Another Baby!

Only this one isn't mine, I swear! He/She is my older sister's! I'm going to be an AUNT! Yay! My niece or nephew is due around the end of May. I'm so happy!


Of course I heard a rumor that my mother was going to print out a copy of this picture and leave it on the kitchen table for my other sister to find, hoping that she would say, "Oh, is A pregnant again?" Ha, ha, very funny!

Congratulations Sis!

Math Made Hard

I use two math programs with the boys: Saxon and Miquon. Saxon mimics how math is taught in a classroom setting and has been used by homeschoolers for many years. Saxon is boring and repetitive, but one is confident nothing is being missed when taught at home. Miquon is more of a hands-on discovery of math and can be confusing for those who prefer their information spoon fed. So far this morning I've made IJ cry and we haven't even gotten to the spelling test yet.

Harvesting...still.

Oh, dear. I've bitten off more than I can chew. I took my neighbor up on an offer for free apples and now I have (in addition to a cooler full from the last time I went apple picking) a flat, two large shopping bags, and a backpack full of apples. I canned 7 pints of applesauce and have two layers of leather dehydrating. And I made an apple crisp last night. Good thing I have so many kids!I took my so many kids to the Harvest Party at our church on Saturday night. The kids had a blast playing games for candy. S dressed up as a pirate, IJ as a snow leopard, and E was a clown (in my old halloween costume that my mom made for me when I was 3 years old). I dressed up as a boxer so I could wear my sweatpants to church. And at the last minute, as I was heading out the door, I threaded a pipe cleaner through F's hat and made her a bug. I just love this age, when babies begin to sit on their own and reach for toys. F is so content to reach for anything. And one thing she does that my other babies didn't is purposely fall over so she can roll around. This morning I put her down at my feet and within a few minutes she was halfway across the living room, wrapped up in a ball of yarn, much like a kitten. My Pathetic Doberman still seems surprised by her on the floor and is learning to share her toys. I think she may remember when E was this small.

Objective Reality

IJ: What's E doing?
Me: Painting the dishwasher
IJ: With water?
Me: Yes
IJ: So, she's actually cleaning.
Me: I guess you could say that.

Do Your Best

That's the Cub Scout Motto. I'm trying to follow the motto today. F has been fussy nonstop since Saturday, as I mentioned in a previous post. I thought she was teething, but now she is covered in little red spots! She hasn't had a fever (that I noticed), so I'm not too concerned, but boy is this annoying! This is what I have been doing my best to accomplish today: putting my kitchen back in order, thinking about finishing my applesauce project, buying a new/used toddler bed for E and assembling it, thinking about making girls' room/boys' room instead of sleeping room/play room, and everything else I do in a busy day (like laundry and making lunch). And like educating my kids. That became the number one priority when the little beast finally went down for a nap (after keeping me up until midnight last night and not napping all day yesterday).We are currently exploring Ancient Egypt. I did my best to keep learning fun by building pyramids out of sugar cubes left over from a science experiment. I also did my best to incorporate math into our project by introducing the boys to the idea of square numbers. We counted out our layers one by one and made squares out of 25, 16, 9, 4, and 1 cube. IJ got extra credit for making his pyramid a model of Khufu's pyramid, complete with three queen's pyramids. After we were done I quizzed them on history and math and gave them sugar cubes to eat when they got the answers right. And E really did build her own pyramid! And she wrote her name all by herself!

When Work Becomes Play

My ultimate goal is to work myself out of a job in about twenty years or so. I hope that by age 25 my children will be self-sufficient and not need me to be the mommy anymore. I'm beginning to see the fruits of my labor budding in IJ. We had a talk about his little sister yesterday and how he doesn't really like her anymore. I reminded him that he will get out of her what he puts into her. If he fights with her and treats her badly, she will treat him badly in return. If he puts effort and work into his relationship with his immature bratty almost three year old sister, she will grow to adore him as much as he adores his older sister.

