Tracy Hall

The Things They Say

2011-09-19T17:17:00.004-05:00

Nathaniel: Me push you?

Edmund: No! This isn't a slide.

Nathaniel: Not a playground?

Edmund: No, they're stairs.

Oh, my.

Good thing Nathaniel thought to ask if Edmund wanted a push first, instead of just doing it!

Elaine Marie Hall

2011-07-27T13:43:00.002-05:00

Elaine Marie

July 21, 2011

5lbs. 5oz. 18.5ins

This little lady came earlier than expected. Her due date was August 11th, so she is early, but not premature. Labor and delivery went smoothly. It was approximately 12 hours from when my water broke (before labor started) to when Elaine was born.

She is adorable and we all love her.

I hope to get back to regular blogging soon, so check back to hear about our vacation as well as more sewing projects and summer activities.

Our Part-time Summer Boarder

2011-06-23T18:00:00.000-05:00

Meet Maggie. She is a Bull Mastiff, about two years old, I think. Maggie belongs to Jaired's sister Ellie. With Ellie working at Camp David this year we are watching Maggie during the week starting back on Memorial Day and going pretty much every week until the middle to end of July.

Flannel Pajamas and Quilting

2011-06-20T20:50:00.001-05:00

There aren't as many clothes patterns for boys as there are for girls, so I don't sew for the boys very often. I sew costumes for them, so far Robin Hood and simple surcoats. (I can't believe I don't have any pictures of them in their Robin Hood costumes on my blog; I'll have to look into that.)

One thing I like making for the boys is pajamas, especially nice warm flannel ones for the winter. I wonder if my in-laws would recognize these flannels that used to be button down shirts? :)

Edmund is always interested in what I make and gives me his opinion on all the things I turn out. Of course he likes it when what I am sewing is for him.

So there is one sewing project done. I have finished most of my mending pile as well. I still have a few things left in that pile, but I have moved on to some new projects that I really want to get done before the baby is born.

Here is the beginnings of one of the new projects. 64 blocks (composed of 9 3" squares of fabric each) to be made into a new, larger picnic blanket. As of the writing of this post I have pieced about half of the blocks. Now to do the rest and then join them all together and find a good backing.

I love to quilt. It is kind of addicting for me. :)

Speaking of quilts, did I ever show you the one that I made with my mother and sisters-in-law for a friend's wedding?This Log Cabin quilt is between a typical king and queen size. We used mostly fabric from our scrap box (we always save every bit of fabric from other sewing projects for quilting). It was so much fun to compare fabrics and figure out the diamond pattern.

I quilted it on my sewing machine.

Then I tried my hand at embroidery. On top, the couple's monogram (AHR) and wedding year. On the back is our signature.

A Weekend in St. Louis

2011-06-17T18:00:00.001-05:00

This past weekend we went up to Saint Louis for a family reunion/great uncle's 95th birthday celebration.

A good part of Friday was spent at the zoo. Last time we went to the zoo we stopped to see each animal we passed and consequently weren't able to see the elephants, hippos, or rhinos. This year I had the boys make a list of the animals they wanted to see and we were able to see everyone that was on the list.

It was a pretty hot day, so we really enjoyed getting to cool off while visiting the penguins and monkeys. We took both of our strollers (a double and a single) and I am glad we did.

Waiting to go into the penguin house. As I said, it was hot. Jeremiah was really flushed; he probably drank a gallon of water and iced tea that day.

Nathaniel.

The boys did really well wearing their hats the whole time.

Somehow I never took a picture of Edmund, so instead here is a funny elephant showering itself with water.

Our great uncle paid for everyone's lodgings for the weekend. We got to stay at the Ritz!

The whole Hall contingent at the big birthday dinner.

Left to right, Glenn (Pop), Justice, Kimberly, Mary (Mom), me, Jeremiah, Nathaniel, Jaired (oblivious to the picture taking), Ellie, and Chava. Edmund is sleeping on Chava's lap.

Our Summer in Pictures (So Far)

2011-06-15T16:27:00.002-05:00

Mr. Toad (named after Mr. Toad in The Wind in the Willows). This fellow provided Edmund with amusement for a long time. As did a turtle Edmund found and carried around for quite some time, hoping it would come out of its shell.

Mr. Toad doing Jumping Jacks.

The three boys are finally starting to play well in the pool together. Nathaniel actually likes being splashed now (at least most of the time)!

Jeremiah bailing water for all he's worth. I don't think he ever made much progress. :)

Jeremiah seems to take the heat worse than the other two boys. This is how he sleeps pretty much day or night. (Though he usually does have a pillowcase on his pillow.)

Another way Jeremiah stays cool. This is also yet another example of Jeremiah being different from the other boys. Edmund and Nathaniel are terrified of showers, but this guy loves them!

Where's Jeremiah?

Peek-a-boo!

Cicadas

2011-05-30T21:41:00.002-05:00

This year the Magicicadas emerged. The link will take you to Wikipedia's page about these interesting insects. A couple things I learned by reading the article: 1) the adults don't seem to eat anything, their sole intention being reproduction and 2) the adult life span is only a few weeks, so they will all be gone about mid-July.

I don't know how it is in other states, or even in the bigger cities compared to where we are, but there are so many cicadas everywhere the noise is terrific!

We first noticed the cicadas coming out about two weeks ago. It was a pretty much overnight thing, one day none, the next day they were everywhere. Then they kept coming for three of four days, I think. What seems really strange to me is that at our house, as I said, they are everywhere, but just about half a mile through the woods at the family's house there are very few. In fact, the family didn't realize until the second or third day that the cicadas where emerging.

The first day, Edmund was a little wary of these scary looking insects. He said they looked like red-nosed dragons. After a little science lesson, during which he learned that the brown skins where empty, he began to inspect the cicadas more closely. It started with collecting the skins and looking at them and how they where open on the backs for the adult to climb out. Then he started using leaves to pick up the cicadas (similar to how you would use a pot holder to pick up something hot). Now he is very free with them and likes to collect them in buckets, or even just care around one or two and let them crawl on him as he plays with them.

Nathaniel is not nearly so friendly with the cicadas. He likes to look at them (and squash them), but is almost paralyzed if one gets on him. He will pick them up now, but very gingerly, and he doesn't hold them long.

Jeremiah, on the other hand, has no fear whatsoever. One of the first things he does when he goes outside is pick up a cicada. He carries them all over the place. The poor things get somewhat tortured, but not on purpose. He has put one in his mouth before, but didn't eat it.

I like this little picture sequence from one of the first days:

Nathaniel watches nervously as Jeremiah touches a cicada.

Then, just as nervously, Nathaniel finally touches a cicada.

Finally, for whatever reason, Nathaniel feels it necessary to help Jeremiah touch the cicadas, though Jeremiah would rather do it by himself.

These Hobbits Love Strawberries

2011-05-23T21:27:00.000-05:00

There is nothing quite so yummy as a freshly picked, homegrown strawberry.

This is our strawberry patch the last couple of springs. Rather overwhelmed with weeds. Very hard for strawberry picking. Not to mention choking those poor strawberry plants.

This year, with the help of a proverbial kick out the door on Jaired's part, I buckled down and weeded the strawberry patch. I think it took me most of three weeks of at least fifteen minutes a day to get it all done. And it isn't really done yet. There are a few patches that don't have any strawberry plants growing where I went ahead and left the weeds, I'll go pull them eventually. Then, of course, the weeds are still coming up, so I have to weed more. BUT the bed is actually predominately strawberry plants now!

It sure is easier to pick the strawberries. For the first time since we moved into this house our strawberry patch looks more like it is supposed to look. I know the pictures may not make the patch look like much, but there is a big difference.

Back in March, when strawberries first came out in the the grocery stores, I fed some to Jeremiah. Considering that the rest of us all LOVE strawberries, it was a bit of a surprise that he actually spit them out! I predicted that he wouldn't be able to say no to the little lovelies that came out of our own patch, and I was correct.

He would eat all the strawberries if I let him.

Not Much, But Life

2011-05-16T20:51:00.003-05:00

Today wasn't our best day for sure.

Thankfully the sun was shining this morning. After a grey weekend the sun was a good boost. The usual Monday housework went pretty well. But then school time came.

The word "pat" proved to be A Very Hard Word To Read. Edmund would read it correctly, then get stuck on saying "pap". It was very frustrating, but I knew that he could read the word properly if he actually took the time to think, instead of just saying the first thing that came to mind. In the end I had to feed the other boys lunch and take them outside to play, leaving Edmund to sit and clear his mind.

Once that hurdle was past the day flowed more smoothly, though right about that time the younger boys started getting really cranky, but then, thank goodness, it was nap time.

I took time to hang the laundry outside today. It smelled so lovely when I brought it in; I really need to hang the laundry more. Partly because of the rain I haven't hung the laundry out as much I usually do in the spring.

My sewing projects are coming along well. I won't bother you with all the mending details, but I should be able to get up some pictures of the new things I am making. I will be making a quilt (and maybe curtains) for Miss Cook's nursery, and the fabric for that came in the mail the other day, so now I am trying to make a final decision on what the quilt will look like. I won't start that project until all the mending is done. I find quilting to be rather addictive, so I need to get the less fun stuff out of the way first. :)

And a couple random pictures from the weekend.

Nathaniel...speed reading? He is our literary child. We had friends over on Friday, and Nathaniel and their little girl brought our entire collection of children's books into the kitchen and read them all while we played games.

We went to a Renaissance Faire near St. Louis on Saturday. This is one of the only pictures I took. A fire-dancer. She was pretty good, nothing fancy, but then I don't know how long she has been doing this. Besides this two ended pole she also has some torched chains and a little torch that she did fire eating with. Edmund was quite fascinated.

Summer Activities

2011-05-09T20:52:00.007-05:00

As with my other pregnancies I have hit that point where I feel the need to finish my half done projects before the baby comes. Sewing projects are the main thing on my list. But there are also a lot of things that still need to be done in the basement that I would like to do before Miss Cook comes. It would be nice to get the schoolroom completed and ready for the new school year, as well as getting the bathroom down there up and running.

For now, I have started on my sewing projects. There are many, ranging from mending to new projects and as I sat and looked at my boxes I started feeling overwhelmed. So I closed all but one box, and from that one box, pulled out the first thing and finished it. Now I have gone through an entire box, fixing what I could and making a list of necessaries for the other things. Some of the projects were so easy and quick that it is ridiculous that I took so long to do them.

One of these was Jeremiah's name sampler. I have made these for the other boys, always finishing them up while pregnant with the next child. After I finished Nathaniel's I started Jeremiah's and had it almost done before he was born. Then I never picked it up again. Well, I finished it the other day, and when I said it was almost done I meant it. It took me all of maybe four hours spread over a few days to finish it. Wouldn't it have been nice to have finished it back when Jeremiah was a newborn?

Here it is: finished, washed, and framed.

And a close-up.

It would be nice to get Miss Cook's done before she comes, but I do think I should finish all the other half done projects I have going first. We will see what happens.

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On another note. We have the pool out and the boys have been in it pretty much every day for the last week and a half. Some of the days were really too cold and they didn't last long, but Sunday and yesterday they were in it a lot.

They all love the water, but of the three fish this one is the fishiest:

Neither of the other boys liked the pool much at this age, but Jeremiah loves it! It doesn't matter how cold it is. In fact, last month when we went to the river for a picnic Jeremiah actually crawled right into the river. Not only is the river always rather cold, but below the spring (where we were) it is ICY!!! But Jeremiah didn't care. As you can see, he loves to splash!

While Jeremiah sat down right away, it took Edmund a little while to get acclimated.

But it didn't take him too long. Oh, the life jacket? I don't know, maybe he was afraid he would be out of his depth. :)

Nathaniel was sleeping when some of these pictures where taken, otherwise he would have been in there more, too.

On Narnia, Imitation, and Walking

2011-05-02T20:00:00.004-05:00

Harper Collins has a great unabridged audio book set of The Chronicles of Narnia. Jaired and I discovered it at the library when we were back in Virgina Beach. Recently, Edmund has become really interested in listening to audio books. He started out with some Jaired made for him, just reading books into a voice recorder, then burning them onto CD's. A few months ago Jaired brought home The Magician's Nephew and Edmund has since listened to all the books several times. He loves them and can recite all his favorite parts.

Last night, the evening wrestling matched somehow evolved into a game of Narnian kings fighting giants on the western border. Then Edmund got his "magic U" (a plastic letter magnet U) and transported us to the little country train station where the book Prince Caspian begins. He proceeded to give us a blow by blow account of the story and what each of us, as the different characters, was doing. We were then transported to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where we went from listening to his accounts to actually acting out the story. Particularly one of his favorite parts, where I, as Lucy, had to go read the magician's book, and act out all the events related with that.

It was very amusing and fun to be able to participate in and encourage his imagination. He was so serious about it and was so pleased every time I was able to insert the correct Lucy quotes for each event. The evening ended with him asking me to read him a story from "the magician's book". When he climbed into my lap I asked him how is was that the magician (for that's who he was playing at the time) was able to sit on Lucy's lap. He said that he was a small magician. :)

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"Me, too!" For everything. Nathaniel wants to be like Edmund and do what Edmund is doing. Even when he doesn't know what we are talking about, if he thinks it sounds good, "me, too!" Even if Edmund is excused from the table and Nathaniel is still eating he wants to be excused too, though he ends up being hungry and wanting to come back to eat more.

