Welch Family Journal: July 2008

my kids smarts

I am going to take a moment to brag on my kids. Both of our kids teachers at school, daycare, and Bible class are constantly telling us how smart our kids are and how animated they are. So far, all their teachers love how they get excited about whatever the subject is. They love how they can answer the questions and do answer the questions asked. I have had different teachers say things like "wow. she is so smart. like how she puts things together and can tell you about thing." or "he is the only one who knows all the answers in class" or "she/he talks and communicates so well for their age" Normally I just say Thanks a blow it off as people who don't spend much time around either kids age group so they are easily awed. But it keeps happening over and over. I am so proud of what my kids have been blessed by God with. I love the fact God blessed them with the ability to learn and retain knowledge. I love the fact they are happy enough in life to be joyful in classes. There are several times a day I get so frustrated answering the "why?" questions. It is nice to have affirmation that all that's paying off. All in all I am very proud of my children.

Ok I am done bragging now and the next posts will be about the silly things they do through their walk in life. :)

What's my name?

We turned on the Red Sox game tonight. They said "David Ortiz" on the TV and what do I hear from across the room? Garrett saying "that's me!"

What?! What did he say?

Great! . . . the brainwashing is Now complete.

Vote for my kids

Scroll through until you find my kids emma and garrett in the sprinkler and vote for them!

Oh

Garrett's new saying is "Oh"

Anytime he asks about something or is just told something he says "Oh". It's kinda cute/funny and kinda odd. I guess it's something about his age since a good friend of mines daughter did it a few months ago all the time. And she's a few months older than Garrett. He must be getting to that stage now. . .Or he's spent too much time with Kinley. :)

Did you miss me?

Emma asked Matt "did you miss me?" Last night over dinner. He said "absolutly!" (he's been gone for a week with the youth group)

Someone asked Emma at church today "did you miss your daddy this week?"
Her answer: "well, he missed me"

A laugh and a half that one!

Bland's water slide

While Mommy was at her scrap booking weekend, the kids were in Taexarkana with Granny and BIg Daddy. Caroline and Hannah brought up their inflatable water slide. The kids had a blast! Apparently Garrett wouldn't go in ti until Tanya showed some tough love and threw him in and went down the slide with him. Thanks Tan! They had so much fun in Texark! The one downer of the trip was when Emma slammed her already sore finger in the door again! This time it was the house door and this time it bleed a lot but she had a nurse and almost nurse in the house plus her granny and tanya so she was well taken care of. Poor kid. Other than that the weekend was great! Mommy enjoyed her time away with her friends too! Daddy wasn't quite sure what to do with a quite house all alone. ;) SO he went out in search of big kids to spend time with. Silly daddy!

What did she call me?

Thursday we had Oogles and Googles come to daycare. I had the pleasure of sitting in on the group with Emma. They were doing a 4th of July unit. They were having fun marching around waving their flags until . . . they started singing "yankee doodle" As soon as the song said "yankee" emma stopped and looked at me with this face

I understood what she was doing but the lady leading it looked at me in confusion. I had to explain that she was a Red Sox fan and didn't want to be called a Yankee. Then I had to explain that the song didn't mean she was rooting for the despised Yankees. It just was something everyone from "up north" used to be called. I knew her Daddy would get a kick out of it. And he laughed out loud when I told him the story. He was so proud. Ahhh the brainwashing has been successful.

Our song

I have been calling Garrett "my sunshine" and singing "you are my sunshine" for quite a while now. He really is a ray of sunshine in my life. Even when I am very frustrated with him and want to scream, he can smile that smile and I melt. I see big problems in his teenage years for me :) Well, the other day his Daddy was singing "you are my sunshine" to him and he frowned at him and said "No daddy. that our song" So apparently only mommy is allowed to sing that song with him. My heart swelled.

Then Emma started getting a tad green with jealousy and wanted a song too. Well she's my "love bug" I did not know any love bug songs. I told her that and she began to make up a song right there. It's a very simple one with the words consisting of "Love bug I love you" but I thought it was amazing that right there on the spot she began to make a song up with changing melodys and everything. THAT she gets from her Daddy.

So now everyone is happy and has a special song. I just have to have matt figure out the tune to Emma's song and write it down to real sheet music so we can remember it when we are older too.

I love this age with my kids. (maybe not every minute of it but all in all I love it) :)

oops she did it again

While I was at my AWESOME scrap booking weekend, the kids were at Granny's house. All went great until yesterday when I got a call saying Emma had shut her finger in the door again! Yes the same finger as before. Yes, it bleed a lot. Yes, she was crying a bunch. Yes, this made the fingernail finally fall off. I go to pick them up here in a little bit to see the damage. The worst part? Tanya said her fingernail was looking really good about 2 hours before she shut it again. This time it wasn't the car door. It was the house door. My poor baby. She will need lots of extra love this week . . and advil.