This morning IJ and E have been busy playing school. Or are they really working on school work? I can't really tell. IJ has E writing letters, sorting Legos by color, and naming shapes. S is the principal, but he doesn't get to tell anyone what to do. He just sits in his office. I might not get a turn playing teacher today if they keep this up!

Developing the Early Learner...

...is a series of workbooks that S and I have been working on. You can see in the picture a page of sequencing. He had to color what came first blue, second green, and last red. Technically, he got them all wrong. But when you think like S does, you get them all right. Here is an example of a sequencing problem: What comes first? A chicken or an egg? He has had that problem twice now. Other problems show picking a flower and then putting it in a vase, etc.Today's problems were like this: The top line shows a hand playing with a truck, a truck on a flat line with a price tag underneath, and a truck being taken out of a box. Obviously, one would buy a truck off a store shelf, take it out of the box, and then play with it. But the truck is not pictured in a box on the shelf. S sees first a truck being taken out of a box, being played with, and left on the floor. The third line shows a person getting their hair brushed, the person with short messy hair, and a person with a long braid. To us regular people we sequence messy hair first, brushed hair second, and braided hair third. S sees long braided hair first, brushing hair second because they are getting ready for a haircut, and a person who just got a short hair cut to look like a boy third. As long as S can explain his answers to me, he gets them all right. Another good reason to homeschool.

My Hero

This guy is My Hero!I should not have said anything about being bored. I jinxed myself! Late Saturday night, I noticed a puddle of water at the base of my dishwasher. Now, we are unfortunate enough to have bought a house with carpet in the kitchen, so the source of the water on the floor was unclear. I thought maybe I left a glass of seltzer water on the counter and it had been spilled by S or My Pathetic Doberman. I mopped up the water and continued to make dinner for S (yes, it was late and past S's bedtime, but we were having a fun weekend). When I turned around, there was more water on the floor! Huh??? Where was this water coming from???

I won't bore you with a minute by minute recounting of this adventure that involved me making panicked phone calls and running next door with a barefoot child in tow. Summing it all up... the water supply pipe to the dishwasher was broken and spraying water and water was leaking through the kitchen floor and running down the wall downstairs onto the fish tanks! Dangerously close to the outlets and our priceless artwork from Vietnam! Luckily my neighbor was able to help me turn the water off, so he was a bit of a hero too. But My real Hero is the guy that pulled the kids out of bed, put them in the car, and got ready to drive home from Twin Firs to help me. After my neighbor turned the water off for me I call M back and told him to stay put and come home in the morning.

Sunday morning, as I waited for M to get home, I called around and found out it would cost about $200 to fix the pipe (and we won't have $200 until next week's payday). I was thinking I was going to have to get a fixed pipe for my lucky number seventh wedding anniversary next week. But My Hero took one look at the leak, went to the hardware store, and had it fixed within an hour!

And did I mention my refrigerator is also not working properly? But I can fix that myself! The appliance repair guy showed me how to dismantle my freezer a few years ago and use a hair dryer to unclog my air vents so I wouldn't have to pay $100 every time I left the freezer door open. I've saved us at least $300 so far :)

But back to My Hero... he also gave our computer a brain transplant and increased the hard drive space and is currently transplanting the old brain into my ancient computer.

What a guy!

Home Alone

No pictures! We are in the process of transferring everything on our computer to a brand new hard drive. And since the transfer has been running for 24 hours (and there are three more hours to go) and M is at Twin Firs for the weekend, I don't DARE go snooping around in the files to figure out where things are. Its bad enough that I'm online. But I'm bored!

I'm home alone! M took IJ and E with him. So I'm home alone with A, S, and F. And My Pathetic Doberman. I guess I'm not really alone, but it sure feels like it when A is at her friend's house, S is playing video games, and F is finally down for a nap. She must be teething or something. She has been super fussy for the last two days.

This is E's first trip to Twin Firs without me. The house is strangely quiet without her loud little voice! But I sure am enjoying some one on one time with S. He wanted to stay home so he could play video games all weekend. Too bad for him, we lost the remote control and can't change the channel to where he can play. So he is stuck playing educational video games on our other computer. I don't know when he will be ready to spend some time with me... but I'll be here when he is ready to snuggle!

