Margie

This photo of Margie just looks terribly old, but still very precious.  She'll be two in less than six months!  Margie is a delight, especially now that most of her teeth are in.  We had a long, rough winter, and yet it is all fleeting when I think of how much she has changed in that time and how fast it seems to have gone.  Of all the girls, I call Margie the "explainer."  Piper at this age was quiet and contemplative, Graci was mischievous and a "scolder."  Margie will have a "conversation" with just about anyone.  She loves to do imitative play, especially if it involves a play kitchen.  Just the other day the missionaries were over for dinner.  After dinner, she had a toy skillet and casserole dish and was feeding them as if she were the cook.  They would make slurping sounds and hand the dishes back to her and she would pretend to slurp out of the dishes as well.  One of her favorite toys are mega blocks.  We spent a lot of time building towers this winter and she's pretty capable on her own now.  I am so excited for the warmer weather because Margie can entertain herself at the park easily.  I am so thankful for each child and all of their unique personalities!  

Piper

Piper is an easy-going, caring, and smart little girl.  She has recently been delving into crafts.  My friend, Jenny, is all about patiently teaching children things like sewing and knitting.  Piper's latest favorite is the circular loom (Mommy at least had the sense to buy it for her :).  She is still a voracious reader.  Grandma Ecker introduced her to the Boxcar Children books a few weeks ago and she is hooked!!  Margie loves Piper dearly and will go to Piper for hugs and comfort if Mommy is not readily available.  Soccer has just started up again and Piper is learning so quickly with Daddy as her coach.  Daddy has also been teaching her to play chess.  One of these days Graci will be mature enough to learn and then we'll really have some fierce competition around here.

Piper will be turning seven this summer.  I noticed my blogger profile photo has a picture of Piper and me together when she was smaller than Margie.  How the time flies!  A few months ago I was in Wal-Mart, a rare but sometimes necessary occurrence, when I spotted a tall woman with two tall daughters with her and felt like I was looking through a portal into my future and it had me really excited.  Piper teaches me daily and I know she will continue to be an example to us all.

The Incident

Writing the previous post about Graci reminded me of her misadventure with an accidentally swallowed quarter this last fall.  Let me begin with a little background knowledge:

Graci is a mouth prodder.  Blankets, toys, surprisingly not fingers, sticks, rocks, you name it--the kid puts it in her mouth.  She has always been this way.  I think it stems from the fact that she never used a binky and thus has been trying to find a replacement ever since.  Peter's sister, Allyson, works with special needs children and informed me that if she has the behavior past age three there is really nothing I can do.  I eased up from that point and only got on to her when it was something dangerous in her mouth, which actually happened quite often.

The incident with the quarter began this fall.  We had just put the girls to bed when we heard them yelling.  We went upstairs to find Graci hunched over, vomiting.  Weird! She had been perfectly fine not ten minutes before and there she was with this terrified look on her face.  I ran downstairs for some towels and when I returned Peter said Graci had been mumbling about how she couldn't find her quarter.  It took me a couple seconds before I figured out what she meant.  She had put the quarter in her mouth and somehow managed to swallow it.  I immediately began fighting conflicting emotions.  Shock:  Are you KIDDING me?  We go over this EVERY DAY!  Do not put things in your mouth!  Empathy:  Poor girl!  She is so scared.  Fear:  How do we get it out?  What if she stops breathing?  Panic:  Where do we go?  What do we do?

I of course called Peter's sister, Meredith, who calmed me as she always does by reminding me that Graci is still breathing, but we would infact need to take her to the ER to determine how to get the quarter out if she was not going to be able to vomit it out.  I hauled Graci downstairs, put on her coat and boots, and went to the local hospital.  Poor thing was just plain woozy and sore.  X-rays revealed the quarter stuck just at the base of her neck.  The doctor informed us that typically incidents like this are handled at Children's Mercy hospital...in Kansas City.  After some more vomiting, a little sleep, and no pain meds, we headed by ambulance to KC.  A first for both of us!

