Sleep, Baby, Sleep!

It is sometimes a real challenge to get all of the kids to take their naps at the same time.  It seems that when one goes down, another gets up and, it seems, tries to get everyone else who is down to wake up!  I mean, I can understand.  It's much more fun to play with your siblings and friends than it is to do something boring like take a nap!

But I still have the hope and dream of getting everyone into bed and sleeping around the same time everyday.

Today is actually not so bad.  Jo went to bed herself easily.  Gabriel was a bit harder, but once he settled, he was out like a light.  Jesse took some time before he was tired enough, but then he rolled over and slept as soon as I put him down.  So that leaves Baby B.

He is usually my best sleeper (after Jo, who usually sleeps very well and easily for her naps).  But not today. He has realized that across the room from his bed is something very very fun...Gabriel!  So, Gabriel is sleeping, and Baby B is very tired, but he keeps hopping up and 'calling' Gabriel with giggles, squeaks and jumps up and down in his bed.  Then, he throws himself on the mattress and snuggles with his blanket for a minute and then pops back up to jump and giggle again!

Thank goodness for white noise machines!  I think that there is no way things would work out without those! I actually just got another one for the downstairs room where Jesse (my very very worst daytime sleeper!) takes his 15 minute catnaps.  It's not as good as the one I have upstairs, but it's ok.  I kind of wish I hadn't spent the money on it, though, and had held out for another one like the one we have upstairs.

We have this upstairs...the Sony Dream Machine,


and some other cheap one downstairs that only makes noise that doesn't even really sound like it should.  It sounds more annoyingly repetitive than soothing, but it seems to help Jesse, so I guess we'll keep using it for now.

Anyway, I'm going to take advantage of my few minutes peace....

So THAT'S Where That Was!!!!

I finally took some time to clean out behind and under the couch.  This is what I found when I moved it:

Holy cow!  How long have THEY been under there?  I'd been wondering where they'd gotten off to...

But, after I got them swept up, it really wasn't that bad, although I had been looking for that shoe of Gabriel's as well as wondering why out Uno games kept getting shorter and shorter due to lack of cards...

Happy Birthday, Jesse!

We celebrated Jesse's first birthday on Saturday and he was so cute!  Elizabeth made his cake and she also made a little one that he could dig into as well.  We figured that we didn't really want his sticky fingers in the big cake, so she made a little one, too.  They both turned out really well.

First, we had some pizza...

 Then Jesse began to wonder where his cake was!

 There it is!

 But he didn't really know what to do with it.  He touched it and started crying because he doesn't really like his hands all messy.  Any time he is eating and gets his hands dirty, he will hold them out for us to clean them.  But while he was crying, I took some of the frosting and put it in his mouth.  So THAT'S what that's for!  You could see the wheels turning in his little head...

...and this is how he figured out how to solve his messy hand problem!

  Smart kid!

But Gabriel was having a hard time waiting for the real cake.  We were all looking at Jesse and watching him eat his cake, and we heard 'Mommy, I don't want to eat this part' from Gabriel.

Well, of course not, silly guy!  That's the candle!!!!

Anyway, here's the cake.  It was half chocolate and half vanilla.  Yum!

Then, he opened his presents, and he love love loved them!  Especially this helicopter from Baby B.

So cute!  So fun!

The Amazing Flying Potholder!

Last week we had some serious Valentining going on.  The kids all made hearts from their handprints...

 ...and then they made borders and decorations to put around their handprint hearts.

It was a lot of fun and turned out really cute.  But, of course, I don't have any pictures of the final products, and we have already sent them away to grandparents and aunts and uncles.

While all this was going on, there was more fun happening in the kitchen:

Both of the babies were basically following Elizabeth and me around being kind of fussy and wanting to be picked up, so Elizabeth devised a way to entertain and distract them while allowing them to remain on the floor.  She took a long string and tied it to a potholder.  Then she threw the potholder across the kitchen to where they were sitting and then reeled it back in.  It was so cute to watch and they were very much entertained with this 'amazing' invention!

