The Farm: Texas Tales Part Who Knows

Josephine loves dogs. I didn't realize this, because we have a dog, and I figured her obsession with hugging, feeding, and riding him - none of which Billy takes too kindly at all - was just because he is, well, here. But next to the Texas farm is a river, deep as a wading pool, and along with She-Dog came other neighborly dogs, and Josephine was ECSTATIC. I have never seen her as excited as she was swimming and romping with the dogs in the water and sand.

She also loved the flowers and cows and riding "the mule" around the land. We all did.

But boy - dogs. She leapt with them, rolled with them, snuggled beside them, splashed with them. She became one of the pack...

He's A Happy Guy

Boy Interrupted: Texas Trip Tale, Part 1

Most of you who read this know by now that, two days before we were to return home from our trip to visit my mom and family in Texas, Sam started screaming in pain. Following a harrowing night of constant screaming, blood, vomit, no feeding, and an ER visit with bad care, we finally found out, at Cooks Children's Hospital in Fortworth, that he had "intesuseption," a rare problem that means part of the colon telescopes in on itself. Untreated, the condition can lead to death.

Sam was given an IV - this took several tries, as his veins were flattened from dehydration - a sonogram, and a procedure to fix the problem, surgery was avoided and Sam was instantly better. I stayed with him overnight while Josephine - a real trooper - went back to the farm with my mom so they could pack our bags and we could make our flight the next day.

Sam was so brave.

Thank you to all of you who offered support and prayers while this was going on. It was so sudden and fast and all the procedures rushed (not to mention, we didn't have our cell phones!), so I was unable to call people as I would normally do.

Most of all, I have to say a big thank you to my mother. She and I tended Sam through the night together, taking turns holding him while he screamed, playing with Josephine, cleaning up the soiled diapers, floors, clothes. She stayed with him when I couldn't take watching him cry any longer as the nurses stabbed him with needles in his feet, arms, head. She calmed him down when no one else could. She was resilient, strong, amazing.

Sam is good! There is a possibility of recurrence, but at least we know what it is now. He is back to his smiling, babbling, happy self. And we are home after a wonderful trip.

More pictures of the fun parts to come!

The Girls in Pink: Texas Trip Tales Part 2

If there were ever any doubt that Josephine was not my mother's granddaughter, or my grandma's great-granddaughter, these photos should prove otherwise. Look at the last one: They all make the SAME FACE!!!!

Peas in a Pod

Sam wore his first pair of overalls, and Jo was in a new blue dress. We were all gussied up for church. I dropped him off in the nursery; she went to her little class. I went to the service alone, no kid, not pregnant, and actually wearing heels.

And I realized my children are getting so grown up.

(And look so much alike!)

First Kiss

The other day, Sam watches Jo give me a kiss on my cheek.

He followed suit, lurching forward and applying his dribbly, mushy mouth to my nose, slobbering a waterfall down my chin.

It was his first kiss.

(And you can check with BabyCenter.com to see that this is a typical age for such things! I'm not making it up!)

Yes, we decorated his sheer, reddish hair with bows. "Now he's a girl!" Jo gloated.

She actually took the top two photos herself. Not bad!

Mama Fence in All Her Glory

Josephine has given us all new names. She is Silla. Sam is Poxcis, or Baby Pox. I am Fence, sometimes Mama Fence. And Daddy is Et (Aet). I can't even begin to know where these names came from, or why they have been so applied; all I know is that Princess Silla is, like most two-almost-three year olds, striving to dominate our lives and, indeed, reality as a whole with her formidable will.

That is, if she says something is so, it is so. "The wading pools aren't going away, they're coming back," she tells me, hearing me talk about the city's decision to remove the wading pools in our next-door park. "He doesn't want to go to sleep," she argues, when I move to put Sam down for a nap. And then we're reading a book about Dora and her cousin, Diego. "It's not her cousin, he her friend," Jo says.

"No, Diego is her cousin," I say, gently. I run my finger over the words in the book, and read aloud, "'...and Dora saw a familiar figure in the distance, her cousin Diego.'" See? Proof! I think.

Jo is undaunted. She copies me, runs her finger over the same sentence, and rewrites the book, pretending to read, "...and Dora saw a familiar figure, her friend Diego."

She contradicts everything we say. Sean actually tried to have a talk with her about it.

"Sometimes Daddy knows what he's talking about, Jo," he said. "And remember, Daddy and Mommy are on your side."

"I'm on MY side," Jo said, defiantly.

She also has been practicing taking photographs - see above. I got draped and stuffed with toilet paper and sat for my picture. My mother will recall the story of Pammy Denis with toilet paper on her head and see that everything comes full circle...

It's a testament to my love for my child that I submit to these exercises in the complete demolition of any aspiration toward sophistication I might have entertained pre-kid.

That I actually post these pictures is another issue altogether. Perhaps I am looking for sympathy. Or figuring that, no beauty queen, I can at least invoke a chuckle!