the time has come.........

to panic. or to move. both of which are happening this week. i sort of mostly-all-the-way just wish it was already october and i was all settled in seattle. alas, it is only the end of june and i still have a cross-country trip and a month-plus of homelessness to face. BUT in the middle of all that i will get to see my sisters (and mom and dad and davie) and friends and loren's family and so maybe i will survive after all. now, if i can just figure out a way to keep my baby alive and getting fat(ish) during all of that. ha! actually i started a new system that is working well--i only nurse him twice a day and then i feed him bottles of milk that i've pumped and/or been given through many minnie miracles. he gets much more milk from a bottle than he can from me, so since i've been doing this (4 days) he's actually gained weight! and is that how you spell 'minnie'? because i thought it was 'miny' but that must be because i was thinking of 'tiny'? 'minny'? (*the problem of the 'mini' spelling is solved, thanks to the linford family lending a hand in their comments--now that i see it, it's completely obvious that's how it's spelled---*)anyway, i know that was a long story made very short that probably didn't even make sense at all, but it's on my brain, so there you go.

and here's the latest from my pace boy:

sunday in sacrament meeting at church he had to use the bathroom, which is highly illegal, of course, but i was not willing to call his bluff, so i let him go out with gretchen. when he came back in, he stopped in the aisle and put his leg up on the side of the bench and just stood there looking around with his leg propped up all straight in front of him. i quickly pulled him into our row and told him to sit down. as i pulled him past me, he leaned in and whispered, "i was just doing some exercises." i think i let an out-and-out laugh escape. he kills me.

he's just started getting carsick (a curse he inherited from both loren and me), so we've been talking a lot about getting sick in the car. i was making him do some jobs around the house this morning, and he said "mom, actually i'm house sick. i think we'd better go camping."

fine, i'll post

the kids have been BEGGING me to post pictures of their new rooms. so, here goes! there are some other random pictures in here, also, and nothing's in a particular order, because that's just how it is.

i repainted madeline and gretchy's dressers. (i know the pix on the wall are not centered right--we had to change the dressers to allow for their new reading corner, and i haven't moved the pix yet--or put the handles back on mad's dresser)

here's mad at field day
gretchy at field day
pace and the bubs
painted my oak bookshelves black, with turquoise insides. i really like it, even if it's somewhat unconventional.

liesel and gwyneth made these canvases themselves. it was quite the project, and very fun.
i painted their dressers turquoise.
i made some new pillows for my bed. also painted the lamps and got new shades. can you tell we're on a turquoise kick around here?
here's a really bad picture of the reading corner (two pink chairs under a canopy) and pace illegally climbing on the beds.
painted the beds, also, and the frame of the canvas that my great grandma gave my mom, that she gave to me!

don't know why i've been such a blog slacker lately. i have lots of things to say, but i don't really have the energy to organize anything into anything readable. possibly because i've been painting everything (not really, but close) in my house, plus nursing a baby. paint, nurse, paint, nurse. that is how i spend my time this month. painting is fun, and my baby is cute, so i guess i could find worse ways to spend my time, right? plus, liesel started therapy up again, which adds some busy-ness in to my days. PLUS, i am in this crazy post-baby-getting-ready-to-move nesting/decluttering/cleaning phase, so inbetween the painting and the nursing and the therapy i'm cleaning out the little metal track thingy on my french doors (just to give you an example of what i got distracted by today). i also redid and organized the office. it's kind of like i can't face the big stress of moving unless i get everything organized here first. which seems kind of backwards---why not wait until i move, since i'm going to have to redo it all in 3 months, right? but, my brain thinks better when things are all set-you-bet, so there you have it.

let's see.....what else to say?

liesel's doing really well. she bent her leg to 102 degree yesterday in therapy (just past a right 90 degree angle) which is a HUGE deal for her/me/us. it still hurts to bend it, but it's getting better. she can walk pretty well now--not quite back to normal (still slow--she does this hop/skip/limp thing when she wants to go fast).

the kids have been spending lots of time in the pool again, which makes me happy! i can't bear the thought of leaving it in 3 months........

we went to the beach twice this week, too. just trying to soak it all in before we go.

liesel and gwyneth went to girl's camp during spring break. they had so much fun and came home singing all the camp songs and teaching them to the other kids. it totally reminded me of when i came home from camp my first time. and it does NOT seem like that was long enough ago to have children doing it.

