A Smattering of Duehrings

Today marks our 11th anniversary. It has been an awesome 11 years, and I look forward to the next 11. Five kids now; maybe we’ll have ten kids then. Ha!

We’re actually going to go out tonight. It should be fun: We’re just going to go see a movie, then race back home 1,000 miles per hour so June can feed Molly and put her to bed, while I probably put Eli to bed (depends on how well he sleeps during naptime). Then we’ll go back out to snarf some food at a local restaraunt, and come back home to put the rest of the kids to bed. Does that sound like a blast, or what?

News on Molly

Molly has figured out how to easily roll from back to front and then from front to back. Starting just yesterday she started rolling all over the living room. She will roll to get to her toys and her favorite thing to get to is my computer cords. Pretty soon the gate to the stairs will have to stay shut. When she is on her tummy she is starting to push up onto her knees, too. Crawling is coming soon. Her teeth are all the way through now and she is only waking me 3 times a night now instead of 5.

News on Eli

Eli is still 2 years old. He has started talking in sentences some. Praise the Lord! He says things like “E I not like it, mommy. This is much better than just saying his name and screaming. He is learning.

Other than his diaper ordeal yesterday, not too many big messes this week. He did find out that pepper burns. I found him standing on the table the other day dumping pepper into his diaper. About 2 minutes later the screams began. He also found out that pepper in the eyes burns, too. I don’t think he will play with pepper again.

News on Micah and Evan

I never really have anything to tell about Micah and Evan. That is a good thing because a few years ago I could have written a book about all the disasters they made. They just hang out in the front of our house riding their bikes and scooters most of the time. The weather has been perfect for playing outside all month long.

News on Maggie

There seems to be a growing number of boys hanging out at the end of our driveway. One 10 year old boy even told Maggie that he was dating her now. Uh, a 10 year old dating a 7 year old, what is that supposed to mean? Daddy had a talk with Maggie about that. I dread when she gets to those teenage years.

Maggie had another game this morning. Her team won again 5-0. She is doing a really good job and getting better each week. Damon works with her at home quite a bit and then they have 2 practices a week. I really thought that watching soccer at this age would be a joke. They actually play hard and it is fun to watch. I have been very surprised at how well they do. Here are some snapshots I took at the game this morning.

News on Mommy and Daddy

We get to go on a DATE tonight. Today is our anniversary and my dear friend Rachel called and asked if she could watch our kids tonight so we could go out.

I have an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon on Monday that I am nervous about. I have been through some weird things lately with numbness and joint pain. When I went to the doctor last week he saw something he called an abnormal mass on the back of my neck that he was concerned about and wanted me to go to this specialist. The numbness and joint pain symptoms are gone now so I am thankful for that.

That is the news for this week!

I heard Eli calling my name. It was 4:00, so I thought I might as well let him get up from his nap. Besides, he sounded like he was in a good mood. Maybe he actually slept for a bit! Then I opened the door. I wished I hadn’t. I really should have waited to open that door until June got home.

There stood Eli. Naked. Covered in the remnants of his diaper. His POOPY diaper.

“Eli! You’re not supposed to take your diaper off! That’s naughty!” screams Damon, a look of utter disgust on his face.
“Yep, naughty. Yucky!” Eli responds with a cute little smile on his face as he proceeds to pick up his open, dripping diaper to hand to Damon.

Do you remember June’s post about the vaseline? The pic of the vaseline covered changing table? Well, picture in your mind that same picture, only what’s covering the changing table a different color. The consistency would be about the same… I hope you appreciate my decision not to have pics with this post.

I will have to say that he made a valiant effort to clean it up himself. He pulled his dung-covered body up onto the changing table to grab a box of wipes, and left evidence of his efforts all over the floor. There were dung-covered wipes scattered amongst the brown smears all over the carpet. It also appeared he attempted to exercise his artistic abilities–a pleasant scene of trees and rolling landscape finger-painted across one wall. Of course, it was all just one color.

So, how many times can one steam clean a carpet before it disintegrates? How many times can one use hand sanitizer before the skin becomes discolored? How long can one dry heave without causing irrepairable throat damage? These are the questions that plague me this evening.

Damon’s mom has been here visiting us for the past few days. Today before she headed back home we took the kids to Burger King for lunch. There is nothing like a bunch of screaming toddlers in playland to give you a headache. At least it exhausted Molly and helped her to sleep all afternoon.

There is one way to keep a baby happy at naptime…

Damon and I didn’t get much sleep last night. Just when I was ready to kick little-miss-eat-every-two-hours-all-night-long out of my room, I looked in her mouth this morning and another tooth had broken through during the night. The poor little baby was probably in pain all night. I actually tried to pull her into bed with me once without feeding her and that really ticked her off. She thinks if she is in my bed she has to be eating. The sucking must soothe the pain or something, too. Sometimes I wish my babies would take pacifiers.

My 3 boys never did this kind of thing with teething. I never knew when they had teeth coming in because they never got very fussy. I can tell that Molly is going to be more of a drama queen like her big sister.

Molly is also sleeping on her tummy now. She decided she kind of likes to be on her tummy and she flips over as soon as I lay her down and then falls asleep on her tummy.