Hold on

I've got so much to write, but don't have time...Here is the run down

We've battled two cases of Strep, two snotty noses, cleaned out, painted and got the house on the market yesterday...whew! I'll write more later.....I miss my blogotherapy sessions.

Another Burlison Public Service announcement....

Confession....I make predictions about my kids. For instance, Mary Ella, my sensitive soul, doesn't like people to laugh at her...just with her. She passionately pursues any goal she chooses taking all commitments very seriously (maybe even too seriously). She is a LOYAL friend, one you can tell anything to in confidence knowing it will not go any further. She is extremely cautious about who she puts her trust in and in making decisions. Yes, in silliness and sassiness, she does get impulsive, but that is where it stops. Addy, well, likes people to laugh at her and has a great sense of humor. She is the outgoing girl who likes to play practical jokes and may even sacrifice her own safety just to make someone laugh. She is an uncoordinated, fearless child....a dangerous combination. She trips over her own feet, runs into door frames and so on. One week she had FOUR bruises on her forehead. I told Scott the other day, "I hope I'm wrong, but I'll bet we end up in the emergency room with her one day." I'm not attempting to "box in" or put boundaries on their personalities, but I see definite personality traits within each of them.

Well, today we started the day off running. I got a call from the contractor coming to fix a few things on the house at 7:30am asking if he could go ahead and "swing by". My sister Meredith had surgery today and Scott is on call...So I was fielding phone calls and conversations all morning. Before I knew it, Addy had disappeared and was silent. I found her on Molly's diaper changing table with prescription wound cream all over her face and she was LICKING it off her lips! I page Scott to get his educated opinion on what to do next. Of course he didn't call me back...sigh! So I put my first phone call into Poison Control. Fortunately, it was no biggie as long as it was just a small amount. But it leaves me wondering....the kid licks soap, wound cream, eats chapstick, and likes anything I give her....does she have taste buds???? Well, she does look like her dad who is not a picky eater, maybe she got it from him or maybe she's just being Addy. Although inconvenient, I guess all ointments and creams need to be in an alternate location for now. Never a dull moment around here.

Back to my sister, Meredith. Please keep her in your prayers. She had a section of her small intestine removed today because they could not get the inflammation from the Crohn's disease under control. She spent two weeks in the hospital before Thanksgiving with a pretty significant infection and they decided the best course would be to remove the affected area. Good news is that this was the only affected area in her gut which could mean remission for many years. Let's pray that is the case. Another bit of good news in the middle of all this is that she was accepted into Baylor University where she intends to enter the nursing program. I guess she has realized the need for good nurses! Especially after they attempted to put a NG tube up her nose four times last night....without success...ouchie!

Before the craziness started this morning I told Mary Ella we needed to pray together for Meredith and by this afternoon, we still had not done it yet. She said, "oh mom, we forgot to say a prayer for Aunt Meredith this morning" I said, "you're right, let's do it right now." This is what she said:

Dear Lord,
Please be with, um, Meredith and, um, bring her back safe.
Help her to, um, feel better
And please help her to not get sick again. Amen.

Oh yes, what a sweet heart she has.

New town, new home, new school...oh my!

Well, we've done it. On Thursday, we took the girls to Tyler where we stayed to look at houses and schools. Scott and I quickly realized that Mary Ella is getting increasingly anxious about the move as she played 101 questions about every detail of our trip and move as we traveled up to East Texas. Addy, who is not our best traveller (putting it nicely), actually had a remarkable trip. Molly? She just slept....yea, a kid that sleeps in the car seat! She didn't even stir at the stop lights. We rolled into Tyler at about 6:30pm and checked into our hotel room at the Marriott Residence Inn, but you would have thought we were at the Ritz if you had your eyes closed and were listening to Mary Ella's description. She kept going on and on:

"Wow, look...they've got phones with cords"

"Look mom, the chair moves..."

"A stove, mom, we have one of those..."

"Mom, look, there's a bathroom!"

In the middle of all this excitement and explosion of pent-up car energy, we heard Addy just a giggling. I round the corner and find her giggling at herself in the full-length mirror (no, I don't have one...just standing up on the bath tub does the trick). I look over at Scott and he says, "We really should get them out more often". I nearly fell out laughing. So maybe our kids are more sheltered than previously thought....

We had our family slumber party and woke up bright and early for my sweet in-laws to pick up Mary Ella and Molly. They were taking them back to Shreveport for some spoil'n (that is a major understatement). Once they left, we went to meet the realtor. Basically our goal was to look at houses/schools to get familiar in preparation for serious house hunting in March. Well, as I've learned, plans evolve and change. It is a loooong story, but this house, we believe, was meant to be ours:

This is the col-de-sac lot we've always dreamed of and the house is perfect for our family of five. Pending all the inspections and "official" stuff, this house will be ours April 30th. A few changes will be made in May and we will move in June.

Down the street is a brand new elementary school called Jack Elementary. We went, visited and were very impressed.

Mary Ella will begin kindergarten next year! I just can't believe it.

