Wed, Mar 4, 2009, 9:26 AM 

to laurenmc27@aol.com, walkerdollahon 

Lauren, I have to tell you. We always pray on the way to school. Shep & ER usually pray. Today Maggie said she wanted to pray, this is the first time she has really asked. I said, what do you want to pray about? she said "I wanna pay baby Wiwy!" And she did!! She said something like, Dear God, baby Lily sick, please make baby lily well, amen! I was so excited. The very first time I have really heard her pray a real prayer!!! And we haven't really talked about Lily much lately, she came up with that all by herself! 

 I LOVE to see how God lays it on my babies hearts to pray for others, already!! Oh, it just gives me chills. 

 love you, Mis

Missy <missydoll@gmail.com>	3/4/09
to Lauren Browning

Lauren, I have to tell you. We always pray on the way to school. Shep & ER usually pray. Today Maggie said she wanted to pray, this is the first time she has really asked. I said, what do you want to pray about? she said "I wanna pay baby Wiwy!" And she did!! She said something like, Dear God, baby Lily sick, please make baby lily well, amen! I was so excited. The very first time I have really heard her pray a real prayer!!! And we haven't really talked about Lily much lately, she came up with that all by herself!

I LOVE to see how God lays it on my babies hearts to pray for others, already!! Oh, it just gives me chills. 

The dinosaurs are all extink, right? Because they died. They died cause they wanted to see Jesus, right? But, they dudn't saw Jesus after they died.
They saw scientists.

-Shep

from Mimi 7-1-08

Might as well enjoy telling you how sweet Eva Rose was to Mimi. I didn't ask her to help me but she got busy clearing the table for me! Imagine my surprise when she carried in the china...ULP! But she was sooooo careful and she went back again and again to get everything she could manage and even the heavy goblets filled with iced tea...she said, "This is so heavy!" I was astonished, Missy!  She kept hugging my legs and bringing me silverware, napkins, etc. I mean she carried a lot! I have no idea why she decided to do that! I thanked her profusely of course. It was so touching. I felt like I had  a glimpse of the woman she is going to become. It was just lovely to have such a young child concerned about helping Mimi!

Email sent to Jenny on 6-18-08

I need your prayers, because I know you will get this.

Eva Rose will wake up at 5, 5:30, when it is pitch black, and go wake up the baby, which wakes up Shep, and us, then we put her back in her room and she screams which proceeds to wake up Maggie. So, 5:30am, pitch black, my whole house is awake and shorted 1-2 hours sleep.

She does this once every 2 weeks or so. Lately more often.
We have tried everything we know to try. Spanking, putting her to bed early, whatever. Nothing works.

She did it this am and you know Walker is out of town. So I put her back in bed, locked the door, and now I told her she cannot come down till it is almost time for school. I am going to cover her doorknob with duct tape tonight - she can undo it otherwise. Now she is absolutely screaming, beating the door, and this has been going on and off for 1.5 hours now. And school is not till 9 and it is only 7.

Please pray that this works. I am so at my wits end with her.

 Eva Rose (3) is sweet on her first boy. His name is Connor.

One afternoon I asked her if she liked Connor. Affirmative tee hee hee. Do you love Connor? Affirmative. Do you want to marry Connor? And this was her reply:

"I don't want to marry Connor. I want to Joseph him."
Pardon?
"Mary is a girl. I am a girl. Joseph is a boy. I don't want to Mary Connor, I want to Joseph him. Cuz I'm a girl, Mommy. And Connor is a boy."

Last week I was SO frustrated with the kids because they would not clean up. So I finally lost it and yelled at them. So Eva Rose turns to Shep and goes "Mommy's bein ugwy" and he goes "Yeah."  

(looking at photos of Uncle James and Baby Wendy)

Shep : Where's James hair go?
ER: I think maybe the bad guys shoot Wendy's and James's hair off.

