Timmy's cuteness

Just a few cute things Timothy has said or done lately.

One day when Melanie was down for a nap, Timothy said "after she wakes up from her nap, she can play." He went in her room and woke her up, which made me mad because she was only a half hour into her 2 hour nap. She started crying and a few minutes later Timmy said "she's crying. Go wake her up. She wants to play." I couldn't be mad anymore because he just wanted to play with his sister.

On Saturday we got to see Timothy's cousin Ava get baptized. It was a fun-filled day and at the end of the day as things had wound down and he was sitting in his seat at the table sipping some milk he said "I'm not baptized. I'm gonna be baptized. When I turn eight I'm gonna be baptized." I thought it was really cute.

Yesterday while I was feeding Melanie her lunch, Timothy grabbed the clear plastic lid to her food and covered his eyes and nose with it, then said, "I'm an astronaut." I don't know where he got that from, but it was pretty funny.

Today while we were eating lunch Timothy said "that's your grilled cheese. Jesus gave that to you. Heavenly Father gave that to you."

And last but not least, at the end of lunch I said "are you full?"
He said, "yeah. I want to go to nap."
Having my Timothy tell me he wants to go to sleep is always nice. :o)

Antics

It's fun to watch as Timothy grows and starts problem solving and playing in more sophisticated ways. All of this happend in the span of about 15 minutes:

He was sitting on his slide and asked me if I thought he should jump off it or slide. I said "jump". He said "jump and slide," with annunciation on the and. Then he rand and got his step stool and set it at the bottom of the slide. He proceeded to slide down the slide, then jump off the step stool. He was able to jump and slide! :o)

Later, when he was playing cars with Melanie, he took a car out of Melanie's hand and said, "no Melanie, you can have the girl car." Then he handed her "flow" from the movie "Cars," AKA a "girl car."

Shortly after that he started acting out scenarios with his cars while having them talk to each other.
"Want to race?"
"Ok."
"I'm going to get you!"
Then he had the cars crash
"Are you ok?"
etc. etc.
It's really fun to watch and listen to.

A few funny Timmy Quotes

After Timothy woke up from a nap he said this...
T: "Where's Daddy?"
Me: "He's at work."
T: "He's sleeping."
Me: "No, he's at work at KMart."
T: "No. He's in the house. He's upstairs, sleeping."
A few minutes later....
T: "Daddy's at Kmart."


Another Timmy quote...
"I want to take a poop."

A cute story about the kids...
I was quickly putting some laundry from the washer into the dryer when Melanie, who was laying in the family room, began crying. I told Timmy "can you go see if Melanie is ok?"
He ran to her and was holding a little red bear that my Grandma gave him on our trip. I came back in there and said "is she ok?"
He said, "Melnie's ok. She wants the bear." Then he gave her the bear. She didn't stop crying so he said "Melanie needs a kiss!" And he gave her one. Then he starting saying "it's ok Melanie. It's ok." She didn't stop crying after all of his efforts to share his cars with her, hug her, and comfort her so finally he yelled out in frustration... "She wants a nap! Take her a nap! Take her a nap!" Then after a little while longer, when I didn't take her for a nap, he yelled out, "she needs her food!"

Funny little boy.

The Front Door

Yesterday, I went up stairs to put some clothes away in Allan and my closet. Timothy was playing contentedly downstairs with his blocks. I could hear him talking about how he was building houses and he even came upstairs twice to show me a picture on a couple of the blocks. I was only upstairs for 5 or 10 minutes putting the clothes away. When I came downstairs I saw he had built a town in the family room and was working on building a new house in the living room. That's when he said "I need more blocks," and proceeded to open the front door and the metal screen door and run out to the christmas deer we have in our front yard. The whole 20 seconds this took, I am telling him "we're not going to go outside right now, the blocks are inside." That's when I notice him trying to pull a block out of his block bag which was sitting next to the deer in the yard. I hadn't even known he had gone outside! Thank goodness he hadn't tried to cross the street on his own to play at the park or something like that. We do live on a quiet street in the back of our subdivision where only people who live back here and the ice cream man pass by, but still a very scary realization. Moral of the story? Keep the bolt locks, locked!

