I tucked them into bed afterwards, and I proceeded to crawl into mine. I hear Seporah sobbing, “Mommy! Mommy!” Of course I crawl back out to go see what the problem was. She’s shaking in her bed and said, “I close my eyes and see pictures of Jerusalem being destroyed.” …Whoops… Let’s retract that last story. I then retold the story to include a VERY happy ending with rainbows and butterflies. “Is that how it really happen?” “Yes Seporah, exactly like that. Now it’s time for bed.” And then tucked Jessie, Rapunzel, Bunny Rushing, Curious George, and Blankie Bear in with her, gave her a hug and kiss and said good night. Crossing my fingers that that would work. No such luck. About 2 minutes later I open my eyes again to see Seporah standing next to my bed. “I still close my eyes and see pictures of Jerusalem being destroyed.” She ended up sleeping with me last night.

Actual quote by the weather lady on the radio this morning, “High today is 78 degrees. It’s a little cold, but remember it is winter time.”

Felicity pooped in the potty! Oh happy day! I’ve changed diapers every day for 4 years, 11 months and 15 days, I am sooo ready to be done with them

Felicity talking into a toy phone, “Hi Naomi! Hi Naomi’s Mommy! You come to Seporah’s party?… Oh no!… Please!!!

Mom: How many times have I told you to put on your house slippers? Seporah: Um, 6? Dad: How many times should Mom have to tell you? Seporah: 7

Seporah: I don’t like breakfast, I don’t like lunch, I only like snacks. Mom: The problem with only eating snacks is you don’t get the right nutrients. Seporah: I don’t like nutrients.

Ack! Just caught Seporah singing Justin Beiber’s Baby, Baby, Baby Oh! He has officially taken over.

Actual quote by some random guy in the elevator, “You’re really beautiful, except for the short hair. That’s too bad because I really love long hair.”

-Steven’s now able to walk around with relatively no pain, hopefully sometime by February he’ll be able to run again.

-Christmas came early here. We’ve been using our USAA card for 5 years racking up points apparently. We didn’t know it, but you can trade in the points for gift cards. I was not planning on getting the girls anything (grandparent’s are the bomb, so they had some things), but now I’ve got all these gift cards for Walmart and Target. It was totally sweet let me tell you.

-Felicity pooped in the potty 2 times this week! So excited to be almost done with the diapering stage of our life.

-Seporah got the Good Citizen of the Quarter at school! Super proud of her. She also did a school performance of Brown Bear, Brown Bear a couple of weeks ago that Steven (wink, wink) needs to put up.

-We actually sent out Christmas cards this year. Steven designed them and we both mailed them out. It’s a good thing Steven took the initiative because if it had up to me, it just wouldn’t have happened. Good intentions are just that intentions.

Daddy said he took off like 20 silly bands, apparently he missed a yellow one though. LOL.

The best part about Santa was the cookie according to the girls.

Great-Grandpa sitting on a train. We went on tour of this plantation that told the history of some of the agriculture of Kauai. It was actually pretty interesting. The girls said the best part of this was getting out and feeding the piggies (ie the wild boars).

Grandpa Russ, Grandma Pam and Seporah at the Waimea Canyon. This scared the snot out of me. What you can’t see is the little fence directly behind Grandpa Russ and the VERY steep drop off directly behind that. Scared the snot out of me I’ll tell you what.

Daddy and Seporah laughing at a blowhole. Essentially the wave came in through these caves where there was an opening that blasted the water through the top. Making it looked like there was a whale blowing water out. The girls said it was dolphins doing it.

Behind the condo where we were staying. We got to watch the sunset over the water, it was quite beautiful to watch the sun go to sleep.

Felicity playing at the blowhole.

Great Grandma Yeske and Grandma Pam. You can definitely tell they’re mother and daughter.

And one more mother-daughter shot, just a different set.

Just in case you don’t this about me, I can totally rock a fedora or cloche. Seriously. When I’m at a store and put one on, people I’m with do a double take because I actually look good in hats. I have quit wearing them since the ones I have gotten messed up by Thing 1 and Thing 2. So I don’t usually wear them in public anymore. However I saw a huge selection of them at Target and had to try on one that was oh so cute. I really, really wanted it, but decided the black cloche with black feathers and black flower off to the side would just get ruined along with the other ones. While I’m doing this my little love bugs decide they’re going to play dress up too. The above outfit was all Seporah and if you’ll notice the big Hollywood sunglasses are over the top of her regular glasses. It was adorable. Felicity played dress up too, but my cellphone doesn’t capture extremely wiggly/running 3 year olds, only 4 year olds willing to hold still for 10 seconds.

