Self Fulfilling Head Injuries

I am baffled. Why do my kids seem prone to accidents that involve head injuries? Maybe it is my clutzy genes. Many of you know about Sarah's scary accident in February falling from a play structure - on her head. That was a nightmare come true and our first 911 call. In the last few weeks, Angela and I have watched Sarah and Natalie doing swimming lessons and cheerleading. (Just a side note: Angela will be doing a fun class in the fall because I feel bad she had to watch her sisters have all the fun this summer) Anyway, in her boredom, Angela would often be goofing off and not playing with the toys I brought to entertain her. She had several accidents - mostly falls with bumps and bruises on her knees. Yesterday, however, she somehow tripped on her own feet (she had flip flops that I told her she shouldn't wear) and flipped over the bottom bench and fell right on her head on the cement. The rest of her body flipped over and her shoes went flying. I threw the magazine I had on the ground and ran over to her in a panic. She gave me quite a scare. One of the life guards brought me an ice pack and another girl made me sign some paper saying exactly what happened - good old liability crap.

I'll get on my soap box for just a minute... It makes me so mad that we have to worry about dumb stuff like that because there are dummies (I have stronger words, but we'll leave it at that) who would actually try to sue an establishment for an accident that was . . . well, an ACCIDENT. So rather than people focusing on helping the child who is hurt and making sure everyone's okay - people automatically go into their "liability"/"someone might sue us" mode. This same exact thing happened when Angela was born and a nurse accidentally cut her tiny wrist while removing the hospital band. It was a dumb accident and she should have been more careful, but rather than apologizing and making sure Angela was okay - she panicked and tried to hide it while she figured out what she should do to protect herself and the hospital in case we wanted to become millionaires based on her little mistake. Meanwhile, Angela is crying and immediately a secondary concern. Pretty sad, I think.

Okay, moving on... So I am baffled why these scary things always happen to my kids. I am one of those moms that is way more strict with my kids - "don't go up there", "hold my hand", "stay right by me", "don't go outside with your shoes off", etc. I think I am a lot more uptight and worried about accidents than a lot of other moms. I see other parents let their kids to things that make my stomach turn with nervousness - and they walk away just fine. Maybe I just don't happen to be around when those kids have accidents. Maybe I am just somehow creating self-fulfilling prophecies by worrying and obsessing over "what if"s that constantly swim around my brain. I think I need to loosen up, but how do I when I've just seen my little sweetie fall head first on concrete? This mom business is so worrisome!

Little Napoleon

This is kind of a funny tidbit about Sarah, that she might not appreciate me sharing, but it is so true.

Sarah is our little Napoleon Dynamite. She can do the best impersonations of him than anyone I know. Well, my sister Chrissy does a pretty goood impression, but Sarah is even better. That is because her impersonations are actually real. When Sarah gets frustrated about something, she doesn't mean to, but she sounds JUST like Napoleon. She'll say things like, "Gosh", "Gross!" or "This piano song is SO hard!", "Natalie is SO annoying", "Sick!", "I hate doing chores." all with such Napoleon-like intonations and sounds of disgust.

For those who don't know the movie that well, Napoleon is just so annoyed at the world sometimes and many comments are made with disgust and big sighs. That's the funniest part - Sarah can do looong drawn out sighs just like in the movie. Like when someone smashes tater tots in Napoleon's pants pocket. Sarah often feels annoyed at the world too. Some of the time she laughs when we point out that she sounds just like Napoleon. Other times it is absolutely not funny or safe to point out.

A Little Christian Shopping

This morning Angela came down the stairs in her pink footy pajamas looking so cute. (How do kids look so cute with messy hair and tired eyes in the morning and at what age does that cuteness turn into "yikes"?) Anyway, I gave her a big hug and snuggled with her on the couch. She laid on my shoulder for a bit and then lifted her head up so we were eye to eye. She told me, "I going shopping today. And I going without you." I repeated what she said to make sure I heard right. It didn't make sense to me - I hadn't said anything about going shopping today any time this week - let alone without me. Maybe she had just woken up from a dream about it.

I continued the conversation. "Well, someone has to take you," I pointed out, being realistic.

"I going shopping with my mudder."

"You're going shopping with your mother?" I asked.

"Yes, with my mudder."

"Well, that's me. I'm your mother."

Angela thought for a minute, like she didn't realize that was the case. We use the term mommy so much maybe she doesn't know what mother means. Then she looked up at a picture on the wall and pointed, "I going shopping with my mudder, Jesus." Then she continued, "He going in a big car and I going in a little car. He have a big car, but my car is little."

Wow! So that is what Angela has on her "to do" list today - big plans.

Pictures, Booster Club and a Book Release

I did a few of my own things in this past week. I had a photo shoot at Cannon Beach with Shannan's family, which was fun. It was a little cooler than we had hoped, but the kids were good sports and tried to "look warm" in the portraits. We did several traditional shots, but the above picture is one of my favorites. After our picture taking, we headed to a fun fish and chips place downtown and our families visited and the kids goofed off together - what a fun night.

