Zulu Knots

I have started practicing on Norah's hair. It is good for me to get used to doing it and it is good for her to get used to me doing it. I cannot do braids yet. They are HARD!!! Maybe her hair isn't long enough yet. The only kind of row styles that I can do are flat twists. Baby steps I guess......

These are Zulu Knots (the parts are terrible but I didn't have a comb, just my fingers). I didn't use any kind of elastic on her hair, I just twisted the hair down and wrapped it around itself and it stayed all night. These are also sometimes called Nubian Knots. I know that there is a technical way to do these and I doubt that I did it the right way. This time I just parted the hair into 4 inch sections. I split each section in half and twisted each half. I then twisted the two sections together and wrapped it around itself into a bun and tucked the ends in. Next time I am going to Lu's hair in Zulu knots too!!

Derek LOVES it when it is braided of clipped up, I think it makes her look too old. She just isn't my girl if she doesn't have her soft Afro. This is how she looks like my girl...

And, just because we can't leave Jacob out of all this, here is how he will always look in my mind... half naked (or all naked usually) with some GREAT shoes and often one of my purses.

Hospital Details

The hospital wasn't too bad. Other than the fact that it was very loud and I didn't sleep at all and there was no bed for me, not too bad. The nurses were great and everyone was so kind. I though of "b" who does this every day. I bet it is really fun at some times and pretty awful at others.

I realized today that I haven't spent an entire day with just Norah ever in her whole life. I don't get that long term one on one time with her so it was nice to just have her to deal with. We played a lot. It was kind of sad to see her in the enormous bed. Poor little thing. She looks so small in there, huh? For some reason the plastic at the top of the bed was very interesting to her and she just looked at it.



We didn't have to put the side of the bed up at all because she doesn't really roll over. She is a little bit developmentally delayed, but I didn't think she was too far behind. The nurses informed me that at her age she should be trying to pull up on the sides of the bed and climb out. She should be rolling everywhere. Even with the gestational adjustment, she is definitely on the slow end of the scale. They called in a person who does the OT for the kids to evaluate her. For example, Norah doesn't sit up. When we have tried she starts up doing pretty well for a few seconds...

and then ends up falling over like this after a few seconds.....

For the longest time she didn't put weight on her legs. She has a few hip issues and we thought it was because of that, but really she just didn't like it. We bought one of those baby centers that is suspended on elastic ropes (to make a jumper) and she LOVES it. She will jump for an hour if we leave her in there long enough. So, we know she CAN put weight on the legs, she just doesn't. We just have to help her practice. With sitting and rolling it is the same, she CAN do it she just doesn't. She is a pretty complaisant kid and I think that she just can't be bothered. So, we will need to keep practicing these things with her now. So, the trip to the hospital was worth it if just for that.

The reason they wanted her in the hospital at all was because she had been throwing up for three days previous to the doctor visit. She also hadn't had a wet diaper in 24 hours. I was more concerned about the dehydration than the cough, but when they checked her oxygen level, it was low. It is smack in the middle of RSV season too so they admitted her. She was a great little patient. She didn't cry at all (even when they too blood and did the throat culture) and just lay in her little bed and talked, kicked and cooed. I had to leave at one point to relieve on sitter and wait for the next one and when I got back she had a crib full of toys!! This is how I knew she was tired. She was sleeping on her back in a light room. These are things she never does. EVER. I also love how she is such a little lady. Even when she is sleeping her little fingers look very proper.

This picture shows the little toe sensor. The little red light at the bottom left of the picture is the thing that is supposed to be on her toe. It monitors her oxygen levels. She kept tearing it off (just like she loves to tear off her eye patch.....). We tried putting socks on, we tried leaving her on her tummy, and eventually tried shoes....

The shoes worked pretty well for a while, but then she would just take the cord and pull it until it came off. I must have re taped that thing one thousand times..... They discharged her the next morning and we just had to follow up with the doctor the next few days. She is supposed to pee every six hours or we have to take her back to the hospital. She waits until the 7th hour (and gives me a heart attack each time) and always pees RIGHT before I am ready to rush her out the door. I think that is just another indicator that she just does things in her own time.

