I Have a Daughter Named Map

Okay.  It's been a little bit crazy around here.  Wait til you hear what I've done now...

Maleah and I went skating last Friday night.  It was a great time... until I fell.  I fell on my butt really hard.  Maleah and I were skating too close together and our skates hit each other and mine went right out from under me.  And down I went.  I didn't think I was really hurt.  I checked on Maleah (who also fell) and we skated some more.  I realized then that it hurt to skate and to pick up my legs so I went and sat down.  I visited with some friends who were there and watched Maleah skate.  I was uncomfortable but didn't start to realize I was hurt until I decided to stand up.  Ouch!  It hurt to stand.  So I told Maleah to get her shoes on and we left.  It was a long drive home.  But luckily Jason was at home that night so I called him and asked him to meet me in the driveway so that he could help me in the house.  I am so glad he was there!  I was miserable.  It hurt to move.  He wanted to take me to the ER.  I refused.  I wanted a pain pill (luckily I had some pills left from my gallbladder surgery last year) and I wanted to fall asleep and not move for a very long time. 

The next morning I was not any better and could not hardly move so off to the Emergency Room we went.  My Mom and Jason both insisted that I go.  They were afraid I had a back injury.  Mom stayed home with the girls and Jason drove me to Effingham.  I didn't really want to go but I was starting to think I must have hurt my pelvis because it hurt to pick up either one of my legs.  The ER was packed.  There were boo-koo (that means a lot in Southern Illinoisan) people in the waiting room.  There were people lined up in the hallways.  It was that packed.  Luckily (sort of) most of the people in the waiting room were one big happy family who were there waiting to see if their dad/grandpa/uncle/cousin/friend/in-law/girlfriend's grandpa/whatever else was going to be okay after a heart scare.  At least they weren't all patients waiting to be seen.  I might've thought they were a very nice family under other circumstances but they were incredibly too jolly and too dang chatty to be in a waiting room with me when I felt like crap.  They talked about everything under the sun and had tons of laughs.  They were the type of people that really enjoyed the fact that other people were listening to their conversations.  Show-offs.  It was waiting room hell.  All we were missing was a screaming sick child.  Lucky for me I had crayons and paper in my purse and passed them on to the less-than-prepared mother of a little boy who was on the verge of either crying or falling asleep.  I'm not sure which.  The parents did not want him to fall asleep because he had hit his head so that made him want to cry.  Note to self:  replace crayons in purse before I myself am that less-than-prepared mother.

Anyway, so we spent the day at the ER and we found out that I am bruised.  Who knew a bruised tailbone could hurt so bad?  Not me.  I am slowly getting better.  I kind of overdid it yesterday so I'm sore again today but I am slowly getting better.  Jason and my Mom have been a big help and have taken over most of my household duties for a few days so that I can rest and get better.  Maleah is also a good little helper to me.  I'm just glad I didn't break anything because I really would not have wanted to deal with this pain for several weeks.  Here's some pics from the skating rink before we crashed and burned.  After that point, I don't think I took any pictures.

Carissa now insists that her name is Map, not Carissa.  She will say "I'mamap!" which is I'm a map in Carissa talk.  Or sometimes when you ask her what her name is she'll add "the" to it and say "The Map."  For those of you who are not familiar with Dora the Explorer, the Map is a character on that show.  He is a map that talks and hangs out in Dora's backpack.  For some reason, Carissa has a special affection for the map and for Boots (Dora's monkey friend).  If I say "Carissa, come here please."  She now says "Map!" until I correct myself and say "Map, will you please come here?"  She will do whatever I request from her as long as I address her as Map.  It's been loads of fun.  Carissa is so darn cute!  I mean, Map is so darn cute!   Whatever!  Today she didn't want to lay down and take a nap.  She has Dora sheets on her bed and so I said "Map, Dora  and Boots want to know how to get to bed.  Can you show them how to get to bed?  First, you go into the room.  Then you climb the bed.  Then you lay down."  I repeated this over and over just like they do on the show.  She listened to every word and had this look on her face like "I have an important mission to accomplish."  It did the trick because she laid down and took a nap. 

She also loves Elmo and she has this red Elmo sock hat that she wants to wear all of the time.  The other day I noticed that she had suddenly disappeared so I tracked her down to my bedroom.  She had apparently gotten into the freezer (which she is now strong enough to open), found Maleah's leftover M&M Blizzard, then got into the silverware drawer where she discovered that she had already scattered all of our spoons randomly around the house.  She has many hobbies and spoon carrying is one of them (others include toilet flushing, removing Uppercase Living from walls, turning on the stove light, undressing herself, and hollering "PHONE!" at the top of her lungs whenever a phone rings in a restaurant, store, etc) .  So instead of grabbing a spoon she must have reached way into the back of the drawer and found a massive fork that I use when I serve ham or large chunks of meat.  Then she raced off with the humongo fork and ice cream, found a quiet little corner of my room and sat down to eat in the Elmo hat.  It was a Kodak moment to say the least.  It was funny because:  she thought she was being sneaky and she hid, the fork was huge and incredibly hard to eat ice cream from, and she had on that ridiculous Elmo hat in the middle of the day inside the house.  I didn't know maps like ice cream so much. 