Stephanie Meyer and her vampire Twilight series have taken on a "Harry Potter"esque following. So, of course, when my friend Kelly hosted a party for the book release, I was there. She went all out - above you can see the decor she put up on her front porch, she painted that sign! She had her daughter and a friend dressed up as Volturri (an Italian vampire clan for those who might not know) to welcome us. We enjoyed music playing that Meyer herself said inspired the books, played a couple quiz games and watched an interview with Meyer and movie trailers for the Twilight movie coming out this fall. It was fun to just hang out together and talk. We headed to Barnes and Noble, which was just as busy as any of the Harry Potter book releases. Thanks to a friend who thought ahead to get a bracelet, we got a good place in line and counted down and cheered when the clock struck midnight. (mostly cheering because we were all hot and wanted to get outside!)

And as for the other item listed above - a Booster Club meeting. Holy Cow - we're already doing back to school stuff! Shannan and I were voted in as the Volunteer co-chairs at Patterson and we are in charge of recruiting and keeping track of the Booster Club volunteers this year. We are working on getting a computer and software to use at the school which will make our job a LOT easier. It's going to be busy this fall with Booster club, the preschool co-op, young women's and the girls starting Kindergarten and 2nd grade. I don't know if I'm quite ready for the roller coaster ride!

A.C. Gilbert's Discovery Village

Sarah trying to make a bubble go all the way around her.


Hula hoops make awesome bubbles.
The girls loved being artistic in the inventor's workshop...
Sarah and Natalie pretending in the China exhibit. Aparently, Sarah thinks Chinese people are very serious.

Last week I felt like the summer was slipping away much too quickly. There were so many things I still wanted to do. I decided to plan for a few extra fun outings before the summer was over. So last week, I took the girls to a place I've always wanted to go. A.C. Gilbert's discovery village is named after the man who invented erector sets. The whole village is dedicated to "exploration, experimentation and learning". (That's from their website - here's a link: http://www.acgilbert.org/ )

We spent the whole day playing in each area - one at a time for as long as the girls wanted. First, we played out in the huge playground maze, a gigantic spider web and gigantic slides. Then we headed inside the Victorian style houses and we found: the bubble room, the body room, a medieval stage with dress ups, an inventor's workshop, a shadow freezing room, an interactive dinosaur exhibit, a room all about life in China (which was cool to learn about with the Olympics going on there right now), a pretend grocery store and a room where the girls danced to music and watched their moving silhouettes morph on a huge screen in all kinds of psychedelic colors. We were all exhausted by the end of the day and agreed it was a fun adventure.

On the way home, we picked up Taco Bell and watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. We let the girls stay up late to watch in their jammies. We were in awe of the whole thing - it was so incredibly awesome! It was fun to hear Sarah's exclamations - she is so enthusiastic and really appreciated the huge numbers of performers, their precision in choreography, the costumes and special effects and, of course, the out of this world fireworks. Natalie and Angela loved the fireworks and the part when the little girl sang with all the kids dressed in different costumes.

What a fun and memorable day.

What we've been up to this week...

We've had a very fun week that has flown by... Swimming, cheerleading, piano lessons, birthday parties, young women activities and meetings, and a very fun day trip for the girls and I.

On Tuesday, we attended an awesome birthday party for our cute little friend Lauren who turned two. The party was at Pump it Up - which is a building full of all kinds of inflatable fun. Even the adults got to join in and play too! Angela thought it was funny when I ran up to the slide and went down with her. Besides the super cool inflatables, the girls were spoiled with treats and boxes full of goodies. It was an awesome party!
Here is a picture of our jungle with the girls to put things into perspective. In all our years of growing tomatoes, I have never had them get so huge. And our cucumbers and zucchini are out of control. Other exciting garden news - one of my pepper plants has 7 peppers growing and still more blossoms! My last attempt at growing peppers yielded me ONE pepper. When we moved the garden to the east side of the house, I worried about if there would be enough sunlight for the garden to thrive. I guess that is not a problem.
On Friday, I took the girls to a super cool children's museum called A.C. Gilbert's discovery village. It was clear down in Salem - over an hour away, so it was a special treat. The picture above is the biggest twisty slide I've ever seen. We all went down it, but Natalie. Even Angela went down without any fear. It was completely dark the whole way down and lasted for much longer than a regular slide. I was very surprised that Angela wanted to keep going down it all by herself. Natalie, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with it. Sarah, my newly discovered thrill seeker - LOVED it.
This was a fun exhibit about the body. The girls are all wearing vests with a picture of food on it - they went in the gilrs mouth and then down in her stomach. I didn't realize it, but apparently our stomachs have a whole bunch of multi-colored bouncy balls inside them. (o:

More Fun Pics

Here are a few random pics from the last few weeks...

Angela and her loverly pink, shimmery purse on her birthday. She's not all good looks, she also bowled very well that night! (O;
The pictures above and below are from our Hillsboro stake summer fair. Natalie did the bobbing for apples right after I took the above picture. She got one for her right away and then tried to get one for Angela. She tried and tried and tried - about 10 times to get one for her little sis, but it just wasn't working. Her whole head was soaked, bless her heart. The funny thing is that Angela doesn't even like apples.
A funny picture of Sarah and Natalie doing their favorite cheerleading positions.
Angela with her good friend Chuck during our potty training success celebration.