Little Squeaker

Ever since her first day of life, I've called Sophie my Little Squeaker. She used to make these cute little grunts that sounded like squeaks! Over the past 5 months as she's grown, her squeaks have changed, and often resemble squawks more than anything. I turned on the webcam because she was in a talkative mood and this is what I got! I apologize for the length, but I thought some of you who don't get to see Sohpie on a regular basis would enjoy it none-the-less.

Yes I did have to clean all the drool up after this!

Smashed finger, Sickness, and Night Terrors, Oh My!

My poor Tori girl has had a rough month! It all started a few weeks ago...we decided to put Tori in her room with the baby gate up to give her some time to play on her own. She wasn't so sure what she thought of this and cried at the gate for a few minutes. She'd get distracted and play for a few min and then go back to the gate and cry for a min, and so forth. I responded the first few times she called out so she knew it was OK, but after that I just let her do her own thing so she'd learn to play on her own. After a little while of quiet playing she started to cry again, but I was in the middle of something that needed to be finished so I didn't respond right away.

And here's when I feel like a bad mom.

Russ went to check on her and found her doubled over with her finger stuck in the heat vent! We live in a house that is almost 100 years old, so the vents are of an older variety that have little doors to open and close. Apparently she was playing with the door and it slammed shut on her poor little finger. Then she spent several minutes attempting to pull it out which resulted in a blister that encompassed the entire tip of her finger! The finger was bruised and swollen for several days and then the blister broke. Of course, being 18 months old she would not leave a band aid on for more than 5 minutes so this whole month I've been worried she'll get an infection which will spread to the bone and she'll have to have her finger amputated and spend weeks on intravenous antibiotics. This is what happens when you know too much. Her finger is looking much better with a steadily shrinking scab, but I suspect the nail might come loose. It is slowly but surely healing, but I hope she is not traumatized for the rest of her life from this!
As if that is not enough, poor Tori has had both the stomach flu and a bad cold over the past few weeks. As you read in a recent post, she was sick while we were in Iowa and managed to loose her lunch all over me. We returned home and when we thought she was finally recovered when she came down with a yucky cold/flu. She was so pale and her eyes had that "I'm sick" look to them. I felt so bad for her!

Along with the busted finger and sickness, this past month Tori has started having night terrors. At first, Russ and I weren't sure what in the world was going on. She'd just wake up in the middle of the night screaming and inconsolable! She wouldn't respond to us and just fought any attempts we made to comfort her. It was like she was still asleep, but screaming uncontrollably. After several nights of this, the word night terror popped up in my tired brain, and sure enough, when I looked it up, it described word for word what was going on. I guess we were doing the wrong thing trying to comfort her, instead you are just supposed to let them cry it out and make sure they stay safe. She hasn't had any in several days (knock on wood), but the article I read also stated that lack of sleep is a huge contributing factor. Well, Tori's sleep schedule was all off kilter from traveling and being sick, so now that we're home and back in the routine, she's doing much better.

I sure hope the rest of 2010 is less eventful for my little girl!

Remembering Opie

It's already been two weeks since my great-grandmother Tena VerBurg (Opie to us) passed away. I've wanted to write a post about my memories of her since, but needed time to think through what to share.

Just a note on why we call my great-grandmother, "Opie." When I was born, my mom's family figured they should have something special to call her so there wouldn't be any confusion as to who is who. Opie decided she would be called "Opie" and we all just figured it was dutch for grandmother. Turns out "Oma" is actually dutch for grandmother, so we really have no idea where she came up with this name or what it means, but she will forever be in our hearts as Opie!

