Home of the Elio Family 

Swimming Spider Scare Shakes Up New Jersey Residents

Two more birthdays have come and gone. Connor is five, and Riley Katie is two. We celebrated with a Marines birthday dinner for Connor and a “lovely lady” dinner for Riley Kate.
Also on Connor’s birthday, we took him out for lunch at Applebee’s, where the waiters sang and brought him a cake. He saw them approaching and sputtered, “What?—are they…?—who?—“ before shooting me the world’s dirtiest look. They placed the cake in front of him and he looked straight ahead and began eating and completely froze out the singing birthday waiters. He didn’t even make eye contact. After they left, Chris began to ask, “Connor, why didn’t you---“ Connor interrupted with, “I’m too shy,” then refused to allow the subject to be broached again for the rest of the evening. Alrighty then! Connor received plenty of cool presents (including money—“I’m rich!”), the favorite being his new police officer costume (complete with handcuffs, God help us all).
Riley Kate enjoyed hearing the birthday song sung to her; so much so that she asked incessantly for us to sing again if she felt that we might be veering onto any topic not related to her birthday or the fact that she was the special birthday girl. She also received monetary gifts in the mail (“monies! It’s my monies!”), as well as a Snow White costume and a swing for her doll.
Chris has begun his last 16 weeks of school—this is both good and not-so-good. The not-so-good part lies in the knowledge that for five hours per night, two nights per week for the next 16 weeks, I will be home alone with nine children, one of whom has made herself a home at my breast. Tonight, for example, I attempted to bathe Connor, Rory and Riley Kate while nursing the baby. Not usually an impossible task, except that the 9 year old and 11 year old launched into a war while I was trying to wash the kids. After breaking up the fight, I returned to the tub to discover that Riley-Kate had decided to prey on Rory’s Achilles heel (fear of spiders) by telling him that there was a swimming spider in the tub, ready to bite him. She’s such a sweetheart. Meanwhile, Connor drained the tub, reasoning that a swimming spider would be helpless in an empty tub. After filling the tub for the second time, I wrestled a fearful Rory into the water just long enough to rinse him off before he ran, dripping and screaming, from the bathroom.
The Gipper is still a champ in the sleep department, despite my regularly forgetting to knock wood and throw salt over my shoulder or whatever the process is for retaining a good sleeper while still boasting about it.
It’s time for me to stop procrastinating and stand eye to eye with the beast… It’s time for me to fold the laundry. Adieu.

You’re on a One-Way Trip to Funky Town, and Connor is your Driver.

Man-alive! I can’t take the singing anymore! Connor is boring a hole in my brain with the incessant singing. Mammam was right all along-- God has given me a child just like myself. Of course, when she said it, it was usually when I was doing something wrong, like my infamous “decorating” of the front porch by drawing all over the new whitewash or my afternoons of feeding food to my invisible people, who never ate anything and left Mammam with spoiled lunch meat and melted ice cream. So she would warn me that someday I’d be a Mommy and get a kid just like myself. And here he is.
I really do enjoy Connor TREMENDOUSLY. And I love to hear his voice; he really is a talented vocalist. It’s just that after FIVE HOURS of “It’s the Fire of Love” (his latest favorite), I get weary, you know? He’s like this warped musical televangelist. He’s on fire for God, and he’s gonna sing about Him until you’re either on fire for Him too or have LIT yourself on fire to get away from the repetitive singing. Sometimes he gives full-scale concerts. Katie bought him some kind of cup that blinks and flashes five different colored lights while you’re drinking, so he takes the cup into the dark hallway by the downstairs bathroom and uses it as a stage effect and then sings the same song for forty-five minutes. It’s maddening. As if to prove my point—Connor is supposed to be napping. He doesn’t realize I’m right at the top of the stairs in the computer room. He’s in the foyer right this minute screaming, “It’s the Fire of Love, and it’s raining down from above!” Now he’s pounding out a drum solo.
Ror and Riley-Katie had their pediatrician check-ups last night. Ror is in the 90th percentile for his weight! The doctor was SHOCKED. I asked if we need to put him on a special diet, but she said he didn’t appear to be heavy at all. So she checked his muscle mass and found that this kid is PURE muscle. My uncle and Chris have been saying that since he’s been born, with their manly pride lighting up their faces—“Look at that kid! He’s all muscle! He’s ripped!” “I know! He’ll be a linebacker! Look at those abs!” So now they have medical proof to give merit to their proud claims. Riley-Kate, on the other hand… well, she’s small. We already knew that. Okay, she’s in the 3rd percentile. I was a little shocked about that. I knew she was small, but I didn’t know she was THAT small. But the doctor is not worried because I was always very small, and Mom Elio is very petite. So Riley-Kate comes by it honestly. As for why I’m also the mother of muscle-man, the world may never know.
During the visit, the nurse had to prick their fingers to test for lead and sugar levels. As soon as she told me this, I started sweating. I considered declining the test. I just knew that needles were not going to go over well; our kids don’t get vaccinations, so they don’t even have any experience with this kind of thing. Ror went first. The nurse stuck him while Chris held him. He didn’t even flinch; he just made a sort of stoic face that said, “It would be SO beneath me to cry about this.” Then he demanded his circus band-aid. Chris, trying to let Ror know he was proud of him, said, “Rory, you’re such a big strong boy! You did a great job! Let me see your muscle! Ooooh, it’s a big muscle!” Ror, recognizing that Chris had been the one to hold him during the ordeal, replied, “Yeah, and I’m gonna punch you after this.” Riley-Kate, seeing Ror’s nonchalant reaction, had no idea what was coming and seemed to almost not notice the needle prick because she was so preoccupied with wanting a circus band-aid for herself. It was the most delayed reaction to pain I’ve ever seen. They pricked her, put the band-aid on, she admired it and let us put her coat on. We left the room and were standing at the exit to the office when she looked at her finger, looked back toward the nurse and screamed, “HEY! HEYYYY! OOOWWWW! You hurted me!”
Reagan slept last night from 10pm to 6:30 am, nursed for fifteen minutes and then slept till 10am. Glory Hallelujah! She’s been a good sleeper from the start, but this was a BIG leap—she usually increases the length of her nighttime sleep by a few minutes each night—suddenly it’s by two hours! I shouldn’t be so cocky; tonight God will surely smite me for my boastfulness and she’ll sleep for like seven minutes and then scream for the rest of the night. So officially, I’m cautiously optimistic. Off the record, I’m dancing around singing Betcha By Golly Wow. It’s just what I sing when I’m excited.

