End of June Picture Dump

I haven't blogged much of substance this year.  Mostly picture dumps and such.  However, I feel like it's worth pointing out that I've already exceeded the number of posts I made in all of 2017 and it's only June 30th.  So that's something, right?

A lot has happened this summer thus far.  So I'm going to do my usual thing and drop the pictures below and caption them.  I'll try to group them together in a somewhat correct chronological order, but no promises.  Not that you guys would know anyway. ;)

Dance Recital - June 24, 2018

Mara had her first dance recital!  It was done through a mobile dance company, meaning the teachers come to the school/establishment to do class rather than the kids going to a studio. Mara LOVED it.  It was a legit recital!  Dress rehearsal, costumes, the works!  Mara wasn't feeling her best (more on that in a minute) but she rallied and did a great job.  Her class danced to Deep in the Heart of Texas and it was pretty much the cutest thing that ever happened.  So proud of my little dancer, Miss Mara Soleil!

Speaking of little miss.... she had a nasty scooter accident on Friday, June 22.  She went too fast down a hill and crashed, leaving her with a lot of gnarly road rash and a massive sore in her mouth from biting through her lip.  She was SO brave and such a tough girl.  The worst part for her was actually having to pull the bandaids off to clean the owies.  Once that part was done, she was fine!  The cut in her mouth turned into a massive canker sore which is still bothering her a tiny bit, making eating tough, but aside from that she is basically all healed now!  Poor little thing.  She's a trooper.

The night of the crash. Check out all those bandaids!

Next day.  Poor thing.

Orion

Mister O is almost 7 months old.  He's doing great.  Super sweet and growing like crazy!  He just had his 6 month appointment mid-June and is the size of an average 15 month old.  Lol!  Love him so much.  Here are some pictures of him.  Beware of his cuteness!

Selfies

I'm not even going to apologize for these.  For one thing, hardly anyone else ever takes pictures of me, so if I want any I have to do it myself.  Second of all, I see nothing wrong with feeling happy with how I look and wanting to document it.  Considering I have a HEALTHY body now and I don't always like how it looks, I feel like it's even more worth it to take a picture when I do!  Anyway.  Here are a few selfies.

This one was actually taken today, 6/30.  Pardon my messy countertop.

At the ice rink during Mara's skating lesson.

All black for working backstage at Mara's dance recital.

Abby

I got a few good pictures of my little brindle beauty this month.  She's usually not very photogenic or is just being an antisocial grump. Lol.  

These last 2 of Abby look as though they don't even contain Abby!  But that's just the thing... she's the master of camouflage.  FIND THE FRENCHIE! :)

Pancake Adventures!

Over the last month I've been making Mara a lot of pancakes.  It's one of her favorite foods and since her scooter accident, she hasn't been able to eat crunchy things very well.  So... here are some of the pancake shenanigans we've been up to recently!

Randoms

Mara doing chores.

Oregon summer.

Miss Sass eating grapes.

Whenever I go to put Orion down for a nap, Abby always pushes the door open with her nose, comes in and makes a nest in the blanket or whatever is lying on the floor.  She's so sweet.  She loves Orion.

Overload

I'm sitting up in my bedroom.  On the bed.  With my white comforter over my legs.  I'm wearing a comfy, red Nike long sleeve shirt and black legging capris that I got at Rue 21 in Sioux City, Iowa back in the summer of 2012 for $2.  I have my favorite black nursing tank top on underneath my red Nike shirt.  My hair is in a messy ponytail.  My fingernails have the remnants of a haphazard self-done manicure.  Essie polish.  Color: Enuf is enuf.  My nails need trimming.  My toenails are even worse.

This is what motherhood looks like on me today.

I had every intention of studying for my 2 online courses for my NASM recertification.  But I'm a ball of anxiety and need to blog instead.  There's like 3 loads of laundry almost completely blocking the hallway at the top of the stairs outside the kids' rooms.  It looks like my dryer exploded.  But, like I said, I'm a ball of anxiety and need to blog instead.

