mouth-pain wimp.  I fully admit it.  I am tough in other ways, but not this way.  Complete wimp.  I hate it and I want to eat again and I want to talk without wincing and I want to sit on my couch doing nothing without a throbbing, consuming pain on (mostly) the left side of my face.  

I even went to the doctor today - a day early - for my follow-up visit because I thought, 'Surely this cannot be normal.'  They just smiled nicely and nodded their head with empathy, then squirted a syringe full of stinging mouthwash on the area.  Then the nice doctor (who really is nice) wanted to talk to me about something he saw on my x-ray that could be a tumor/cyst...he's not sure.  He wants to see x-rays from my previous dentists to compare and we'll go from there.  Dude, you're dreaming if you think that you're getting close to my mouth again!  Let that tumor eat away all of my nerve endings - see if I care.  Okay, so I would get it taken care of, but let the record show that I do NOT want any more oral surgery in my lifetime.  Okay, that's enough griping for now.  This wimp is going to lay down and take a nap and enjoy the non-talking time I have left until the kids wake up.  

Funny drunk? I think maybe

Yesterday I had my wisdom teeth removed. I know what you're thinking, 'Isn't that what teenagers do?', 'Aren't you supposed to do that before your mission?' Yes, well, I didn't have dental insurance before my mission and it was going to cost $900.00 to get it done. I had to buy luggage and clothes and other things to get me ready to go; so I said a prayer and asked Heavenly Father to not make my teeth a problem for me while I was out and I would get them done later. They have bothered me off and on over the years and I was going to get them out at two different times since I've been married. But both times I became pregnant before I could get them out. The first time I found out I was expecting Max just three days before my scheduled appointment to get them yanked. Then I was scheduled for another consultation but had to cancel because I was pregnant with what turned out to be a miscarriage.

Anyway, so I FINALLY got around to it. I am without my wisdom teeth. Don't feel too bad for me since I only have two wisdom teeth, both on the bottom. Some members of my family didn't have any wisdom teeth. I know that you who had four removed at once are much more hard-core, okay?

I was pretty nervous yesterday morning since I've never been under anesthesia before. Okay, really nervous would be more accurate. I've never even had laughing gas. But I put on a brave face and went. It was great! They worked really fast once I got in the chair and within about 5 minutes I was out. I breathed in the stuff through my nose and said, "Whoa" as everything got fuzzy. Next thing I knew the nurse was smiling at me, sitting me up and putting me in a wheelchair. For the ride home and for a while after I got home and Ty settled me into bed, all I remember is laughing/giggling. Everything was funny. Ty had to steady me the whole walk in and I just couldn't stop laughing. I wonder what Max and the babysitter thought when we walked in the door? I remember Ty laughing a lot too.

I just have to mention again how much I love my husband! He's been such a good nurse...filling my ice packs and getting my medicine and making me scrambled eggs, jello, protein drinks. Last night he took the kids out to dinner and was gone for almost two and a half hours so that I could just relax. What a mighty good man I have! Hooray that these things are finally out!

FACT:

I cannot be a good/nice mom and have a throbbing headache at the same time.

I've been getting headaches every afternoon this week. Maybe it's my way of protesting my hubby having to return to work after two weeks off? I don't usually get headaches. Today was the worst of it. Last night I went to see a movie with a friend and didn't get home until just before midnight. OF COURSE that means that Kelly (who for the past several weeks had been sleeping until about 8:30 or 9:00 each morning) woke up at 6:00 a.m. *She was super cute and cuddled and 'talked' to me in my bed like never before. Not much of a cuddler, that one, so I loved it. She had her arm underneath my head and played with my hair. For a while we just lay there, quietly cuddling. Then she started to chat it up. It was oh-so-cute, despite the early hour.* I thought, though, that I could get her to fall back asleep. Alas, Max woke up a little after 7:00 and that meant it was all over. We did have some good talking/cuddling/Max making Kelly laugh time in my bed, though. That was the best part of the day.

It was all downhill after that. My head started pounding early. I don't know why, but it seems that since my pregnancies I am a lot less likely to take a pill. I just massage my head and try to relax to get the pain to go away. That made for a pretty lame mom this morning. My poor kids. Plus Kelly is teething, I think, and so she was extra needy and had some fussiness today which makes Max think that he needs some extra love from the mom as well. On a normal, non-headache day this would have been a little trying, but today it was all I could do to put on a happy face. And I didn't for a good chunk of the morning. I even made a really frustrated groan that scared Kelly pretty bad. I felt horrible. Lots of kisses and hugging to make up for that. Thank goodness they both still take afternoon naps! The evening went much smoother since I finally took a few Tylenol and had a break. My poor kids. Tomorrow will be better. I learned my lesson, pop those pills! :)

You know your kids REALLY ARE great when...

...you get two offers at Church on Sunday for free babysitting. People who are not their blood relation really want to spend quality time with them. And I don't think it was for us to have a break, it was so that they could hang with my kids. So this morning Tyler and I went to the temple, which was a real treat. It's about a 5 1/2 hour deal since the temple is an hour and a half drive. It sounds like they were great! Except I did ask Max afterward if he used his manners and he responded, "Yes." I thought I'd dig a little deeper and said, "So you said 'please' and 'thank you'?" In a very serious, disappointed-in-himself voice he said, "No, I didn't. I didn't, Mom." I have a hard time believing that he didn't use his manners at all because the boy says "Thanks" constantly - "Max, you're such a good big brother", "Here's your lunch", handing him a toy, "You are so handsome, dude!"...all followed by his sweet gratitude, "Oh. Thanks." I told Shawna as we picked up the kids today, "I owe you one", but she quickly said, "No, I owe you one. Thanks for letting me have them over." Kelly also slept in Shawna's arms which was bonus (her kids are ages 11-21). Who doesn't love holding a sleeping baby? Good going, kiddos! Maybe these free babysitting offers will keep coming! I told Max that we missed him while we were gone and he said, "I missed you guys too." I love when he calls me and Tyler "guys". :) Tomorrow night our little ones are going to another friend's home while we treat ourselves to a nice dinner and maybe a movie. I feel very blessed to have such great friends and to have kids who behave well enough that people want to be around them! So it's not just me....