After Dancy came home, Katie took to being a homeless bag lady. She confiscated every blanket and outfit for Dancy and walked around with it all piled on her stroller. She still thinks every blanket in the house belongs to her. Shad once counted 7 in her bed and repossessed 5 of them.
Pris came hours after Dancy was born and stayed for 2 days. She took the kids to the park 3 times in that time, and entertained them a lot otherwise. Shad and I had lots of time to rest and enjoy our fresh little daughter. She's grown so much since then that she looks so tiny in this picture.
After 2 days, Pris went back to Geneva Saturday night and then came back the next day with the rest of the family. Tom and Katie were actually kinda happy to see her leave them, because they were excited that she'd come back with their Bumpa, Ruthie and Levi. Bumpa and Dancy took a nap together on Sunday night. They left Monday afternoon to go back home.
Tom and Katie absolutely love having their very own baby sister.
My mom came to stay for a week on Wednesday, 2 days after Pris and everyone left, and 6 days after Dancy was born. That day we had a tornado watch issued at 1 pm for the rest of the day. Mom got here safely, Norton didn't have any tornados, and youth activities were NOT cancelled. Shad was on his way home from Phillipsburg when this rain storm hit:
We found out the next morning that there was a tornado that hit just 17 miles east of us. We saw shredded, twisted trees on the way to church on Sunday.
My mom cooked most of the nights she was here. One of the favorite meals was Chicken "Muggets" (Tom gets his N and M sounds confused sometimes) with a melon salad. Katie loved cramming melon balls into her mouth.
Everybody loves to hold our new girl.
We had a rainbow one night and it was really exciting. In fact, Tommy now uses the word "exciting" in his vocabulary. "Mom! The missionaries are here! That's so exCITING!" Stuff like that.
Whenever Dancy is on the floor crying, I can always be sure that some little person will be there to try and comfort her. They bring her all sorts of blankets, toys, pacifiers, clothes, and if that doesn't work, I usually get told that she needs milk from my boobs, or "pat her to burp" or that she needs her diaper changed. But when Momma is busy, the next best thing is to hold her and sing to her. Tom is explaining the picture to me at the moment, "I hold my Dancy and say, 'I got my Dancy! I got my Dancy! I got my Dancy!' Where's Dancy? She in her bed?" Did I mention that he loves his sister?
Tom Singing to Dancy
We went to the library as we usually do on Thursday mornings and there was a special music event--Randy's Music Jam. Randy is a Norton native who sings songs for kids. Tommy enjoyed talking to him after the event, and Randy gave him and Katie kazoos!
While Mom was here, Shad and I took advantage of a date night to go to the movie theater. Since Epic was one of the movies there, and we prefered to see it over Gatsby, we decided to bring Tom along. He watches movies so well that I wanted to take him for a treat to see one at the theater. So he worked concessions with us. He manned the candy counter and was great at offering recommendations to his customers. And keeping them in check with their manners--"Say 'pease!'" Then when it was time to go in for the movie, we got our popcorn, soda and candy. He was so excited to have his very own box of popcorn with his soda and candy in it. He loved the movie, and wore his 3D glasses for the first half hour or so, then decided he could see better without them. Shad and I don't blame him. We don't like wearing them, either. After the movie, we swept the theater. Would you believe this boy's excitement over getting his own broom? And look at this face! How could anybody resist taking this boy to the movie theater?
Dad came over the weekend that Mom was here. We took them out to Prairie Dog State Park. We walked the nature walk trail and then played at a playground in a campground by the lake. Katie really enjoyed pushing the stroller around for a bit.
Blue Hat, Green Hat
Tommy didn't make it easy for Grandma to leave--clinging to her legs, crying out, "Don't YEAVE me! Just stay in Kansas by me!" But he and Katie both handled her departure well. She left last Wednesday afternoon. Shad didn't have to work overtime on Friday OR Saturday last week! Natoma is starting to cut back on the overtime. He doesn't have to work either day this week, either. Oh, it feels like we can breathe and get things done that need done. On Friday we went down to Hays to get set up with new phones. Sprint's coverage changed and dropped northern Kansas, so I got on to Vern and Pris' family plan with Verizon, and Shad went to StraightTalk from Walmart. We went to Gella's Diner for dinner. Shad heard about it from a coworker. They brew their own root beer, and that was the main point of interest for Shad. Upon some internet research, we learned that they're highly rated on tripadvisor.com for their excellent food, brew, prices and quick service. We found everything we read to be correct. It was fantastic!
Saturday we got to sleep in late. Then Adam came over to play Magic with Shad, and I went out to garage sales. I found a nice microfiber couch with recliner ends. We picked it up to replace our abused and broken blue couch in the basement. It was just two blocks down the street at the house one of his coworkers just moved into. The guy had a truck, so he and Shad just loaded it in right then and we got it home. Then Shad and Adam had a not so fun time getting that hide-a-bed couch out of the basement. I'm not so happy about some scraped paint, but can hardly blame the guys. That couch just should have come out in pieces and then it would've been a different story.
Tommy got stuck in the bathroom at church on Sunday. Before sacrament meeting started, I noticed that Katie had a dirty diaper, so I took her out to change it. She went back in to the chapel while I took the diaper out to the dumpster, grabbed my bag from the van and went to the Primary room to return a piece of music. When I walked into the church, I heard a little person crying. I identified that it was Tommy and started looking for him. When I called out his name, he wailed out to me, "Momma! I'm stuck in the door!" After checking a couple different doors still trying to find him, I finally realized he was crying out from the bathroom door. He said he had gone looking for me and Katie. He wasn't able to open the door to get back out of the bathroom. What was so sad to me was that I almost didn't go back to the Primary at that time. And if I hadn't, I probably wouldn't have been too concerned about where Tommy was because I'd have assumed that he found a friend to sit with. It just breaks my heart to think about that poor, distressed boy being stuck in the bathroom, crying for help for an hour. I'm glad he was only in there for a few minutes. Him being stuck in there though, reminded me that in the church building I grew up going to, they have handles at little kids' height on the bathroom doors. Our bishop was out of town, but our stake president was there, so I told him about that and he said he'd talk to someone to get that done.
I've been doing okay on my own with my 3 little beings. That doesn't mean that I've successfully kept up on dishes, cleaning and laundry, but at least all those things got caught up while my mom was here. Between the two of us, we were able to get all that done. Now things have fallen to the wayside again as I have my little friends to play with and hold and feed and diaper and then take care of myself as I lose energy. On Tuesday I came down with a summer cold that wiped me out for most of Wednesday, seemed better on Thursday, but is much worse in my chest today. My visiting teacher came over Wednesday to help me set up some buckets for container gardening and that effort in the morning had me on the couch for most of the rest of the day. I just ached all over. It hurt to sit up to eat lunch. Shad stayed home from youth activities to help me so that I wouldn't be disabled Thursday as well. I went to the doctor yesterday and was prescribed antibiotics.
Last night after dinner, we walked up to the library to return DVDs and pick up some new ones. Last week we Jack Reacher and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. We really liked Jack Reacher, but decided not to finish watching Wallflower. This time we got Wreck-It Ralph and Valkyrie. We watched Wreck-It Ralph with the kids last night. Tommy was excited to get to eat popcorn out of a movie theater bucket. I thought the movie was good; Shad was disappointed.
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