Nathaniel is definitely in the unenviable position of middle child. He tries so hard to do all the things Edmund does, and at the same time is trying to stay ahead of Jeremiah. It's not fun. But that little, "me, too!" sure makes me smile.

And after saying hello to the baby, he always point to his own tummy and says, "me, too. Baby!"

Oh, and he has started volunteering kisses. He has the cutest little pucker.

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Jeremiah has finally started walking. He is so funny. Sometime last week, he started by walking up to something with his walker and stopping a couple of steps away, and then taking those last steps alone. He would hold his hands up above his head and as he reached his target bring them down onto it with a triumphant crash. Yesterday, we again had a fire going in the fireplace, so we spent most of the late afternoon and evening in there. Jeremiah walked back and forth between the couches or people, trying further distances as he went along. Today, he got up to halfway across the room.

He is so proud of himself. Of course we are proud of him, too.

(No pictures, I know. I'll try to get some in the next post.)

Baby Number Four

2011-04-27T06:00:00.000-05:00

I should have posted this last week, but I wasn't feeling up to writing a blog post, so I distracted myself by reading a mystery story instead.

As some of you know, we are expecting our fourth baby. The due date is August 11. Yes, I know, that means that I am already over halfway through my pregnancy and I haven't blogged about it at all. That's bad.

Anyway. I had a doctor's appointment Monday of last week (the 18th) and we found out that we are having a girl!

It will be interesting to see how much differences there will be between raising a boy and raising a girl. But I think we will have fun.

Edmund is excited. Of course he has known all along that this baby was a girl and would never hear otherwise from anyone. He has even named her, Miss Cook. "Because she will be a good cooker like Mama when she gets big."

Once while listening to Alexander Rybak's "Dolphin," where one line runs, "...and in my dreams he's promised me that someday I'll find my girl..." Edmund said, "Mama, do you know when I'll find my girl? When she comes out of your tummy!"

"April Showers Bring May Flowers"

2011-04-25T19:57:00.004-05:00

We have been getting a lot of rain. More rain than sunshine, particularly this past weekend.

On Saturday we and the fam went to Jaired's office for a spring clean up. It started to rain about halfway through the morning, but we still managed to get all the outdoor work done. I think we worked faster because of the rain than we would have normally. The indoor work all got done, too, though there wasn't as much of it. Mostly just a thorough cleaning of the whole building. We were able to hang Jaired's diplomas and other documents that we had finally just recently gotten framed. And Kimberly cleaned the chimney. I think she got about 30 lbs. of ASH out of it. Really? How was there ash in the chimney?

Saturday night the rain got really crazy. We even got hail, which, though it is sometimes in the forecast isn't really that common in this area. No tornadoes though, thankfully.

When we moved into this house there were four or five places in the basement that leaked. We thought we had taken care of all of them, but there is still one left in a side room. It turns out that the leak is in a different place than I thought, but I believe I have it pin-pointed now. We have to go down there a few times a day to vacuum and mop up the water that comes in. But things got even more wild when the back yard and patio flooded up to the house and water started pouring into the schoolroom. After frantically trying to scoop it up faster than it came in I happened to glance over at what we have always thought was some odd hole in the patio floor that was kept covered with an old pot. Willing to try anything I pulled out the pot and watched with relief as the water began to pour down the hole. We don't know where this drain goes, but it seems to work well. Hopefully we aren't flooding something else.

We had a very simple Easter. Homemade sticky buns for breakfast, then off to church where Edmund joined a couple of the other boys in singing "He Reigns" by The Newsboys for the congregation. Back at home we got a fire going in the fireplace and Jaired and I relaxed with our books while Edmund and Nathaniel watched a Curious George movie. In the evening we had an Easter egg hunt. This was Nathaniel's first hunt and the first one Edmund has had in a long time (since we lived in Virginia). Because of the rain we had all the eggs inside. I am really bad about taking pictures of these kinds of things because I am so focused on them and making sure they know what is going on and that they are having fun. They did have fun and they didn't have any trouble figuring out what to do. (Sometimes I wonder if I worry too much?) They opened their eggs by the fireplace and seemed to be as excited about the new cars and bouncy balls as they were about the candy.

Spring is Here

2011-04-11T20:43:00.004-05:00

Spring has pretty decidedly arrived now. We are having the usual mixture of sun and rain, cold, warm, and hot. I like it. It isn't likely that we will get many, if any, more frosty mornings, but even if we do they will certainly warm up to be quite lovely by lunch time. There is some heat, for example, on Saturday we went over to the family's for dinner and they got the pool out for the boys to play in. But the heat isn't too bad either, and the evenings cool off.

The boys and I are spending more time outside now. All three of them love to be outside, so it works out well. I am able to get some yard work done while they play and even when they are cranky they will play happily, then when nap time comes they are ready to lay down and take a good long nap. Sometimes when Jeremiah is having a fit at lunch and refusing to eat I will sit him out on the stoop and he will eat up all his food with almost no complaint.

Right at the end of February we bought a John Deere garden tractor. That, along with an extra wagon the family had from one of their old garden tractors, has been a great addition to our spring yard work. We have been spending the last several Saturdays outside working on a lot of the neglected aspects of our property. We still have work in the basement that needs to be done, but I am glad that we are spending these weekends outside. There will be plenty of time to work in the basement when the weather gets hot. In the past we spent a lot of days not doing anything because of not being able to work on the basement for various reasons, but at the same time feeling like, if we were going to be working we should do the "important" projects, instead of stuff like yard work. But now we are really enjoying the spring and getting work done.

I have been working on trimming plants, pruning dead branches, and in general cleaning up the place. I am at war with the wisteria, which is trying to take over the garden. Jaired has been mowing the field, tearing down fences, and building things.

I love this time of year.

School with Edmund Part 2:

2011-04-04T21:00:00.001-05:00

After about two months we moved on from letter recognition to phonics. Jaired’s family used Sing, Spell, Read, and Write for their children, and Jaired still remembered the phonics song that is used in that curriculum. We taught Edmund how to sing it, and, using images from the Internet, I made a visual for him to look at as he sang it. At that point I was able to use the same letter flash cards I had already made to drill him in his phonics. For each card he would tell me the name of the letter and the sound it made. I also started him writing the alphabet, usually a letter a day, first in uppercase and now he is doing lowercase.

Around the same time that we started phonics, I started him on other memorization besides just songs. We are working on both Scripture verses and various poems.

Throughout all of this I keep up with regular reading to him, from picture books as well as picking up chapter books and educational/informational books on topics that interest him (like castles).

As Edmund becomes more familiar with everything he learns he starts, of his own accord, to use it in his every day play:

Ø He writes his name on his own, practices writing random letters and numbers, or he draws a picture, then asks me how to write what the picture is.

Ø Once he learned the concept of counting past twenty he taught himself to count higher, just asking for help with the tens.

Ø He likes to sing to himself or recite nursery rhymes as he plays, so all the songs and poems he learns go into his repertoire.

We started using Saxon Math K in January. Both Jaired and I grew up on Saxon Math. Back then their lowest grade was 4^th, but now they have down to kindergarten. For the most part the books are non-consumables, so Jaired’s parents were able to save all of Saxon books once their children were done using them, with grandchildren in mind. For Saxon Math K we are able to borrow their teacher’s guide and only had to buy the booklet and manipulatives package that goes with the program. (And the manipulatives are used all the way to 3^rd grade, so they are well worth the 60 something dollars they cost, not to mention we can use them with the other children as well.)

Edmund and I both really enjoy the Saxon Math. Though it is a kindergarten book they start out with very easy concepts, much of which Edmund already knew. The book is designed to be used three times a week, with reviewing past lessons on the off days. I didn’t notice this until after we were a few weeks into the book, but, because Edmund was easily understanding each lesson, we have continued going through the book at a lesson a day.

The math book is designed to take up a full school year, but since we are doing a lesson a day we will be done with it in less time. I haven’t checked how many lessons there are, but I don’t plan to take off any official summer break, so we will just go until we are done and then probably move on to the next grade, keeping pace with what Edmund is able to understand.

Back to reading and writing, Edmund now knows all the initial sounds each letter makes and recognizes both upper and lowercase letters, though I have not yet taught him when to use which case.

Last month we started reading three letter words. I just use a notebook and devote each page to one type of words. So far we have done words ending with –an and –ot. I don’t know yet when I will teach him letter combination sounds, but once I do I can always go back to each page and write down the longer words that have those same endings.

I love the challenge and flexibility of home schooling. I can go as fast or as slow with a concept as Edmund is able to understand and not worry that he is going to “fall behind” or “get ahead.” If he is not in a very teachable mood we can skip our sit down school and just play. I don’t have to get stressed out trying to make him learn, and he learns that school is fun.

I learn and understand more about what I am teaching as I have to look at the topic/concept from different angles trying to find the way Edmund will understand it. And it is not just the way I explain things to him, but the way a lesson is presented to him.

For example: as I gave him new words to read he began to be overwhelmed by all that was going on. He would look at the list of words, which probably appeared long to him, and his mind would shut done, so much so that he would not even be able to tell me the sounds of the letters. You may think I am making excuses for him being stubborn and not wanting to read, but I think that it really was just too much at once for him to handle. My approach now is: each day I tell him if we are going to just do a review of the previous day’s words or if we will be learning new words. Then, I make sure that he feels confident with reading each word, and at least understands the basic meaning of the word before going on to another one. Finally, even if I want him to read three or four new words I write them down one at a time, that way he can concentrate on each new word one at a time, instead of seeing all of them at once and wondering how in the world he is going to be able to read them. This approach has worked really well. We are both much more relaxed about reading, and he is excited and confident about reading. He even gets the notebook out at other times during the day to read the words to himself.

I look forward to sharing more of our home schooling journey with you. I would love to hear your comments.

The Beginnings of Our Home Schooling Adventures

2011-03-29T20:28:00.004-05:00

I intended to write a full post of how our home schooling evolving and progressing, but I am currently only about halfway through writing up a post and it is already two pages long. Instead of one post I have decided to divide it up into a two or three, so:

School with Edmund Part 1:

Edmund and I started doing “formal” schooling in October of last year. I say formal, because we always try to incorporate learning into everything we do; making a point of using the names of shapes and colors, referring to an item’s position by right or left, counting things, and singing the alphabet. But please understand, our lessons are not at all what you would probably find in a typical school. I started by mainly just making up each day’s lesson as I went along, without really any curriculum, any particular consistency in daily school, or even necessarily a flow from one day’s lesson to the next.

You may be thinking at this point that it can’t really be called school. What I was going for was getting into the school mode, both for Edmund, and myself, as well as trying to find what kind of learning system would work for us. Sure, I could have figured out all the curriculum details before we started, but then who knows when we would have started, and how much actual curriculum do you need for your preschool/kindergarten student anyway? Our curriculum is definitely still a work in progress, but I would like to share with you what I started with and how our schooling is going right now.

I did several Google searches for preschool resources and found a lot of free stuff online. Our first few months of school I did a lot with just printed worksheets and coloring pages that focused on whatever we were learning in a given day.

The first weeks was mainly “review” work with Edmund to figure out what he already knew. As I said before, we sang, counted, named colors, etc in daily play, so Edmund already had a good foundation in those areas. To begin, we did a lot of repetition of numbers and the alphabet, straightening out the ones that he had mixed up or was missing altogether.

Once he was fairly good with saying both his letters and numbers I made some flash cards, to work on recognition. I just used Microsoft Word and made a template then printed out two of each number or letter (for the letters I had both upper and lower case on the same card). We worked with the flash cards every day, as well as using them to play games of Memory.

By this time our lessons consisted of:

Ø Reading the Bible, I started with a regular Bible, abridging as necessary for his understanding, now we have a children’s Bible that we read. I ask him questions about the previous day’s reading, we read the current day’s reading, then talk about it.

Ø Singing a song, we have Edmund memorize songs (we started with Christmas ones). Once he has a song memorized we move on to a new one, but periodically we have him sing past songs to keep them fresh in his mind. He also likes to sing when he is playing, so all these songs go into him repertoire for that as well. (In fact you can tell when he really is starting to “get” a song, because he will start singing it throughout the day.)

Ø Numbers, first counting then moving on to recognition

Ø Letters, first singing the alphabet properly, then moving on to recognition

To be continued....

Wrestling with Rybak

2011-03-21T20:25:00.002-05:00

Jaired's sisters introduced me to Alexander Rybak sometime last year, but it wasn't until Jaired got a hold of Chava's CD Fairytales in December, that we really started listening to his music. Now when I say we listen to his music I mean just that one CD, but....

This song has become one of our family favorites. Edmund can sing the chorus and parts of the rest of the song, and even Nathaniel tries to sing along.

Jaired and the boys wrestle most evenings and Fairytales is the go-to wrestling music for them. If Jeremiah is in the kitchen with me while I am cleaning up and he hears Rybak start up he knows that the office is the place to be, and off he goes.

Jeremiah -- One Year

2011-03-14T20:29:00.008-05:00

This year has gone by so fast. In some ways I still want to be snuggling my little, tiny baby Jeremiah, but here he is, one year old already!

Jeremiah may look like his older brothers, but he definitely has his own personality. He is so much more serious than the two older boys. He doesn't laugh much, so when he does it is so delightful and you can really tell how much fun he is having. The great thing about it is that his brothers are some of the people who make him laugh most often.

He also knows how to hold his own with his brothers. Laughing and letting them tumble him around to their hearts content, but letting them know in no uncertain terms when he has had enough. He sure can yell to let you know how mad he is! It is hard not to laugh when he gets that mischievous glint in his eye as he edges towards his brothers' toys, then gleefully knocks over whatever it was that they just built.

