fat lip

warning: there are four pictures in this post. the last two are not for the faint of heart.

on monday around noon, i was in the bathroom getting ready for the day (yes, that's right, it was noon). the girls were laughing in their room, when suddenly, i heard a thud and both girls burst into tears. they were the kind of cries you hate to hear - serious injury cries. i ran into their room and found diane clutching her head and madeleine clutching her mouth, with large pools of blood starting to form in her hand.

these are the days that i am glad that i have a husband that works from home. these are probably the days that randy wishes he had a nice, quiet office.

i don't do well with blood, so i threw a washcloth at madeleine, grabbed jonathan, and ran across the house (which takes a surprisingly long time in our house) to get randy. i told him that madeleine and diane had run into each other and madeleine was bleeding profusely from her mouth.

i was really hoping that she had just bit her tongue or lip and it wasn't anything that big. mouth injuries bleed a lot and often look worse once the blood mixes with saliva. unfortunately, madeleine's was a little worse than i had hoped. her front two teeth got shoved back and upward in her mouth, and she has a big chunk of skin gone from the inside of her lip.

after we calmed the girls down, we found out that madeleine had been jumping off the bed as diane ran past and madeleine had basically landed, with her mouth open, on diane's head. while we were tending to madeleine, diane was lying on the bed and kept saying, "it happened to me, too!" after inspecting her head, we decided that her primary problem was that she wanted as much attention as madeleine was getting.

we called our dentist (randy's dad), who happened to be on vacation for his continuing dental education, and after some back and forth, with randy trying to get pictures without sending madeleine back into hysteria, he told us that she should be okay and told us what to watch for as things heal. it's really nice to have a dentist in the family.

i rocked madeleine and sang to her for a while to get her calmed down and she spent the rest of the day watching as much tv as she wanted to. she's actually been great about the whole thing, although she's had a couple breakdowns about the fact that she can't eat what she wants to (she'll be eating soft foods for a couple more days). i think the whole thing has been more traumatizing for randy and me than it has been for madeleine.

i took these pictures the next day and madeleine was very obliging. hopefully things heal quickly.

pictures of the inside of her mouth:

three years old

diane turned three today. i can't believe it. she has really hit a developmental/growth spurt lately and she feels so old all of a sudden. randy keeps scooping her up and telling her to stop growing. she's leaving that squishy toddler stage and starting to say more grown up phrases and act older. still a toddler, but barely. she is her own little personality and it's fun to see it as she grows up. 

these are a bunch of pictures from opening presents this morning. madeleine was right in there and we finally had to tell her she couldn't stand next to diane if she didn't let diane open her own presents. let's just say she had a hard time having the focus not be on her. this afternoon, she said, "where are diane's other presents?" at first i thought that it was a commentary on how many presents diane got and thought that was odd. i told her there weren't any more and she said, "no, the ones she opens at night!" then i realized that she was referring to how presents work on her birthday. i reminded her that not everyone's birthday starts with christmas presents and ends with birthday presents. diane gets all of hers in the morning.

madeleine showing diane the book she made her. it has a picture of diane and a number three on the front.

showing diane the mermaids (notice there are two? how convenient!) that madeleine picked out at the dollar store for diane.

diane showing off the bracelet and ring from the petersen family. i just like that she looks like she's singing "i'm a little teapot."

 

later in the day, we decorated diane's cake. i went to frost it and it started tearing up the top of the cake. frosting fail. so, the cake was really beautiful. fortunately, diane didn't seem to care one bit. she was just excited to put sprinkles on it.

i love the sheer joy on her face here. i made a dress for diane to match the one i made madeleine for her birthday. of course, they had to be twins today.

this was the finished product on the cake. the girls each ate about half of a little piece. none of us are big cake people and always end up throwing about 2/3 of it out, but the girls love the concept of making and decorating a birthday cake and then singing and blowing out a candle and insist on doing it for each other. cheap thrills.

 

i love this girl.

here are the two parts of her birthday video interview. it's pretty long, but she sings in it and is pretty cute all around.

star wars quilt

started: november 7th, 2012

completed: january 28th, 2013

dimensions: approx. 72"x90"

notes: back in october, my friend, robynn, was trying to pick out a quilt to make for her son's bedspread. i sent her a few options, including this one, and volunteered to make it for her since i love to quilt but don't have the budget to run out and buy a bunch of fabric right now. it was a win-win situation. so, i made up a pattern and got her a list of fabric requirements and she went out and picked out and bought the fabric and shipped it to me (fabric is much cheaper in utah than washington, plus i wanted her to pick out the fabric that she wanted). her son just got new star wars sheets, so the fabrics go with that theme, including the backing, which is an actual star wars print (of course, i forgot to get a picture of the back before sending it off). 

i got the fabric at the beginning of november and had the top pieced and pinned to the back in three days. it was a really easy pattern, with lots of strip quilting. robynn still had to pick out the binding fabric but we both got sidetracked by christmas projects, so it took a while for her to get me the binding and then it took me a while to get up the desire to sew again after all of my christmas projects. i started quilting it about a week ago and spent a lot of time sewing while chatting with my mom during her visit this past weekend. i really wanted to get it done so that my mom could take it back to utah with her. my mom was kind and put on the binding for me (she is much better at machine binding than i am) and we finished it up a couple hours before she left. it means that i didn't have time to wash it before i sent it off, so the quilt didn't crinkle up before these pictures, and i forgot to measure the finished quilt and take a picture of the back. 

i hope that the young jedi knight will enjoy his new quilt.

my mom visits

as a birthday present to herself, my mom came to visit us last weekend. i, of course, thought it was a marvelous idea. she came last wednesday and left monday. it didn't seem nearly long enough, but i'm sure that would be true no matter how long she had stayed. unfortunately, the day that she arrived, my kids all got nasty colds, so we really spent most of the weekend just sitting around and visiting. i didn't mind, and knowing my mom, she didn't mind either. by some miracle, she seems to have avoided the cold, despite having the kids climb (cough, and sneeze) all over her, so hopefully that stays true once she's home. 

her actual birthday fell during her visit, so we made a cake. she turned fifty-six, thus the five and six candles. the girls decorated it.

 we never did get a picture of my mom and all three kids, but did manage to snap them separately.

i would have liked to have hog-tied my mom and made her stay forever, but i'm pretty sure that she would have gotten sick of it pretty quickly and my dad would have been pretty upset with me. love you mom; thanks for coming to visit. 

bookend photoshoot

pictures of my bookends.

meanwhile, diane was napping.