Happy Fourth Birthday, My Ella Pearl

My dearest little Ella Pearl,

I can't believe tomorrow you will be FOUR years old. 

It seems like just yesterday Dr. Montgomery was holding you over the sheet to show you to me for the first time, and I burst into a teary smile at how perfect and beautiful you were.  I can't get over how quickly four years have flown by.  Once upon a time you were a little "buglet" that I would rock to sleep each night, and now you're this little wonderful person. 

At four, here are some of my favorite things about you: 
I love the way you ask, "After this sleep, where we goin?" in the cutest little Texas accent.  When I am driving around town, you know exactly where we are, and if I make a wrong turn, you are quick to ask, "Are we going a different route, mom?  We live that way!" 
I love LOVE love to listen to you play with your little sister, Amelia.  Your imagination is FASCINATING, and I could listen to you make up scenarios and act them out with your little people and little figurines for hours.  You can be bossy sometimes, but you're quick to make ammends. 
I love to listen to you sing.  Not only do you know the words to most children's songs and nursery rhymes, but you also know every word to Ariel's, "Part of Your World."  Oddly enough, you also know the words to Taylor Swift's "Mean" and Toby Keith's "Red Solo Cup." 
I love the way you want to give everyone a kiss and a hug before they leave. 
I love the way you love to snuggle. 
I love it when you tell me, "I love you SO much, mom."
I love to hear your laugh and your giggle.
I love to watch you fight sleep until you cannot go any more....ok, just kidding.  I can't stand that, but I think it's cute that you got that from me.  :)
I love your big blue eyes, especially when you watch in wonder.
I love it when you decide to share with someone or you do something nice. 
I love every single thing about you.

And I sit here and wonder...if I love you this much at four years old, just imagine how much I will love you at fourteen or at twenty-four or even thirty-four, just like I am now.  Funny how life is.

I wish I could stop time and make these years last forever.  But I know, like you want to do so much, you have to grow.  I hope I can continue to be the best mommy I can be for you so that you can grow into the best person you can be. 

Happy Birthday, my sweet, sweet girl. 

Love,
Mommy

Mother of Three Toddlers - the real truth

I went to Louisiana for a week, and I throroughly enjoyed my time around family and friends.  I planned on trying to see EVERYONE in that week, but I was enjoyed just some laxed time at my mom and sister's house so much, that I decided I could do that later.  I wanted to let my kiddos make memories at my mom and dad's house, and boy, did they!!  So, to all you that I missed, so sorry for not coming to visit - I promise to see you soon!!

In hanging with friends and family, I remember someone saying to me how on Facebook I make staying at home with three kiddos look so easy. 
DO I?? 
I was under the impression that my daily funny moments and updates epitomized just how insane my life is right now.  I share that stuff in hopes to relate why I don't always return calls and emails quickly.  If I have ever given anyone the impression that taking care of a three, two and one year old was easy, my sincerest apologies for misguiding you! 

Life is INSANE!  Every day.  Insanity. 

However, I suppose my outlook on life is what is leading people to believe I have it all together.  Because I would have it no other way.  Yes, I do get tired.  Yes, I do get frustrated.  And NO, I don't know what I am doing most of the time, but I try.  And I love it.  Although we didn't "plan" on having three kids under three, we definitely wanted three kids, and we wanted them close together.  I wanted them to be best of friends.  I wanted them to all be in school together.  I wanted them to experience everything together.  And they are.  And they will.
I tell Bart all the time, "I love my life.  I love my husband, and I love my kids." 
I cry when it gets to be a lot.  I love when I get an hour break now and then.  I am so looking forward to a weekend without responsibility and children and husband.  But I love them.  And I will probably sadly miss them (while I am lying in that quiet lazy river sipping on a fruity cocktail....ok, maybe MISS is a strong word, but I will be happy to see them come Sunday).

I guess what I am trying to say is that, YES - raising three babies is NOT easy, especially as a stay at home mom, but I love it.  And I am very grateful for the opportunity.  And I wouldn't have it any other way.

A Half Hour in the life of Mama

So many people have been asking why I don't keep up my blog more often.  People, I LOVE to write.  It's like therapy for me, and all day long, I write articles in my head of what I know would make people laugh (all non fiction, of course).  Yeah, it's called MY LIFE, and it's funny stuff.  I am trying to find more time to write....for entertainment purposes, but also so we can have a daily account of our life.  I'm pretty sure one day I'll completely lose my mind and forget everything that happened during these days of raising babies.  :) 

One day, when one of my inevitably smart ass children ask me what I did all day when I was a stay at home mom, I have a mental list of things to tell them, but yesterday, another resounding answer #32 came to mind. 

