More pictures of Damon

Here are a few more pictures of Damon ranging from the 21st at the hospital (shortly before coming home) until today. He is so cute and sweet, though he's having some trouble sleeping at night. So, when I get a little more sleep, I will write about his birth story. Natalie and Kelton both really love him and aren't jealous at all. Natalie loves to hold him, and Kelton will occasionally demand "I want to hold it!"

Our baby is here!

Damon Burgess Webb

April 20, 2010

8 lbs 7 oz

20 inches

More story to come later...here's just a few pictures. We have yet to really see him with his eyes open. Damon is very sweet and so cute with all of his dark hair! We can't wait to bring him home to meet his brother and sister. They haven't been able to see him yet because kids aren't allowed in the hospital--due to flu season.

It was bound to happen sometime

Going...

Going...

Gone!

I've never had this happen before. Natalie fell out of her crib a few times before we moved her to a bed. But all of a sudden, Kelton is getting out of his crib with it being a 100% controlled movement. Watching him do it, I was amazed, and slightly annoyed. So climbing out became a fun game that was keeping him awake...so out came the toddler bed. We've actually been meaning to get this out for a few weeks now, but just hadn't done it on account of needing to clean the room and move a bunch of stuff around. I guess Kelton got tired of waiting around for us to get with it.

And of course...the very first night we put him in his bed...

We went in a short while later because Natalie had left her blanket in his room. Yeah, he had found a bottle of Mod Podge (if you don't know what that is, it's the craft version of Elmer's glue. Yes, glue.) and had opened it and gotten it all over the carpet. There were two separate round spots, each with about a 5 inch diameter plus other little random spots and dribbles. I had no idea what to do. I've successfully cleaned a lot of stuff out of our very light carpet: baby food, throw up, bathroom messes, crayon, blood, red Kool Aid, etc... but GLUE? How do you get glue out of carpet? I figured a lot of water was the best way. So I took a wet rag to it over and over and over again until I thought I got it all. In the morning, the hard, crunchy spots told me that I just didn't quite get it out. Oh, well. I tried.



On another note, today is my Grandpa's 91st birthday! My Grandma will turn 90 later on this year. I am SO lucky to still have both of them here--together! Happy birthday Grandpa!



And for randomness sake: Natalie helped her daddy make cookies between sessions of Conference. I just thought it was cute. She's just getting too big.

Car wrecks, car seats, and Easter eggs

Yesterday Nate was stopped at a crosswalk--one with a light--when he got rear-ended by a guy who apparently wasn't paying attention. I guess this guy didn't see that Nate was stopped at a red light. He tried to stop but couldn't in time. He tried to swerve to miss our car, but didn't quite make it. You can see in the picture below that he got the bumper. The piece of the bumper was hanging off but Nate ended up ripping it off so it wouldn't catch air and take flight while driving on the freeway. Fortunately, the guy who hit Nate claimed responsibility (because of course it was 100% his fault, but you never know with people) and we have an appointment to get the car fixed on Monday and Nate will get to drive around a rental for a while.
Last Monday we talked with the kids about Easter. Natalie of course remembered the eggs and the candy. We wanted to make sure she really knew why Easter was important, so we talked about the Resurrection. She even explained the story to us. Then we explained the tie in with the Easter eggs and how they should remind us of Jesus. So with that understanding, we had the kids do their Easter egg hunt this morning. I don't really need to tell you that they had a lot of fun.

After collecting all of their candy, we came inside to watch General Conference. Look at what good little kids I have. They sat like this the whole time! Yeah right. But they did sit like this of their own free will and stayed that way for probably 15 minutes. Natalie lasted a little longer than that. I just had to take a picture because I thought it was really cute.

Today we (meaning Nate) rearranged the car seats in the Durango. We are running out of Saturdays for him to do this before the baby comes, so today turned out to be the day. We previously had the back row seat folded down and Natalie and Kelton we in the first row seat. Since we can't fit three carseats side by side, Natalie and Kelton got bumped to the back row seat. I took this picture to show their seats way in the back. They are going to seem so far away now!

I wanted to put this picture on because Kelton saw me taking pictures and was trying his best to get in on one. But you can also see the base for the baby's car seat is now in the first row. The seat that Kelton is climbing up on folds down so Natalie and Kelton will be able to crawl in to get to their seats--and me too to buckle them in. I'm already trying to picture the fun I will have buckling three kids into their seats every time I go anywhere. But hey, the car is all ready to go now.

