What I've Got

With school back in session, the kids are bringing lots of things home. We have gotten newsletters from the PTSA, notes from the teachers, homework, and Scholastic book club order forms. The girls have also brought home dirty lunch boxes, water bottles, and scraped knees. They have also brought home, unfortunately, germs.

Miriam came home with a cough. You know, the kind where she isn't sick enough to stay home, but she's sneezing and coughing. That lasted for a couple days, and then she was fine. That 5-year-old immune system kicked the cold bug right out. Unfortunately for me, she shared those germs with me. I don't get lucky enough to get a two-day cough and be done with it. No, I get the full-fledged cold. Congestion, sneezing, coughing, misery.

Luckily, I have great kids. Yesterday as they were confined to the house since Mom and Dad weren't feeling well, they were so patient. They were happy to watch church movies all day long. They were thrilled to eat Chicken Noodle Soup for dinner. They also took care of me a lot. Miriam especially was my little nurse. She brought me a box of Kleenex when mine ran out. She got the lotion and rubbed my feet. She carried my medicine up to my room before bed. What a big helper!

Then today I gave in and went to the doctor. What did she say I've got? I have fluid on both ears, and an ear infection in one. I've got a sinus infection. And she thinks I have allergies on top of the cold!

Welcome back, school year!

Snacker

Several months ago, Joseph discovered how to open doors all by himself. This was so exciting for him! He especially loved to open the basement door and the pantry door. Of course, these are two of the places I like for him to get into the least.

Joseph would open the pantry door, go inside, and close the door so I wouldn't be able to find him. Then he would open boxes of crackers and cereal to eat, dump, and generally make a mess. No fun for mom.

So recently I put a child lock on the door to the pantry. Joseph hasn't figured out how to open these, yet, so he can't get into the pantry. Hooray! Unfortunately, his snacking habits have not gone away. During those last 10 minutes before dinner, he has now started opening the basement door, going downstairs, and getting a bag of goldfish from the food storage. He doesn't seem convinced that he won't starve before dinner!

Back to School BBQ

The last Saturday before school started, we had a back to school barbecue. We let each of the girls pick one friend to invite, and Jack and I chose a couple families from the neighborhood we wanted to get to know better. Of course, Rebecca chose her friend Anna and Miriam chose our neighbor Katelyn. We also had Chad and Tracy and their girls over. We had lots of fun with these three families.

The plan was to grill, eat out in the back yard, and then play on the new Slip and Slide. Unfortunately, the weather was cold and rainy! We ended up eating inside. The kids mostly played in the house until the sun finally peeked out of the clouds. As soon as that happened, the kids wanted to play in the water. They had fun, but were awfully cold!

In Her Nose

Miriam has such a creative mind. She thinks very much "outside the box" and wants to try out all her ideas. She wants to take apart the blinds because she likes the circles at the bottom. She wants to put putty in water just to see what happens. She has even disassembled books so she can put the pages in a different order! Usually her experiments are interesting for her, frustrating for me, and generally harmless.

Recently I was making dinner for a neighbor who recently had a baby when Miriam calls to me from her room. She tells me she has a gem in her nose. I am not at all pleased with this announcement. I need to get this food down the street in half an hour, Jack is out of town, and a 4:30 trip to the doctor's office is not in the schedule! I had her blow her nose to see if it would come out, and of course it didn't. Then she tells me, "Wait!" and reaches into her nose and gets the offending gem. Whew! We had a nice talk about not putting things in your nose after that...

I don't think it is possible for me to remove all potential trouble items from Miriam's reach. Will she ever learn to use things properly?

Visiting Grandma Fong

We went to dinner at Jack's grandmother's home yesterday. As we were coming in, we all gave Grandma a hug. Rebecca was very excited to see Great-Grandma, so she knocked Grandma over with her hug. Literally. We had to pick her up off the floor. Rebecca gets exuberant at times and will jump into your arms for a hug. Well, Grandma, at 80 years and 8 days, wasn't expecting this and tumbled right to the ground with Rebecca underneath her. Jack and I felt horrible about it. We were grateful we didn't have to whisk Grandma off to the emergency room!

After all that excitement, things quieted down for a nice visit. We looked at pictures of Grandma and Tommie's recent trip to San Francisco to visit Tommie's family as well as Jack's Uncle Bob's kids. We found time to discuss politics, World War II ration stamps, and baseball. Grandma fixed us a nice dinner, including 5 spice chicken (Jack's favorite thing she makes!). The kids really liked the red punch Grandma had.


The kids also enjoyed playing with all the noisy toys Grandma and Tommie have. They especially liked the Halloween Basset Hound. Once Miriam started dancing all over the living room and Joseph started playing with the breakables, we decided it was time to go home.All in all, a nice visit. Definitely memorable!