While the other two boys started walking before they turned one, but didn't say their first words until sometime after; Jeremiah has shown no interest in walking alone, but has already said a few words. His favorite word is "ball," but he also can say "bye" and "quack."

Jeremiah learned how to clap in time for his birthday.

He is very excited about his new walking toy, and plays with it a lot.

His brothers like playing with it, too. :)

The birthday shirt Aunt Kimberly made.

A Chocolate cupcake. Hmm, is this stuff any good?

Oh, yes, definitely!

Hey, look at the icing on my tray.

I wonder how much more mess I can make?

Wow, look at the icing on my hand. That's cool!

Man, that cupcake sure was good. And I know I am so cute with all this icing on my face.

(This picture was taken the day after his birthday party. At the party, he wasn't so happy about how messy he got and started crying as soon as he was done eating because he was so tired and just wanted to get cleaned up!)

Jeremiah is such a fun little baby. We all love him so much, and he loves us all right back.

The Never-ending Menace of a Mother

2011-03-07T20:20:00.009-06:00

Or anyone for that matter: laundry. It has to be done, and you need a cleaning agent to do it.

Some time last year, my MIL and I were talking about the prices of laundry detergent, and the strong perfumes and dyes in the detergents. We both have to pay close attention to perfumes and dyes in detergents. My FIL has very sensitive skin, so there are only a handful of detergents that can be used for him. I use cloth diapers, and perfumes and dyes can clog up the fabric, irritating the baby's skin as well as making the diapers less absorbent.

In an effort to save money and use less chemicals on our clothes (and consequently, our skin), I began looking into home-made detergent options. I found this website. Not only are there several detergent recipes to choose from, but there is a pretty exhaustive FAQ's section that was complied in response to the questions generated by the detergent recipes.

I went with Recipe #1:

1 quart boiling water

2 cups or 1 bar grated bar soap (A regular cheese grater works great. No pun intended!)

2 cups Borax

2 cups Washing soda

Add the grated soap to the boiling water and stir over low heat until dissolved.

In a large bucket (with lid) combine water/soap mixture with the Borax and Washing Soda, stirring until dissolved.

Add 2 gallons of water and mix well.

Keep covered, stir before each use (it will gel). Use about a 1/4 cup per load.

I chose to use Ivory soap rather then Fels Naptha (which is what a lot of people use) for the grated bar soap because that is what I had on hand the first time. I am glad I did, for one thing Ivory does have a slight scent, which is nice, but not heavy, and for the other thing it is very gentle on the skin, more so than Fels Naptha, I believe.

I am currently on my second bucket of this detergent and we have been very happy with it. Our laundry comes out clean and fresh smelling. Once in awhile I do still use a little bleach, particularly with the whites. I also use white vinegar in the rinse cycle for the diapers to help break up any soap residue.

I have been asked by a few different people about the price difference. I knew before starting this venture that the home-made detergent would be cheaper, but I never ran any numbers until now. It seemed a good thing to include in this post. :)

Here are the three main detergents I previously used:

Dreft 100 oz. (64 loads) $15.97

Tide 150 oz. (96 loads) $17.50

All Free and Clear 150 oz. (96 loads) $10.97

(Prices and images from Walmart.com)

For the home-made detergent:

One box each of Borax and Washing Soda totaled $7.50. I will get four or five batches of detergent out of each box. Let's say four batches, that's $1.87.

The Ivory soap is about $0.38/bar ($3.76 for a pack of ten).

That puts one batch of detergent at approximately 144 loads and costs around $2.25 (+a little time and water). That looks like a savings to me!

Of course, laundry still can be a menace even when you have cheap detergent.

I have finally found a system that seems to work for me. Instead of doing laundry when it gets piled up, I stick to a weekly rotation: colors on Monday, darks on Wednesday, and whites on Friday. Diapers get washed whenever we run low. This means that I have a load or two that I do each of those days, but it ensures that each pile gets done once a week, so we don't run out of anything. It also makes laundry folding a more manageable job.

Once the laundry is folded I have the boys put away most of it, their own laundry, as well as all the linens. They love it, so it isn't really even viewed as a "chore."

Nathaniel -- Two and a half (almost)

2011-02-28T20:39:00.009-06:00

Nathaniel's vocabulary is finally starting to grow at a noticeable rate. He surprised me yesterday by say, "More cookie." In many ways he speaks more clearly than Edmund. Have I ever told you that Edmund has a lisp? His tongue gets in the way whenever he tries to say the s and th sounds. But even besides not having that lisp Nathaniel speaks more clearly. He does not have as much difficulty with sounds made in the throat, such as g and c/k. Just another difference between the two boys. His new word of the week so far is "read." And believe me, he uses it a lot.

Nathaniel is quite the bookworm. He can sits for an hour sometimes reading books. He loves to carry stack after stack of books to one of his favorite reading spots, then sit down and read each one page by page. Regular children's picture books are great, but some of the most common books he picks are the big story collections or children's encyclopedias. The more pages the better. When we go to the family's house he heads straight for the horse encyclopedias. The strangest and funniest book he likes to read is the Bible. Yes, our regular Bibles that don't have any pictures whatsoever. And he will sit there turning page after page, looking at each one.

Nathaniel didn't take well to the idea of potty training. Too much other stuff to do maybe, or else he didn't want to have to think about when he needed to go potty, but rather just let it happen when it happened. Whatever the case, it took longer than with Edmund to get him to actually tell us when he had to go. If we happened to ask him right when he needed to go we could catch it, but if we asked a few minutes to soon he would say no, then the next thing we would know he would be going in his pants. We used candy (Skittles in this case) as a reward for when he used the toilet and after a couple of weeks he picked up on the idea and got pretty good at telling us when he needed to pee.

Pooping on the other hand took much longer. He absolutely refused to go in the toilet for a few weeks, even to the point of sitting there for several minutes every hour and just holding it. Somedays he would find a quiet place or catch a quick moment when our attention was elsewhere to poop in his pants. With Edmund we gave him one candy for peeing and a second one if he pooped, too. With Nathaniel that second one hardly made a difference. We had to make it an extra four candies before it was enough incentive for him to start going on the toilet.

Thankfully all of that is behind us now. It has been many a week since he has had an accident. He almost never goes even when he is sleeping now.

Nathaniel is starting to pay attention to colors. Everything is "blue," though he can say red, black, and gray when he is prompted. He counts, "two, three, two, three," even lining up his toys and counting them at times. When asked how old he is he knows to say, "two." One of his favorite toys is a plastic Bob the the Tomato that was handed down to us by some friends. He doesn't sleep with his Gorilla any more, but does like to have him on the shelf at the head of the bed. He almost always greets Jeremiah with a hug and a kiss when Jeremiah wakes up from his naps. He calls Jeremiah either "Baby" or "Jack-Jack." He refers to himself as "me" and calls Edmund "you," though he does know all the other names of people in the family.

Dairy still bothers Nathaniel, so we are cutting back on how much we give him. We originally intended to take him off dairy completely, but that is proving harder than you may think. It is amazing how much of the food we eat has even a little dairy in it. So instead of going cold turkey we are slowing taking him off. So far I have switched from butter to oil when cooking for him and have dairy-free pancakes in the freezer for him to eat whenever we have pancakes for breakfast. I used our regular pancake recipe which we already use oil instead of butter when we make and replaced the milk with soymilk, cooking them in oil of course. The soymilk makes for a heavier pancake, so I may try adding a little more baking powder next time I make some. They aren't as flavorful either, but with jam on top he doesn't seem to notice. I am also looking into other alternatives for him.

All in all, Nathaniel is quickly progressing from baby/toddler to little boy. He is very energetic and curious (what child isn't). He is a handful for sure. :)

Thoughts on Life

2011-02-15T21:00:00.004-06:00

I go through phases, as I am sure we all do. Some days or weeks I am really motivated, and others I just want to sit around and do nothing (including wishing I wasn't bothered by little children so much). Unfortunately, I have reached that "grown up" point in my life when I find that being grown up means more than getting to stay up late, eat whatever I want, and work or play as the whim hits me. It is such a let down, don't you think? I mean, really, this housework keeps needing to be done even if I feel more like playing or being lazy. And guess what? I have to do it, there's no mom to pick up after me. I am the mom.

My New Year's resolution actually started back in December, as I began to really mean it when I told myself I wanted to invest more time in my children and less time in my daily housework and other "stuff." I have made this resolution in the past, and have even written about it here on my blog. This time around seems to be working better. For one thing, I have truly been spending less time on the internet, particularly Facebook. For another thing I have come up with a housework schedule that really seems to be working. And, as I am discovering this week, right now when things have been going long enough for good intentions to fade the weather has warmed up enough to hint at Spring, which is always a time when I feel more motivated to keep the house clean.

I hope I can keep it up. Edmund and I also do school almost every day. The goal is to do school every day, but with the morning being the best time to do school as well as the time I am most motivated to clean the house it sometimes ends up that the housework takes so long that lunch comes before we have gotten around to doing school. When this happens it is often easier, and less stressful, to skip school. Edmund really enjoys school and is doing a great job, but the later we sit down to do school the shorter his attention span is and the less brain power he seems to have. The struggle often isn't worth it to me.

Then I have this blog, which I enjoy, but don't seem to find time to post on much. Hopefully, that is changing starting now as I, with Jaired's help, attempt to write regularly (probably Tuesday nights). I will share more about Edmund's schooling, housework, my boys, and the other aspects of our lives in future posts.

Good Night.

Edmund -- 4 Years Old

2010-12-14T12:22:00.005-06:00

Edmund's birthday was last month, the week before Thanksgiving. He has really been able to understand about his birthday and age change this year. The whole week after his birthday he would use his age in conversations whenever he could. Like saying, "Mama, can I have my four years old boy's Legos to play with?" (He got some Legos for his birthday, and we have to keep them up high when he isn't playing with them, so that Nathaniel won't get them.)

His birthday meals this year were: Blueberry Pancakes for breakfast, Spaghetti with bread and salad for dinner, and Chocolate Cream Pie with whipped cream for dessert. The whipped cream was very important to him. Before he had even decided on a pie he knew he wanted whipped cream on it. :)

We had a lot of fun baking the pies together. He is getting really good at helping with stirring, adding ingredients, and getting out everything we need for the baking process. Jaired taught him how to crack an egg, but he doesn't like to do it because his fingers get egg white on them -- he is such a particular little boy.

Here is the final result. It was pronounced a great success.

Singing "Happy Birthday."

He blew out each candle individually!

Opening presents.

This book is The Wind in the Willows. We read it together the next week and he really enjoyed it. The pictures are beautiful.

Jaired and I got him a sleeping bag. He is so excited, because he has been asking for one since the summer. He sleeps in it almost every night.

In fact, that night we lit a fire in the fireplace and camped out in the living room.

The birthday shirt, made by Aunt Kimberly.

It is crazy that my first baby is four years old now. He is such a sweet, particular, funny little boy. He loves to help me around the house and to play with his little brothers.

We started school with him this year. He has really taken off with writing the alphabet, though he still doesn't remember the names of all the letters. He continues to love drawing and has recently been making "books." He will draw pictures on several papers, scribble "words" on them, then staple the pages together. It is always interesting to read these stories to him. He expects me to know the story, so I have to ask him questions to figure out the general plot and then make up something off of that.

Edmund likes to tell me about his wife, whom he hasn't meet yet. Her name is Aba-baba. He is always talking about her, how many children they are going to have, how she is going to to have a sewing machine just like me, or be like me in some other way. He is so serious about the whole thing.

Random Pictures

2010-11-22T06:50:00.000-06:00

From a few months ago:

Edmund and his buddies having some hands-on experience during a Tower of Babel during children's church.

Edmund and his finished product.

Apparently, he didn't want to stand still for the picture.

(The building materials? Marshmallows and peanut butter.)

My budding musician.

Hmm, is he playing Bach? Or, wait, maybe it's Grieg. It is pretty hard to tell at this stage.

Edmund's Zoo

2010-11-10T15:07:00.002-06:00

Ever since we visited the zoo last month Edmund has enjoyed playing zoo with his various animals. Today, when he invited me to visit his zoo I decided to be a good tourist and take my camera along for pictures.

The proud zoo keeper

A kangaroo, sheep, and goat live in cozy harmony.

A tiger (that looks more like a bear) shares his pen with a cow.

Edmund assured me that the tiger would not eat the cow. They are just sitting there together.

A cute baby bear.

And the whole zoo.

The Bite of the Sewing Bug

2010-10-18T14:41:00.001-05:00

It seems like I end up sewing more during the winter than the rest of the year. At least that is how last winter was. Before Christmas I was making gifts, then afterwards I had several things that I wanted to get out of the way before Jeremiah was born.

I just got my first "load" of fabric for this winter's sewing delights. Be prepared for pictures of sewing projects over the next few months.

For now I will show off my babies and see if you can tell the three apart.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

These pictures are the boys in order, as you may have guessed. Jeremiah is 7 months and the other two are about 5 months. He kicked his feet when I was taking the picture, which adds to how much bigger he looks than the others.

Nathaniel -- 2 Years

2010-10-05T06:41:00.008-05:00

Nathaniel's birthday was about two weeks ago. We always get together with the family to celebrate birthdays.

Kimberly made this adorable owl shirt for Nathaniel. Do you see the little leaf detail on the back?

I think this picture is so cute just because of the face Nathaniel is making.