Third time's a charm

I was wanting to crochet a blanket for the baby, probably as a blessing blanket. I found the prettiest pattern and decided to try it out. Problem was, it was thread crochet. So you are using thread instead of yarn. After messing with that for a while, I decided that it was just going to take more time and patience than I was willing to spend on it. Maybe for another baby, someday. So I moved on to a different pattern I had. I decided I wanted to make this one a little bit bigger than the original pattern so I did some stuff to the stitches and ended up messing it up after about 2-3 hours of work. I took it all out, fixed the problem and started again. After about another 2-3 hours, I looked at the blanket and realized that I really didn't like it all that much. Nate agreed. So I abandoned attempt #2. So I started again on another pattern. And this is what I've ended up with. I finally finished it. Most of you probably don't know just how long this takes--this blanket is about a yard sqare and took anywhere from 20-30 hours to crochet. But it's done now!

Trip to Snowflake

Since it is Nate's spring break, we were able to spend almost a week in Snowflake. We went up on Thursday the 11th and stayed until the 17th. The timing worked out perfectly for us to be there on Friday to be able to go to Nate's niece, Rayla's wedding. It's always fun to be in the temple for a sealing. After the sealing we went to the church and had a lunch and later came back for the reception.

On Saturday, due to good timing again, I was able to go to my sister Melanie's baby shower. She is the only one in my family yet to have a baby, so it was really fun to be able to go to her baby shower. I made this cake for the shower, and despite fate's best efforts to ruin it, it actually turned out okay. (I was having serious trouble with the frosting consistency.) Here's Melanie with the cake.

Here's a picture of our tummies. Melanie is due about 3-4 weeks after me. Sadly, this picture has shown me that, yet again, my face has gotten chubby. Lovely. It's amazing how you can see things in pictures that you don't see in the mirror. Maybe I do need to stop eating donuts at night after the kids go to bed... My problem is the BABY wants them.

Melanie and I made blankets for each other. I crocheted the pink and purple one for her and she knitted the blue one for me. Like two little old ladies, I guess. Actually, I would consider us both still pretty young and quite opposite of little.

When Melanie and Sean come over to my parents house, this is Kelton and Natalie's favorite toy--Buster. He is a Yorkie (right, Mel?) and despite the innocently sweet, kind and loving faces my children have in these pictures, they are anything but sweet and kind to this poor dog. He is their toy to be drug, often times literally, all over the house. Poor dog. Happy kids.

On this trip, we decided to forego using the pack-n-play. Kelton is just way too big for it now and we figured he would be okay in a bed. So he slept in a bed for the first time and he thought it was way cool. He wouldn't stop smiling when we told him he was going to sleep in the bed. This is a picture of the first night. All those giant stuffed bears were up on the headboard and he apparently decided that they all needed to sleep with him. Then he tucked himself back in and went to sleep.

These pictures aren't from Snowflake, but I wanted to put them on because, for the first time ever, Kelton has "real" church clothes. So here he his all decked out in his Van Heusen and Oxfords. He looked so handsome! And I have to say, the shirt and tie combo was my steal of the year--$3 total, for both. And the new shoes were actually free, but that's just way too long of a story.

And here's my "Natalie says" section. She had me cracking up all through dinner tonight. We don't have cable so we (fortunatley) don't get the show Dora the Explorer. I cannot stand this show. I would actually rather watch Barney because it's less annoying. Anyway, Natalie saw Dora for the first time in Snowflake just barely and when we got home, insisted on getting a Dora dvd from the library, which she has been watching today. So at dinner, she said:

"Mom, I need a real backpack like Dora, to put all my stuff in."

Me (confused): "You already have a backpack."

Natalie: "No, a REAL backpack."

Me: "Yeah, you have a REAL backpack in your room."

Natalie: "No mom, a real backpack that talks."

I've been having trouble lately trying to explain to her that a lot of things in her movies aren't real. Like dragons and fairies that can fly (or can't fly for that matter) and talking backpacks. She can see them on TV so she figures they are real, despite my best efforts to tell her they are pretend. She told me the other day that she wanted pixie dust for her birthday because she wants to be able to fly.

Shortly following that conversation was this one.

Natalie: "Mom, there's something wrong with my milk."

Me: "There's nothing wrong with the milk. I just had some."

Natalie: "Yeah there is."

Me: "What's wrong with it?"

Natalie: "It's got milkahol in it."

Me (laughing because I already knowing where it's going): "What's milkahol?"

Natalie: "It's really bad for our bodies and makes you sick and then you die."