pace spends all his time either swimming or dancing and singing. liesel and gwyneth turn on youtube videos while they're doing schoolwork (i know, i try not to care.......) and pace hangs out with them and learns all the songs and the dance moves. he is so cute when he dances, but as soon as i turn on the video camera he gets all weird. i'll keep trying. he did a full handstand the other day while he was dancing. he was so surprised at himself. he looked at me and said "mom, i got sticked upside down for a long time!"

wells is a really good baby. really, seriously good. it's a good thing i nurse him or i'd never hold him--he's just really happy playing by himself. and, he made himself even cuter by learning how to do a kissing face and noise this week.

this is him sort of doing his trick.

12!

liesel and gwyneth turned 12 today! we just got back from getting their ears pierced. fun stuff. here are some of their thoughts about being 12:

"being 12 hasn't had as much of an impact on me as i thought it would" (liesel)

"kids grow up so much faster than adults" (liesel)

"being a kid goes by so fast! being a teenager goes by even faster" (gwyneth)

"we promised ourselves we wouldn't be brats when we turn 13. why would be brats now?" (both)

time to get sappy now. i love my girls! this year has been way too hard, but i'm so glad i've been able to be home with them. we have had a good time doing projects and learning to sew together. we just redid their room (all diy projects) and it was SO fun!

i'm glad i have twins. watching them together is one of the best things in my life. i couldn't ask for better children!

and the reason there are no pictures in this post is because loading the pictures on is what always keeps me from posting! pictures next time. (soon?) and pictures of liesel and gwyneth's new room and other projects we've been doing.

no particular title

my baby's taking a super long nap and i have a couple of surprise spare moments! i don't have anything in particular to say, but i do have some cute pictures i can post........

who needs an ipod? this is the new generation of boom boxes. i found pace walking around holding the little-people nativity stable upside down on his shoulder so he could hear it play "away in a manger" better.

liesel and gwyneth organized a family olympics competition. we did an obstacle course, swimming events, free-throw shots, sit-ups (i did 4 the first time--ha! i tried again and squeaked out 31), push-ups, hula-hooping........when it wasn't his turn pace practiced his motorcycle-riding skills.

here is liesel doing her push-ups
i love decorating the tree. it might be my favorite part of christmas. this picture of madeline captures our excitement.
a good use for extra ornaments.........
we went to the everglades a couple of weeks ago. we kept forgetting liesel was in a wheelchair and kept leaving her behind. pace took pity on her.
does it look like we have a really big family? i never think it's that big until i catch a glimpse of us all together. yikes!

just some randomness

first of all, here are two funny signs that i'm letting things slide a bit around here:

#1 gretchen (6 years old, remember) put pace in bed last night. totally by herself. no input from me. i didn't even know she was doing it. she had him go to the bathroom, she put him in his pajamas, read him a book, and hefted him into his crib (yes, i know he's 3, but why wreck a good thing by putting him in a real bed?).

#2 gwyneth and i were looking at her faith in god book to see which things she could check off. one of the requirements was "planning and preparing a meal". she laughed and said "hello, only like a million times!".

thank heavens for good children!!!!!!!!!!

luckily, she still finds time to sneak in a good book while hula-hooping

in other news: this is how pace spends a good portion of his time these days. eating cookies and waiting for wells to wake up so he can give him his pacifier.

wells got blessed. better pictures to come when i have time to get him redressed in his blessing outfit.

and we did do halloween.

maxwell: beast/wells/newbaby/wellsmax

4 weeks old today! i still can't quite believe i have 6 children. i guess the 9 months of pregnancy weren't enough to prepare me. i really, truly, and seriously can't believe i've had a baby for almost a month. i think that most of my brain is taken up with other things and i'm just fitting the baby in between things. it's a good thing i'm nursing him so i get a good excuse to really hold him every couple of hours.

so, here's the rundown on the bub. he weighed 7.11 lbs when he was born, and at his 2-week checkup he was 8.1 lbs, so he's filling out quickly. he's working on a bit of a double chin. it's funny that he can seem chunky, since he's still a full pound lighter than gretchy was when she was born. ouch! i'll take the 7-pounders any day, that's for sure. he sleeping really well at night (i feed him at 8:15 and he doesn't nurse again until 5:00) and is taking some pretty good naps during the day. the kids all love him, of course, and it's nice to have so many helpers. pace hates it when i put wells to bed for naps, though, and says that wells will "miss him too much to sleep". we are very glad that wells (so far) is a low-maintenance baby. he is starting to make his first baby-talk noises, which is very cute.

