Happy Thanksgiving!!!

...from the most adorable doll in the house to your family this Thanksgiving Season. I mean really, do they come any cuter than this?

Riding Buddies

If Faith could talk, I think she might say one of her most favorite things to do with the baby is share the same car seat row. It could get a little lonely always being the one in the middle. But now she has a riding buddy. And she is frequently heard exclaiming in a smile with a point at her side, "BAHHH-BEEEE!".

Ms. TMI

Who knew that Mama had a whole 'nother set of bras? And of course, if you're going to try on bras, you might as well try on ALL of them. Being very careful to make a grand entrance fully bra clad in front of visiting church folk.

Punch-It Faithy

Faith is 100% original. Apparently, she felt like we had run into a shortage of utensils for breakfast this morning. Making herself resourceful, she climbed up on to the kitchen table with a hole puncher and began systematically capturing her cereal bits with the puncher. She was so proud of herself and was thrilled that we had all noticed her mastery of fine motor skills.

Ready Or Not?

For those of you who don't see me waddling around throughout the week, you may have wondered if my one week of silence meant the early arrival of Baby Hope. If that were true, it would have radically changed my position on global warming. True global warming might be the only thing that could successfully kick my cooker into microwave gear.

Most pregnant ladies have lovely convection ovens to bake their little buns. Some ladies, are lucky enough to have state of the art microwaves. I have been blessed with grandma's indestructable stainless steel slow cooker forever stuck on the "Low" setting. {{sigh}} You can't break me. You can't rush me. I don't even know how long the light would stay lit on my slow cooker without Pitocin.

The chickens and I are having a contest. We are both due to lay our egg in the same week. It's me against twelve chickens. Cheep entertainment around here.

I have been tempted this go around to see how long I actually would go. Just to see, you know? But by about this week in the pregnancy with just three weeks left to go, the pelvis begins to shudder. I may have a uterus of steel, but the rest of me is not bionic woman material. Each evening this week has tested my tolerance of pain. Everything hurts. By 5:00 pm, whatever junk is strewn around the floor (and there is a lot of that) gets an automatic pass. All I can do is growl at it or kick it.

I whine that Mama is ready for Hope to come out now. When I see little babies nuzzled close to their mothers, I surprise myself with how much I long for those days again, holding another beautiful blessing. It is a comfort to know that I still have that deep seated desire to gather up my new little baby girl and love on her entirely. Fully. After three children, the excitement is still new and fresh.

But then I feel a sadness sweep over when I look at the little girl babbling in front of me who is still so much a baby herself. She has all of my heart right now, as she stands on the brink of so many milestones. How distracted I will be in a month. How much our "Mommy-Faith" world will change. Are we both really ready? Faith tries so hard to sit in my lap and fit. She'll lay on my belly with her blanket molding herself around her tiny sister completely oblivious to Hope's kicks of protest.

We can do this. I know we can. All of us. All six of us. Which brings me to the masterpiece I stumbled upon last week. Grace had left this picture on the counter. A picture of our family, plus another unidentified woman that I'll assume is supposed to be Grandma or Nana. I love her drawings. Notice how she identified ME. I'm the bodacious one in the middle with all of the curves! So until less than three days pass before I find my way to a shower, this will have to do for an updated belly shot...

Little Surfer Girl or Nina

I'm not sure what seems more out of place: A 1 1/2 year old surfing like a professional on the Internet, or a laptop computer at a kid table in the playroom. I caught Faithy browsing through the chicken forum, scrolling and clicking away this afternoon.


I don't normally do my Internet surfing in the playroom, but we've been trying out our first week of Latin Spanish using Rosetta Stone (we bit the bullet). The entire family has committed to learning Latin Spanish together to justify the cost of the software. Mommy and Daddy too! I'm a five years of French girl, so after three weeks of trying to stay a day ahead of the kids on Spanish for school, I threw up my hands and took the Rosetta Stone plunge. Has anyone else out there used this program successfully in their homeschooling endeavors?