So what else is new with us?  Not much really.  Maleah is growing like crazy and I can't hardly keep her in shoes or clothes that fit.  She has had some major growth spurts lately.  She is starting to look forward to summer and warmer weather.  She is also super excited about her upcoming birthday party.  She absolutely can not wait.  Her party will be at the skating rink.  It will interesting to see if I'm ready to skate again by then or not...

Lovin' Those Powdered Donettes!

Hi all!  We've been having tons of fun around here. 

I'll start with Maleah news.  She finished piecing together her nine-patch quilt top together and took it to school with her for the 100th day of school.  She was so proud of herself and I was super proud of her too.  So the next step is to sew a border on to the quilt blocks and then begin quilting it.  She is looking forward to that. 

Other Maleah news:  she lost another tooth.  This time it was on top and she now has a big gap in her smile.  I think she looks absolutely adorable. 

Today was Valentine's Day and Maleah took these valentine's to school with her:

She and I made them together.  Okay, not really.  I did most of it.  She kept getting sidetracked.  They look like an ipod but they are a box of conversation hearts wrapped in pink paper.  We glued on the playlist and buttons and then took string and taped two Hershey's kisses to them for the earbuds.  They turned out cute, cute, cute!  I loved them and so did Maleah.

Jason sent me a dozen red roses today that are absolutely beautiful!  I love them but not as much as I love him.  He is the best ever!  This picture was taken by our in-house photographer - Maleah.



Okay, moving on to Carissa news.  She is wild!  She is talking more and repeating more than ever.  Her speech isn't perfect and she pronounces "cat" as "tat" and "sit" as "shit".  We're working on getting it right.  Last week she locked herself into her bedroom.  Thank goodness for a coat hanger is all I can say.  It took me 10 minutes or so to get her out.  She was about to pee her pants the whole time and came running out when the door opened.  She headed straight to the bathroom yelling "Pee!  Pee!!"  She made it in time so that was good.  And then tonight she locked herself in the bathroom while she was with my parents at their friends' Nick and Vera's house.  Nick and my Dad rescued her that time.  I'm hoping she'll quit doing that.  Luckily she was locked in with the potty that time though. 

Here is a picture of her and her sister after having some Hostess Powdered Donettes.  Yummo.

The girls were a little sicky over the weekend but not too bad and it didn't stick around.  Thank goodness for that.  I celebrated my 32nd birthday this past week.  It was great except that I get irritated that it's hard to go out for supper for my birthday because everybody else is out celebrating Valentine's Day and the restaurants are packed.  I think I should get to go to the front of the line because it's my birthday.  Don't ya think?  So, instead of waiting an hour and a half to get a table we went through three different drive thrus.  I chose Steak n' Shake, Jason chose Arby's, and the girls had McDonald's.  I squeezed a package of ketchup all over my jeans while getting some nuggets ready for the girls.  It was lovely.  Happy birthday to me!

Overall it was a great week!  February is just flying by and I can't believe it is half over already!  Maleah's comment the other day was "When is it March already?!  I am soooo sick of February!"  Not only does she have spring fever but she knows her birthday is coming up in March.  I can't believe she'll be 6 and I really can't believe that my baby is going to be 2!  How did this happen??

Ice, Ice Baby!

Hey folks!  I can't wait to get you updated on all that's been going on with the Coopers.  It's been a fun couple of weeks.

Last week Maleah got her marble jar filled.  This was super exciting to her.  It probably sounds boring to you.  Maleah earns marbles by doing chores and extra things around the house.  She also earns marbles by having good character and doing the "right thing" without being told.  She loves this system and has worked very very hard to get her marble jar filled to the top.  It has taken over four months to do this (it's a big jar).  She was told that when it was full she could pick what she wanted to do, either go bowling, spend $10 at Walmart, or invite a friend over.  She picked Chuck E. Cheese's.  Okay, obviously not one of the choices but she presented a good argument and I caved and said yes.  We needed to go to Evansville anyway so we just added another stop to our list. 

So last Saturday we journeyed to the land of the mouse (No, not the most famous mouse.  It would take several hundred marble jars to earn a trip to see Mickey.  This was the less famous, distant cousin named Chuck E. Cheese).  There were at least 600 people there I'm sure.  It was PACKED!  There were five tra-zillion germs everywhere.  At least that's what I was thinking about.  Grubby little hands were touching the same buttons over and over.  Ewwww!  So needless to say, we all got scrubbed down with Germ-X wipes the second we walked out of that place.  We didn't eat there either.  The lines and the wait for their mediocre overpriced food was long and I had been there, done that, and wasn't doing it again.  Jason and I had decided to eat at Red Lobster before we ever even went to see the mouse.  We had a delicious meal and our kids love to eat there too.  It all worked out just fine and Maleah had fun. 

