Funny Parenting Moment

I have known for a while today will be a stressful day.  Chris has his final defense for his thesis today - and even though he has done an amazing job and I am sure it will go well...still kind of nervous.  On top of that his parents just got into town, and they are coming up today, not to mention he will be graduating in about 5 weeks and we still have absolutely no idea where we will be moving to.  I am a serious planner and it is driving me up the wall that we have no idea where we are going to be.  I know it will all work out in the end, and I am trying to see this as a chance to learn patience, but at the moment I am finding that difficult to do.

So we have established it is a stressful day, now Cortney gets up and is just not herself today.  Her sleeping schedule has been way off, which I am sure is a big part of her acting this way, but she is just pushing buttons all over the place.  Today she has been playing twenty questions, except all twenty are exactly the same one I answered 10 seconds ago.   She isn't really listening to what I am saying, so I have to repeat myself a million times, and she is doing everything I ask her not to.  I know with a toddler these things are expected but today was way more than she normally does it, and she knows it too.

So I sat down with her and we talked about how we need to choose to be happy and listen to mom the first time.  And then I asked her

"Have you been nice to mom today?"

Cort - "no"

Mom - "Why?"

Cort - "Wait yes I have been nice"

Mom - just gave her a mom look

Cort - "no I have not been nice"

Mom - "What do you think you should say to mom?"

Cort - "Just be patient"

After this I laughed for about 2 minutes straight,  totally broke the tension and stress.  I love being a mom - it is amazing and it has taught me so much, and I continue to learn everyday.  I love how even though I am the one that is supposed to be teaching Cortney, she is usually the one teaching me.

A Surprise for Jenn!

It was shortly after Jenn and Spencer announced they were moving to Rexburg when I had the idea.  I wanted to surprise Jenn with something special for their new baby coming in a couple months.  Jenn has done so much for Cortney, and instead of buying clothes or cool toys I thought a small nursery would be a great idea.  After a couple weeks of thinking about it, I let my mom in on it and together we came up with this! 

We arranged it so that when we arrived in Rexburg it would be lunch time.  Since Jenn cannot really move anything anyway we planned that she would go pick up lunch, with Ryan (whose mission was to distract her) and Cortney, to make it take longer.  We got to Rexburg, and when Jenn left to get lunch she left with an empty house, we had not even backed up the moving truck by the door yet, and when she came back, the room she wanted for the baby looked like this!

 Can I just say how kind of difficult it is to find things for a red, white and black nursery?  But between me and my mom and our craftiness we pulled it off!

 The changing table and rocking chair were originally different colors but we spray painted them black to match each other and the nursery theme.  Gifts from many people filled the changing table and small 3 drawer rubbermaid container

 I even took some of the pictures from the photography session we did earlier this week and put them up.  It is kind of hard to see but I made them all black and white, unless there was something pink in the pictures, like the elephant or shoes - I kept those pink!

 A combined effort from my mom and me lead to this chair being finished!  It is a nice glider chair with a matching ottoman.  When we first found it it was a light oak color, and the fabric was falling apart and looked dirty, so we reupholstered it, and painted it, and we are excited about how well it turned out.  The fabric actually matches a blanket my mom made for the baby - it is on the 3 drawer thing by the other wall I even made a fancy pillow to put on it!  PS - the blanked on the ottoman was a gift I knitted for the baby too!

 This was under the window.  The bench was made by Spencers grandpa, and we put a couple of stuffed animals on it that she had, but we did buy the bear in the middle, and put the little ribbon on him.

 We also bought baby hangers - something Jenn was super excited about I guess, again thanks to a lot of different people they have many clothes and things to help when the baby will come!

 Just another view.  You may notice the lack of a crib, and the reason for that is, every baby in our family - for generations now has slept in this crib, that was still in storage when we took the pictures.  Cortney even slept in it when she was a baby.  Kind of amazing, I love that we keep that tradition going!

It was so hard keeping in a secret from Jenn, but we were so excited to show it to her yesterday!  We are so excited for Jenn and Spencer to move to Rexburg and start a new chapter in their lives, and excited that we could give them something to help out! Love you Jenn!  Glad you liked it!

Meet the Gang...

Lately Cortney has been in love with ponies so much!  She loves playing with all her little random ones she has gotten over the past 3 years.  She made up some names for them, I am sure they will change over the years, but I wanted to write them down so I  wouldn't forget!

Without further adieu here they are:

  This is a group shot, but I thought I would introduce them in smaller groups:

These two are Mommy and Cortney.  She has had Cortney (the little one with pink hair)  for the longest.  I think Paul or Jackson gave it to her when we were in Hawaii for the wedding, so she was about 7 months old.  Mommy she got next, and I think it was just a little cheap pony we found at a grocery store, while we were living in Texas.  But it is bigger than Cortney, and it was the next one we got, so it is Mommy.