Dino retires, Paul becomes Paula, and Batman Saves Gotham.

Ah, an exciting few days we’ve had—trade negotiations (Connor), sex reassignment procedures (Riley Katie’s doll), snow adventures, and of course, the thrills and agonies of victory and defeat on the new video game system.
Connor is making me crazy with what has become “the shirt issue.” Grandmom bought Connor a shirt over two years ago, which he loved. It’s a very nice shirt, but like any child’s shirt, it wasn’t made to be worn four days per week for two years. Unfortunately, the EXACT shirt is no longer made, so it was impossible to buy a duplicate when the original began to fade. However, Grandmom managed to find similar shirts from the same company and sent two for EACH of the boys. I mistakenly thought that the idea was, “Great, now we can retire the old one!” Connor’s feeling on the new shirts was, “Great, now I can ADD TO MY COLLECTION!” The original shirt was a snappy long sleeved black t-shirt with a glow-in-the-dark t-rex skeleton and the words “Dino-Pack” on the front. It is now a semi-gray, two-sizes-too-small t-shirt with elbow length sleeves and an appliqué that’s partially worn off. A few days ago when I told Connor to go get dressed “in something nice, because we’re going out,” he emerged wearing black, dressy corduroy pants and his original dino tee. I had finally had it. I said, “Hand over the shirt. We will frame it and hang it on your wall, but you may not wear it anymore.” He had a meltdown, of course, sobbing that this shirt was “the coolest”, and he had to wear it. I asked him what I could offer as a trade for retiring the shirt—a new fixer-guy shirt, perhaps? A Superman or Spidey shirt? Even another dino shirt? After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, we have come to the following agreement: Connor will retire the original dino shirt on the condition that he is free to wear the other two dino shirts a minimum of three days per week unless a dressy outing is scheduled, and I will make him a t-shirt with an iron-on picture of him WEARING the old t-shirt, which he can wear as a night shirt. I thought it was all finally resolved, but now I’m being harassed about what kind of frame/shadowbox we will buy for the retired and much beloved shirt and when we will buy it.
Meanwhile, Riley Katie is no longer the mother of Matilda and Paul, the bitty twins. She is the mother of Matilda and Paula. Gee, you try to raise them right, but you know, she was a very young mother—not quite two, as a matter of fact; so who wouldn’t expect one of her kids to go awry? Actually, Riley Katie just felt that she no longer wanted a boy baby, so we pulled Paul’s hair into a ponytail to match Matty’s and changed his name to Paula. He can’t speak, but he gave us all a look that clearly said, “I always knew I was different…. I’ve always felt like a stranger in my own body…. I used to secretly try on Matty’s tights at night in the toybox…Thank you, Dr. Colleen, you’re a miracle worker.” Anyway, here’s hoping we haven’t just taught Riley Kate that we can swap Ror for a girl one of these days when she gets sick of him.
Rory is completely addicted to v-smile, especially since he has a ---*gasp*--- Batman game. Not just any Batman game, but a Batman game in which the narrator talks in that deep, serious voice that Ror likes to use when he’s attempting to save the world. True, he has no idea how to solve any of the puzzles in the game, but the narrator takes him seriously, unlike Mommy. The narrator would never call him “the cutest little Batman ever.” No, the narrator (or, as Ror calls him, “the guy”) encourages him with a deep, manly, “you’ll do it! Keep trying!” and apparently understands that the fate of Gotham lies in the hands of Ror, and that it is a serious matter indeed.
Be sure to check out our Snow Day and Valentine’s Day pictures on the photo album site. You can see Chris decked out in a pastel pink coat, borrowed from Katie because he didn’t want to get his leather jacket wet. Nothing says comedy like seeing Chris Elio in a too-tight, puffy, pink parka.