Thanks for all the kind words and good wishes. The weekend was a little bit nuts between sick baby, monitoring diapers and dealing with the yuck that the other kids have (both of them are pretty sick too). Derek is off again for a week and so I am on my own again. Lauren is back in school so that will help and hopefully I can get Jacob signed up for a gymnastics class. I figure if he is going to do headstands in his bed, we might as well help him expand his talent. He can also do a headstand on the floor--with nothing to prop him up. He does it yoga style, his legs are bent and he just bends over and very slowly pulls his legs up. He can't do it with his legs extended, but still. This kid is amazing!

Happy Monday to you all!

Be careful what you wish for...

I have been trying to get a grip on my life (meaning, catch up w/ laundry and actually cook something for dinner) lately. The broken computer is only part of it. Life has been made a bit more difficult by sick kids, cranky kids, ski week (what the #&# is that? Who needs a week off in Feb? It just means that Lu is home, and bored.....). I have been existing in a place of "not quite sick enough to be sick, but too sick too have enough patience with my kids". We have all been there. Admit it. You know when you hear the kids first banging on the door at 5:30 am, ready for the day, and you want to crawl into a cave and sleep till spring? That is me. Or is that just my kids and your kids don't get up that early? Actually, it is only ONE kid of mine that does it. The one that chewed through his crib tent and will shove various items under the door until I let him out. If the item is TOO BIG to fit under the door, like say, a jewelry box, then he will destroy it and break it into tiny pieces and THEN shove them under the door. When you reprimand him, he will give you a look that says simply "you should not have left me alone in there....". He is right.

Sigh.

Anyway, the kid's finally caught the bug as well and have also been sick, but not SICK sick, just sick enough to whine and cry all day and be totally grumpy and toxic. Poor Norah has had a cold and is sniffling and crying with the rest of them. She is my third, so I don't get too worked up about sniffles. I don't even have a thermometer at home (and I am always kind of embarrassed when they ask if I have taken her temp and I say no, but who am I kidding, it would be lost or swiped by Cubby anyway....). This morning, after being up ALL night with sick Norah I realized it has been three days since Norah had a wet diaper. She also had been throwing up every bottle. Not just spitting, but "projectile, soak everything in its path" throw up. After the first day I switched her to Pedialite from milk, thinking that it would help her congestion. We have been battling an RSV-type rattling chest since October and that is what the Dr. had advised before.

I called the advice nurse and they said to bring her in right away because my doctor had an opening. I couldn't find a sitter for the big kids so they ALL came with me (another story in itself). The doc looked at her, checked something and then left the room really fast. When she came back she told me that the baby needed to go to the hospital RIGHT NOW and that they could have an ambulance take her or I could drive her but it had to be RIGHT NOW.

Yikes.

I found someone to take the big kids and raced the baby to the hospital (which ironically wasn't the hospital adjacent to the doctor's office and a few blocks from my home, I had to take her to one 15 minutes away). It turns out she is dehydrated (very) and wasn't getting enough oxygen and they wanted to do the nebulizer treatment. It is a similar thing we have been fighting, but this time it was much worse and I just didn't realize it. We haven't gotten the RSV test back, but she might have picked it up over Christmas in Utah. They want to give her an IV and major breathing treatments and let her sleep. So that is where we stand. I just left her in the hospital and came home to get some things (like a bottle, formula, clothes for her, my wallet.... I thought I was just going to the doc... and I haven't carried a well stocked diaper bag for years...). Then I get to spend the night in the hospital (that is, if my husband can come home tonight, he has a late night scheduled w/ work) and if we are lucky, she can come home tomorrow. I have to find someone to take my kids tomorrow, but so far my dear friends are stepping up to the plate and taking the kiddo's for me tonight.

