Bathing Suit Shopping for Teens

If you've never had to search for a decent bathing suit for a teenage girl, consider yourself lucky.  Last year was the first year Madeline was in juniors sizing for swimwear.  I dreaded having to find a nice bathing suit that was modest but not frumpy looking and certainly not something that looked like it belonged on someone twice her age.  I consider us blessed that the process was amazingly painless last year.  Madeline looked at what was available at Kohls and found a few cute tankini options that worked well for her.

Since I always like to put a bathing suit in the kids' Easter baskets, I started looking for swimwear not too long ago.  I have something in mind for Ellie and I already have bathing suits for Katie and Anthony.  But, finding something for Madeline, has not been easy at all.  I asked for suggestions on a Catholic mom's group on Facebook earlier today after being very disappointed in the offerings I found on Kohls, Speedo, JC Penney, and a few other sites.  Offerings for tankini separates ranged from dowdy to very mature to I can just hear Madeline saying I'm not wearing that!  This is the girl who likes her clothing to look classic and she, thankfully, is not the kind of girl who wants to wear things that are revealing.

Someone mentioned that Target was where they had found swimwear for their teen, so I decided to look on line and see what was up there.  There are a lot of tankini pieces that I think are nice for the 25+ set, but not much that are suited to a teen.  Then I came across a few cute retro looking options that I thought might work for her.  After showing her what I found she agreed that three of them looked like something she would wear so I placed an order and hope that the one I select for the Easter basket will work.

Here's a peek at the two that I ordered:

The yellow one is a one piece suit that you can find here.

And this one is a tankini.  You can find the top here and the bottoms here.

I am very hopeful that one or both of these swimsuits works for her.  I ordered two different sizes for each since we aren't familiar with the brand so I was unsure of how they were cut.  If these suits work out I will be happy knowing she's decently clad while swimming in our pool.  

Shifting Gears

This morning Bryan and I took Madeline to the high school she will be attending next year.  It's a school that several people we know either send or have sent their kids to and all of them have been happy with the experience.  Today we had a meeting with the guidance counselor to go over her current classes and what she would take for next year.  I'm very pleased that between the curriculum from Seton and the two independent studies that we added to her course load that she won't be missing anything that is required for her to graduate.

The only question is whether or not she will need to take biology.  It's a freshman course at this school, and with Seton it's a sophomore year course.  She's presently taking Earth Science.  The guidance counselor thinks what she has will be sufficient, but she's going to double check to make sure she won't be lacking when it comes time to apply to colleges.

Madeline spent the day shadowing a sophomore so she could get an idea of what the classes she will be taking will be like next year.  She had a good day and is looking forward to next school year.  She got to meet several of the girls who play for the soccer team and they were happy to hear that she plans to play with them.  Apparently the team needs more girls, and from what they were telling Madeline, it sounds like she'll get play time.

I'm hoping that this will be a good switch for her.  She's not particularly thrilled with the Seton curriculum, and for some of the classes I can't say I blame her.  I do feel like some of the classes are a bit on the impossible side and I've grown tired of the very obscure seemingly sneaky trick questions Seton likes to toss out in their tests.  Even with me using the test to create a study guide, I've found that there are lots of times where the correct answer to a question seems to be nowhere in the text or lesson plan.

So while I'm not entirely thrilled that we won't be homeschooling for high school any more, I do think the switch has the potential to be a good thing.  I'll know better once the school year starts and we see how things go.  What I do like about this school is it is small, has a great reputation for turning out students who are well prepared for college, and has a very good priest who used to be at our parish as a religion teacher for sophomore and senior year.  Daily Mass is even available on campus at the end of every school day for students who wish to go.  I think that's pretty cool, and I suspect it's part of the initiative started by our bishop a few years ago to foster a Catholic identity in the diocese high schools.

On Vomit and Confession

My past week has really been something.  It's the kind of something that I'd choose never to experience again if I were in control of such things and I'd certainly go back and delete it if that were even a possibility.