Beware of the Mama Bear!

Yesterday morning the first question out of S's mouth was, "Why is spider's legs so tight?" What he meant was, "How do spiders stick to the wall when they climb?" I told him about the tiny hooks on their feet and thought we were done with the subject. Until I discovered this last night: Oh, the boys climbed the walls all evening. Literally.

And today I decided to take the kids to a preschool playtime that I used to go to quite frequently. I quit going because there was a brat that would bully other little kids and destroy their toys. His mother, who was pregnant and due at any moment would barely get out of her chair to deal with his behavior problems. And I didn't blame her-at the time. When I was 9 months pregnant, I could hardly move either. But this boy's behavior problem did not go away. This boy ripped the plastic handles off my boys' bikes, leaving sharp metal edges sticking out. He spit loogies at my best friend's son. He hurt little kids; he would even hurt babies! He is a mean, nasty little kid. And now his toddler aged brother is the same way. And the mother never does anything about her sons' behavior. A Christian friend asked me to show compassion and pray for the mother when I told her why I was leaving playtime. However, I didn't feel like my kids should be the victim of an undisciplined lifestyle and I started staying home. Today I decided to visit playtime again, hoping that this piece of work was in Kindergarten full time or at least in daycare. But he was not, much to my dismay.

Imagine my anger when my little E came up to me saying, "Mama kiss my face! My face got hurt!" "What happened? How did you hurt your face?" "That boy ofer there in da back shirt 'macked me!" Sure enough, there was a white area on her pink cheek that was obviously a smack mark. And the boy in the black shirt was looking defiantly at me from across the gym. I turned to his mother and said, "Your son smacked my little girl on the face." She hollered at her son to come to her (which he ignored) and when she finally got him to come over and answer if he had smacked E, he said that E was lying!!! Two year old girls who have been smacked by bratty five year old boys DO NOT LIE! And neither do smack marks on her face! Well, this evil woman said to me, "Well, I don't know who is telling the truth, so I'm not going to get involved."

She is lucky she decided to leave at that moment.

I thought about not going back again. But that is a lot like letting a bully determine your life. And I will not be bullied by an undisciplined five year old and his mother. I'm going back to play time and me and my kids will be ready for them! So watch out!

Weekend Update & Random Thoughts

Since there are so many people in our home that all need to share and take turns with the computer and the downstairs TV, I gracefully let M and A have all the time and didn't barge in all weekend. Because Monday morning, I can have it all to myself when they have to leave, HA HA!
F is sitting up and playing with toys really well now! She likes to blow raspberries (even when she nurses-a strange sensation) and shake toys. This is my absolute favorite age! I love being able to plop her down on the floor with a pillow and a few toys (and a brother for back up) and get some work done.

It was really cold this weekend and we don't really want to heat the whole house for a temporary chill, so we put on sweaters and I lengthened F's woolies! I love having an exuse to knit all weekend. I also kept busy in the kitchen with apples (what else-sigh) and also pumpkin!

Remember last year when we didn't carve our Halloween pumpkin and ate it instead? I had one container of frozen puree that fell out of the freezer and shattered that I needed to use up. In my VitaMix I made pumpkin pie smoothies! Oh, Heavenly! Frozen pumpkin puree, plain yogurt, a touch of brown sugar and spice... yum! The only problem was I didn't make enough, because the kids drank it all up! Luckily I had a pumpkin in reserve that I picked up from the farm down the street from my house. E helped me separate the seeds from the flesh in a wonderful Montessori-like activity (look closely at the background of the picture, you will see one of the reasons I love M so much). We roasted the seeds (my recipe: lightly spray seeds with canola oil, bake at 350 until you've forgotten what you are doing and wonder why the house smells like popcorn, remove from oven, stir and enjoy!) and froze the rest. I even used the stringy part that we took the seeds out of in (oh you will love this) Carrot-Pumpkin-Orange-Strawberry-Banana Ice Cream!!!

