The question isn't what can't she eat, but what can she?

My youngest Tara has always had issues with eczema, we planned to get her in to see what was up the first of the year since it had not cleared up on its own like her sisters. That timetable got pushed up when a week ago when her lips quadrupled in size after eating fish sticks.

Today was the day, she got tested for a bunch of things. The good news is that she is not allergic to dogs or cats so Zoe can rest easy and Anna's wish for a kitten can still be something to hope to have one day.

Milk, soy and wheat all came back clean which is a sigh of relief.

The bad news is Peanuts, Tree Nuts, Egg, Fish, Rice, Turkey(the irony of it being right after Thanksgiving is not lost on me), Chicken.

Peanuts, Tree Nuts and Fish are total bans. The others are to be avoided for the next month and she will be retested.

Anna, the peanut butter addict is not taking it well, but I am on the hunt for Sun Butter in hopes of giving her a Tara friendly alternative.

I can only hope she grows out of most of these, though peanuts and fish are likely for life.

Apparently we are going to have a lemondade stand....

At least according to Anna we are.

All weekend we have been deluged with requests for the ingredients and a box so we can make the stand. Anna would throw into conversation how it was so hot, perfect for a lemonade stand. Don't forget the juice, we need sugar for lemonade.

Her great-grandmother suggested to her that we could have a yard sale and she can sell her lemonade. Later I suggested to Mike that she could sell her kitchen while hawking her lemonade. :D

So thanks Nickelodeon for showing my 3.5yr old how to make lemonade(Yo! Gabba Gabba!) and then telling her how to sell it(Max n' Ruby)!

It that time of year where every commercail becomes a coveted Christmas wish...

Anna's wish list so far is comprised of:

An Island Princess Barbie
A My Little Pony Baby that lays on its back and bats at toys hanging from its play mat
and last but not least and surely not to remain last for long, a Little Tykes Kitchen with flashing lights.

To the last item I asked her:

'Don't you already have a kitchen in your bedroom?'

'No.'

'No?'

'It's for sale.'

'For sale?'

'Yup.'

~lol~

I still don't see any new kitchens in her future but I give her an A for effort.

Things I learned while laying carpet tiles.....

-When the calculators say you need 10 boxes and you decide you should order 11 boxes to cover all your bases, you should really order 12 boxes.

-Remember that carpet doesn't magically adhere to the floor and that carpet tacking strips will be glued and nailed down into your concrete subfloor. After 20-30 yrs wood and glue do start to melt into concrete apparently.

-Poles in the center of your living room are a royal pain in the ___ to cut around.

-You can lay the tiles down without removing all the furniture in a room. Do know that this will add lots of time to your timeline.

-If you think you're going to do it in one night, stop, laugh and add two days. We started Thursday after all three girls were in bed and we still have some edging to do.

It looks great and I might actually be willing to tackle another room with carpet or laminate, but not til I can bend over without pain again.

And my littlest baby turns ONE!

Tara First Birthday!
Originally uploaded by blue lady studios

A year. A whole year has gone by since her arrival. What an arrival it was. Tara apparently had a lot of room inside, as I was carrying too much fluid so when my water broke we ended up with a prolapsed cord. I was rushed to the OR where two hours later I awoke to the news that I had a very healthy, very big baby girl with a head full of hair.

That has been the most trouble she has given us since then. She is our happy girl. She just goes with the flow, a nice trait to have in a house with two older sisters.

Apparently though, she isn't a cake person despite the pictorial evidence. Her first piece of cake/cupcake on Saturday she devoured. She inhaled the ice cream she was offered. Today she was given a big piece of butterfly birthday cake and she tasted it, then left it on her tray. Both similar vanilla cakes, vanilla icings, just not interested in the cake. She did inhale a pile of peas with some biscuit and sweet potatoes a couple hours later so in the end, I'd rather have a girl who loves her veggies then one who will only eat sweets! :)

Happy Birthday Pumpkin!

We love you!

My first baby is off to Kindergarten.....

Katy's first day of Kindergarten!
Originally uploaded by blue lady studios

Katy started Kindergarten this past Monday! My oldest girl is officially off to school. Last year I was impatiently waiting for my youngest baby to arrive, so I was more relieved to see her off to preschool then sad. This year though I am missing my girl.

PCAGOE August Ocean Challenge

PCAGOE August Ocean Challenge
Originally uploaded by blockpartypress

The August challenge for the Polymer Clay Artist Guild of Etsy is up and ready for your votes. Our theme this month was the ocean! Just go to www.pcagoe.com and you can place your vote for the piece you feel best captures this month's theme. All voters are entered into a raffle for a prize package put together by our members.

She walks!

Finally! She's only been thinking about it for a month and a half.

After weeks of standing up in the middle of a room to clap her hands, get everyone's attention only to plop on her bottom and laugh as if she just told the world's greatest joke, Tara finally took her first steps last Thursday.

