This is Emily and me around Christmas 1980 when I was three and she was about a year-and-a-half. This picture is infamous in our family because it’s the only formal one Em and I ever had taken together. In February 1981, her sister Anna came along and ruined it all for me. I didn’t have any sisters so that was the end of me getting my pic taken in matching outfits! THANKS ANNA, GEEZ!! Actually when we were little, Emily and I used to tease Anna for not being in it. Then a few years ago, when Strawberry Shortcake came back into fashion, I bought the three of us Strawberry Shortcake shirts for Christmas and we took a snapshot so we could finally all be in a picture together with matching outfits. Somehow, it wasn’t as cute as I imagined it would be, which is why I’m not posting it here!

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Hi Cousin,
Kate was up all night puking. It was awful. She puked about 2 seconds before I left for work, too. Andy stayed home with her. We heard her barf over the monitor at about 11:30 last night, and the poor baby was covered from head to toe with puke. It was terrible. She really enjoyed getting her hair washed in the middle of the night. Ugh.
Well, I love you. I hope you are having a better day than I am!

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Cousin,

Have you noticed any boob changes yet? Not to get too personal, but mine are TOTALLY freaking me out. They used to be pointy and now they are saggy. And my nipples used to be in the middle and now they are pointing south. AND I am getting stretch marks on them. AAAHHH!!! Goodbye, boobs of my youth!!

(The beauty of hindsight: when I wrote this email to Emily, I was about halfway through my pregnancy with my first baby. If I had known at that moment how sad my boobs would be after nursing said baby, I wouldn’t have complained about the pregnant version. They seem much more attractive from this side of the fence…oh well…small price to pay for a miracle….)

Hello my cousin!!!

Guess what happened last night. Ok, it’s not going to seem nearly as traumatic today as it did last night, but here goes. Kate and I went to Bob Evan’s with my grandparents, and Kate fell asleep on the way home.

When we got home, she woke up, and I went about my business putting her in her jammies and making her bottle and stuff (yes, I know she is 19 months old but she still takes a bottle at bedtime!). We were out of whole milk, and we only had a little skim. So anyway, I made her bottle with skim milk, and we went upstairs to rock and for her to drink her bottle. Lately one bottle is not enough (we never got any bigger ones), so after she drained the first bottle, she said “More milky, Mommy” and we went downstairs for another bottle, this time finishing off the remaining milk.

She said the same thing after the second bottle, but there was no more milk to be had, so we said our prayers and I put her in her bed. She FLIPPED out. Screaming, all kinds of stuff. It was awful. So I went up and got her and tried to rock her, but she was screaming for more milk. Snot and tears everywhere… awful. Andy was still out, and I couldn’t get a hold of him on the cell phone. So eventually, I had to pack her up in her car seat – it was snowing, I might add – and go to the Sunoco to get milk… getting her in and out of her car seat while she was screaming, all the while being sure that I was pretty much the most awful mother in history. So anyway, we got home and she drank two more bottles and finally went to sleep. As I suggested, this story doesn’t sound nearly as traumatic for me or Kate the morning after, but it really felt terrible at the time!!

To: Emily
From: Jenny
Date: 11/17/2005
Re: More Milky!

Cousin,
I assure you, it sounds EXTREMELY TRAUMATIC!!!!!!! Poor you!!

TO: Jenny
From: Emily
Date: 11/17/2005
Re: More Milky!

LOL, yes, it was pretty awful!

What I kept thinking, though, as I rocked her while she was drinking the milk we went out to get, was how awful it had been to hear her cry for milk that we didn’t have… and how lucky we were that the only thing preventing us from getting more milk was just that I didn’t want to get her out in the cold. We had a place to get milk and the means to do so… it made me consider how much worse it would have been if we just couldn’t have gotten “more milky.” So much to be thankful for.

Hi cousin,
How are you? I am fine but TIRED. Kate woke up at 4:58 again. I don’t know what we’re going to do with this girl! She gets so sleepy before she even goes to the babysitter’s… this morning she was putting a towel on the floor of the bathroom and laying down on it while I was getting ready. I really don’t know what to do. But none of us are getting enough sleep! Andy got up with her this morning, but the way our bedroom is, it’s very hard to sleep if she’s up and about downstairs. And get this. Andy usually puts her in her highchair for breakfast and PBS Kids when she gets up, and this morning he fed her Cheetos! For breakfast!!! I was in shock when I saw them on her highchair tray. Needless to say, I threw the rest of the bag away. What a dork.

This baby is going crazy with the rib-kicking! And I’m officially GINORMOUS. Em, I can barely cross my legs anymore. What am I going to do? I NEED TO CROSS MY LEGS!! And my pantyhose are rolling down my pelvic area…gotta go take care of that. I’ll write you later when they’re resting comfortably right below my bra again.

You are never going to believe what happened last night. I am going to try to give you the abbreviated version of the story, but bear with me.

Kate and I took my grandma over to Target last night and we got Kate some dried blueberries. On the way home, she was eating them, and I heard her say indignantly “Ow nose!” as though her nose had hurt her, so I asked her if she picked it too hard and she said yes.

So we get back to Grandma’s and I notice that her snot is bluish. She had Oreos on her face, and I thought it was just mixing in with that… but it kept happening, so sort of jokingly I said “Kate, did you stick an Oreo up your nose?” and Grandma said “I bet it was a blueberry.”

To make a long story somewhat shorter, Andy and I were getting ready to get the tweezers, but Grandma said she didn’t think that was a good idea and maybe we should call this 24/7 nurse line her insurance has. So I called (GREAT invention btw, I’m going to put Anthem’s nurse line on the fridge) and the nurse said NOT to use the tweezers, because of her eyes and brain being so close to her nose. She said to take Kate to Urgent Care because the blueberry needed to come out in 2-8 hours. I don’t know what happens after that time period expires – perhaps the blueberry would start to sprout.

We decided to go home and call Kate’s doctor to see if we should take her that night, or if we could wait until his office opened up. He said it needed to come out lest she suck it into her lungs. A blueberry in the lungs is apparently worse than a blueberry in the nose. So we were putting her in her jammies around 9:30, getting ready to go to Urgent Care, and she sneezed. I glanced down and said “Andy, there’s a blueberry on my pants!!” She had sneezed it out.

The crazy thing is that even though it was a tiny dried blueberry when she stuck it up there, all the snot and everything made it expand back to the size of a regular blueberry.

Andy and I were sooooo glad she sneezed it out! I was really not looking forward to the idea of a straight jacket.

So the moral of the story is:
A) Check to see if your insurance has a nurse line because it’s awesome, and
B) Don’t use tweezers when Joshua pulls this stunt.

Date: 9/16/04
Time: 8:31 a.m.

To: Jenny
From: Emily

When I got to work this morning, I realized I had Kate’s poop under my thumbnail. Just thought you should know.