Technically I can just leave the baby in the hospital, but I don't want to do that. Besides, the thought of sleeping in a hotel chair sounds like heaven. Like a vacation or a spa. I don't have to deal with Cubby for a few hours (don't get me wrong, I love him dearly but he makes me tired), I get to eat breakfast that I didn't have to make. I just have to deal with one small child that can't move. I can read a book. I can brush my teeth alone. I can eat a meal with out sharing. Lately, the only food that my kids want to eat is the stuff that is on my fork, halfway to my mouth. That is THE ONLY morsel of food that they want. I kind of miss the days when they wanted to eat off the floor. :-)

But, back to the title of the post. The other day I was thinking that I wish I had something interesting to blog about to get me out of the rut.

Ha!!!

(P.S. Pictures tomorrow -- if the computer is better....).

Did you miss me?

Internet,

My computer is broken....blech. I personally think that Jacob put a piece of cheese in the disk drive, but that remains to be seen...

I am sorry I haven't been posting, and I worry that my readership has dwindled down to my mom and my sister...

I will be back (with pictures and funny stories galore...).

See you in a few days...

All you need is love.....

Happy Valentines Day!

What are you doing? What did you do? Do you have traditions for this holiday? I am trying to turn this into a fun day for the whole family. I have been scouring the internet to find some fun ideas. A few of the ones that appeal to me are to have a fun breakfast (but I am not a morning person so we will have breakfast for dinner), make a pillow to put love notes in (for the kids too...) or decorate the door of the kids. I love these ideas. I would love to hear your ideas.

I am going to put fun hearts on the doors of the kids bedrooms and for dinner we are having heart shaped pancakes, ham (cut into heart shapes), strawberries, and any other red stuff that I can find. The kids each get a small trinket (very small). Derek is in Europe, so I don't have to worry about him, but we put special notes in his suitcase (and Lauren made penguins for him and for her Aunt Kate that lives in London--Hi Kate!!).

Hope you all had a happy day!!

Jacob Friday....

Remember when I said that I didn't take many pictures of Norah? I guess there are more fun things to capture...

I call this

DON'T BOX ME IN........NO WAIT, DO!
I DO WANT TO BE IN THE BOX!!!!!

Hmmm, a box

I think I could sit in this...

First I need to see if any thing interesting is on the bottom

Yup, fits just perfect

Wait, I need my Night Night...

Ooops,

Ok, try again....

Here we go, it all fits...

Heaven.

Sadly this little interlude only occupied about 3 minutes of his time. The rest of the day he is just a busy and curious. JJ is starting to talk more and more. He calls me "me ma" and Derek "my da" It is the most inventive name I have ever heard for Daddy. :-) He loves to whisper, it is his new thing. He will come up to me and whisper some jibberish (that makes perfect sense to him) and can hardly contain the smile until he is done. He will burst out into laughter before he finishes. He is the kid that has so much joy it is almost as if his body can't contain it...

Jacobs current obessions (besides whispering) include, Blues Clues, dancing, collecting rocks from the front courtyard (and storing them in his sassy pink purse), stealing Norah's pacifier and doing handstands in his bed.

Happy Weekend

Why YES....

I DO have a third child....

It has come to my attention that Norah is not getting much love here on the Crazy blog. For a child that cried the first three months of her life, she is pretty easy now. The reason I don't talk much about her is because she is just easy and perfect. Maybe it just seems that way in comparison to Destructive McCrazy and The Cleaner. It is nice to have a child that just sits and smiles at me and laughs at everything I say. She doesn't shout no or tell me that I don't understand. Right now she is doing what she does 90 percent of the time. Sitting in my lap, chewing her fingers, smiling up at me a few times and growling (that is her happy sound). I took this picture a few minutes ago (before I put her in my lap). She has discovered her fingers and they are a never ending source of fascination these days. She also has started to grab her feet and roll around. She is 6 months old this week, yikes. Apparently 6 months is brought to us by the letter "g". She is starting to "talk" and it is all g sounds. Ga ga. Goo goo. Guh guh. Her hair is still enormous (and I do mean enormous) but I can't stand to braid it yet, because I love to play with it.