Colleen Elio, T-shirt Designer, Outraged Mother.

I’ve decided I need to design t-shirts. I think a lot of parents would buy a baby shirt that reads, “Don’t touch this baby.” But my best creation is going to be a t-shirt that I’ll call “The Reagan”, which will appeal to a small audience, but believe me-- parents of children named Reagan will buy them in multiples. Here’s what it’ll say:

1. Yup, just like the president.
2. Yeah, same pronunciation.
3. No, I’m not kidding.
4. Yes, we are really going to call her that.
5. Yes, we’ve seen “The Exorcist”, but thanks for bringing it up.
6. Well, I’m sure she thinks YOU are “unusual,” too!
7. You think that’s weird? We’re naming the next one Nixon!

Ah. Well, now that I’ve had my fill of spewing my caustic attitude at the masses for today, I’ll go back to my usual pontificating on the perfectness and hilarity of my children.
Connor’s having a great day because he got a new superhero action figure, someone from the Justice League called Aquaman. He seems to have misunderstood, though, because he thinks the superhero’s name is Awkward Man. He can’t seem to figure out what super powers would go along with that title, but he’s trying.
Rory is speeding like a bullet train toward the big 0-3 next Wednesday. I got the biggest compliment from my grandmother today (in the form of a back-handed, are you SURE you know how old your kids are?); she said, “he CAN’T be turning only three! He talks like an old man. No, he seems much older. Maybe he’s turning four?” We’ve checked the birth certificate to be sure we weren’t victims of alien abduction time lapse; he’s definitely turning three.
Riley Kate got a haircut again today to work toward our family goal of no mullets in 2006. It vexes me, how children’s hair grows at different rates on different parts of their head. If you’re not diligent at trimming the bottom, you’ve got a kid sporting a mullet faster than you can say “feather the sides!”
Reagan is wearing one of my two favorite shirts that her godmother bought her, which I feel were manufactured with her in mind. One says “Perfect” and the other says “Wonderful.” Truer words were never emblazoned on a child’s chest. My little Gipper has driven me to raptures of maternal blubbering these days, with her huge grins and winning ability to vomit on me but make it feel like a gift. Ah, babies. They’re like potato chips. You can’t have just one.

THERE'S NO MILK IN MY FACE!

First of all, I have a big announcement. As you read the announcement, you'll have to imagine the angels singing, the Heavens opening, and bells ringing. That's how exciting and miraculous it is....
Okay, here it is.... Are you ready? (No, Mammam/Mom Elio/Uncle Bobby, we're not pregnant. Stop clutching your chest.)
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I HIRED A BABYSITTER! A real, living, breathing, BABYSITTER! And not just an average, when-you-need-her babysitter-- A WEEKLY, EVERY SUNDAY BABYSITTER! She's going to come EVERY SINGLE SUNDAY! After five years of motherhood, I have finally come to the conclusion that my kids may live through an occasional three hours without me. So I made the decision to really look for a sitter a few nights ago, amid raucous and enthusiastic cheering and whooping from my husband. He even did one of those jumps where you punch the air with your hand. This very Sunday we will be leaving our children (well, not Reagan; as her sole source of food, I think it'd be pretty cruel to leave her to starve...) for THREE HOURS while we go to lunch and go shopping. Don’t worry; we haven’t let the kids in on the secret that we’re actually excited about this. And truthfully, I may be excited NOW, but historically, attempted fun times out without the kids begin with me needing a few drinks before I’m even able to think about relaxing (and that’s when their tried-and-true very capable godmother is watching them; this is a non-family member; chances are I’ll need to be totally soused just to leave the house). The kids, on the other hand, seem to feel that THEY need a break from US. Connor actually said so; he commended me on finally bringing someone in so he and Ror can have some “fun time without you and Daddy.” Humph! I am slightly insulted, but also counting my blessings that they’re okay with this new turn of events.

