Passing the time

**WARNING! The following account contains mentions of bodily fluids and gross elements that may disgust some audiences.  Reader disgretion is advised.**


It has been a rough, rough evening for the Farnsworths.  At about 11pm on the dot, we suddenly heard a terribly sad mixture of coughing, retching and sobbing from Kendra's room.  She had started and continued to throw up as we found her and tried to comfort her while also guiding her to a place where she could finish.  Within minutes, just as Grant got her cleaned up and while I was working my way through the mess in the room, we heard frantic screaming from the room Elliot was in to find him also covered in sick.

And about an hour later, as everything calmed down, they both did it again.

It wasn't even like they were setting each other off, they were in separate rooms both times and both times they totally barfed within minutes of each other, it was the craziest, smelliest, grossest thing.

A little more than an hour after that, Kendra did it one more time (Elliot had actually also been sick earlier in the day but we had just said, "Well, that's strange..." and Grant chalked it up to him getting too worked up but either way their score is even).  We have learned that she is unfortunately very averse to vomiting into baggie-lined bowls, tubs or toilets and prefers spewing onto carpets or all over Daddy instead (he literally got it in his eyeball).

I miss all our hard wood floors in Chicago tonight.

I had bathed them both before putting them down for the night so they'd be clean for church tomorrow, which they both HATE (Kendra enjoys it well enough once we stop messing with her head, but Elliot screams the whole time) and had to do them both again because they threw up all over themselves and smelled awful.  Though there's no way we're bringing these germs to church!  You're welcome.

Did I mention we'd let Kendra watch a movie in our bed after the first time?  And had laid Elliot down in his bed with clean towels and a clean pillow seconds before he threw up the second time?  There has been a LOT of yuckied up clothing, bedding, pillows, towels (because Elliot still likes to cuddle up with them) which also means a lot of laundry that I'm not willing to let wait to dry up and sit around and smell until morning.

So.  I have some spare time for blogging at 2:30am while I wait to cycle the last unfortunate load through.


**END Disclaimer**


We don't have many pictures from the last couple of months, but we do have a few.  Last fall, for some reason it finally occurred to me to move our changing table from the kids' room (at least...in theory they share it though many nights Elliot ends up in the Pack 'N Play in the third bedroom) into our hall bathroom--since we live on the ground floor, it's big enough to accommodate a wheelchair so there's more room in it than in the bathrooms of other apartments in our building/complex.

And since we have two kids in diapers (I'm not gonna lie, I'm kind of terrified of potty training, but it is around the corner), sometimes we need to stash the more nosy one somewhere out of the way so he doesn't get into the diaper we just peeled off of him while we deal with his big sister.

"Mom?  Have you seen this really, really ridiculously good-looking baby over here?"

We've also been really interested and surprised to see the differences between Elliot and Kendra.  She was always a very independent little thing, while she's always needed to be in the same room, she's never been too clingy or needy beyond that.  Elliot, on the other hand...well, I will forever remember his infancy like this:

"Um.  You're totally not holding me.  Not sure if you noticed that."

He pulls himself up to my chair or my pants very, very often.  Apparently, this kid's place is as close to me as possible most of the time.

 And in other news, after months of getting faked out with whiny days I was sure meant teeth were coming (in retrospect, I think he might have been getting headaches from his whacked out vision), he finally cut a tooth!

I know, it's barely visible, but it's there.  This is literally the first day we felt his gums after seeing a huge white bulge and there was a tooth there.  Since this picture was taken on March 1, he's popped out three more and is working through a fourth right now.

Have I mentioned that our local library is so awesomely kid-friendly it blows my mind?  They have an extensive play area set up in the childrens' section with a train table, a blocks/legos table (they rotate what's on that one), dozens of wooden puzzles, dozens more games and activities, and a playhouse with shelves full of stuffed animals and puppets.  We go there pretty regularly.  Sometimes Elliot naps while Kendra plays and sometimes he gets down and checks things out for himself...

And sometimes, Kendra even takes a break from plowing through one thing to another to play with him for a moment...

Back in December, we made some goals about some things we wanted to be doing individually and as a family and one of those things was reading the scriptures together.  So now, as part of our routine just before we put the kids down, we pull out a copy of the Book of Mormon we acquired for this purpose and Grant reads a bit (half a page each night) while I hold Elliot and Kendra has a special job of her own until she can help read, too.  We hand her a highlighter and she marks the verses we read together.  She often chooses to delegate this responsibility to one of her many little friends/helpers around this house.  The evening we took this picture, she chose her special lamb she's been sleeping with since she was a tiny baby:

It's become a neat and special thing we do together every day as a family.

And speaking of Kendra, of course, she had a birthday already two months ago.  Unfortunately, she was fighting a pretty nasty cold so our celebrations were simple, but we did take this video to talk to her for a few minutes about her big day.

Since then she's asked for "balloons, pet store, birthday party and presents" a time or two and also if we've mentioned anyone else's birthday, she's been pretty sure that person gets all those things, too, like it's the universal definition of "birthday".

Life is so simple when you're three, isn't it?