Happy St. Patrick’s Day

Gone are the days of green beer… now the leprechaun leaves green milk and Lucky Charms, and of course a pot of gold for each of our Irish Babes.

Can I just tell you how AWESOME Mike is… at 10:30pm on March 16th… I told Mike that I had forgotten to get the kids Lucky Charms to leave out from the leprechaun. Don’t you know that he went to the grocery store bright and early before the babes were up to get them so they would have them. Made my day! Such a great daddy. We are sure lucky to have him.

Sure, I wish that we were celebrating with some of our favorite cousins at The Shannon Door. But we had a fun day at home, where we all proudly sported our green. Katy’s Tinkerbelle crown was the perfect green accessory.

Then we made oh, so colorful rainbow cupcakes.

I can’t believe I didn’t take an after photo.

For recipe and to see a photo of the finished photo you can click here. Ours looked just like the ones shown. So fun!

Auntie Krissie joined us for a boiled dinner! At 7pm Katy looked around and said. “ Mommy, look your wearing green, Daddy’s wearing green, Auntie Krissie’s wearing green, Patrick’s wearing green and I am wearing green. We are all wearing green.” Only took her 10 hours to realize it. Love that little girl!

New baby…

Not ours!

Justin and Tyna welcomed a new baby boy!! Connor Matthew Murphy! What a cutie! There is a reason that grandmother’s are usually past their baby rearing years. It’s so their ovaries, don’t start aching like mine were yesterday. I swear I was one cry away from lactating.

Oh, and there is nothing sweeter, than my husband cuddling a teeny tiny baby in his arms. ( Mike holding Connor for the few seconds, I gave him up! I was a BABY hog yesterday!)

Oh, My…for a second it makes me think I want another Murphy Baby myself!! Just a second!

Handsome little guy, sporting the hat I made him!!

Photo Catch Up

I downloaded all of the photos off of my camera card… the pictures on my phone are still there! Really too bad since there are some good ones on there… I will get them on here at some point!

These pictures go back to January, and some could have their own post and others are just fun filler posts.

For sake of time!

They are all going right here:

PICTURE OVER LOAD!

January 2011

Patrick Jamming out!!!

Ladies of BayPath Night Out!! Congrats to all the graduates!!

Murphy Baby’s camping out in the living room!

The Great Pajama’s switch!

Stream of Consciousness

It’s raining… it must be Spring!! I’m just thankful its not snow! Since here in New England snow is completely possible! Remember that HUGE April 1st snow storm back in 97! I do I was sick with strep throat.

Anyway… I am so excited for Spring! Since before we can get to beach trips, and sprinklers and lots of fun in the sun… we have to get through spring.

Spring is so hard to dress for, and therefore makes clothing organization especially for K & P miserable! I feel like they have every season of clothing floating around our house.

They still need winter, because it is still chilly out there!

They need their rain boots because it is wet out there!

They need spring jackets because some days are warmer out there!

They need swimsuits because we have been loving Open Swim on Sunday!

Then we have all the clothes they are out growing…

Then we have the new Spring/Summer clothing I have been slowly buying!

I am drowning in clothes, clean, clothes dirty clothes, winter, spring and summer CLOTHES!

Weird, that my spring post… turned into a clothing post!

(This post was originally titled “It’s raining”… I decided Stream of Consciousness was more fitting)

I know you are probably thinking… where are all those pictures she keeps telling us about?!

Yup… they are still on my phone, and still on my camera card in my camera… all 400+ of them!

I need to clear them off… because there is a new baby in our family… and I am going to go snuggle and love on that little babe… and I will need space on my camera for fresh Baby skin!! Oooooo I love me some fresh baby skin!!

I have been spending all of my free time knitting! I started a new blanket… for our living room and I really want it done! It’s a pretty teal and I think its going to look great draped over thrown in a ball in the corner of our red couch!

Kids Say the Funniest Things

Katy is really funny… she has a sense of humor and “gets” things that would go over the heads of most 3 year olds. I love it! I also have to be really careful of what I say around her!

While at the doctor’s the other day. Our nurse Elizabeth was talking to Kate and asked her where she got her outfit, and Katy matter of factly replied”Target” If you know Kate you know her favorite store is Target! Elizabeth said. “Wow, Katy you really love Target, is that your favorite store?” Kate: “Yup, it’s my favorite store!” Elizabeth then asked: “What’s Patrick’s favorite store” Katy then replied: “ Home Depot!”

We all burst out laughing… I have no idea why she said it. It she said it in a tone that was like…Duh! Obviously it’s Home Depot!

Now that I write it out, I have no idea why we all thought it was so funny! I guess it was because it was unexpected…clearly the gender roles are already well defined for Miss Kate!

Top 5 Motherhood Moments of all time?

I was reading Kelly Hampton's blog and she reminded me of one of my favorite Motherhood Moments. Love her or Hate her… I happen to Love her!

