This Post has Pictures!

The girls and I were invited to a friend’s for lunch while Casey was out of town this week, and this is what awaited us.  I was so touched.

We had couscous with avocado slices and the best Panini sandwiches I’ve ever had: turkey, provolone and pepper-jack cheeses, sautéed roasted red bell peppers and sundried tomatoes.  Delicious!

I asked T’s other guest to take pictures for me, because the presentation was so beautiful.  T is especially known for her creativity and eye for beauty, but I cannot get over how easily this type of thing comes to her.  She truly has a gift!  One that I certainly do not have (sadly) but I do appreciate!  It’s easy to forget how important presentation can be, since I pay so little attention to it myself, but this luncheon really reminded me how much difference it makes when attention is paid in this area.  I felt so spoiled, loved and well-hosted.

T’s presentation didn’t stop with the adults: she had this cute table set up for Claire and Haley, and even made place tags for them!  They feasted on turkey sandwiches and macaroni—YUM!

Here’s Ian close to a month ago, back when we were still spending long afternoons outside, picnicking on the back porch and playing in the water table.  (It has since gotten colder and we no longer spend ANY time on our northern-exposure back porch!)

This water table was a great idea, Sandy.  Thanks for pushing for it for over a year!  Sorry I didn’t give in to you earlier.  It has provided many hours of enjoyment.

My life.  (To my housekeeping chagrin, this love seat spends little time sans laundry.)

Ruby is all about “doing” school.

Playing hooky under the table is more along Claire’s lines of thinking.  I’ll nearly always allow her to opt out, and she almost always does, but once we go along without her, she comes back saying things like, “Well, I didn’t know you were going to use a jump rope!”  It’s all good, either way.  She and Haley are picking up so many things, just being around “school.”  This last week, I often heard Haley saying the days of the week and once-in-a-while, she’ll get the pointer and butcher the months of the year or the alphabet, all bossy-like.  It’s so cute.

I cannot. Stop. Kissing this guy.

For about a month now, Haley will pee on the potty on a whim.  She (and the other girls) get a Skittle (yes, we have bought them in bulk!) whenever the fancy takes her, but we are not officially potty training just yet.  I really do wait until they pretty much train themselves.  No power struggles, no drawn-out stuff.  It’s a battle I’m not willing to fight, and I’m okay with having kids in diapers for 6 more months than “usual” if it means we agreeably sail into total big-kid mode in little time.

Casey took the training wheels off Ruby’s bike last weekend.  She loves how fast she can now go!

(Can you tell I’m just going through our pictures for the last month?  Random, I know.  Casey switched the camera from taking pictures in raw format, so I’m catching up!)

In lieu of really camping, we made indoor s’mores this week.  It may be awhile before we camp again as a family.  I think the last time was sometime after we had Claire.

Ian is now four months old.  (And I still haven’t posted his birth story—I know.)  At his well-check on Wed, he was 16 pounds, 10 oz and 26 1/2 inches.   He is still a super-contented baby, but teething is now in full force, and he has been known to complain a little.  Still sweet as ever, though.  Two weeks ago, I got to enjoy my first time away from all children (2 hours: grocery shopping, but I loved it!).  About a week before that, Ian stayed with Casey (napping) while Ruby and I grocery shopped for my first hour away from my sweet little tub of testosterone.

Ian sleeps through the night, and it is a wonderful blessing.  Something I did not expect for awhile longer, but God was so gracious to have him start doing so at the beautiful age of 8 weeks without scheduling.  Generally, he’ll go a good 7-9 hours straight.  The ironic thing is that Haley has started waking for a 2 a.m. feeding every night for the last 2 weeks!

Yes, Haley is still nursing.  Correction: Haley is still breastfeeding.  No latching on for a few seconds here.  It’s interesting to think that when I went to my Bradley teacher training in September of 2009 and was gone from 16-month-old Haley for 5 days, I sadly expected she’d end up weaning because of it.  But here we are, over a year later, and she’s more into nursing than she was then!  Never, never, ever would I have believed you if you had told me that I would one day tandem breastfeed.  Would my sisters like to know what has happened to my cycle due to nursing two children?  Take a guess, ladies.  (It’s certainly not intuitive.)

