Hugging my Ears

This morning Katie was screaming & Josh was mad about all the noise. So, to get back at Katie, Josh said he couldn't hear her...he was "huggin' his ears" to block out her noise!

Another "cute" thing was when Nathan was looking at a map & told me, "Here is where the Avalanche Mountains are." He meant the Appalachians! :)

What's in YOUR kitchen drawer?

I bet it's not something like this!:) (Who knew that cookie cutters made great teething rings??? At least the top, rubbery part!)

Spring is Here!!!

And along with spring comes wet, muddy feet & pants & hands! But it didn't seem to bother the older kids today.

Nathan was out building a dam where the melting snow was running along the curb. He also panned for "gold" (which he is displaying in this picture). He had some success--he did find a piece of gold (a gold cap to a Budweiser bottle) and a dime. Here he is with his treasures!


Megan has always loved jumping in puddles. She had a blast riding her bike through the puddles on the street, jumping in the water streaming along the curb, and finding plenty of mud. That's my girl!;)

School Days

Everyone seems to be hard at work these days...even Katie!:) (Although on this particular day, Josh must've taken a "vacation" day!)

Sir Nathan

Showing off his new grown-up teeth...

A cute face as my little scholar studies a map of the world:

Miss Megan

Megan is looking so grown up!!!


Here she is wearing my robe...it's just a little big on her!:)

Prince Joshua

Princess Kate

Here she is playing peek-a-boo:

Temper Tantrum caught on Camera!!!

This is what happens when I take away a piece of paper that she wanted to chew on. Princess Katie has a fit! Gotta love her expression in the first picture...if looks could kill!;)

My practice subject from last night

Good old Abby, who was trying to snooze, was my test subject last night as all the kids were in bed. Bryn was in the shower...I didn't think he'd appreciate my photographing him, so the dog it was!:)

And here I got all artsy-fartsy (sorry to use that word mom, but it is part of the phrase!). You know those photos people take of their babies' feet? Well, I did a similar thing with the tops of Abby's paws. Hmmm, not nearly as cute as the baby concept, but oh well!

Tomorrow!!!!

Tomorrow my new camera is due to arrive...between the hours of 8:00am & 7:00pm. I need to be home in order to sign for the package when it arrives. Nothing like an 11-hour window to make it difficult to plan out the day. Here's a picture of what my camera will look like:

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words...

But unfortunately my camera died yesterday! That's o.k., I will just try to use words (around 1,000 or so) to explain our wonderful day today...

This morning, while I was busy for 2 or 3 minutes, Joshua took the opportunity to climb onto a chair & take almost every single book off our 7-foot bookshelf in the basement & dump them into a pile on the floor. What's worse is that he also chucked a glass bottle with a boat in it on top of them & it shattered, spreading glass EVERYWHERE on the books & on the basement floor. Not cool. He was in big trouble for that one.

Fast forward an hour or so to lunchtime when I was feeding the kids some pepperoni tortilla pizzas I had made. I cut Katie's up into little pieces & placed them in front of her. She chose to shovel a bunch of them into her mouth and ended up choking. Thank goodness I looked over at her when I did. She had a strange expression on her face & she was turning red. I unbuckled her from her chair & flipped her over & did the baby heimlich on her. At first it didn't work; she just turned redder. I continued to do the back blows & she finally gagged & threw up the food that had been caught in her throat. What a relief.

This mom has been emotionally drained since a little before noon. A nap sounds pretty good to me; too bad I can't seem to convince my children of the same thing. Heaven knows what would happen were I to actually sneak a nap in with as quickly as Josh can get into trouble. I hope you were able to get a good mental picture of what happened today as I managed to describe it in 111 words rather than 1,000!

"Carons"

Today we melted down the stubs of old crayons we had & made some new, "fancy" crayons. The kids loved them & it was a very quick process. Joshua refers to crayons as "carons," and is very excited to color with these new ones!

Read Alouds

Nathan CAN read...he just doesn't seem to have the desire to pick up a book and actually read for fun just yet, even though he sees us reading books frequently. So tonight I managed to get him to read a stack of books. What card did I play, you might be asking? I suggested he read to his caterpillars...the ones that arrived on Monday for our butterfly kit. That seemed to be just the right motivation for him. He read away to those caterpillars, showing them the pictures & everything. It was very cute!

Guess Who? Sorry!