On another note, Timothy has a new bed. Well... not really a new bed. When I put him down for his nap now, I can't get him to sleep in his bed. When I leave the room, he takes his stuffed animals, goes into the closet, shuts the door, and uses his stuffed animals as pillows. Silly little guy.

Wishing for a stoplight

Typically, when I am driving I am in a big hurry to get wherever it is I am going. Getting out the door with both of the kids takes longer than it used to with just Timothy, so I find myself ending up in more of a rush. I'm getting more and more used to it and planning it better, but it still happens. I end up in a rush and I just hope as I'm driving that I get lucky enough to hit all the green lights. Even when I'm not in a hurry to get somewhere I find myself hoping to hit all of the green lights because it's just no fun stopping at red lights.

Today, we were driving home from somewhere and Timothy was way past due for his nap. When he's excessively tired it takes him about 5 or 10 minutes of fussing in the car to get himself to sleep. Melanie was a trooper through the fussing, then within about a minute of Timothy falling asleep, it was Melanie's turn. Her binky was lying somewhere in the abyss of baby seat, and I was just pleading in my mind for her to not wake up her brother who had just fallen asleep. Then, I found myself passing each green light I went through just hoping and hoping one of them would turn red! I needed a red light so I could do the special mommy maneuver of snatching her binky out of the abyss and slyly placing it back in her mouth before Timothy even knew she was crying. I passed green light after green light and had no such luck. It was getting to the point where I really had no choice. I wanted to avoid a rude awakening with Timothy and Melanie's fussing was just stressing me out. So, I did the mommy maneuver while driving. It's not an easy maneuver to do in the first place, but trying to stay between the lines while driving makes it even harder. Good thing I am well coordinated. I bet you thought the story was going to end with me getting into a fender bender or something like that... :o) Sorry to disappoint, but I pulled it off.... this time.

OK. So I tell myself like at least once a week I need to blog more. Especially since the last time I blogged was when Melanie was born. So, I am going to blog today.

Today when I put Timothy down for his nap, he don't go straight down. I fed Melanie and spent some time playing with her and when I came out of my room, I heard him talking. That was about an hour after I put him down for his nap. I have learned over time though, that I can't go in there after I put him down, or he really won't go to sleep. So, I just ignored the talking and let him do what he does.Later, when I went to go wake him up from his nap, this is what I found at his doorway entry.

In his room, I found an even bigger mess. He had gotten into both of his book drawers. The bottom drawer holds all of his board books and the top drawer hold his paperback and pop-ups. I was trying to keep the paperbacks and pop-ups out of his reach so they wouldn't get ruined. Fortunately he didn't decide to tear any of the pop-ups of the page or anything.

And, this is how I found him when I looked at his bed...

The part I thought was kind of funny is that he gave his 3 bears a nice cushy spot on the pillow and he used books for his pillow. He's a silly kid and he has always loved his books!

On another note, here are a couple of pictures I took of Melanie today. She's 12 week old.