here's the rundown on liesel. 2 weeks ago the dr. said that the next 2-3 weeks would be the hardest yet. liesel and i about died. we were like "um, i thought we already were doing really hard.....". the first week after he made that announcement actually went well (as well as being in lots of pain and having a no-fun external fixator can be), but last week was a bear. by far her worst since the first week after the surgery. her main pain right now is from the muscles being stretched so tight. her leg has now been stretched 4 1/2 centimeters, and her muscles are really fighting it. her dr. is really proud of how she's handling it. i think she might be his best patient ever.

we got good news on friday, though! we are done with the stretching phase, which means the muscles will have a chance to catch up, and the pain should get more manageable. we have a couple more days of turning the struts on the fixator to get her knee aligned better (her knee was slightly knock-kneed, and the bone in her lower leg was bowed, so the dr. is using the fixator to correct some of that). we'll go back to the dr. on tuesday to find out if the knee is in place. already, her pain is much more manageable in her thigh than it was last week. her knee is pretty sore today, but overall it's much better. she was able to walk around last night a bit at the halloween party we were at, which she couldn't have done at all on thursday. we are hoping that it keeps getting better!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! now we just hope the next 5 months pass VERY quickly (4 in the external fixator, 1 without the fixator, but on crutches/walker/wheelchair again to make sure the bone is stable).

oh, i forgot to tell about maxwell's labor/birth. friday night (october 1st) loren and i went on a brisk hour-long walk--my goal was to have maxwell over the weekend so loren wouldn't have to come rushing home from work (even though it was almost 2 weeks before my due date, i was done being pregnant--plus, i'd been dilated to a 3-4 for almost a week by then). saturday all day i was really crampy and achy and had some really big contractions, but nothing regular. by saturday night i was having more contractions--still nothing regular, but hard enough that i called loren while he was at the priesthood session of general conference and had him come home from it early. when he got home we went on another walk (not brisk at all--more like a waddle, and only around the culdesac a couple of times). it still didn't make the contractions any more regular, so i decided to take a bath to actually stop the contractions so i could go to bed. i got to bed at about 12:00 a.m. and slept until 2:00 when i got woken up by a whopping big contraction. i expected to start having contractions then every 2 minutes or so, since that's what i did with all the other kids, but i didn't have another one for 15 minutes. it was another huge one, though. i waited for one more contraction (15 minutes later again), and then woke loren up to tell him that even though the contractions were 15 minutes apart, it was definitely the real thing. we left for the hospital at about 3:00. i was trying out the hypnobirthing method for the first time (i highly recommend it, by the way, if you are going for a natural childbirth) so i started doing my deep breathing/relaxation stuff. at the hospital we got all checked in and i was dilated to a 7. the contractions were still 10-15 minutes apart, so i was totally able to relax in between each one. they stayed that far apart until i was a 9, and then i had a few that were 5 minutes apart, and then i felt like i was going to have to push soon, so the nurse got the dr. and i pushed through 3 or 4 contractions (these were the ones that really hurt--i do not like my transition/pushing contractions at all!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and he was born at 8:45 a.m. i got to hold wells right away for a long time before they took him away for cleaning and all that other stuff. he nursed right off and was making everyone laugh because he was gulping and swallowing like he was getting tons of milk, but of course it was only a couple of drops.

anyway, i really liked the hypnobirthing method--it was a very calm way to go through labor. the recovery was easier, too, because i hadn't expended much energy during labor. it was an all-around satisfying way to have my 6th baby.

this picture has nothing to do with anything in this post, but i think it's cute, so here it is. he's being a swim coach for madeline and gretchen. the other day i heard all this whistle-blowing and i looked out and saw the kids taking turns being coaches and swimmers. pace even took turns being a swimmer, doing laps across the pool. his "backstroke" is hilarious. he totally looks like he's drowning because he swims on his back with his face under water and his arms flailing around like crazy. he comes up every few seconds for a breath with a big old grin on his face. somehow he can make it across the whole pool like this. i tried to make a rule that he can't do backstroke anymore, but he wouldn't listen to me.

surgery

here she is, waiting for the surgery.

the day after surgery. the hospital had a scrapbooking activity.

