Tutorial

For anyone interested who hasn't already looked at this, I made a photography tutorial (hooray!) on how to take pictures of kids in Halloween costumes. If you are interested, here is the link:
http://chelseasattic.blogspot.com/2010/10/tutorial-halloween-pictures-with-kids.html

I'd appreciate any feedback on it if anyone is interested in reading the whole thing. :-) I'd like to make some more, but I don't know if what I posted is like "duh" material or if it's actually helpful or not. I have experience in photography, but that doesn't make me an experienced photographer, know what I mean? Yup.

Pumpkin Fun!

Every time Craig and I have driven together anywhere in the last couple of weeks, the most commonly uttered phrase from my mouth is "Oh my gosh, Craig, look at the colors on that tree!" I must say I have thoroughly enjoyed this years autumn show. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like Colorado hasn't seen a decent fall here in a while, and I am enjoying every minute of it. I wish I could get out and take more pictures of it all, but there just aren't hours enough in the day, so I'll just have to make mental memories of it all.
We went to Tigges farm on Friday to go pick out some pumpkins- this was the first time I'd done that with the kids ever. My heart lamented every previous year when I would run out of time and my mother in law would end up taking the kids for me when she went because I had too much to do. This year, thanks to "fall break", I specifically planned an afternoon where we could go and do this and I could get some decent pictures of the kids at the pumpkin patch. We had a lot of fun, my sister in law and her kids came with us for an hour. Getting four kids 5 and under to take a picture together was challenging (yes, even for a photographer, there's no magic button to make them all look the right way at the right time with the right smile!)- this was as good as I could get!
We also got the kids' halloween costumes this year: nothing fancy. Since Halloween is on Sunday and we won't be going trick-or-treating (we believe that Sunday, as the sabboth, is a day of rest, so we won't be going trick or treating in the neighborhood on Sunday night). Look for pictures of that upcoming this week...

We sold Linus to the zoo

Unfortunately, they wouldn't take him. :-)
Whew! Just got back this morning from a two day stay with my mom in Denver with all three of the kids by myself. I'm starting to finally acknowledge that my kids are starting slightly to behave better in public. Well, Chloe's been fine for a while, but Linus is bit by bit gaining eensy-weensy morsels of self-control each time I take him out, which is saying something for him.
We had a nice relaxing stay, though. We left Wednesday after naptime, I got stuck in traffic something fierce, and while trying to avoid I-25, got even more stuck in traffic and it ended up taking me two hours to get to my mom's place when it usually onely takes us one. But we made it there in one piece just in time to eat some dinner and then put the kids to bed! The next morning I took Linus and Chloe to the zoo because it was free zoo day and Grandma watched Odell at home. I was expecting it to be a somewhat stressful experience, but I was just hoping by a glimmer that the kids would enjoy it more than the last time we went. Last time I was with my aunt and her kids and my brother and sister and I was very pregnant, uncomfortable, and cranky, not to mention we put the kids in our wagon to pull them around and they couldn't see anything and got distracted very easily. This time I had the energy of the universe in me, as compared to how I felt 8 months pregnant last time, and I put them in the side by side double stroller (got it last week on craigslist for $35!)this time so I could push them right up to the windows or the bars and they could see everything. It made a world of difference and they were actually content to sit in it the whole time and LOVED seeing the animals. Linus liked the monkeys the most and I think Chloe liked the giant hippo statue the most, but there were a bazillion kids crawling all over it so we couldn't get out and play on it this time. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the beautiful day in the backyard and my sister came up from Boulder and we all went out to eat for dinner. We drove home this morning and I'm now blogging about this because we are going to the pumpkin patch this afternoon and wanted to get these pictures up before I had more of getting pumpkins and got behind in my blogging...again. :-) Here are just a few shots of the zoo.

Real Gorilla

Not a real Gorilla

Linus wouldn't go on the carousel, but Chloe had a blast, it was her first time, she was so brave!
Since Chloe got to go on the carousel, we had to take a trip on the train too. Linus loved it.

Singing on the back porch at Grandma's house
Thank you, thank you...