A present from Grandpa and Omi. Yes, that is a fishbowl, with a fish in it.

Nathaniel, getting his first look at his new fish, which he and Edmund named Otto, after the fish in A Fish Out of Water.

This may be my very favorite of all his birthday pictures. We had just finished singing, and he is saying, "yay!"

A little side story: Since the beginning of the summer Edmund has been wrapping up various articles to give to me, Jaired, or Nathaniel. He sings Happy Birthday, cheers, then hands over the gift to be opened, so that is how Nathaniel learned to cheer every time someone sings Happy Birthday.

It only took Nathaniel two puffs to blow out all his candles, which is pretty good for a two year old. Yes, he is two. There are three candles on his cake because we always put one to grow on. :)

Enjoying his cupcake.

I love this little guy. He is such a lovable little boy. He loves to snuggle, and is never shy about go up to our friends asking to be held. He is an funny mixture of big boy and baby. He loves reading books and drawing pictures. He is really getting into playing with Edmund, and is able to understand a lot of what Edmund wants him to do in the games they play. But he also still loves his pacifier. He can be such a baby sometimes when he is sad or not feeling well, but a lot of times if he gets hurt he will come to me crying and wailing and as soon as I kiss him on the head he shuts off like a switch and goes back to whatever he was doing. He is still very attached to his Gorilla and Dog, but he also goes through times when he has some other special thing he likes to carry around. This week he has been carrying around all my baby washcloths.

Speaking of Gorillas, we went to the zoo last Saturday as part of Nathaniel's birthday. Of course we took him to the Gorilla House. This one was right next to the window (as you can see) and Nathaniel was pretty excited about it.

Look at how calm and nice the gorilla looks. Well, just after taking this picture it sprang up and hit the window with all four feet. It was sudden, and loud, and kids don't know all about really thick, strong glass. That other little kid just about died of fright. Nathaniel handled it pretty well, his lip just trembled as he backed slowly away. But he didn't want to see the gorilla anymore. And when we went into the money house he refused to look at the monkeys. He still loves his Gorilla. :)

We love you, Than-than. Happy Birthday!

Jeremiah -- Six Months

2010-09-14T09:32:00.005-05:00

Half a year; where has the time gone? For me this age is a big I-don't-want-my-baby-to-get-any-bigger/I-wish-he-would-grow-faster stage. Babies are so sweet and cute and I love it when they can start interacting with people, but at the same time teething and the increased mobility along with a growing curiosity make this time bittersweet. Why can't they stay this cute and innocent always?

Jeremiah has been very busy the last three months:

3 months -- rolling from tummy to back

4 months -- progressed to rolling from back to tummy, then learned to roll over either side.

5 1/2 months -- army crawling, sitting up

6 months -- first tooth, with the second one expected to pop through any day.

Jeremiah weighs approximately 16.5 lbs. He loves to growl and blow raspberries.

Our camera broke and we have yet to get and new one, so I don't have any six month pictures, but here are some from the last few months.

Learning to sit up. (Like his angel halo?)

Resting after a long day of sightseeing in Yellowstone.

An unwilling little traveler.

Bouncy, bouncy!

Don't roll off the bed, Jeremiah!

Rawr, I'm a little bear and I'm going to eat you!

Happy baby. He sleeps with that little moose that he got from Aunt Chava.

Beginning to scoot.

And that's it for now, I guess that was more than a few pictures. ;)

Our Household Monster

2010-09-07T13:15:00.006-05:00

Yes, we have a monster living in our house.

It looks something like this:

Image courtesy of the Internet.

Our vacuum cleaner.

Of all my children, Edmund has always been the most fearful of the vacuum.

When he was a baby I would vacuum during his naps. As he got older he felt pretty safe if I sat him down on the couch before vacuuming. But he always had to be in the same room as the vacuuming; almost as if he felt safer if he could keep an eye on the situation.

Now, he asks to be allowed to plug in and turn on the vacuum, then he runs around the room shrieking and jumping off of the furniture. Playing a sort of "keep away" with the vacuum. His game seems to have done away with some of his fearfulness, but he still gets nervous if he gets in a corner and thinks he is trapped.

Disclaimer: No, I do not try to scare him or chase him with the vacuum cleaner. I am a very nice Mama. :)

Vacation 2010 Part 2 -- Yellowstone

2010-08-30T11:05:00.000-05:00

A few more mountain climbing pictures...

Getting ready: Walking sticks, check. Water, check. Cameras, check.

Halfway up the main mountain we climbed.

A beautiful (the fuzziness is due to my picture taking, sorry) view of the Grand Tetons range from the highest point we climbed. There was a big grassy, sage bush covered plain on top of the mountain.

On to Yellowstone!

After spending a few relaxing days in the Teton area (yes, even with the mountain climbing it was relaxing!), we headed up to Yellowstone.

Our good friend Robby Haselwander was working just north of Yellowstone for the summer, so he was able to come down and hang out with us for the weekend.

We also met up with a good portion of Jaired's family on his mom's side for part of the family reunion. It was great to see the non-Missouri relations, and one of Jaired's uncles was able to take us on the main Yellowstone tour loop since he is so familiar with the area, so we didn't have to hire a tour guide. I don't seem to have any good pictures of the adult relations, but one of the boys' second cousins came, and she and Edmund had a great time playing together.

Joanna and Edmund on one of hikes.

Edmund and Jaired resting in the shade.

The boys slept well every night from all the exercise and fresh air they were getting. They shared a bed the entire trip and did a great job.

Edmund loved all the geysers. Here he is watching Old Faithful erupt. We stayed in the Old Faithful cabins, and we could see the geyser from our cabin.

Jeremiah, like his brothers, loves being outside, and he enjoyed being held a lot and getting first dibs on the stroller.

Nathaniel with his Aunt Kimberly, those two are really good buddies.

Nathaniel is a great walker. He doesn't even complain as much as Edmund does about having to walk instead of getting to ride in the stroller.

Visiting Mount Rushmore on the way home.

Oh boy, that trip home was crazy. Ellie returned with us, as the rest of the family continued on to Montana for the rest of the family reunion. We had decided before even starting the trip that going up in Montana was going to be too much driving for our boys, and I sure am glad we came straight home from Yellowstone. The drive through Northern Wyoming was grueling. We left Yellowstone through the East Entrance and drove through the Big Horn Mountains. The pass was crazy -- switchbacks and road construction! It took us about three hours to drive the 60 miles over the mountains, and Jeremiah was screaming almost the entire time!

The second day of driving, is when we saw Mount Rushmore and drove through the Badlands. About halfway through the day Jaired asked Ellie and I if we wanted to just skip that night's hotel and head straight home. We drove right through the night and got home twelve hours earlier than the original plan.

It was so good to be back home, but the humidity that hit us when we stepped out of the car was not welcome. It was 6 a.m. when we got home and the temperatures were already in the high eighties! We turned up our air conditioner and went to bed. :)

Vacation 2010 Part 1 -- Grand Tetons

2010-08-27T13:00:00.004-05:00

We went on our first family vacation in June/July. We drove through Kansas and Colorado into Wyoming to spend time at both The Grand Tetons and Yellowstone Park. On the way home we visited Mount Rushmore and the Badlands. This was my first visit West. (Not counting flying to California when I was six.) The scenery is amazing and the weather was beautiful.

We tried to take a slow, laid back approach to the vacation, so that we would be spending time having fun, rather then stressing about getting places on time and worrying about cranky children. We traveled with Jaired's family and had one of the girls with us each day of the drive. They were an amazing help caring for the boys in the car.

I packed a lot of books and toys, as well as our portable DVD player, so Edmund and Nathaniel were pretty well entertained in the car. Jeremiah did not have quite as much fun; he was temporarily scarred by car travel, and for the second half of the trip would start crying the moment we entered the car. Fortunately, he has recovered.

These are some of my favorite pictures from the trip:

Edmund entertaining himself in the car with a Duplo "recorder".

Car break! We stopped in Kansas City to enjoy some delicious Lamar's doughnuts. Yum! I love how the boys are all looking in different directions, but none at the camera.

One of the rest areas in Wyoming had a Prairie Dog village. The boys had a great time feeding them our wilted grapes and lettuce.

The view from the family's cottage on Slide Lake. The beautiful Grand Tetons mountain range. We stayed in the cabin that you can see on the right edge of the top picture.

Hiking. Nathaniel took possession of Justice's hat for part of the trip. Family picture, nine bumps on a log, and two besides. The man who took the picture opted to get a good close up of us, rather then show the mountains in the background.

Mountain climbing at Slide Lake. These small mountains are MUCH bigger than the Ozark Mountains!

In the top picture you can see Slide Lake, and the slide it is named for. In the bottom picture is the 20 foot cliff we climbed down as we made our descent.

There was good food in abundance.

Plenty of playtime with relations.

Lots of rest and hanging out.

Edmund got inventive in his play. Books for a train track, and there is something about those plastic water bottles that makes them so fun to drink out of, much to the owner's chagrin.

Why I Haven't Blogged (or Why Haven't I Blogged?)

2010-08-18T15:12:00.002-05:00

It's been a while. I have a couple of reasons, but I won't tell you which one is the main one, because I don't know for sure.

First, I get writer's block, so even though I have things to write about I don't write. Second, I have a bad habit. It goes like this. I don't write for a while, so I feel bad, but I don't want to be apologizing to my readers all the time and I find it awkward to start writing after a gap of time without saying anything about the gap. So I put off blogging; and the gap gets bigger.

Well, I have heard that if you have writer's block you should just write and eventually you will break through and have something to say worth reading. Likewise, if I publish this post I will have finally posted after a long silence and will (hopefully) be able to keep up again.

So, that's all I have to say for now. I will write more later, telling you all what we have been doing this summer. There will be pictures, too, of course.

A Bouquet of Roses and Edmund's Addition

2010-06-18T09:00:00.002-05:00

I was out running the other morning and found some beautiful wild roses growing along the driveway. I thought it a good excuse to not have to run the rest of the way up the driveway. ;)

Edmund very sweetly added his own embellishments. Do you see them?

That's right he carefully picked and meticulously arranged a few clover flowers in among the roses. What a sweetie-pie!

Jeremiah -- Three Months

2010-06-12T09:06:00.005-05:00

Jeremiah is growing fast. He smiles a lot and evens laughs sometimes.

He can hold up his head really well and likes to look at people and things around him.

He is our first baby that we have gotten to take a bottle at this age. Which makes it easy to have the family watch all three boys of an evening so Jaired and I can have a quiet dinner at home together.

I love this little guy.

Jeremiah -- Six Weeks Old

2010-04-26T12:56:00.009-05:00

Jeremiah was six weeks old last Friday. Here he is wearing the cupcake outfit. (That is a duck on it, that you can barely see.) Don't ask me, but when Edmund wore this outfit, Jaired's mom said he looked like a striped cupcake. :)

Edmund likes to talk to "Baby 'Jememiah'." Both boys really love their baby brother.

He started to smile this past week; though he doesn't do it often.

It is hard to tell, but his eyes are a really pretty medium grey. Jaired's mom thinks that it is possible they will turn blue. We'll see what happens.

A Spaghetti Picnic

2010-04-20T15:13:00.004-05:00

Hmm, let's see if I can get some noodles on my fork.

Wow, this is a lot harder than it looks.

Finally, I got some in my mouth. This is good stuff, Mom, thanks!

Random Sunshine and Babies

2010-04-14T12:02:00.004-05:00

No time to blog. Because I haven't made time. Facebook is an evil vortex, sucking me in to see what other people are doing and saying. Once a week really should be often enough for me from now on. Not that I am on Facebook all day long, but rather, that when I do spend time on the computer it is on frivolous, time-wasting pursuits.

I am a wife and mother. That is the full-time job I have chosen. Some days I feel like I haven't gotten "anything" done, but when I stop and look back over my day I have done a lot of things that are my job: fed three hungry boys (several times), washed and hung on the line a load or two of diapers and baby clothes, read multiple Dr. Seuss books, cooked yet another (hopefully) delicious supper, kissed hurts away, and talked about anything from cows to knights with a three-year-old.

I love to hang laundry outside during the warm weather. It is a good time for me to take a break from the house and get some fresh air and sunshine. It gives me a chance to be quiet and enjoy the beautiful outdoors, on a day when I would otherwise have just stayed inside. The boys also like getting to run around outside. Plus, it saves on electricity, so it benefits us in more ways than one.

I could probably sit all day and hold Jeremiah, but I have three boys who all need my attention in different ways. Jeremiah by far requires the least brain cells, just feed him, change his diaper, and hold him; and he is the happiest boy in the world.

Nathaniel is still a baby and is now finding himself in the unenviable position of middle child. He wants to play with his brothers, but he is too big for Jeremiah, and yet sometimes too small for Edmund's games. He still needs a lot of my attention, but sometimes has to wait while I take care of Jeremiah. The week leading up to Jeremiah's birth I felt so sad for Nathaniel. He did not understand about another baby coming into the family, and the changes that were coming with it. He is doing very well, though. He loves his baby brother.

Edmund always has something to tell me -- which always needs a response. He still would rather play with me then with Nathaniel, or even by himself. He likes to have me help him, even if he knows how to do it without help. He also likes to do things that make Nathaniel mad, which then requires me to step in and sort things out.

Never a dull moment for sure. I love my life and my job, but there are definitely times I just throw up my hands and want to stop. All I need to do is remember that laundry and caring for the boys is my main job, then I will be happy, not getting frustrated that I never get anything done. :)

The Three Musketeers

2010-04-02T11:09:00.003-05:00

Sweaters courtesy of Chava Hall. Three cute boys courtesy of Jaired and Tracy Hall.

