Catch up - February

February saw us sick again, crafting and making all sorts of preparations.  To start out, Jilly got a pretty raging ear infection.  The poor girl was clearly not feeling good at all!  She would lay around, moaning about her ear hurting, fever going up and down, and overall just crummy.  We tried some garlic oil drops, which definitely soothed her, but didn't quite kick the infection.  A few days later she had her 4 year well-child check up and the NP said it was very red and inflamed and prescribed antibiotics.  I had some mixed feelings on filling the prescription, because I don't want to overdose my kids with them, I was worried about some of the side effects, but in the end Jilly was miserable and anything else we were doing for her only provided comfort for a few hours at most.  I decided to fill it and I'm glad I did.  It was an appropriate situation to use them and she perked right up in a day or two.  

You can see how bad she felt, because this was taken at like 3pm!  She fell asleep on the couch after crying about her hurting ear and getting some juice and ibuprofen.  Poor thing.

This is just a fun picture Steve took while playing with the black and white setting on our computer.  I heart my Goo.

These are what Jilly calls her "Jesus wheel".  A couple years ago in Sharing Time, I had the kids make these with cardstock.  As you turn the top wheel, you see a total of 5 pictures, helping you to remember Jesus during the Sacrament.  I'd made probably 3 for Jilly because they keep getting ripped or chewed on.  I decided to make another one and laminate it, since my mom got us a laminator for Christmas.  I thought then it was sure to stand up to the abuse of both the 4 year old and her little brother.  I had told a friend about it and she thought it was a neat idea, so I made one for her daughter too.  I colored the pictures of the girls with their hair color and favorite color of dress, so they could make it more personal. They turned out great!

(I must add though, that ours lasted only about 3 weeks before Jason grabbed it, pulled off the top wheel and then ripped it in half!  I'll have to either find something stronger, give up on the wheel, or  just be extremely vigilant about keeping it away from Jason!)

It was also Valentines Day and Jilly's class was having a party where all the kids were asked to bring Valentines.  It certainly would have been easy to buy a pack and send them that way, but I was feeling crafty, so I decided to make her valentines.  It ended up being very easy because I already had everything I needed, pink cardstock, heart foam stickers, and a sharpie!  Each one was a little different and had every kid's name on it.  I thought they turned out pretty cute, so I hope they pleased all the 3 & 4 year olds.  :-)

Here is a close up of a couple of them.

We also made a trip to Costco and found a few things for Ducky.  This cute ensemble has butterflies on it.  One of the great things about having another girl is that we get to re-use a lot of Jilly's baby clothes, which let's face it, were super insanely cute.  However, Jilly was a winter baby, so while onesies and pants work at any time of year, fleece sleepers and long sleeve velvet & corduroy dresses are not going to work for a summer baby.  So we need to get Ducky a few things.

We just couldn't pass up the sweet outfit with the sleeper, onesie, pants and hat.  When even Steve thinks something is cute, you know it is.  :-)  I honestly don't hold out much hope that Ducky will ever wear the hat.  My kids just have giant heads (thanks a lot Steve), so newborns hats don't fit very long, if at all.  But the clothes are soft cotton and will be great for a lukewarm June, not too hot, not too cool.

We found this adorable dress too!  It's sooooo cute!  Ducky's gotta have something to wear to church, so this will be fantastic on a hot August Sunday.  I was initially worried that she wouldn't fit into the 3 months size before summer was over, but then Steve reminded me that summer doesn't start until July and lasts through, at least, the first part of September.  So she'll be 3 months old by the time summer is wrapping up.  Most likely she'll have plenty of opportunity to wear it, unless she really really takes after me and stays very small and petite!  Even then, she'll probably get to wear it.  :-)

In order to get a good idea of what we needed for Ducky, I had to pull out all the baby clothes to see what would work.  It may seem a little premature to get them all out four months prior to the due date, but I had to at least get a handle on what we had.  I found we had a lot more than I thought.  Definitely only one or two dresses, but more sleepers than I thought.  And there were a lot of Spring outfits that I'd bought for Jilly when she was about 3 months old, that I probably put on her too soon.  So they will work great as summer fades into fall.  That was nice.  I also decided to pull out any clothes for the older kids that they would likely fit into soon and reorganized their closet a bit too.

While I was doing that, Jilly decided to put together her own outfit.  Quite the look, I must say!  She's wearing an Easter dress of mine from when I was 6 (or it might have been my sister's, but since I think my mom made them the same size, we can't be sure), a fleece infant hat that isn't even close to fitting Jason, and her fairy wings.

She danced around the apartment like that for the rest of the night.  It was stinkin' hilarious!   At the end of February, we made a trip to Houston for Steve's sister's wedding.  But that was such a big trip, it deserves it's own post, so stay tuned!