My Shoe Box Full of Joy

All weekend my little girl put a smile on my face, because of the abundance of her own smiles parked right below her button nose. She is such a cheerful butterfly in my life right now, full of gutteral garbles and chattering. None of it making any sense, other than the wonderfully clear "Hi!" she lavishes on each passing soul. Yesterday, she spent part of the afternoon dressing and diapering her bears and babies, grunting dramatically over their weight as she moved them here and there. However, her finest moment was her attempt at squishing into a kid sized shoe box, as she practiced rolling her "Rs". I could look at these smiles and six pearly toofers all day.

The Impressionist

If you ever want to make the Princess of Wails crazy with happiness, give her an art medium and a piece of paper (or a blank wall). Faithy adores drawing and painting, and the praise that comes dripping from our mouths when she whips out a colorful montage (unless it is on the wall). I'm not exaggerating about crazy...


At least this little Van Gogh still has her two precious ears. If she could, she would tell you that mixing colors requires major concentration...

...and works best if you can use all four appendages as test run pallettes before placing the newly mixed color on your paper. Oh, and FYI, diapers make terrific blotters in a pinch.

The Faith-ster

For our family and friends far away...it has been awhile since you saw the motor driven Faith-ster in action. We owe you a peek. When she gets her motor running, everyone starts laughing, even the grumpy adults. She is officially one year and three months old today.



This movie was taken just before the flu bug reared his ugly head.

Who Flu The Poop?

There is only one thing that keeps me from blogging for over a week. Not moving. Not homeschooling. Not chasing after three kids and trying to grow another. And not trying to do all of those things at once. What keeps me from blogging is Faith, the flu, buckets of curdled sour milk on the way back up, and amazingly rancid diapers that have MOAB military like capabilities when they detonate.

Flu + Faith = Stale Blog.

Six days of the flu bug for my poor little one. By day three, she was shuffling her feet along the floor like an old lady. By day four, we had the worst blow out in Knucker Hatch history. By day five, I was praising the steam cleaner for it's vomit devouring capabilities on hardwoods. By day six, the laundry had washed The Princess of Wails' sheets and blankets 12 times.

And now...Tom Builder appears to be Mr. Flu's next possible victim. Good times.

However, we are making progress on the house. The play room is freshly painted, and neatly organized which has made everyone in the new house cheerful in spite of the stench o' flu. I'm sure there is an old adage somewhere that says, "If the playroom is happy, everybody is happy."


There is much more I have to share with you from last week. Not all of it was doom and gloom. In fact, the farm is dazzling. And just as amazing, we've discovered that Mr. Incredible can turn slime into sparkling pool water. Just in time for almost 80+ degree weather. A many pictured post to follow tomorrow (as soon as my camera battery recharges and recovers from my trigger happy finger.)

Be The Cheeto

She looks like a Cheeto. {Sniff} She smells like a cheeto.
She must be a Cheeto...


Health conscious mothers, this is not the house of artificial horrors. The Princess of Wails has only honored a Cheeto bag with her presence once, and you're looking at it. Faith is a total granola girl, preferring organic rocks (teeth sharpening), Georgia clay, wood chips, weeds, bar soap, and my personal favorite - dog hair pulled out of the dog's grooming brush.

A Leg To Stand On

After spending two weeks in a half leg cast, Faith had her check up today. In the last week, she had committed to hobbling around the house, determined not to let a broken bone keep her crawling for too long. We hoped this was a good sign that things were healing. Since it sounds like we have a resident pirate walking around our house keeping watch over the hard wood floors, Faith has quickly earned the nick name "peg-leg".


The doctor was very happy with her follow up X-ray. On the left was the original X-Ray of the break (where the pen is pointing) on the right is her X-Ray from today. The thin sliver line you see on the right side of the bone, going quite a way up the fibula, is actually NEW growth of bone. All that in two weeks! She has received clearance to begin going cast-less for periods of time under strict supervision over the next 10 days. The break is healed but it is still weak, and we will need to be careful that she keeps her back flips and quadruple toe, triple toe combinations to a minimum (which is like trying to use floss to keep a wild horse tethered).