The other day, Natalie was asking why wine is bad for us and I told her it's because it has alcohol in it. So apparently, her drink had milk-ahol in it. What's funny is that Natalie LOVES milk. But hey, at least our word of wisdom FHE's are getting through to her. I always love it when she asks in all seriousness, "Why is that person smoking? Do they want to die?"

Bye Bye Birdie

Here's how the story goes. About 6 years ago I decided to get Nate a bird for Christmas because I knew he loved animals and wanted a pet. I decided a bird was a good way to go--low maintenance and not too much trouble to take care of. So we got a parakeet. It got lonely so I got a second parakeet a short time later to keep it company. Then the first parakeet died a month or two after the second one came. Then I found out that parakeets usually live for about 12 years! I was thinking that they might live for 2 or 3 years at most. I had no idea that they are a long term investment.

So here we are six years later, and we still have a parakeet, in quite good health, I might add. It's been a while now that I have been very sick of the thing. It makes a mess with its seeds, bangs its food dish all the time, and wakes up my napping kids on occasion. (there's not much else that makes me more mad than something waking up my kids during naptime.) Plus, due to business/forgetfulness, the cage never gets cleaned out. Well, I guess it gets cleaned out about 4 times a year. Seriously.

I decided it was time to get rid of the bird and Nate finally agreed. As luck would have it, someone in our ward has a parakeet and wanted another one to keep theirs company. So we found a good home for our bird. Unfortunately, we didn't factor in our tender hearted 4 year old. We have been telling her for a while that we were going to give the bird away, which she of course didn't want to do. But today ended up being the day that we said goodbye to our bird.

Here is a picture of Natalie with the bird, at its new house.
Here is poor Natalie crying uncontrollably after leaving the bird there. She was so sad. We tried to explain that the bird was lonely and needed a friend so we took it to live with another bird. Her solution was that we could find another bird to live with ours. She kept crying "I need a pet. I need a bird." Later when she calmed down I told her that we needed to get rid of the bird because we are going to have a baby and we don't want the bird to wake up our baby. I asked her, "do you want a pet, or a baby at our house?" Of course, in the moment she said the wanted a pet. She later changed her answer to "both."

She was so sad that we decided to take her out for a special treat at "Old McDonalds" to help her feel a little better. You can see that the tears are gone. We are sure the sadness will be short lived. None of us ever paid any attention to the bird anyway, except in my case when yelling at it to be quiet.

To the dentist, again

There is one dentist that I was really wanting to get Kelton in to see, and I was able to get him an appointment today. The differences between this dentist and the one we saw on Friday is like night and day. (For those of you in my area: do not, Do Not, DO NOT go to General Dentistry for Kids)

Friday's dentist: wanted to put Kelton under general anesthesia just to take an x-ray-- because "he is too little and won't hold still for long enough." And their reason for this was to check to see if there was any nerve damage and then do a root canal if there was. Plus, we would have to wait for about 6 weeks before even doing this so they could clear it with the insurance.

Just in case you are wondering.... no, you can't see 'nerve damage' on an x-ray. So I'm not exactly sure what they were even going to do once they put my two year old under...

Today's pediatric denstist: Said everything my credible sources had already told me. They took an x-ray. (Hey, you can hold a wiggly two year old in your lap and force him to hold still for half a second to take an x-ray. Amazing!) Then he looked at the root to make sure it wasn't cracked anywhere, which is wasn't. If it had been, they would have pulled the tooth out. So for now everything looks just fine. The tooth should come back down on its own over the next little while. If any signs of nerve damage do show up, like a few months from now, or if an abscess develops, they will pull the tooth. But for now, we just leave it alone, because more than likely, it is just fine as it is.

On another subject, I was out shopping on Saturday (after all this had happened the day before) and I found this shirt. I was actually looking for a shirt for Kelton, and this one was screaming "perfect" at me. I actually laughed out loud when I saw it.

If you can't read it, it says "I Do My Own Stunts." In case you don't know Kelton, beside his latest little fiasco, he is always getting himself hurt. And as if he needed to prove the shirt true, he was acting out all kinds of craziness for the camera while I was trying to get a picture. So here's a few more shots of him being crazy on the couch. I just thought it was cute. And you can also see that he is doing just fine, despite his poor little mouth.