Here's some basic info about her life for those who don't know. Tena VerBurg was born in Sioux County, Iowa in 1913 and raised on a farm. She grew up as a member of the strict Netherlands Reformed Church. She met her husband, my great-grandfather, while he was working on her family's farm. They dated 4 years and finally married in 1935, which was a bit of a controversy because he did not belong to the Netherlands Reformed Church. They farmed in Minnesota and Iowa until the '60's and then moved to eastern Washington. Opie had to bury her husband in 1979 just before moving back to Iowa. He died of liver failure due to overuse of Valium. She resided in Rock Valley, IA for the remainder of her life and had many fun adventures traveling. She had a stroke, but through therapy was able to continue to live on her own until 2006 when she moved into a nursing home. Her health declined swiftly in the fall of 2009 and was placed on hospice shortly after Christmas. She died at the age of 96.

Some of my favorite memories of Opie include the following:

• Dressing up with blankets, handkerchiefs and wearing her shoes.
  
  
• Fascination with her false teeth and seeing her without them in!
  
  
• Exploring her basement and finding treasures. As a kid I always loved to find her peacock feathers. As a teenager, I found some rumpled and stained embroidery that she had done as a child. They are now cleaned and framed and will hang in my house! My parents say when they were in college, they'd go to her house and she'd get beer out of the basement. Apparently it wasn't appropriate in those parts to have alcohol out in the open...


• Pancakes! Opie made the best pancakes in the world! No one can replicate them. She always just threw a bit of this and a bit of that in, not using measuring utensils. When my mom was a kid she tried to write down the recipe once as Opie was making them. So Opie would put something in and mom would write it down. When mom got home and showed the recipe to her mom, they saw Opie's fun sense of humor as she had told my mom to put in 2 "rooster" eggs! We always joke the rooster eggs were the secret ingredient, but in fact it was coffee!


• Opie's fun and spontaneous personality. Even though she was one of the hardest workers I've ever known, Opie also knew how to make things fun. She loved to go out, which by the end of her life was one of her greatest desires. I think it was because after living a life full of work and play, she was bored in the nursing home.
  

I won't pretend to be oblivious to Opie's faults, for we all have them, but in my mind, her strengths far outweigh her faults. Sure she was stubborn, tended to gossip (what Dutch woman in northwest Iowa doesn't) and wasn't always quick to forgive, but she also made a positive impact in many people's lives, especially mine. She knew and trusted Jesus Christ as her Savior and now she is rejoicing in paradise with him! As my grandmother said at the funeral, people in heaven are having more fun now that Opie is there!

Our Series of Unfortunate Events

Some of you know that this past weekend we traveled to northwest Iowa for my great-grandmother's funeral (more to come on that later). As could be expected, I was fairly nervous about traveling with an 18 month old and a 4 month old. Luckily, none of our flights were full, after all who wants to travel to Minneapolis and Sioux Falls, SD for a weekend getaway!? Anyway, Saturday ended up being a little crazy so I thought I'd share a timeline of the day!

0500: Wake up
0510: Get up!
0600: Say we're supposed to be leaving now but still packing
0620: Leave for the airport
0735: Take off from St. Louis
1030: Eat lunch in Minneapolis
11:45: Take off to Sioux Falls, SD
12:30: Sit down in Sioux Falls airport to wait for the rest of the family. Note, this airport only has 8 gates so there wasn't a ton to do while waiting.
1500: Family arrives, get rental cars and head for Sioux Center, Iowa
1730: Sit around Tyler's apartment trying to decide what to eat
1830: Actually leave for the restaurant
1832: Realize we locked Tyler's keys in his apartment
1855: Arrive at the restaurant and accept that we have to wait for 45 min to eat
2030: Complain to the hostess that we've been waiting for an hour and a half and get seated at two tables instead of one
2045: Ravenously eat cornbread since we haven't eaten anything since 1030
2050: Get thrown up upon by Tori. Every article of clothing save my socks is soaked.
2055: Realize our suitcases are not in either rental car
2100: Stand outside where is is -2 degrees and ask, "Why God?" soaked and cold.
2105: Call the airport and find out our bags somehow were left in the parking lot at the airport. We suspect the rental car guys accidentally moved them and become bitter towards them.
2130: Get dropped off to shower and change into Tyler's clothes while Russ and dad head out on the hour long drive to the airport for our stuff
2200: Expect food to arrive, but it doesn't
2230: Receive phone call from dad and Russ who are lost in the dark, freezing, snow clad roads of South Dakota
2235: Fall asleep feeling very sorry for myself and Russ.
0012: Russ and dad get back. Russ and I split a sandwich from Wal-Mart. Go back to bed.