Two Names You Go By:1. Missy
2. Mommy

Two Things You Are Wearing Right Now:1. green tank with a cross on it
2. bracelet a friend got me in Prague that I keep scratching Ike's head with

Two Things You Want in a Relationship:

are we talking husbands or sister wives? I guess it doesn't matter
1. love
2. money - not necessarily in that order

Two of Your Favorite Things to do:1. sleep
2. eat

wow, that sounds lazy. What I meant to say was

1. preach the gospel

2. serve my neighbor

Two things You Want Very Badly At The Moment:1. a backrub
2. a little time alone

Two pets you had/have:
1. Parlin - orange tabby
2. the family of possums that lives in our backyard

Two things you did last night:1. stared at the clock wondering where my husband was
2. snuggled with Ingram

Two things you ate today:1. pizza
2. one bite of the kids corndog. Man, corndogs are good.

Two people you talked to last:1. Walker
2. Maggie

Two Things You're doing tomorrow:1. buying a cute little girl a first birthday present
2. sleeping in, hopefully

Two longest car rides:
1. Houston-Virginia-Houston
2. up and down the California coast

Two Favorite Holidays:
1. Purim
2. Martin Luther King day

Two favorite beverages:
1. anything forbidden in Mormonism

Shep got mad at me today because i wouldnt buy him this truck at Ross and it was naptime and he had a total meltdown, cried and cried "you made me sad Mom! you hurt my feelings!"  After he calmed down i was looking at him in my rear view mirror and said "you have the prettiest eyes Shep" and he goes "I got WET eyes. I got CRYING eyes. Cuz you don't buy me a TRUCK."  

Thu, May 3, 2007, 1:11 AM

Maggie is B A D. It is coming out strong!! She climbs up on top the the table, stands there and looks at me and goes Nononononono!

email

Quick update...

I saw the neonatologist yesterday and was crying so I think he felt bad for me so he said that he would get an OT consult.  I met with her today and she showed me some tricks to try and get him to suck better. He is doing better, they are giving him 60 ccs of milk, about 2oz, and he was taking 40 today - yesterday he was only taking 25, so that is good. They will only feed him 20-25 min before they give up and put it in his tube. Someone finally explained it to me that is because they do not want to exhaust him. The only thing he does to burn calories now is to suck, and they don't want him to burn too many because they don't want him to lose weight. He gets a bottle every other feed and when he does a whole one, they will add more. We are a ways from that. The OT and the nurses have said it it like a lightbulb suddenly turns on in their heads and they figure it out. So I am praying for that lightbulb to brighten up soon.  I am pumping every 3 hours (when possible) and so far that has gone fine. The LC today told me I needed to pump every 2.5 hours and also wake up at night once to pump - I just smiled at her and went OK thinking, that ain't gonna happen. It is hard enough for me to do every 3 hours with 3 other very demanding little kids and the ONLY bright side to him being in the NICU is that I get to sleep all night. I am ok with him getting some formula and they are packing my milk with more calories too. So far he has only lost about 6oz.

I have been extremely hormonal the last couple of days and was very afraid post-partum depression was kicking in (I have had it twice before) but today I feel normal, so praise God. Shepherd and Eva Rose are being pretty terrible. Shep has been very defiant and backtalking. He got to see him last night so that helped but he does not understand why his baby is not home. "Where is her? I WANT my baby brudder!" Me too, baby, me too. Eva Rose is pretty clueless and thinks Baby Ingram is in her tummy. Maggie is FINALLY starting to walk so she may be walking for real by the time he is home. I am going to try to spend some time with them tomorrow and take Shep to his favorite place in the world - Costco - so hopefully some one-on-one will help. It is hard when I feel like I barely see them, and then when I do, I am disciplining the whole time.

One of the doctors said he thought he was a 34 weeker, his other doctor said more like a 36 weeker, who knows when this baby was conceived. It doesn't really matter, as some full term babies, especially c-section ones, end up in the same boat as Ingram.

I am learning a whole lot about the NICU and becoming a little attached to his little buddies - his next door neighbor Luis caught on sucking so he gets to go home soon.  His other next door neighbor Ashlyn has been there since March 19. She is a twin, and there is no other twin there, so I don't know if they lost the other one. She is teeny tiny but has a giant temper and today she had what looked like a shunt on her head. Seeing her makes me thankful that our problems are minor in comparison. His other friend Grace was born the same day as Ingram and is much tinier but out of her incubator. The nurses won't tell me their details due to privacy (altho I think I found one who might) so I just pray for them to get better, whatever they need, God knows.

