Christmas 2012

My mom and Jerry came to visit for Christmas.  Despite Wes' cough and Jerry's leg problems, they accomplished a lot, while the rest of us got pretty sick.  By the time Christmas came, Scarlett, Desmond, my mom, and I were on antibiotics.  Somehow amidst all of that, we still had a pretty great Christmas Day.  We came downstairs Christmas morning to an empty plate of cookies, a half-eaten zucchini, and an empty glass of milk.  Scarlett spent about twenty minutes discussing that exciting event with us.

Santa dropped off some toys for Scarlett and Desmond and filled all of our stockings.  He even left two on the couch for Nana and Grandpa.

Here's a close-up of Scarlett's gifts.  Santa even got one of her old dolls to showcase her new doll high chair.  He's so good at laying out his presents with a little bit of style!

Desmond got two toys and some sweet new clothes to fit his ever expanding baby body.  He seemed very pleased with his Christmas!

Scarlett immediately got busy on coloring her some sweet Dora pictures.
"Swiper, no swiping!"

Then she drew some of her famous faces on the whiteboard side.

Then it was time to go skating!  She's a natural, of course.  They went outside and skated some more after she got dressed, but I only caught that on video.

First fall.

First twirl.

I had gotten a sweet deal off our local "Craigslist" type online classifieds.  So, we gave her these princess dresses.  She was pretty excited about them.

Daddy helped her with her costume changes.  Snow White first.

Then, Sleeping Beauty.  She also got Belle, but I had switched to video by then.  This is her "I can't believe how amazing Christmas is" smile.

Desmond said, "This was a fun day, but I'm pretty tired."

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

Best Friends and Placebos

I've had two experiences recently with Scarlett that I had to share here on our blog.

Situation 1 - The Placebo

Desmond has been having a really hard time sleeping lately because he's teething and last night he was fussy all evening.  So, before putting him to bed, I decided to give him some tylenol.  Scarlett saw this and freaked out because she wanted medicine.  She was already on the edge because we had put Desmond's crib together and had just told her that he would be sleeping in the new bed instead of her.  So, just wanting all of my kids to stop screaming I thought fine I'll just give her some fake medicine.  So, (when she wasn't looking) I put some water in her little medicine cup and put a drop of green food coloring in it and gave it to her.  She looked at it suspiciously and said, "Nasty medicine?  I need chocolate."  That's how I get her to take nasty medicine like the antibiotics she took twice while she was sick in the last two months.  I said, "no chocolate, its not nasty medicine."  She looked at it very unconvinced and took a sip.  I totally expected her to scrunch her little face up and say, "nasty."  Instead she looked at me very confused and said, "Mommy, that's water."



Situation 2 - Best Friends

Scarlett has been going to a preschool co-op since September.  She loves it, I love it, its been the best thing I could have done for Desmond, Scarlett, and myself.  Its Tuesday/Thursday from 9-12 and  all of us moms take turns teaching for a week.  So, I teach once every five weeks and the other four Scarlett's at one of their houses.  There are five little girls total in the class and they're all such sweet little girls.  One of them is Abbie and Abbie is the one Scarlett sees most frequently.  Abbie is in Scarlett's nursery class at church, her preschool co-op class, and her mom also serves in Young Women with me and because of her husband's work schedule she has to bring Abbie to mutual each week.  Scarlett has to come to mutual each week too because Wes works with the Young Men and I make him take Desmond!  She also sees Abbie whenever we have our Young Women Presidency meeting each month.  Scarlett is a little obsessed with Abbie.  Luckily, she plays it pretty cool in front of Abbie and doesn't stalk her or drive her crazy (I don't think).  But as soon as we leave Abbie's presence, Scarlett starts talking about the next time she'll see her.  We were eating breakfast last Saturday and Scarlett was quietly chewing her food and all of a sudden looked up at me and said, "Scarlett see Abbie today?"  She's always asking me if Abbie's sick or if Abbie's asleep or if Abbie's eating.  So, you get the point.  Last Tuesday night (which is when we have mutual) I told Scarlett at dinner,

"We're going to church to night and you get to see..."

"ABBIE!!!" she cut me off and yelled her friends name once she realized what church meant.

"You love Abbie, don't you?  Abbie's your friend."

"Yes, but she's not my best friend."

This surprised me because a) I had no idea she knew the term 'best friend' and b) I figured since she did know the term then it might be Abbie.