Two Year Old for Sale!

Any takers? I'll throw in a case of diapers to boot.

So here's a funny story. Well, it's funny now, wasn't so funny at the time. The lock on the kid's door faces out. The reason for this was because when Chloe was about 18 months old, she locked herself in the room and couldn't figure out how to unlock it. A couple of hours later we had taken some of the wood off the door frame so we could slide a card in there and unlock it. Chloe had cried herself to sleep by then and I felt like the world's most irresponsible mother. Did it cross my mind that someday I might get locked in the room and not be able to get out? Yes, but it obviously didn't bother me enough to do anything about it. This morning I woke up with the distinct impression that Linus would lock us all in the room that morning. I didn't think much of it, especially when a minute later, Chloe started screaming bloody murder. I got out of bed and went into their room to find that Linus had climbed up on the top bunk, scraped a bunch of texture off of our "popcorn" celing, and taken Chloe's picture of Jesus healing a young girl that Chloe had me cut out and tape next to her bed because she liked it so much and he had ripped it to shreds all over the floor. I did consciously keep Linus away from the door as I cleaned up the mess just because I was thinking about him locking the door, I don't know why. I went downstairs and opened up the blinds and saw my phone on the counter. I had the thought that I should put it in my pocket, but didn't because I didn't think I would need it. I went upstairs and came in their room again and let Linus off of his bed and made him apologize to Chloe. I started getting Chloe dressed and was just finishing putting her pants on when I hear Linus behind me say "Mommy! I wock-a-door!" and then a deafening *SLAM* of the door shut. My heart sank into my stomach and I lunged for the door (too late, obviously) to find it locked, my phone downstairs on the kitchen counter, Odell sleeping in the next room, and me stuck with my two toddlers with no escaping. In my premonitioning earlier, I thought, should I be locked in the room, my best bet would be to open the window and pray that someone next door would hear if I kept yelling long enough. So that's exactly what we did: I sat down on the floor with my kids and we all said a prayer that someone would be able to hear us or come over and find us so that we wouldn't be stuck in the room all morning, and then I put my face to the screen and starting yelping across my backyard. I kept yelling my mother-in-law's name, and eventually Chloe and Linus were up on the bunk bed helping me out, yelling "GRANDMA!!! GRANDMA!!!" After a few fruitless minutes of that, it occurred to me that the kids probably hadn't left for school yet next door. If I was lucky, and kept watch, I might be able to catch Seth as he was biking off to school. That meant that our fate would rest in the hands of a seven year old boy, biking briefly by on the street 500 yards away, and hope that by a miracle he would be able to hear my frantic yelling from the second story window of our house. I didn't keep my eyes off the street as I waited patiently for him to bike by. Suddenly he popped out of nowhere and was going pretty fast, so I started yelling and yelling as he passed by and kept even after he disappeared out of view. Well, God heard our prayer because a fraction of a second later, I saw him bike back around the other direction because he heard me. I got him to stop and just said "SETH!!! IT'S CHELSEA, LINUS LOCKED US IN THEIR ROOM, WILL YOU GO GET MOM FOR ME?!?!", to which he loudly and clearly replied, "OKAY!!" and went back to the house. Mom didn't get the message in its' entirety, Seth told her that Linus was locked in the room and that I needed help, but at least she came over and found us. I could have cried I was so happy to see her and I explained what happened. I wasn't supposed to bring the kids over to her until around 1 in the afternoon, and even if Mom called, she may not have even come over because I wouldn't have answered the phone and I would have had to wait until after 3 when Craig got home from school before I would have been found. All the implications, not having snacks, not having a potty, not being able to get to Odell once she woke up, it would have been a hellish day to say the least.
So now we have a new doorknob on the door that you can unlock from the other side. We are never going through that again!!
And seriously...any takers? My next step will be to sell Linus to the zoo...

