the story of my life

Allow me a few moments of self-indulgent pity. So, today was basically the WORST. DAY. EVER. I know that my extremist tendencies make me a bit prone to hyperbole as it is, but rest assured that today COMPLETELY merits that distinction.

As I sit here typing, my tooth is still throbbing from the effects of going to the dentist this morning. What should have just been a quick (ha) dental visit to fill a couple of cavities turned into a nightmare of epic proportions. First of all, let me state that I HATE going to the dentist -- with the drill sounding worse than nails on a chalkboard, the numbness, the dentist asking questions and expecting an answer all while my mouth is full of dental instruments, the constant dryness of my mouth and inability to swallow while being worked on -- really there is nothing to like about it. Well, let's just say this morning was even worse than usual. Apparently the cavities were REALLY deep -- so LOTS of drilling was involved, and on one side my tooth was numb but my gums weren't -- resulting in moments of pain, and on the other side they hit a nerve and managed to slice open my lip with the metal band thingy that they put around the tooth as they're filling it -- more pain, and in the end the dentist told me that because the cavities were so deep I would most likely need to get root canals. As he was telling me this, my tooth on the left side was already starting to throb and I couldn't close my mouth and let my tongue or bottom teeth touch it because it kept sending sharp, shooting pains through the tooth. Yea! Well, that was a bad sign, clearly, so the doctor gave me another shot to numb things up better, and started drilling again to do a pulpotomy. Double yea! Now I need to schedule a root canal with an endodentist ASAP to fix this tooth.

So, here we are at the end of the day. My tooth has been throbbing all day long, I still can't touch my teeth together -- thus ruling out any kind of chewing for food, and I don't think Tylenol with Codeine does a THING for pain.

And while I'm pitying myself here, I'm starting to get paranoid that I might be developing gestational diabetes due to my unexplained and epic weight gain over the last few days and weeks, not to mention my eyes have been bothering me whenever I've worn my contacts over the last month and my eye doctor said it would really be best if I just wore my glasses till after I deliver this baby. Triple yea! Anybody want to trade lives with me? Hahaha.

Alright, gripefest over. Here are the rest of the happenings over the last few weeks:

Easter was a lot of fun. Scott had Good Friday off, so we made a quick trip over to visit his sister Kristin and her family on Thursday night and came back on Friday evening just in time to welcome my mom and Amy and Jacob. They came up for a quick trip for their Spring Break and it was a blast. Sarah came down with baby Eleanor to hang out with us on Monday, and then everyone left to go back home on Wednesday. Even though we didn't exactly have Springy weather to enjoy the Spring Break, it was still a lot of fun. Ethan was in Super Nintendo heaven the whole time, and all the kids loved having Eleanor here. Almost too much. I'm worried about poor baby Jane being suffocated by their love once she's here!

The kids started posing on the stairs before I even realized what they were doing. I guess they figured we took pictures before coming down to see what Santa brought, so the Easter Bunny deserves the same respect. Hahaha.

Their loot -- courtesy of the Dollar Tree


The obligatory Easter outfit shot. Let's just say rushing for 9 o'clock church cramped its style a bit.

Of course it wouldn't be my life if the fun we had while the family was here weren't tempered by a bit of bad luck. When everyone was leaving Wednesday morning, the kids and I went out to see them off and say good-bye. Well, someone locked the door on the way out and left all of us out in the cold. Sarah had already left, but my mom was still in the driveway which was very fortunate because I didn't even have real shoes on much less my cell phone. Of course, I'm the only one with the house key so a call to Scott only served useful in Googling a locksmith, and so 25 minutes and 65 bucks later, we were back in the house! Sarah showed up about 10 minutes into our wait because she left some stuff at the house and we all piled into mom's minivan for a little more family bonding:

Sidenote: When "Mr. Lock" came, he asked to see ID when I gave him the check. After looking at my driver's license he commented "you look different." Oh gee, thanks. You mean I don't look the same 7 years and 3 1/2 children later, 30 pounds heavier, and sporting my awesome glasses and ungroomed and unruly tresses? Just what every pregnant woman wants to hear.