Last Friday afternoon Anthony started spitting up huge amounts.  So much that I started to question whether there might have been oatmeal in his new box of rice cereal since he was reacting the way he does when he has oatmeal.  The spitting up, which we later realized was vomit, kept happening, and it wasn't until he vomited about two ounces of baby food that I was still in the process of feeding him for dinner that we realized there was something other than just regular spit up going on.  Almost immediately after the disturbing dinnertime display he began vomiting a lot and his color quickly turned very sickly looking.  He was starting to remind us of how Katie looked when she dehydrated from her bout with pneumonia so Bryan ran out and got him pedialyte and we began hydrating him every ten minutes with a few MLs of pedialyte.  After an hour or two he was seeming a bit better, but it was obvious that he wasn't feeling well.

Neither of us was comfortable with the idea of putting him to be in his room, so we set up a playpen in the family room and decided he would stay down there with us until we were certain the vomiting had passed and he was hydrated.  I had kept telling Bryan that I thought I felt sick, too, but he kept telling me that I was just worried about the baby and his impending business trip to Denver.  I figured he was right since I do stress out to the point of feeling ill when he goes away and I was also stressing out about the baby.

Around ten or eleven at night I started getting sick.  By midnight I was vomiting all over the bathroom floor because I had no other choice.  Within minutes Bryan was also sick and once the next wave of feeling sick came around Bryan and I were practically doing synchronized vomiting.  Then Anthony got in on the action and woke up wanting of all things, to be fed and held and neither Bryan and I were in a position to tend to him.  Nursing a baby while succumbing to a nasty stomach virus just isn't possible.

We ended up having to wake Madeline at 1AM and have her come down to take care of the baby and help us as we tried to clean up two bathrooms that were covered in vomit.  An hour or so later Katie woke up and had vomited all over her bed, herself and her carpet.  So Madeline had a new patient.  I tried as best I could to help clean up the mess, but that's not easy when you're also throwing up and running to the bathroom every few minutes.  We got Katie settled and an hour or two later Ellie fell victim to the same horrid fate as the rest of us [except Madeline].

I don't think Madeline got much sleep the rest of the night as she helped her younger siblings and did her best to get the loads and loads of vomit laundry through the washer.  She came through for us in a huge way.  I'm not sure if we would have survived without her.  She kept the baby hydrated, made sure Bryan, the girls and I had drinks, saltines and orange slices.

I'm amazed that the didn't get hit with the stomach bug, too, but we think she may have had it last month.  The day after Christmas she was sick and had very similar symptoms to the rest of us.  She was the only one to get sick with it then.

The timing for this virus was not ideal.  Bryan was getting ready to leave for a business trip and I had loosely planned out my Saturday.  Once I had gotten sick I realized that heading to Mass for the feast day of St. Francis de Sales who has become one of my favorite saints over the past year or two was out.  And going to confession was also out.  Soon enough I realized that there was no way I was able to teach my CCD class on Sunday and there was no way we could go to Mass and share our grotesque stomach bug with everyone else.  Even though we all stopped vomiting by early Saturday morning the fun of horrible body aches, fevers and dizziness were just getting warmed up for their two day stay.  I laid on the couch thinking to myself that labor, strep throat, ear infections, and possibly hand foot and mouth disease were all less miserable.  Of course, that last one is a misery in itself and I'd rather have the stomach bug for a few days than relive a day of hand, foot and mouth disease.

We were mostly all on the mend by very late Sunday night or Monday morning.  Katie and Ellie had some lingering effects for a day or two after, but were doing much better by today.  Anthony, on the other hand, will seem like he's doing just fine and out of nowhere have an explosive diaper.  That I could handle.  But this evening I fed him dinner and then loaded the kids into the car so we could go to confession.  All was going well.  We were there right at 6:00 when confessions begin and I was hopeful that we might not be at the end of a long line since the parking lot hardly had any cars in it.  Then I opened the door to get Anthony and was met with a baby sitting in a puddle of vomit that consisted of all the freshly pureed peas I had just fed him.