Yeah!

Amazon just charged my cc!!

Now why would someplace taking my money make me happy?

Why, because it means that they are taking a pristine copy of 'Harry Potter Deathly Hallows' and putting it in a box for me!

Why yes, I am a geek. ~lol~

Is it Friday yet?

I just need the week to go by a bit faster.

I hate waiting.

I can't wait to get these,

I finally, finally ordered fabric to make Tara's quilt. For each of my girls I have made them a quilt, hand pieced and hand quilted. It takes around six months all told, I don't have six months til she'll need it so I cheated. I got charm quilt packs instead of cutting it myself. It actually is one of the most time consuming and annoying parts of the process. Well, binding is, but cutting is a close second. :)

Congratulations Phillip, enjoy a few weeks freedom before responsibility comes knocking!

Just a quick shout out to my baby brother who graduated high school this weekend! Making me feel quite old as I approach 32 and a daughter starting Kindergarten this fall. :)

No home repair goes unpunished....

We have this little issue where if we fix something in the house something else must unexpectedly break, which of course is either inconvenient or costly. If it can be both inconvenient and costly all the better.

This weeks example. A $13 trip to Lowe's for a toilet valve cost us just under $900.

Eek!

On the upside, the plumber complemented Mike on the work he did with the valve replacement. :P

Woollaby settling in!

Woollaby settling in!
Originally uploaded by blue lady studios

Isn't he cute! I usually don't buy anything frivolous but he makes me smile and he's purple! The girls think he's tops too! To see more cute critters and other art pieces check out the etsy shop I bought him from www.beastlies.etsy.com .

It's here, It's here!

And its not the new phone book!

The last day of school is tomorrow! A fun filled day of running around playing games outside, to be followed by a sugary filled lunch/end of school party, a mini assembly and that is it. Katy is out for the summer, three kids at home all day, everyday for two and a half months. JOY!

Will I have the last shred of sanity I retain now by the end of August? Time will tell.

:P

We have teeth!

Well, more like a tooth, but she's working on the others! Finally, the first one is through. Hopefully, this means I'll get a bit more sleep for awhile. :)

Hope to have photographic evidence soon!

Should I be concerned that my middle daughter has an imaginary Mom?

Yes, you read that correctly, she has an imaginary Mom. She asked this Mom a question today, which I answered. I got told right quick, 'No Mom, I'm asking Mom.' She proceeds to point to thin air. Oh, ok, so sorry. ~l~

After that I listened to her ask her new Mom all sorts of questions. Giggling in response, telling her she's wonderful. I guess an imaginary Mom who says yes to everything is better then a real Mom who won't let you jump on the furniture, have any snack you want, or make a cage for your baby sister out of a pile of pillows.

Oh and Ischa, the evil imaginary friend who gets Anna into trouble, her speech has improved and she has recently been revealed as Isa the Iguana from Dora the Explorer. I knew that sweet little lizard had a mean streak in her. :P

One more note about Anna. She has a new excuse for bad behavior. It is all my fault, Dad's fault and Katy's fault. Why? Because we won't let her go to school. Sibling rivalry/jealousy pops up once again. She's not very happy that we don't except that as a good reason to misbehave.

Thankfully, that excuse ends in just one week, at least til school starts up again next Fall.

I have a reader.....

My Katy is reading! She still needs a bit of help when she reaches new words, but she is able to sound out most words with just a little encouragement from Mike. I knew she had been improving by practicing the word books that she would bring home from school, but I got to hear her read along with Mike the other night a brand new book from the library. She read most of the words with little to no help.

Words really can not describe how proud we are of that little girl.

Going cruising.....

Tara just loves to cruise. All along the couch, the chairs, she's happier trying to play with the toys on her ultra saucer from the outside, then sitting in it. She has become quite comfy with letting go while standing so it is just a matter of time before she is walking. I figure by the time we are heading to my youngest brother's graduation Tara will be completely independent.

Mike discovered today just how fast she can be. He had left Ms Tara in the middle of what is a good sized living room, walked up three stairs to the kitchen, went to replace the trash bag, and was being called by the other girls to inform him that Tara was near the stairs. No way she is that fast he thinks, so a moment later he is being informed that Tara is upstairs. He turns to find a very happy little girl smiling and waving at him from the top of the stairs.

I warned him, but now he knows I'm not making it up. ~l~

I love You Tube!

So I am trying to teach myself to knit. There is so much really lovely looking handspun, dyed and painted yarn on Etsy that I would love to have a use for it/reason to buy. So I got a book, a pair of needles and a couple skeins of nice but cheap cotton yarn. The book is useless. The tutorial I found online was good for the casting on stitch, but the pictures from that point on looked like they were taken from space. Then I remembered You Tube. Two minutes later I had watched a very concise and visually easy to follow tutorial on the knit stitch. I may actually be able to do this! I flunked out on teaching myself how to crochet. Then again, I didn't have You Tube and video tutorials, so maybe if knitting works out I'll try using my crochet hooks for more then clay.