What Will I Do?

With school having started for the girls, I have been thinking about what I will do with my day. For the past 5 1/2 years, I have had at least two children home all day. With the differences in age and maturity levels, that left only about 30 minutes to 1 hour a day that I could count on for down time. Now with the girls at school and Joseph still napping for a couple hours in the afternoon, what will I do with my time?

I have also been thinking about how I have never had individual time with Joseph before. With older children, I find that I focus our time and activities to the oldest child's abilities, and the youngest is just along for the ride. Now I can give Joseph that one-on-one attention that he needs since big sisters aren't vying for my attention.

So what will I do with my sweet boy?

• Read stories. He loves to read stories. Since he has older sisters, he has started distinguishing picture books as "book" and longer, chapter books as "chapter" when he talks about them.
• Play trains. Joseph is obsessed with the train track. He loves to put together the pieces and push the train around the track.
• Go to the zoo. Whenever we go to the zoo, we go where the girls want to go. I want to take Joseph and make sure he sees more than just the fence in front of him!
• Go to the Nature and Science Museum. I would love to follow his lead and see what he likes at the museum!
• Push him on the tricycle. Every time we come in from the garage, Joseph is sad if we don't ride the tricycle. He can now reach the petals and move the petals as I push him.

I also have things I want to accomplish while Joseph is napping.

• Read. There are so many good books out there I would love to enjoy.
• Make cards. I love to be creative and make handmade cards. I am hoping to have more time to pursue this craft.
• Update scrapbooks. I need to get working on Joseph's scrapbook. He is over 2 and I have not done one page yet! Poor boy!
• Organize the office. There are lots of things I need to organize. I am going to try to fit in some project every day so they get done!
• Bake and freeze. I want to start doing more freezer meals, so this seems like the perfect opportunity!

I know this time with just the two of us home during the day won't last forever, but I am looking forward to enjoying it while it lasts!

Back to School

Back to school. It seems like it comes earlier every year. It seems like it is still summer, and my beautiful daughters have been ushered off into another year of learning. Rebecca started school on Tuesday. She is a second grader this year. It seems like she is more grown up every time I look at her! Recently she told me that she thought she would be as tall as me by the end of second grade. Well, I don't think it will be that soon! But it will probably feel like only a year from now when my baby is looking down on me.

Rebecca wanted to ride her bike to school this year. I think it is great that she is enjoying her bike and wants to ride to school like the big kids. But I still walk with her. It is because Miriam is too little to go with just big sister. Yeah, right. Rebecca is still so young to me as well!

This year Rebecca's teacher is Mrs. Walker. She has promised Rebecca lots of homework. But she also promised Rebecca she would be learning multiplication and division, cursive handwriting and an extensive vocabulary. Rebecca is a wonderful student and so excited to learn. She will do fabulously this year.

Miriam started school today, Wednesday. I look at her and can hardly believe that she is going off to school. I remember holding this tiny baby in my arms, and look at her now! Miriam was excited and nervous to start school. Since she didn't attend preschool, this is Miriam's first school experience. Miriam has been pretty nervous about starting school, and especially with being away from Mom. Friday Miriam had her assessment with her teacher and got to see her classroom. As I expected, once she saw the room and met her teacher, she was fine with the whole experience. Miriam is such a social butterfly, I'm sure she will have no trouble at all making friends and interacting with the teachers.

Miriam is quite the "think-outside-the-box" type of person. I know she will take off and do a super job in kindergarten. She is a happy, smart, energetic little girl. I will miss her at home!

It has been five years since I have only had one child home with me during the day. Now I have two school girls, so Joseph and I will get some quality time together. But he misses them, too. A couple times today he started calling for his sisters. At one point, he said, "Miriam, I love you!"

The Lord gives us these precious children to care for and protect. I am so pleased with them. They are working so hard and are wonderful girls. But as I leave them in the care of strangers, I find my heart and mind constantly turning to them. I know they need to experience this separation from me, to learn to be independent, self-sufficient individuals. But my instinct is to gather them close to me so I can protect them from everything that might hurt them in this world. I can't do that, so I find that throughout the day, I am constantly praying for them. He can protect them better than me, anyway!

Ah, NO!

All children have a desire to be independent and make their own decisions. They want to be able to control some little part of their world. Joseph has learned the power in the word NO. He is growing up, mentally and physically, and he wants to be able to control his world. So he has started saying, "No" to everything he is asked, even if he doesn't mean it.

