So that was the good, happy news to write about this time. What follows is not for the squeamish. 

Last week was Thanksgiving and it was NOT a good week. The last I posted, Ella was sick with the flu. As might be expected, it spread to others. On Wednesday afternoon, after we went to our make-up gym session, we came home and within a half hour, Ethan was throwing up. And he refuses to use the potty for that, too. It was bad. So, so, bad. Suffice it to say that I spent the afternoon scrubbing the living room carpet. The ENTIRE living room carpet. (I'm very glad we got that wet vac a few years back!!!)  When Phil got home, he'd already had three bouts and I wasn't about to start cooking dinner and getting the house full of cooking smells, so we decided to get Subway. Phil stayed in with Ella and Ethan and I took Natalie out. We first had to stop at Blockbuster, and then the plan was to get Subway and then stop at the store to get milk and pop. We were in line at Subway when Natalie looked up and said, "Mom, my tummy hurts."

Uh oh.

I abandoned the line and rushed back to the bathroom with Natalie. She not only threw up, but had some diarrhea that had escaped early. (Yes, we ditched the underwear and she went home with just pants. They weren't worth trying to clean up in a restaurant bathroom to save them!) After she finished, and felt much better of course, I ran back to the line and tried to get my sandwiches as quickly as possible. Too bad I had employees who moved like snails and then the cash register person who couldn't read in order to ring up my coupon. (Really. I had to read for him that it said "buy one sub get one free". You think rudimentary reading skills would be required for cash register duty.) By the time I got through the line and paid, we had to run back to the bathroom for another round. Ten or so minutes later we finally got to leave that Subway that we will never again patronize. We got home and Natalie and Ethan went right to bed while Phil and I ate our sandwiches in silence. 

And then I noticed that my dinner was feeling like a lead balloon inside of my stomach.  I couldn't possibly have gotten through three kids being sick, cleaning up after them, doing a dozen loads of laundry and getting very little sleep for an entire week, without succumbing myself, could I?

Nope. I spent the entire night either catching Ella's vomit, rushing in to either Natalie or Ethan's room to help them (yes Phil did his share as well) or spending my own time in the bathroom. All night long, I had to get up about every 15 minutes for my own issues. By the middle of the night, I realized that not only was my green bean casserole and cake for Thanksgiving dinner not going to get made the next morning, but I would likely not be going anywhere. Natalie and Ethan both stopped by the early pre-dawn hours, but Ella and I still weren't feeling any better. I spent the whole morning sitting in one chair.  I didn't even have the strength to go through the Black Friday ads -- something I really love doing every Thanksgiving. I just sat, and occasionally was able to read a book. Phil took Natalie and Ethan to my mom's house for dinner, so at least they got to eat.  Phil did bring me a plate of leftovers (and my mom sent home some leftovers for later as well). By early in the evening I was feeling a little better, but unfortunately the food didn't taste that good yet.  By Friday, EVERYONE was feeling pretty much back to normal. Too bad Thanksgiving doesn't fall on a Friday!

And no, as usual, Phil didn't get the sickness that the rest of us got. A couple days ago he wasn't feeling so great and we started to get worried, but it passed without much incident.

Last week was the second of our scheduled weeks off of homeschool, and just like the last week off (when Ethan ended up in the hospital), we got to spend the whole week dealing with sickness. So this has been a catch-up week for us. We just did phonics, reading and math as normal subjects and then we've been working through a unit study on Thanksgiving. It would have been ideal to have done the Thanksgiving study on the week on Thanksgiving (we're doing two different ones but the major one was a three day curriculum), but at least now a week later, Natalie knows something about what we celebrated last week! 

I'm almost afraid of our next break, which will be the week of Christmas!

November 20, 2007
I was up most of the night last night with a sick little Ella. She's been throwing up all night, starting at 1:00 am and all through this morning. I lost track of how many times she's vomited, but it's at least 10 already. Right now she's asleep sitting on my lap. It was hard last night because all she wanted was to nurse, but I knew that would make her throw up more, so a few times Phil walked around with her to get her to sleep. (While I went through every sheet and blanket in the house changing bedding -- she wouldn't stay on the towels we put down but rolled all over our bed every time she threw up.) By the time Phil got her to sleep and back into bed (either hers or ours) she'd wake up just a few minutes later for another round. Poor little sweetie. And of course, she got the flu shot last Friday. Why did I bother?