Its been a long week,

Mike is working a bit of overtime right now and so of course its the perfect time for kids to get sick. This time the littlest one with her first major cold. She's had the sniffles once, but this is the first one that has really knocked her down. She wants to be held all the time, doesn't want to go down at night til she passing out on me. So not much done this week, not much remembered this week either. :D

I am currently being entertained while Anna pretends she is going to bed, at the beach, while having a tea party and going to a birthday party. Yes, all those things are going on at the same time. Katy has one imaginary friend, this friend has two younger sisters and a mom and dad. Anna has a gang of friends. Every other day she adds a new one. Some are fun like Orky the penguin and Lemon. Then there is one who has had to be banished back to wherever imaginary friends come from on occasion. Ischa(its a made up name, I don't know if I'm spelling it right, :) ), is a trouble maker. Whenever Anna does something she should not, its Ischa who tells her to do it.

I'm not sure if its cute or scary. (lol)

What a nice quiet day......

I had a very lovely, but quiet weekend. Well, as quiet as it can be with three little ones at home. I received several lovely cards and a gardenia plant that is smelling better everyday as I impatiently wait for it to bloom. Mike took both Anna and Tara out on Friday so that I had the house completely to myself for two full hours!! Saturday, I enjoyed a quiet day with one of my very favorite meals for dinner.

Mother's Day itself started with homemade French Toast, followed by my gift from Katy. A pretty picture of a teapot she made in preschool. It came with a packet of lemon tea which I will gamely drink tomorrow morning before she heads off to school. You see, I really do not like lemon in my tea. I will drink it for her though, she was too proud of her gift not to. No one says I have to fill the cup to the brim. Midday had me off in search of something to wear to my youngest brother's graduation next month. A task that isn't that fun being only 8mths postpartum with a complicated cesarean making weight loss a slow, slow process. I did find something pretty so it wasn't as painful as I feared. :)

Dinner of shrimp and steak rounded off my evening before it was time to get the girls off to bed.

Now, all the girls are finally to bed, so I should do the same!

Hope everyone's Mother's Day was as lovely!

What's that you say Tara, you have a Mother's Day present for me?

The other day I was on the floor with the girls. Letting my youngest Tara crawl around me, and play with whatever she could find that was safe to pat, chew and toss, when she crawled over to me, patted me on the leg and clear as day said, 'Mum.' What? Did you say Mum, Mum? Really, Mum? I tried very hard to get her to say it again, but nothing. I was sure at this point I was making too much of it and she had accidentally stumbled on that sound since she had been experimenting with buhbye for a couple days before.

You see, Katy's first words consisted of owe(Zoe), Da(Dad), Hi and Buhbye. Anna's were the same except for the order was slightly shifted. Mom/Mum was WAY down the list. So I've been waiting for Tara's first words with hope that I would rank in the top ten this time. ~l~

Fully aware that I must have misheard in my desire to hear her say my name, I told Mike about how I had to have misheard her because she did not repeat it at all the rest of the day though she was quite happy to say Buhbye, attempt Hi when she greeted her Dad and will wave at anyone willing to indulge her.

Then Tuesday night as we are all piled up on the bed in our bedroom, reading stories and trying to get the girls ready for bed, Tara with arms wide open lunges at me with another loud Mum! Mike heard it, I'm not hearing things, she said Mum! So I may not be her first word, and if you count the breathy, elongated Hi, not her second, but I rank top three! The best Mother's Day gift I could get!

It wasn't a fluke,

she is off, she is gone, loving the freedom of self mobility. I know I've went through this twice before but I just find it amazing how fast a baby can move on all fours. One moment you are putting them down to finish something that literally takes two seconds, but requires two free hands and then look down to find they are across the room about ready to pounce on a piece of fuzz tracked in by the older kids.

Crawling is not enough though, oh no, we added sitting on our own just after we started crawling. I guess getting up once we are at our destination isn't so hard after we've mastered moving. Then once we got ourselves seated, we realized that there is stuff higher then we can see and we must see it. So we have also mastered pulling up to a standing position. We do not have balance mastered yet so most often it results in returning instantly to the seated position. Her sisters were up and walking by 8 and 9 mths so if she keeps trying I should have a fully mobile baby by June/July. Heaven help me.

And so it begins......

She did it. It was awkward and she lunged once up on her knees instead of picking her leg up to move, but she did it. Not just once, but a good 30-45 minutes before she became too exhausted to continue. Tara's reward for all this hard work, one of her most favorite things in the whole world. A remote control. Truly her father's daughter. :)