And a little brotherly affection. (For real, Than loves to hug his brothers!)

Jeremiah Clive Hall

2010-03-14T14:54:00.005-05:00

Jeremiah Clive Hall

12 March 2010, 8:14 a.m.

6 lbs. 11 oz. 20 ins.

It's This Week, Folks

2010-03-09T07:30:00.001-06:00

This is how I have felt the last few weeks. Tired. Ready to be done.

But this week, though I am still tired, I feel a little more energetic. At least, I feel more motivated to get things done. Can you call it the nesting instinct even with a scheduled c-section? Because I think that is what I have. Thorough housecleaning, organizing, and spring decorating are the order of the week. Last week I devoted to finishing projects. So, if I can finish this week's list I will feel very prepared for the baby.

I have had the baby's bag ready for a few weeks. I prepared it the same day I unpacked all the baby clothes and organized them on the shelves. The nursery is rearrange for the last time, and as ready as it is going to get for the new baby. Nathaniel is still sleeping in the crib in there, but that won't be a problem because my babies never use the crib much when they are tiny anyway.

My bag is almost ready to go. I have figured out the books and stuff that I will take to the hospital, even though I don't ever get much reading done.

For the rest of the week it is just laundry, house cleaning and playing with the boys. Oh, and celebrating Jaired's mom's birthday.

Please keep us in your prayers, especially when you wake up on Friday morning.

Busy Days

2010-03-03T18:44:00.000-06:00

This pretty little Crocus popped its head out the other day to tell me that spring is around the corner, even though we are still having many cold days.

I have decided that I don't mind the cold, as long as it is sunny outside.

We have a wood furnace that we have used most of the winter (we took a break from using it in February), that is really nice, when we make sure to keep the fire burning good and hot. We try to be frugal when it comes to heating our house, but I am definitely enjoying having a warmer house! I have a hard time being motivated to get up and do stuff when I am cold, and being pregnant isn't helping either, so the warm house and sunshine are essential to a productive day.

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A few Sundays ago on the way to church we saw one of these beautiful landscape pieces. Edmund asked, "Mama, what's that?" (A classic three-year-old question.) I responded with a somewhat vague, "Oh, that's a tower of some nature." His deduction -- a nature tower! Which is what he continued to call them for the next week or two; until Jaired decided that his son needed to be properly educated and told him that, "Mama made a mistake, those are actually cell phone towers." I think that Edmund is getting it sorted out. he still calls them nature towers if he forgets, but he has graciously accepted the fact that I had misinformed him.

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One of my pre-baby goals was to finish all of my (several) sewing projects. And I am happy to say that I have succeeded.
Along with outfits for myself, I have been making some things for my SIL Chava, like the dress above.
In the future I hope to talk more about my sewing, for those who might be interested to see what patterns I use, how I get through the hard parts, etc. This dress though, I had no particular pattern for. Chava has had "this" dress for awhile, but it needed to be altered, so I took the leftover fabric from when it was made and redid the bodice using princess seams. I also turned the gathered skirt into an A-line, to give it a better figure. The sash was just for fun because I had so much of the contrasting fabric left after altering the skirt, but it really adds a lot to the dress.

Games for the Boys

2010-02-17T09:43:00.000-06:00

As we buy toys for our boys we try to choose things they are interested in, such as trains and animals, but we also look for things that will teach at the same time as being fun. We avoid the commercialized, TV themed toys and games, and always enjoy finding things that we remember playing as children.

Books are one thing that both boys love. They read a lot, both by themselves and with us. It is not uncommon to have one or the other coming up with a stack of books wanting to be read to.

We have Chutes and Ladders; this game gives us a chance to count with Edmund and he really likes making his person go up and down the ladders and slides (as he calls them). If you are not familiar with this game, it involves the very simple use of the spinner to determine the number of spaces to move. Then there are good deeds, that allow you to go up a ladder, or bad deeds, that make you go down a chute. Edmund doesn't understand that going down is bad and going up is good, but we do talk about the pictures and the results of the good or bad deeds.Sometimes, instead of buying something we make it ourselves. Jaired is especially a game lover, and some day would like to make a "real" game, that is one for adults. For now he is starting on children's games. Jaired draws a lot and when we make games he gravitates toward the initial artwork, while I cut out the cards and color in the pictures.

We took one of the boys' favorite books and created a game which is played similar to Candy Land.

Go, Dog. Go! by P.D. Eastman is a fun little book about dogs, though really not so much about dogs as about colors, opposites, and a little bit of counting.

The playing pieces are, of course, dogs.

The players draw cards to determine their move. The main cards are the colored squares, indicating where to go. There are special cards that one gets to keep for the dog party at the end of the game, and there are other special cards that make you skip a turn, go forward, or back, etc.

Two shortcuts allow some variations in the game. In this game there is no one person who is the winner. Everyone keeps drawing cards until all are at the Party Tree.

This game helps with colors of course, but it is also fun for Edmund to see the different things that he is familiar with from the book. And he really likes the end of the game when we can "put on" the party hats, "eat" the birthday cake and ice cream, and "open" the birthday presents.

The second game we have made is Memory.

This is a very simple game to make and play. If you aren't an artist you could even print off pictures from your computer. You just need two of each picture. We currently have eleven pairs of cards (above are just my favorites), which is perfect for Edmund's attention span and playing level, but we may make more cards as he improves. Little children tend to turn over the same cards again and again, which means they never win. When we play, I encourage Edmund to look at cards he hasn't seen yet. I also will occasionally throughout the game go back over the cards we have looked at (without turning them over) and remember aloud what they are, to help Edmund grasp the concept of the game.

In addition to games, Jaired had made toys for the boys out of wood. Again, our woodworking tools are limited, but someday we hope to have the means to make really nice, durable toys.

These wooden blocks were made with a table saw out of regular 1"x2" boards. They work on a similar concept to Legos, starting with a small square, "one-size," and moving up by increments. Some of the ones pictured above were made by Jaired and some by his dad and brother.

Jaired also makes wooden swords, shields, and battleaxes. All three of them like to spar together, though Nathaniel often finds the action to be a bit too much for him. These wooden toys are all works in progress, as Jaired improves the design every time he makes another weapon or block.

Sleepyhead

2010-02-10T15:28:00.000-06:00

Two minutes before taking this picture I asked Edmund, "are you tired, do you want to take a nap?" "No...zzzz." was his reply.

Silly Little Bear.

Snow and Peanut Butter Cookies

2010-02-10T09:47:00.000-06:00

We have been getting snow every week for the last few weeks. This is pretty unusual for Missouri weather. In fact, back in the middle of January when the temperature was up in the 4o's and 50's we were not surprised and figured we had seen all of our allotment of snow for the winter. But just as Missouri winters are usually not very snowy, they are also not very predictable.

I really like snow. I think it is beautiful, it sure beats plain, old grayness, and it covers up all the ugly brown grass. I like it when we get snowed in and Jaired has to stay home.

Of course it has been snowing so frequently that if he had stayed home every day he would be really behind with his work. So, since he does have to go to work still, I am glad that 1) it has mostly been warm enough that the snow doesn't accumulate much on the roads and 2) the snowplows have been doing a great job keeping the rest of the snow cleared away.

And, if it is snowy and cold outside, what do you do? Maybe Papa can take the three-year-old into the kitchen, ignore the fact that he didn't eat very much supper, and teach him how to make peanut butter cookies.

And I smile as I type and he sings: "Happy Birthday at baby in Mommy's tummy."

The Baby's Birthday

2010-02-03T12:22:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, I had a prenatal and got the baby's birthday set up. March 12. That's is as long as the baby behaves himself and waits patiently. If I start having contractions before that day we will have to have the c-section right away, to avoid any possible dangers to me or baby.

Otherwise, my pregnancy is going great. Everything is normal and the baby is growing like he should be.

Praying that this birth and newborn will be a lot less "eventful" then the last two.*

5 weeks. Oh, my.

*For those who don't know:
I had some small complications with Edmund's birth, but then he had to go back to the hospital twice before he was even two months old. First for severe jaundice, second for severe anemia.

Nathaniel was 7 weeks premature, born via emergency c-section, spent three weeks in the NICU, then had anemia at 6 months.

For people who don't ever go to the doctor we have spent a lot of time at the hospital because of our boys!

The Big Boy Room

2010-01-27T10:02:00.000-06:00

Stage Two of moving the boys' bedroom out of the playroom was actually an idea born before we even decided to move the nursery. One of the bedrooms was already painted a lovely "boy" blue when we moved in. This room was our storage/catch-all room. Maps on the walls, boxes of dance stuff, sporting goods equipment, anything that didn't have a particular place found its way in there.

Of course this room being the only big bedroom that was unoccupied it was the logical choice for the new boys' room. We decided that the new room would be the boys' main Christmas present from us. This included building beds for the boys and making coordinating quilts.

We started planning in the fall and I began sewing the quilts right away. The beds, however, were somewhat of a procrastination project. In fact, we did a good bit of the work on them Christmas week, even staying up until 2 a.m. one night, in order to have them ready. They are compatible as bunk beds if we ever would like to stack them. We measured the family's bunk beds to get the right size, then cut and sanded each piece of wood before assembling them. They are made out of pine and we bolted the pieces together.

The beds will be stained this summer, hopefully.

Jaired and I put our heads together to come up with the quilt design. The Lion and Unicorn were drawn by Jaired, then I cut them out and appliqued them onto the quilts. I have made quilts before, but this was my first time doing applique, so I was a little nervous. The little squares give a very deceptive idea of this quilt being difficult to make. The only hard part about the quilts was making sure to keep the diagonal pattern going throughout. The quilting itself was relatively easy, too. I did free-hand on the rectangles around the animals, then straight diagonals through the blue squares. These quilts were very fun to make, and I am now doing some brainstorming about curtains for the windows.

Jaired really likes the medieval time period and likes to draw knights, swords, castles, etc. So the Lion and Unicorn go along with that idea and Jaired plans to do the artwork for this room himself in the near future.

The Thomas the Tank Engine sheets and the tractor pillowcase are gifts from the boys' Aunt Ellie. Sure they don't go with the "medieval" theme, but they are great for our train-loving little boys.

I also made these birthday cross-stitch samplers for the boys. Edmund's has been done and rather homeless for a couple of years. Nathaniel's I just finished this month. I am glad to have a permanent place to hang them. We plan to print and frame pictures of the boys, probably from when they are a year old, that we will hang with their cross-stitches.

A view of the closet: up until now the boys were sharing a small chest of drawers, but they have outgrown it. All the shelves in here make for pretty good clothes storage and eliminate the need for a new chest of drawers.

The world map was drawn by Jaired when he was about 13 or 14. The frame is blue and I really like how well the colored pencil artwork goes with a children's room.

That is all we have for now, though between when I started this post on Saturday to now Jaried has started, and made good progress on, one of the drawings for this room. I will post pictures when he is done, and maybe we will see some curtains go up in the next few months.

The Nursery

2010-01-20T13:09:00.001-06:00

With the boys getting bigger and more active, and a new baby on the way, we decided it was time to separate the nursery from the playroom.

Our house has a small, sunny room at the end of the hallway that has, up until now, been our guest bedroom. I moved all the nursery furniture into that room and it fits perfectly.

The crib made up and ready for a tiny newborn. With Winnie-the-Pooh to keep watch.

I made these curtains for Edmund's nursery in Virginia Beach. This was my first attempt at curtain making and I did not make them the right width, so now, for the first time, I get to see them as they should be, nice and fully ruffled.

The Halls bought this antique cradle when Edmund was born, but since they didn't have much space to store it we get to use it here at our house. I will actually move it into my bedroom once the baby is born.

And the changing table all ready to go.

This room, like so many others in our house, is sparse on the decorations, but hopefully I will be able to find some nice wall hangings in the next few months.

The best thing about this room though is the many blessing s that it contains. All the furniture in here was given to us, as well as most of the baby necessities and all the infant clothing we have. Though we have moved and lost contact with some of these people we have a constant reminder of their love and friendship when we go into the nursery.

Where Has the Time Gone?

2010-01-05T17:41:00.000-06:00

The holidays are over now and we are getting back into a little more settled routine. I don't have very many pictures, because my camera isn't much fun to work with, and we are not very good at remembering to pull it out and use it in the first place. I will hopefully be able to post soon about some of the changes we have going on around here, like the boys' new room, the play room, and the nursery, but for now I will just leave you all with a few pictures to give you an idea of what we have done in the past month and a half since I last posted.

In no particular chronological order:

We drank a lot of tea, and made this really cool (we think) tea cabinet out of an old drawer pulled from a store counter in the family's building in town. The family is renovating and all of us "kids" went to town late one night to demolish the counter so we could save the wood for whatever it might come in handy for.

We had a few parties and danced in our kitchen. Here are Jaired and Chava dancing Gay Gordon's, fondly known to our dance group as "The Scottish."

We organized a Christmas Ball for our December dance.

Jaired and I stayed up late one night cutting out, baking, and icing over eighty cookies. We gave some away, ate some, and froze some. It was a lot of fun, but I think next time we should do it during the day.

Jaired started a group on Facebook dedicated to Gorilla rights, initiated by his acquaintance with Nathaniel's dear friend, Gorilla. Check it out here.

He also tried on a new look for the holidays.

We hung out.

We had fun, and we hope you did, too.

Goodbye 2009, hello 2010!