So, on to my new favorite Rory story. Ror is the most enthusiastic big brother who has ever existed, and as such, spends an exorbitant amount of time with his face only centimeters from Reagan’s, making high-pitched cooing sounds. So, it was bound to happen. Yesterday, as Ror was cooing, “Hey, sweetheart, I like you! Do you like me? I like you, Reagan! I like my baby sister! Give me a hug…” ssssslurp! Reagan latched on to his nose and began voraciously sucking. Ror gave a jolt of surprise but did not attempt to pull away, apparently believing that she was about to remove his nose; instead he began waving his arms around, screaming, “There’s no milk my face, Reagan! There’s no milk in my face!” I came over and unlatched her, and he stood next to her with a look of sheer betrayal on his face before saying to me incredulously, “REAGAN THINKS MY NOSE IS A BREAST!”

I’m not totally surprised that food is all that Reagan can think about; have you seen the latest pictures of her on the photo albums (see link at right)? She’s really packing on the pounds! When Riley Kate was this age, she was just leaving preemie clothing behind; Reagan seems to be quickly growing out of her 0-3 month clothing already! She is also absolutely the most smiley baby we’ve ever had. She looks kind of like a monchichi.

Connor and Riley Katie have been getting along famously these days, united in their abhorrence of Ror’s ebullience (some would call it aggression; I like to put a more positive spin on his ability to destroy an entire room in thirty seconds) and their mutual love for pretending to be rock stars. Our ears never rest around here. Some of Connor’s latest and greatest include “The Solar System” which gives a chilling musical account of what happens when you look under your bed and discover that there’s an entire solar system under there (don’t we all hate it when that happens?), the newest “Jesus King of Everything” ballads, of course, and his own remix of Finger Eleven’s “One Thing” and Aerosmith’s “Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing.”
Well, it’s pizza night at the Elio House, so you know what that means—time to go cover the entire dining room with a drop cloth. Have a great weekend!

***I’d also like to use this forum to extend a special thanks to my uncle for being my own personal computer special ed teacher, walking me through technological tasks via email and phone, with little information on what’s actually wrong. I commend him for his ability to fix an entire computer (several computers of mine, actually) based on descriptions like “I pushed on the button with the arrow, but it just went ‘errrr-errrr’, and when I clicked on the ‘x’, it said, ‘dong!’” So thank you to Uncle Bobby; I’m sure there’s a special place in Heaven for you as a reward for all of the stupidity and high-strung meltdowns I’ve flung your way over the past twenty five years.

