New Pics

Bray always enjoys spending his "big boy time" with Siena. Especially when she is not "spit upitty"

Bray & Siena spend a lot of time cuddling and playing, so I thought it was nice to see Brody really start to interact with Siena. He seems a little more interested in her now that she is able to get around a little.

This was last week at our nephew, Zachary's baptism. Proud parents Mike & Molly & Godparents Shayne & Aunt Lisa.

Drats!

Well, it was bound to happen. I was hoping that it wouldn't.... but it did. I found the deep freezer door opened just a crack this morning. That was all I needed to see to know what I would find inside. Everything in there was thawed, including about a months supply of milk for Siena. You can not refreeze breast milk and after it is thawed you have to use it within 24 hours. As much as I would love to blame it on someone else, I know exactly how it happened. Bray, Siena, Daisy & I went for a walk last night. In a rush to leave I decided to make corn dogs so we could eat while we walked (after Brody's incident, wisdom would say that I would not allow my kids to walk & eat corn dogs at the same time but they are just so good that wisdom goes out the window when they are involved) . I know that the big ole corn dog box was in the way of the door closing all the way. Lesson learned... don't buy corn dogs. Absolutely no good can come from consuming or even purchasing corn dogs. Okay, so scratch that.... corn dogs are good, but don't be a dum*as* and make sure the freezer door is closed. I guess it just all boils down to what Grandpa Pooh always said, "Don't be a du*ba*s (you can email me privately if you need me to fill in these blanks). Anyway, Siena is approaching 7 months old so that is good and she is also eating 3 solid meals of baby food a day so she is not drinking quite so much these days. The bottles we are giving her are always supplemented with Neosure (special formula for preemies) so if we run out of the natural stuff we will just add more Neosure to her bottles. It's more about principle than anything else. "Double drats!" as Bray would say.

Yes, this is a random picture of Brody. He loves to put things on his head and call them his hat. This was from Gma & Gpa Pooh's anniversary dinner. He was posing for Bray.

Finally, some new pictures!

I have to start off by saying I'm sorry to Shayne who finally posted to the blog for the first time in months only to be outdone by me and a hundred new photos. :-)

We have been up to lots this summer. Some events I have posted photos for, others I have not. I am going to back track a little and post a photo or 2 from some big events of the summer. Siena continues to do great. Every day we are out and about people comment on how beautiful she is and of course we couldn't agree more.

Grandma & Grandpa Barnhart (Pooh) celebrated their 40th anniversary on June 28th. They took the whole family to Dick's Steakhouse. Bray was our photographer for the day. With one more kid to watch over it is nice that he has taken over or at least helps with camera duty. In front of my parents is the "dad" & "mom" collages that my aunt Karen made for all of us. It has photos of our them as kids. Very cool. Karen was incredibly creative and was always working on new projects to share.

July 12th- We were very sad on this day. This is from Father Lane's retirement party. Father moved to NY and will be teaching at Saint Bonaventure. He is greatly missed.

The week after Father's send off we were in Chicago. The week following Chicago was St Margaret's Festival. It was a lot of fun for everyone.

Yes, they are all wearing tie dye shirts that they made at a MOMS Club function earlier this summer. They are the official uniform of this summer Bray told me.

For $5.00 (combined) they got their hair spiked & painted red, their face painted, got to play a ton of games, got a glo stick &........

tatoos!!! Plus I won $2.00 on Big Six and Shayne did well at the poker table. We didn't win the car that they were giving away, but overall a very good day. Plus I got about 30 pictures of the boys posing together and being silly. Even after all of the excitement and sharing a bag of cotton candy the boys were great for baths & bedtime. And mass the next day was great too. Great weekend! I think that was the Sunday that a woman gave both boys a dollar and Siena $5 for being so good in church. Very sweet woman.

On July 31st we celebrated our 10 year anniversary. Anyone who knows me knows that I desperately have wanted the backyard fenced in forever. Poor Daisy needs a fenced in yard to roam freely. Well, on July 30th Shayne completed the side yard fence & gate. It is awesome! Now when Daisy sees a squirrel in the front yard she can't take off after it. I love it. Bray took this photo of us before taking off to our anniversary dinner. Thank you Katlyn for watching the kiddos. Every time we tell the kids we are going somewhere now Bray asks "Are we going to Katlyn's?"

Bray takes pictures & video of Siena in the car. Usually when we get home I check the camera to find 60 new photos of her. Bray's 2 passions...Siena & the camera.

I took this of Siena while we were at the state fair. The boys were watching wrestling so we were keeping ourselves entertained.

Tristan and Jen came to visit recently. I hate how photogenic they are, even first thing in the morning.