I have been making smoothies for the kids this summer. He really likes them. But one day the smoothie was thicker than normal, so Joseph was having a hard time drinking it. He brought me the cup, and I asked him if he wanted some. His response: "Ah, NO!" And then he drank a big gulp of it. Every time he wanted another drink, we went through this same process. You can't really tell, but his face is a mess, as well as his shirt. My baby is growing up and becoming an individual!

Heartbreak

I just found out that Jack's sister Julie had another miscarriage. My heart breaks for her. This is her second miscarriage in about 6 months. I had just talked to her a week or so ago, and she told me how well things were going. She wasn't bleeding like she had been with the previous pregnancies. She was just out of her first trimester. I am so sorry.

This has made me think about how grateful I am for my children. While I have had problems with my pregnancies, each time I have gotten pregnant I have been blessed to bring a healthy baby home from the hospital with me. I am so grateful for this blessing! Even with all the physical illness and limitations I experience as well as the mental stress from pregnancy, I am overwhelmed with the blessing of having healthy children. I will strive to be the type of mother that is constantly aware of the blessing these little ones are in my life.

Julie, my heart breaks for you. Know I pray for you and the Lord will help you heal.

Washing the Van

Our van had gotten pretty dirty, and since the weather has been so warm, I decided we would save the $5 for a car wash and do it ourselves.

The kids had fun. Mostly they played in the water, but they did help me a little with the washing. Then they filled up their cups with the wash water and dumped it on each other. Joseph liked playing in the bucket, but did not want anyone else to get him wet.

I'm glad the kids had fun, but it was a lot of work to clean the van. And at the end of all that hard work, it didn't look as nice as a car wash. So from now on, I'll pay the $5 and let the kids play with the hose, buckets and cups!

The Farm

Last week we went to The Farm in Fort Collins with Jack's sister Julie and her family. We had a great time. The farm is a petting zoo-- well, really more like a feeding zoo. It is a cute little farm with chickens, goats, sheep, horses, cows, pigs and ducks, as well as displays of working and non-functioning farm equipment. The kids could pet the animals through the fences, but there wasn't anywhere for them to enter the pens and interact with the animals. But that's okay by me!

The kids all had a great time pumping water from the old water pump. It took Uncle Will to get the water moving before any of the kids could get it going, though. Rebecca is lifting that bale of hay behind her using a rope an pulley system. She and Miriam both liked to show us how strong they were!

Miriam and Rebecca were both experts at feeding the animals. The goats were really the only animals interested in eating out of their hands. Of course, they thought it tickled and felt kind of yucky when the goats licked the oats out of their hands.

I fed a goat a couple times to show Joseph what the idea was. Then I held out my hand to give him some oats to feed the goats. He proceeded to put it in his mouth. Hey, the goats liked it! Joseph, however, didn't think it was that great and proceeded to spit it out.

We witnessed the truth of the old adage that a goat will eat anything. While we were feeding the goats, a goat next to us took a little girl's whole bag of oats and proceeded to eat the whole thing. Bag and all. She was distraught. Poor thing!

Nearly the whole time we were at The Farm, Joseph was running. I think he was just fascinated by everything going on. He wanted to see everything right now. This is one of the only pictures I got of his face. The rest are of the back of his head as he ran away from me. He and Sebastian are shaking the fence around the cage.

We had a fun little picnic there as well. The kids picked the red table in the sun even though there was an unpainted one in the shade right next to it. They ended up moving halfway through lunch when they got too hot!

They all loved the tractor so we got pictures of them on it. How fun!

Once again, I can't seem to get Miriam's face in a picture!

Joseph was content just sitting on the tractor floor.

Did I say all the kids loved the tractor? Hmm, all but Sebastian. He screamed whenever anyone tried to put him on it.

We had a great time seeing the animals and spending time with family!

Shoe Shopping Lessons

We finally finished all our back-to-school shopping today with a trip to Payless Shoes and Wal-Mart. While we were shopping for shoes, I learned something from each of the children.

Miriam was so excited to get the boxes from the shoes. She wasn't really concerned about which shoes she got (just the same kind as Rebecca), but those boxes! She wanted to make a train for her animals out of the boxes. Right now she is trying to tie the boxes together so the train cars can move together. Rebecca always wants to get more or different shoes from the kind we are there to buy. So when she asked me if she could get another pair of shoes, I explained to her how much we had budgeted for her shoes. I told her she could get as many shoes as she wanted as long as it cost less than that amount and she got one pair of tennis shoes. Then I explained where to find the price tags and what sales were going on. She did a fantastic job of figuring out how to spend all her money and get the shoes she wanted. And the best part-- no arguing or temper tantrums at all!