Life Lessons

This past weekend was a weekend of life’s lessons. And we learned more than a few. The most spectacular lesson was the answer to the age-old question, “What happens if three toddlers miss their naps for three consecutive days and are then expected to act remotely human at a solemn religious ceremony on the third day?”
We departed Friday morning with smiles on our faces and songs in our hearts, expecting stellar behavior from our precious angels. Lesson 1: Pride goeth before a fall. Three and a half hours later, the kids were still behaving well, but I was snapping at Chris, “I need five hundred extra calories a day to feed this kid; the least you can do is get me to a restaurant within a reasonable enough time to eat before I starve to death.” Here, a dual lesson: When Colleen is pregnant or nursing, don’t bother to argue when her blood sugar is low; just duck and cover. Secondly, when someone tells you that mapquest directions are notoriously unreliable, LISTEN. (I should add that Chris learned a related lesson many months ago, and the effects are still felt. The lesson was, if Colleen’s pregnant or nursing and snapping at you, the LAST THING on the face of God’s earth that you should do is suggest to her that she MIGHT be overreacting because of low blood sugar.) Finally, we arrived at the National Air and Space museum and had lunch in their solarium before exploring the exhibits. The kids had such fun pretending to fly planes—at least, that’s what I’m told; I wouldn’t know because apparently the sight of aeronautical equipment really stokes Reagan’s appetite, and I was parked on a bench, feeding her for most of the visit. I don’t think she stopped for a breath for the entire two hours we were there. After NASM, we headed over to the Museum of American History, which is my version of Mecca: the location of Jacqueline Kennedy’s pearls and several of her ball gowns. The boys were not especially interested in the First Ladies exhibit, but both were impressed with “The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden,” where there are some hallways that replicate the inside of the Whitehouse and an interactive “You be the President” activity. Here we learned the most amusing lesson of all—if you put Connor behind a podium, there’s no telling what he’s going to say. He began with, “Hello Americans. The President loves you.” So he started out pretty normally. Then, “And I am here to announce that THE GENETIC EXPERIMENTS WILL NOW END!” Huh? Here, several people stopped to watch, and he really began to pick up steam. “We will go to Mars, and take the information there, where it will reside. That’s right, we will reside. And about those evil experiments, don’t worry, Americans, because the Marines are brave and strong, and Uncle Ryan is the strongest, and he can kill everybody if he has to.” Super. Can’t wait to notify my brother that someone in our nation’s capital is maligning him as being ready to “kill everybody if he has to.” We actually had to drag him away from the podium as he was screeching, “God bless you and America!” We arrived at our hotel completely exhausted, but the kids seemed to be just getting their second wind and insisted on swimming in the indoor pool in lieu of going to bed early. At the pool, I learned that while Chris is normally very laid back in his parenting, the surest way to give him a panic attack is to put Riley Kate, aka Stuntwoman Elio, near a body of water. Whereas Connor and Ror shriek in fear after putting one foot into a pool deeper than a bathtub (on this occasion Ror even screamed, “DANGER! This is too DANGEROUS!”), Riley Kate seems to have a death wish every time she puts on a swim suit. She alternated between making Chris’s blood run cold with her careening around the tile edge of the pool, and standing just at the edge of the water and alerting Chris to her plan with a menacing, “WATCH, Daddy! WATCH me!” before leaping off the edge only to get snagged by Chris every time. He was pretty pale as we headed back toward the room. Upon entering our suite, the children discovered that—oh joy!— there was not only a giant Jacuzzi in the middle of the master bedroom, but it was surrounded by a two foot wide tile deck from which they could do death defying stunts before leaping into the empty Jacuzzi. Again, Riley-Kate seemed to be the ring leader of the let’s-give-our-parents-a-stroke activities.
After a night of little sleep (who wants to sleep when there are so many unexplored areas and breakables in the hotel room?), we headed over to Sara and Erik’s house to meet them and Kate’s family (see “Kate’s blog” link at right) for brunch. The kids played so nicely together and had such a great time that we decided to head right to the Science Center instead of afternoon naps. Strangely, I feel that I almost SENSED the foreshadowing of the following day’s meltdown as I consented to allow the children to skip naps once again. Anyway, at the Baltimore Science Center, the kids careened around the children’s area and performed all kinds of cool experiments. Riley Kate attempted to eat an entire tray of bingo chips that were meant for a magnet demonstration, but other than that, we all emerged unscathed. We wisely decided to take the kids home for an early bedtime, only to scrap that idea immediately after Chris saw all of the cool restaurants along Inner Harbor. So, because we are masochists, we decided to go out to dinner with the kids, who are normally well behaved at restaurants, but when tired resemble a cross between tazmanian devils and the scariest scenes from The Exorcist. Surprisingly, the kids were charming and sweet at dinner. They talked animatedly about what they had seen and done at the Science Center and conversed with the waitstaff politely. We felt like we had really dodged a bullet. Then it came time to get the check. Connor gazed mournfully at his half eaten meal, which he just could not finish. Connor has been lately having empathy for inanimate objects, especially food. He feels terribly that uneaten food will be thrown away and thereby denied its opportunity to fulfill its culinary destiny in the process of digestion. So Chris and I have come up with a great explanation about uneaten food becoming part of the earth again through the process of decomposition, and later growing into other kinds of food. It’s all very “Circle of Life,” and the it’s-never-really-gone moral sits very well with Connor. So when the waiter came to take his plate away, instead of just saying, “thanks,” Connor looked deep into the waiter’s eyes and handed him his plate, saying solemnly, “Please send my food back to the earth for me, so that it can join with the soil to make new food.” The waiter looked at us like we were nuts.
We returned to the hotel and crashed. In the morning, we could tell that Riley Kate was “in a snit”, as my grandmother would say. We hadn’t even left the hotel room before we discovered that there was no way she was going to behave reasonably during Mass. But wow, she totally surpassed all expectations and threw a meltdown fit that went beyond even our wildest predictions. She was mad that her outfit was not a dress. She was mad that she was only wearing one hairbow instead of two. She was mad that Chris wanted her to sit still. In general, our girl was ANGRY. By the time Mass was over, Chris and I were totally spent, but our biggest task lay before us: convincing the kids to sit quietly in a pew while we stood at the baptismal font for our goddaughter’s baptism. This was just flat out not going to happen. When we got up to stand beside Natalie’s parents, Ror started wailing, “I want to come too! I want to come too!” Mercifully, Sara’s father wrangled Riley Kate and Daniel’s godfather managed to corral the other two while Reagan slept peacefully in her seat. Chris and I were incredibly proud and happy to witness and participate in Natalie’s baptism, and, in the word’s of Natalie’s four-year-old brother Nick, “Fortunately, the baptism went well.”
Back at the house, Sara had arranged a beautiful spread of appetizers on the table, where Ror immediately parked himself, along with Sara’s kids and Connor. They were all talking and eating and having great fun, when someone tried to take a carrot stick from the crudite platter in front of Ror, who mistakenly thought that the entire PLATTER was his plate. This caused a meltdown of epic proportions. He calmed down only after Nick and Dan escorted him to the sunroom and proceeded to explain the ins and outs of building a roof trestle.
The overarching life lesson of this past weekend’s trip is clear: NAPS ARE SACRED. Skip them AT YOUR OWN PERIL!