Here is a mere 30 minutes of my life:

I was sitting at the kitchen table tracing Winnie the Pooh party posters with a marksalot, while my audience, Ella and Amelia watched.  Olivia was wobbling around on the floor.  Amelia hops up from the table and starts running around the living room, poking her fingers into her diaper, "I GOT POO POO!  I GOT POO POO!!  CHANGE ME!!  CHANGE ME!!"  We're on that brink of wanting to be potty trained, aware we have something in our diaper, but too lazy or unmotivated to actually sit down on a potty to do it.  Afraid she might stick a finger in actual poo, I got up from the table for just a second to grab a diaper and wipes that were nearby....

Just a second....ughhhh.

Remembering I just left two kids at a table with marksalot and my cup of coffee, I turned around just in time to see Olivia, a week shy from 1 year old, reach up on top of my kitchen table and grab my cup of coffee.  Now, before I start getting calls from CPS, 1.  This is the first time she has reached up that high, and 2. I am well aware that my coffee cup is full of luke warm coffee.  I never drink hot coffee, for mutliple reasons....mainly because I don't like scalding hot coffee and by the time I actually get to drinking it, the coffee pot has long been shut off.  Nonetheless, she reached for the cup, and in like slow motion, I went to avoid it spilling, with no such luck.  The large cup spilled all down her side, onto the floor, shattering into large, ceramic pieces.  Let's not even dawn on the fact that those are my favorite mugs from a set that are no longer made!  That's not the point, I guess....

Afraid that maybe that cup was NOT luke warm, I checked her first to make sure she was ok, and she looked at me and smiled and said, "uh oh!" (her favorite words right now).  She's fine....I picked her up and brought her to the den, ripped off her shirt and put her on the floor for a second.

"DON'T MOVE, ELLA - THERE'S GLASS ON THE FLOOR!"

I return to the kitchen to pick up te large chunks of glass and throw them away.

"ELLA, DON'T TOUCH THAT MARKSALOT," and I continue threatening her from future summer fun.  She abides, thank GOD!

"POO POO!!  POO POO!!  CHANGE ME!!"

The baby starts for the kitchen.  I bring her back into the den and wipe her down quickly with a wipe to get the sticky coffee off.  Her hair is in a sticky mohawk straight from "Something About Mary." 

"DON'T MOVE, ELLA!"

"CHANGE ME!!  CHANGE ME!"

I start sopping up the gallon of coffee from the floor with paper towels, picking up the little pieces of glass, when I turn around to see Amelia's diaper hanging on by one tab.  "POO POO!!!"

Wonderful!  I go back into the den to start changing her diaper at lightning speed.  Seriously, I could do that with my eyes closed. 

"DON'T MOVE, ELLA!!"

Ella, completely ignoring me, hops up from the table, hops around the spilled coffee, runs out of the kitchen and across the den.  "I HAVE TO POO POO!!"

Good Lord!!  As I finish up on Amelia's diaper, Ella calls from the bathroom.  "CAN YOU TURN ON THE LIGHT FOR ME?"  There's a stool in there right under the switch.  What!?  "IT'S LOOSE, MOM!"  She has diarrhea.  Lovely.

Turn on light for Ella.  Run to kitchen just in time to pull Olivia away from going in.  I finish cleaning up the coffee, and I run a quick steam mop to take care of the stickyness.  There.  Cleaner than it was when we started.  One plus! 

"MOM, CAN YOU COME WIPE ME??"

Take care of that and return to find Olivia sitting in the middle of the shiny kitchen floor, splashing her hands in a large puddle of chunky banana spit up. 

And your thirty minutes are up!!

*Just a disclaimer - I am well aware that my life is crazy because I made it that way, and I wouldn't have it any other way.  I LOVE my kids, and I LOVE being a mother, and this craziness is what keeps me sane.  :)  Besides, what else would I have to write about it if life were boring!??

Don't you wish Bart was YOUR dad?

Average week at the Farrells

It was a pretty normal week at the Farrell household.  Ella and Amelia had school Tuesday and Thursday.  Kim and I started working out, so we went to the gym twice this week (as well as me going two other days), so that's pretty exciting.  The kids love it too because we go to her YMCA, and its like a whole new experience for them.

Ella has been all over her Leappad.  She loves the Mr. Pencil game, and she LOVES the Tangled game.  She has to spell words and manipulate letters to unlock new stamps and drawing tools, and she loves doing that.  I feel bad sometimes about her being on the game, but she mainly does it while Amelia naps.  Plus she is learning SO much.  I am amazed how she recognizes words and sounds.  I know I am biased, but she is sooo smart.  I made her put on headphone this particular day because the other two were napping.  She felt like such a big girl with her earphones.