So all activities planned for today are cancelled. We had her second photo appointment scheduled for this morning. That was definitely out. Natalie has gym at 1:00 but since Ella hasn't gone more than 30 minutes without vomiting, I can't attempt that either. Then Natalie and Ethan have dentist appointments for 3:00 today, and it's looking unlikely. The last thing we had planned for today was to go to see the Wildlights at the zoo this afternoon/evening, since it's supposed to be warm today, and my zoo membership expires at the end of the month. It's supposed to get cold again tomorrow, but maybe we'll have another warm day between now and the 30th.   

One thing I remembered as I was sitting awake last night, was something I forgot to add about Ella's party. The funniest thing that happened at the party was spoken by Natalie. I heard it second hand, so I hope I relate it correctly. Sandy was holding Natalie in her lap, and was telling her how pretty she was. Then Sandy said to her, "your sister is pretty too, isn't she?" Natalie answered her matter-of-factly, "Ella's pretty, but not as pretty as me."  

November 19, 2007
I have lots to write about today - from Ella's one year checkup, to her birthday party, but first, you may have noticed that I changed the "name" of my webpage today. Lately it's seemed less and less appropriate to have it called "baby days" when I just had one official baby left, and now that she's one, and will soon be a toddler, she's only officially a baby in my mind. (All my kids are still babies in my mind, but that's another issue.) So I'm now going to call it "Praise from their lips", which comes from a verse I never really had a grasp on until just recently. The verse is Psalm 8:2, and it is "From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise." I never got that. I mean, okay, from children, sure that's obvious. But from infants? When the word "infant" itself means "without speech"? It made no sense to me. How can God ordain that praise come from a person who can't even speak? A month or so ago, we went up to Cleveland for a weekend, and we visited a church, which we tend to do when we go out of town.  We love our church, but it's nice to see other perspectives, styles of worship and preaching sometimes. This time, we found a little start-up church that met in a college classroom. It reminded me a lot of our old Chi Alpha meetings, actually. I don't know whether it was the college building atmosphere, the small praise band, or the mostly 20-somethings in attendance, but it was refreshing. Anyway, the teaching that morning was on this verse, and it was mostly from a video that we've seen a couple other teachings from; a very post-modern series with some solid teaching that really makes you think. He said that in ancient Hebrew, the name of God, what we usually write out as "YAHWEH" and pronounce as "Yah-Way" actually is four different sounds: ya, ha, wa, eh, and they are the sounds of BREATH. So with our every breath, we are proclaiming the name of God. Even when people curse God with one breath, with their next breath they proclaim His name. Which is what brought this fresh perspective, and brought a new appreciation for me, to this verse. With the first instant a baby is born, they are proclaiming the name of God, and every person does not stop until the moment they die. Amazing, huh?

Yesterday was Ella's birthday party. We decided, after the craziness of the other two kids' parties this year, that we weren't going to do a big party for Ella's first. (We're also not likely to do a big party at our house again, other than a simple party like we had last night with just family. It's just too much stress to prepare for, manage, and clean up. Both Phil and I felt like we didn't get to enjoy the last two birthday parties we've hosted at our house. So for Natalie's in February, we'll be going somewhere, though we don't know where yet.) So last night it was just family. Grammy and Papa Brett, Grandma and Grandpa Hedrick, Aunt Nanny and Uncle Bruce and David, "Aunt" Sandy, and Aunt Sarah and her boyfriend. My mom wasn't feeling well at all; she had the same cold it seems our entire family has had over the last few weeks, but I'm glad she was able to be here. Since we just got my mom's old furniture, she came over and got comfy in her Grammy Chair anyway. (Sarah got our old stuff -- which was given to us by Nan -- for her new apartment. It's just a big ol' switcheroo around here.) There were plenty of people here and it was just about right for a first birthday. Not overwhelming for the guest of honor, specifically. Unfortunately Ella wasn't feeling 100% yesterday, between getting over her cold from last week, and the day after getting her shots at the doctor's office, but she was definitely feeling happier than Ethan was at his first birthday party. (He was getting roseola that day.) I spent all afternoon, after getting home from church, decorating the cake, so Ella didn't get to snuggle down with me for a Sunday afternoon nap, so by the time everyone got here, Ella was ready to take a snooze. Sandy held her and she was completely zonked within a few minutes. So, she missed her birthday party dinner (I made homemade pizzas), but she needed the nap more. I'm sure Sandy enjoyed it too. That is, after I gave her a chair to sit in so she didn't have to stand and hold sleeping-baby weight. We ate our pizzas and then woke Ella up for cake time. 