8 Weeks

Odell turned 8 weeks old a week ago tomorrow, but her checkup was on Monday. Here are her current stats:
She weighs 11 lbs. 4 oz., in the 60th %. She's 24 inches long, in the 83rd %, and her head circumference is in the 99th %. The nurse even double checked her head just to make sure, but yes, it was the 99th. She and the doctor kept over emphasizing that 99th % is still proportional, like I was going to be concerned about it, until I assured them that my other kids had big heads and that they come from a long line of big headers, so I wasn't surprised. In fact, the hat she is wearing should be for like a 6 month old baby, maybe fitting snugly on a 12 month old. That's okay, though, big heads mean big brains, right? Something like that.
Fun things Odells is doing:

• Being the cutest baby in the world. That goes without saying, though.
  
• Starting to coo when she is happy. One of my most favorite moments of the day is when she's fed and slept and burped and she stops and looks at me really intently and wiggles her arms around ferociously like there's something really really important she wants to tell me but just can't get it out.
  
• She smiles when she's happy too. I also love it when she's either gasing, or just happy to be around us all and she gives us a crooked, gaped mouth, giant grin. You can't not laugh when she does it, it's adorable.
  
• She fits into Chloe's old clothes finally! Hooray! Her wardrobe has now tripled in volume at least.
  
• She sleeps 7-10 hours a night. We are the luckiest parents in the world- all of our kids were sleeping through the night by the time they were 8 weeks old, Odell has been doing it for about 3-4 weeks now. We're so proud.
  

She had her blessing at church on Sunday. We had a few family members there and it was just sweet and simple and it was a good day. This girl has great things in store for her and we are happy to be a part of it.

A whole new world

Chloe got her new glasses on Friday. For about the last 6-12 months (my memory is not so good on it, but it's been a while), Chloe had been going cross-eyed. At first it was sort of funny and cute. Then it got to be to the point where she was doing it all the time, and then it wasn't really so funny anymore. Does she have a lazy eye? Will she have to wear a patch? Sure it's funny now, but it won't be so funny if she's in high school/college and can't make direct eye contact with anyone. Anyway, long story short, she got an appointment with an eye doctor and he confirmed that yes, her eyes do cross (thank you doctor) and that she would either need surgery or glasses. He dialated her eyes first- she was a trooper with the eye drops. She didn't like them, but she didn't scream like I was afraid she was going to. The doctor looked at her eyes for a while and then determined that she was extremely far sighted (how he can know that from looking at a girl who couldn't even tell that the picture she was looking at was a birthday cake, I don't know, but I guess that's why he's the doctor...) and that your brain, as a reflex, will make your eyes cross when you are far-sighted when you try to focus your eyes. So he gave me a perscription and set up another appointment for a few months from now and then she'll need to see a doctor again about the time she gets into Kindergarten to see how the glasses are working.
Anyway, we picked out some frames and just got them in on Friday! The eye-glasses case that they gave her was a pink little purse that said "princess" on it- we call it her glasses' "bed", where they sleep at night. Since then, a whole new world has opened up to Chloe and it's been funny watching her discover things all over again:

• When we walked out of the doctor's office into the foyer and to the door right after putting her glasses on, she stopped in front of the door and looked taken aback, then said "Whoa...look at that....". "Look at what?" I asked, and after a pause and more staring "...nuffing...".
• When we got in the car and I was putting her in her car seat, she kept looking at me and touching my face like I got a complete makeover. "What?" I finally asked her, laughing a little- she quickly retracted her hands and apologized, then two seconds later did it again like she couldn't help it. It was a little flattering, actually...
• While staring at her hands at the dinner table yesterday: "Mom, I got something on my hands". Showing me clean hands, I replied, "I don't see anything, hun, just keep eating your dinner." "No, Mom, there's something on my hands!" I pulled her hands closer to get a better look. "Chloe, there's nothing on your hands, I don't see anything." "NO! These!" she insisted, pointing to the crease in one of the lines on her hands. "You mean the lines on your hand?" "Yes!!" "Honey, everyone has those," I said, showing her the lines on my hands. She looked at the lines on my hands and on Daddy's hands, then confusedly accepted that there wasn't anything wrong with her hands.
  