Our mothers have been lifesavers and have come every day so that I can run back and forth to the hospital and take much needed naps.  They are true blessings.

Please continue to pray that Ingram figures out how to suck, swallow and breathe all at the same time, and that my hormones stay stable. We don't need Momma to go south right now.  Also that I can figure out how to meet the needs of my other kiddoes when I am feeling so emotionally tapped as it is.

Your prayers are working and mean the world to us.

thanks -
love, Mis

3/5/2007 8:55 PM >>>

Shep and ER fight like an old married couple. Yours too?

This is it. Walker is supposedly going to make the call to Dr Snip Snip. I want more but my old body - man, it has been put thru the ringer. And this last scare....I mean obviously we are not good at not getting pg since we have 3 precious surprises. My body is very unregular. And evidently loves to conceive. Which is a good thing, but.  I do want to adopt and if we make more then we can't do that. I can't even think about when we will adopt tho. All along I have told myself this is my last one, so mentally I am ok, or as ok as I will get. But I will always be jealous of women having babies :( I don't love the pg part so much, but going to the hospital to have a baby is my fave thing in the world to do. So it is very bittersweet. I am enjoying every little kick. And this is the kickingest baby yet.

(email)

Eva Rose has been throwing temper tantrums and been so whiny for the past 5 days or so. I went to pick her up from mothers day out just now and they told me that during naptime she didn't want to lay on her mat so had KICKED and HIT  the teachers. 

Jeez louise. So embarrassing. Anyone have the number for an exorcist?

Shep told a lie to us for the first time this wkend.  Told me he had finished his sandwich so he could get a cookie and then I found it hidden. I thought he had also switched out his oatmeal bowl with his sister's empty one that same morning but could not prove it...

later i put him in time out for something and when I went in to talk to him about it he was reading a book and said 'I'm reading. I'm in time out." with this surly attitude - JUST like a teenager.

And so it begins. Sigh.

from an email - 

Awww! Maggie has 8 teeth, poor thing. It has been very rough to cut them all so close together. I am 90% sure she said "Night" yesterday.  As in, "Say night night to baby!" "Night night baby!" which she hears 5x a day. So that will be 3 - if you count Momma and Dada, I have yet to hear Dada but Walker swears she says it.  By 10 months Eva Rose was saying 6 words - momma, dada, uh oh, ice, juice and something else I can't think of. I thought she was weird - Maggie in her normalness is confirming it. Eva Rose is gonna be trouble. Her thing now is she just started climbing out of her crib, so at 6am she goes and wakes up Shep and Maggie. It's cute, real freaking cute.

Eva gets in trouble for saying no, so now when you ask her to do something she says 'I can't" instead. Sorry, just can't do it, mom. Maybe later I'll pencil you in. 

"I wuv you mommy." Shep says it a lot. Eva Rose has not said it to me but told me the other day "I love Nina." Who is Nina? Our MAID.  She loves the maid. Not her mommy, the maid.

Ingrate.

 Today my first daughter was THE DEVIL. She is very very TWO. She does not seem to throw normal tantrums when she does not get what she wants, she uses this devil voice to scream at you. Picture REDRUM. Or the Exorcist. I am serious, it hurts my ears and my spine and it is NOT cute. And then Miss Maggie Belle, she has learned how to pull up in her crib but not how to get down. So her thing is to stand up the whole time she is supposed to be napping and alternately yell and giggle. And so I go up, lie her down, and before i am down the stairs, she is up again. She did not nap ALL day today. I was so aggravated when my mom called she threatened to call CPS on me and I actually told her to go ahead, I could use the break from them both. So, there goes my mother of the year award.

 

Today on the way to school, I told her when we got there she was getting a spanking for that ugly voice. She says No 'pankin! And I was like oooooh, yeah, 'pankin. So when we get there, she looks at me when I come to get her and goes "I got cute boots! I got a cute dress!" Like, how can you possibly spank me when I am so cute and fashionable? Didn't work.