Ella and Amelia LOVE their baby sister....especially Ella.  She has been all into loving on her lately.  She's always telling me, "I love Olivia....she's MY sister."  I get a little curious as to where all this newfound love came from, but all in all, it's sweet.  Here they are, showing her something on the laptop.

Mammy gave my girls a very special gift for Christmas this year....they each have their own book of Mammy reading to them.  It has a recording of her voice reading to them, page by page, and as you turn the page, she reads along.  They LOVE them, and they want to hear Mammy's voice often.  It's quite deafening when they all want to hear their book at the same time, but they do love them.

Sweet Olivia has been playing on her own with her sisters' toys.  She basically just chews on them, but it still seems to amuse her for a while.  She's such a happy baby.

Bart got me a paper cricut for Christmas, but he also got me a cake cricut, which cuts fondant and sugar sheets into different shapes to decorate a cake with.  I am sooo excited to make kickbutt cakes and cupcakes for the girls' birthday parties and school and such.  I bought a sugar sheet a few weeks ago to try it out, and we needed a reason to make a cake on Saturday, so we made a Saints cake for the game.  All i had was blue dye, so it ended up being a blue and red Saints cake (who also lost their playoff game...).  I LOVE the cake cricut, and I can't wait to make more neat stuff!

Oh, and I tried something from Pinterest called zebra cake.  You just lay the batter differently, and it makes a striped effect, but way cool!

Look at those sweet dimples!

Seven months old, and she is pulling up on everything!  She barely crawls, but she is getting to where she wants to go with a quickness.  And more importantly, she is pulling up on the couch, the baby gate fence and the toys! 

Sunday, we played outside almost all day long.  It was such a beautiful day and there was football on the TV, so the girls played dress up and stayed out in the backyard all day.  Rapunzel found some leftover pumpkins from Halloween, and she hauled them into her tower. 

"Look, ma!  I'm driving!!"

Sweet sisters....sometimes the fight, but they really do love each other.

Ella found the only tiny trees we have in our yard, and she proceeded to attempt to climb it.  Hee hee...

My children HATE clothing, if you haven't been able to tell.

Geaux Tigers!

Well, the tigers lost, but it wasn't due to our lack of team spirit! 

Monday was a HELLISH day!  It was a cold and rainy night and morning, and Olivia woke up still not feeling that great from a weekend of antibiotics.  So I called the doctor and got an appointment for 9:30.  Now, I don't know if you know this about my girls, but they are sleepers!  Once they finally admit defeat and actually give IN to sleep, they will sleep till 9am easy.  I was skeptical about taking them out not only in the rain and cold but also to all three of them to a doctors office (germ city!), but I was desperate for poor Olivia to feel better.  I woke up the older girls, fed them breakfast, and dressed everyone (in LSU clothes because it was championship game day, how could I not!?), piled them all into the car in the pouring rain and cold, and made our way to the doctor.  Thank God for free valet parking at my doctor's office, or THAT would've been a fiasco too, but it was a pleasant overall doctor's visit. 

Not sure if I have mentioned before, but I LOVE my pediatrician, Dr. Nguyen.  She is SO wonderful to us.  Not only does she always remember us and what's going on with us (because I am there so often, I guess!), but on days like today when she wasn't very busy, she stops to talk to us about how our holidays were, how my surgeries went, and little small talk that I know she does not have to do...but thats what makes a good doctor.  She is such a wonderful person to have caring for my girls.

Anyway, sure enough the antibiotics weren't working, so we stopped by the pharmacy for more, grabbed lunch, and headed to the YMCA for Ella's dance class (all in torrential rain, might I add).  After I shuttle three kids IN THE RAIN in a double stroller into the Y, I walk in and the woman behind the desk tells me, "Oh, didn't they call you?  Dance class was cancelled!"

NO, THEY DIDN'T CALL ME!   Do you think I would be here dripping wet with my sick baby and my hungry children if I knew that!?  Needless to say, I stayed and worked out because I needed to RELIEVE SOME STRESS!  Wow. 

The evening didn't get much better....LSU played a pathetic game against Alabama, all while Ella and Amelia yelled "GEAUX TIGERS!" and Amelia's favorite phrase, "TOUCHDOWN!," and she says it with such gusto!  LSU lost 21-0.  Humiliating, but we still had the cutest little cheerleaders!

First week of the year in pictures

Ella and Amelia came home from Louisiana, and they had a ball playing with all their toys they got from Santa and family.  Here's Amelia and Ella.....I mean, Little Mermaid and Rapunzel (not sure why Ariel sporting the black do!)