The other day Bray was reading Green Eggs & Ham to me upside down(so I could see the pictures) while cuddling with Siena. Bray's 3 passions... reading Green Eggs & Ham, Siena & his sharky shirt (his original summer uniform until he made his tie dye shirt)

Siena is pretty self sufficient now.

Brody is back to his silly self. It took about a whole half hour after surgery to recoup. I just can't get over his total lack of any sort of down time.

The kids cuddling up before bedtime.

Here is little Miss Siena being a cutie. She is not officially crawling but she does scoot herself all over the place. She stays on a blanket about long enough to spit up on it, then she is off and onto the carpet.


This morning we went to COSI to meet SuperWhy (from a PBS Kids show- great show-love it!). You better soak up this photo and cherish it always cause we stood in line for an hour to get it. After standing in line that whole time SuperWhy was supposed to be leaving in 10 minutes (with the line still a mile long) so we were told to "take your time, but hurry up". Nothing fancy, just the boys with SuperWhy, then we went home. Bray totally gets the whole "it's a guy in a costume" thing and I think Brody is figuring it out too so they didn't go as crazy as I thought they would. Still... it was fun. But yes, soak up this picture and remember it :-)


Tomorrow is our nephew, Zachary's baptism. Shayne is the Godfather and of course is very excited. It's always great to see all of the nephews, especially since they are all running around and playing together now. Siena will surely either get pampered or toughened up by all of her cousins. I guess time will only tell which will be the case.

Friday Night Date

So what was I doing on Friday you are thinking? I know . . . you weren't thinking that, but I will share with you anyway.



That is me crashed out on the couch with my Friday night date. There isn't anything better in the world. (Yes I'm repeating my sentiment for those of you who are connected with me on Facebook.)

Siena is growing and growing and growing . . . She's brought a lot of joy to the family. The boys get excited every time she smiles at them. Daily they announce, "She smiled at me; she just smiled at me, again!" It is something so little and paradoxically it is really Big, very special, and means so much!

Brody, the Phenom

Brody did not once mention any sort of pain again today. The Dr said it would get worse as the days go on for the next few days but he never mentioned that Brody may feel no pain at all. Very bizarre. He is quite a tough guy.

Bray was taking pictures of Siena tonight during his "big boy time". He is very good at getting her to smile. After capturing about 5 mediocre smiles on film she finally gave him an open mouth, full face smile. He was so excited and told both Shayne & I, "Now that's the kind of smile I've been looking for."

Brody Update

My new found wisdom... don't run with wooden flutes that you buy for $1.00 at the PowWow down the road. Latest update.. he is more crazy than ever, trying to wrestle with me on the floor while I was trying to keep everyone calm with reading. The only time he asked for medicine was after snack time. I think because he just wanted some, not cause he was in pain.

I will work on uploading some new Siena photos hopefully sometime this weekend.

Brody's Surgery II

(from last night)
For all of you who know about our big, traumatic day, just thought I would give an update. For those who may not know already... Brody tripped while playing his wooden flute/recorder thing (he told us on the way home he was actually trying to scare some birds away and that is why he was running) and the flute tore the roof of his mouth. It actually went through some muscle and tissue (it was hanging down, very gory). I called Shayne at work and 911 (to see which ER was closest). They eneded up sending medics just to check him out while I was waiting for Shayne. Once we got Brody to cooperate and show the inside of his mouth they could see that it was bad and he needed to go to the ER. Shayne & Brody went to Children's Hospital ER via an ambulance (while our neighbors gathered around to check out what was going on) around 10:15 this morning. I arrived at the hospital at 3, thanks to Tiff watching the boys and the Monahans being extremely understanding and picking up the kids right after lunch. Brody was supposed to have surgery around 3:30 but we ended up waiting around till about 6:30. The nice thing about going via ambulance was that they did not have to sit in the waiting room forever, but they did have to sit and wait forever once he was admitted. Anyway, he fell asleep around 5:30 so he was still pretty sleepy when he went in for surgery. Surgery went well (basically just put the tissues back in place and stitched it up )and we were able to see him around 7:30. He was groggy but in good spirits. He drank almost immediately and ate a ton when they brought food. By 8:15 he had eaten applesauce, chocolate pudding, yogurt, spageddios, jello, mac & cheese & chicken & stars soup. Amazing. He didn't want the IV taken out, in fact he told the nurse that he wanted to take that home with him. Silly kid. We arrived home around 10:15. Thank you to tiff & grandma & grandpa for watching Bray and Siena. As long as today was for us, it will be even longer for gma & gpa Pooh who will not be arriving home before 1 AM. Thank you!!