"Who is your best friend?"

I totally expected her to say Mason because he's her other favorite little friend.  We know him from our city's mother's group.  But what did that cute, sweet, adorable little girl say while filling her mother's heart with more love and joy than she knew was possible?

"Mommy!"

Yep, my cup runneth over.


Here's a shot of my two sweeties just for posterity's sake to show how much they love one another!

Growing up

When you have your first baby especially, everyone tells you how fast the time goes and how quickly they change.  Scarlett's first year did not go quickly at all although she did change quite a bit!  At the end of her first year, I looked at pictures of her and thought she did change a lot but it wasn't a shock.  The changes taking place that first year are so blazingly visible and obvious.  The second year, a little less so, but still pretty visible.  This last (third) year, I'll admit, her growth kind of snuck up on me.  I was looking at pictures of the three years we've gone to the same place to get our Christmas tree since she was born.  It seems like no time has passed since last Christmas and when I looked at these pictures it hit me...I only have one baby now and its not Scarlett.  (We all know she'll always be my baby, but you know what I mean!)  She's a little girl and I adore the person she's becoming.

Christmas 2010 - Just a little 9 month old baby.

hating Santa Claus

 Christmas 2011- Still a little tike toddling around with chubby little legs.

loving Mickey and Minnie

Here it comes...









BAM!

Christmas 2012 - A sassy little girl sauntering around to wherever her heart leads her.

checking out Frosty

giving her, "I'm getting kind of bored, let's ditch this place" stance

Still not crazy about Santa

but loves her Daddy and Desmond and train rides.

 finally old enough to play on the inflatables (you have to be two)

"Ready or not, here I come!"

"That was awesome!"

A Meal for Desmond

"This is a fun change.  What's this chair called?"

"Hmmm, I don't know what 'high chair' means, but I love being this high off the ground...oh wait..."

"What's that you got there?"

"What's Oatmeal Cereal?  Where's my bottle?  Quit messing around!" 

 "I can't focus with everyone staring at me like this."

"I haven't really decided about this "solid food" thing, but it IS fun having Sister and Daddy hang out with me!" 

"Hey Scarlett" 

"Listen Scarlett, the more I eat of this, the less I like it.  Will you tell Daddy to stop?" 

"Seriously, this is disgusting!  Make it stop!" 

"Maybe if turn my head like this, he'll forget I'm here.  (Look at how it clumps and clings to my finger!  Milk would never look so disgusting.)" 

"Nope, didn't work.  Scarlett, I need your help!  Sibling to sibling." 

 "No more, no more.  He doesn't like it!"

"Are you stopping Daddy?  He doesn't want anymore!" 

*Hack*  *Cough*  *Gag*  "What's the matter with you people?"

"At least I know you've always got my back."

Just keep swimming...

An interesting fact that you may not know about Scarlett is that she sleeps only in her crib.  I can't think of a time she's ever fallen asleep on the couch or playing in her playroom or wherever other kids may fall randomly asleep.  Once in a blue moon, I mean like once every few months, she'll fall asleep on the way home from somewhere if we've pushed too far past her nap.  The last time she did that was when we were coming back from the Zoo at 5:00 pm with the Alstons last July.  The point is, if she's fallen asleep out of her crib, then she's seriously exhausted.

Last week, we all hit such levels of exhaustion.  Scarlett had a little cough on Friday, but it wasn't too bad, so I didn't worry about it.  Friday night, she woke up and coughed so much she threw up a ton of mucus.  It was gross, so I brought her into our bed for the first time in her little 2.5 year old life.  She curled up next to me and fell asleep.  She would sleep for 30 minute increments before she started coughing, hacking, wheezing, etc.  Finally around 3 am, Wes took her downstairs and they sat on the couch and watched some Dora while she drank some water.  She went to bed and slept until morning.

The next day, her fevers were getting really high, around 102 degrees.  She was pretty miserable most of the day and we let her watch whatever she wanted all day long.  She would only drink the occasional sip of water and wouldn't eat anything.  Saturday night, was probably the 2nd worse night of my life, right after the first night we brought Scarlett home from the hospital and weren't feeding her enough and she cried ALL night long.  This night she just hacked and cried insanely all night long.  She was out of her mind.  She wouldn't listen to anything we said, she wouldn't calm down.  Her fever hit 104.4 at one point.  If I had never experienced what a joke the ER was, I would have brought her there.  But I knew all we'd do was sit in a waiting room for 4+ hours, while exposing her to who-only-knows what other germs.  So, we sat up with her, alternated medicine to keep the fever down and tried our best to keep her calm.  I have never seen her look this sick before and I pray that I never will again.  Her eyes were glassy and sunken in.  Her skin tone looked horrible, she just looked really, really sick.  This picture doesn't do it justice.