gwyneth had all sorts of good ways to cheer liesel up. sisters are way better than moms when it comes to that sort of thing.

physical therapy.

and here it is.
be glad i didn't show you a close up of this hole 3 1/2 weeks ago. this is looking good.
more p.t.
the package loot.
home spa treatments
notice the plate of goodies.
another view.
the wheelchair.
first time going upstairs.
first time dressed and sitting at the table.
future fashion disigners.

i guess it's about time i stop procrastinating and just get this post over with. every time i sit down to do it, i give up because there's really too much to say, and no way to say it. does that make sense?

liesel had her big leg surgery almost 4 weeks ago. she has an external fixator on her leg now, and we're in the process of stretching/growing her leg to be about 5 centimeters longer so her legs will be more even in length. basically, during the surgery the dr. cut the femur bone so it could be separated apart and then attached 7 metal pins to various parts of the separated bones. the pins are attached to the fixator, which has these little rods on it that we turn 3 times a day to stretch the bones apart. so far she has "grown" almost 2 centimeters in the last 4 weeks. if all goes well, we'll have a couple more months of "growing" and then a few months of letting the bones grow back together again and get strong. the earliest the fixator will come of is march, but it could be as late as june or july. liesel does therapy at home 3 times a day and then we go to 2-3 dr's appointments/therapy sessions a week to make sure we're on track.

see, this is the problem with doing this post. that's all the technical stuff explained, but there's so much more going on..........i don't think there's any way to prepare for the kind of emotional roller coaster ride a surgery like this puts you on, and there's certainly no good way to explain it on paper.

i thought i was pretty good at seeing liesel come out of surgeries, but when i saw her lying there before she woke up and the reality of the fixator hit me, i burst in to tears and couldn't stop crying. and i don't ever cry in front of people. especially doctors. before i left the hospital to go home to the other kids (loren was staying with liesel--we took turns) i had to stay in the bathroom for 10 minutes before i looked presentable enough to walk through the halls. the first time liesel did therapy at the hospital it was absolutely awful-- she was dry heaving from pain, gwyneth was standing behind her rubbing her shoulders with tears just streaming down her face, i was crying (again.......in front of people). since we've come home from the hospital we've had lots of ups and downs. the main problem right now is that liesel's muscles/tendons/etc. can not keep up with how fast her leg is being stretched so they are really, really, really tight and sore. so therapy is hard. HARD! and it's just getting really old to be in pain all the time and to be in a wheelchair and to know it's going to be this way for a long time. i was not prepared for how hard it was going to be on me to watch liesel go through this. yesterday in church i totally lost it and cried and cried and couldn't stop, even when i was playing the organ on the closing song. then, i'd finally gotten ahold of myself and was heading to primary to do the singing time and somebody stopped me and asked how things were going. i literally burst in to tears (big sobbing ones) and couldn't talk for like 5 minutes. and then i was just like "i'm fine. just tired. everything's okay." because really, we are okay, it's just hard.

and, see, that's the problem with trying to write it down all down. because we really are fine. but it is also really too hard to do. it's both at the same time. all the time. see, now i'm crying again, but i'm also about to write a list of all the ways liesel's doing so well. and she IS doing so well. but it's still too hard.

SO, here are some of the thank-goodness-for things:

1. having twins. i have never, ever, ever, never in my whole life seen such a bond between two people as i've seen between liesel and gwyneth during this time. gwyneth is amazing. liesel is amazing. it's awe-inspiring.

2. children who read. we've gone through maybe a thousand books. that's probably an underestimate.

3. fashion-designing. hours and hours and hours spent designing fashions.

4. home spas. lots of painting fingernails, toenails.......face masks.........homemade lip gloss......

5. moms and sisters who will spend lots of time talking to liesel on the phone while she does therapy.

6. moms and sisters who will spend lots of time talking to me on the phone about liesel's therapy.

7. loren. best husband and dad ever. he is also turning in to an amazing cook. i'm trying to convince him it should be a permanent thing.

8. fathers-in-law who come to help out and sweep floors and load dishwashers and spend hours with pace in the pool.

9. grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins who send packages with all sorts of pain-distracting goodies/crafts/books/etc. we couldn't have survived without them!

so basically, we ARE doing really well, liesel's exceeding her dr's expectations, we are seeing the lord's tender mercies all around us, we have lots of good times every day............and it's still hard.