I thought maybe the spit up wasn't as bad as I thought but a quick attempt to clean him up with a burp cloth revealed that there was no way I was getting this child out of his seat and standing in a line for confession.  We would have had a slimy green trail following us.  It was that bad.  It was so bad that I took pictures when we got home so I could show Bryan.

As I stood in the cold parking lot completely defeated, I told the girls to get back in the car.  They were more than happy to comply.  I was just left with the feeling that if I didn't need to go to confession when I pulled into the church parking lot, I certainly needed to go now.  Patience had officially left the building.  Inside my head I raised my little white flag of surrender to God, all the while grumbling that I now had a phenomenally bad mess to clean.

When we got home I made the unhappy discovery that Anthony needed bath number two in four hours. The kid was covered in green pea vomit.  Can I shock all of you and tell you that I've bathed Anthony three times in the past two days which is more times than I've bathed him in the past month.  Bryan is much better at washing babies than I am, so I usually propose to him that I'll dry and dress the baby if he washes.  So yes, he's cleaned regularly, just not by me.  I will say that I'm feeling more confident washing him after the last two baths I gave him today.

Once he was cleaned I set about getting his clothes sent down to the laundry room only to discover that the dog decided to try washing them.  Arrgh!  Why are dogs so gross?

The real fun began when I had to pull the carseat out of the van.  That cute cover that can be pulled off for washing so you don't have to remove the harness is a load of crap for people who don't live in reality land.  When junior pukes all over the harness and there's so much vomit that it dribbles out of the car seat and onto the car upholstery, the easy remove seat pad is worthless.  I had lots of choice words and thoughts about the engineers and designers of the Britax Marathon 70-G3.  Ignore my 5 star review of it on Amazon.  I obviously didn't have real world baby disaster experience with the seat when I wrote the review.  My recurring thought was "What genius makes a car seat where the *@&%@*$ harness cannot be removed?!"  It's covered in green pea sludge and the omnipotent owners manual is telling me to "sponge clean" the harness if it needs to be cleaned.  Ok, Britax manual writer....you're drunk, you probably don't have any children and have never had to clean up green vomit; it's time to pack it up and go home.

So picture me dear readers at the kitchen sink with a giant car seat sitting on the counter top with the harness, dripping with green oozy grossness hanging out of the bottom of the seat and into the sink so I can wash it with mild soap.  The seat and the fantastic design that does not allow the harness to come out is an occasion of sin, my friends.  Plain and simple.  On the bright side, I kept all the expletives that I had regarding the seat, and it's designers in my head so the kids were at least spared that nice little show.

Madeline had very kindly offered to clean the puddle of green slime off the car upholstery, so that was a huge help.  I was really impressed to see that the got it all up.  I guess she gained some practical life experience this past weekend.

I was going to attempt to put the carseat cover back on the seat tonight and get it back out in the van, but it's not dry.  I hope it will dry sometime this evening so I can get everything back where it belongs.  I'd really like to get to Mass tomorrow morning.  This is one of those times where I wish I didn't keep our spare carseat in Bryan's car.  Since he's out in Denver until tomorrow, my spare seat is sitting over in the Philly airport parking lot.  Some days it just seems like nothing can be easy.  Too bad this happens to be one of those days, right?

I'm looking forward to tomorrow.  Bryan will be back and I don't know about you, but I'm confident that it's going to be a vomit free day.  If it's not, I'm going to go and eat a lot of chocolate and have a glass of cranberry wine.

If you made it to the end, thanks for sticking with me.  I promise not to talk so much about vomit next time.  Maybe I'll talk about the upcoming name change for the blog.  Oh and how happy are you that I didn't share any pictures with this story?  I almost did.  Sure they aren't something anyone really wants to see, but the watermark on the picture would have revealed the new name for my blog.

We Have a Teenager!

Every year on the anniversary of 9/11 we watch some of the documentaries that tell about that day where our world as we knew it was forever changed.  Even now, thirteen years later, that day still seems surreal.  I remember much of what I did that day quite vividly and I suspect part of that is due to the fact that it was also the day I went into labor with our first child.  In the small hours of 9/12 less than eighteen hours after the first plane hit the World Trade Center I was holding a small little baby in my arms and marveling at how amazing it was that Bryan and I actually had a tiny baby girl.  We had no idea what adventures lay ahead of us.

