Clothes

Yesterday I sorted through bags of clothes that we have been storing for years now. Among those clothes were my prepregnancy clothes, those cute size 10's and lovely size small Tee-shirts. It was depressing. These clothes are all leaving my house!








See this shirt on my 4 year old? That was mine, I wore that, it was cute. Disgusting. Then I was pregnant with that same child, and it was all over.












I can't wear those clothes anymore now, but this is what I have instead.

Showers

Alexander started eating puffed rice cereal today. He thinks it is great. This evening he learned that banana mush is like glue for this cereal.










So after this gluing experience he had to be cleansed, which he does not think is great, in fact he is pretty sure it is evil. He hates having his face or hands wiped, he screams when put into the sink for a bath. The easies (but not most efficient) way to clean him is to take him to the sink and rinse his hands off. Tonight's gluing required more. Since our bath tub is currently out of service, the shower was his only option. He is not fond of the shower, with me holding him or crawling on the shower floor, he is not sure what that falling water is all about. However, he can now sit very well on his own, so tonight I sat him up in the shower. Started him out as far from the water as he could be, and moved him closer over time. He actually enjoyed it. He played in the shower for about 15 minutes!

Isabella, on the other hand, would live in the shower...honestly. Shower or bath, she doesn't care. She could stay in there all day. She usually outlasts Sophia by a good 15 minutes. Their favorite is when I give them shaving cream in the shower. We started this about a year ago I think. I was trying to think of the least messy way to let them "draw" in shaving cream and the shower seemed perfect. Some times they get tons (all over the walls) and sometimes I only give them a handful. They LOVE it.

It's quiet here

Everyone is sleeping now, ahh, quite. I should go to sleep too, it is 11:35, but I am enjoying the quite (by wasting my time on the computer!). I just did the nightly kid check, everyone is covered up, those who need diapers have them on, all is well.
Sophia is, of course, devoid of clothing. She does, however, have a diaper on so that is the least I can expect. This means that when she wakes up sometime between 3 and 5 (most likely) and comes into my bed she will slip between Faron and me and place her freezing cold feet/arms/legs/back/whatever onto my back. She and Isabella both do this, Isabella actually runs her feet to the bottom of my shirt and slips her toes underneath until she finds a good entry point to access my warm back. Funny how they can do that in their sleep.
It use to be when I would do the final night time check and I would see Isabella and Sophia still and asleep that it would dawn on me that Isabella is just a baby. During the day she is bright and intelligent, whitey and grown up, I forget she is 3. However in the last couple of weeks it has been that final nightly check that has revealed to me that Isabella is no longer a baby, she is a full blown kid. She is tall and mature, her baby face is gone, her feet are not baby feet but the feet of a kid who will be a tall girl. It is amazing.

Isabella will be 4 in 2 weeks. This is not that hard for me to accept, it is amazing that she is only 4 really. She constantly amazes me with her abilities. She is learning to read. Today she read "This cat is sick. This cat is sad" along with a list of about 9 other words. She flies through her reading lesson in about half the time the book says it will take for a 5 year old. We worked on her math computer game yesterday, which we haven't played for several months. It has just taken her into addition, so she was adding 1+2, 2+1 and so on all the way up to 5+2, 5+3. She gets it, no problem. You have 5, you add 2 more, you get 7 ok, lets move on shall we.

I think that my biggest problems with her education will be keeping her motivated and not boring her with repetition. Once she understands a concept she really doesn't want to have to repeat it. Her reading lessons usually begin with, "maybe I won't read all my words this time, maybe just half" or "do I have to do all of them?". However, she is also sensitive to failure, she holds herself to a very high standard. If she fears she will not be able to do something correctly she would rather not try it to begin with. I can't imagine where she would get such a trait, what a lovely gift for me to pass onto my child. So I have to walk the line between helping her push past her fears and not putting more pressure on her than she needs.

Sophia is a funny girl. She is every bit as quick and smart as Isabella, but she doesn't care nearly as much as Isabella does. If giving the wrong answer suits her needs more than answering correctly then she will. Up until about 6 months ago she had me pretty convinced that she didn't know her colors. I would ask her, "what color is this" and she would look at it (or not) and just give me any old color that came to mind. I would say, "no, that's purple" and her answer is, "yes, purple". She got the right answer, she didn't have to stop what she was doing to think about it, and she got me to stop asking her questions. When not being questioned, however, I find that she knows all of her colors perfectly well.

"Can you count, Sophia?", "No, I don't know how" or "8, 3, 5, 7". Playing hide and seek with Isabella I hear "1,2,3,4 here I come".

If it isn't fun then what is the point? However, she could have a whole conversation with you about anything you would like, be it real or pretend. Feed her a joke and stop half way, she can figure out where you are going and finish it for you. Even when I think she isn't paying attention (why do we parents continue to think kids aren't paying attention to things?) she knows exactly what is going on. Leaving the Nature Sanctuary last week Isabella asked me why the tour guide was playing bird calls while we were walking. I had already answered this question at least 2 times so I said, "why was she, do you remember?". Sophia quotes my answer word for word, "to try to get the other birds to come over to us".

My biggest educational challenge with her: tell me why this is important to me, make it fun, make it quick!

Kids are loud

Kids are loud, I don't think they can be any other way. It is just in their nature, especially if you are on the phone, or the baby is almost asleep, or you are trying to hear something. Faron is working from home today, and he spends most of his day on the phone on one meeting or another, so it is fun trying to keep them quiet and away from him. They have done pretty well though, considering the circumstances.

We have tried to do quiet things, played computer games, watched 2 movies (shhh, don't tell), colored, looked at books, stuff like that. We have had to stay up in my bed room, so our options are limited, but the work day is almost finished, so I think it has been a success.

I just had to stop typing to go get Alexander and set the girls up coloring while I feed him. As I was walking away Isabella starts saying, "How can a young man keep his way pure? According to the word." That is from watching the Donut Man movie today, so maybe the movies weren't so bad.

My friend Melissa from Austin called me today, I don't think I have talked to her for at least a year. That is about how often we communicate, once a year or so. It is still nice to keep in touch. She catches me up on all the friends I had from living in Austin, none of whom (aside from her) do I have any contact with. Our middle daughters are about 1 month apart, and our sons are 5 months apart, so we are in similar circumstances!

bloggin

So, I have finally jumped in, I am bloggin.

I think this will be fun, I have never been faithful to keep a journal, but I often want to write, so I think this is the spot. I'm sure it will be a smorgasbord of random thoughts, soap boxes, kid quotes and stories, and picture gallery-ing (and making up words).

Kid quotes: This is Sophia's impression of Pop, so it is harder to tell than just a quote, but try to picture it. She says "Pop does..." and cocks her head sideways, raises her eyebrows, closes her eyes and starts making up a song. And he does, so she is right!

Isabella's word for the week is "flabby-oso" which is her version of Fabuloso, which is what I say as the Spanish form of Fabulous. No idea if it really is the spanish word, but that is what I say. Her word though, flabby-oso, is really just a great way to describe arms and such.

So, here is my random soap box for the day:

Why do kids play "monster"? Why do cartoons feature monsters? Is there some logical reason (aside from it being a great idea of Satan's) that we inadvertently teach our children that evil and dark spiritual forces are pretend and funny? How silly of us is that? If I am teaching my children about Christ and how to live the christian life, why would I not also teach them that we have an enemy who is real, not cartoonish?