There are those times, that make you stop what you are doing so you can LOCK the memory into you memory vault. The times that if a camera is not near by you are bummed for a second, quickly stop being bummed and enjoy being in that very moment. You tell yourself if it’s to happen again I will snap a picture if not I need to be able to recall the picture in my brain. For me there are many many moments in my Motherhood Vault of Memories Both good and bad.

As I flip through that memory book in my brain I am happy to report that there are more happy good wonderful memories than there are bad, not my so finest moments.

Here are my current Top 5 Motherhood Moments.

1. Kathryn being released from the hospital. I will NEVER ever forget that moment. I will never forget the excitement I felt that day. It was earlier than we had expected. It was AWESOME!

2 I love the moment when you are nursing your baby your baby gazes up and stares into you eyes, you smile, they smile all while never loosing their suck.

3. When Katy & Patrick give each other the sweetest hug/embrace.

4. When Patrick gives me the side eye…when I ask he “Who do you love” and he turns his side eyes into a huge wide grin and smiles… and says mamma.

5. When Katy sleeps in my bed ( not often, and usually more for mommy’s sake than Katy’s and she cuddles up and has to keep her hand on me while sound asleep. During those moments I know that she still needs me and wants to cuddle and love her mommy. Even though she is growing so big and being so much less dependent on me.

Katy Girl Update 3-7-11

Katy woke up this morning and looked the best she has in weeks. She had rosy cheeks, she was running around the house! Didn’t appear to be a child that was headed in for a full work up to check for congestive heart failure. She looked FANTASTIC! I actually felt bad that we even called since I wouldn’t have called on Friday if she was looking like this… and I might have actually gotten some sleep! Not complaining… actually we couldn’t be happier. We both decided we should go in and just get a baseline.

Kate was once again reminding us that she is a ROCKSTAR! She was very brave for all her tests. Blood work, X Ray, and the dreaded ECHO! She was amazing!

So what’s going on with Katy Girl?

On appearance we can all agree she looked fantastic.

Dr. Blume was very happy to see her looking so well. Her blood work is not back yet. Her X ray showed some fluid in her lungs, but not enough to be overly concerning.

Kate was a Rockstar through her entire echo…

Her echo showed no change. So it was basically decided that Katy must have had a bug or something and she worked through it. We will continue to supplement with tube feeds and hopefully we can continue to wait for a new heart from the comfort of our home.

Thank you for all your prayers and kind words over the past couple days. They mean the world to us, and clearly are working!

We love you!

Love,

Amiee, Mike, Katy & Patrick!

Stream of Consciousness

I mentioned back here that we were noticing some subtle changes in Katy. For the past two weeks or so we have noticed Katy becoming increasingly more tired and cranky. When the changes are subtle it is so hard to know if it is heart related or just 3 year old related. To be cautious and to make sure that we weren’t unknowingly ignoring a sign of congestive heart failure, we called the team explained that Katy was requesting naps, ( where she had most recently just starting to get to the point of not needing a nap) more cuddle time on the couch and just a bit more cranky and demanding.

The team heard us, and agreed that it could be heart it could be a 3 year old. Lets wait and see. Ahh… my favorite response, wait and see, right up there with a “it’s a virus” diagnosis. They both mean there is NOTHING I can do… lets see were it goes!

So we went about our life… Mike and I had our first visit with the trainers at the YMCA, I started back to classes… just a few more sessions to go. We painted, and shopped, had bath time and folded, LOTS AND LOTS of LAUNDRY! ( I swear it multiplies by the time it comes back up from the laundry room. )I am sad to say that as much as I try… I can’t seem to get the laundry ( that is all folded and separated by family member) into the DRAWERS!!! Anyone else have that problem?!

OK. Back to Katy…

We did all that knowing and silently acknowledging to each other, that Kate wasn’t right and wondered what was going on, praying she would snap out of it and we would continue to wait for a new heart from the comfort of our home. ( We still might be doing that… We don’t know anything different as of right now)

So yesterday, we realized that in addition to Katy being lethargic, and cranky she had really no appetite and ZERO interest in eating. Still drinking and peeing ( which is a good thing) but, really ate NOTHING yesterday. That symptom alone would be enough to scare us, add that with the whole cranky tiredness we have going on and there really is no denying that this is more likely heart related… and not just a tired 3 year old.

So for the second time since we had the G tube placed back in August, I was happy to have it last night. With Kate refusing to eat we can be sure to know she is getting X amount of calories and vitamins, through her tube feeds. I would much prefer for her to eat her calories, but if she won’t then I know we can maintain her with feeds. For Kate to lose what little weight she has would be devastating.

So we called the team this morning and of course they agreed that the no eating was a concern and it was time for a full work up. So Monday we are headed in for blood work, EKG, Chest X-ray and an Echo. Hopefully, they all come back normal, or maybe her meds just need to be tweaked.