I just named 2 of the games the big kids & I played together tonight. I got them (the games!)at a local thrift store for 40 cents apiece...what a steal! We HAD a Sorry game prior to moving, but I haven't been able to find it since we moved in, so just went & got a "new" one the other night. It's really fun being able to play games with them like that. (Although we're still working on not boasting when you're winning & not whining when you're losing.) And to top the night off, we cozied up on the loveseat & read a couple of new library books together. There's nothing I love more than being sandwiched between my kids as we read a good book! Most of all I love seeing how completely happy they are right now--life is good!

Recent pics of the kids!

Here's Kaitlyn. She's not smiling, but I like this picture because you can see how one eye (on the left) is much more hazel than the right eye. The right eye is mostly hazel, but has a quadrant in the lower right that is all blue!
Here's Josh...prior to the staple incident (see previous blog entry):

And Megan, very cheerful & happy this particular morning!:)

And finally, here is Nathan. You'll notice he is missing his 2nd tooth, lost earlier in the morning during breakfast. Don't worry, he didn't swallow it & the tooth fairy came later that night!

ER

Josh spent a little time at the hospital yesterday afternoon. Nothing major, thankfully. But he grabbed a tag on a cord...a tag that had been stapled on & the staple got hooked through the pad of his pinky finger. It was hard to tell how bad it was; he was bleeding & you could see both ends of the staple sticking through his finger. Thank goodness my mom happened to stop by about 5 minutes earlier--she was able to take care of the other kids while I raced Josh off to the hospital. He was anxious at first & obviously distraught over his sore finger, but calmed down pretty quickly once we were taken back to our room. He didn't want to sit on the bed with me, so I picked him up & held him in a cradle position & rocked him back & forth...and in less than 2 minutes he fell sound asleep! While I was sorry that he was hurting, it was really nice to have some snuggling time with my usually squirmy 2-yr old. After his nap, he woke up in good spirits, and we read some books together & examined some of the things we could see in our room--"There's a laundry basket, Momma!" (it was a little garbage can) "Oh! There's a kleenex!" (a medical glove sticking out of a box attached to the wall). Finally, after about 2 hours of sitting there, the doctor came in to remove the staple. A rather simple procedure & one that probably could've been handled just as well at home, eliminating the $100 copay. But that's life. He cried when the staple was removed, but just as quickly stopped, fascinated by the droplets of blood coming out of his finger. The kind nurse brought in a bucket of soapy water for him to splash his hand around in for a while. Then she further cleaned out his finger, finishing it off with a Snoopy band-aid. Ever charming, Josh said "Oh, thank you for the band-aid!" and about it being a Snoopy band-aid, "This is my favorite!" Safe to say he was a favorite patient of the day. It doesn't get any better than a minor injury & a well-behaved little boy at the hospital!

Bye Bye Binky

We're down to 1 child using a binky now! Tonight we took the binky away from Josh cold-turkey. He was a little sad about the idea, but after hearing his big brother & sister say that they don't use binkies, and hearing that the Binky Fairy would bring him a special present if he got rid of his binky, he decided he could handle it. After bedtime stories & songs, we turned out the light, he rolled over & went right to sleep.

Here's what he's getting tomorrow morning from the Binky Fairy (who is an excellent clearance sale shopper, I might add!). A Sing-A-Long Spiderman pal!

Lunar Eclipse

Tonight was very special! Nathan is SO into planets & anything "out of this world" that the lunar eclipse couldn't have taken place at a better time! We started counting down the hours until the eclipse already this morning--he just couldn't wait! Here's a picture of him explaining to Megan what is going to take place:

As we waited for the moon to rise, the kids had a special "lunar eclipse treat" (a Frosty from Wendy's). It was kind of like how you get popcorn at the movie theater & then eat it all before the movie even starts:
Then we started watching the moon as it changed. It was VERY cool.

I don't have the best camera by a long-shot, but I was impressed with how some of my pictures turned out in spite of that. I figured they'd mostly be a complete blur...and they are, but not as blurry as I was imagining! We had a PERFECT view of the moon from both downstairs, and upstairs. It was a blessing to be able to stay indoors to watch the eclipse with as bitterly cold as it is around here lately.

I'm not sure what was up with some of the colors that turned up in some of my pictures (some had a blue hue, others were pink, purple, greenish?!?!) but they look cool in spite of that. Also, I have included the reflection of the moon off the window from where I took the picture. I could've edited it out, but I think it provides a more accurate picture of what the moon really looked like. I couldn't use my flash while taking the pictures, of course, but the reflection of the moon is less bright & you can definitely see the eclipse better from some of those angles than of the "real" moon that I was shooting. Here are some pics!

