And it's only the 4th

June has been a busy month. Already. It feels like a month's worth of excitement and drama have been wrapped up in the past four days. Normally, this first week of June is busy anyway because it's birthday week: my mother-in-law, my husband, and my mother all celebrate birthdays this week. But to make things more interesting, let's throw another birthday, a few trips to the doctor, and a few cops to the mix...

On the first day of June...
-our 3rd niece/girl cousin was born. Her fine parents named her Annabelle Marie. Isn't that a beautiful name? Now we have an Isabelle and an Annabelle. We were joking the other day that we'll have to change Eliza's name to Elizabelle just so she won't feel left out.
-Momma Bonnie celebrated her birthday. Far, far away, in Utahland. Agenda for next June 1st? Sky diving, I've heard. Wild and crazy? I think so.

On the second day of June...
-the last of the Smiths went out of town, leaving us here in this huge house all by ourselves. My biggest challenge in the next 2 weeks? Keep myself from "accidentally" killing Jack-dog.

On the third day of June...
-we celebrated Daddy's birthday. Oh, the girls had a ball with this. We met Taber at school and took him out to lunch, his choice of restaurant. Arby's it was. Then we dropped him back at school and headed out to do some birthday shopping. On the list? Laces for some of Taber's boots. How hard could it be to find stinkin' shoelaces? 4 stores later, a gazillion buckling/unbucklings of car seats, all afternoon spent, 2 huge blisters on mommy's feet and still no laces. Don't worry, I'm still working on it. I found a shop in NORTH CAROLINA that sells the right size/type laces. Seriously?!? They better be woven with gold thread. Moving on...We had a delicious home-cooked dinner of steak (Taber's favorite), mashed potatoes and gravy, and pasta salad, followed by a smashing party, complete with cake, strawberry ice cream (Taber's favorite), and presents. I learned a few things from this party.
***One, the extra money you spend at a party store for helium balloons is worth it. Notice the drooping, mini balloon in the picture below. This was only a few hours after we got them blown up...at Wal-Mart. (Wal-Mart is not to be confused with a party store. Sure, they have low prices and everything, but their helium balloons suck.) They were all to the floor this morning when we woke up. In my mind, a birthday party is not a birthday party without helium balloons.
***Two, we're reaching the limit on the number of candles (27!) we can (safely) fit and light on a birthday cake. I have read about a billion old fogie birthday cards joking about this very thing, but the humor is just now revealing itself to me, now that it's personal. Maybe we'll just have to enlarge the cake. Yeah, that sounds like the best solution. :) It was extremely difficult lighting all 27 candles by myself, carrying the cake over to Taber, singing Happy Birthday and snapping a single picture of him before the candles had completely disappeared into the cake. Next year - Texas sheet cake and roman candles.

As a side note, the girls sang Happy Birthday to Taber about 4 times yesterday. They were so cute about it.

On the fourth day of June...

-Eliza had a doctor's appointment to get her ears checked. She had an ear infection earlier this spring and the doctor had us come back a few weeks later to check to make sure the fluid in her ear had all drained out. It hadn't. At that appointment, I also mentioned I was concerned with her hearing. (She says 'huh?' every other sentence. Sometimes she reminds me of an 80 year old man. Sad.) The doctor said the fluid could be muffling sounds, making it hard for her to hear. She asked us to come back so she could check the fluid for a second time. We went today and the doctor said her ears looked beautiful. That's not what I wanted to hear. It seems like fluid would be one of the easiest things to fix. Now I get to wonder what could be causing her hearing problems. The pediatrician referred us to an audiologist who is better equipped to perform in-depth testing. I'll report the findings in a few weeks. Stay tuned.

WARNING: Slightly graphic injury photos following. (Dude, you should have seen it before the doctor got to her. I thought I was going to pass out!)
-Familiar with the story "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed?" Let's just say we reenacted this book today, but instead of their being five little monkeys, there were two.

Two little monkeys, jumping on the bed,

Eliza fell off and bumped her head,

Momma called the doctor, and the doctor said,

"Bring her in right away."

The girls were jumping on a big king bed that is sitting in the middle of their room before they took their afternoon nap. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Isabelle push Eliza off the bed. This happens often, but unfortunately this time, Eliza's head smacked into the dresser. She started crying and so I went over to console her. She was holding her forehead in her hands. I saw blood seeping through her fingers. Oh crap. Then I peeked under her hands. Oh crap, crap, crap. What do I do? Her forehead had a huge gash in it. It was about an inch long, but worse than the length was the depth. I could see layers I never wanted to see. After consulting with our family's EMT (Taber), I decided to call the doctor. They asked me how far away we lived and then told me to bring her right in. I cleaned it up as well as I could and clumsily bandaged it. I rushed out to the van and sped off to the doctor's office. As I was pulling out of the driveway, I thought to myself, "Wouldn't that be funny if I got pulled over for speeding?" Yep, the joke was on me. About 2 minutes from the doctor's office, there he was. Sitting on the other side of the hill. He saw me, I saw him, I knew exactly what was coming. He walked up to the car, asked for my license, after which I proceeded to tell him my daughter gashed her head and I was rushing her to the hospital. (I may have been dramatic for effect...) My ramshackle bandage came in handy then, because he looked in the car back to her seat where he saw this gauze pad folded over, held to her head with a finger bandage. He said he clocked me at 49 in a 35, but that he'd just ask me a few questions, give me a written warning and let me go on my way. He asked me if I worked (what is the point of that question?) and what year my car was. He came back a few minutes later, handed me my slip, and let me get on my way. Now this incident on its own is nothing...but I got another written warning last Saturday when I was waiting for my mom in a fire lane at Hobby Lobby. The car was still running, I was in the drivers seat, but the cop still wrote me up. Lame. A real Owasso policeman patrolling the parking lots at the mall??? Don't you have some meth lab to go bust or something? He told me the ticket for this offense was $119. Ouch. Lucky me, I guess he was feeling generous to just give me a warning. Ever since Saturday, I've been feeling kind of nervous - I feel like I have a target on my car now and the tiniest slip-up would nail me. I'm "in the system" now. So I guess I was doubly lucky he didn't stick it to me today. And thus continues my 11 year ticketless driving career. It's something I'm very proud of. Not just that I've never gotten a ticket, but that I've been pulled over countless times (probably at least 10 times) and always gotten off.

Enough bragging. Back to the story. We got to the doctor's office and the nurse and doctor took a look at the gash and they both agreed it looked pretty serious. I felt justified by their reaction and that I wasn't over exaggerating how bad it was. The doctor said it would definitely need stitches. In my mind I thought, "Good. Now the stitch score will be even. Isabelle, 1; Eliza, 1." Everything must be equal in twindom. The doctor left to get the materials for the stitches ready, but when she came back she said this type of scar was actually a prime candidate for dermabond, a type of super glue for the body. So basically she just glued Eliza's head back together. No needles, no stitches, no drugs. We were in and out in less than 15 minutes. Poor girl.

I wonder what excitement the next 26 days have in store. Or do I?

Just a random picture of the girls showing off their big booties. I let them go swimming in the kiddie pool in the backyard with normal diapers and this is what happened. Oh man, it was hilarious. Some serious junk in their trunks.