Christmas All Year 'Round

I have a confession to make:

We still have our Christmas lights up on the outside of our house.

Anyone who drives Elizabeth home late from babysitting or from choir knows this is true.  

'Our house is the one there with the fence,' she says.

'Oh, the one with the Christmas lights still on?' they ask.

'Umm...yeah.  That would be ours.  I'll just get out here...'

But really, what's wrong with a little extra color and lights in the evening?  

Honestly, it's just that Gabriel really likes them and turns them on every day and every time I mention to Jimmy that it just might be time to take the lights down, there is a sorrowful 'Noooooooo!' that comes from the back seat of the truck, and so, they stay up one more week.

I did, however, put my foot down on the red ball that was hanging in the middle of the front stoop.  I never really liked the placement of that ball.  There are supposed to be balls all around the gutters where the lights are hung, but somehow, whoever hung the lights this year didn't get the memo.  Not like we don't do them the same way every year...for the last 8 years or so.  But hey, it's easy to forget, right?  I mean you open the box of 'outdoor decorations', see a few strings of lights and a whole bunch of plastic balls, and you think, 'Yep.  It must be just one...just one up there right in the middle.  Just one lonely red ball dangling there all be its lonesome.  That must be what is meant to be done with this big box of balls'

But I digress.  And next year, I will be sure to either write clear instructions or be home during the application of the outdoor decorations.  I mean, I know our big plastic balls are a little hokey, but at least if there are multiples of them, it doesn't look like some weird red nose hanging on our house!

Anyhow, the solitary red ball had to go.

And, of course, we can't just use a ladder like normal people...oh, no.  We have to make a spectacle of ourselves to get it down.

Gabriel was looking on to be sure that we didn't sneak up there and take his lights down, too.

Don't worry, little buddy, we're still the odd ones in the neighborhood with our Christmas lights still up.  

Do Not Exasperate Your Children...

Ephesians 6:4  Fathers, do not exasperate your children, instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the LORD.


I firmly believe that children need to learn the meaning of the word 'no', and I believe that the sooner they learn it, the easier it will be on them, on the family, and on the community as a whole.  I believe that many parents have given up on trying to teach their children 'no' and rather go for 'no, ok?'  But to be effective, 'no' can't be framed as a question.  It is no because it is no.  It is not 'no' only if you want to agree with me.

I also do not believe that children should be allowed to run the house.  They should be taught that certain things are not ok and are off limits, especially for the youngest members of the family. Don't touch the computer, for example, or don't drink mommy's coffee Gabriel, or don't put your feet on the table at dinner time, or don't pull the cat's tail or try to take his food from his mouth while he's eating...you know, the things that not only protect the valuables in your house from being wantonly broken, but also to be sure that your children remain relatively safe in their home environment and it is an enjoyable experience for all involved.

But even though the word 'no' is used liberally around our house, I also believe that it is our duty a parents to set up areas where it's easy to follow the rules.  That way, things are more evened out.  You may get more 'no's' at the dinner table, for example, but the living room and your play place is pretty much free game, within reason.

Along those lines, when I see a problem area, I try to figure out if this is an area that needs a 'no' taught, or is this an area that needs to be rethought and redesigned with the kids in mind.

Our 'dining room', if you want to call it that, is actually the room that used to be the tiny kitchen before an addition was added to the house and the kitchen was moved back there.  To get to this 'new' kitchen, you must walk through the 'old' kitchen.  It is quite narrow and a little bit long, and has pretty narrow entrances to it on both ends.  In this small small space, we have a dining table pushed up against the wall with 5 chairs and a highchair crammed around it and 3 tall bookcases.  That means that if someone is sitting in a chair eating and you want to walk past them, they must push their chair all the way up to the table to their chest is touching the table so that you can get past behind their chair.