The “Farm”

Casey and I took the fam to a local “farm” on Friday.  I put “farm” in quotes so that you will not be disappointed at the barren land that is the background of many of our pictures.  (I am also choosing pics that will not reveal just how barren the land is, because it really is depressing.)

This is how it is when you live in the desert!  The “farm” consisted of about 100 acres of corn and another 150 perhaps of pumpkins and gourds.  That was pretty much it.  Not much to sneeze at, but I am very thankful for one thing: all the acres had been bare ground (read, “dust”) whose topsoil had been blowing every spring and fall for years, straight across the interstate and right into our neighborhood.  Sometimes the blowing dust was so thick, it was hard to see even 10 feet in front of us when we were driving.  That’s pretty scary on an interstate!  Several accidents had been caused by the crazy amount of dust, and the prior solution was to put signs at the areas’ entrance: “Caution: zero visibility likely.”  If you are like me, you probably think that the planting of crops is a much better solution.

By far, the best part about this farm was that it was so close to our home, and that for most of our time there, we were the only customers.

We attempted the corn maze, but didn’t get far, and ended up coming out the way we came in.  I didn’t mind not finishing it (making it to every point/station), but it was a little de-motivating to not at least come out a different way!

(Haley’s face cracks me up—doesn’t she look like  a jack-o-lantern herself?)

Casey and the girls searched out a perfect carving pumpkin, as well as a little one.  The crops had been planted quite late, so there weren’t any really big pumpkins, but that made the job of choosing easier.

Yesterday, the girls chose a template and Casey carved their pumpkin with his Dremmel (?) tool.  A good deal better than a knife—it only took about 1/2 hour this time, as opposed to several hours.  R & C chose “Tigger the Pooh,” as they call him.  I am once again lazy, and am not downloading pictures just for a post (lame, I know), so I’ll post these pics of last year’s owl-carved pumpkin.  Maybe next year, I’ll post this year’s pumpkin!

I’m glad Casey gets into this and is willing to indulge the girls.  The girls love setting the pumpkin out on the porch and seeing how it looks from the street.  I love that simple things like this can make their day.

Okay Kar, since you asked:

Unfortunately, I only did video of the “glowing” pumpkin, so that requires yet one more download (that I haven’t done).  Ah, the complexity that technology gives!

Here’s a Random Peek

Here I sit with burning eyes, runny nose, sore throat and a fever, completely unable to fall asleep.  A lot has been going on lately regarding my “other occupation,” for which I have been very excited, and as a result of which, my brain has not wanted to turn off at bedtime.  I hope to share about it more within the next few weeks.  Wonderful, exciting news.

Case told me Sunday morning that I’d better take it easy, since today, he had several very important meetings at work and would not be able to stay home if I needed him.  I told him I was pretty used to the SAHM not-being-able-to-call-in-sick position, and I wasn’t too worried about it, but as he had this cold a couple weeks ago, he figured it would get pretty bad and wondered if we should call someone to help me with the kids.

He reiterated just how important the meetings were and that he absolutely would not be able to miss them, caveating to say that I’d pretty much have to be hospitalized . . . but I stopped him short: “Do you really want to say that?” I asked.  He only thought a split second and said no, he really didn’t, since last time (and the only other time, by the way) he had laid things out in such emphatic terms, I nearly ended up giving birth alone.  We had a good laugh thinking what it could look like if I took him literally today: “Only if blood is squirting out at least 3 feet, and you’re driving into ABQ with an appendage hanging by a thread, then you can call me and I’ll meet you at the hospital,” he teased, snickering.

I’m going to just do the bare minimum today and see if we can’t make it until Casey comes home late this evening.  Sigh.  This insomnia isn’t going to make the day any easier.