He Makes Her Lay Down In Purple Pastures

Now you know how this story ends, I'll start from the beginning. Last Thursday evening, after returning from a wonderfully exciting day of visiting with a close friend and playmates, I sat down to rest. The entire week had been packed, and this last visit marked the end of a fun but tiring affair. Ken had been away in Tennessee for the week, and I was glad to be near the end of flying solo.

The children, eager to be out of the long car ride back, got out their wiggles chasing each other around the house and swinging Faith's blankies at each other. Faith was just as happy to be free from car seat restraints and was giggling with her older siblings trying to keep up. As the children chased each other up the stairs, Faith followed. Too tired to object, and enjoying her visible joy in being a part of it all, I watched from my chair as she climbed up the stairs. I saw her little legs disappear as she moved beyond the rails and the wall hid her view. She was half way up the stairs, when she encountered her two blankets that Grace and Jack had left on the stairs.

What happened then, we'll never know. The next thing I heard was her gasp, as she lost her balance and began a slow tumble down our steep staircase. I saw her reappear tumbling backwards till she landed on the floor. It was a scary fall, but it was slow enough that it seemed she would be ok. In a matter of minutes I realized she was crying over more than fright. She did not wish to stand, and held her foot up refusing to have any pressure placed underneath it. Her right foot grew red and hot, and it appeared that she might have twisted her ankle during the fall.

It took her 30 minutes to stop crying and complaining. Her usual comforts didn't perform their magic. I called Ken and employed his resources to look up broken bones in infants on the Internet while I focused on Faith. After going through it together, it still seemed like she had twisted her ankle, and the swelling around her ankle was small. After an hour, the hot to the touch skin and redness had subsided. I decided to wait until the morning to see if the swelling had increased, or if there was bruising, or any other further signs.

Long story short, Faith got quickly used to standing on her left foot and keeping her right foot bent off the ground, but most noticeably, she went back to a life of crawling. Her foot had a small amount of swelling, but no change from the date of injury. However, after still refusing to stand or put pressure on her foot four days later and with no improvement, it was clearly time to take her in.

Somewhere in my mind I always thought that babies' bones were less brittle than adults. That since they were new and still growing, there was more cartilage involved and they had more bend to them (which is true in a sense). What I didn't know, until that visit, is that babies' bones are actually more likely to fracture than for a ligament to sprain. Bottom line, babies have stronger muscles than bones. I was given a referral to a sports medicine doctor for X-Rays in the morning.


Then things turned from bad to worse. Faith got the royal puke flu that night. She went through numerous bedding and clothes changes, and she and I got very little sleep as all she wanted to do was sleep on my chest, anything farther away was unacceptable. I felt so bad for her, she couldn't keep even water down until late afternoon.

The whole family headed out in support of Faith that morning. And we all hoped and prayed for the best. Unfortunately, it was not Faith's day. The X-Ray showed that Faith had broken and bent her fibula (lower leg bone on the inside of your leg) just above her ankle. It wasn't a giant break, but it was clearly broken. So our little Faith became our first family trauma after three children. We all watched as the doctor set a half cast around her leg and secured it with an ace bandage.

Grace kept the conversation light. The doctor had given Jack a small wet cast sample to observe how it slowly would harden. As he was describing how the cast would harden, Grace looked directly at the doctor and said, "How do YOU know?" As if he had no authority. We all bust out laughing, and the doctor wittily informed Grace he had gone to school for sixteen years to learn those types of things.

The rest of the day was a blur with little sleep under our belt, and nausea to boot. Our little girl is much better today, and is getting used to her little cast which she will need to wear for four weeks. It has slowed her down which is a huge test for mobile Faith. She is learning to be still, and be even cuter. We are so glad she is on her way to recovery. And somehow, even weighed down with a cast, she still manages to be a blur in my camera lens.


And now I must end this post with a cliff hanger. We have a number of life changing events to announce in the next week. There is more than one reason why I have been so blog-silent as of late. The changes are uber-exciting, but I don't like to blog about it until I'm quite sure it is true. Stay tuned in the coming week...