Once we arrived I was kind of amused to find out that this was the third or fourth quarter extraction witnessed by the resident that helped us who had only been there a month!  We had some more xrays taken, some more vomiting, and found that the quarter had not moved.  If it had, they would have sent us home!!  Ah!  The next step was getting it out.  The plan was to drop a balloon down her throat below the quarter, blow up the balloon, and get her to spit the quarter out.  (after seeing her post-quarter extraction I learned it also involved some yucky black liquid) They did not use anesthesia as this could cause an even greater risk since she has never had it and we didn't know if she might have a reaction to it.  Basically they held her down and got the job done.  I was in a waiting room a hallway and a couple sets of doors away and heard her shriek, but it was over rather quickly and thankfully she didn't reswallow the quarter.  She was so brave!

We slept in our room until Peter was able to come pick us up the next morning.  We went to his parents and they fed us breakfast and patted our backs while we related the scary events.  They are experts in the field of childhood emergencies and were kind to not rub in Peter passing on some dangerous curiosity personality traits to Graci.

And as for putting things in her mouth?  Graci took about a two week hiatus before resuming her oral fixation activities :)

Graci

Graci is growing up!  She is fitting right into anything Piper out grows and I think she'll be caught up in height with Piper in a couple years.  She LOVES to dance and the plan is to persuade Piper that since she gets to play soccer with Daddy as her special coach that Graci should get to do something fun, too.  Dance class is what I am hoping!  Just have to master the psychology of how I approach them about it and I should be successful...mwhahaha!  Graci started Let's Play Music classes this year and I must admit, I am convinced she is going to be a percussionist.  She has incredible rhythm and loves to show off her rhythm in true percussionist style:  on anything she can use as a drum.  We have struggled with her expressing her emotions the last few months.  However, I noticed a few weeks ago all of a sudden she was explaining herself so well!  Please, thank you, and reasons why she gets upset have been flowing from her in the form of intelligible sentences as opposed to screams and tantrums.  Graci is learning to read and is doing quite well considering Margie does her very best to distract us.  Graci has also been surprising me with her taste in food.  She likes celery!  Who knew?  I have tried and tried to like it but not even a glob of peanut butter can make me like the stuff.  Put it in some tuna salad and I'm good.  But back to Graci.  I believe her current wish for a future occupation is Rockstar Barbie.  She is just hilarious and always keeps us on our toes!

Hello, Old Friend!

Ah, my blog!  How I have missed having a chance to update you!  Here we are, girls in bed, husband at a youth activity, and me with time to update!

I noticed my last post was in September and there is good reason for that!  We have been swamped around here!  But as I always say, better busy than bored.

This fall was full of fun activities:

5 Let's Play Music classes for Annah to teach
2 1/2 children to homeschool
Margie learned how to walk
New adventures in pressure canning
Peter working full time
Peter taking two Masters classes
Peter became the YM president
Peter was Piper's soccer coach

And this semester we will add...

Annah teaching oils classes
Monthly temple attendance
Margie running
Graci doing dance class

But subtract pressure canning like mad and this all might be doable!

Whew!  I'm excited :)

Piper's Birthday

We returned home from our trip to Arizona on Piper's birthday.  We actually stayed overnight in Wichita and then drove home on Piper's birthday.  Peter had been fishing and was prepared to cook a massive birthday feast for Piper.  So, we invited some friends over for a fish fry and called it Piper's party, keeping with our lame birthday tradition of 2013.  Thanks to daddy, though, it wasn't lame.  Daddy had all kinds of birthday goodies for Piper.  A few movies, a bike helmet, and a fun foam craft.  He was busy while we were gone and we sure appreciated everything he did for us!  He even made Piper a lemon raspberry cake, complete with raspberries on top from our garden.  We have since made up for some of the lameness of the girl's birthdays with books from Nona and new barbies from grandma.  Next year there is no way we are getting away with no parties and little friends over.  I'm pretty sure we'll have a mutiny on our hands if we ever let this happen again!!

Trip to Arizona

You'd think I would have taken advantage of the summer to blog, but no, I didn't so here I go with another marathon of blog posts beginning with...our trip to Arizona!

Now, when I say "our trip," what I really mean is the ladies of the family.  Peter was finishing up scout camp when we left, so we ended up not seeing daddy for nearly two weeks.  The girls were kind of bummed at first, but thankfully the lure of a plane flight and seeing mountains and grandma and grandpa was enough to distract them from missing daddy too much.