I took both the little kids to a black hair salon and they were kind of mean to me (fine, it was a good example of how my kids will feel some of the time). When I asked them about the babies hair and if I was taking the right care of it, they told me I was over thinking it and didn't need to oil it or anything like that. Hmmm. According to every black woman that see me (and stops me) in Walmart I am not taking good enough care of it. I have both sides of the spectrum. They told me to bring Cubby in to have his head shaved every week. I don't think I want to do that. First of all, it gets kind of expensive and it is also pretty far away. I really am looking for ways to get these kids into situations that make them "just like everyone else" and not the only different one. We live in a pretty white town. I have had no luck finding black teachers or doctors. I can't afford the preschool in the part of town that is predominantly black (It was a GREAT little school, every teacher and child was black but it cost 950$ a month...). Hmm. Maybe we need to move to New York after all......

Sadly for the Golden One... she has a brother that has to get in on anything that others are doing (like the above hair discussion, it started being about her and ended up being about Cubbo, oooops) Let me demonstrate. Here is baby Nori sleeping on her daddy's chest. Snuggle time. How sweet.......

Not really, she was just getting her loves in between Jacob being thrown in the air....

Finally, some alone time with Daddy. Norah falls asleep while Dad, the ultimate multi tasker, does his ab work... (you can just see Cubby rushing in....)

"Hi Dad, Hi. Can I play?"

Even taking pictures. I was trying to snap a picture of the baby and Jacob ran up and laid down right next to her...and then cried because de didn't want me to take his picture.... but look how big they are getting! She is looking at him like he is crazy.

What has become clear to me is that I have almost NO pictures of Norah. This Mamma needs to get on the ball. Time to do a Norah photo shoot. For some reason it gets harder and harder to pull out the old camera and snap some pictures. I need to work on that.

Happy Tuesday.

Lauren Friday....

This kid has been saying blog-worthy stuff all week, here are a few before I forget...

--Upon walking in the room while I had "The View" on the television (THE dumbest show ever, but I know that when The View comes on it is time to walk to the bus stop...) she saw Toni Braxton, who was guest hosting, and commented "Look Mom, Oprah got new hair".....

--Lauren was driving with me in the car and I was trying to explain to Lauren what an apartment is (since she has lived in one her entire life, I don't know why she was confused...). We were talking about how someday we might buy a house but if we ever moved back to New York we would have to live in an apartment...but really, really tall ones that don't have small yards on the back. I asked her which she would rather have. "New York Mom, we should live there. There are LOTS of sweepstakes there. Some of them even have thousands of back up prizes".... New York it is.

--This is the best one. Our daddy has been pretty much gone for two weeks and I am beyond grumpy by the time 6 o clock rolls around. Last night she excused herself from dinner and asked if she could do a surprise in my room. About an hour later she came downstairs and escorted me upstairs.

Lu, camera ready and waiting to show me the surprise...

She made the bed and laid out our clothes...

A dress for me (and the remote...smart girl)

Jammies for Dad (socks and everything...she also straightened his table..)

She also picked up and folded all the clothes on the floor of my room. I didn't have the heart to tell her that they were the ones going to Career Closets and Goodwill. She did such a good job!! (Do you love how I have a FULL ON weight bench in my bedroom? Do I love my husband or what?)

I'll be back...

I have been pretty busy and having blog writers block this week. Hub is out of town (again) the kids are all still fighting colds and I have been working on a few different charity projects (one really cool new one is to support family based orphan care in Africa and India) and that has kept me busy. I am also trying to decide if I am going to Africa in March or not. I want to, but there are a lot of other things going on that month too (finalizing and sealed, kitchen remodel, multiple kid Dr. appointments)... and I am not sure if I should indulge the selfish part of me that really WANTS to go.....