(email to Hillary Luker)


Let me tell you about my week. On Monday, Maggie's booster chair tray just flew off. So she falls flat on her face and busts her lip and her frenulum, the skin between your 2 front teeth. Blood everywhere, she SCREAMS for an hour, and this is a child who almost never cries. Heartbreaking. Scares me to death. Later that afternoon Eva Rose breaks out head to toe in hives. ??? Still don't know why. THEN, Tues morn Shep gets sent home from Mothers Day Out because he has impetigo on his face. Haul all 3 kids back to the dr. Impetigo is truly gross, FYI. Then this morning, Maggie wakes up the snot queen, totally sick with some crud that made her drowsy all day. At least she napped like a normal infant, for once. So, I am just feeling the urge to dip all my children by their toes into a big vat of Lysol. And on top of all that, I have a UTI. And Eva Rose is possessed by the devil. 

Shepherd is talking so much now, he is in the stage where he will say something and we will ask, where did he get that from??  Tonight he looked at Maggie and said "Baby is a joy."  Awwwww.  He is a little confused on his theology tho; today he told me "Jesus lives in my tummy!"  

missys date

Subject: Re: Date with Jonathan Edwards To: rosann@pdq.net, ark@neosoft.com, LauraEds@aol.com SUCKED!!!! S U C K E D S U C K E D S U C K E D OH man my level of excitement was exactly matched by my level of disappointment. He came over and we talked here for like 30 minutes. The whole time it was all talking about him. I would wait for him to turn the conversation back to me and I waited and waited. Felt like an HR person at an interview. Smiling nodding idiot. So then he says we are going to Black Lab. I was like, ok, not really a date place, but ok. He said something like dreaming of Black Lab when he was in Prague, so I let it go. Then when we go to the car in my drive he says "its open" and didnt open it for me. First red flag. Ok...then we go to Soundwaves to buy Jeff a cd (buena vista social club). He does open the car door for me there, but not the door to soundwaves. Then we go to black lab. No door opening. We eat, and he does kinda start to ask me ?s about me, so things go ok at dinner. He does pay. Then afterward we stood on the big chessboard and he was explaing to me how to play chess, and he is standing with his head blocking the light from the restaurant, shining about him like a halo, and I marvel at his beauty and pretend to listen. He is SOOO precious. One of his teeth is kinda slanted at the bottom and it is SOOO sexy. But alas. Then - we get in the car, are driving down W Alabama, and he says "so what do you wanna talk about?" and I said "me!". Long silence !!!!!!! Ok here is the kiss of death. We get to my house - to my drive - sitting in the car - and --- YES --- he is not going to walk me up!!!!! UGH!! So by this point I was so fed up I just looked at him and said "You gonna walk me to the door Jonathan?!?" And he kinda jumps and says "oh!" so he does. So he wrote a little note to Jeff, I said thanks and I am sure I will see you after I get back from Prague cuz of Jeff, and I accidently slammed the door in his face. Didnt mean to push it that hard. UGH. I am SOOOOOOOO unhappy. He is just so great looking. Deep, well read. Christian. Getitng his MBA. Dammit, dammit dammit. At first I was like, maybe he is nervous, thats why he is talking about him self so much. Cus he did NOT do that at the party; that was a normal, great conversation. And once he got a beer he kinda loosened up. So I could have dismissed that. It was the combo of the selfcenteredness plus the lack of manners. Lack of manners I could eventually say "listen, Jonathan..." I could have dealt w/one or the other, but not both. Then I thought, maybe this is not even a date. Maybe it is just a 2 friends of Jeffs having dinner. Cuz, like, I would not expect Graham to walk me up or open my doors, even tho my guy friends ALWAYS open my doors - even my friends' husbands open my doors...my DAD opens my doors....probably MY BROTHER would ... But he met me at a party & got my #...emailed me....showered and looked cute, wore khakis & a button down....picked me up.....paid.....walks like a date, talks like a date! And I have been told by more than one guy that guys don't do that just with girls they are not interested in. So what the hell? I dunno. If he asked me out again I would probably give him one more chance, being that he is so beautiful, but I SERIOUSLY doubt that is gonna happen. I tell you what, he and Jeff are like seperated at birth. Both tall, brilliant analytical introverts. Cept Jeff has SOCIAL SKILLS.