Our travel time was quite extensive as we drove down to Wichita to fly out on a cheaper airline.  The bonus of flying through Wichita, though was we were able to visit my good friends Ray and Natalie Stone.  We've been friends since we were freshmen in college.  Ray is a youth pastor at their church and Natalie just finished her masters in bassoon performance and was taking a much needed rest after performing non-stop for about eight months, plus finishing her schooling.  The girls had fun playing with their kid-friendly cat Rufus.  We attempted naps and then headed to the airport.

Mommy was terribly over prepared for the entire trip.  It's been a while since I've flown solo with children, let alone with three, one of which was a baby with an earache.  Turns out she was teething, but I wasn't taking my chances and came armed with antibiotics and a collection of essential oils to treat anything that might come our way.  Two hours is the max for children (and I think adults as well) on a plane, so we were quite relieved when we arrived in Arizona.  That is until we stepped out onto the tarmac!  It was 7:00 at night and 118 degrees outside!  Ugh, who in their right mind would want to live in the Phoenix metro area?  We quickly got loaded up in my parent's vehicle they so kindly drove down to California and headed to a nearby condo to get some much needed rest.

The next day we visited with my Grammy Ecker.  It was so fun to see her and for her to see Margie.  I always chuckle when she wants to hold the girls because Grammy is so tiny and my girls are tall.  She always tries to pick them up when they are little and lets out a big grunt while doing it.  We chatted for about an hour and headed out to head up to the mountains.  The drive went pretty well.  It was actually my birthday, so we had a nice lunch half-way up at a Dairy Queen.  Five hours from leaving the valley we were finally at the cabin.  It was only 90 degrees there!

The girls were so excited to be with Grandma and Grandpa and explore the new landscape.  Grandpa took the girls fishing one day and let's just say they were toast after that!  Not many fish plus lots of "hiking" and I thought Piper would never go on a walk in the woods again.  I'm sure my dad had many memories of putting up with whiny girls in the wilderness.  At least he was experienced and knew what he was getting into!  Grandma took the girls shopping and bought them some fun glittery Disney shirts.  Later we realized Graci's Tinkerbell shirt said, "It's all about me!"  Oh, how accurate!

Our favorite thing to do was go and walk around Woodland Lake.  The lake is not too far from my parent's house and has a paved path that's a little over a mile.  There are always fun things to see like dogs, fish, birds, and friendly folks--usually from the valley, but some locals as well.  However, the snake that crossed the path right in front of Grandma was NOT fun to see.  Apparently it was poisonous and we were all on the lookout after that!

The neighborhood my parents' house is in backs up to national forest and just a short hike from their house is a look-out tower.  It was late and getting close to dinner time, so we drove the girls up and visited the ranger.  During the summer it's typical for storms to roll in in the afternoon and we got an up close and personal view of one while in the tower!  We could see the wall of rain headed our way.  The tower wasn't what I would call "immovable" and we certainly felt the wind ahead of the storm.  But it came quickly and left just as fast and we climbed back down soon after.  The girls were pleased with their Smokey the Bear memorabilia the ranger so graciously had doled out.

I will admit the girl's favorite part of our trip was meeting and playing with the next door neighbor's granddaughter, Jordan.  She stays with her grandma, Cara, every summer.  She's 11 years old and the girls were just completely smitten with her awesomeness.  Jordan loves babies, so Margie was in love with her as well.  Jordan had to leave the day before we were leaving and Piper cried.  It was so sweet!  The girls immediately asked when we would be coming back to the cabin to play with Jordan!

We spent another entire day driving and flying to get home and by the time we got to Wichita, we were pooped!  Ray and Natalie were happy to have us stay overnight.  The girls and I camped out in the living room and actually slept in until 9:30 in the morning!  Of course, Mommy stayed up entirely too late watching Natalie's new favorite performance of The Phantom of the Opera on the computer.  I have to admit, it really was amazing!  I miss Ray and Natalie a bunch.  They have good, caring hearts and are just plain fun to be around.  We're hoping everyone can visit soon!  Grandma, Grandpa, Ray, Natalie!  Come on out!!