Gammie came

Posted on July 12, 2012 by francescaforsyth

This is so late coming, but I have been a little out of it lately. OK, but she came and it was wonderful. She played with the boys (Noah and Liam) and had a million little activities for them to do – scavenger hunts, making books, collecting seeds … it was adorable. And she made dinner … every night. It was heaven for me. The only thing I felt bad about was when she got sick on the last day here. She was really sick – like down and out, crawl in your bed and take advil kind of sick. I felt badly that we sent her home that way. But after she left, the boys asked about her in the morning, “Where’s Gammie?” Like they expected her to be a permanent addition to our home It was cute. Here are only a few pictures I snapped while she was here. I should’ve done more, but I didn’t … again, I am just kind of out of it.

Noah explaining something to Gammie, of course.

Liz, don’t hate me for putting this picture in, but the boys’ faces are awesome. I think you didn’t know you were in the shot, sorry, should’ve told you.

So cute. The funniest part of the picture is the reason why there’s a blanket over Ray – Liz said this fluffy hair was tickling her face, so she put a blanket over his hair. lol.

Thanks for coming Gammie! We miss you.

looking at me

Posted on July 11, 2012 by francescaforsyth

Last night I was holding Ray. Daniel had been holding him for a while and he seemed fussy, so I took him to see if he wanted to eat, but before he started nursing, I just talked to him for a few minutes. It was a beautiful little moment. He looked for my face and seemed fixated on me and my voice. He smiled and made cute little baby noises and I know it doesn’t sound like a “moment” or anything special, it just was. Had to be there … and you just had to be me. It was like he really saw me and knew me and loved me. After a minute I told Daniel to get the camera. The camera, of course, does not capture what it was really like, but it was glorious. It was like heaven smiling at me. Really. I know it all sounds cheesy and like maybe I haven’t been sleeping enough lately (which I haven’t) and I know what it sounds like to hear mommies say, “he was talking to me!” even though their kid is basically a worm … but really. He saw me and he knew me and he loved me – for a few minutes last night.

first outing

Posted on July 2, 2012 by francescaforsyth

A friend of mine snapped this shot of my boys and a few of the Ordaz boys sitting together at the baptism we went to on Saturday. My favorite part? Alejandro has his arm around Noah’s shoulders. These boys just love each other and it’s so sweet.

We went on our first outing as a family of FIVE on Saturday. It was a baptism for a little girl in our ward. She asked Daniel to baptize and confirm her and for me to lead the music.

Randomly, Ray fell asleep about 15 minutes before we left and stayed asleep for the entire baptism, so he just sat asleep in his carseat in the stroller. It was awesome! But that was pure luck. We’ll see how it goes in the future. The fourth of July is coming up and we’re going to some fireworks …. we’ll see what happens.

It is continually a learning experience to be a mommy of three kids. It reveals all sorts of things. I have been watching lots of home inprovement shows and we’ve hosted a few grandmas over the past month and this is what I’ve learned – I live in a sub-par home. It is small, the one bathroom is glaringly not enough, all of our floors need to be replaced, carpet is unacceptably dirty, the central air conditioning doesn’t work well, our fridge is too small, and the kitchen just flat out needs to be replaced – completely … down to the studs kind of replacement.

Maybe we’ve just gotten used to a few inconveniences, like not running the dishwasher or washing machine or using hot water in the bathroom while someone is showering … or how I just adjust all cooking times to make up for the fact that my oven is from the 50’s and doesn’t cook like it should … but when you have people in your home, living with you, those things come to light And the home improvement shows are definitely not helping. It makes me feel like I just need to grab a sledge hammer and start knocking things down and out. But that would be bad because I could not replace or fix the things I sledged.

Anyway, I should be posting more pictures of Ray, but I haven’t taken any. I will next time. But here’s the update …

Ray has been pretty uncomfortable – lots of gas, and grunting and whining, with a little crying mixed in. He’s not sleeping or eating very well over the last 24 hours, so Daniel is sick and I am tired. That’s what happens when Ray is uncomfortable. We pay for it. Other than that – there’s nothing else going on. seriously. nothing. All we do is hold Ray, burp Ray, feed Ray, try to put him to sleep and fail, so not much else is happening. Not much cleaning or laundry is getting done, but we are all fed and the boys don’t seem to care about the fact that we’re not leaving the house. OK, Ray is crying, gotta go.

10 times a day

Posted on June 25, 2012 by francescaforsyth

This is probably one of those posts where I read it later and think, “wow, I’m so glad my life is not like that now” and it will make me grateful in the future, so I’m going to write, otherwise, I should keep this kind of stuff to myself. Just to give you an idea of where this is going, lemme just say – Ray just threw up all over me. It was a big throw up, not a little spit up, maybe about a 1/2 cup’s worth of regurgitated milk, all over my shirt. And guess what? I didn’t rush to change my clothes. Instead, I lifted up my shirt so the wet part wasn’t on my body making me uncomfortable and burped Ray, then put him down and had a bowl of cereal with baby throw up all over the front of me because I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to eat again and it was already 10 am. That’s where we’re headed here with this post.