My plan was to make a two-tiered cake, and let Ella have the entire top tier to dig into, but the cake I made for the top tier completely flopped in the oven. (I think I need to get a cake pan piece made to stick into the core of a cake, so that the center gets cooked enough when using deeper pans.) I didn't need the whole cake so I tried to cut it and paste together the good parts using frosting. I was covering the whole thing in fondant anyway, so it didn't have to look pretty. Unfortunately the cake was so heavy after being glued with frosting and then covered in the fondant, that it was not going to stay securely on top of the pillars. So I dumped the whole thing (top tier) in the trash and just made a false layer. I took an extra cake board and covered it in fondant, and then decorated that. It wasn't exactly what I'd been hoping to make, but it still turned out pretty nice. Going with the whole "low-key" party, we had no big theme, either. (For every future birthday I'm sure she'll have an opinion about her party theme, so this year I was making the decision!) I found a cute clown cake, so I made that. It was a marble cake with berry cream filling, covered in my butter cream and then my homemade fondant.  Ella wasn't too sure about the cake at first, but then I gave her a taste of the frosting (I gave her a piece with a purple clown on top) and after that she dug right in. She got very sticky!

Ella got some cute new outfits (she'll probably wear one of them tomorrow when we get her photo taken) and my sisters got her a few toys. She figured out what those papers and bags were about pretty quick -- hopefully she'll remember by Christmas!

Friday was Ella's one year checkup, and I had unfortunately told Natalie and Ethan that we had Ella's doctor appointment, but that no, THEY would not be getting any shots. Well, as it turns out, I was mistaken. We gave all three kids the flu shot. They were NOT happy with this surprise. It really made my day, let me tell you, to take THREE crying kids out of the doctor's office. Did I say "take"? More like "drag". Poor Ella had the flu shot plus MMR and Prevnar, so she was feeling particularly sore, but Ethan got his shot in his leg and he insisted he couldn't walk afterwards. He limped, holding his leg, out the door. Natalie got hers in her left arm. She could walk just fine but she was wailing worse than Ella. When we came out to the waiting room, the place was jam-packed with kids, who now were likely even more looking forward to getting called back for whatever those poor three kids endured. Fun times. I got home and needed a nap. Fortunately Ella zonked out with her post-vaccination trauma sleep, so I got some much needed quiet. (The other two were sent downstairs to watch a DVD.)

The girl is definitely growing big. She is now 32 inches long and 23 pounds on the dot. That's around 100th percentile for height and around 75th for weight. Her head circumference is still way, way off the charts. She measured at 19.5 inches. Dr. Burns told me that she is still not getting TOO worried, but she's going to watch it carefully now. Her soft spot is completely closed up, and she said that her head is perfectly shaped, but the size compared to her body is a little concern. She said that if her head growth doesn't level off on the chart by her next visit (15 months) that she will schedule a CAT scan to make sure everything is okay. I really have no idea what the concern is -- I just think she's got big brains like her daddy. She suggested getting her scheduled for a CAT scan now, but told me we could wait until 15 months to see if the growth leveled off some. I told her I would wait. I don't want to subject my 12 month old to that if it's not a huge, immediate concern!

November 15, 2007
Happy birthday my sweet Gabriella Joy!

I took the first of hopefully about 17 or 18 photos this morning. Earlier this year, I read about someone who took their daughter's photo with her wearing the same outfit every year. They used a bathing suit, and I decided to adopt the idea but to use a special dress of mine. I put Ella into the dark blue dress I wore for our engagement photo about ten years ago. The dress doesn't fit me at ALL anymore, but I still love the dress so it's one of only a few pieces of clothing I've hung onto for sentimental reasons. (Yes, my wedding dress is another, but it's sealed in a box so that one is out of the question!) So, as Ella grows, she'll grow into the dress until sometime in her teen years when it will fit her. I just wish I would have heard of the idea when Natalie was a baby!

We're not going to get Ella's photo taken today at a studio, because both her and my sniffles got a lot worse this morning. So I took lots of photos at home, and we'll get over to the studio to get Ella's birthday photo taken in a couple days. We're having Ella's birthday party on Sunday afternoon. It's just going to be family, since now from experience I know all about the years to come when we can have a big (expensive) party with lots of friends. I am going to be making a cake though, and I'm going to attempt my first tiered cake for it. The bottom tier will be for everyone else, and the top tier will be for Ella all by herself. This kid loves to dig into her food, so I'm thinking --hoping-- that this will finally be the kid who gives me a good photo of her first birthday cake.

November 14, 2007
Wow. Well, here we are. One year ago right now, I was experiencing an unexpected natural labor. Ella's birthday is technically tomorrow, but she swiftly came into our world at 12:30 am. In case you missed it or want a refresher about the drama of Ella's birth, it's linked here.