 This is Gressen (like Gretchen but no tch only an s sound.)  She got this one for Christmas when she was 2, if I remember right we found it at DI for like a quarter (gotta love DI)

 These two I got from the dollar tree right before we moved to Salt Lake to entertain Cortney on the plane.  The black one is Daddy, and the grey one always changes names, but today it was Tom.  Usually it is some made up name I cannot comprehend.

 She got these lovely beauties for her last birthday in January.  the blue one is Tess, the white one is Buss (like puss but with a b), and the pink one is Kayla.  No idea really where she got the names, but they are always the same, so their names are set in stone.  I thought she got 4 ponies for her birthday, but maybe I am wrong, because I have gone through everything a couple times and cannot seem to find it, so there might be another one out there somewhere...

 This baby one is Corkayla (Cortney + Kayla = Corkayla)  I think this one came with the big one from DI, so she got it on her second Christmas.

 And of course we cannot leave out Maximus from Rapunzel.  Sometimes he plays with the ponies, but mostly he plays with Eugene and Rapunzel, but I didn't want to leave him out.  She got this one with a Rapunzel toy set for this last Christmas

So that is the gang, Cortney has been stuck on this pony stage for a while.  The other day she was playing with her little people and I listened in to hear this:

"Here Cortney this is for you"
"Oh mom thank you for this pony it is beautiful"
"Your welcome honey"

I can gain two things from this, 1 - I am raising a well mannered girl because even her toys use their manners, and 2 - Someone wants a pony. 

Sorry Cort we live on the third floor of an apartment building, living on a limited budget - I don't think a pony is in the near future.  I am going to have to take her to a petting zoo or something so she can be up close to a real one, I think in her mind ponies are pretty colors, have sparkily hair,  and can talk.  I love that she has such a great imagination!

Sick blues...

The last couple of days Cortney has been sick.  Nothing too major, just a little sick.  Today after quiet time I went in to get Cortney - she was happy to see me, and said "Mom look!  I am all better now!  I'm not sick any more!"  In her voice - if you can call it a voice, very scratchy.  Then she wiped her nose and coughed.  I looked in her sick tired eyes and said, "you sure honey?".  "Well maybe just a little sick mommy."

Her temp did go down a little, it was 101.0 this morning and it went down to 100.0, that was good.  I was also very pleased with Cortney today during quiet time!  Not only did she take a nap (which happens maybe once every 4 months), but I gave her a stack of Kleenex, and a small box, told her they were for her to wipe her nose, and the box was to put the dirty ones in.  She only used about half the stack, but she put all the dirty ones in the box, and she didn't put any toys or books in the box!  My little baby is growing up!

I never like it when she is sick, but this is the first time that she kind of understands, and the first time she can really tell me what hurts and what she needs, that is so nice! She is also very good at taking medicine which I am thrilled with.  That is one way she is not like me at all.  To this day I am not good at taking medicine, I still make the faces and have to stand there for a minute or two before and build up to taking it.  I only learned how to swallow pills shortly after I got married - only because I had to.  I was talking to my mom the other day and she was telling me how once I did not want to take some so much so, that she had to sit on me and try to open my mouth and I bit her - so funny because that sounds like such the opposite of me.  So I am so happy she just takes medicine like it is no big deal, and never spits it out!

Life has been good but busy!  This is the last semester of school for Chris, he is also working part time, and finishing up his manuscript for his thesis.  No idea yet where we will be moving come the end of May, hopefully we will find out soon - kind of driving me crazy a little, but I know everything will work out like it is supposed to in the end.  Chris has had some interviews but they all want someone sooner.

On a side note, my father in law Garth has been suffering from lyme disease, overall we have seen much improvement, especially since I first joined their family.  The other day he sent out an e-mail asking for help - as I don't know exactly what it is all about I will repost it here for you to see -

Dear family and friends,

 

I don't do mass emails, in fact this is first time.  However, I could use your help with a very simple request. Would you, your family, friends and anyone you know of any age, please go to www.lymedisease.org and sign the online petition to revise the IDSA (Infectious Diseases Society of America) guidelines for treating Lyme disease. If you want to understand the issue you can read below or on the web site, but in any case, please get as many signatures on the petition as possible. Going deep into your family, friends and other contacts to spread this request would be so appreciated. Thanks!

 

 

 

As many of you know, I've sufferred from Lyme (and at least 4 other tick-borne diseases) for many years. It remained undiagonosed for nearly 2 decades.  However, I've received treatment for a few years and have had marked improvements in some areas and am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Lyme (with the other related diseases from tick bites) is very complicated and difficult to detect and treat in many patients, especially when it has been long-term infection.  The lyme bacteria can enter cells and hide.  It can also form into a cyst making it difficult to detect and kill. It can infect any system of the body, including the central nervous system, and cause many painful and debilitating symptoms, even death.  Standard bloodtests are notoriously unreliable.  Therefore, it requires a clinical diagnosis from a doctor with experience treating the disease. I have had to travel to Colorado and California for treatment.