That little baby is no longer little.  She's grown so much and while she may drive us crazy at times, she also amuses us with her antics, her quirky outlook on life and her many quotable comments which those of you who happen to be my friend on FaceBook have no doubt seen.  From "crapple juice" (that's cran-apple to the rest of us) to "ravenous bears" striking poses in populated areas, she always keeps us laughing.

One can only imagine what the upcoming year will have in store for us.  I know she'll be confirmed sometime in the spring and she'll also graduate from 8th grade.  Before her next birthday she will officially begin high school.   I'm sure there will be plenty more Madeline quotes along the way and many more stories to be told.  It's always an adventure!

So happy birthday Madeline!  I hope your first year as a teenager is a fun one!  Try not to drive me insane....at least not deliberately.

Busy, busy, busy!

It seems like there's always something going on around here.  It's like there's never time to sit down and just write a blog post, or I start to write one and suddenly there's a queue of kids asking me what feels like a thousand questions.

Last week I had the hardest time sleeping for a couple of days and after two nights of only four hours of sleep each night I was completely exhausted.  Despite feeling incredibly tired I then found that I just couldn't sleep.  It wasn't until Friday that I started to be able to catch up on sleep.  I'm just now starting to feel like I've had enough sleep to function properly.

I think were now a laundry generating machine.  Anthony spits up so much that I think he creates a load of wash a day all on his own.  He's on Zantac, but it's not helping with the spit up as much as I would like.  This morning at Mass he had such a massive spit up during the Our Father right as we said "Thy will be done" that there was an audible splash and enough dripping off my arm that our friends about seven pews back commented on the dripping spit up after Mass.   Lovely.

That Mass was just a fun-filled 45 minutes of mortification.  Between Katie acting like a two year old, which she is, but she really ramped it up this morning, and Ellie grabbing Katie by the head during a novena to move her out of the way, along with Anthony's excessive spitting up, I was ready to go crawl into a hole and stay there for the rest of the day.

Later in the day the dog decided to get stuck under the shed.  If it were left to me, I would have just let him try to figure out how to get unstuck on his own, but Bryan and the girls are much nicer to him than I am.  It took Bryan a little while but he rescued the dog who then tried to go right back under the shed again.  I imagine there must be something under there that has him very interested.

This Friday the girls will wrap up their third week of school.  We're 1/12 of the way through the school year!  So far it's going well.  They're getting everything done for the most part.  I decided to just have the girls work off the lesson plans that Seton sent us rather than copy them into an excel spreadsheet for the week.  I like it better this way, but Madeline doesn't.  This way makes it harder for her to ignore the details that don't fit on the spreadsheet.

Soccer has one again taken over.  Two nights a week the girls and Bryan go off to soccer practice while I stay home with Katie and Anthony.  Being alone with the two little ones at the end of a long day can be exhausting.  I've seen more Sofia the First, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Cinderella than I care to remember.  I've also read Katie's favorite Tomie DePaola books to the point that even the newer ones we're recently added are almost memorized by me.  I have quite the collection of children's books memorized.  Too bad I can't use that awesome mom skill to remember what we need to buy at Target or the grocery store!

I think it's possible that me eating dairy foods may be making Anthony's reflux worse.  I've been noticing that when I eat a lot of dairy that he spits up a lot more than on the days when I haven't, particularly a day or two after not having much or any diary.  So, of course, after noticing this yesterday I sat down and had Tostitos and sour cream--a lot of sour cream.  Today I spent all day wiping up copious amounts of cheesy spit up.  So I'm going to try going dairy free for a few days to see if there's a change.  I really don't want to have to possibly eliminate dairy, but I'd like him to not be spitting up all the time.  So if I must, I'll stop eating it.  I'll just have to figure out what to eat instead if diary does turn out to be the culprit.

Is it bad that Anthony will be four months old in eleven days and I still haven't ordered birth announcements?  I sent them out for the girls but just never got around to doing them for Anthony.  I feel like it might be silly to send them out now, but at the same time I hate to not have a birth announcement for him when I had one for each of his sisters.