Other than an annoying cold that has made its rounds (I’m the last to succumb, which is typical), all is well here.  Homeschooling continues, albeit nothing like that first week.  As Sonlight admonishes, I have tweaked things to what works for me, and what works for the family, and homeschooling now blends its way nicely into our day.  The greatest challenge still lies in the discipline department, especially in regard to a 2-yr-old who, to quote a Proverb, “runs rapidly to evil.”  (Okay, so maybe it’s just the cupboard with the granola bars or my bathroom drawer with the toothpaste, lip balm and Vick’s vapo-rub, or the diaper bag with the wipes and Butt Paste, or my purse with the mascara, eyeliner and lipstick.)  Sometimes I wonder: where is the compliant child that is supposed to come along at some point in a family?  Oh well.  It’s actually a blessing that none of them are too compliant, ‘cause I know I’d get lazy and let a lot of non-behavior stuff go and just raise some Pharisees. (At least that’s what I tell myself.)

Perhaps Ian is the compliant child.  Though I would never place any bets, seeing that in my experience, the more compliant the infant, the more challenging the child.

But he is a sweetie.  Honestly, I can’t think of a time when I’ve felt “bothered” by him.  He’s even brought an enjoyment to things I’ve never actually loved, like breastfeeding.  And if ever there was a baby who could be scheduled, he’s the one.  (But I don’t.)  Nearly every moment of the day, he is the opposite of high-need.  At bedtime, I can (sometimes) even put him in his bed, wide-awake, and he will coo and finally fall asleep at some point with nary a fuss.  To anyone who wonders, “What?!  Isn’t that how babies are?” the answer is no.  They are not like that.  If it seems normal, then count yourself very blessed to not know any differently.

Ian’s giggling now, and he rolled over back-to-front last week, despite not yet having rolled the easier direction.  He hasn’t repeated it, so I’m likely to think it was just a fluke.  But he does try to roll any time he’s laid down.  Tonight, while I was trying to nurse him, he played a game with Casey, where he picked his head up and giggled at Case, then buried his face in my shirt.  Over and over.  I can’t help but think he is absolutely the most precious baby ever.

Ruby and Claire are doing well.  They have gotten to liking school again now that we’ve made necessary adjustments.   After completing the Kindergarten readers (27 tiny books with about 6-8 pages and less than 10 short-vowel words on a page) Ruby is on to the next level reader (bigger book with 8-10 short-vowel sentences on the beginning pages).  It’s the reader I had started her out on, since it was below her skill level, but too many sentences on a page really discouraged her, even if the words were easy.  It was a good lesson for me.

Claire is plugging along on the K readers, though she usually wants to read about a page every other day or less, and that may only be because there’s a Skittle involved.  It’s funny how children fluctuate, because about a year ago, she was getting blending concepts very quickly, but now she’s distracted and finds blending difficult.  I’m not pushing her to read.  I just ask every day, and sometimes she’ll take me up on it, sometimes she won’t.  Both of them pretty much do all the other “school” stuff together, and we all enjoy that.  Even Haley is getting to where she will sit down for part of a story (if it’s reading her books, she’ll  easily sit on my lap for a good 1/2 hour as I read book after book to her).

The girls have made friends with some neighbors that moved in during the summer, and it has been great to have some playmates for them.  They are really sweet kids—I feel spoiled to have these particular children living so close.  And there are plenty of them: 8 in one house.  Two families.  The circumstances are sad: one set of 5 children is being cared for by an aunt and a grandfather, due to their parents being drug addicts.  Two of the children have never lived with their parents, and were addicted to meth at birth.  My heart breaks for them.  I am amazed at how sweet they are for what they’ve been through.  The girls will play or talk with them at least once a day.  It’s also nice because Ruby’s “best friend” was the little boy that lived there, who is about a year older than she, and he wasn’t really into playing with girls, so she’d have her feelings hurt sometimes.  (Ironic thing: his nickname is Max, so “Ruby and Max” were playmates this past year.)  These are Max’s cousins, all but one are girls, and there is almost always someone who wants to climb the wall and come play with them.  For now, this is how it works best.  Even though my girls will beg me to let them go to their yard, it’s usually more than I can do to hang over the wall to supervise their every move.  Much better to keep an eye on them in our own yard.

We are hoping to visit the pumpkin patch on Friday, but a cold front has suddenly appeared, and we haven’t gotten out our fall/winter stuff yet, so we’ll see if we can make it before the nearby “farm” closes.