The Girl I Used To Be

I got this from one of my Mom friends, and I really love it. Enjoy!

The Girl I Used to Be
Author Unknown

She came tonight as I sat alone,
the girl I used to be,
And she gazed at me with her earnest eyes,
and questioned reproachfully,

Have you forgotten the many plans,
and hopes I had for you?
The great career,
the splendid fame,
all the wonderful things to do?

Where is the mansion of stately height,
with all of its gardens rare?
The silken robes that I dreamed for you,
and the shining jewels in your hair?

And as she spoke,
I was very sad,
for I wanted her pleased with me,
This slender girl from the shadowy past,
the girl I used to be.

So gently rising,
I took her hand and guided her up the stairs,
Where peacefully sleeping,
my babies lay, innocent, sweet and fair,

And I told her that these are my only gems,
and precious they are to me,
That silken robe is my motherhood,
of costly simplicity,

And my mansion of stately height is love,
and the only career I know,
Is serving each day in these sheltered walls,
for the dear ones who come and go,

And as I spoke to my shadowy guest,
she smiled through her tears at me,
And I saw the woman that I am now,
pleased the girl that I used to be!

Bless YOU, and the horse you rode in on!

My Uncle Paul got Riley Kate this pink horse for Christmas, and we knew it would be a big hit from the moment she opened it. She ripped the paper off of the box and screamed, "OH WOW!" about a hundred times and then actually THREW herself on top of the box. She had reached toy nirvana. It was surprising, given that we had absolutely no clue that she had even WANTED a horse, let alone a flourescent pink horse with a purple mane and purple wheels instead of hooves. Go figure.
Anyway, Connor, Ror and Riley Kate (I was going to say "all of the kids" before I realized that those three no longer comprise "all" of the kids) spend more time playing with this horse than all of their other toys that they've ever owned, combined. Today was no exception, but the game was so bizarre. I *think* Riley Kate was supposed to be some sort of travelling holy person or something, and she would scoot around whooping like a cowgirl and then do a laying of hands on Connor, Ror and some dolls, and then they would pray. My kids are so weird. But they were playing nicely, and I guess it helps her to learn her prayers if she listens to the boys saying them, so I just ignored their strange little game and let them carry on.
Reagan, bless her little heart, has entered a growth spurt, and I'm so excited, I could spit. Apparently, this growth spurt is just EXHAUSTING her. Last night she nursed for an hour and a half (that's not the part I'm particularly excited or thrilled about, but whatever) and then slept from 11pm to 5:30 am!!! Then she woke up, nursed ferociously as though she were about to starve to death, and then conked out again for another three hours. GOD BLESS AMERICA!
Besides being the "supply" side of the supply and demand relationship that Reagan and I have, I have been spending any free time honing my comedic skills. I've always wanted to be funny, and now I've found my niche-- entertaining Rory. If I figure out something that makes him laugh, I can repeat it ten thousand times, and he laughs just as hysterically on the 500th repetition as on the first. You should see him chortling at my rendition of "Tainted Love." It's not just a comedy show, it's a MUSICAL comedy show, and though it has only been reviewed by one person, I can assure you, it's been very well received.
Riley Kate seems to have given up on mauling "Baby Bacon" and now totes around her own doll (also coincidentally named Baby Bacon), whom she breastfeeds, burps, and to whom she even administers her own pretend version of baby Zantac when plastic Baby Bacon has a reflux episode. Connor and Ror are still pretty into the REAL baby and are completely willing to beat the snot out of each other in an effort to be the first to make it to my bedroom in the morning and be the first to ask to hold her.
Oh, and I'm pregnant again.
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JUST KIDDING! Thought everyone might be in the winter doldrums, so I thought I'd get everyone's blood pumping again. Have a great day!

I Ain't Sayin' She's a Gold Digger... Lunch with the Elios.

Chris thinks that I secretly like rap music. I've been trying to explain to him that it's not that I like it; I just can't help but know some of the lyrics because, well, when you're raising teenagers, you pick these things up. So we went out to lunch today to celebrate Reagan and Connor's good visit to the pediatrician, and somehow the rap conversation ended with Chris using Ror's power ranger doll to do a little dance and song number--- "I ain't sayin' she's a gold digger, but she ain't messin' with no broke ranger..." It's not enough that people stare at us for having four kids under the age of five; he's got to make it a musical show, too.

So on to the stats-- Connor is right smack in the middle of the percentile range for weight and height, finally reaching the forty pound mark! Reagan is tipping the scales in the 5th percentiles for height and weight, weighing in at a whopping seven pounds, thirteen ounces. Chris and I cracked up when we realized that our goddaughter, who was born TWO DAYS ago, already weighs two pounds more than our one-month old. So evidently both Riley Kate AND Reagan have taken a cue from Grandmom in the petiteness department. Ror and Riley Kate have their well visits soon, and I'll report where they stand when we find out.