That's pretty much the nickel tour of what's been going on around here.  Nothing spectacular, just regular everyday craziness.

Quick Takes Baby Cuteness and Soccer

~1~

Last week at his 2 month well visit my adorable little fat man weighed in at 12lbs 11oz.  I think most of that weight is situated in those squishy chubby cheeks and his little second chin.

~2~

Seriously, look at how big those cheeks are!  They're so big they wound up taking over another quick take!

~3~

I'm hardly ever in any pictures with any of the kids so I had Bryan take a few of me with Anthony the other day.  Of the ones he took I liked this one the best.  Since my kids like to steal my blog photos all of the time (they don't care when I point out the copyright notice on the sidebar of the blog) this is one they can use when I die and they're putting together one of those photo memory boards.  Got it Madeline?

~4~

Anthony's been exhibiting some pretty good head control lately and is getting a bit tired of his swing, playmat, bouncy seat and boppy pillow.  So we added a little variety and put together the bouncy entertainer thing I got as a review product a while back.  He can't bounce and jump in it yet or even reach the toys but he seems to like just sitting there and taking in the sights.

~5~

My older girls are at a Team First Soccer Academy this week so I had a rare 45 minutes of quiet yesterday while Katie and Anthony napped at the same time (Woot!).  I took advantage of that time and finished up reading a advance copy of Fearless, which I really enjoyed.  With two pages left of the book I heard Anthony stirring and decided that since he wasn't crying I had time to finish reading.  Umm, yeah.  See how he's on his belly in the above picture?  That's not how he was sleeping.  So while I finished reading about St. Katharine Drexel, this little guy decided to roll from back to front and rotate his body 90 degrees when I wasn't watching.  Arrgh!  Little Man, don't you know that you aren't supposed to hit milestones when Mommy isn't watching?!

~6~

Today was picture day at Team First Soccer Academy.  The ladies in the red shirts are soccer legends Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly and Tish Hoch.  The girls are having a great time at the camp and so is Bryan who is one of the volunteer coaches.

~7~

Katie's too little for this soccer camp, but she really wanted to be in a picture.  Who knows, maybe when she's older our soccer club will host this camp again.

Four Kids Will Keep You Busy!

I can't believe that I've only blogged two or three times since Anthony was born on May 1st.  I feel like my blog has been set on the back burner for the longest time.  All I can say is the past eleven months have felt like some of the busiest months of my life.

Things are going well here and I'm continually amazed at how sweet this new little love of mine is.  I can't believe I spent so much time worried that I wouldn't adore this little man as much as I do my girls. I really didn't think I'd have any clue what to do with a little boy but I have to say having a boy baby isn't too different from having a girl other than the obvious differences and the overall absence of whining and crying.  How come nobody told me boys were so easy going?  Anthony is so laid back that I'd be prefectly content to have more just like him.

I have so much I want to blog about so I will hopefully be able to find some time in the next few weeks to fill you in on what we've been up to.  Here are are few highlights.

Madeline completed her first year of homeschooling and she managed to finish up the year a full three weeks before the kids in public school finished.

Ellie will be joining us for school this year.  When I re-enrolled Madeline for 8th grade we also enrolled Ellie for 4th grade.  Can I tell you how excited I am that we're done with the public school?  I know Ellie is excited about homeschooling, too.  She seems to be telling everyone about it.

I think Katie has adjusted to having a little brother for the most part.  She still has moments here and there where she seems jealous but overall she seems content to have a real baby in the house.

Anthony was baptized on the feast day of St. Anthony of Padua.  I couldn't resist having him baptized on the feast day of his patron saint.

VBS took place last week.  How I managed to pull off coordinating VBS this year while pregnant/having just had a baby will remain a mystery.  All I can say is I have some amazing friends and family members who all helped me out tremendously.  Last week was great and I enjoyed seeing all of the kids having a great time.

