It's Wild Here

updates

 

The fossil and rock in the Buddha's hands were given to us by our friends at Family Hour at the Dharma Center - we have been attending regularly, 2x/month.

There will be new photos in the weekly albums to the right.

The babies are still sick although fevers seem to be gone. Coughs and snot remain. Sleep deprivation is severe.

The big boys are enjoying the snow, which is quite beautifully falling all morning. We're planning some sledding by the weekend if possible.

I'm reading An Abundance of Katherines, which is so far excellent. The characters are very smart teenage boys - one a prodigy and one a Muslim boy who was homeschooled until his current grade, 1o. He is at once dedicated to his religion but also irreverent about many things and very typically 15ish in his boy humor and attitude.  The story isn't doing much, which usually annoys me right away, but is fine this time - the characters are so engaging.

The near-end of January should console me

... but February isn't usually much better.  Very sick toddler is now medium sick, but up since 3am bc of medicine (?) and infant sick with same symptoms that made toddler very sick. Praises to the coffee gods. Curses upon mucus.

whining, naps, art, consonants

1. Kellen is sick with a bad cold. He didn't sleep for more than 30 minutes at a time last night, and the more typical amount was about 15 minutes. I'm a zombie. And a grumpy one. My big boys are going to find that the house rules today are very flexible.

2. I'm really tempted to see if Ryan can cut out his naps, at least a few days a week. I'm really craving an earlier bedtime for him, and I know Evan would like it - last night he sat in there with him for 2 hours. Granted, we probably started too early, but dang.

3. Kellen has begun the consonant-babbling; already we're getting bababa, mamama, and galgalgal.

4. Here is the aforementioned craftiness from Ryan last week:

ryan's projects

I've found a couple of pretty easy things to give to Ryan to keep him busy. I'm really feeling the camera shortage... wah!

He's fishing off the side of Evan's chair, like Little Bear, with his homemade fishing pole: yarn, drumstick, fridge magnet/clip.  His fish were hastily cut-out paper with adhesive magnets stuck on... Jeremiah is making them more beautiful right now, adding faces, etc.  Ryan did get a little too enthusiastic with his casting, and he clocked himself in the head with the "hook," which is rather heavy.

Yesterday, I took some round label stickers and colored them various colors - one color per sheet of stickers, so it only took about 15 seconds for 30 stickers. Took several sheets of paper and drew trees, stems, cars, faces - all missing their round parts. He added the stickers to make them complete. The page with the flowers is rather lovely.

Oh Canon, why do you have SO many different cameras? How can I choose the right one? On the bright side, this lack of photos is making me a bit more writerly here on this blog.

Jamie, Ryan and I have colds.

I don't think I talked about Christmas for R this year. (I know a lot of you have heard about this already, but for the record...) He had a wonderful time on the 23rd when everyone came here. He seemed to have a good time on Christmas Eve, visiting my dad (who gave him this very fun and busy truck ) and running around Uncle D's house and touching all the things a toddler shouldn't touch. He had a great time with his cousins and second cousin. Unfortunately, on the drive home he  complained that his tummy hurt, and proceeded to vomit several times before we made it back. Car full of winter clothes and gifts, into the carseat, etc etc. It was pretty awful for everyone, especially him.  His gifts sat under the tree for nearly 3 days - he'd make a half-hearted attempt to open one here and there, and then need to sleep. A pile of untouched gifts for a 2-year old on the 25th is just Very Sad.

Just typing this post is making me queasy, so I'll end it with a very concise summary:  we all caught it, and well, Christmas comes every year so we'll just look forward to the next one.

The highlights in gift-giving:

DS games for the big boys
Lego Creator Mythical Creatures for Evan
Star Wars lego for Jamie
Bionicle for Jeremiah
Climbing dome for Ryan
Giant dinosaur for Ryan
Wrapping paper and ribbon (and lots of socks) for Kellen
((drumroll please))  the #1 gift of the year, resulting in near-weeping from mama and very toasty toes:

handmade slippers for both parents - handmade BY their talented and generous older sons.  I can't wait to get pictures of these slippers up here for you to see. Grammy took J and J on two occasions to visit a special older friend who is a master sewing goddess. She and her daughter and Grammy helped the boys to sew these fleece slippers. It was hard work! They couldn't wait to give them to us, and tell us everything they'd learned. Did you know Mrs. K sewed parachutes in WW2?  Do you know how a serger works? We made all the pieces for these slippers and then we couldn't figure out how to put them together!  Can we have those slippers back now because we have to reinforce the seams for you...

::: love and thanks to all the slipper fairies this year :::

Your daily dose:

friday update

A day early.