Ever since I was pregnant with Orion, my anxiety has gone haywire.  I remember having anxiety after Mara was born too.  And, indeed, before she was born but that was more like I was constantly worried I'd miscarry or something.  I was less worried about miscarriage my second pregnancy, but my anxiety grabbed onto other things and wouldn't let go.  

I can't remember if I wrote about this before or not, but back in the summertime when I was pregnant with Orion, I started having some pretty extreme anxiety revolving around Mara and stomach viruses.  Weird, right?  Like, what a weird thing to have anxiety over.  I mean, of course stomach viruses suck horribly.  But is it really worth getting all anxious and worked up over?  Apparently it is, if you're me!

Mara came down with a stomach virus back on June 9th.  I remember because it was the day of my friend's son's birthday party.  She was 100% fine at the party.  She even ate like 4 slices of pizza and a big piece of birthday cake and played for like 4 1/2 straight hours.  Then that night - BAM! High fever and throwing up.  I holed up in Orion's room with him and escaped to my parents' house the next day.

So on Friday of last week, Mara crashed on her scooter.  She was pretty banged up.  She bit her lip badly during the crash and has had a bad canker sore because of it so she hasn't really been wanting to eat because it hurts.  Today, I picked her up from my friend's house where she went instead of preschool (a story for another post) and she was refusing lunch.  We went to the store to grab a few things and she didn't even ask for a cookie.  I was suspicious.

On Monday, when I dropped her off at school, her teacher was just getting out of her car in the parking lot at the same time we arrived.  She has her 2 youngest kids in the school too, and she asked me if I'd tell the other classroom teacher that she'd be in momentarily, that her youngest son had just thrown up on himself in the car.

My immediate instinct was to take Mara and leave.  To not put her in school that day.  I didn't, though, and apparently I should have.

Because Mara had a bad scooter accident last week, and didn't have any bloodwork done to rule out things like trauma-induced pancreatitis, I called the pediatrician's office today when I noticed her marked lack of appetite.  They got us in with in half an hour.  

The doctor's verdict: stomach virus.  

She said, "I would bet she'll start throwing up or having diarrhea sometime in the next 12-24 hours."

Cue my anxiety going BERSERK.  The doctor wanted to run a blood test just to be certain that nothing else was going on but she was fairly confident it was a virus.  Mara had no appetite and just lounged around on the couch the rest of the night and went to bed with Corky about 20 minutes ago.  So I'm on Orion duty tonight, and he's on Mara duty.  

WHY AM I SO FREAKED OUT BY THIS???

OMG speaking of that... as I'm typing that, a singing teapot toy that Mara has just started playing all by itself in her bedroom.  There is no one in there! I thought maybe Abby was in there but no... she's downstairs with Corky and Mara in the basement room where they're sleeping (because there's an attached bathroom).  FREAKY.

Anyway.  Ghosts aside.  Why has my anxiety grabbed onto this?  I mean, I understand that part of why it's so worrisome to me is that if I get it and get dehydrated that my milk supply will tank.  And obviously that's bad when you have an exclusively breastfed baby who refuses bottles (ahem, son!).  But this is more than that.  I don't know what it is.

Ugh, I don't know.  I know we'll get through it, but I feel like life for the past several months has just been one long series of "getting through it."  I just want everyone to be healthy and uninjured for more than 2 or 3 days at at time.  Is that really too much to ask??  Why can't she just get a cold?? She hasn't had a single cold!  Just all stomach bugs.  And besides that.. it's almost July! Aren't we out of cold and flu season yet?? Why is the stomach bug lingering around here? UGHHH MAKES ME SO STRESSED AND ANNOYED.

Okay.  Now that I got all that out, maybe I can study.  I'm running out of time to complete these 2 classes but my nerves are just shot and I couldn't concentrate.  I'll study for an hour and then go to bed, unless Orion gets up before that.  Wish us luck with this latest stomach virus. Xo.

Summerin'

Well it's June here in Oregon, which means that it's only slightly less chilly and drizzly than it's been for the last several months.  Especially this year, since we had a very mild winter and didn't get any snow except a tiny dusting on Christmas Eve.