Anthony had his 2 month well visit last week.  He's growing so fast.  He's 12 lbs 11oz and 23 1/4 inches long.  He's already outgrown some of his 0-3 month outfits and is on the verge of outgrowing the rest.  It's crazy!  Between 6 and 8 weeks old he went from looking like a newborn to looking more like a three month old.

As if having a new baby and running VBS wasn't enough, we also had a birthday party to plan for yesterday.  Ellie turned nine yesterday and we celebrated with a Frozen pool party.  I can't believe she's nine already.  It's amazing how quickly time passes.  It doesn't seem like that long ago that we had just moved into this house and celebrated her second birthday and already she's nine years old.

So I think this wraps up my little highlight tour of what we've been up to this past month and a half.   I hope to be able to put together a post about Anthony's baptism and Ellie's Frozen party later this week.  I have a lot of pictures to share and I was so pleased with how well Ellie's party came together that I need to tell you how easily everything came together and why I'm convinced that I must get a die cut machine. (Hint: Look at the snowflake decorations in the background of each of the birthday pictures.)

{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real} Birthday Girl

Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life...

{Pretty}

This lovely young lady celebrated her 12th birthday on Thursday.

{Happy}

The night before her birthday Madeline asked if I could make a pumpkin cheesecake instead of a regular cake.  It seems that we have a few people in the house who really like pumpkin cheesecake a lot!  While it doesn't look like the prettiest birthday cake it made her happy and I suppose that's all the really matters when it comes to birthday cakes.

{Funny}

Bryan and I found a birthday card that amused us so we decided to go with that one and hoped that she would find it funny, too.  Based on her initial reaction I'd say we chose well.

{Real}

Last night we had a party with a handful of Madeline's friends, my parents and my brother.  She had a really good time with her friends.  And would you believe we even had party crashers?  That was a first for us and it was a little awkward.

Visit Like Mother, Like Daughter for more pictures of contentment.

The Things They Say

Sometimes my girls come out with some things that are just off the wall or incredibly funny.  We can go days or weeks without one of these little gems and then out of nowhere we might get a two or three in rapid succession.

Last night before heading out to Madeline's soccer practice and a very long board meeting for the soccer club, Bryan was playing with Oscar.  He had the dog submit to him and Madeline made some comment asking why Oscar gets on his back and shows his belly.  Bryan explained that it was because he's the dog's master and Oscar was submitting to him.  I can't recall what exactly Madeline said to him after that, but she followed up with something along the lines of asking him if I get on my back and show him my belly to submit to him.  It was one of those moments where I swear time stood still.  Bryan asked why she was asking that and she made some comment about him being the "master of the house."  Umm..no, Madeline, your father doesn't ask me to submit to him the way the dog does.  Did you really ask that question?  Were you serious?   I don't chew on my hind quarters either in case you wanted to know.  So odd.  There is certainly a difference between a dog submitting to his master and a wife submitting to her husband.

After we left Mass this morning Madeline was talking about Shark Week.  Somehow Ellie started asking whether or not fish have teeth because she didn't understand how fish hooks worked.  So we're discussing that and it segued into a discussion of fish stinking.  That's when Ellie tells us that on the shark show she and Madeline watched the other day they were talking about ex-stinking some fish and she was wondering why.  She thought they were essentially trying to de-odorize certain types of fish and didn't realize that they were talking about them going extinct.  Madeline and I thought it was pretty funny.  Personally, I think it would be great if they could find a way to ex-stink marine life.  I'm not a fan of smelly fish.

So there you have it. Two oddly funny conversations in less than 24 hours.

Keep Madeline from Getting Schooled!

This is the time of year where we have to start fundraising to help cover the costs of Madeline's travel soccer team expenses.  I was amused by the write up that Bryan did on her Go Fund Me page so I decided that I'd share it here.

Theme Thursday: Play

My older girls played a fair amount of soccer this past weekend so here's my take on this week's theme of play.

Ellie is a beast on the soccer field these days. She just gives it her all when she's playing the game.  In the top picture she looks absolutely determined to get to that ball.  I love the action of the second picture.  I think it's one of the better soccer pictures I have taken of Ellie.