Hair Bear

When the princess is told she is having a good hair day...
When the princess doubts the talents of her hairdresser...and dentist...
When The Princess of Wails suspects she is being mocked...

Zero To One in 24 Hours

On the morning of Faith's birthday, Jack peered into her room as she and I did a "Happy Birthday" dance together. Coming in for a closer look, he asked:

"Is Faith really one today?"




After I confirmed that she was indeed one, he carefully supervised her diaper change, making comments like:

"Her legs look longer, I think."
"Mom let's put her down and see how she walks NOW."
"I wonder if she understands any more words."

For Jack, the idea of Faith going from zero to one overnight is a concept he still is trying to wrap his mind around. I'm not sure what he expected, but it was his belief that overnight our little Faith would become a toddler. When I tried to explain Faith has been slowly working her way toward one all year long his eyes glazed over. And then I think I almost made his head explode when I told him that now that she was one, Faith was one day closer to being two!

Stumbling upon this photo today, made me realize just how much both Jack and Faith have grown in the last year. Both of them...just babies.

Faith In Motion

Today she turned one.

It has been one whole year since I first touched those long little fingers. I remember studying her fingers in the hospital. All of them wrapped tightly around my giant pinky finger, and kissing their sweet tiny-ness all over. And now, I could pick those puffy appendages among dozens with a blindfold on. I KNOW them...

The way they scratch the sheets like a cat preparing to settle in. How they strum invisible guitars and harps as she goes toodling about her day. Her fingers have never stopped exploring her world, even in the early stages of sleep. Tears would come to my sleepy eyes at 3:00AM as she nursed and dug her nails into all of the tummy rolls she could find. How I know that no amount of sanding or clipping can dull the tactile sensitive razors at the tips of her fingers. How her fingers could dance as she experimented with airy hellos and goodbyes. And those are just her fingers...

I could go on for hours and hours about each and every piece and part of Faith. I KNOW her. She knows me. And at this precious age of one, she can now return my love with her own lean in hugs, and her own wet droolly kisses. She's been the most challenging motor on wheels to raise in the first year, but I wouldn't change a second of it. There were few times of second guessing or worrying over this and that. I've had time to enjoy Faith through the eyes of a more experienced and relaxed mother.

My baby girl is now a blur of activity that the shutter on my camera cannot match.

And yet, every once and a while, if I keep the camera clicking, I catch her face. An impish grin caught in the frame that says, "I'll always be one step ahead of you. But don't ever stop trying to catch me Mom."

I won't sweetheart. How I love you.

The Princess Has Found Her Legs

I'm in total post-Holiday blog catch-up mode. So much has happened on the ever changing Faith front. The most notable accomplishment is that THE PRINCESS WALKS. She's unstoppable. Crawling is SOOO out of style. Faith started walking right before we headed out to Colorado. She hadn't even hit the 11 month milestone.

The footage below is already outdated, but the moment is priceless. Here are Faith's first steps from mid December with Daddy as her "Bipedal" coach. And just like our daring Faith, she goes for three.

Baby Tongue Jumping Jacks

Faith had all of us in stitches tonight, and I just had to share the video clip. Normally, Faith has an aversion to being spoon fed, rarely staying still for 1/3 of a jar of food. But this evening, she mowed down an entire jar of breakfast for dinner, "Apples and Bananas Mixed with Cereal".

Her reaction to the delightful sweet taste is priceless.

9 Months In The Womb...Nine Months Out

Faith has strolled into a major milestone...nine months!! Don't tell the other two kids, but Ken and I both agree that she is so stinkin' cute she pretty much gets everything she wants. And I mean, everything! Aren't kids supposed to be less spoiled the further down the birth order they fall? This toothless wonder, bucks just about every trend in the book.

The Littlest Domestic Diva

There are three worlds Faith would love to search and destroy: the fridge, the fireplace, and the brightness beyond The Great Doors of The House. In fact, any world called "Faith, No, No, No" is a world to be conquered. One of Faith's favorite days is grocery day. It is the only day that she can spend 10 minutes basking in the light of the fridge, and feel the cool breeze on her face while she squeals with delight over all of the fruits, veggies and yogurt.