Melanie Brooke Merrell was born at 7:23 AM on July 13, 2009. She weighed 7 pounds, 7 ounces and was 19 and ¼ inches long. Here’s the story. It was Sunday morning and we were going about our Sunday as usual with Allan preparing to go to his meetings before church since he is the Executive Secretary. We had spent some time debating whether we should go up to Phoenix for our Nephew, Nathan’s blessing which was taking place at church that morning. After pondering it for some time, we decided it would be best for Allan to stay home instead of going since that was our gut feeling about it. Around 10:00 AM, I started feeling my first contractions that seemed to be something more than Braxton Hicks. I told Allan to go ahead and go to his meetings since even if I was in labor, it was going to be a while before we needed to go to the hospital and before the contractions became regular. Boy was I right! Timothy and I got ready to go to church and headed over. It was during Sacrament meeting that I started to think I was in more than just false labor as I watched the clock and was having contractions regularly every 10 minutes. We were sitting in the pews with me watching the clock, Timothy in his umbrella stroller and Allan on the end of the isle when one of the older Sisters in the ward collapsed right by us and Allan jumped up to help keep her from falling to the ground. She had momentarily passed out and the 3 gentleman who caught her, including Allan, walked her out into the foyer supporting her weight. I felt a need to help because I am a wilderness first responder and I wasn’t sure what kind of medical professionals there were in our ward. Fortunately, because it was Johnny Elidge’s mission fairwell that day, there was a doctor from Safford attending our sacrament meeting. He spoke to the woman while I kept records, citing things such as her Dr., what medications she was on, allergies, chief complaints, vitals, etc. Her pulse had dropped down to 40 which is what caused her to pass out. The EMT’s came and took her to the hospital and since Sacrament was nearly over and Allan and I had already decided we were only going to stay for sacrament, we came home. On a side note, I later found out that the woman received a pacemaker and is doing just fine now. When we got home and the contractions were still coming fairly regularly around 10 minutes apart, we decided to go for a walk to try to move things along. Hours later, we decided to take another walk while my mom looked after Timothy for us. Things were just not progressing and my contractions were stuck at around 10 minutes apart so I started to wonder if it really was just false labor. Night fell and around 8:00 I decided to get some rest and went to bed. Three hours later, at 11:00 I couldn’t sleep anymore because the contractions had become more painful. I got out of bed and we began timing the contractions. They were starting to get closer together ranging in space from 4 minutes to 14 minutes apart. Around 12:30 pm we decided it was real labor and because they were getting quite painful and closer together. We prepared to go to the hospital and called my mom to have her come down from Westward Look Resort to take care of Timothy for us. We got our bags together, packed the car, gave my mom the car seat for Timothy and made her a little bed on the couch and headed off to the hospital unsure of whether we would be admitted or not. When we got there, the nurses checked me and I was 5 cm dilated and 60 percent effaced so they admitted me. They gave me an IV to pump some fluids in me in an effort to perk the baby up and move things along. After about an hour, they unhooked me and let me move around freely for a while. We decided we’d watch the second Harry Potter film to try to help entertain ourselves while we waited for Melanie’s debut. I sat on a birthing ball bouncing and rocking as the contractions got stronger and stronger. Allan massaged my back when they came and offered a great deal of support. Later on they hooked me back up to monitoring and the IV for a while, then I came back off, then they decided it was time to check me again. After I laid down on the bed, I could not get back up because the contractions were so unbelievably painful! I was at about 7 cm and moving into transition. I labored into transition for a couple of hours before I began pleading for an epidural. When they put in the order, the anesthesiologist was giving someone else an epidural and I had to wait 45 minutes. I have never felt such excruciating pain in my life. I was just begging and pleading for the pain to go away and asking Allan and the nurse over and over again “why does labor have to be this painful!?” Allan did his best to help me and Dr. Coppola arrived. Shortly after Dr. Coppola arrived, they gave me the epidural, even though I was between an 8 and 9, then they popped my bag of waters and I labored on. I watched the screen contentedly and comfortably as the contractions grew closer together and stronger. I could still feel them, but it was bearable. About 45 minutes after receiving the epidural, I let the nurse know I was starting to feel some pressure and it was time to push! After about 4 pushing sessions, her head started coming out. The pain from that was different than the contractions. It stung really bad and Dr. Coppola was working hard to make sure I didn’t tear this time so there were periods where I had to stop pushing and wait while things