I also finally remembered to get her Growing Ella page updated with photos from the last few months! See how she's grown in the last year...

I  just can't believe you've already been here for a year, my sweet little pumpkin. A year has gone by and I haven't been away from you for a single full day (or night, for that matter) yet. You're my sweet little darling and I love you so much it hurts -- I can't even imagine would it have been like for us to not have you. You were a surprise for us, but God knew what he was doing when he gave us such a sweet, unexpected blessing. Your middle name is "Joy" and it fits so well. You are such a happy baby. Yes you have fussy moments (don't we all) but most of the time you smile and laugh so easily, and all it takes is one look at your sweet face and you bring me joy.

Today Ella crawled all the way up the basement stairs by herself for the first time, when I was checking my email and apparently one of the other kids moved the gate away. Our baby gate is pretty useless, because the hallway is too wide for our gate, so we just prop it up against the stairs. I noticed I hadn't heard from Ella and I just KNEW she was heading back to the stairs, as she has been wanting to do lately. Well, she had made it up to the top step -- thankfully very successfully.

This afternoon, Natalie said to me, "Ella is turning one tomorrow, so that means she'll start walking tomorrow, right mom?" I told her it wasn't likely. Ella seems to be following her brother's pattern in this and not her sister's. But she's a great stander, and she LOVES to give kisses now. She says "diss" and then leans over and kisses me. Because of this favorite game of hers, right now Ella and I are sharing a pretty bad cold.  At least I'm feeling really yucky. Ella just doesn't seem too fazed by it, though her nose is running quite a lot. Unless she starts to get fussy or really sick looking tomorrow though, we'll still probably get her one year picture taken tomorrow!

November 10, 2007
OSU just lost the game against Illinois. They have been #1 this year and this is the first game they lost. Expect rioting in Columbus, Ohio tonight. Ugh.

I just read this on the Homeschooler's board at PaperBackSwap. I thought it was hilarious, so I thought I'd post it here. No, I'm not a bitter homeschooler. I just thought this was funny and it's a good representation of the common questions and comments I'm already getting even at this early stage of homeschooling! I can add one more to the list: "Are you going to homeschool just this year, or all the way through?" I'm not taking an all or nothing approach. You never know what future circumstances hold. As for now, I look ahead to the long term but plan on getting through this year. Any other questions?

November 9, 2007
I tried to upload a new update last night, but I was having site issues. So I thought I'd go ahead and write a little more today, just to help me get back in the habit of writing more frequently. I think I know the main reason why I haven't been as quick to get in here and write lately. We moved in this house going on two years ago now (in February) and every since then, I've either had morning sickness, bed rest, newborn baby, broken ankle or recovering from surgery. For two years I've not been able to get my house organized. So, for the past about month, I've been doing some serious "nesting". I'm the kind of person that doesn't obsess about everything being spotless -- as long as it's clean (relatively), I'm happy. For awhile. Then it suddenly reaches a point that IT HAS TO BE CLEANED NOW. Well, since moving into this house I couldn't do much about it. It started with having it up to here with the clutter taking up more than half of what is a really nice bit laundry room. It had become the dumping ground. I got a couple shelves and plastic storage drawers at Target, and found some other shelving units at a thrift store, and started with the laundry room. Got that cleaned out and nicely organized. Then I did the same thing to our utility room. Then I moved to the bathroom cabinets, the closets, and on and on. I'm slowly getting this house under control. But it's taking most of my "free" time. With our homeschool schedule, I really only have about a free hour or so every day, since we homeschool all morning, then we have lunch, then blessed naptime (where yes I technically and sometimes DO do some cleaning, but generally I plop down on the couch and read a good book that I don't have to teach anyone anything about). So then after naptime we can be loud again and I can run around like a crazy lady getting things done around the house, before it's time to start cooking dinner. In other words, all that time I used to sit and play on the computer has gone away lately. I generally try my best to check my email either before starting school in the morning, or sometimes in a lull when Natalie is working on something not needing my direct involvement (a rare thing for K/1st grade level work), but at the very least before we have lunch. If school runs longer and we're not getting to lunch until after one or so, then there have been times where I don't even get my email checked until the kids go to bed for the night. I try to get on and at least post up a few (or more) photos to Flickr, and check out my PaperBackSwap account, and that's about it. I live a much more scheduled life these days, as I've mentioned recently. It's amazing, thinking back on how our lives were so unscheduled when it was just Natalie and me!