We've had painters here all week. We have a wonderful newly-green room for the babies, blue, moldless bathroom, and a great shade of orange in the big boys' room and one wall of the dining room. As soon as I put the house back together and hang some pictures, I'll take pictures.

Having people in the house for three days is stressful for all of us. Having all our stuff piled up and covered with plastic was really stressful. We tried to get out, but this is not the time for hanging out in public places and catching lots of Christmas viruses. So mostly we were in the way, or they were in our way... something.

Yesterday, one outing we did take was to playgroup at the BC gym.  You know those big padded panels on the sides of gym walls, meant to withstand the full-force impact of grown men? Well, in our wonderfully kept gym, one of these fell on my baby :-( I was blathering on about something to someone, and I looked over to see one of this big wooden panels on top of Ryan, and Ryan howling. He was, between sobs, able to tell me that his head hurt but nothing else. He even did one of his little sideways hops to show me that his legs worked. So, we went upstairs to let someone know, and found a very nice man named Kelley, who took my name. 

Mimps is in the hospital. He'll be having surgery on his spine so that he can regain feeling in his legs. I know he is unhappy. I hope that anyone reading this will be thinking of him and picturing him calm and feeling safe. I hope that this surgery restores him to comfort.

nasty cold

This illness is moving fast - Kellen's been stuffy almost 2 days, Jeremiah since yesterday, and now with sore throat, and Evan this morning. I was ignoring my little throat tickle until the last hour, and now I feel pretty crappy.  I hope one of us can at least make it to the store for food.

Jamie is still well... hopefully he'll stay that way! 

House of Flu, spring, soccer, pregnancy

Recently, more people have been reading this blog than just the 3 family members who previously checked in. For this reason, I've tried to make my posts a tiny bit more interesting, add more pictures, talk more about knitting.

In the past, the blog was primarily about record-keeping for homeschooling and just general family history. As in, what year was it when Jamie dyed his hair green?  How old was Ryan when he stopped throwing food off his tray? Silly little stuff like that. And I'm not really getting those details in lately. So, I'm just saying, I have to go back to some of my older more boring posts, but I promise to keep adding the more amusing bits as well.  I mean, it's not like this blog could be anyone's source of real entertainment, so I know this isn't a big deal. Just FYI.

And along those lines...
- this flu will not leave the house. Jamie is almost up to 2 weeks sick. Not as sick as last week, but too sick to be normally active. Jeremiah is the same, but has had it much less time. Ryan is well. Evan is sick. I keep feeling slightly sick but don't seem to really get it. Thank goddess!
- I love spring. Even though our yard is muddy and leafy from non-raking in the fall, the weather is warmer. Even though it's raining almost constantly and I still barely see the sun, I can go out in  a sweater and take the toddler outside.
- soccer is starting up soon. The select/travel team last year was a nightmare for us, for various reasons. If you click "soccer" on the left in categories, I probably wrote about it some. I actually might have left out some of the most horrible stuff. Anyway, the boys are going to play rec league again this year so we don't have to travel, don't have to watch one of the boys sit on the side the whole game, don't pay an arm and leg, and don't lose every game (ok, I just summed up last year).  Fortunately, Jamie's select team is short player so they're willing to take as much playing from him as they can get. He can just play home games and join in on practices, so he should get lots of soccer in this spring. That's great for him.  Jeremiah is doing TTF and soccer at once, and those practices/classes always overlap, so I'm crossing my fingers on that - hoping for a soccer practice day that doesn't conflict.

I'll be in my third trimester on Tuesday (also the day Brokeback Mountain comes out on DVD). This pregnancy has flown by, now that I don't feel like crap. Same as with Ryan - every week that passes I think, I can't be THIS pregnant!  So, it's time to start checking things off the to-do list.

Baby is wiggling like a spaz! I have that alien-belly going on, and loving it.   

better this morning

Ryan and Jamie saw the doctor yesterday afternoon, and Ryan was given a shot of an antibiotic I can't remember. Big shot, no crying - what a guy. He was very happy to get out of there and go home, though (as were his mama and brothers).  The wait was long and the office was hot.

We've had to cancel our trip to Cincinnati to celebrate Kip's birthday and get all the kids together. We were really looking forward to that!

I didn't make this up

So, we're considering removing some of the foods Ryan consumes most, to see if we can detect any improvements in his irritability and sleep troubles.  I'm using the list from the Feingold Diet, which happens to be commonly used to treat Attention-Deficit-Disorder.

I just had the following exchange with Jeremiah, after explaining that there would be some foods we couldn't give Ryan for a while:

Me: So, another interesting thing about this list of foods is that they also can have an effect on kids who have difficulty staying focused.

J: blank stare

Me: did you hear me?

J: What?