stretched out. Dr. Coppola said, “I can see hair. Lots of black hair!” I pushed on and soon, at 7:23 AM, she was out! They put her straight onto my chest and sucked her mouth out with her right there before my eyes. They wrapped her in a blanket and let me nurse her for quite a while. It was a really great nursing session! I was so happy to have my baby here and she was gorgeous and healthy! After I nursed her for a while, they cleaned her up and put her hat on, etc. Then, they let us take some pictures and left us for a while so we could bond. Allan and I looked at her and tried to decide what her name was. We had a fairly extensive list of names that could have been possibilities. Our favorite going into the delivery was Ella Brooke. Some of the others were Ella Faith, Ella Hope, Ella Joy, Acacia Renee, Eliza Renee, Emma, Hannah, and Hayden. We spent some time pondering what we thought we should call her and we both decided that none of the names fit! Then, the name Melanie Brooke popped into Allan’s head and it fit her perfect! So, we were pretty sure that was what we were going to call her, but hadn’t decided 100% yet. After a while they took baby girl to the nursery and Allan went with them to make sure they didn’t give her any binky’s or formula and just to watch. I got some much needed rest, wrote in the baby book, and waited for them to bring my baby back to me. Allan came into the room slightly ahead of the baby so we could discuss the name briefly and we decided we would call her Melanie Brooke Merrell. Timothy, my mom, dad, and Justin all came to visit her briefly. Timothy’s first reaction to Melanie was “baby!” I don’t think he fully realized that Melanie was actually going to be coming home with us. He looked at her, touched her hands, pointed out her body parts, and then decided to run around the hospital room. I do think that he realized that Melanie was the baby we had been talking about that was in mommy’s belly and now she wasn't anymore. After the brief visit, everyone left including Allan so he could take care of Timothy through the night. Melanie and I spent 24 precious hours in the hospital bonding, nursing, and sleeping and were released from the hospital the morning of July 14th around 10:00 AM. My dad got into town the night of the 13th, so he and my mom were looking after Timothy for us when Allan came to pick me up from the hospital. When we got home, we reintroduced Melanie to Timothy. The first thing he did was run to his toy bin and grab one of his waffle balls and put it on Melanie’s lap while she was in her car seat. We thought it was so cute because we have been reading him a book about becoming a big brother and at the end of the book the big brother plays with a ball with baby. He put two and two together and when we brought her home, he wanted to play ball with her. After we told him that she is too little to play ball, he started to point out all of her body parts again. His first reaction to her was very sweet. Between then and now, he has been off and on with her. Sometimes he’s very sweet and loves to give her kisses, and let her hold his hand with her fingers. One time when I was nursing her in the living room, he hit her on the head with his hand though. It was soft and didn’t hurt her, but still un-nerving. I know it will be an adjustment process for him. It has been great having family around to help entertain him and help him have fun during the adjustment phase. We’ve had Melanie home for 6 days now. Physically, my recovery has been very smooth, but I am having a little bit of a harder time handling it emotionally. I am somewhat overwhelmed with the responsibility of being a mother of two. I love both Timothy and Melanie with all of my heart. It wouldn’t be humanly possible to love them more. I want to be a good mother for them and to teach them good things. I know it is my responsibility to do that. I’m a bit anxious because tomorrow Allan has his first day of work and I’m frightened to have that responsibility be mine alone. It’s difficult to nurse Melanie and keep Timothy entertained at the same time. I always feel like I am neglecting one of the children. Since Melanie will only sleep if she is being held, it limits my ability to interact with Timothy as regularly as I’d like to and also my ability to lovingly discipline him when it is necessary. If I try to just put Melanie to bed, she ends up crying and I think she’s too young to cry it out. So, a lot of the time I feel like I’m doing something wrong even though I’m doing my best. I know that we will adjust over time and I hope that with Heavenly Father’s guidance I can recover my emotional strength. One thing I always try to remind myself is that I need to enjoy every moment I can. That is something I have been struggling with since bringing Melanie home, but it is so important. Timothy is no longer my baby. He turns 2 on August 6th. He speaks in sentences now and is an active, rambunctious, climbing, running, jumping little boy. The time has really flown by unbelievably fast since he was a baby. I need to enjoy him in his toddlerhood and I need to enjoy Melanie in her babyhood because the time will vanish into the past shortly. I want to try to be happy and not sweat the small stuff so I can look back with no regrets and with happy memories of loving moments. I need to move forward with confidence and remember that one thing my children will always have is a knowledge of how loved they are.