I have more throw in pictures of Madeline than I can count.  I guess I take these pictures because I know what's about to happen and she's on my side of the field.  Most of the time she's off on the other side like in this bottom picture where I had to zoom in to get her.

Visit Clan Donaldson for more Theme Thursday.

It's Soccer Try-Out Season

Last year we invested a lot of time in shuttling Madeline from one soccer club to the next doing try-outs to see what her options were.  In the end our soccer club made a few coaching changes and we were able to stay with the club.  Overall, we've been very happy with the arrangement.  This year we don't have to go from club to club since Madeline is sticking with her current team, but we still have to get through two weeks of soccer overload.

In a typical week Madeline has two practices and a game on Saturday.  Ellie has a practice, usually on one of the nights when Madeline has practice and a game on Sunday.  So four days a week have us working around soccer practices and games.  For the next two weeks we're looking at an additional night of try-outs for both girls.  I feel like we're up to our eyeballs in soccer.  This Sunday is going to be very busy.  Madeline has a make up game that was rained out a couple weeks ago that is causing some schedule issues.  This week I'll have to bring Katie and Ellie with me to teach my religious ed class which happens to be the week our class is putting on a show for the parents.

Last night both of the girls had practice.  Nights like that can be brutal when Katie goes on a cry rant.  She spent about three hours screaming and crying off and on while they were gone.  She doesn't like when her Daddy leaves the house.  She thinks he should be playing with her instead and I'm apparently not a good Daddy substitute.  I'm not looking forward to two more nights in a row of Katie crying for Bryan.  It's exhausting.  They're calling for warmer weather today so maybe tonight will be better if I'm able to take her outside for a walk.  It was too cold last night so we had to stay inside.

Did I mention that Ellie is going to try out for the U-9 travel team?  Bryan isn't sure what her chances are of making the team.  From what he tells me the present team looks pretty good.  He thinks she might have a shot if she goes out there and plays her best.  If she gets offered a spot on the team we'll then have to weigh out our options and see if it's the right decision for her.  Bryan has been coaching her the past three or four seasons, but he feels that she learn better from other coaches based on the progress she has made while going to some training sessions this winter.  In the event that she does get selected for the team and we go forward with it, we'll have a lot of schedule juggling to do on Saturdays beginning this fall.

Now I just need to make it through Katie's teething/evening Daddy withdrawal for the next few days.  I miss the really warm weather of last week.  She didn't miss Bryan and the girls at all last week since she was having too much fun playing outside and going for walks in her little red car.

Not the Pied Piper

I do my best not to criticize Madeline when she practices her flute.  Her biggest problem is she rarely practices.  That old adage that "practice makes perfect" is quite true and you can't expect to play flawlessly or to progress if you only pick up the instrument when it's time for another lesson.

Bryan and I told her last year that she is to practice in her room with the door shut and not while the baby is sleeping.  She doesn't like this arrangement and is always trying to "put on a concert" for us on the rare occasions when she does practice.  I don't think she grasps that you need to practice and rehearse a great deal before you put on a concert.  Anyway, the rule about playing in her room with her door shut is one that my parents had when my brothers and I played in band and I'm certain that it's saturated in wisdom.  They listened to ten years of children learning to play the trumpet [God bless them!], trombone, and flute.  Of course, in our house even with the door shut you still heard every note, just muffled a bit.  In our house, it's possible to have a child playing an instrument in her room and only faintly hear it in the basement or family room.  But, Madeline insists on playing for us.  Bryan and I joke to each other that it's a lesson in patience.

Now if Oscar had a say in any of this flute playing business he'd veto the entire thing.  He's not a fan at all.  If she's playing well he's willing to tolerate it a bit but after a few minutes he starts to get agitated.  Now he could just walk away and go somewhere where the audio assault is not as loud, but he chooses to sit at her feet and give her his opinion.  He'll give little grumbles and whimpers as she hits notes that if they were cartons of milk they would be curdled messes.  But some notes are enough to set him off on a howling streak.  So in a way, Madeline has her own music critic.  If she's playing well, he'll sit as quietly as he can at her feet and make very low sounds of discontent.  Madeline gets angry with him, tells him to shush or go away, but he apparently feels duty bound to stand sentry next to the source of his audio enemy.  On more than a few occasions she has asked Bryan and I to make him stop, but you can't reason with a dog, and honestly, his complaints were not unfounded.  He was merely stating what the rest of us were thinking.