Connor was deeply, deeply offended by the pediatrician's requests today, feeling that the visit was just all-around undignified. He was very businesslike at the beginning, almost enthusiastic in complying with her requests to stick out his tongue, allow his blood pressure to be taken, and look straight ahead while she examined his eyes. However, when she needed to check his balance, reflexes, and posture, she asked him to "hop like a bunny." He stood there and said, "I don't think so; no thanks." So she said, "Hop like a power ranger." He rolled his eyes and replied, " They don't really hop; they flip, and I'm sorry, but I can't flip." After five more minutes of cajoling, he turned to me and said, "This is ridiculous." Dr. Ruiz said she'd never had a child comply with the actual medical side of the exam and then become belligerent for the "hop like a bunny" portion of the visit. After he flat-out let her know that there would be no hopping no matter how she phrased it, she moved on to asking him to run and touch the door and then run back. He turned, gave a heavy sigh and rolled his eyes, and then calmly walked to the door, touched it as though he couldn't believe he was withstanding this humiliation, and then came back.

During the entire time the doctor was examining Connor and Reagan, Rory was eyeing her warily and repeatedly commanding her not to hurt Connor or Reagan. When the nurse pulled out a measuring tape to measure Reagan's head circumference, Ror gave her a warning look (which she did not heed) before shouting, "GET THAT OFF MY SISTER!" In the waiting room before the exam, Ror marched back and forth in front of Reagan's car seat, barking at the other children in the waiting room, "This is my Reagan, and NO, you can't touch her! Get back! Get back from my Reagan!" None of my kids have ever been threatened or physically attacked, and they don't watch scary television shows, so I have no idea where Ror's suspicion comes from. He sees most strangers as potential babynappers and other children as little gremlins just waiting for an opportunity to hurt one of his sisters.

Despite Ror's rudeness in the waiting room, we got lots of compliments from other parents, who kept asking our secrets for having raised Connor to be such a polite child. I basked in their praise while trying to distract them from the fact that Ror was verbally berating their children for standing too close to his sister. Connor was walking around the office offering to share his new action figure with all of the other children and introducing himself and offering to shake hands with anyone who was willing.

Well, now that I've rambled about the other kids, it's time for me to humbly admit to previous harsh judgments of Riley Kate. As family and friends know, we were quite worried for sometime that she was becoming, uh... well, you know...a little, um....okay, we thought she was turning into a mean brat. But apparently it was just a phase. For the past four days, she has won the "good listener" and "good helper" award for each day (as if normal sibling rivalry isn't enough, I make them compete for awards), and has just morphed into the most loving, sweet, enthralling child I could ever imagine. I mean, she's not exactly thrilled with ME, (after all, I am the witch who brought home a baby that sucks up so much of my time), but she absolutely adores Chris, and when I'm not holding the baby, she's pretty fond of me, too. As a matter of fact, she's taken the term "Attachment Parenting" to the extreme-- she's decided that she must be physically connected to Chris at all times. Today when I watched him try to eat shrimp fettucine with one arm because she was hanging on to the other arm for dear life, I realized that someday she's going to be one of those women who say things like, "I'm not in a rush to get married; I mean, I'm only forty-five, so it's not like I need to leave the nest yet. I'm not overly dependent on my parents; I just haven't found anyone as wonderful as my father yet..."

Reagan continues to be just the sweetest little baby ever, eliciting comments from me that I'm sure are obnoxious to everyone else. I think even Chris rolls his eyes a little bit when I say things like, "She just looked straight at me, Chris, and I could tell that she was HAPPY. Her mouth looked like this [I demonstrate] and her eyes looked like this [I demonstrate again].... Oh, wait! You looked away, and she did it again! It wasn't so much a pensive look, more like a content look. Satisfied, that's it. She's satisfied. And curious. She looks curious...." I can't help it; it's probably the deep fatigue and haze of day and night blurring together that stop me just short of understanding why everyone else isn't as interested in the thoughts and expressions of my newborn as I am.

Today is Reagan's one-month birthday; check your inboxes and the photo website (link at right) for pictures marking the event! :)

Reagan's Arrival!