I haven't been as much of a shutterbug as I sometimes am, and I myself actually appear in very few of the following pictures.  But here's a small picture dump anyway.

Playing Island in the Yard

One day, when Orion was napping, Mara and I went outside to play.  We decided to pretend that the side yard was an island and the asphalt was water.  So we dragged the cardboard house I had constructed (out of a dishwasher box) for her the previous week out outside and set it up on our "island."  We collected pinecones and sticks and rocks.  Before too long, Orion woke up but we were having too much fun to stop so we brought his exer-saucer outside and he became our lighthouse.  It was so much fun and I felt like a kid again!

Land ho!

Very Blair-witch-esque.

The sentinel.

Pinecone stash in the house!

Our pretend firepit

Playing Chess

Or "chest clip" as Mara calls it. (LOL!)  Just in case any of you think I have a genius level 3 year old on my hands here, Mara has no idea how to play chess.  She just likes moving the pieces around and (illegally) capturing my queen every other move.  What's notable about these pics to me is how healthy and normal she looks.  By 10:30pm that same night, she was burning up and vomiting.  Poor thing.  Nasty virus knocked her down all Sunday and most of Monday too.  Luckily, thus far, the rest of us have avoided it (knock on wood!)

Rose Festival Selfie

We went to the Portland Rose Festival one day to take advantage of the City Fair.  It's basically just a bunch of rides and booths set up at Tom McCall waterfront park in Portland. Mara wanted to ride the ferris wheel but found she is nervous of heights!

Hiding in the Closet

I was hiding in the closet.  Eating an ice cream bar (well, a yogurt bar actually).  Because I didn't want to share with either of my children.

That's my confession.

Want another one?  I am skipping my workout tonight.  

I'm just so tired.  Today was one of those days where I LITERALLY (and I do mean literally) have not stopped doing something since the moment my eyes opened this morning.  Which, by the way, was at 4:30am. 

Orion slept in until just after nine o'clock!  Mara was up at 7:00am with Corky and me.  I saw a bunch of extremely ripe bananas on the counter so Mara and I decided to make banana bread.  We were having lunch with my dad later and I used to bake things and take them to his office.  It had been a while since I'd done that so I thought we'd bring the banana bread down to his office when we went later.

I moved Mara's gymnastics class from Saturday morning to Thursday morning.  The main reason for the switch was to free up our weekends but it had a few unexpected benefits too.  For one thing, there's almost nobody there so there are actually parking spots!  That aren't half a mile from the door!  Another thing is that her new coach is a woman named Kayla who was actually Mara's coach about a year ago.  She's really nice and Mara likes her a lot.  A third benefit is that there are very few kids in her class, which allows everyone more one-on-one time with the coach.

Side note: Coach Kayla was exceedingly complimentary of Mara today after class.  She commented on how strong Mara is and how well-suited she is for gymnastics.  She gave us some stuff we can work on at home to help Mara improve.  Not that she needs a lot of improvement but I know she likes working on stuff and seeing herself improve.  Not to mention she loves to show off for her teachers. :)

Side note off the side note: Mara does figure skating lessons on Wednesdays.  The last few weeks have been tough.  She seems.... spacey.  Like she's not really enjoying it or mentally present.  She seemed to be having a really hard time doing the exercises that the rest of the class seemed to be flying through.  So yesterday, instead of having her use her same-old-same-old big, bulky blue ice skates, I had her rent the lightweight plastic ones from the rink. HUUUUUUGE improvement.  So we'll be going that route from here on out.  They don't offer lessons over the summer, so unless she does summer camps (which she won't) she won't be back on the ice until September.  At least not in a structured, class-like environment.