• "Big head, little head, big head, little head, big head..." Chloe says while sitting at the table. I look up to see her staring at me, flipping her glasses up and down off her nose by pushing on the back of her frames behind her ears up and down with her fingers. Nice.
  

She looks about 20 years older with her glasses on. We have to keep reminding her to be careful with them and she seems quite pleased to keep them away from her brother, because it's something she has that he doesn't (which suits us just fine, anything in Linus's hands could mean imminent destruction if not supervised carefully). But generally she seems to like them and seems to be getting used to them just fine.
In other news, I'm back at work, this will be my second full week tomorrow. Once I'm at school, I'm fine, but it's the few minutes while I'm getting the kids ready to go to Grandma's house that my heart starts to sink a bit, especially when Chloe wraps her arms around my neck and clings to me like her life depends on it some days, pleading with me not to go. As a mother, you have to be just a little bit inhuman not to let that affect you. I've been doing pretty good, for the most part though. The other day, though, Linus was sick in the morning- he woke up and threw up all over his bed. After we cleaned everything up, he seemed to be doing okay, but I just gave him a couple of canned pears, a little applejuice and a couple of crackers to eat to play it safe. He didn't have any problems and seemed to be acting normally- they were supposed to go to a friend's house for a little while before I left for workbecause Grandma was in Denver until lunch time, but Dave, my father in law, came home to work from home so that I wouldn't have to take a sick kid to a friend's house. I got the kids ready and walked across the lawn. I was just in the process of explaining to Dave that Linus seemed to be doing better when he walked through the door and puked all over the floor. We brought him quickly into the kitchen, while he puked the whole way into the kitchen and all over the kitchen floor. Dave turned me around and told me to go to work and that he would take care of it, and I couldn't help but burst into tears as I helplessly tried to verbally console my crying, sick two year old boy and explain to him that I had to leave him while he was feeling icky, while at the same time blubbering out apology after apology to Dave as I walked out the door. That's been the only time I've cried over it, though, so I think that extenuating circumstance can be excused for mommy-back-to-work tears in that case. :-)
Linus is still a little sick and I'm wondering if I should take him in. I think he may have eaten something that was not supposed to be edible because after three days, he keeps most of his food down, but he doesn't eat a whole lot, has had horribley messy watery diapers, and only ate a few bites of dinner tonight and threw it up again. He doesn't have a fever at all, he runs around the house like nothing is wrong, he's not really lethargic, but oh my two-year-old tantrums, he has been cranky, and he's constantly asking for drinks- I've been giving him a lot of gatorade in hopes that will help him a little, and he just drinks and drinks and drinks. Yesterday morning while watching General Conference, he cried and screamed over everything the entire time and didn't stop until we got a few bites of lunch down him and put him down for a nap. He cried because he wanted things done a certain way, then cried when we did them the way he wanted them done, he cried when we looked at him wrong, he cried when he was just sitting there, he was just a complete mess. I keep asking him if his tummy hurts or if his teeth hurt or what is wrong, but he doesn't seem to really know anything conclusively. We'll see how he does tomorrow. I'm tempted to have my mother in law check his blood sugar levels tomorrow just to see (with so many diabetics in the family, I will forever be paranoid that my kids will have it, and that's just the way it will be with our kids, I can't help it). He hasn't had horribley wet diapers in the morning, so that's a good sign I guess, but I just want to make sure he's not too dihidrated after all his stomach issues.
Odell is doing well too- she is growing just fine, but isn't nearly as big as my other kids were at the same age. I was looking at a picture of Chloe when she was about a month old, and Odell is still not fitting into the outfit that Chloe was in in that picture and she'll be two months old on Wednesday. Chloe and Linus were unusually large for their age, though, so I'm not worried that Odell is too small- her cheecks are filling out and her thighs are getting chunkier- it's cute. She's smiled a few times and has cooed a grand total of once the other night. She's awake for a lot longer during the day and has been sleeping through the night for a couple of weeks now (totally a blessing, we need that sleep...). She's been just the sweetest little baby in the world. In fact, I'm going to sign off here and go goggle at my husband while he dances her to sleep in his arms. One of my favorite parts of the day. :-)