The Fox Den: January 2009

Now that we can start fresh (it being a new year and all) I've found a little bit of time to get things up to speed. Before I sat down to ponder how I was going to go about this, I decided to read some of our older blogs. And, just so you know, this one is going to start out/sound a lot like to posting from December of 2007.

For the last 6 weeks, we've recycled a great deal of illness. We've had 8 infected ears (that's everybody minus Ian), an adenoid infection (Abby), 6 pneumonia infected lungs (Zoe had it twice), a sinus infection (Ian) and strep throat (Carey) and possible pink eye (Abby)...all totaling 6 trips to the ER, 6 trips to the doctor and roughly 120 breathing treatments (but we won't even mention the cost of the visits or the medications). Hopefully we are nearing the end. The girls' spirits and appetites are on the up swing and in that respect, all signs point to yes!

Regardless of being ill, the girls continue to keep us on our toes, especially where words come into play. So I will try to start from where the last blog left off....

In November, we celebrated Thanksgiving with Ian's family. The girls took particular interest in grammie's peno (piano). In one of of the photos you will notice Abby's arm all bandaged up. She had a hang nail and asked for a band aid, and that's what grandpa came up with. Here are some photos from that day:

My family came down for Thanksgiving that weekend, as has been tradition for the last few years. However, this year we put everyone to work in our basement project. Walls were framed, sheetrock hung and new lights installed. Thanks everybody for your help!! It's shaping up something sweet!

My mom thought it would be fun to have the older girls decorate Christmas cookies. They seemed to enjoy it and earned a sugar high in the process. I earned a new floor covering (sprinkles) in my kitchen. Here's some pictures from that:

As mentioned previously, we've been sick since Thanksgiving weekend which consumed all of December. We did return to Minnesota to celebrate Christmas and man was that crazy! It took us 8 hours to get to my parents house due to the snow and ice-a drive I never wish to see again. We ended up making a trip to the ER with Stella later that evening to make sure that her stiff neck was nothing more than that...and thankfully it wasn't and was most likely related to her double ear infection. After returning from the ER, we decided to open gifts. Imagine if you will-6 girls all under the age of 3 opening presents-this left little time for any photos as everyone was trying to establish some order to the chaos. We did manage to get a couple of pictures of the girls enjoying their cradles (after the fact), Zoe reading the newspaper with grandma Luci and playing in our new Dora tent (which the girls got from my friend Jen).

We celebrated Christmas with Ian's family a couple weeks later, after the girls were mid cycle of pneumonia. It was icy that night too and took us longer than expected to get there and unfortunately the girls weren't up to par. We didn't get any pictures from that night, but I would have to say the best gift we got was the portable DVD players for the van (which they gave to us early so we could use them on the way to Minnesota-what a lifesaver!!)

And that brings us to 2009 and what we've been up to on our own:

Abby is our little repeater...of EVERYTHING. She's been singing a lot lately and usually it's just made up songs or putting parts of others together and she's almost got the hand motions to Itsy Bitsy Spider down. She's all about using this loud, fake laugh right now and when you hear it, all you can do is laugh in response, which only makes her laugh harder. She's famous for saying, "follow me" then running circles or skipping around the living room. She's a pro at knowing her colors and she's starting to master "big" words...like rhinoceros.

Here she is saying one of the songs from "Yo Gabba Gabba" (one of the shows she likes). The song is, "don't bite your friends". She started singing it, then Stella joined in.

Stella is still the mother hen who is full of love. She likes to snuggle and give kisses and get things for her sisters if they ask. She also has a tendency to be a clown and can always make you laugh. She loves to draw, especially with the crayons in the tub and will gladly tell you just what is is she is making. She also likes to sing and frequently makes requests for mommy to start and she will sing along.