My daughter's weird

My sister passed her RN boards, so we went to dinner last week at PF Chang's. I absolutely love their mongolian beef. Carolyn surprised us by eating well, but her favorite was stealing the green onions off my dish. She chowed down approximately half of them. I thought this was weird, but not really noteworthy. She used to eat raw diced onion while I prepared dinner.

But I was still surprised to see this while trying to get the groceries put away:

Babies and Sisters

Time flies. I can't believe that Blake is one month old. His first few weeks were a whirlwind because my family descended on Portland for the holidays. It was the first time in two years we had the whole family together, and it was a lot of fun. Here's everyone at Blake's baby blessing, hours before they all left.


All of them except Angelina. Did I mention she moved in with us? She starts her job in the next week or two and will be in Portland for the foreseeable future. She'll only be with us until she figures out where she wants to live and all that jazz, but until she moves, I am enjoying being able to take a shower whenever I want and run to the store across the street without packing up two children. It's helped this month feel a lot more bearable and less stressful.

It's been four weeks

and they still love each other!

My Past Week

Jeremy, after a month at home, went back to work on Monday. I woke early and decided to use the time I had before Carolyn woke to get in a little exercise. I threw in a pilates DVD, feeling great to actually use some muscles again. Then, I promised my sister that I would take a fast shower if she would watch the kids. Well, uh, it was 20 minutes before I turned off the water. Bewildered, I explained to her that for some reason my body got really cold and I had to stay in. Angel wanted a nap, so I told her to go lie down.

Then, I promptly got the chills and body aches, wrapped myself in a blanket, and passed out on my couch. Angel didn't even have a chance to get upstairs. She dutifully took care of Carolyn and Blake for the next two hours. That's when I finally came to. With a fever of 102.

After a mandatory trip to the OB where I swore up and down it was just the flu (my temperature was already back down to 99.4), I was diagnosed with mastitis and given antibiotics. I had a return appointment for Wednesday with the lactation lady and went home to sleep.

By Wednesday I was feeling great...until I got a concurrent diagnosis of thrush. Now Blake looks like this:

Not the best picture, but you get the idea. Isn't he handsome? His medicine comes in this cute little bottle:
Just 1 ounce. It doesn't seem like much except the fact that it dyes everything it comes in contact with. I have purple fingernails from him sucking on my fingers. He has purple marks on his clothes. It's potent stuff; I've only used like 4 q-tips of the stuff.

So today, I didn't screw the top on quite as well as I should have and Jeremy knocked the bottle off our counter. About half of it landed on our counter, cupboards, and floor. 1/2 ounce=5 square feet of purple. 2 cans of hairspray and many paper towels later we had it mostly clean. Quite a few of the grooves still had dye in them and the baseboard was still a disaster, but we were out of hairspray and the other cleaning supplies weren't working. I was about to walk to Fred Meyer, when Jeremy brought me a little item from the new man in my life.
I had spent close to an hour scrubbing and inhaling fumes until only the most stubborn dye remained. My magic eraser cleaned the rest up in about 3 minutes. There is a little left on the baseboard, but it looks about a million times better than when I started with the eraser. How I wish I had used it to start. Now if I could just use the eraser on Blake...

Here's to a better week starting tomorrow!

Jeremy says we have to move...

Two years ago, starving for some Costa Vida (or Cafe Rio, if you prefer the original), I looked up their website to get information. Lo, and behold, it noted that a store was opening up in Hillsboro that very week. Imagine my elation! I called my brother and our families went to dinner when it opened. Since that time, we've filled many a frequent diner card. Jeremy introduced his coworkers to the sweet pork. They went there often for work lunches and filled many frequent diner cards that got passed on to me. I used them all.

There was a sad time during my pregnancy with Blake when I couldn't eat their food, but that passed and I was back to going there often.

But now they are closing. Apparently, all the BYU grads and Utah transplants in Oregon weren't enough to keep the business in the black. Jeremy got an email forwarded to him announcing the closure, effective tomorrow! We made plans to have lunch there. I even bought Carolyn her own meal knowing it would be the last time she could stuff her face with sweet pork and I didn't want to share.

The signs on the doors said they would close after lunch tomorrow. So if you are in the area, you better book your booty down there as soon as possible, or wait until your next trip to Utah or Arizona.It's hard to let go, so if you go for lunch tomorrow, I might see you there.

Christmas Dresses

This picture is for Grandma Horner. Carolyn loved wearing her Christmas dress this year. We didn't actually wear it until after Christmas because weather canceled church on Dec. 21. But she got to wear it for Blake's baby blessing that we did on Dec. 28. Her perfectly coordinated bows in the hair are courtesy of Rachel.

Speaking of Rachel...

Here is the dress she made Carolyn for Christmas! She looks adorable in it.


In fact this is the first dress that Carolyn refused to change out of when we came home.

Here you can see the detail on the bodice. For better pictures of the detail (and a model who wasn't running during the photo shoot), check out my niece Emilee's matching dress.