The bookcases hold most of the books that we have in our house.  The reason that they are there is because there really is no other place to put them.  We have a gate that we can close off so we can keep the littles either in or out of the dining room/kitchen area and away from the books.  But, of course, Jesse's favorite past time is to pull all of the books off the second shelf from the bottom and watch them hit the floor.  They make a wonderful slapping sound on the stone tiles we have in that room, and the pages flutter so wonderfully, it's easy to see how he just can't resist.  However, as much fun as he has pulling them off, it is not fun putting them back up, and it's not even like we can leave them down for the day and just collect them once a day because if we do that, they we can't walk back and forth to the kitchen.

I decided that this was not a place where I wanted to try to teach a 'no' so Elizabeth and I decided to take all the books off that shelf and leave that shelf empty.  Actually, to be honest, it was my idea and she was roped into helping.

This is what we started with (this was after they had been picked up and somewhat neatly placed back on the shelf):

...and this is what we ended up with:

There is something in front of the other shelf so that Jesse can't pull those books off right now.  You see, the problem is that we have too many books!  There is no way to empty those two shelves and still have all the books out.

So now I have come to a dilemma:

Do I put the extra books away to be taken back out who knows when?

or

Do I get rid of some of the books that we don't use as much and just figure that we can get them back out at the library if we ever want them?

Is it ethical to get rid of books?!?!?!?!?!?

It seems kind of pointless to put the books away.  I mean, if they are packed away, when am I ever going to say, "Wow!  We really have a lot of extra space here!  Let's pull out those old books that we haven't seen in years and stack them up right here!"

But on the other hand, it's really hard to get rid of books!

It does seem more practical to have a carefully chosen library of really awesome books so that they aren't lost in the mediocre ones, I guess, it's just hard to part with books.

Does anyone out there know what I mean?

Gymnastics Take 2

Today was Jo's second gymnastics class.  We had spent some time in the last few days talking about the class and what she thought of it, and what she should expect from it again.  She had said that she liked it and that she liked the other kids who are in it, (who are all younger than her since they don't have a homeschool class, so these are kids that are not yet kindergarten age) and she likes the teacher.  She just said that she felt new and felt as if she didn't belong there; like she shouldn't be there.  We talked about how sometimes we all feel that way in a new experience, but that with time, you can feel more comfortable, and we also talked about how a lot of the other kids in her class are new, too, and how she really does belong there just as much as anyone else.

And she was super excited to go to class this morning.

But then, things kind of fell apart again this afternoon.  She didn't want to learn her AWANA verse.  She couldn't concentrate on it.  Usually she has no problem memorizing the verses very quickly, but she just couldn't get her head around it today.

Then, she had a crying and screaming jag in the car on the way to AWANA.  She wanted one of the other kids in the car to quiz her on addition problems with some flash cards that she had, but they wanted to help her with her verse while she did that...one math problem, say the verse, then another math problem.  Jo has having none of that.  She was also upset about what was playing on the radio and whatever else she wanted to get upset about.

When we got to the 'safety' of the church, she was fine, and she managed to eat her dinner and say her verse in AWANA with no issues, but in the car on the way home, she had a problem keeping her hands to herself and keeping her voice at a normal car noise level rather than just screaming at the top of her lungs.

I am so frustrated!  Mostly with myself.  I mean, I really want her to be able to continue at this gym.  She seems to have a talent for gymnastics, and the price is discounted right now, and I think that if I were to talk to my brother, I might be able to convince him to invest in her and pay for at least a few months of classes, but I'm not sure that it's the best thing for Jo.  So, here I am, projecting what I want on her and not accepting the fact that she is the way she is and no matter how much I desire for her to be able to handle these things, it just may not be something that she can do.

So, I guess I will let her finish out the last 2 classes and let it go.  She definitely likes it, but if it makes her and all the rest of us miserable for the rest of the day afterwards, I guess it's just really not worth it.  And I can't keep denying that this is her reality for right now.