at the end of the day.

this morning was nuts. We ran out of oatmeal- waffles were not sufficient.

We had a playdate, and honestly, I am so preoccupied with the zillion other things going on that I had a hard time even focusing on my dear friends.

Nap time was a lost cause... Henry slept for maybe an hour- Maeve was up singing and jumping on her bed for the ENTIRE length of "nap."

My plan was to make some Thai food for dinner. I realized I didn't have chicken (of course I reached this realization AFTER I opened the noodles, flavoring packs and crushed the peanuts).

Ryan had to mow the lawn which left me in the house with the kids for the remainder of the night. To put it mildly, I was just in a rotten mood. It's not anyone's fault- certainly not my kids- but I was taking out my frustration on them. Just being short with Maeve- (like when she asked for water, then changed her mind and wanted juice... and I actually said to her "Maeve walk out of the kitchen and be thankful for your water.") Or my Mr.Man who ((I THINK)) may be cutting another tooth?!? All he wanted was to be held and all I needed to do was the dishes, tying up some things before Florida, packing, picking up toys, etc. He kept doing his Mogli crawl to me, and instead of just stopping what I was doing and picking him up I muttered under my breath "dear LORD give me a BREAK!"

The beautiful hour of 8 PM finally rolled around. Baths were given, pjs on. Henry was happy again (belly full with milk:) and it was story time for Maeve. I said "ONE book tonight." She picked out 3. Out of pure exhaustion I decided it would take less effort to read 3 than it would to argue about only reading one.

All three books were read and we folded our hands for prayers. I asked Maeve what made her happy today and what she wanted to thank Jesus for. This is how it went.

"Thank you Jesus for mama. Thank you for my Henry. Thank you for dadda. Thank you for nana, and popa, and aunt emi, and aunt meg, and uncle ty, and uncle al. I love the park. I love ice cream."

I told her those were very nice prayers and asked if there was anything else she wanted to thank Jesus for... she flung back her head, started giggling and said "YOU SWEET MOMMA!"

At the end of the day... My.Heart.Melted.

Memorial Weekend 2010!

"The best laid plans" should be the real title of this post. It's amazing with even my superb planning skills (more like OCD/controlling skills) how things still can go completely awry. (love the word "awry.")

Lo and behold, Ryan had Saturday off- this does NOT happen people. Normally when there is a holiday, everyone else at Culligan is home but RYAN is the one they send in to do some grunt work. You can imagine my excitement and PURE JOY when he told me he was off on Saturday :)

Saturday was spent cleaning and doing yard work. I planted a mini-garden. It's MINI MINI. Ryan kind of refused to dig up a patch of grass larger than a beach towel... (yeah that's about the size of my little garden... one of those over sized beach towels). We got this wiggle worm hose thingy for Maeve to play in while I concentrated (intensely) on planting my squash (that's all I really have growing in there at the moment... BUT along w/ my scattering of melon plants- which are coming along VERY nicely & my 3 topsy turvy's I am hoping to have some luck!)

Saturday night we rented "Dear John." I was disappointed. I was waiting for her to write "I'm pregnant" or "I have cancer" or SOMETHING really dramatic. Instead it was just a bunch of "blah blah blah." Ryan joked that in order for me to deem a movie "really good" there has to be either a pregnancy or a death. Not true, not true... :)

Sunday we woke up bright and early- I had to be at church at 10:30 to photograph a dedication. We were taking the kids (the dedication was at the church we go to anyway) but I didn't want to try and focus on taking pictures with Maeve tugging on me. So I left early and went by myself & the kids followed with my parents. The service was great... somehow that pastor speaks to my heart each and every time. I honestly start looking around like "are there cameras somewhere recording my reactions???" Because the messages always hit home (sometimes too close to home).

Now, I've expressed my desire to someday be a "photographer"- I am hoping to take a post-production class at some point... anyways, I would love to continue to photograph children, babies, couples, seniors, etc. BUT I have absolutely NO DESIRE, WHATSOEVER to photograph a wedding. The stress combined with church lighting... ummm no thanks. So yeah- that church lighting- this is my 2nd time photographing a baptism/dedication and this one was tougher than the first. This church had stage lighting so it was pretty shadowy. Fortunately the parents saved me a great seat RIGHT in front of where the pastor dedicated Lottie. I was grateful I didn't have to run all over the place :) And believe it or not, even with the crappy lighting, there are some pretty cool pictures. Still editing...still editing...



