McNabb Family Blog

Ensley is great. The funniest things come out of that little girl’s mouth. I try to write them down so I don’t forget. Here are some of our favorite Ensley-isms (and just other funny things that make us chuckle). . .

We were changing Will’s diaper the other day. Ensley said, “Yook, Baby Will has tail.”

Will is known as “Baby Wheel.”

It’s not a pacifier, it’s a “passy passy.”

Ensley will just randomly proclaim her love for inanimate objects and things. “Oh, my new ‘wim diapers. I yuv my ‘wim diapers so much.” (’wim = swim)

Ensley has started to make this face when she is having her picture taken. Cute huh?

Ensley was in bed. We thought she was asleep because we hadn’t heard from her in a while. Nancy sneezed in her normal loud fashion. All of the sudden from Ensley’s room we hear, “Bwess you Ga-ma.” then nothing else. Ensley recognized Nancy’s crazy sneeze.

Will started crying. Ensley immediately found Will’s pacifier and put it in his mouth. She turned to me and said, “Say, Ensley, tank you so much find Baby Wheel’s passy passy.”

Me: Ensley what color of cup do you want?
Ensley: Umm, (looking down at shirt) pink. Pink match my shirt.
Has it happened already? I thought kids were supposed to pick out non-matching outfits.

Ensley will say, “I so happy. I so happy. Are you happy Mommy?” or she’ll say, “You sad Mommy? You sad?” “No be sad Mommy, be happy.” Ens always seems concerned about if I am happy or not–it’s nice to have someone watching out for you.

Every night Ensley “tucks” her baby into bed which is actually putting the baby inside her pillowcase. This particular night she “tucked” herself in too and got stuck.

Ensley: (Yelling from her room) “Mom, me need medicine.”
Me: Going into her room “What’s wrong Ens?”
Ensley: Me sick mom.
Me: What hurts?
Ensley: Me sick in my mouth. Me need some medicine.

I was sure Ensley was just trying to avoid going to bed. But we took her out and she wanted to sit on the potty. All of the sudden she started throwing up. That poor girl tossed ALL of her cookies. I felt so bad. She totally was trying to tell me she was going to throw up and I didn’t even believe her.

Nancy and I were talking about places where we could have a family reunion in the car one day. I mentioned that maybe we could have the dinner in a neighborhood club house. From the back of the car we hear, “Ruby (as in Max and Ruby) has a clubhouse.”

Ensley likes to call the cereal “Corn Pops” “Porn Cops”

Ensley loves to draw. Recently her “faces” started to actually look like faces. Here is a picture she drew of Daddy. If you ever see him when he wakes up in the morning there is a surprising resemblance.

I had to run something into the post office. Evan stayed in the car with the kids. He went to turn the car around and Ensley started to cry saying, “No yeave Mommy. No yeave Mommy.” Ensley thought that Evan had forgot about me and was leaving me at the post office.

We went out to lunch with some friends. Ensley and the other little girl we were with both got ice creams, but Evan got Ensley a milkshake and the other little girl got a cone. We could tell Ensley was very jealous of the cone. She said to the girl “You have mine. I have yours.”

I told Ensley to pick up her toys. She ran into her room, peaked her head out the door and yelled, “Mommy you mean. You mean Mom. You mean.” Has it started already? She’s already telling me I’m a bad Mom. You can only imagine the satisfaction the story gave my own mom–payback time.

Ensley: Baby Wheel eats milk and mommy’s tummy

Ensley’s already starting to learn the art of multi-tasking. Pottying and hair straightening at the same time takes practice. Especially when your power source is a toilet paper holder.

We were checking out at a store and Ensley said to the cashier, “Dis my Mommy. I yuv her so much.” The cashier lady said, “Are you going to love her forever and always?” Ensley said, “I weed dat in my woom” (referring to the Love You Forever book).

Posted on June 28th, 2009 by Lisa
Filed under: | 2 Comments »

How do you prepare a two year old for the biggest life changing event yet? We had a few books and we’d try and talk about “our new baby,” but I don’t think Ensley fully grasped the concept of another little one until he came home . . . and stayed!

Over all I think Ens has adjusted well. It seems that for the first little bit we were having more hitting and fits than normal. There was one day were she was a total pill. At dinner she was throwing her food. Evan said, “Ensley if you throw that again you are going to time out.” That little stink looked right at him (even kind of smiled) and chucked a piece of watermelon right at his face. I had to turn my head so she couldn’t see me laugh. When he put her in the corner for time out she started singing and shaking her tush (like, Aren’t I so cute?). She went to bed early that night, but woke up a much nicer child the following morning.