To end on a fun and happy note, here is a picture of my shopping success at the mall last night before all my troubles started this morning:


After making fabulous use of my Gymbucks, reward cards, and massive winter clearance sales, I scored all of these clothes for Jane for ... (drumroll please) 50 cents! You would think that already having 2 girls would mean we're set for clothes for this little one but you would think wrong. For one thing neither Grace nor Sophie was a summer baby, and for another thing a lot of their play clothes are kind of trashed at this point. When I took stock of the girl clothes that are put away, I discovered that I have basically no winter clothes that will fit her for this year. All in all, it was a very successful trip.


And just for fun:

Here is Sophie's favorite perch.



Whenever I'm at the computer (which is probably too often), Sophie climbs up on the fireplace, pulls some paper out of the printer, and starts to color. She's funny.

Well, folks that's all. Tomorrow is another day, right?

Random Tidbits

Here we go...

Tidbit #1. Up first is Ethan's school Carnival, of course. I have now discovered that my children respond quite favorably when a bribe is dangled in front of their noses. As in, I was able to get ALL of the kids to clean up and do their chores for most of the week last week by telling them that they couldn't go to the Carnival (or "festival" as Grace kept calling it) unless they did. Grace has surprised me lately with her external motivation levels and actually put up LESS of a fight than Ethan when it came down to getting the work done. The big day finally arrived and after waiting for Scott to get back from a Scout camp-out, we were finally on our way to the school with the whole family in tow. The poor little muppet was not feeling very well, and had been running a fever the day before, so in the end Scott took her home for a nap while I stayed with Ethan and Grace for a couple of hours, and then attempted to run a booth while Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum sat on the floor next to me asking me every other minute if they could have another sucker from the "Lollipop Pull" I was in charge of. In the end, the kids had a TON of fun and ate way too much junk -- although, if I do say so myself, this carnival had NOTHING on the Lusher Annual Crawfish Boil of my elementary school days. Oh how I wish we could have gone down there this year. *sigh* Oh well, maybe next year.

Of course, we had to hit up the Bake Sale first. Do you like how spaced out Sophie looks? And how fantastic her wardrobe choices have become now that she is able to dictate to me what she wants to wear?

Getting really excited to make the rounds.

Really loving her "goodies."


Ready to go home and take a nap.


Waiting in line


Striking a pose


Possibly my favorite shot from the whole day. Look at what responsible young citizens these two are. Hahahaha. They really look like a couple of road workers, don't you think?


Sophie didn't want to be left out of the picture taking, so she forced me to take her picture in front of the daffodils. She is quite the little despot when she's sick.

Tidbit #2. Grace gave her very first talk in Primary the next day. I have to say I was very skeptical as to whether her enthusiasm for giving the talk would continue once she was actually up there in front of everybody, but she surprised me once again, and after an initial bout of shyness she managed to repeat each line I whispered to her -- although I doubt anyone in the room could hear what she was saying because she was so quiet. Oh well, I was just happy to hear that she's absorbing things we've talked about in Family Home Evening, because she had no problem helping me write the talk on the topic of "Family members have important responsibilities." Now if only she would always follow through on HER responsibility of "doing chores" and "quickly I'll obey" when I tell her what she needs to do...

In case you can't tell, Grace picked out her outfit this morning. It was actually really cute because when she saw me dressed first, she decided that she wanted to wear a striped shirt just like me. So there you go. Here is my mini-me. Hahaha.


The girlie bugs before church -- Scott had to stay home with Sophie who was still running a slight fever and consequently had to miss Grace's talk


Superfluous shot of the Supermuppet.

Tidbit #3. I know all of you have been waiting impatiently to hear the results of March's Read-a-thon. So, here you go:

Ethan did indeed manage to kick it into high gear and ended up beating out Grace by the narrowest of margins. His special choice of date for winning, you ask? Oh, you know -- playing Super Nintendo with Dad down in the basement. It is his current obsession. Nothing compares to Super Mario World in his young eyes, and I can't say I blame him. Hahaha.


Tidbit #4. Grace was NOT happy about being beaten and not getting a date, but was quickly appeased when I reminded her that she had finally finished her whole month of no thumb sucking and could get her ears pierced that very day if she wanted. And boy did she want to. I've never seen her get dressed and ready to go so quickly. Below you will see the anatomy of an ear piercing...

• First off, you need a still sick little sister to throw a meltdown fit because she wants to get her ears pierced, too, and the answer is NO.

• Next head for the mecca of mall ear piercing.