Edmund's Third Birthday

2009-11-20T08:52:00.000-06:00

Wednesday was Edmund's third birthday. We had a fun relaxing day of playing and celebrating. Edmund got to open his presents, homemade blocks and a children's Bible, from Jaired and I in the morning.

Besides getting to have me spend most of the day reading to and playing with him, Edmund also was invited to him Oma's house for a visit.

Then in the evening we had the family over for a big dinner, and, of course, more presents.

Edmund has been learning to count over the last few months and just the other day mastered counting to ten, so as soon as he pulled this Abucus out of its wrappings he starting counting all the beads.

Edmund loves to read and was not at all put out that almost half of his presents were books.

When it came time for cake Edmund was so excited he didn't even wait until we were done singing to start blowing out his candles.

A Shower of Leaves

2009-11-11T08:46:00.000-06:00

I love having several trees in our yard. In fact, in addition to the two maples, one crab apple, two somethings else, and several bushes that were already in our immediate yard when we moved in, we have planted six more trees! I love the shadiness of trees as well as their majestic beauty. And, yes, I love when Autumn comes and the leaves change colors and come showering down with the wind.

This is the first year that we have really been able to get out and enjoy playing in fallen leaves, and Edmund has been having a great time! The picture above is one we took the day we did our family pictures for the year.

These are our two maples. The big one (top) turns yellow and shed its leaves over the course of several weeks. The smaller one turns a beautiful orange, and one big rainstorm completely stripped it of its leaves.
All these leaves of course mean lots of raking, which I finally went out and did yesterday. As I raked I thought to myself how glad I was that I hadn't raked sooner. Waiting, though unintentionally, until all the leaves had fallen meant that we were not only able to enjoy the Autumnal beauty of a leaf strewn yard, but we will only have to rake the yard once this Autumn/Winter.

The job's not done yet. The piles you see here (two above and one in the picture before) are only three of the seven I raked up yesterday, and I still have to rake the front yard. But it is turning out to be a fun time for me to spend outside with the boys, instead of a tedious, seemingly endless task.

When do you rake your leaves? From when they first start falling until the end of the season, or just at the end? Or do you wait until Spring? Or maybe you never rake at all! :)

What to Write -- Dinner Anyone?

2009-11-05T11:48:00.000-06:00

Jaired sometimes will give me a little to do list of things he specifically would like me to do on a particular day. He also sometimes tells me if there is something off of our menu that he really wants for dinner, instead of me just picking something myself.Today, he sent me an email that said this:

1) hang up my wool suit pants :-) Thanks babe, I love you. xoxo
2) do a blog post today.
3) sauteed chicken, mashed potatoes, something green, and apple sauce for dinner.

As I sat down at my computer and tried to think of something to write my mind wandered to the other things on his list.

Dinner

This is an important part of the day at our house. We usually eat shortly after Jaired gets home, so dinnertime is when we catch up on each other's day. During dinner preparation, I have Edmund tidy up all his toys and Nathaniel starts to clamor for food. (I tell you, that kid would eat all day if you let him!) So dinner is also, ideally, the time when Nathaniel quiets down as he eats, and the house is mostly picked up and straightened.

Needless to say, deciding what to eat for dinner is important. And, for those of us who have a few small children, getting to the end of the day can be a major accomplishment in itself, forget about a nice dinner on the table!

So, I thought, why don't I share with all of you what we are having for dinner, as this is a fairly simple, though still elegant, meal to make.

The Menu:

Sauteed Chicken Breast

Mashed Potatoes

Salad

Fresh Homemade Applesauce

Pictures taken from various online sources.

The first thing you will have to do, of course, is pull out the chicken after lunch so it can thaw completely.

Start cooking about 40 minutes before you plan to serve dinner.

Peel and quarter several potatoes (the four of us usually eat about six medium) rinse the potatoes and place them in a pot with a generous amount of water. If you like, add some peeled garlic cloves. Put on the stove and bring to a boil. Boil gently until soft when pierced with a fork, about 30 minutes.

Peel and eighth several apples (we usually do about 5) place the apples in a saucepan with about a quarter of an inch of water in the bottom, sprinkle in some cinnamon and cloves (go lightly with these until you figure out what your family likes). Bring to a boil and then simmer until the apples are soft, about 10 to 15 minutes, I think. Check them occasionally, to make sure the apples do not run out of water.

Prepare your salad:
The simplest salad is just torn up lettuce with dressing.
Sometimes I chop up some olives, toss them in with the lettuce, and sprinkle Parmesan cheese over the top.
Or you could go for a garden salad with lettuce and any of the following, tomato, bell pepper, carrot, other greens (spinach, chard, beet tops, or even dandelion leaves) onion, and mushrooms.

If you wash your apples the peels make a great thing for little ones to eat while waiting for dinner, or you could give them a piece of carrot or other vegetable.

Set, or have one of the children set, the table.

Heat in a thick skillet or iron skillet over medium heat, 2 tablespoons each of butter and olive oil. Rinse and dry the chicken breasts. If they are not completely thawed you can cut them into a few pieces to help them cook better. Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper, then coat with flour. Place all the chicken in the pan, saute on one side for 5 minutes, then turn over and saute on the other side. Depending on the thickness of your chicken it may take longer then ten minutes to cook. Watch the chicken closely and turn again if needed.

While the chicken is cooking, mash the apples and drain and mash the potatoes. Everyone does their potatoes a little different, but the way I do it is, after draining place back in the pot and add a few tablespoons of butter and some salt and pepper. Mash then taste to check the seasonings, and add more salt and pepper if necessary. You don't have to add anything to the apples, they are delicous as they are with just the cinnamon and cloves!

And there you have it! A simple meal, still making sure your family gets the nutrients they need, and you can dress it up or down from there. Add bread, some steamed vegetables, use nice serving dishes and this could be as fancy as you want.

An Unexpected bit of Decorating

2009-10-28T12:22:00.000-05:00

Recently, I have seen a lot of bloggers talking about decorating with sticks and grass for the Autumn, now that most of the flowers are gone. They all vary slightly, but for the most part it involves getting sticks, either from the craft store or a handy bush in the yard, and arranging them in a vase, sometimes with glue and string to secure and fancify them.

Our fireplace is in our sitting room. In one corner of the room next to the fireplace is a low, deep cabinet. Jaired uses the space on top of the cabinet to store logs for fires, and it keeps them pretty tidy. The kindling has been a problem though. Last year, we would go outside every evening to bring in kindling, but this year it has been just stacked up on the floor, making a big mess. Today, in a effort to tidy up the house in preparation for visitors I brought an old galvanized bucket up from the basement and stuck all the sticks in. I immediately noticed how it looked a little like a bouquet of sticks.

The bucket works great to keep all the sticks together and catches any bits of bark that fall off. It also adds a nice touch to our countryish sitting room. And it was free and simple to put together.

Wordless Wednesday -- 21 October 2009

2009-10-21T10:00:00.000-05:00

One of our Maples in its Autumn splendor.

A stack of firewood ready to warm us in the evenings.

Edmund sporting the black eye he got during an encounter with the dining room table.
(The lighting wasn't very good, and I don't think I took this on the day the bruise was the darkest. It was really dark purple.)

Colds, Walking Babies, Sewing...My October so Far

2009-10-16T09:16:00.000-05:00

Autumn came in earnest right at the beginning of October. We have had at least as many rainy days as sunny, if not more, so far this month and the weather has been COLD. We haven't started using our heater yet, so the boys and I pull on the layers to stay warm during the day. Every evening we gather in the sitting room after dinner to enjoy a warm fire. You may wonder why I don't have a fire going all day. The main reason is that our sitting room is not the best for "living" in (that's why I don't call it a living room). We have a couple of couches, end tables, and some other furniture in the room, but no tables where I can sit and work.

We went through our first run of sickness last week. Jaired was the worst, having a fever for a few days. Edmund got away with one rotten day when he also had a fever. Nathaniel and I have both only had colds, though mine was accompanied by a splitting headache.

Besides being cold and sick I have been sewing quilts for the boys which is part of a larger project that Jaired and I are working on for the boys' Christmas present. Here is a peek at the quilts.
Nathaniel is learning how to walk, which is so much fun. He does whether or not we are watching him, but if he does notice us watching he gives the most adorable smile. Edmund is excited about it, too. Whenever he sees Nathaniel taking off he says, "look, Mama, Nathaniel do it by self!" I have tried to tell Edmund that Nathaniel will soon be running around after him, but I am not sure Edmund believes me. He always points out that he is fast or that Nathaniel crawls.

Nathaniel's First Birthday

2009-09-29T13:25:00.000-05:00

Nathaniel turned one on Saturday, the 26th. We had a small celebration with Jaired's family on Sunday. It was definitely a new experience for Edmund, that Nathaniel was getting toys.

This picture was taken upside down, Edmund wanted to look at the firetruck first.

Jaired loves taking self portraits, so we never have to worry about him not being in the picture when he is the one with the camera.
Nathaniel is looking at himself in the mirror in Pat the Bunny.

Nathaniel's birthday apple pie

It was yummy!

A New Kidney Bean

2009-09-16T12:12:00.000-05:00

This is a picture of the ultrasound picture. I forgot to ask Jaired to scan the ultrasound pictures at work, but I wanted to show you all our new baby now, so didn't want to wait until tomorrow for him to do it!

This is the same picture as above, but I opened it in Paintbrush to mark the baby so you all would know what to look at. The bottom word on the left says "spine" and is referring to the white line.

I am 13 weeks and 5 days along. The Baby's due date is March 19. :)

High Tea and Whiskey

2009-09-10T13:32:00.000-05:00

That might not sound like a likely combination, but this past weekend they went together beautifully! Jaired and I, along with Jaired's sisters, spent the weekend at a dance workshop in St. Louis. The weekend was a whirlwind combination of English Country Dancing (the high tea?) and Contra (the whiskey?). This weekend was the first of what I believe is to be an annual workshop. We had music played by live by some great musicians, one of whom was Martha Edwards, whose music we use at our own dances. (Martha was also one of the organizers of the workshop.) The calling was done by a famous caller, Joseph Pimentel, who came up from Austin, Texas. As for dancers, we had people come from Texas, California, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, to name a few.

Jaired and Kimberly have both danced Contra in the past, but it was the first time for the rest of us. Our dance group, here in Salem, The Jovial Beggars, up until now has been English Country only, but we had so much fun with Contra that we might introduce it into our regular dances!

While Kimberly lived up in St. Louis this past winter she attended several of the local dances. Because so many people had heard about our dance group, and because we have wanted to make t-shirts for awhile now, we quickly made some to wear to the workshop. Soon, we hope to have a big batch of shirts made so that all our dancers can have one.

Here we are with our JB shirts.

As you can see we had a great time.

There was a ball on Saturday night and we girls dressed up in Regency style dresses and beautiful hairdos. Ellie, on the left, made her own dress, but Kimberly, on the right, made her own dress as well as mine and Chava's. Kimberly also did our hair.

Unfortunately there are no pictures of Kimberly, but her hair and dancing were quite beautiful. And Jaired, well he wasn't in costume with his hair up, so there wasn't any reason to get a picture of him I guess. ;)

Nathaniel is not old enough to know that he can get along fine without Mama for a weekend, so he came along for the ride. Besides the fact that he wasn't too keen on the late nights, he had a blast. People were talking to him and holding him all weekend. Everyone loved him and he got to practice his waving a lot. He even got to dance!

Tuesday Evening Randomness

2009-08-25T10:22:00.000-05:00

We bought Edmund his first bicycle this weekend. He likes it well enough, but as he has not yet learned how to peddle it is not a very fun toy for him yet. When I try to get him to push on the peddles he pushes backwards, and, as you know, that makes him stop, not go! I hope he will learn soon, but for now I am pushing him up and down the driveway.
We have been having unseasonably cool weather for a good part of this month. It feels more like autumn than summer, with temperatures being in the low 70's rather than the high 90's. I really like having the weather this way, but am wondering, if this is what we have in the summer, what will the autumn be like, and then winter?

Nathaniel is loving the cold weather. Both of our boys do really well in the cold, but with his allergies, cool weather is definitely the best thing for Nathaniel. He has been such a happy boy this whole week, and hasn't been scratching very much. I have began weaning Nathaniel, very slowly. This is earlier than I weaned Edmund, but I feel like it is time to start. Nathaniel can be demanding, which Edmund wasn't. Now, less nursings for us means that Nathaniel is nursing about four or five times a day. I know this is the norm for some peoples babies who are nursing full time as little infants. My babies like to nurse every two hours, however, so this is a definite improvement!

Nathaniel wants to ask you all, "What's up?!"

A Beautiful Day on the Current River

2009-08-18T12:43:00.000-05:00

This past Saturday we went on a float trip with our church. Jaired's sisters and brother went with us, and we had a great time. The weather was perfect for floating, sunny and hot. The water felt so good! We got on the river around 9 a.m. to avoid the rowdy crowd that usually comes out on weekends. The first part of the float we had the river all to ourselves, but after a few hours we hit a bunch of people putting into the river and from then on we were passing other canoers constantly.

This is the second time that Edmund has gone on a float trip. He is always apprehensive when we put him in the canoe, but enjoys himself once we get going. He sat in the bottom of the canoe with his hand trailing in the water, catching the leaves floating past. We left Nathaniel with his grandparents this time, but will probably take him with us next time.

Two of Jaired's sisters, still dry, we must have just gotten in the river! :)

Considering how much we like canoeing and swimming it is amazing that this is the first float we have been on this year. Well, time has a way of getting away from us. I hope that we can go again before it gets cold. We'll see!