Ens loves to “help” with Will. Sometimes she’s a little too helpful. For example, both times when she BROUGHT Will to me was a little too helpful. If Will is crying she always tries to put the pacifier in his mouth. If she can’t find a “passy passy” then she’ll use her finger (yuck). I swear she sticks her finger half way down his throat. No wonder he stops crying–he can’t breathe. She’ll say, “No cy-ing Baby Will no cy-ing.”

One time Will was crying. I asked Ensley if she would give him his pacifier. She ran off and Will stopped crying. I figured she had given him the pacifier. I thought Will was happy and she was off playing somewhere. When I went into the family room Ens has climbed into the bouncy chair and she was reading Will a book. I had to snap a picture. It was so sweet.

Ensley’s babies have also taken on a whole new life. Now the babies wear Will’s clothes, have size newborn diapers instead of Ensley’s size 3’s, actually swing in a swing, and lay in the boppy. Ensley gets upset when I actually have to move one of her babies so Will can use something. The other day I found Will sharing his boppy pillow with a baby. My newborn already shares better than my two year old.

If Will is ever cooing, Ensley tells us, “Baby Will says, ‘I yuv you so much Big Sis-er.” He probably is.

Posted on June 28th, 2009 by Lisa
Filed under: | No Comments »

It’s already been six weeks since Ensley’s last eye doctor visit, so it was time to visit the office again. Ensley is getting better and better at answering the questions they use to test her sight. I feel like each time we go we are getting a more accurate measurement of her vision.

Her left eye is still weak and we are going to re-start patching it again. I am not surprised by this. I was surprised when they decided to not patch last time. Deep down inside I thought it was a bad choice, but I understood why they made that decision. Her eyes now noticeably cross again when her glasses are off. For a while they had stopped crossing so badly.

We’ve noticed that Ensley’s glasses were getting a quite scratched. In fact, we’ve wondered if they were too scratched. Today the doctor said that she thought we needed to get a new pair. The quote was, “I think her glasses are so scratched it’s impeding her vision.” Once again, Ensley, if you would just tell us you can’t see, we’d fix it, promise!

I called several different places, but because we only wanted new lenses it was a little of a problem. We were going to have to send her frames in so that the lenses could be cut to fit the frames. It is about a 2 week turn around process. Ens can’t be with out her glasses for that long. But someone mentioned that Walmart had a vision center. I called them and it turns out they have a system that “traces” the frames. It was so easy and they were very well priced. Yeah! I would probably not have normally went to Walmart for glasses, but in this case it worked out wonderfully. We picked up the new frames yesterday and they look just as nice as the one’s that cost over 4 times more.

Posted on June 28th, 2009 by Lisa
Filed under: | No Comments »

Paul and Stewart could only spend the weekend, but Nancy stayed for the week. It was a good thing that I was feeling so well because Nancy and I didn’t do much sitting. We even joked about how she came to help me “recover” and how we both needed a week to recover from her visit.

Most of my home decorating (like 95% of it) happens when Nancy is in town. This time was no different. We switched up the bathrooms and she even convinced me to paint them! I wasn’t so sure when I was painting, but after they were done they looked so nice.

Nancy and Paul also brought some old furniture that they had been keeping in their attic. We refinished a rocking chair, table and lamp for Ensley’s new room. I am very pleased. We are waiting on some bedroom furniture and then we’ll put it all together. I think it is going to look really cute. Hopefully she’ll adjust to being in a bed, but that will be a whole other post.

Ensley found a dress that Nancy had bought a while back. She LOVES it. She calls it her dancing dress. She wore it 3 days straight (there was some washing done at night). She’d say, “wa-ch me ‘pin wa-ch me ‘pin.” One day Nancy was playing the piano and Ensley started to dance to the song. It was so cute I had to grab a video of it.

Once I was trying to get Ensley to do something. I said, “Ensley, stop spinning.” She said, “Me can’t. My dwess make me ‘pin.”

Nancy and Ensley had this thing about making frowning faces towards each other. By the end of the week Ens was able to make a pretty good frown face. One night at dinner we caught these pictures.

Nancy was always cooking up some sort of goodies. The day after she left I had to call her and tell her I was craving chocolate chip cookies because my body was going through sweet withdrawl. A few days after Nancy went home Ensley said to me, “Mommy, me want a tookie.” I told her we didn’t have any. I asked her where we should go to get some. Ensley said, “Grandma make us a tookie.” Ha! Nancy made us so many sweets that even Ens noticed.

Posted on June 28th, 2009 by Lisa
Filed under: | No Comments »

Evan’s company has a box at the RDU Center (arena of the Carolina Hurricanes hockey team and NC State basketball team), so he can get tickets to the events that are held there. Believe it or not they had some extra tickets to Sesame Street Live “Elmo Grows Up” so Evan and Ensley had an afternoon out.

The day before the show we told Ensley she was going to see Elmo with Daddy. All day she kept talking about how she was going on a date with Daddy. She was really looking forward to seeing Elmo.