{pretty, happy, funny, real} Happy Birthday Madeline!

Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life...

This past Wednesday Madeline turned eleven.  The passage of time truly amazes me.  I still vividly remember the day she was born and the days surrounding her birthday.  Maybe I remember those days so well because she was born less than seventeen hours after the chaos of the September 11th attacks.  Eleven years later and it's still very hard for me to separate her birthday from the day before.  In fact, chances are if you ask me her birthday I'll tell you 9/11 and then have to quickly correct myself.  

{pretty}

The birthday girl just before heading out to catch the bus.

Our snazzy 11 year old posing with her cake and gifts.

Three pretty girls all looking at the camera at the same time!

 {happy}

This has to be one of the better whole family pictures we've managed to get of us recently and that makes me happy.

Madeline was so very happy when she opened the dress she has been wanting for over two months.  My mom and dad were certainly very happy to see how thrilled she was with their gift.

{funny}

Madeline is always asking us to bake with her, and she does the same anytime she spends the night at my parents' house.  So my dad thought it would be a good gag gift to buy her a box of snicker doodle cookie mix.  Madeline LOVED it!  How many eleven year olds get that excited about a box of cookie mix?

{real}

I am so proud of this giant giant cupcake cake.Over the years I have had little to no success at baking cakes for Madeline's birthday.  Something ALWAYS goes wrong and has ever since her very first birthday.  This year, everything came together beautifully.  Sure Bryan had to run out to the store and get me more eggs, and I had to run to Target twice for cake mix (forgot to buy two boxes first time around) and I had to make a last minute run to Wal-Mart for sprinkles, but the baking and decorating went incredibly well.  Best of all, Madeline loved her cake.  Oh, and it was pretty tasty, too!

Happy 11th Birthday Madeline!  We can't wait to see what this next year brings!

Visit Like Mother, Like Daughter for more snapshots of contentment.

First Day of School!

I am sitting in a completely quite house.  Katie is napping and Madeline and Ellie are decked out in blue plaid in their new school.  It's been a while since the house has been this silent.

We woke up bright and early this morning to start a new school year.  When I got out of bed this morning at 6:50 I was greeted by a fully washed and dressed Ellie.  Wow!  This is the kid who doesn't like to get up in the morning but she was certainly eager to start a new year of school.

I had disliked the ugly blue jumper for Ellie since I first saw it, but I have to say I think she looked pretty cute in it when I saw her all set for school this morning.  I guess it has grown on me.

Madeline was very happy with how her uniform looks.  Since our school has a summer uniform that can be worn for nearly half of the school year, I suspect she'll be taking advantage of this nice simple combination a lot.

I think it was either last year or the year before that I started spelling out the grade with our Leap Frog magnets.This year we have a second grader and a sixth grader.  It's harder for me to believe that Madeline is in sixth than it is for me to believe that Ellie is in second.

  

We're one of the very last stops on the bus route so we did a lot of waiting out front.  The bus arrived nearly five minutes after the start of school.  Eeek!

While we waited I snapped a few more pictures of them.  Madeline was very anxious that they were going to miss the bus and didn't want me taking pictures of them on the law.

Finally I told them we could walk closer to the bus stop.

After I got just one more picture on the lawn, that is.

And just like that, the bus finally showed up and the girls had to run to bus!

I can't wait to hear about their day.  I know they got there in once piece since one of our parish priests told me he saw Madeline when he was at the school this morning.

Would you believe that Katie slept through the entire morning routine?  I think she was a bit upset to discover that her big sisters and her Daddy were all missing this morning.  But I made it better by taking a trip over to the parish office to make copies for my class.  She had plenty of people of there wanting to hold her and make a big fuss over her.