I'll be back........... but until then, here are some pictures of the oven micro-loan project that I did last summer. A group of women wanted to buy a charcoal oven so they could make food to sell and supplement (or in some cases, provide) an income for their families. We bought the oven and got permission to have it "live" in the LDS church building in Nairobi. This was necessary because they needed the space to house it and the fact that the church has a guard. The women bring their own ingredients and fuel and use it at a scheduled time. It has been so successful that we are doing another one in another building on the other side of Nairobi and are looking for funding to do on in Uganda. This one is Jacob's oven. The person who donates the money can name it........ (Angelina Jolie totally copied me on this one.... I also have a project for each of my kids--granted I only have about 10$ for each one instead of one billion... whatever.....). The cost of this project? 350$ Just another example of how SO LITTLE can go so far. The bike project is well underway as well, each bike costs 60$. The picture at the bottom is an example of a Boda Boda bike, they are used as a form of taxi, for transport, to carry items to market, and apparently, children. If you (or anyone you know) wants to help, let me know...

Making the dough

These are the tin's that they cook the bread in...

This is the charcoal part of the oven, the bring their own fuel an burn it here...

The finished product!

This is a typical Boda Boda...some are more like scooters, but the ones we will buy are just man powered. When I was in Uganda I saw a full sized couch on the back of one of these...

New Years Eve (aka..Second Christmas...)

We made it back to California in time for New Years Eve. All of Mr. Crazy's brothers and sisters had gone to their in-laws as well for real Christmas, so we had round two on New Years Eve. Grandpa Crazy LOVES Christmas and often does most of the shopping. One year we all got luggage (great gift, but it all looked the same, so that caused confusion on the first family trip...), the girls get perfume almost every year, the boys get at least one dress up outfit, the kids get toys that light up or have small pieces (you know, the kind that mom and dad won't buy...). It is really fun. There are also tons of DVD's. When we have a Crazy Christmas, there are always DVD's involved. We never buy DVD b/c we know they are bound to come our way at some point. This year they did Yankee Swap w/ the DVD's. That was pretty funny. If you don't know what that is, not only do you clearly NOT watch The Office, you also haven't been invited to the right parties! Yankee Swap (aka White Elephant) is where each person picks a present and the next person can either get a new one or take one from a previous person. The gift can only be "stolen" three times. :-) We managed to dodge "Ruthless People" and "Die Hard 3" (I didn't say they were all GOOD DVD's.... now you know who buys all the ones from the 5$ bin). Lauren scored "Little Miss Sunshine" and Jacob got "Curious George". We were sad not to hang on to "Pirates of the Caribbean 2" but you can't win them all, and like I said, we dodged not one but TWO copies of Ruthless People. :-) Best White Elephant gift I ever got? A real armadillo that was also a purse....... it doesn't get better than that folks.

Norah and Sweetie (that is what we call Grandma B)

The other fun tradition that I love is the book box. Derek's grandparents always send a box of books to each family. Everything from novels to history, best sellers, biographies and classics. It is basically a free for all and everyone manages to take something that they haven't read home. I love this because it keeps me in reading material for weeks. I am a voracious reader.

Jacob got these glasses from Aunt Ashley. He LOVES them.

For New Years Eve dinner we had King Crab Legs. I am not a seafood fan. I have come a long way and will eat many things, but this one didn't become a favorite for me. Derek's family lived in Portland for awhile and also overseas where they ate seafood all the time. In fact, they all eat everything. They love stuff like Liver and Onions (my husbands favorite dish--no lie, he will order it if he ever see's it in a restaurant), sushi and sashimi, all veggies, etc. They all ate this stuff at a very young age. But, back to the crab legs.... the kids LOVED them. Actually, Lulu could take them or leave them, but is is obsessed with butter so she was happy. She would eat cat food if we told her that she could dip it in butter. Derek and Jacob were in heaven. It was fun to watch everyone "opening" their dinner. I can't imagine what the actual crab looked like if these were just the legs. :-) I've seen The Deadlist Catch and the crabs on that looked MUCH smaller.....

Extra Credit: The anatomy of trying to take a family picture this year......

That isn't too bad considering that this was last year.......