Joseph didn't get shoes this trip, but when we got home he showed me what he has learned. The first thing Miriam did when she walked in the door was take her old shoes and put them in the trash. Joseph was watching, and said, "No ah shoes!" He then went over to the trash and took the shoes out of the trash can. This was repeated once more, and then I told Miriam to wait to throw her old shoes away until Joseph was taking a nap. I'm glad he has learned what should and shouldn't go in the trash can!

So I'd say that was a successful shopping trip all around!

Swimming Lessons

This summer the girls had a great time in swimming lessons. This year Rebecca really took off. She was really excited to learn to swim, and she was willing to do anything the teacher asked her to do. I think her teacher, Susan, was the best we have had. Rebecca can now swim a few strokes on her own. She can also go down the water slide, which is definitely her favorite thing to do at any pool. Miriam also had fun in swimming lessons. She was still very cautious about the water. She did put her face in the water a few times over the course of the summer. When she was supposed to jump off the side of the pool to her teacher, Miriam would sit on the edge of the pool and scoot herself all the way to the edge until she could touch her teacher's hands before jumping in. But the lessons gave her time to be in the water and get more accustomed to the experience.

Joseph had the boring assignment to sit at the edge of the pool with mom while big sisters got to play in the water. He wasn't overly thrilled with this situation, so he worked at keeping me running around the pool to keep him from jumping in. The only casualty of the summer was a book Joseph threw in the water. Maybe next year, buddy!

Next Stop, Beauty School

Yesterday Rebecca and Miriam were playing in their room. After a while, Miriam came out with what was obviously purple chap stick (with a little glitter!) painted in lines all over her face. I asked her what was on her face. Her first words: "I'm sorry, Mom."

Of course. She knows from past experience with chap stick that it is off limits. But obviously she found some again. I think all chap stick needs to be banned from the house. Why is it so fascinating to little people???

So I asked her where the chap stick is. She tells me it is in her room. I ask her to go get it for me. She informs me that it is empty. "Rebecca used her electric toothbrush to put the chap stick on my face and make it pretty."

First off, that sounds gross. That toothbrush was not new. It had been in Rebecca's mouth plenty of times. And now it has been in the tube of chap stick and all over Miriam's face. Yuck. Secondly, now we have a ruined toothbrush. Granted, I got it on sale and with a coupon, but still. We shouldn't ruin our things! And finally, why was Rebecca involved in this? I kind of expect Miriam to get into things and make a mess, but I think of Rebecca as much more mature and responsible.

I told Miriam to wash her face. She did a decent job, even if the bathroom sink was purple afterward.

The next time I saw Rebecca, her eyelids had a definite purple tint to them. I asked her what was on her face. She told me: "Nothing. I washed it off like Miriam." Hmm, so not only is she painting her sister, she's painting herself!

Not My Favorite Thing

This is the time of year when the stores all have their back to school displays up. When we went to Wal-Mart in July, they already had school supplies out! So we are working on getting ready to go back to school. Yesterday, the girls got their annual professional haircut. They were excited to watch a movie, but I wasn't excited to pay $17.95 each for 20 minutes in the chair and 1 inch of hair on the floor. I think it will be Cost Cutters next year!

Then today we did school clothes shopping. I like for the kids to have a new outfit to wear the first day of school. So we headed off to Sears Grand to try to find something cute, durable, and affordable. When we got there, I was pleasantly surprised to see racks and racks of clearance clothes all with an additional 40% off the tag price. For someone cheap like me, that is great. So I spent an hour digging through racks of clothes looking for the right sizes in cute clothes for the girls to wear to school. I also found swim suits for them. Hooray!

Now I know of people that love to shop. They think it is enjoyable. I would not be one of them. I spent close to two hours at the store with just the girls today, and I would be happy to not shop for clothes again for months! As I was driving home, I thought that perhaps I would enjoy it more if I were able to go in the store by myself, look at all the cute displays and pick an outfit just like it is on a mannequin. However, due to my frugal nature, I am always looking through the sale and clearance racks (which aren't neatly arranged) and it is much more stressful. But I guess it saves me money to not shop, too. Definitely not one of my favorite things!

Big Helper

Joseph is at that fun stage where he likes to imitate what he sees us doing. The other day, he spilled his rice during lunch. After he got down from his chair, he got the broom and dust pan out of the closet and proceeded to try sweeping up the mess. The broom is about twice as tall as he is, so that didn't last long. but he worked on getting the rice in the dust pan. Once he got one or two pieces of rice in the dust pan, he carefully carried it over to the trash can and dumped it in the trash. Of course, the rice fell off the dust pan onto the floor long before it made it to the trash. But he tried so hard! He would put the dust pan all the way into the trash before he pulled it out. What a sweet boy! I hope he still has the desire to help in a few years when he is big enough to actually do some work!