• Don't forget to bring along some moral support in the form of one of your favorite junks.

• Sit nervously and wait as the lady swabs and marks your ears.

• Laugh at Sophie as she plays dress-up in Claire's and pulls everything within reach from the stroller down from the walls and makes a huge mess for mom to clean up while she's trying to listen to the instructions on how to take care of your newly pierced ears.

• And finally, enjoy your complimentary sucker at the end of your ordeal.

Grace has become my child of surprises these days in that she didn't cry or freak out at all as her ears were being pierced. And she has been more diligent than I have in remembering to clean her ears and twist the earrings everyday. I still cannot really believe that she has actually stopped sucking her thumb. I thought that day would NEVER come!


Tidbit #5. And just so Ethan doesn't get left out of this post, here he is with a crown he made on the 100th day of school for this year (2009):


He literally would not take it off at ALL on Friday -- not even when he went to bed. They did all kinds of counting to 100 activities during the day apparently, and he LOVED that. And while his reading efforts have taken a little bit longer to get off the ground, it has become apparent to us that his heart belongs to mathematics. I hesitated to post this picture, but in the end I figured it made me laugh, so I'm guessing it will make some other family members laugh as well.

"Fraction Action"

THIS is what Ethan does at school during his free time. What a weird kid, right? Of course I mean that very lovingly, and by weird I mean funny, but please rest assured that they are not learning about fractions like this in his Kindergarten. The story behind this is that when I take the kids to the library to pick out new books, I seldom have the chance to look through what they're picking out because I'm too busy doing damage control with Sophie, and trying to prevent runaways from happening. As a result, there are usually a few duds in each batch of check-outs. Grace is actually VERY good, usually, at picking out books that are very appealing to her and appropriate -- comprehension-level-wise. Last time around, however, she picked up a book called "Fraction Action," that was clearly written for a much higher age level. But of course, the kids still made me read it to them over and over again. It was a pretty basic introduction of what fractions are, but still, definitely much more than they will cover in Kindergarten. However, Ethan was really intrigued by them, and as a way to keep him quiet during sacrament meeting one Sunday when he was making Grace scream and throw fits because he was trying to steal her crayons and markers, I started drawing fractions and having him represent it in numbers. It took a few tries before he got the hang of it, but after awhile he had it down well enough. Anyway, long story not-so-short, the next day at school, when he was at one of the tables where they could work on any projects they wanted, he made up his own fractions and labeled each one. When I asked him what his teacher said when she saw it, he just ducked his head and shyly said that she was impressed. Please understand that I am NOT trying to say that Ethan is some kind of math genius, here. Because he's not -- I just thought it was really funny that he got such a kick out of fractions. Simple pleasures, right?


Tidbit #6. In other news, I think we are 99% settled on the baby's name. Apparently our criteria for names is a bit limiting, because after narrowing down all the girl's names in the whole world, we came up with exactly 2 1/2 that both Scott and I liked -- Jane, Kirsten, and Liesl. (In case you were wondering, I was the half that liked Liesl). In the end, I think we've decided that this little girl is going to be a baby Jane. Basically because it would take a whole lot of convincing for the kids otherwise. They've been referring to this baby as "Baby Alex or Baby Jane" since they found out I was pregnant, so I guess it would be a little difficult for them to switch gears now. The only problem left is to find a middle name. The difficulty I'm having is that Jane is so much more commonly used as a middle name that a lot of names sound weird when Jane is first. For example -- Jane Abigail sounds a little off, while Abigail Jane flows so much more nicely. Any suggestions will be warmly welcomed.


Tidbit #7. And finally, I'll close with what Scott and I have now lovingly dubbed "The Color of Love" -- or in other words Grace's now-painted bedroom walls. Because really, how else could we spend a whole Saturday morning painting our daughter's room this color, if we didn't really love her? After all, this is the color she REALLY wanted. Now, that's a whole lot of love, wouldn't you say? And boy was Grace excited. She was literally flitting and floating around the room while we were painting saying "this is so beautiful!" and "I will keep it so clean!" Hmmmm. We'll see about that.

The Before (notice Ethan once again wearing his 100 crown)...

and After of painting.

All right folks, that's about all that's been happening with us over the last couple of weeks. It is now very late and I am very tired. So, until next time, good-night!