Just another day in paradise....the girls going for their Sunday drive in the Barbie Jeep!

If you haven't noticed yet, our kids like to play dress up.  I have the cutest picture of the three of them in Winnie the Pooh costumes leftover from Halloween, but Pooh is missing clothes.....so, you'll have to settle for the cutest Piglet ever!!

Weekend mornings are the greatest because dad can play games with the girls.  Amelia loves to play Don't Break the Ice with her daddy. 

Sweet cheeks is a jumping fool!  And our latest addition?  The two pearly whites gleaming from the lower gums! 

Ahhhh, lunch in my pj's! 

Is it a yawn?  Is it amazement?  The world will never know!

Our newly mobile Olivia somehow made her way UNDERNEATH her baby bed. 

Nothing like mud-riding in church clothes! 

We do the crawl-a-shuffle! 

Olivia looooves bathtime.  Especially when she doesn't have to share the tub!! 

My latest craft - a Mardi Gras wreath!  Feeling exceptionally homesick this weekend with the Saints playoff game and the big LSU game in New Orleans this weekend.  This made me feel better!

This is how we do it in the country....king cake on the table, barefoot and bottomless. 

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am back!

A friend of mine inspired me to start a challenge.  To take as many photos of the every day moments of our lives so that when our little ones are grown up, we'll remember the not so special occasions just as much as we remember the special ones (ok, who are we kidding...they're all special!)

Having three kids, it's really hard to blog as often as I would like to.  I have SO many funny stories and so many things I want to share with not only my children one day (through this blog), but also to share with you, my readers, who take the time to come here to our blog to read about us.  I'm challenging myself to one entry a week....if I accomplish more, great!  But at least if I can shoot for once a week, that doesn't seem like THAT much of an unrealistic goal (and at very least, I can throw a bunch of pictures of that week on here!)

I had surgery on my hands at the end of the year.  I had carpal tunnel throughout all three of my pregnancies, but with each pregnancy, it subsided afterwards.  After Olivia, it didn't go away.  I would feel numbness in my hands all the time, and pain would shoot up through my arm, almost to my shoulder.  It was getting worse and worse, until one night I was working on a hot glue gun project for some Christmas favors for the girls to take to school.  I have one of those old-time mega hot guns, and as I worked, I remember getting glue on my hands, but I continued to work.  When I was done, I hadn't burned myself one time...until I looked at my fingers, and I had red spots on them.  I had burned my fingers, and I had so little feeling in them, that I didn't even notice.  CRAZINESS!  So, I made an appointment to see a specialist downtown, met with him in the morning, and that afternoon I was having surgery on my left hand, the one with the most damage.  That was Dec 16th....it was pretty easy making do with one hand through the holidays because I still had my right hand, my good hand.  Dec 29th we came back to Houston, and I had the right hand done.  Wow....hard for a mama to take care of her three babies with one healing hand and one freshly cut hand!  But my wonderful husband helped me, and we made it through.  PLUS, it was the best thing I could've every done because the problem is completely fixed, and I'm recovering more and more everyday.  Bionic, I think, was what my physical therapist called me for my one-time visit....she was amazed I had progressed so much in so little time.  I informed her I had three tiny physical therapists at home that did her job for her.

We had a great Christmas, and a wonderful New Year.  We're so blessed to have the friends and family that we have.

Our First Visit to the Children's Museum

Since Bart was off of work the day after New Year's and since we had to pass by the Children's Museum every time I had to have my hand surgery, we decided it would be a good day to take the girls to the museum.  All these places are going to love us (having three kids), since paying for all of us to get in is just as much as a membership, so of course again, we caved and became members!  Two visits and it paid for itself, plus the kids LOVED it...I know we'll be back.

Amelia, the mad scientist, getting ready for an experiment!

I loved seeing the wonder in their eyes.  Some things were way over their heads, but they were very curious all the same. 

"Riding" in the mexican taxi in the Mexico exhibit.  Amelia also exchanged my money into pesos, and Ella made me some tortillas.

Amelia and Ella LOVED seeing the baby chicks pecking their way through the eggs.  Then they got to see the fluffy little chicks after they were all cleaned up.  So cool.

Olivia even got in on the action!

By far, Ella's favorite part was Kidtropolis, a kid-centered city with businesses, jobs, banks, stores and so much more.  Here's Ella working in the restaurant, bringing Bart his "chicken." 

Our next stop was the HEB grocery store.  The girls had a blast shopping like mommy does.  I swear I could hear Ella talking like me, "Let's see....we also need ___." 

Great day at the museum.