Mommy's weekend away

You read that right. The kids are at Granny and Big daddy's (say several prayers for them) and Matt's at home. Mommy gets to go have a weekend with other mommies (childlesss too) and do something mommy enjoys . . scrapbooking! It's going to be a super weekend filled with laughing and mommy bonding. I can't wait! I will update on all of our weekend's once I get back. Have a fun weekend yourself . . even if you have to lock yourself into the bathroom with earplugs and a good book to achieve it!

HAPPY JULY 4TH

Spring Cleaning part 1

This is how many dolls and stuffed toys my kids had a couple weeks ago (and I came ot find more after we weeded this down)

My 4 year old daughter had 14 dolls not including stuffed animals . . .. just dolls!

I looked at this and decided it was time to spring clean! We went through and picked out 5 babies she could keep and 6 stuffed animals. We saved a couple Cabbage Patch dolls to take back to Me-me's house to play with. The rest we sold at a garage sale. I went through Garrett's and picked a couple of babies and a few animals to keep. We sold the rest of his. They had way too many dolls/animals to even play with them. They were just left all over the house. I went through her cabbage patch clothes and only kept the matching outfits and coats. I went through the baby blankets and only kept about 3 each for each kid to play with. I went through our big blankets ad only kept a manageable number. I went through our toy boxes and got rid of a lot of the baby toys and toys that they really never played with. I got rid of almost all the McDonald toys. I got rid of one toy box that basically became a dumping ground for toys when they were actually put in there. I put all the beanie babies in one big zip up bag and they can get them down and play with the different animals then put them back up when they are done. I straightened up the downstairs closets and rearranged the downstairs furniture. I went through Emma's room and began tossing things she never played with. Tossing things that were broken or missing pieces. I moved all puzzles to the kitchen kid's shelf. I found a place for everything in her room (or tossed it if there wasn't a place for it) I weeded out her purses to carry random things around the house and drop. After I found a place for everything and was done weeding out everything, I took her on a tour of her room and sowed her where everything belonged. That way she would know when I said clean up your room where things would fit. So far she and I have done a pretty good job or cleaning up every couple of nights so her room is "granny approved" :) The downstairs and her room are a lot easier to keep straightened It has been great. I still need to add boxes for some of the toys in the closets and I still have more organizing to do in the rest of the house but for now I am proud of what we accomplished a couple of weeks ago.

Dangers of a car door

Saturday night as we were getting back from dinner and grocery shopping, Emma got out of the car like usual and began to shut her door. Then we hear a bloodcurdeling scream. We look back and her finger is stuck in the door. Matt is almost of out the car anyway so he reaches around and opens the door while I jump out of my seat and run to her. We get her inside and began to look at it. It is already swollen, bleeding a little, and nasty looking. I give her Advil and an ice pack. She is screaming and crying. All night long she keeps crying and can't do anything. I call mom (our on duty nurse) she says to keep it elevated and giver her advil throughout the night. SO I let Emmers sleep with em. She wakes up every 2-3 hours crying that her finger hurts.

Sunday morning she feels better she says she can swing her hand around and everything. So we go to church. Then the Advil wears off, and she's not as chipper. We get home and Advil up more and nap. That helps. She is able to go and play at the building but still can't let anything touch her hand and still needs Advil every 3 hours. I let her sleep with me again Sunday night. Same as before up every 2-3 hours needing Advil.

So, I cancel going to the pool monday and get her a Dr. appt. The dr looks at it and as we feared (because Tanya and mom said this may happen) they are going to have to drain the nail to let the blood out. Emma was soooooo brave. She sat on my lap, turned her head right before the Dr put a hot needle thingy on her nail to burn a hole in it. Emma didn't flinch or cry at all! She let the nurse squeeze her finger a little to get more blood to drip out. She was so brave! She amazed her Dr too! She did so good we went to The Purple Cow for ice cream cones afterwards. She deserved a treat after enduring all that!

You could tell an hour after getting her hand done it was feeling at least some better. I gave Advil the rest of the night like before. About an hour before bedtime she came running downstairs saying "my fingers bleeding again" She had gotten her hand wet and the dried blood had disolved and let more leak out. The nurse had told us to do this anyways and I was trying to figure out how to make her do it. Since she did it on her own on accident it worked out great. I calmly told her that was supposed to happen and to just keep blotting it with a kleenex until it was done and dried up again.

Last night she slept all night long without waking up once because of her finger! Yessss! We may be on the uphill climb of this. Hopefully I can get her to drain it again today and get more blood out to speed recovery even more.

Here's a few pictures of the finger right before we went to the Dr. and then some shots of the ice cream treat.
Thanks to my mother who made taking pictures possible again!