Tooth troubles

This morning Kelton decided to get himself out of the bath by himself, and Natalie decided to "help" him by pushing him on his way out. This resulted in Kelton smacking his mouth into, I'm assuming, the toilet. (I didn't actually see it happen.) Anyway we were finally able to see that one of his front teeth got pushed back and jammed up into his gums. We've spent most of the day trying to track down a dentist who works on Friday, going to the dentist (and waiting forever) and just trying to figure out what to do. After all that, we aren't even happy with the dentist we saw and are going to take him to a different dentist, hopefully on Monday. I'll let everyone know what the prognosis is after that. After talking to my brother, who is a dentist, it sounds like most everything the dentist we went to said to do, isn't quite right. So we will see what happens--leave the tooth, pull the tooth, or something else...

So for right now, and maybe for a while after, my cute little boy looks like a hockey player. You can see from the first two pictures that his upper lip is pretty swollen. His upper lip isn't normally that big in profile.

This is the best picture we could get of his teeth. He doesn't want us having anything to do with them so it's hard to get a look at them. I do have to say though, I think his teeth look way better in the picture than in person. You can't really get the same angle and depth perception when looking at a picture. But this gives you an idea. So the front tooth that is jammed up in was the same size and length as the other one. You can see in the picture that it looks more the same size as the smaller tooth next to it.

Here is a "normal" picture, just for comparison.

Explanations

A little while ago I noticed that Natalie kept starting sentences with, "when/after the baby POPS (she would emphasize this word) out of your tummy..." I started to realize that she literally thought that my tummy was going to explode, like a balloon, and the baby would come out. She didn't seem to be disturbed by this, but I started to think that at some point this might worry her. Morbid/scary stuff seems to fascinate her, but it does scare her too.

So one night I thought it would be a good idea to explain... (can you already see what's coming?)

ME: "Natalie, you know the baby is not going to actually pop out of my tummy. It's not going to pop like a balloon when the baby comes out."

NATALIE: "Oh."

Long pause...

NATALIE: "How is the baby going to get out?"

Okay, I was about 70% sure I would get this question too. Though I wasn't smart enough to come up with an answer beforehand. Now I've always heard that when little kids ask these types of questions, they are really looking for a much simpler answer than often try to give them. They don't/can't understand things in the same complexity that we do; so easy, simple answers are really all they are looking for; they don't really want the whole story.

Yeah right.

ME: "Well, there is a sort of tunnel for the baby to come out."

I was already patting myself on the back for that one. Nice, simple, easy to understand. I gave her the truth, packaged nicely for an almost 5 year old.

NATALIE: "Mom, where's the tunnel?"

Great. That one I didn't see coming, and I went into 'skirt around the issue' mode. How do I answer that? Do I explain that to a 4 year old? Umm....

So now about every week or so I will randomly get "mom, where's the tunnel the baby's going to come out of?" I finally did try to explain, but I don't think she really got it.

So she still asks, and I still don't really know what to say. I'm thinking I shouldn't have bothered her in her initial theory.

Here's a recent picture of my inquisitive little question asker. She got a new dress and new shoes to wear to church, and she looked so cute. She told me "everyone in my class is going to tell me 'oh Natalie! You are so beautiful!'"

Kids make life...

I'll let you fill in the blank on that one, but here are some of our recent happenings that make my life, well, you know.

1) Today Natalie told me "Mom, you look funny smelling." I'm still trying to figure that one out. I had been joking with her, and she told me I was funny. That was followed by the other random comment.

2) Natalie was taking a bath the other day. She had been in there for a while when I heard her very jubilantly exclaiming, "Bubbles! Woo-hoo! Bubbles!" I went to investigate because we don't own any bubble bath. Sure enough, I walk in and there is a CRAZY amount of bubbles in the tub. Turns out she had decided to empty about half of a fairly new bottle of shampoo into her bath--to make bubbles, of course. I was not very happy. And those bubbles kept multiplying the more she played. It was rediculous! Our only hope of de-soapifying everything, including Natalie, was to pull the drain and then turn on the shower. It worked--eventually.

3) This one is my favorite--or not so favorite. I took Kelton to the doctor the other day for his 2 year old check up. AND HE PULLED THE FIRE ALARM!!! That pretty much sums it up right there, but I will explain anyway. We were in the waiting room, and both children were running around being crazy, as if they were caged animals who had finally been set free. With this pregnancy it has been really hard/painful to pick the kids up. So I was having a hard time controlling them. So I was already a bit embarrassed because of their behavior (they are nornally pretty good in public) when all of a sudden I notice that Kelton has walked over to the fire alarm and has a finger on it. I said "NO Kelton" and got up to walk over and get him. But it was too late. He had pulled the little white bar out and down--which resulted in that wonderful loud alarm going off. Even though they knew it was a false alarm, EVERONE had to evacuate the building--patients, staff, all the doctors. It was a lot of fun. I could almost see the thought process going on in some of their heads..."this lady can't control her kids, one of them just pulled the fire alarm, and she's going to have ANOTHER baby." I must add, in all fairness to me (and Kelton) that the fire alarm is a whopping 3 feet or so off the ground--in a pediatricians office. And it's bright red on a solid, blank, white wall. Frankly, I'm surprised Kelton is the first little kid to pull it. At that level and that color it is basically begging to be played with. They've only been in this new office for a few months, so maybe they will get it moved.