We returned home Sunday...tired. When I say tired, I mean tired, wiped, exhausted, worn down....ready to get back to our normal, what ever that means! So we've been retraining sleep patterns, eating habits, and, well, sassiness all week. However, all the fun was worth it and I think we are settling back in.

A quick aside on Molly...the child has some cheeks and the cutest dimple in the left one that I could eat up every time she smiles. We took her in for her shots at 2 1/2 months and her weight was in the 75th percentile! Yes, I'm still nursing her and she is doing well as long as I stay off the dairy, poultry, rice, and oats. Not too much longer and she will probably be going to the "top shelf" formula like Addy did, but we just want to get her through the winter and cooties season since the two big sisters like to smooch on her all the time. She is three months today and so much fun. Phase 2 of the "baby fog" has lifted as she is being consistent about sleeping through the night and establishing a predictable sleep/wake cycle. Of course most of her daytime napping occurs in the carseat, but hey, at least she's sleeping.

Well, I guess I better catch some zzz's of my own. Scott is on call and usually those are the nights the children like to surprise me with night calls of my own. Nighty night!

Let me Clarify

Blame it on my fragmented state of mind reflected through my writing or whatever you will, but I did not intend for my previous post to imply that those without children somehow have more time on their hands than those of us that do. Unfortunately, we (Scott and I) do not have any (adequate) excuse for being messy before children. Scott was studying all the time. I had ample time to do things around the house and chose not to :). We would let dishes, laundry and junk mail pile up all the time. Laziness was my problem. So we really were messy and my point when talking to Scott was..... I can't believe how we used to let things pile up and how my tolerance for messes/clutter has decreased exponentially since having kiddos. My writing wasn't all that clear. Please know that I realize others without children do valuable things with their time, I just don't feel like I did :).

Confession

Now I know I've admitted before that with each child my OCD tendencies get worse. There is a home for each and every item in my house. It might be a basket for stuffed animals only or a plastic box for dollhouse things....thank God for Rubbermaid containers. If it does not have a clear "place" it has what I call a "shelf life" and is thrown away usually after I've picked it up from some random places 3-5 times. For instance, kid's meal toys...they stay for at most 7 days. The reason for this is time. If everything has a "home" it makes clean up much easier in the long run and toys remain toys not miscellaneous pieces of toys that you'll never find all the pieces to again. Yes, time management is important and when things get out of sorts, I'll admit, I get out of sorts.

All this leading up to my near panic attack the other day. While in the shower, I usually have to stick my head out the door several times in order to do a welfare check on our children. If I hear annoyed screaming?....they are just gonna have to work it out. If I hear objects that I recognize being played with?....I continue on. If I don't hear anything?.....time to get out. Well the other morning I had one of those silent moments, so I wrapped up my shower, dried off as fast as I could to go hunt down what was going on. I rounded the corner and my heart started racing at what I saw....once neatly folded clothes spread like confetti all over the floor. "It is snowing" Mary Ella said while Addy was happily throwing them up in the air. I thought I was going LOSE IT! Folded laundry is the ultimate representation of time in motherhood. Ask any mom with 2 or more children and you will find laundry is one of those things that never ends. I have to do 2 loads/day just to keep the baskets from overflowing. So, yes, I let that go all over me despite the fact that I was the one who didn't put it up immediately. Do you remember when doing the laundry 2x/week was a lot? How about running the dishwasher? I remember when we ran it only 1-2x/week. Now we run it nightly. I'm not complaining, it is just funny how things evolve and change. I said to Scott the other day, "we should've been ashamed of ourselves. We lived like slobs when we didn't have children. What on earth were we doing with our time????" I honestly don't remember.....

Happy New Year

The Burlison household ushered in the New Year.....asleep. Yes, we are duds, boring, socially isolated, party poopers, or whatever else you can come up with. We didn't give it a second thought pulling the blankets over our heads at 9:30pm. The kids were tucked safely into their beds and Scott was prepping for an eventful (as always) call on New Years Day. I did wake up at midnight only because of the fireworks and thought, "oh, it must be midnight..." and turned over to go back to sleep. I have to do just as much prepping as Scott does to maximize my energy "bank" deposits when he is on call. If I don't "mean mommy" begins to appear :).

As we look forward to 2008, we know it will be filled with lots of exciting and sometimes exhausting transitions. Number one, perhaps the most obvious, is that Scott will begin his official career in anesthesiology prompting a move to Tyler, Texas. There, Mary Ella will begin kindergarten in the Fall. Addy and Molly Kate will continue to hit milestones as young ones do from crawling, walking to potty training and tantrums (this one has already begun!). We will begin to add to our already amazing group of friends as we begin to finally settle. We have looked forward to this for so long and for so long it seemed so out of reach. It is hard to imagine all this is really happening. Somebody pinch me, please! The countdown is on and the nostalgia of the last ten years sometimes gets the best of me as I reflect on our journey. Bottom line, we are blessed as God has sustained us. It is only through many prayers, people, and special circumstances that we have made it to this point. So let us celebrate 2008!