Summer Daze

2009-08-10T16:07:00.000-05:00

We have been busy this summer, but not any busier than life usually is. In fact, from week to week, we do pretty much the same things over and over.

Jaired leaves for work between 7 and 7:30 a.m. and returns home between 6 and 6:30 p.m.

During the day the boys and I play and take care of the house. Edmund is getting to be a really big help. He helps me empty the dishwasher, put away laundry, and tidy up the house. He is also responsible for dressing himself and making his bed.

Both boys continue to learn new things every day. Nathaniel is a professional crawler and is picking up speed with his cruising. He will eat whatever we feed him; I don't think he has spit out anything yet. At meal times, he eats almost as much food as Edmund eats, and with a lot more enthusiasm. Nathaniel is not a very good napper, sleeping only for short periods of time two or three times a day, which usually means he is pretty fussy in the late afternoon and evening because of being tired. But we love the little stinker, and he will grow out of this stage before we know it!

Edmund on the other hand, still takes his two hour afternoon naps. He is as active as ever and loves to talk. He can often be heard letting out a delighted chuckle and a "wow!" He has been experimenting with adjectives and prepositions. He loves reading and would be happy to have his entire library read to him every day. Some of his favorite things to do are spending time with his papa, visiting his grandparents, aunts, and uncle who live through the woods, and going to our monthly English Country dances.

Some of the highlights of our summer are:

Pool parties at Grandma's house.

Edmund has had fun digging in this shady spot under our porch for the last year...

...until he got attacked, and stung four times, by a bumblebee or hornet.
This particular sting right under his eye really swelled up the most.

It was a very traumatic experience for both of us. Imagine how I felt to hear him screaming in terror for my help! Edmund spent the whole afternoon sleeping and felt rather sick. Fortunately, he did not have any very serious reaction.

One day we spent in Houston, where Jaired's office is. We did some shopping and had a doctor's visit, but we were also able to hang out at the office and after work help clean the office and yard.

We had dinner at the park across the street that evening and spent time playing in the playground.

Between our dances, visits to the zoo and extended relatives, hikes, and afternoons at the river we have not had many weekends at home. But it has been a good summer. It is hard to believe that we are already almost halfway through August!

I hope you have had as good of a summer as we have!

Peaches, peaches!

2009-07-29T08:40:00.001-05:00

Wordless Wednesday

2009-07-29T07:16:00.001-05:00

Wordless Wednesday

2009-07-22T10:14:00.000-05:00

I have decided to start doing Wordless Wednesdays. Not only will it be an opportunity for you all to see pictures of the boys, but it will also insure that I get on here and post at least once a week. :)

Edmund, learning how to shoot a rubberband.

Nathaniel is starting to pull up on furniture!

Hooded Bath Towels

2009-06-24T16:20:00.000-05:00

Little children and hooded bath towels seem to go together. It is so cute to see those baby faces peering out of an "elfish" hood. And children love them! They are one of those things one puts on their baby registry; like I did. Unfortunately, the hooded towel I got was a tiny, polyester thing (not the one I put on my registry). Just big enough and absorbent enough for a newborn, but not much good for a bigger baby. I was disappointed to not have something that my children could use even when they got to be toddlers.

I occasionally tossed around ideas for making my own hooded towel, but never came up with anything. Recently, however, I found just the thing! I got this off of a blog, but can't remember which one, so am unable to give credit where credit is due.

This is really easy to make; all you need is a bath towel and a hand towel. Cut the hand towel in half. Fold the cut side of the towel in half and sew, then open out the hood and sew the seam allowance to one side. Sew the hemmed edge of the hand towel to one of the sides of the bath towel. That's it! You're done!

I made two of these using towels I already had, so it didn't cost me anything. And there was no waste.

Here is Edmund's back. Do you see how long the towel is? He will be able to use this for several years.

A Family Snapshot

2009-06-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

A friend asked for a picture of me, so here we are at a friend's wedding.

Nathaniel's First Haircut

2009-06-19T12:32:00.001-05:00

Nathaniel's hair was just starting to curl and he looked so cute with it all long. I was hoping that we could wait until his first birthday to cut his hair, like we did with Edmund. With his allergies, however, he was getting pretty miserable, so Jaired said he needed a buzz. I felt that was a little drastic, but I did consent to cut his hair.

Before (Yes, we did have people ask if he was a girl!)

After.

So, what do you think? Should I give him a buzz?

River Fun

2009-06-18T12:41:00.000-05:00

We have gone to the river twice now this summer. It is about a 25 minute drive for us, but when you live in the country distance can be pretty relative. We, especially Jaired, love going to the river. Jaired wants all of our children to be "fish" and Edmund is definitely on his way there.

Here is Edmund when we first got to the river last weekend.

Then he ventured further out.

Here he is last night, in the water up to his armpits. He had a great time and it was pretty funny to see him walking around in the water, tottering forward and backward as he tried to keep his balance.

Nathaniel always has a great time, too. He is our little allergy baby and the heat has really been bothering him recently. He loves being outside though, especially when he is by the river where the air is always a little cooler.

Strawberries!

2009-05-27T08:00:00.000-05:00

Strawberries may be Jaired's favorite food ever. I really like them a lot, too, of course. One of the things we made sure to do every year in Virginia Beach was go strawberry picking at least once. We were very excited to hear that our new house here in Missouri has a strawberry patch. It is only a few years old, and last year we pretty much just ate the berries as we picked them.

The patch was rather neglegted after strawberry season, partly because of not having what we needed to care for it. In the fall it did not get its protective mulch blanket because right when we should have put that down Nathaniel was born and I was with him in the hospital for three weeks.

The patch had also become somewhat overgrown so we were not sure what would happen this year. As the days began to warm up Jaired started checking the plants for blossoms daily. We watched with growing excitment as the blossoms withered and strawberries formed. Finally our first strawberry was ripe! It was a little one, but a ripe berry nonetheless!

As you can see, there are quite a lot of weeds needing to be cleared out. The rows are also just about nonexistent. Hopefully (cross fingers), we can get the patch cleaned up this summer.

Strawberries!

We have made pies and smoothies, and have frozen several quarts of strawberries. The patch is starting to slow down, but at its peak we picked about eight cups a day. Berry nice, if you ask me.

Nathaniel -- Eight Months

2009-05-26T11:09:00.001-05:00

Nathaniel is eight months old today, and though he is not where Edmund was, in physical development, at the same age, he is in the normal eight month bracket for size and development.

Nathaniel is usually a very happy baby. He is quite energetic and vocal.

Nathaniel has taken to playing and rolling around in bed before falling asleep. I found him like this the other day.

Nathaniel can roll both ways and push himself around, backwards. Here he is, holding himself up. That face is his humming, "Mama, pick me up" face.

Go, Baby. Go!

Nathaniel is very good at using his walker now. He can manuver it pretty well, and zooms across the floor at a surprising rate.

Reading with Edmund

Getting pushed in the dolly stroller by Edmund. They both thought it great fun.

*Giggles*

And, just for good measure, Edmund, at the park.

Natural Disasters

2009-05-13T10:56:00.000-05:00

Natural Disaster -- you think of Hurricane Katrina, an earthquake, BIG things right?

Well, last Friday, the 8th, we had a big storm. It rained, yes, but the big thing was the wind. It got up to 80mph at some points in time. And a tornado, not at our house, but touching down here and there about ten miles from us. Of course the power went out, at our house, and at the two law offices, one being 15 minutes away and the other 30. Altogether the storm was probably 2-3 hours long. Jaired and Pop driving home saw downed trees and power lines everywhere, but upon getting home there was almost no damage, some trees down, but no power lines broken or down. So we figured it wouldn't be long before the power came back on.

Saturday afternoon came and still no power. We called the power company and found out that initially about 10,000 people were out of power, but by the evening the number was down to 2500. Sunday, still no power and the power company was telling people it could be at least a week and to have a back up plan. Great, so what are we going to do?

Fortunately, both the offices had power again by Monday. Jaired brought water home with him in the evenings to supplement what we had stored during the storm. He has a full kitchen at his office so was able to take all the perishable food there and even took a tub of dirty dishes and washed them in his dishwasher. The hardest things about being out of power were the limited water supply and cooking. We have an electric stove. We cooked some both in our fireplace and outside on our firepit, Jaired's parents, who live just through the woods, have a gas stove, so we were also able to go over and cook at their house.

The power came on right before supper last night and it is definitely nice to be able to wash our hands and flush the toilet normally, not to mention shower and wash dishes and laundry. We really take our electricity for granted.

Pictures!

2009-05-04T15:00:00.000-05:00

The new Jedi apprentice.

Reflections.

A new ball from Oma. Jaired loved (and still loves) playing with balls as a boy. His mom told him that she would buy lots of balls for his children, this is the beginning!

Edmund's baby

A Long Silence

2009-04-24T17:15:00.000-05:00

All my fancy plans to blog on a regular basis are in vain it would seem. Some days I have ideas, but no time to get on the computer, and other days time, but no ideas. Of course now that I know about the posting feature that allows one to set the day I can write several posts at once and set them to come out on consecutive days.

Well, on to other things. I have been very busy recently doing...nothing really. Nathaniel has had a rash for over a month now. It started as a diaper rash that would not go away and then spread to the rest of his body in the form of Eczema. Have you every seen a baby scratch its head? It is pretty cute, but sad, too, because there is no reason a baby should have to put up with something like Eczema, especially as bad as Nathaniel has had. I didn't take any pictures, but just imagine an angry red rash with ozzing blisters and crusty scabs. Fortunately, his whole body did not get that bad!

It has been so hard to see my baby miserable and me unable to figure out what to do to help him. I don't want to be smearing him with Cortisone the rest of his life. I have been leaving his regular diaper off during the day, usually just loosely pinning on a prefold to keep him contained, but still allowing for plenty of air circulation. This way I know as soon as he wets and can change him to keep the pee from sitting on his skin. Of course this also means that there is more laundry as he gets changed a lot and sometimes gets the blanket he is on wet, too.

For two weeks I was also giving Nathaniel two 20 minute baths a day, to help his skin get the moisture it needed to heal. (This was on the instructions of the dermatologist I took Nathaniel to see.) I only bathe him once a day now, and not always for 20 minutes. Even now he still has really dry skin and I lotion him up at least twice a day.

All these things make for a pretty busy day, in which I do almost nothing except take care of the boys and try to keep the house sane. I have hardly touched the computer in the last few weeks.

Nathaniel's rash is finally going down and he is happier. He can sit up pretty well now, with only an occasional tumble. The weather is finally warming up and staying sunny for more than two days in a row. I hope both the healthy, happy baby and the beautiful weather stay because it sure makes life better!

Bathtime and Naptime

2009-03-12T21:41:00.000-05:00

Bath times are great fun in our house. Both the boys love taking baths. When Edmund was a baby someone gave us a collapsible baby tub. I never could get it to work, so Edmund has always had his baths in the big tub. Nathaniel on the other hand started out in a dishpan. When he first came home form the hospital he did not like being undressed AT ALL, but by the time I switched him over to the big tub he had gotten over that. Now I can put both boys in the tub and wash them all up and then Edmund gets his playtime in while I dry and dress Nathaniel. I hope my boys inherit their father's love of water, because I am not too confident in it myself.

They sure don't seem to be too happy about getting out of the tub. Of course maybe they are just cold and wondering why in the world I am taking pictures instead of dressing them!

Here they are dressed, combed, and ready to go to Oma's birthday party. Nathaniel is armed with his trusty pacifier. They are so cute, but maybe I'm biased, what do you think?

As for naps, well, more often than not I can get them to sleep at the same time. One day though Edmund decided they should also sleep in the same bed. Edmund loves to take his current favorite toy(s) to bed with him, and this time, managed to get them, and himself, all into the crib and settled without waking up his brother. I love these two little guys so much and I am sure they will be such good friends all their lives!

Is Spring Finally Here?

2009-03-06T08:45:00.000-06:00

Last Saturday, it snowed. At some points of time it almost looked like a blizzard. The flakes were so big that when Jaired went out and patted down the 12 inches of snow to 6 inches then stepped in it the snow still crunched and compacted like it does if you step on a fresh spot of snow. A few days after the snow the weather warmed up and by yesterday the only thing left was a small bump of snow where Jaired's snow pile had been.

Yesterday, the weather was beautiful and Edmund and I were able to spend all morning outside. I started a project that I will show you all soon. Edmund had a great time in the puddles and playing with the neighbors' dog.

To make the beautiful day even better, I found some Crocuses, our first flowers of the year!

But the best thing about the day was when Jaired called and said he would be home early, so we could drive down to the nearby state park and have a picnic! The evening was beautiful and only got slightly chilly.

Here is Nathaniel on his first picnic. No, he didn't use the water gun. But Edmund sure had fun with it.

Edmund enjoying barbaqued potato chips.

Note: I started this on Friday, and just finished it now, so yesterday refers to Thursday.

Home: Beautiful and Organized

2009-03-03T10:30:00.001-06:00

Recently I have been following several blogs about home organization and decor. I don't have a natural "eye" for decorating, nor do I currently have the money (or the car!) to go out and buy the things I need, or think I need, for organizing my house. So I am learning to work with what I have to make my house beautiful. One way to have a beautiful home is to just keep it clean! A good source for ideas on this is The Flylady.