 

Unfortunately, the Center for Disease Conctrol (CDC) and LDSA guidelines do not take into account research and results from clinical practices and provide extremely limited and inflexible guidelines which don't work on most patients. As a result of the faulty guidelines, many doctors are uninformed about "best practices".  Insurance companies may not pay for the treatments that actually work as they are out of IDSA scope. Also government agencies have been prosecuting doctors (even the most successful doctors in the field) who treat the disease because the most successful practices fall outside the limited IDSA guidelines.  Patients and doctors are limited in the ability to review and try the treatments that work best.

 

In recent years the Connecticut attorney general investigated the LDSA guidlines and processes and found the board had grievious problems, including conflicts of interest, suppressing reseach from dissenting doctors, and that they had not allowed representation from dissenting practitioners on the decision making board.  The doctors actually treating patients and knowing what works were not allowed in the decision process.  CT required the IDSA to revise the guidelines under strict process standards to allow research, points of view, and representation from practitioners.  However, the IDSA kept the old guidelines.  CT later found that the IDSA did not follow the the required decision processes and simply voted that the limited guidelines remain in place. That is where we are now.

 

This is a situation in which government beauracrats, some with conflicts of interest, prolong the sufferring of so many people and thwart doctors and patients from potentially life-saving treatments.  It's driving some of the most experienced and successful doctors into difficult legal situations, inhibiting others from entering the field, and deterring much valuable treatment and research.  All we ask is that the guidelines be adjusted to reflect the studies of real practicing doctors and patients, that they allow doctors and patients to use a more broad and flexible treatments for each individual circumstance.  Your signatures could help our cause.  Thank you so much for doing this for me and other lyme sufferers.

 

Sincerely,

Garth Nield

Please follow this link and sign the petition for Garth! www.lymedisease.org  Thanks so much for your help!

Awesome Randomness...

So just a few random bits of awesome for you!

First the other day I went to get Cort out of her room after quiet time and this is what I found.  Not exactly sure what she was doing...but it made me smile and I couldn't resist putting in the blog so I can always remember it!  I have realized how fast she has been growing and I want to save as many memories as I can.  Loving the stage she is in now, because she is mostly out of terrible 2's - some fits now and then but for the most part she is just a smart sweet little girl!

 Secondly I was looking at Cort's pull ups - she is basically potty trained - even poo now - she just needs these at night - anyway I was looking at the princesses and realized that they are our favorites!  Cinderella is my moms favorite, Belle is my favorite and Rapunzel is Cortney's favorite.  Not exactly sure why I liked this so much but I think it is pretty cool!

Fun Weekend!

Friday and Saturday we had a lot of fun!  Friday Cortney and I went to the Zoo, and then Saturday we went as our whole family to the Discovery center with our friend Katie and her son Kaden.

Friday was such an amazing day weather wise it was too good to pass up going out and having fun!  Cortney loves the zoo, she was sad that the train still isn't going yet, but we still had fun!

 This is one of those pictures where I say...oh my goodness, it's me!  I cannot believe how much she looks like me sometimes!

 Playing on her favorite toy!

 Going down the slide

 She has loved to push her stroller since she was little, luckily she is getting tall enough to see over and push it pretty well.

 Playing in the little cave thing

 Being my little monkey in the monkey house :)  she does this every time

 We were on the carousel - about 1/2 way done when all the sudden Cortney decided she was scared and wanted to get down - she wouldn't even look at me but just acted like she was super glued to the pole...silly Cortney - she has been on this carousel many times before.

 Smile!

 This is Kaden and Cortney playing together at Discovery...if you notice Cort's cute clothes - they were a birthday present from Grandma and Grandpa Nield!

 They were even holding hands!

 Playing in the water...

 We decided we are going to have to send them to the same college when the time comes to see if it will work out!  Definitely BYU-Idaho!

 She loved playing with the big lego blocks

 They also enjoyed coloring with each other.

 Kaden gave her a kiss on the cheek.  Cute kids!  Thanks to Kaite for letting us tag along!

Some Fun Stuff...

Lately we have had some awesome things happen... for instance now I am 25 - didn't make an official blog post about it, I was actually a little sick on my birthday.  But here are some other cool things....

Cortney's family went back to Disneyland, this time though they went on a different ride...the teacups!

I also knitted my first scarf!  I had crocheted a few - one for me and Cort, but this time I was tackling cable knitting - which was a little tricky to get a hold of but pretty much have it down now!  Here are some pictures:

 My dad calls it the tic tac toe scarf because of the X's and O's.  But I told Chris that it was just full of my hugs and kisses! 

 Here it is over our table to show the length of it.  Pretty long!  And here is Cort modeling it for you!  Cannot believe how big she is getting!  We bought these PJ's over the summer and they went down to her knees, now it is almost too short to wear. 

And finally I got a big envelope from BYU-Idaho saying do not bend or fold!!!!!!  Why is that so exciting
?!  That means it is official I am a graduate!  It's about time!  This past month has been the first time I have been a mom without being a student - loving it!