A Day for BooBoos

I was making my way home from work on Tuesday, and I was pretty happy with myself because I was leaving at a decent hour. It takes me an hour and a half to get home, and I feel like most days I am in a huge rush to get home by 5:30 so that I can start the routine of dinner, checking homework, bath time, and bed time.

Anyway, I was talking on the cell phone and the babysitter beeped in. I told Margaret that I needed to get the other call, and when I answered, the babysitter said in a rush "Christie, I need the number for Miss Louise (my mother-in-law). Bubba fell and knocked his tooth, and it is bleeding and about to fall out, and I don't do well with teeth, and I need her to come pull it out!"

I started freaking out because I am an hour and a half away at this point and can't do anything about my baby being hurt or anything about his tooth, which is evidently out or about to fall out. I gave the babysitter my MIL's numbers, told her to put the tooth in milk if it fell out, and then called our dentist (who is, thankfully, a good friend) to find out what the heck we should do, especially since we now live over an hour from her office. Once I get on the phone with her and she starts asking me questions, I realize that I don't know what tooth it is, whether it is actually out, if it is just dangling, or what the situation is. So, she asks for the babysitter's number, and they talk it over, and thankfully my MIL has made it over to my house by that point. Katherine, our dentist friend, and Louise decide that Bubba needs to be seen, so Louise and I start driving towards each other so that we can meet on the road for a Bubba exchange.

Luckily, Katherine decided that Bubba's tooth did not need to be pulled. It is definitely pushed back a bit from the other teeth, and she said that there is a 50/50 chance that it will turn black, but at least the tooth was saved. Bubba has done plenty of complaining about his tooth being sore, which I am sure it is. I can't imagine how much it would hurt to knock a tooth loose by falling on my face! Hopefully Bubba learned not to run through the house in only socks. Probably not, though.

That was not our only booboo on Tuesday...

On our way home from visiting Katherine, I was talking to my sister, and she said that her daughter had just fallen and her tooth had gone all the way through her bottom lip! She was trying to decide whether the hole in the lip warranted a trip to the Emergency Room, but the pediatrician on-call told her that there wasn't much that could be done. Poor little H was bleeding all over the place and screaming and crying in the background.

Then, when Bubba and I got home, Sassy came out to the car to meet us. She looked so forlorn, and when I looked at her closely, I noticed that she had a blue-green goose-egg on her forehead with a little cut on it. I asked her what in the world happened to her, and she told me that she had a bike accident. She was wearing a long dress riding her bike, it got caught in the pedals, and she did a nose-dive. The result was a bloody lip, a bruised cheek, and the goose-egg with a little cut on her forehead.

Luckily that was the end of our booboos, but my children went to school on Wednesday looking like they have child abusers for parents.

(Which, by the way, they don't.)

(Sassy, by the way, has a problem with vanity, because she kept telling me she did "not want to go to school looking like this." Who knew a five-year-old would care so much about a goose-egg on her head?")

Hopefully that is our fair share of booboos for a while...

St. Simons, Part 1

I need to do a little bit of catching up, starting with our vacation to St. Simons Island, GA, back in August. I have about a zillion pictures (actual number), so I am going to do this post in two parts.

First, we stayed in The Strachan Carriage House on St. Simons. It was awesome -- as awesome as it looks if you hop on over to the website, and it really was kid-friendly. It was an older house (the site says it was built in 1910), so we did deal with some bugs -- mainly roaches -- but we are used to those, so I can't say that we were too bothered by them.

The pool in the courtyard was wonderful. We were a little worried about it before we got there because we were traveling with 7 kids -- 2 1-year-olds, a 2-year-old, a 3-year-old, a 4-year-old, a 5-year-old, and a 7-year-old -- that we made a rule that all kids had to have on life jackets at all times around the pool unless pretty much all grown up hands (6 adults and 3 college-aged babysitters) were on deck. The older kids, who are pretty good swimmers and just got better as the week went on, grumbled a good bit about our rule, but we decided that we would rather be safe than sorry -- I don't know why, but we like having those little buggers around. Seriously, though, they got used to it -- they would wake up around 7 or 8 in the morning, eat breakfast, get on their sunscreen, bathing suits, and life jackets, and hit the pool for most of the day. It was hard to get them to do anything else!

Today's post will focus on pool pics...

We followed the main pool rule:

Our sitters with my girls:

Someone gave W a mowhawk...

I don't think he appreciated it.

The girls entertained L:

The Farmer thought a kayak

was a great pool toy...the kids agreed:

Bubba made sure G had enough suncreen on:

Sassy went flying high:

Bubba learned to hold his nose:

The FIVE Amigos!