I feel like the walking dead. I just woke up, hmmmm, I don’t think I was actually asleep for the past 4 1/2 hours, so I don’t know if “woke up” is the right word …. I just left my bedroom. yes, that’s more accurate. I just left my bedroom after a night of about 4 hours of sleep and I am a little delirious. I know this is definitely the wrong time to re-evaluate my life, since I am hormonal being that I just had a baby 3 weeks ago, I am tired because I’ve had little to no good sleep in the last 24 hours and I have hardly interacted with anyone over the age of 6 in the last week, so my social filter is off and what I have to say and think is not for public consumption. You might say, “what about Daniel?” … yeah. I don’t know if we’ve “interacted”, I don’t know what the words are for what we do around each other each day …. “tag team” is the best description I think. So, bad time to reflect on life, but I can’t help but think, “what the heck happened??”

I found myself wondering what happened over the span of time between the hours of 4:30 am and 7:00 am. I sat in my bed, awake just nursing, patting Ray’s back or changing his diaper and watched the sun rise behind my blinds. I wondered what happened as I heard my day begin before I was ready to go to sleep – listening to Ray grunt off and on like he was passing a kidney stone for 3 hours and then hearing Noah and Liam wake up and bounce downstairs and then begin yelling at each other about legos. I saw Daniel wake up and shuffle into the bathroom to get ready, then kiss me goodbye at 6:30 am because he had to be to work early for some meeting and I wondered, “what the heck happened?”

The question still rung in my head as I tried to sleep between the hours of 7 and 8:30 am. I had already changed Ray and nursed him on both sides and wrapped him up to go to sleep, but sleep was not in the cards for me. It was like Chinese torture to try and sleep while every 35- 40 seconds Ray grunted like I did in labor – yelping out every once in a while and I couldn’t just put him in another room where I couldn’t hear him because what if something really bad happened?? So, there I lay, listening to grunting little Ray and not sleeping, but trying and almost falling asleep about 25 times, but only really sleeping for about 2 minutes at a time, if I slept at all. The whole time I kept looking over at Ray to see if he was waking up and needed something, so that I might perhaps be able to rectify the situation, but no. He lay there with a perfectly serene face, eyes closed and then about every 40 seconds, his face would get red and he’d grunt like he was trying to poop a tennis ball, then he’d relax and look serene again. I dare say, he was actually sleeping during all of this.

What happened to me and my life? I remember back in the days when I slept at night, showered in the morning hours and went to work and talked to other adult humans. I remember back in the days when I only had to deal with my own excrement and no one else’s. I remember back in the days when I spent time with Daniel and we talked (about other things besides children, sleep and excrement) and we went out to eat and we felt like a couple, not parents. What the heck happened? …. I am not going to answer that, because I know this is not the time to re-evaluate my life. Just a rhetorical question I guess.

Anyway, I was thinking about my life (as I shouldn’t be) in the shower yesterday while Ray was screaming his head off (by the way – worst shower of my life) and I was thinking about the list of things I do more than 10 times a day and this is what I came up with:

– nurse Ray (in case I am reading this later and am wondering if nursing has gotten better at 3 weeks – no. it hasn’t. It still hurts like the dickens for latch on and the first 20 seconds and then it turns into outrageous itchiness all over my body – this happened with the other two boys also … the itchiness. It’s torturous.)

– change diapers

– rock or pat Ray

– answer questions asked by Noah

– listen to Liam whine about something … really, anything. Sometimes I think he might cross that line and whine to me saying, “Mommmyyyyyy! Why do I have to breathe air … whyyy?? I don’t want to! I not going to.”

– pick up the bathroom hand towel that is inevitably on the floor and hang it back on the towel bar. This drives me crazy … every. single. day.

And here is what I WISH happened more than 10 times a day, every day:

– Daniel would kiss me.

– I would have positive feedback from those around me – a smile, a “thank you” … something positive.

– I heard nothing. No noise, no yelling, no grunting, no fighting, no phone ringing, no running or jumping, no requests, no anything.

– I looked out over an expansive and gorgeous view of the aqua ocean and pristine, white sands in Mexico (what?? This is my wish list right? I can wish for this).

hmmmmmm, that would be nice right? More than 10 times a day.

sundays, minus church

Posted on June 24, 2012 by francescaforsyth

I have been spending Sundays at home with Ray for the past 3 weeks. Because of this, I have been yearning for some spiritual uplift and that’s where cable stepped in. Yes. Cable. We have access to BYUTV through our cable set up, so for the past three Sundays, I sit down to nurse Ray and see what’s on BYUTV. The past two Sundays have been talks from the most recent Women’s Conference in April of this year. And they have been wonderful! Just what I needed.

Last week I heard a talk that inspired me to move things around in our front room to make a space for the laptop to be accessible to the boys and to be in an open area. The talk mentioned how it is important to have the computer out in the open, where everyone can see what you’re looking at online. I have always thought this was a good idea, but never knew where I would find space in my tiny front room to do that – but after last week’s talk, I made it happen and I love it. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, eh?

This week I heard a few quotes that I wanted to put up in my home. I love word art in the home and I already have a few things up in my front room. But now I want to put things in my boys’ room and other places. One of the quotes is at the top of this post (by the way, I got a template for that design here). The other quote is here:

My little Noah is always so scared at night. I remember being the same way. I was fearful of so many things. I want Noah to know that he does not need to be afraid. So I will put this one in the boys’ room next to Noah’s bed.

As for the quote at the beginning of this post, it may seem odd to have an inspirational quote about making mistakes, but I want my boys to know that no matter what, they are loved. I want our family to feel that. I know it will make us stronger as a little family to know that there is nothing that can stand in the way of us becoming an eternal family, as long as we try.

And that’s my Sunday activity for the day. Happy Sabbath.