After the dedication we headed up to Detroit. It was WEDDING time. Our (my family's- not OURS) old foreign exchange student, Martina, was getting married. We totally missed the wedding. I mean, the wedding party was marching out as we were running in. Whoops. We met up with my family & thus began the waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

First we waited outside (for about an hour & a half) for the wedding party to get to the limo & do bubbles... during this time, I made my sister and her boyfriend, Cody, pose for pictures. We joked everyone was going to think they were engaged :) ... they're not. Just for the record. But they do make a cute couple...

We made our way over to the reception which was in Greektown- the only part of Detroit I'm semi-familiar with. Greektown 5 years ago (pre-kids/marriage) was fun... but Greektown with 2 babies, uhhhh not so much. We went to the reception (which was in the upstairs of this really good pizza place) and let Maeve dance and dance and dance. No joke- about 2 hours later (by this time it was 8:30 or so?) dinner still had not been served and my kids were losing it. Well... Henry was okay- he just wanted to sleep but was having a hard time because of the noise and lights. Maeve was a second away from a meltdown. This was really not very "mom" of me- but we were IN Greektown- like a step away from the casino... so I asked my mom if she could watch Maeve for 20 minutes while Ryan and I spent 10 bucks in the casino. We ended up winning 50 bucks. We're lucky like that :)

We ran back up to the reception and dinner was STILL not being served. Now it was around 9 or so. It was time to pack up and leave. Maeve actually fell asleep like a sack of potatoes and Henry followed suit. Luckily we only had a 10 minute drive back to our hotel in Southfield.

We got there, checked in, got the crib set up and ordered room service ASAP. I felt HORRIBLE- Maeve kept saying "I SO HUNGRY!" The food got there semi-fast and Maeve was in heaven :) We spread the food out on the bed and she picked away. I think it was 11:30 or so by the time we fell asleep. It was a LONG DAY.


The next morning started out promising- a great breakfast, followed by a HUGE DOWNPOUR. No Detroit zoo :( We drove home early- around 9 or so, and I was deterrrrrmined to do SOMETHING for Memorial day. Unfortunately the rain hit Jackson as well, and the parades were canceled. Ahhhhh well. The best laid plans, right?

We didn't get to swim at the Westin. We didn't get to the zoo. We didn't see any parades. We even missed the fireworks on Saturday night. BUT it was a good weekend. Even though our plans were kind of all over the place...

Happy 50th Ma!

OH MY LORD. What a day. Yesterday.

It was my mom's 50th birthday- one she wasn't too excited about celebrating. She's really not the kind of woman that enjoys getting riper with age! She'd love to be 20 again. The day started out great- Maeve had ballet at 10- my mom was feeling good and I was happy Maeve's ballet class fell on mom's birthday- since ballet and Maeve are my mom's two loves :) Next was lunch at Anna's. Again, everything seemed fine- we ate, I lost my mind for a little bit as Maeve decided to run through the store barely dodging very fragile items. (ahhh). Dinner was planned for 5 because Ryan, Maeve, Henry and I were going to go to the U of M/State meet up in Ann Arbor. It was a last minute thing that I saw advertised on facebook yesterday and I decided it would be fun for us to go. Admission was a buck and it was Hawaiian night. Plus I had been wanting to see how Maeve would do at a meet. After dinner (again, mom was acting totally normal) we headed up to Ann Arbor and my mom went back to work at the studio. The meet went great- Maeve loved it. She called the girls "monkeys" as they were swinging on the bars ;) But we decided to leave about 30 minutes early because Henry was starting to fuss and Maeve was beginning to wander through the rows of seats. About a half hour into our car ride home, my phone rang- it was my dad. He told me my mom had been taken to the ER for one of her heart episodes. Coincidentally, we were about 10 miles from the Elm street exit so I told him I'd be there in 15 minutes or so.

Ryan raced me to the hospital and I ran into the ER- completely forgetting about the kids (oops!) Thankfully Ryan is a good dadda who takes lots of notes on how to defrost milk (by not putting it the microwave!!) and making bottles! :) When I got there, it was a bit hectic. Her heart rate was soaring between 260-270. She was having a hard time breathing so she was on oxygen. The doctors had just finished giving her a medicine called adentin which stopped her heart long enough for it to get back into a normal rhythm. VERY quickly, her heart rate started dropping back down to a normal range. Within about a half hour it was in the 90s. After things settled down a bit, we sat and waited, and waited, and waited. Her labs came back a little abnormal- her potassium was low. So they gave her some... then we waited longer. When all was said and done, they couldn't tell her why her heart had done that- but they did say she was lucky to get into the ER so they could capture it on the EKG so that maybe a cardiologist could figure it out.