4) On the way to that doctors appointment, Natalie asked me where we were, meaning the name of the town. I told her we were in Green Valley. She got all excited and said, "That's where the dinosaurs live!!" It took me a split second, then I laughed and corrected her-- that the dinosaurs live in the Great Valley. She's been watching a little too much "Land Before Time" I guess.

5) More often than not, my kids won't eat fast food. I am really quite shocked by this because when I was a kid, getting fast food was as good as winning the lottory. You might say, 'well, that's a good thing because fast food isn't that healthy anyway' but it can be very, very inconvenient at times. I had a doctor's appointment yesterday morning. By the time I got out (I was in the waiting room for a little over an hour) it was lunch time and we still had a 45 minute drive to get home. The kids were telling me they were hungry. I really didn't want to spend money on food, but being a kind mom, I pulled into McDonalds and bought a cheeseburger for them to split. I didn't even get myself anything. Yeah, they didn't eat it. And they mangled it so bad that there was no way I was going to eat it. I felt like I had ripped up a dollar and let it go into the wind.

6) The kids were still hungry when we got home so I made Natalie a PB sandwich. I have been giving them wheat bread, but there was only one piece left. So I made her sandwich with one piece of wheat and one piece of white bread. A few minutes later I see Natalie meticulously picking off the white bread. When I asked her what she was doing she said, "this bread is gross. I don't like it." Again, I was shocked. This is a good thing though, but honestly, what kid doesn't like white bread?

I'm sure I could think of more, but for now those are some of the things that make my life...well, life!

Baby has a name!

Yeah, so basically this is all we've got...







I was so excited to find this shirt, #1 because it's perfect. It's a size 3-6 months. (we've been meaning to buy one of these for someone in our family. I mean, how many people can buy a real baseball jersey with thier own name on the back from the team they like?) And #2 it was on the clearance rack.

As for a FISRT name, I'm thinking this baby will be lucky to get one. We haven't really been able to come up with anything. Well, anything that we can agree on. We have about 8 to 10 weeks left to decide on something for this little boy. Or maybe it will just come down to whoever gets ahold of the birth certificate first...(which will be me.)

Fashion sense

Just a few pictures to show my kids' awesome fashion sense. I had absolutely nothing to do with either of these outfits.

So here's Natalie: princess crown, church dress that is about 2 sizes too small, elbow/knee pads, princess shoes, and a cape. I really should have asked her what exactly she was. What's sad is that she was later playing outside and slipped and scraped her knees up pretty bad--she had taken off the knee pads. It's kind of funny that they actually would have come in handy.

And Kelton: I guess it's possible that I had something to do with the buttons...I don't remember exactly. The top one comes undone all the time and I probably started to undress him when I got sidetracked, phone rang, or something. Then I found him like this. He was walking around swinging that string of beads in his hand. When I saw him, he immediately reminded me of an 80's music video.

Valentine pre-school party

Today Natalie's preschool group met at my house and we had a Valentine's Day party. The kids were all really excited to bring Valentines and we had a lot of fun. We made Valentine baskets out of milk jugs (I needed 9 jugs. It only took about a week and a half to save up that many. We drink sooo much milk!), we graphed conversation hearts by color, decorated sugar cookies, played "pin the lips on the heart person" and passed out Valentines. They had a lot of fun and were excited to not be doing school-type stuff (because that's "boring" one kid told me) although I still snuck it in with the graphing. Which they enjoyed, by the way, and did a really great job at reading the graphs. So here are some pictures of Natalie after everyone left. You can see her Valentine box and she's decorating a sugar cookie for me.

Checking out her Valentines...

She wanted me to take a picture of her finished sugar cookies. Mine is the one on the right. Heaven knows I LOVE frosting, but I had to scrape some of that off when she wasn't looking. You can't tell from the picture, but that frosting is about 3 times as thick as the cookie itself.