Two days later the ice storm hit.  We stocked up on groceries and kerosene.  Then we hunkered down for the duration. We lost power for only two and a half hours.  We were prepared to be without for days so the short length of time was a-okay with me.  There were others in the county who were without power for days.  We lost a lot of branches.  Well not really.  Our neighbors lost a lot of branches - big branches.  Their big tree hangs over our driveway which is unfortunate for us because everything from that tree falls onto our cars.  Yuck.  I was kind of hoping the whole tree would go but it didn't.  A good chunk of it barely missed my car (right after that I moved my car around back).  We ended up with a little less than an inch of ice over everything.  It was very slick out to say the least.  After the ice, we ended up with lots of snow.  We have some bushes on the other side of our house that my Grandma Rose always calls Honeysuckle Bushes.  She didn't know their real name but in the summer they are covered with blooms that smell just like honeysuckle but look completely different.  They are tall bushes or perhaps skinny trees I don't know exactly but they are not vines and they are not real honeysuckle.  It doesn't matter anyway because they are gone now.  Jason had to cut them down with a chainsaw after they fell into our other neighbor's driveway.  Apparently there was some sort of domino effect going on around here.  Those two bushes would make our whole yard fragrant in the summer.  When Maleah found out that Daddy was going out to cut down the bushes (which were practically laying flat in our neighbor's driveway) she cried.  "What about the beeeeessss!  The bees loovvvvvee those bushes (sniff sniff)!  What will they do now?  Where will they go???"  Talk about drama.  Yes, the bees loved those bushes.  I don't know where they will go but I assured her that they will find a nice new place to live.  I am raising a tree-hugger and didn't even know it.  I love trees too but I don't cry over honeysuckle bushes.

The branches falling over our driveway.

My burning bush covered with ice.

I didn't make it through the bad weather without falling.  Boo to that.  I fell hard on our front sidewalk.  It hurt.  I was mad.  I was relieved that it was dark outside.  I knew it was slick and I still fell.  I fell on my hands and knees.  All I could think about was how bad my hands hurt.  I didn't notice until the next day that I had smashed my wedding ring in the process.  It is mangled up, prongs all messed up, and a diamond missing.  That made me sad and totally explained the cut on my left hand.  So now I know there is diamond somewhere between my front walk and Walmart.  It could be on the sidewalk or in the snow or in the mulch or in my car or in Walmart.  Isn't that lovely?  I'm still searching.  I think I'll put Maleah on that job.  She can spot anything but finding something shiny and reflective on an icy sidewalk and a pile of ice-covered snow is like finding a raindrop in the ocean.

Our little Miss Independent Carissa has been doing her own thing lately.  She marches to the beat of a different drummer and insists on wearing her pink princess snow boots and red Elmo snow cap with every outfit every day.  She likes the boots because she doesn't need any help to put them on or take them off and she is in love with Elmo right now.  She only wants to wear Elmo panties and not her Dora ones these days too.  It's all about Elmo.  On Sunday morning we were running a few minutes behind (Of course we were.  We have a really hard time making it to church on time.) and I tried putting a cute pair of brown shoes on Carissa that matched her brown leopard print skirt, brown leggings, and brown shirt.  Nope.  She would have none of it and insisted on wearing the pink snow boots.  I didn't have the time or patience to fight her on that one so she wore pink snow boots to church with her leopard print skirt and a red Elmo hat.  Her Sunday School teacher did say that she eventually took the hat off for a little while but by the time I picked her back up in her classroom she had put it back on.  If you look up the word "stubborn" you will find "Carissa" in the definition.  I will try to get a picture of her in her get-up soon.

Maleah had Fancy Day at her school last week.  She wore her flower girl dress from Kevin and Hillary's wedding and a tiara that her Aunt Cheryl had bought her at Disney World.  She looked beautiful and had a great day.  This week she is getting geared up for celebrating the 100th day of school with her class.  Each child is supposed to be bring 100 items to school in a ziploc bag (i.e. candy, cotton balls, small toys, etc).  Maleah is bringing 100 square pieces of fabric.  She is also bringing the quilt top that she has been working on and is going to show her class what you can do with 100 squares of fabric.  I am so proud of her!  She has done all of the sewing herself and is doing a fantastic job!  I cut the fabric and did the ironing but she has done the rest.  She is excited to show her work to her class.

Maleah on Fancy Day

Maleah sewing her quilt together.

Some of her finished quilt blocks.

I wanted to write more but Carissa won't quit crying and I need to go hold her.  She's mad because I won't turn it to "Boots!"  She only wants to watch Dora the Explorer 24/7.  It's not her turn right now so she is having a meltdown.  It's hard to be almost two years old.