Side note off the side note off the side note: On Wednesday when I dropped Mara off at school, one of the teachers was arriving just as Orion and I were heading back out to the car. She came over to say hi to us and started telling me what a great kid Mara is.  How the threes are usually her least favorite age group but not Mara.  "She's empathetic, she's caring, she's loving, she's generous... you are doing a great job with her," she told me.  I smiled and thanked her but in my head I was thinking how unfair it is that I work my ass off to teach her good morals, good values and good principles and everyone else gets to reap the benefit of that except for Corky and me.  And that is SO unfair.  Don't get me wrong.. I'm glad she's good at school.  And I know it's normal for kids to act differently around their parents, especially their default parent (me).  But dang.... wish I could see that side of her more often!

Anyway, back to today.  Of all the days for Orion to sleep in!  I ended up getting him up at 9:05, nursing him quickly and loading him into his car seat and rushing us all off to Mara's gymnastics.  I chugged my coffee so fast I burned my tongue.  The banana bread was so freshly out of the oven that I had to wrap it in a towel in order to carry it to the car. Of course Mara had to change her shoes three times, find her favorite purse and do the sidewalk chalk hopscotch in the driveway before she could get in her carseat.  Then she had to buckle herself.  Heaven forbid I try to help her.  This made us late, and of course every light was red.  We rushed into gymnastics two minutes past the start time.  Not how I wanted to start my day.

So after gymnastics class ended at 10:20, we loaded back into the car, stopped at the gas station and headed for downtown, $50 poorer.  We delivered the banana bread to my dad, took Orion around his office to meet a few of his co-workers who hadn't met him yet, and then had lunch.

Corky's mom came over this afternoon to hang out for a while.  The big news for the afternoon was that Mara's new scooter arrived.  Her little buddy who lives across the street has this green scooter that he rides all the time.  He and Mara would take turns with it (grudgingly on his part) and so I finally decided to buy her a scooter of her own about a month ago.  I bought her this cute little pink and purple scooter.... which is apparently slower than molasses.  So for the past month they've continued to trade off this green scooter... and argue about it.  So finally I decided enough was enough.  I donated her pink and purple scooter and bought her a blue one, same kind as her friend's.  It arrived this afternoon and when he got home from Pre-K (he's 5) they spent the afternoon scootering around the driveway together.

Tonight at 6pm was the "coordinating rehearsal" and costume pickup for Mara's dance recital later this month.  Mara's teacher at school had confessed to me that she didn't know if she'd be able to take her daughter, Mina, to the rehearsal because she had to pick her older son up from his after school program in Tigard at the same time.  I offered to drive Mina since I was going there anyway and we live 3 minutes from the school.  So at 5:15 this evening, Mara and I (Orion stayed home with Corky) arrived at school to pick up Mina.  We then fought traffic all the way out to this huge synagogue, of all places, where the rehearsal was being held.  The girls received their costumes (in all their sequined and fringed glory) and all the different classes did a quick run-through of their song.  We left the rehearsal about 7:30, dropped Mina home 20 minutes later and were home 20 minutes after that.  

Orion was headed toward Hot Mess-ville by the time Mara and I walked in the door.  He hit meltdown mode within thirty seconds.  I helped Mara into her costume, as she was itching to try it on, whisked Orion upstairs, put him in his PJs and nursed him to sleep.  I came downstairs to Mara wailing and tantrumming about god knows what.  This was the point that I snuck my yogurt bar and shut myself into the master closet to eat my treat in peace. When I came back downstairs, Orion was just starting to fuss.  Corky went upstairs to calm him down, telling me as he passed that his brother texted and likely has appendicitis.  

Well, okay then.

Mara, who had refused her dinner earlier because she was too busy playing and was too excited about seeing Mina, informed me that she was hungry.  I gave her half a buttered bagel, an applesauce pouch and a cup of milk, brushed her teeth, put her in her PJs and put her to bed.  Only after discovering that she had taken my BRAND NEW bottle of soap from Bath & Body Works and DUMPED IT DOWN THE SINK and replaced it with water.  AGHGHHHHHHHHHH.

*Deep breath*

And now.  It's 10:02.  I should be pumping.  I should be taking a shower.  But I'm blogging.  Why?  Because I feel like it!  And after a day like today, I can do whatever the hell I want.