If I could only have one countertop appliance, it would be a VitaMix 5200. My husband has never eaten so many vegetables. IJ, who was a journalist this weekend, did a newscast about how much he loves my smoothies and it was all because of the VitaMix. I wonder if I send it in to the VitaMix company if they will pay me???

In addition to newscasting (which I have on video and will use as blackmail in about ten years), IJ learned how to tie a square knot and a sheet bend. I let him have a garbage bag full of cheap acrylic yarn that I've kept for kid's projects. He would cut a length of yarn, tie it to the end of the previous string, and wind it up. The perfect activity to develop those fine motor skills which will translate into good penmenship, so they say. For two straight hours last night I heard, "...rabbit comes out of the hole, around the tree, back into the hole..."

What about S? What did he do all weekend? Saturday and Sunday are video game days, so he played video games for hours and hours. We set the timer and made him come up (or go outside) for air, and we had peace. Peace because when it isn't video game day, S asks when it will be video game day (he has learned the days of the week this way) and talks nonstop about his races and the bosses he beats and how many balloons he has. In fact, he wakes up really early and sometimes goes downstairs where he waits for A to emerge to get ready for school. As soon as he sees her, he asks her what the hardest race is and how to beat the big boss... I should have a problem with this, but for some reason I don't. When he wasn't playing video games or playing outside, he was making his baby sister laugh with his insane antics. No one makes F laugh like S does.

Look Who's READING!

I can't believe it! I'm so excited! I took this picture at 6:45 this morning. S is now picking up his school readers for fun and reading them...correctly! We are on Book #9 this week, but he has read ahead to Book #15. I'm so proud!

Power Outage

I mentioned yesterday that S was up at 4:45 because the power went out, right? Well, by 3:00 in the afternoon, his power went out... We knew he was tired. But we are always amazed when a tired child says, "I'm tired. I need a nap," which is what this little guy did. M and I put on Disney's Fantasia and without fail, S was asleep by the Nutcracker Suite. M fondly said, "I've been putting kids to sleep with this movie for twenty years!"

Apple Tally: 11 quarts and 7 pints of canned applesauce, 6 pints of apple butter, and three or four batches of dehydrated apple slices and I'm not even half done! I have another full-sized cooler of apples in the basement!

Apples & Apples & Apples

I've been busy! We had a large bag of apples from Twin Firs, which we ate and turned into apple sauce for our morning porridge and smoothies. Then I got another bag of apples from my neighbor, which we ate and turned into apple sauce for our morning porridge and smoothies. This weekend we outdid ourselves and picked 115 pounds of apples from our favorite U-pick. Here is E hauling the wagon with a 40 pound cooler of apples!We had a power outage last night and for some awful reason everyone was up WAY too early. S was up at 4:45am, F followed at about 5:10, and E crawled up next to me on the couch at 5:20. I guess I will get an early start on those apples in the kitchen... Today is apple butter day!
This isn't how I left the baby! I put her down on her back! F started rolling over from back to front on Sunday night and hasn't stopped yet! She is also able to sit for a few seconds at a time.

Popcorn Anyone?

Are you interested in supporting this wonderful boy in his favorite activity, Cub Scouts? IJ is participating in the one and only fund raising activity his troop does every year. The best part is that IJ will earn commission from his sales to pay his way to camp this summer! We are selling popcorn in tins and also for the microwave from now until October 25th. Popcorn will be delivered at the end of November (do I hear a great idea for a Christmas present?), which is also when the payments are due.

Contact me if you are interested in purchasing popcorn and making this sweet wonderful boy extremely happy!

Foot Fetish

Chewing on her own foot...
















...and enjoying her father's (he just got out of the bath so yes, his feet are clean!)

I seem to remember another child of mine liking feet...ah yes...S would notice when his older sisters painted their toenails and would pet their feet.










This is my latest diaper, made from an old T-shirt of M's. See the wolf?

Guess Who Found Her Feet?