Hiding from the camera

More hiding from the camera

Crawling under the bed to try to get away from the camera

“No Felicity, I don’t want a picture of you, I want a picture of your baby.” “Oh, Ok”

*Background is indeed an extremely messy room.*

The past couple of months though it’s gotten worse, so I decided to just make an appointment and see if they would care that she was only 4 years 10 months. They didn’t question us until we walked into the appointment, but let us see the optometrist anyways. The optometrist very nicely sat down and talked to us for about 15 minutes, but didn’t look into Seporah’s eyes or make her look at a chart. The optometrist told me she couldn’t help us, but that she knew who could. Apparently what I actually needed was a pediatric opthamologist (hello, that would have been nice to know a year ago, they could see I don’t wear glasses and probably don’t know the difference, I’ve actually only been to an optometrist once in my entire life that I know about). So after talking for 15 minutes and not looking into Seporah’s eyes, she very calmly told me she didn’t think Seporah could see out of her left eye. I laughed and totally dismissed her, but thanked her for the number of who I was suppose to call.

We got an appointment with the opthamologist after talking to a few people, including insurance. Get there and I was informed insurance had not completed the necessary paperwork and would we like to reschedule until they could. I thought about it ($275 is a lot of money), but figured since we had been wanting an appointment for quite some time I would just pay it. We get in there and Seporah goes to read the chart, she puts on the special glasses that cover up the left eye and starts reading. She didn’t do so well, but I figured oh well maybe that’s just because she was only using one eye.

And then we covered the right eye, so she was suppose to read with the left eye. “I can’t read it, there’s a black spot on my eyes,” she said while pointing to her right eye. At this point I think I was breaking out in cold sweats and possibly hyperventilating as I’m remembering what the optometrist had said. She could not see out of her left eye. Holy crap. And I had no idea.

So what actually happened is her left eye has probably always worked very, very, very poorly and eventually her brain stopped recognizing it at all. So she’s blind in her left eye without there being any actually physical damage. And to top it off her right eye doesn’t work so well either (BTW, thinking this is why teaching her to read has been such a struggle).

Her right eye is 100/20 and her left eye is worse than 400/20. Her prescription for lenses is right eye +3.25 and left eye +7.5 (and a couple other things that I can’t understand at all). Apparently her lenses are extremely rare and difficult to make (please read very expensive). Steven had to go to 3 different stores before he found one that had a set of lenses (read “a” as in one) that could be made without special ordering. They actually called in their best lens crafter to do them on his day off since none of the other lens crafters felt comfortable doing it.

She seems to like them ok, we just said she was going to be cool like Daddy and we’ve totally hyped them up. I’m worried about how she’s going to do in school, ESPECIALLY in 6 weeks when we have to patch her right eye to try and make the brain recognize the left one more. Found this site where we’re going to get the patches, I thought they were pretty cute, way better than the pirate patches you can get at Wal-mart.

Like ‘em, she picked ‘em out with Daddy

BTW, have I discussed my love of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream? No, well it’s an amazing cure all that I HIGHLY recommend.

I’m gonna have to say our house just keeps on getting messier and messier with the girls developing new ways to destroy it, but I’m gonna have to say I prefer living in a tornado laden house compared to a sleep deprived zombie land.

*Written in response after I reread the last post which made it kinda sound like I wanted them to revert to their baby ways, which really wasn’t the case.*

*Warning-the following makes me sound like a cracky old non-hip momma* Whatever happened to the cute sweet innocent clothes??? What ever happened to look she’s 5 years old??? I mostly dress the girls in dresses with leggings underneath. They look like girls, it’s comfortable, not too hot, and it’s easy to get on and off (neither of them can get jeans on/off for the potty and I’m trying to help them foster their own independence in that realm, I mean I’m not gonna be able to help them forever in the bathroom). I actually LOVE the outfits on Hanna Andersson. They’re perfect: comfortable material, stretchy, fun play clothes. Everything I want except it’s like $60 an outfit, not something I’m willing to pay for 1 child’s outfit.

2. Seporah’s also decided she’s old enough to have long hair. This is NOT cool in my opinion. I’ve gotten used to the easiness of short hair. Wash it, brush it, Voila! You’re done! No brushing out snarls, no having to put it in a ponytail so they can play without it getting in their eyes. But she has voiced her concerns about how EVERYONE at school has long hair (including her teacher Mrs. Lucas, who she adores) and I guess she is big enough to make that decision on her own. Felicity will continue to have short hair just incase you were wondering.

3. Today, Steven and I were watching Modern Family. This episode centered around the fact that the children were being raised on electronic portable devices. It was quite funny. After it was over. I realized that we hadn’t heard from Felicity the entire 22 minutes it was running (Seporah was in school). Uh-oh, Felicity could do all sorts of havoc in 22 minutes. Ironically, we found her sitting on her bed playing with an electronic portable device.