I took her to a Rediclinic on Sunday morning, because I figured she had to have some sort of infection, this was not normal cold behavior.  They said she had a sinus infection and an ear infection.  They gave us some cold medicine that tastes horrible but works great and some super powerful antibiotics.  I gave her both when we got home (thank heavens she's such a good medicine taker, it did take some bribing though) and put her on the couch to watch some Monkey (as she calls Dora the Explorer).  I went into the kitchen to clean up and when I went back this is what I saw.

She eventually woke up, started whimpering/crying and laid on the floor by the couch in just sheer exhaustion.  It was as if she wanted to cry about how bad she felt and then just decided she didn't have the energy.  She promptly fell asleep, on the floor, seconds after having laid down on it.  Here she is asleep.

The good news is her energy and smiles are back and her fever hasn't been over 100 since Monday.  Yay!  She still has a nasty cough, though.  The sad news?  Desmond caught her cold on Monday, this is what he looks like today.  He's right pitiful, but i'm hoping that we can fight our way through his cold without any infections.  So far, no fevers, so that's good.

Poor little guy, he hadn't even been crying.  This is just how he looks from all of the coughing and congestion.

It's been rough going over here at the Harris household for the past two months.  We appreciate any prayers and positive thoughts sent our way.  I'd love for us to all be healthy by Thanksgiving and keep it that way through Christmas!

Halloween Time with Scarlett

Scarlett was Dorothy for Halloween.  I posted some pictures on Facebook, but I thought I'd post this little video on the blog.  She's so cute!  I love listening to her talk more.  She wears these red shoes all the time and still refers to them as her "Dorothy Shoes."

The Sweetness that is Scarlett

Today, Scarlett was sitting on the couch playing some game app on Wes's iPhone and Wes was sitting next to her holding Desmond.  I was laying on the love seat reading a blog on my phone and occasionally looking over at my family.  Wes decided it would be funny to horizontally stick Desmond's head between Scarlett's head and her phone blocking her vision of what she was doing.  You know, the kind of thing that would drive you mad if it was you.  Desmond looked up at his sister, beaming.  For a second Scarlett tilted her head to look around him at the phone and then she moved the phone up above Desmond's head so she could see it better.  Wes assumed she was not going to give him the reaction he wanted of squawking or whatever at him, so he started to bring Desmond back onto his lap.  However, what Scarlett was doing was moving the phone to turn it off and then she set it down on the couch next to her and turned to Desmond with such excitement and love.  She made a little high pitched noise to him that always gets him laughing and started playing peek a boo with him.  She just put her phone/game away and played with him.  She was happy to do it and was immediately just in the moment with her little brother.  Why is it so hard for me to do something that a 2.5 year old can do so gracefully?

The Pumpkin

This last Monday, we were at a friends house doing a joint Family Home Evening with four different families.  We do this the last Monday of every month with the same families.  It's fun to shake things up and socialize with more adults.  This month, the activity was carving pumpkins for Halloween.  Scarlett was very diligent and excited while helping me empty the pumpkin of all it's guts.

Sorry for the horrible quality photos.  Everyone else I know takes amazing pictures with their iPhones.  For some reason, Wes and I can only take blurry, dark, junky pictures.  Anyway, so, when we were done I gave Scarlett a black sharpie and told her to draw a face on the pumpkin.  I was mostly kidding because I was just trying to keep her interested and entertained while I thought about what sort of face I wanted to make on the pumpkin.  Then, she drew this.

I said, "Scarlett, what is this?"  She then pointed out the below labeled items, naming them one by one.  And finished it off with, "See, a face!"

Ok, is it just me, or is she a genius?

Maybe, it's because I haven't spent much time drawing with 2 1/2 year olds and they're all easily capable of this, or maybe it's because I don't spend enough time drawing with my own 2 1/2 year old and she's been drawing little faces for a year now and that's totally normal, or maybe she's a 2 1/2 year old prodigy!  I'm thinking it's the latter.

I just hope she doesn't try to cut off her ear.