Bathtime! (and a post-surgery pic)

So cute and chubby!
First things first, Mamie always likes to rid the bath of her toys. I don't know why. I don't think she dislikes them, she just likes taking things from one place and putting them in another. Unfortunately, she can't get these back herself. :-)
Perhaps about to drop the washcloth on the floor too?
Her hair has gotten so long, I can do the unicorn hair and she's not even 2 yet!
This is my arm a few days after I came home from the hospital. I took a picture of my stomach too, but that is not for public viewing. :-) Especially when it was all swollen like that.

Mamie turns 2!

A little about Mamie:

She loves her food and cooking toys. Her nursery leaders told me that the first toys she usually heads for in nursery is the kitchen stuff. I'm not sure if she was doing that before or starting doing it after I bought her some play food and pots and pans from a yard sale, but she LOVES them. It is definitely her favorite thing to play with at our house. I guess she likes to cook like her daddy. :-) She likes to put the play food in the little play pots and pans and stir them around. She likes to hand me and Wade food and then have us hand it back to her. She could literally do that for 20 minutes.

She loves to sing, some of her favorites are "I am a Child of God", "I Love to see the Temple", "Families can be together forever", "if your happy and you know it" and "abc's" and "B-I-N-G-O" although we often make it M-A-M-I-E (as in "There was a mommy who had a girl and Mamie was her name") . Sometimes she likes to mix together "I am a child of god" and "abc's". She usually starts crying in the bath when I make her lay down her head to wash her hair but as soon as I start singing, she is okay. She also has really been enjoying the "Sound of Music" songs. Especially do-re-mi. She always says, "ti" along with me when I sing and gets other parts now and then.

She also loves to talk on the phone. She pretends that anything and everything is a phone and puts it to her ear and says, "heh-o? hi!"

She has learned to say, "catheter" and often says it when we change her diaper. :-) It sounds more like, "categer".

She does not like the grass and wont' move around much when we put her on it. She also doesn't seem to like stickers. It bothers her that they stick to her hand. Haha Once I tried to hand one to her and when it stuck to her she promptly tried to shake it off.

She loves beans and green beans. She likes to get food on her hands and rub them together like I do when I wash her hair. And then of course she pretends to wash her hair, and gets the food all in her hair. Sigh. She also likes to watch mommy get ready and likes to pretend to put lotion on herself.

She loves to say hi to everyone but a lot of the time just says, "Hi, Mamie!" to them. Everywhere we go she makes friends. I never go anywhere without people telling me how cute and friendly she is. Long before her actual birthday, we practiced with her asking, "How old are you gonna be?" and got her to say, "Two!" Now whenever we ask her how old she is, she also holds up two fingers, sometimes two sets of two fingers.

If she had it her way, she would probably sit in my lap all day long, drawing pictures all over my papers and "organizing" my desk. :-) She'll scoot over to Wade or me when we're at our desks, as close as she can get, and then look up at us with outstretched hands. Very hard to resist. :-)

She is such a sweetheart and I love being her mommy!

Cape Meares

We visited a lighthouse and the people there gave Mamie a sticker which she tried to get rid of but couldn't because, well, it kept sticking to her hand. So I just put it on her bottom. :-)
Some beautiful sights we saw on the little hike down to the lighthouse.


Mamie and her little buddy Anabelle

Tillamook Forestry Center

Although this was not a stop I particularly wanted to make, it has some fun things for Mamie and the bridge was neat.
Mamie churning the butter. They had a play house and it demonstrated how things were in the old days of Tillamook. :-)

Mamie and I in some cute old-fashioned clothing. I think she looks adorable in a bonnet. :-)
Nothing could be better for Mamie than a place with phones, especially ones that talk to you! She enjoyed hearing about the Tillamook fires on the little "phone"
Mamie and I practicing fighting fires

More Japanese Gardens

I tried to get the nice view of Portland behind them but they were sitting so it didn't quite work, but I thought this was cute, Mamie pretending to feed "Papa"
Mamie and mommy with some Japanese stone thingy :-)




I can only figure out how to post 5 pictures at a time so....

Japanese Gardens

Grandma, grandpa and Mamie. We took a trip to the Japanese Gardens in Portland when they were here visiting
Mamie took advantage of the extra people to hold and hug her. She always wanted to hold grandma or grandpa and I don't think it was so good for grandma's back, but she was a good sport.
Mamie and mommy enjoying the gardens and waiting while Grandpa listened to the boring tour guide
Grandma and Mamie enjoying each others company

The worst "vacation" ever

Recently, Mamie and I flew to Utah. We had fun with family for 2 1/2 days. Then, early Sunday morning, I woke with severe abdominal pain. I eventually decided it was bad enough that I thought I needed to go to the ER. I started puking once I got there. They did various tests and eventually decided the best thing to do would be to remove my gall bladder. So they removed it on Tuesday the 12th and I was sent home on the 13th. However, I continued to throw up and feel sick and wound up going back in the hospital. They did more tests and came to the conclusion that I had an ileus, which meant that my digestive system was completely not working, it basically didnt' start up again after the surgery, at least that is my understanding. So they put a tube up my nose and made me swallow again and again till they got the tube all the way down. It was horrible. I had to have that tube up my nose and clear down my throat for days and couldn't eat. I felt nauseous most of the time and couldn't sleep. I was on all kinds of meds, and imagined hearing all kinds of things. I had panic attacks. After awhile they had trouble getting blood when they tried to draw it so they had to do a "pick line", which to my understanding, went further in, like, close to the heart or something . Part of the time I was in the ICU, I'm not sure for how long. I had an infection and they were very concerned because I had a fever and my blood pressure was low. I think the white blood cell count was high? The nasty tube down my throat eventually drained all the gross goop it was supposed to drain. And I finally got to go home (to my parents) from the hospital on the 19th. Once there, I still felt nauseous a lot and found it really hard to get myself to eat. Then the next day I had a seizure. I guess I was low on my epilepsy meds from in the hospital. I know I threw up my pills at least once. Sometimes they gave me my meds by IV but other times they tried to have me swallow them. I came back to Oregon on Saturday. I was going to try to wait until I saw the surgeon on Tuesday, but I just really wanted to get back to Wade and Mamie. He had flown out to Utah after I went in the hospital the second time and took Mamie back to Oregon with him the day I got out. I remember one time in the hospital they had wheeled me to another room to have some test. They tried to get me to stand, and I tried but collapsed. Fortunately they were already holding me under my arms. I was so thirsty all the time, especially since one of my anti nausea meds gave me a dry mouth. But I wasn't allowed to even drink while the tube was in. All they would let me do is dip this little sponge thingy in my ice water and suck out a little water. I am not exaggerating when I say the whole experience was very traumatizing.