Shadow just starting to cross the bottom left of the moon:


Notice in this next photo how the reflection of the moon shows just how much further the eclipse has progressed:

Oooh...it's like time-lapse photography!;)

More of the same, about 10 minutes later:

Now the reflection has moved to the top right portion of the photo. Again, you can see better from that angle just how much the moon is in shadow, compared to the brighter version:
The moon started to turn a reddish-brown here. It didn't really flatten out; I must've moved a little as I took the picture:
And here is the final picture where you can actually see the moon and its rusty-colored appearance:

Too Cute Not to Share

I don't normally post my nursery letter orders here, but this one was SO fun to do (click on the picture to enlarge it) & I think it turned out super cute!

YMCA!

Well, we bit the bullet & joined the Y today!:) Temps were a balmy 14 below or so outside & we decided it was just right for an afternoon of swimming in the pool...the indoor variety, of course! We had a blast! The kids were so excited, it was a joy just to watch them. They were giggling & splashing like crazy in the wading pool. The fountains were going when we first got there & Josh screeched & squealed at the sight of them. Kaitlyn was the only one who wasn't quite sure about this enormous bathtub she was in. She tried to climb up me as I held her, but eventually she realized it was fun to hang out in the pool. (Boy did she take a great nap when we got home after all that stimulation!) I'm sure we'll be going back for more pool time very soon!

Joshua updates!

Last night (drum roll, please) he peed in the potty!!!! We're nowhere near success just yet, but the fact that he went in there was very encouraging! He CAN do it...we now just need to make a habit of getting him some practice time on the toilet!

And this morning he got his finger stuck in a storage bin. It contains a bunch of their toys & he happened to find a small hole near the handle portion. It was just big enough for the tip of his pointer finger. The problem was, he put his finger in all the way to his 3rd knuckle...and got stuck. So, I had to pull his finger straight up to get him loose. It worked, but not without tearing a layer of skin off that section of his finger. Ouch! I know it hurts a fair amount when just a top layer of skin is rubbed off. He's got a band-aid on it right now, but it sure took a lot of encouragement to convince him that I should put it on.

A Good Night's Sleep???

Last night Bryn looked into our smoke detector issue. It must simply be an old detector as it did NOT have a back-up battery in it. So, he disconnected it & we'll purchase & install a new unit this weekend. After getting that one disconnected, we were guaranteed a good nights' sleep, right? Wrong! Incredibly, at 2:13 a.m., the detector in OUR bedroom started chirping & woke us up! My initial thought was that it was still the hallway detector, but how could that be? Then we listened more closely & discovered that the chirp was a little louder than it had been the past 2 nights. So...today I will be running to Target & buying a bunch of 9-volt batteries to replace in ALL the smoke detectors so this doesn't keep happening! Here's to a good night of sleep tonight...I hope?!?!

What's with this?!?!

If it's not the kids getting us up, there's always got to be something else, it seems! The past couple of nights have been fairly restful as far as kids not getting up the entire night. Interestingly enough, however, our smoke detector has chosen the magic hours of 1:30-3:30 to begin "chirping." The first time it happened, I woke Bryn up & he tried to take the detector down. That's when we discovered that it is hardwired into the house. Interesting. He had a heck of a time getting the thing to snap back into place...it's a wonder no kids woke up! The chirping then stopped. But, same thing happened last night, this time around 1:30. Grrrrr. It does not make this sound during the day. This is the oddest (and most annoying) thing!!!

Whac-A-Mole

This is what our nights have been like lately. We no sooner have one kid back to bed in the middle of the night, finally fall back to sleep, and someone else is up. The youngest two are both teething, so I am sure that affects their sleep. Nathan is always a great sleeper...until Josh wakes him up since they share a room. And Megan sleeps well until she has to get up to go potty...at which time she insists on coming down to our room, crying and needing one of us to help her to the bathroom. We were up 9 times in 5 hours last night. Someday they will be teenagers & we'll have to wake THEM up...won't that be funny!

By the way, did you notice on the picture of the box that it says "4-player game"? Yeah, the kids are taking that to heart. (And no, we don't use hammers to get the kids to go back to sleep, tempting as it may be!)

Practicing for Valentine's Day

Do I really care that much about Valentine's Day? Not really. But it's always good to practice making some of the treats beforehand, just to make sure they turn out how they should on the real day...in other words, I was craving chocolate today!