We left for the hospital around 9am on December 8th; I had been having regular contractions for over a week, but part of my cervix was refusing to efface, so the contractions weren’t helping much. When we got to the hospital, the midwife applied cervical gel, which got labor going a little more regularly. By noon it hurt for me to walk, but the midwife advised that walking would help things along, so I would power walk with Katie around the labor and delivery floor, one lap, before collapsing onto the bed. Chris kept making me laugh, and I would laugh and then scream at him because it hurt to laugh. As the day wore on, he kept making me laugh to the point that I would be laughing AND crying at the same time from the pain of laughing. He said, “This is it! This is what we’ll do; you can just laugh the baby out.” My mood continued to be somewhat light until sometime in the mid afternoon when the combination of a distressing phone call (who calls a woman on her cell phone knowing full well that she’s in labor???) and a pushy nurse just pushed my mood into dangerous territory. Later in the afternoon the midwife gave me a sleeping pill because I wasn’t progressing and she wanted me to try to get some sleep. Chris and Katie started getting a little frustrated with me because I kept trying to fight it off and wanted to keep talking through the haze of the sleeping pill. I remember that at one point I started crying, “You guys are mad at me!” Around 10pm, the midwife checked me and said that it would definitely not happen tonight. Katie had only arranged to be off from work for one day, so I felt that Chris should take her home so she could go to work and then he should sleep at our house instead of at the hospital. He seemed a little uneasy about this, but the midwife assured us that I was not progressing. They moved me to a room with a better bed in a quieter area so I could get some sleep. Around midnight, I woke up in PAIN. The nurse came in and said I was in active labor, but I refused to call Chris because I felt that maybe I was wrong, that maybe I was exaggerating, and I didn’t want to wake him. By 2am I was yelling out prayers to patron saints of childbirth with every contraction, but for some reason continued to refuse to wake Chris. Why on earth the nurses didn’t just call him and realize that I was too compromised to think clearly, is beyond me. At 4 am I finally called Chris and said something like, “I don’t know if I’m really in labor, but I can’t talk, because it hurts too much!” Then I hung up on him. That poor man; imagine getting that phone call at 4am. The nurse then came in and said that it was time to go back to the birthing room, and I kept insisting that I thought I might be exaggerating, so maybe she should check me. She said, “I am not going to check you. You are VERY VERY definitely in active labor.” I wasn’t convinced, and then yelled, “Oh, no, I’m going to throw up!” And she replied, “I think you’re almost ready to push.” When we got to the birthing room, she finally checked me and said, “You can’t get into the tub yet, because baby is going to be born as soon as you get in there, and your midwife isn’t back yet.” The midwife had gone home to get some sleep. I started yelling at the nurse, saying, “Let me in that tub! You better let me in that tub!” A few more contractions passed, and I was in the middle of saying, “That is IT! I am done with this! Get me something! Knock me out!” when I saw Roxie from the corner of my eye. She said, “Colleen, I’m here. As soon as this contraction is over, you can get in the tub.” After I got in the tub, I labored there for a while, still yelling out prayers to obscure saints, which I think scared the nurse a little bit. Chris dashed in and changed into his swimsuit quickly and then hopped into the tub with me. At one point, I put my hand down and said, “I think I feel the head,” and the midwife said, “No, that’s the amniotic sac; you have a bulging bag of water.” So I kept pushing till I felt it burst, and everyone laughed because I was yelling, “Wow! It popped!” After that, I could touch the baby’s head and began pushing in earnest. During one of the last contractions, something felt different and hurt a lot more and I started getting a little out of control and yelling. Finally I could feel the head start to come out, and the midwife let me guide her head out myself. After she checked to make sure there was no cord around her neck, I got to pull her out by myself, which was really neat! Then I held her up and said something like, “Look at this! I made this baby come out all by myself!”
After I got out of the tub, the nurse said I was bleeding a little too much. They put me on the bed and I began to hemorrhage. I wasn’t too upset, though, because I was floating in and out of consciousness. We have a tradition of calling my aunt and uncle and my grandparents from the labor room right after every one of our kids’ births, so while the nurses were working on me, I decided to call even though I kept falling asleep. Later that night, I had to call to find out what I said because I only vaguely remember speaking to anyone! Finally they decided to set the baby up to nurse, because it would stimulate contractions to slow the bleeding. We have a really funny picture of Reagan nursing with me completely unconscious. After they slowed the bleeding, I woke up but was still a little confused and more than a little belligerent. I was annoyed that they wouldn’t let me get out of the bed and on with my day, so after the nurse left the room, I hopped out of bed before Chris could stop me and decided to take a shower. I went into the bathroom and then I remember thinking, “wow, I think that bang was my head hitting something!” LOL Chris said I yelled to him, “hey, I think I’m falling!” right before I passed out. So the lesson of the day was that it is occasionally in your best interest to listen to medical personnel. Chris carried me back to the bed and got the nurses and I was fine in a few hours. After that, our hospital stay went incredibly smoothly, and Reagan proved to be a great nurser. Connor, Ror and Riley Kate came to visit in the afternoon on the day she was born and gave her plenty of hugs and kisses.
We’re all home now, and while Ms. Reagan seems to want to nurse literally every hour round the clock, we’re settling in nicely and look forward to showing her off soon!