Me Likey

Trish over at Pink Preppy Lilly Lover (say that three times fast!) is having a little giveaway for this lovely watch, and I sure would love to win it. Nevermind that I just got myself a new watch as a reward for making it through my stressful summer -- this watch would go well with all of my gold jewelry while my other watch goes well with silver.

Do me a favor and don't go over there and join the giveaway, mmmkay?...it will better my chances of winning!

Peace out...

Our Answer To The Naked Cowboy

I think he's pretty darn cute!

Free Time

I don't know what I was thinking.

I thought that, by moving my family to The Farmer's farm, I would have some more time on my hands. I could see myself with a cup of coffee and my Bible out on the deck having a leisurely morning before I got into my work. I could see myself taking long walks around the fields, getting in lots of exercise. I could see myself catching up on this little ol' blog.

Boy, was I wrong.

We can all laugh at me now.

I am absolutely crazy busy all the time these days. I seem to live in my car whether I am commuting back to my farm two days a week or staying around here driving the kids to and from school -- a total of three round-trips (that take about an hour each!) a day. When I'm not driving, I'm cooking, or helping with homework, or working, or fixing lunches, or cleaning, or doing something that takes up all. of. my. time. I have seriously not had a free minute to myself in weeks.

I mean, I'm not complaining (okay, I am) -- I know there are plenty of moms out there who are running around like crazy people and don't have free moments to themselves. I just wasn't prepared to be one of them, and I have to find a little bit of a happier medium before I go crazy.

Or crazier, I should say.

Because I'm exhausted.

But, it's totally worth it to see The Farmer at lunchtime on the days when I'm here. And it's totally worth it to have plenty of room for the kids to run around and play without having to worry about them getting run over by some stranger flying down the street. And it's totally worth it to have The Farmer home at a decent hour at night.

It's totally worth it for us to be a family -- something that we've never truly been, or not a normal one, at least.

I've just got to figure out how to add some more hours to each day...

A Family Picture

I think I mentioned back in the spring that the people at BiLo sent a photographer down to The Farmer's farm to get some advertising pictures of the family. We posed for pictures, and then I never heard anything else about them. When The Farmer's blueberries were in BiLo I looked around to see if maybe a picture happened to be up in the store, but I never saw one.

So, I have no idea what BiLo ever did with the pictures.

But, I did finally get to see one the other day:

Do you notice who didn't get the memo about wearing khaki on the bottom?

I don't even own any khaki, so I guess I wouldn't have been able to wear any even if I had gotten the memo...

All in all I think it is a pretty cute picture. My face (and the rest of me) is a lot rounder in the picture than it is now, but you probably can't tell that unless you blow the picture up -- which I am sure you won't do unless you have tons of time on your hands.

Anywho, that is The Farmer's family picture, courtesy of BiLo...

Three!

As I mentioned in my last post, Bubba also celebrated a birthday this summer. He turned three on the 13th of August.

Last year when Bubba turned two, I went into a deep depression (okay, not really, just saying...) because it was the first time that I had a baby turn two without another one on the way. Something about not having another baby on the way just made me feel like my baby was growing up too fast, and I just wanted time to quit it already!

So you can imagine how I felt when he turned three. I mean, look -- he doesn't even look like a baby anymore:

But, we are happy to be celebrating another birthday with our sweet little boy. For the most part he is a joy to have around. He is, after all, three -- and whoever dubbed them the Terrible Twos hadn't gotten to the Threes yet...

But, honestly, I wouldn't trade him for the world! I love you, Bubba!

Five!

We celebrated a couple of birthdays over my summer blogging hiatus, starting with Sassy's fifth birthday on August 2nd! We were in St. Simon's on vacation on her actual birthday, so we had a little celebration for her there. We got these three adorable cakes from the St. Simon's Sweet Shop:

However, this was how Sassy was feeling on her birthday:

She just didn't have the best day, poor thing. She got a rash from her bathing suit. She got a fat lip from I-can't-remember-what. And she ended the day with a tummy ache, and that was before the cake! Last year she was sick on her birthday, so she is on a roll for not-so-great birthdays...

Because of our vacation and move we didn't have an actual birthday party for Sassy this year, but we had a family celebration when we got back. Luckily Sassy was feeling better for that little shindig:

I can't believe that my Sassy girl is 5 -- she is just growing up too fast! She is a big Kindergarten girl now and learning and growing more and more every day, and she is as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside. My sweet, sassy girl...

We also celebrated Bubba's birthday, but I will share those pictures tomorrow and my depression over my baby being a big boy!