This afternoon we went out shopping with my Grandma Hedrick, to get Natalie a winter coat. Ella is wearing Natalie's old fuzzy pink one, which still looks brand new. Ethan's still wearing the one we found him last year at a thrift store, in great condition and a size too big. Grandma got Ethan a Lightning McQueen hoodie shirt since she didn't get him a coat, and Ella got a sporty little Nike outfit, which she picked out (by pulling it down on top of her head). Natalie's new coat is mostly pink (she wanted PINK, not PURPLE!) and it includes snow pants. She was so thrilled with it that she put it on right after we paid for it, before even walking out of the store. 

November 8, 2007
I really need to get back into the habit of writing more often. Apparently, my mom has missed lots of the pictures of the kids because I haven't been sending out updates. So, just in case anyone doesn't know, I do post pictures over at Flickr every couple days, whether I get on here to write or not.  I want to get back into writing more often, though. I'm missing too much and I know I'm going to kick myself later when I want to know all the things that were going on in our lives right now! Poor little third kid Ella hasn't even had her First Year page updated in a couple months. I will get that done, I will. 

Ethan went voting with me on Tuesday. He was so cute. Phil got home from work and he offered to stay home with the kids so that I wouldn't have to drag everyone out to go vote. It's finally gotten cold around here (we went right from summer, to a week of fall, and now it feels like winter), and I didn't want to have to go out during the day with all three kids in tow. Last year I went voting while officially on "bed rest" (ha ha) with the other two, and it was stressful trying to keep an eye on just two kids while doing my civic duty. So anyway, I just planned on going out by myself, but Ethan insisted that he wanted to go with me. I found out later why he really wanted to go with me. After we punched all our buttons and got ready to leave, he asked me, "Where's the boat, mama?" I tried to explain to him, that there was no boat; we had finished voting. He said I had told him that we were going to go push buttons on a boat. It was quite a disappointing experience for him.

Through the last week, Ella is now standing as often as she possibly can, all by herself without any support. She almost stubbornly refuses to take any steps, though. It's so cute, when we hold her hand and try to walk with her, she instantly plops her little bottom right down. Her balance is so good and she can stand just fine without holding onto anything, that we know she'd be able to walk if she really wanted to, but she just doesn't want to. 

She's saying a couple words. She still of course says "mamamama" when she is upset (why can't they learn to cry "dadadada" when they whine?), and she likes to say either "baba" or "dada" for "baby". (Either one interchangeably.) Yesterday she said two new ones, though. She loves to give hugs to her brother and sister -- for some reason she gives Ethan the biggest hugs -- and last night at bedtime she hugged him and said "hug". Then as we were going downstairs after Natalie and Ethan went to bed, I turned off one set of lights nearest the stairs before turning on the basement lights. When I turned off the stairs lights, Ella's eyes got really big and she looked around very surprised. I looked at her and said, sotto voce, "Yeah, it's very dark, isn't it?" She repeated back to me in the same tone and with a kind of wonder in her voice, "gark!". It was so cute.

The girl is going to be one in a week and a half. I feel like I'm really moving into a new stage of motherhood already -- less baby and more kid. Homeschooling and preschooler instead of baby days.  Of course with two still in diapers I still have lots more baby ahead of me.

Ethan does NOT want to go on the potty. The worst part is, every day now he has a "pee-out" because his bladder holds big-kid amounts these days, and he lets it all go at the same time. In his diaper, of course. I've had to give him new PJ's every single night this week because when we change him in the morning it's already soaked through his clothes. Driving me NUTS. He now says he's afraid of falling into the potty, even using his kid-size seat. I know I should just not worry about it and remember that, like Natalie, he'll figure it out as soon as he's ready, but I wasn't washing 7 pairs of pajamas a week and Febreezing the TV couch by the time she was trained the month before she turned three.

Natalie lost her third tooth last week. Her top center left. It's been loose for a few weeks but not ready for me to just wiggle out. The day it fell out, after eating an apple at lunch she asked me to try to get it out but then said it hurt too much, so I stopped. Then after dinner she was wiggling it again and I told her I was going to try again. I got out the boo-boo-bunny and held it on her gums for a about 15 seconds, then I braced myself to try to pop it out. It literally fell right out into my hand. I'd never tried the ice pack thing before -- maybe just making it cold cause the final shred of root to shrink back; I don't know, but it sure came out without hardly touching it. She was still laying in my lap,  bracing for the pain of me wiggling, when I sat back and said, "Got it, Natalie! You can sit up!"  The tooth fairy was prepared this time. She'd kept a secret stash of gold dollar coins hidden ever since using the token machine at the hospital parking lot last month.