That's where my mom is today- at the cardiologist, trying to get this under control. It was really scary and I am so thankful she's alright.

There is a part two to this story: Today just happened to be Henry's two month appointment. My mom was planning on watching Maeve this morning, but of course, with everything that happened last night, she was in no condition to watch her. That meant me bringing both kids to the doc. (one of whom is petrified of the doctors). I was nervous; My friend Jessy and I joke that they keep those office rooms at 100 degrees because as soon as you get in there with all your kids we start to sweat. No different today. I got in there, Maeve immediately started jumping on the scale (that is clearly marked "KEEP CHILDREN OFF SCALE") I am trying to get Henry down to a dry diaper while yanking Maeve off the scale. THANK GOD for the "Tarzan" book that happened to be in the room- it kept Maeve busy enough for me to get H undressed and weighed. After the nurse left, I was then informed by the billing lady that my dear, dear husband had not submitted a form for Henry yet and therefore, this visit (including the 4 vaccines he got) would not be covered. Talk about starting to sweat. After the billing lady left I got on the phone with Ryan and started hissing in that low, really ticked off sounding voice, about how he should be here dealing with the billing and with his out of control 2 year old daughter.

I'm not sure if the doctor was busy operating on a patient, performing open heart surgery or something, but we were left in that small, HOT room for about 20 minutes. I was about to melt onto the floor. Maeve was already ON the floor- with her MOUTH OPEN SCREAMING at the top of her lungs. She wanted to go out to the chalk board and color. I will call it a true miracle if Maeve doesn't get sick here within the next few weeks- literally, her mouth was open on the floor. Eventually it got so loud (of course Henry had to join in on the screaming fun) that the nurse came in and TOOK MAEVE OUT for me. Are you kidding me??????????? Granted, the nurse, Brooke is *kind of* a friend (meaning, we would say hi and chat for a minute if we saw each other at the store) but yeah, pretty embarrassing. I totally could just hear them saying "that poor mom- she can't handle her kids." UGHHHH.

Now onto Mr. Henry... Dr. Williams finally made her way into the room and by this time I am fairly sure my mascara was running from the sweat, my shirt was crooked exposing my bra (due to Maeve pulling on it) and I had that overall look of "shoot me now" on my face. She did his exam in about two minutes flat. His skin isn't looking too hot- he has to be on some hydrocortizone cream... his blocked tear duct isn't looking great either. We're going to wait until he's at least 6 months until we talk about doing anything to it. She's also pretty sure he's got a milk allergy. FABULOUS! My choices are soy based formulas or cutting out my dairy. We'll see what happens within the next few weeks. As of now, I'm planning on nursing but she went on and on about how "great of a start" I've given him and to not feel badly about quitting. She's seen a lot of moms go insane over trying to figure out what's making their baby so gassy and uncomfortable. Sometimes it isn't worth eliminating half of your diet. (keep in mind dairy isn't just found in milk and cheeses). As far as Henry's weight/height- he's 12 lbs 15 oz (lost an ounce since last visit) and I've already forgotten his height (its written on a sticker somewhere around here...) I DO know that both his height and weight are in the 75th percentile and his head is in the 50th. He got his 4 pokes (poor guy). After we picked up Maeve from the nurses station we high tailed it out of there, but not before apologizing profusely to the nurses, doctor and anyone else that was subjected to the screaming coming from room 8. On our way home I called my sister in pure desperation- I BEGGED her to watch Maeve for just an hour so I could come home, nurse Henry, give him a bath (he LOVES his baths) and just cuddle him for a minute or two. I have a good sister (actually I have 2 good sisters :) she played hide & go seek w/ Maeve for 45 minutes or so while I got some time with Henry.

Maeve is now eating a lunch of peanut butter banana sandwiches and cheese. Henry is sleeping. I am sitting for the first time today without a screaming child in my arms. Counting down to 1:00... nap time nap time nap time. :)

***oooh one more note: Stay tuned to the blog... the McKenney family has a very big announcement to make (soon-ish). And no, I can say with 100% confidence I am NOT preggo!! :)

stilllllll hereee!

I promise I will post some updates soon. I just wanted to let you all know I am still alive! I'm just suuuuper tired and busy. AND whenever I get a free second (like now- the baby is sleeping, Maeve is in her crib TRYING to get to sleep) all I want to do is lay in bed... not sit on the computer. But stick with me... someday I will get into a routine & have some energy back!