It was a CRAZY day, but the girls ended up sleeping all night and we skipped church the next morning so things ended up not being so crazy after that. The worst of the day was at the restaurant when we figured out we didn't have our bags and I was soaked in barf. Yuck! Oh well, we survived and now have something to look back and say, "We made it through that, we can make it through anything!"

Baptized with Wisdom

On Sunday, our little Sophia Marie was baptized! How exciting for us as parents to witness the sacrament which represents God's sign of His covenant on our daughter!

At our church, when a child is baptized the parents choose a verse to read that will act as a banner over the child's life. For Sophie, who's name means "wisdom" in Greek, we chose Proverbs 3:1-6 which says,

"My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart, for they will prolong your life many years and bring you prosperity. Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and he will make your paths straight."

The rest of the chapter goes on to describe wisdom as more profitable than silver and precious that rubies. We hope and pray that our little girl will cling to God and grow in wisdom and knowledge of Him as she grows!

I was very nervous before the church service, not because we had to go up front, and not even because I read the scripture verse, but because we took Tori up front with us. She was very squirmy during the service before the baptism, but once we went up front, she calmed down and looked out at the crowd. I held her of course, to keep her from running around! She really did quite well and the only distracting, but cute, things she managed to get away with were playing with my hair and pointing to the communion bread and saying, "Eeee!" which means "please" for those of you who don't speak Tori's language. Sophie was an angel the whole time and just looked up at Pastor Ron the whole time he spoke. She looked so precious in all white. The dress she wore was the same dress I wore in 1984 when I was baptized! Tori also wore it when she was baptized in 2008. Such fun!

I'm sad to say most of the pictures from the service ended up quite blurry because of the lighting, but here is one of our family afterwards!

If life had a dislike button...

...I would push it every time I had to do laundry! I really do not like laundry. I know, most people really don't either. But do they dislike it enough that the avoid washing anything but "the essentials" for a month just because they don't want to do it? I do. And I'm paying for it. Now I have TONS of laundry. There are only four of us. How do we go through so many clothes? We could clothe a small army with all the dirty clothes I have around here! Granted, the army would have to be made of baby girls because that's what type of clothes I have the most of...

Does anyone else share this problem?

If I could, I would pay someone to come and do laundry for me because I just want to keep avoiding it. But I'm out of warm clothes to wear, and the girls have been wearing outfits too big and too small so that I don't have to do the wash. Alas, it's one of my lots in life. I must do the laundry. Down to the basement I go...

My goal this week: wash and PUT AWAY all the clothes. Hold me to it folks. We just can't live this way anymore!

Resolutions

Every year I try to make a few New Year's resolutions. One year I resolved to be bold and daring. Ends up that was the year I met my husband! Who knows, if I hadn't resolved to have more courage, would I have talked to that guy on the bus? My life sure would look different now!

Because of that success, I want to continue in the act of resolving. Well, this year I have several resolutions, some big, others small. One big one is this very blog. I've been feeling bad about what a horrible job I've done over the past two years keeping in touch with family and friends. Granted, a few things have happened including marriage, moving, new jobs, school, two babies etc so everyone has been quite understanding, which is appreciated, but I still want to make the effort. Being in St. Louis for the holidays this year has reminded me how very far away from many of our loved ones we are, and that I don't want to completely lose touch.

So, this blog will be an effort on my part to let you in on our lives here in St. Louis. Most of what I post will probably be about the girls, but I hope to include more. Who knows, maybe I can become a famous "mommy blogger" and make a living off this! I'm only half kidding...don't hate me if I start posting ads in an effort to make a little cash! We honestly could use every penny!

So, welcome to my new blog! I pray I will be diligent in posting!