When Ensley first saw the characters coming onto the stage she got extremely excited. She was jumping up and down, clapping, and yelling at the characters. Everyone else in the booth was watching and laughing at her because she was so into it.

(A few days later Ensley saw this picture on the camera. She had a MELTDOWN because she wanted to “watch it.” How do you explain that some of the “pictures” on the camera are just pictures and some are movies–they are not interchangeable?)

Posted on June 28th, 2009 by Lisa
Filed under: | No Comments »

We came home from the hospital on Thursday and my family came up Friday night. I was so excited for them to come. I couldn’t wait for them to meet Will. We had a nice weekend.

Saturday morning we went to pick strawberries. I love that strawberry patch. Ensley really liked to pick the strawberries and put them in her bucket. Mmm. How can you go wrong with fresh sweet strawberries.

Being 9 months pregnant I totally slacked on my strawberry picking this year. I think we only went 2 or 3 times. I usually get enough to freeze and make enough strawberry pies for Evan to get sick of, but this year I didn’t freeze any or have Evan “nicely” break the news to me that he is strawberry-pied-out.

It’s become a family joke that whenever my family comes to visit I have some sort of “project” for them. This time was no different. We used my parent’s truck to pick up a new patio set and then I put the boys to work putting it together (Thanks again guys). We had a nice relaxing dinner out on the patio. I love it when the weather is like this–too bad it doesn’t stay like this too long before it gets smouldering hot. Here is a picture of Rachel and I enjoying the new furniture.

I don’t think Will’s little body was ever put down the entire weekend. As soon as one of us needed to do something someone else was there to pick him up. Lucky little man.

Stevie’s already started prepping him for wrestling season 2015. Here they are watching a wrestling clip. Stephen is explaining the different moves to him. I didn’t really have the heart to tell Stevie that will wasn’t really paying attention .

Dad, Stephen, and Evan drove over to Charlotte to watch a NASCAR race. Unfortunately it rained all day and was finally rescheduled 5 hours later. Who would have ever guessed that Evan would find his inner red neck. I guess that is what happens when you marry a girl from the south.

Dad, Rachel and Stevie had to head home Monday for work, but Mom was able to stay and help out. Before they headed out Dad had to get one more cuddle with his two babies.

Posted on June 28th, 2009 by Lisa
Filed under: | No Comments »

Tuesday morning we woke up early and got ready for the big day. The whole time I just kept waiting for the hospital to call and tell us not to come, but luckily no call came. We dropped Ens off at my friend Stacy’s house at 0600 and we were off to the hospital. We got to the hospital, checked in and then went to our room. Yeah, we were so excited. The day finally came.

The nurse put my IV in and started me on pitocin. Around 0800 the doctor came in and broke my water. He said I was 2 cm, but the baby was really low (My nurse kept quietly shaking her head and saying to me 4 cm). He said he had a c-section at 1100 and wanted to get a sandwich around 1300, so he was hoping I could fit the baby in between–sure, let me just do that for you . I wasn’t really feeling too strong of contractions, so Evan and I watched some television and relaxed. Evan even went to the cafeteria for breakfast. I think he was looking forward to a cafeteria-type breakfast–he obviously doesn’t work in a hospital when he’s looking forward to eating their food.

Around 1030 the contractions were getting really strong. It takes an hour from the time you ask until the time you get your epidural so I went ahead and asked the nurse to start the process. She made me wait the full hour because my blood pressure was already running low and she wanted to make sure I got the entire fluid bolus before I got the meds.

Around 1130 I got my epidural. The nurse checked me and said I was 6 cm, but she thought I’d move fast. The baby also started to have some decels so she turned off my pitocin. Oh, I love drugs. This time for some reason, the epidural worked really well on my left side, but it didn’t quite numb my right side. It still was much better than no epidural at all though. Because my right side was still cramping I kept hitting my PCA button every time I could to try and get that part feeling better. I think my left side kept getting really numb and my right side just got a little better.

Around 1230 the doctor came in to check how things were going. As soon as he checked he said, “Oh, we’re going to have a baby. I need to get your nurse.” He must have said he needed my nurse 3 or 4 times. It seemed a little funny to me that he needed her so bad. Isn’t he the doctor? Wasn’t he going to be the one delivering this baby? See, those doctors they’d be lost with out us nurses .

I pushed just a few times and then at 1251 little Will was here. I was so glad to finally have him on the outside instead of the inside. He is a perfect addition to our family.

Posted on June 28th, 2009 by Lisa
Filed under: | No Comments »

William (Will) Paul McNabb arrived this afternoon at 12:51pm Eastern. He is 6 lbs 12 oz and 18 inches long. Everything went wonderfully and he is currently cuddling up with mommy.

Posted on May 19th, 2009 by Lisa
Filed under: | 17 Comments »