Here is what I have started with:
Morning routine:
Get up immediately! If Nathaniel needs to be nursed, sit in the rocking chair, nursing in bed is a sure way to sleep in.
Get dressed, including doing my hair.
Make my bed
Breakfast

After breakfast:
Immediately clean up the kitchen, put dishes in dishwasher, wipe table and highchair, et cetera. If there are only a few dishes to hand wash I sometimes will set those aside for washing after lunch, but they need to be filled with water so they will be easy to clean.
If the bed wasn't made already, make it.
Wipe down the bathroom sinks and toilet.
Do the housecleaning job of the day: Vacuum, sweep, dust, laundry, et cetera.

Don't get on the computer until all the above things are done!

After lunch I clean up the kitchen again, then either take a nap or begin whatever project I am working on. I also decide what we will have for dinner.

After making dinner, if there is time before we eat, I clean up the preparation dishes. I also tidy up the house so it will look pretty when Jaired gets home. I do not do this because I don't want him to see what a mess the house is, but that he will be able to feel relaxed, and enjoy coming home even more! :)

After dinner, I clean the kitchen for the last time. Clean it BEFORE going off to play with my boys or spend time with Jaired. Since we eat very shortly after Jaired gets home, this is a good time for him to spend with Edmund.

Before going to bed, I walk through all the rooms of the house and make sure everything is where it should be. I fold and put away any laundry, put any toys Edmund did not pick up into his room, et cetera. I also pick out my clothes for the next day.

As you can see I try to do damage control by doing things right away instead of waiting for things to pile up. I also try to involve Edmund in all these chores. There is no need to wait until a child is 5, 6, or 7 to have him help, especially because he is already contributing to the mess!

So tell me, what do you do to make your day flow more smoothly and your house more beautiful?

P.S. I have many ideas of other things I would like to do, but I will talk about those as they happen. :)

The Iron Man

2009-02-24T09:01:00.000-06:00

Well, we didn't have to stay in the hospital, and Nathaniel doesn't have anything serious going on.

Nathaniel has an iron deficiency. The doctor said that this is common in premature babies. They are growing so much faster than regular infants in order to catch up that the iron they get in their milk isn't enough. This is why there is a special preemie formula with iron in it. The doctor sent us home with some liquid iron for Nathaniel to take. Provided he only has an iron deficiency, Nathaniel should be back to normal soon.

This is such a relief to me. I was not look forward to another hospital stay. Thank you all for your prayers. Please continue to pray that Nathaniel will do well with his iron supplements.

Here we go again

2009-02-21T12:08:00.000-06:00

Here is Nathaniel at almost 5 months. He is a fat, happy baby. He is teething and can hold his head up well. He hasn't rolled over for awhile, and isn't much interested in sitting up by himself, but that is okay. He babbles a lot! He is very alert and loves to watch his big brother's antics and smile at them. He is now 16 lbs. He is the picture of health, right?

Not exactly. There is something about our boys. They like to go to the hospital. More than that, they like having specialists. At one and a half months Edmund was admitted to the Children's Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia with severe anemia; the normal hemoglobin level is 11-13 gm/dl, Edmund was down to 3. He received three blood transfusions in 24 hours. Over the course of his first year he had multiple visits to the hematologist. They did tests, but never could figure out what the deal was. His iron was fine, his liver and kidneys were fine, his body was producing cells properly, but some how they were dying. He was always borderline anemic, but never seriously again. Now, he is a perfectly healthy, very active boy. But what, you say, does this have to do with Nathaniel?

This past Monday, Nathaniel had a routine checkup. Having been premature, and given Edmund's history, the doctor has been monitoring his hemoglobin. This week it was 7.3. So they called me in to have it checked again, with the same results. The doctor then sent in a referral to the Children's Hospital in St. Louis, two hours from here. The head doctor in the Hematology ward gave an order for us to take Nathaniel in on Monday. He said that he would actually like to have seen Nathaniel yesterday, but knew that that was pretty short notice, given the distance.

So here we go again. Will Nathaniel need a blood transfusion? Will he have to stay at the hospital? Or will they just ask us to take him in for regular checkups? I don't know. All I know is that I want my baby to be healthy and at home. At least if he has to stay at the hospital we will be in St. Louis, near family, this time.

Please pray that all will be well and that there will be nothing wrong except whatever Edmund had. I'll let you know....

Knights and their Surcoats

2009-02-15T10:49:00.000-06:00

Surcoat, d.:
A garment worn over medieval armor, often embroidered with heraldic arms. (dictionary.com)

Jaired's brother, Justice, loves to play in the woods, usually acting out some battle or other that he has read about. (He is usually the English, I think.) For Christmas, Jaired had me make Justice a surcoat, black with a red lion crest. He also got Ellie to make a matching flag. As an additional surprise for the guys, Chava made surcoats for Edmund, a blue falcon, and Jaired, a blue dragon, and a bib for Nathaniel, a red cross. Jaired and Justice were thrilled and immediately went out the day after Christmas to fight the Frenchies and vanquish a couple of dragons.

Here they are in all their splendor. You might not be able to see it, but Edmund is holding one of Jaired's small swords. I know you can hardly see Nathaniel's crest, but this is the best picture we have, since the little guys weren't cooperating.

Kiwi Kisses

2009-02-10T10:46:00.000-06:00

On the left is a Kiwi Bird finger puppet of Edmund's, on the right a Kiwi Fruit. Edmund got the Bird for Christmas and thought that with a beak like that what else could it be good for except to give out kisses. So the Kiwi Bird sometimes takes a trip around the house kissing everyone multiple times.

The other day I bought some Kiwi Fruit for the first time in a long while, and later asked Edmund if he wanted a Kiwi, showing him the Fruit, he said, "no." A few minutes later he started to push a chair over to the island making kissing sounds. It took me a few minutes to realize that he had changed his mind and did want a Kiwi, and he had come up with kissing as his way of saying Kiwi.

One of God's Angels

2009-02-09T13:20:00.000-06:00

Well, I know I just posted, but I felt like I should put this on. I was just on my Google Reader and read a post that linked to this blog.
This family, the McClenahans, found out on January 25, 2009 that their precious almost-one-year-old baby girl, Cora had cancer. Yesterday, Cora went home to Jesus. Please keep them in your prayers.

John Wayne and "Me"

2009-02-06T16:55:00.000-06:00

The other day I was at Walmart and picked up a DVD with four one-hour John Wayne movies for five bucks. We watched the first one that night and Edmund was hooked. Something about the fist-fights, horse-chases, and guns is so fascinating to him. I wonder why!? :)
Edmund has a way of figuring out how to communicate with his limited vocabulary to let us know what movie he wants to watch and with John Wayne it is a hand patting his head, which means hat. He asks for this movie all the time and just loves it!

Edmund has also learned what to call himself; "Me!" He taught himself that word, too! Now, I know all kids are smart in their own different ways, but I have never known a two-year-old who has grasped the concept of pronouns, so please pardon a little bragging. It is so cute to hear him say, "Me," when I ask him who he is or he sees himself in a picture.

Snow Days

2009-01-28T10:24:00.000-06:00

We have finally gotten a big snowfall. Living 14 miles outside of Salem we usually miss all the snow that Rolla gets. I love snow and don't feel like I have had a proper winter if I don't get a couple of good snowfalls. (Consequently, I never had a real winter while living in Virginia.) We got a few inches of snow right after Thanksgiving, but have only had lots of flurries with no significant accumulation since then.

Until this week...Monday afternoon it started to ice. Basically, little balls of ice, instead of snow fell from the sky, would that be sleet? It continued to ice for the next 24 hours. Then it snowed. We now have about 2 inches of snow over about 2 inches of ice balls. It is deliciously white outside!

Here are a bunch of pictures to commemorate the event:Here is Edmund getting his bundles on. Amazingly enough he didn't ask to go to the bathroom once the whole time we were playing outside. I had thought it one of the laws of nature that as soon as a child had all his bundles on he had to use the bathroom.

This is Jaired and Nathaniel. Nathaniel is under the blanket.

Here we are walking through the woods to my in-laws' house to go sledding. That is Justice walking behind me with his surcoat on. (I'll blog about his surcoat some time.) Notice how you can still see the grass and stuff through the snow.

Here is my wonderful and beautiful mother-in-law, Mary.

This is where we went sledding. This is the family's pond. In the background is the dike, which is what we sledded down. On the Flexible Flyers we took turns sledding to see who could go the furthest across the pond. Ellie won, she made it about halfway across!

Here I am with Edmund. He was very apprehensive at first about sledding and wouldn't go down with anyone except me. He did let Jaired take him once.

After sledding, Edmund stayed inside with his Oma. He ate clementines and popcorn.

He also thought it necessary to have a picture taken of his foot to go along with the other sledding day pictures.

When we got back to our house Jaired built a fire which we enjoyed for the rest of the evening.

This morning it looked like this outside.

The ground is completely covered.

Nathaniel -- 4 Months

2009-01-26T08:06:00.000-06:00

Nathaniel is 4 months old, today. He is healthy, happy, and fat! I have, however, discovered that milk bothers his little tummy. :( No fun, because I love milk and cheese!

Here are some pictures:

Both the boys were sick at the same time. Edmund loves his baby brother and tries to play with him, hug and kiss him, snuggle with him, and in general it is so much fun to watch them together. Nathaniel follows him with his eyes and smiles.

This is during a changing session on the changing table. If Nathaniel is crying it is an almost guaranteed cure to put him on the changing table and fiddle with his clothes or diaper. He smiles so big and wriggles and chuckles while being changed. The more things he needs changed, the better!

Dombey and Son

2009-01-15T10:23:00.000-06:00

"Jo, I won't be taking all of Dickens with me to college."

For those of you who have watched Little Women, with Winona Ryder as Jo and Kristen Dunst as the young Amy, you will recognise this line. You may also have caught Jo mentioning Dombey and Son as one of Dicken's novels. The movie was for a long time the only place I had ever heard of this particular novel.

A few years back Jaired and I found The Complete Works of Dickens in Twenty Volumes at a library book sale. We got it for $20. This set was from a private library so does not have any library stickers, and though I did not see any publication date, the name plates inside have dates on them going back to 1938. The set naturally includes Dombey and Son. After looking at these books on my shelf for several months I finally decided it was time to read another Dickens and picked up Dombey and Son, simply because it was mentioned in Little Women. It has become a new favorite. Dickens tends to be dark; he writes about a lot of ugly characters, and though this book has it share of interesting characters: repulsive, silly, hangers-on, and the like, the main story line is about a sweet, innocent girl who wants nothing more than to be loved by her father. Try it and you might find that you like Dickens after all.

Here, on the right, is Dombey and Son; its neighbor is Bleak House, another wonderful story, which Jaired just finished reading. (I have not read this one, only watched the BBC production.)

Nathaniel

2009-01-07T20:30:00.000-06:00

You are all perhaps wondering, "doesn't Tracy have two babies, why have we only heard of one?"

Well, at 3 and a half months old Nathaniel is not doing a whole lot worth blogging about. He still sleeps a lot, but besides that does mostly the usual baby things.

That said, there are some things to tell about him regardless. He has rolled over once or twice on several different occasions. It has gone from Accidental Roll Overs While In Dire Distress to Purposeful Roll Overs. He is only able to do it from tummy to front and only two or three at a time. But it is an exciting step in his development. Here he is getting ready to go over.
It is often amazing how, even at this young age, one is able to see marked differences in character/personality between children. For example, Edmund did not begin using a pacifier until he was about maybe 5 months old, I can't remember for sure, but he definitely was not using it at three months. Nathaniel on the other hand is quite attached to his pacifier and we are in big trouble if we don't have one with us where ever we go. Nathaniel came down with a cold on Tuesday. Poor little guy, his nose is runny/stuffy and his eyes are red and watery. Yesterday was the worst, so I hope that means he is on the mend. You could just look at him and tell that he was feeling miserable! What a trooper, he is. So it is plenty of sleep and a liquid diet for my little sick boy! ;)

Edmund's piano

2009-01-02T12:24:00.000-06:00

This year Edmund got a piano for Christmas from his grandparents. It is really a very nice little instrument. It is a "real piano," not anything electronic. It is chromatically tuned, the chime-like notes being produced by hammers striking steel rods as apposed to taut wires as in full-sized pianos. The keys are the same width as full-sized pianos, to help the child's hands learn proper "finger stretch" from the very beginning. Edmund loves it and once he gets a little older we plan to teach him to play it using the song book and key guide that came with the piano.

Christmas Cookies

2008-12-28T13:40:00.000-06:00

I love Christmas, and all the baking and cooking that go along with it. This year I, along with my mother-in-law, Mary, and sisters-in-law, Ellie and Chava, made a lot of cookies. Too many actually.

Not the best picture, but, from the top clockwise: Jelly Tots, Angel Slices, Chocolate Cherry, Lemon Squares, Pecan Puffs, Baklava, Pecan Pie, and (center) Pinwheel cookies. We also made Snickerdoodles, Peanut Butter Blossoms, and loaded Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Edmund -- The Artist

2008-12-17T13:06:00.001-06:00

Edmund loves to draw. Back in Virginia Beach he would ask for a pen and piece of paper whenever Jaired was writing. Now he writes with and on anything he can get his hands on. Most recently, he told us that he was drawing trains.

Here is his first train picture.

And the latest.

To Begin

2008-12-02T12:53:00.000-06:00

Greetings to All:

This blog will be predominately for sharing with friends and family the news of my own little family. I will periodically write my personal thoughts on various topics as well as recipes or advice that I have come across.

Happy reading!
Tracy