More Isaac Stories

Brian told Isaac to come to him because he had to tell him a secret.  He told him, "I love you, Bud."  Isaac replies, "Can I tell people?"

There was an early baseball game on Memorial Day in the middle of the cul de sac.  We had extra kids at the house overnight and so the whole house was up at 6:30am which is early for us to ALL be awake.  So Brian took them all (minus Drewy) out to play baseball at 7:30am.  The neighbors heard the commotion and sent their kids out too.  One little girl was getting upset that she wasn't fast enough to get on base.  Isaac tells her he will race her and "go slow so she can win."  Sweet boy!  She told her parents that Isaac is nicer than all the boys at her school.

While reading Isaac one of his favorite Magic Tree House books, he asks me why Jack closed his eyes.  I told him he was scared and sometimes people close their eyes when they are scared so they don't have to see what is making them scared.  He says, "Oh, I think he was closing his eyes because gnats were flying around his face."  Can you tell it is gnat season in Maryland?

Paper Airplanes

Isaac asked me to make him a spider airplane like in the book.  He wanted it hairy!

The kids got a paper airplane book, and there have been airplanes in every corner of my house ever since.   A good investment if you need a fun open-ended summer activity.  I had to help them get started and then they were off.  We had paper airplane races in the front yard the first day we got the book out.

The Droid: 37 Weeks

My little monster started eating normally again, but gets upset when I put him into the highchair for just a couple minutes.  Once I get him some Cheerios he stops fussing and eats them until his main meal arrives.  He tried hummus and hard boiled egg yolk this week.  He is getting better at picking up food and making most of it end up in his mouth instead of everywhere else.  These are the moments I miss having a dog.  I spend a lot more time sweeping and scrounging the floor for dropped food than I ever did when Murray was around.

Drew is pulling up on higher things now, like kitchen chairs.  He is saying "Uh Oh" all day everyday.  He is starting to figure out how to play "So Big" but hasn't mastered it 100% yet.  His fourth tooth (the other top front tooth) came through finally after looking like it was going to drag his gums down with it for two weeks. 

As for his schedule, he took the third nap whenever we were able to give it to him.  Since we had a busy week with our friends in town we were out more in the evenings.  The days we were out in the evenings he skipped it and was just a little fussy around 5pm, but dinner at 5:30pm seemed to recharge him.  We went to lunch after Mass on Sunday and it was right at nap time.  He was good for the first half, but just got too overly tired and I had to walk with him in the sling a bit to help him fall asleep.  Once he did it was time to leave and I was able to transfer him to the car seat and then to his bed at home so he could finish his (total) 2 hour nap.  Even after that being later in the day he still was so ready for his evening nap just a smidgen later than usual (5:15-5:45pm.)  I guess we wore him out.

You can see three of his four teeth in this picture.

Notice Drew is nearly always looking at the camera and smiling.  I was just taking a picture of Isaac relaxing all cute, but Drew thought he was in it too, so I zoomed out.

Good morning, Boys!

Drew has a new favorite toy.  This soccer ball that is squishy is his bestie, but pretty much any ball that he can carry around will do in a pinch.  If he needs both of his hands, or they are full of other toys while he is trying to crawl, he will carry it around in his mouth like a dog.  I'll have to get a picture of that!

"I never go anywhere without a ball in my hand!  This one is my favorite.  I can even crawl with it in my hand." ~Drew

So many headbands!

 We have a whole drawer full of headbands and bows in the kid's bathroom.  So I like to get some on display so we can find the one we need quicker.  I have been meaning to make one of these forever.  Who knew that with a hot glue gun it only takes about 10 minutes?  I made two, one for us and one for our neighbor's birthday.  She is the headband queen!

Empty headband holder for my neighbor.

Our headband holder maxed out!

We have a whole drawer full of headbands and bows in the kid's bathroom.  So I like to get some on display so we can find the one we need quicker.  I have been meaning to make one of these forever.  Who knew that with a hot glue gun it only takes about 10 minutes?  I made two, one for us and one for our neighbor's birthday.  She is the headband queen!

What have we been up to?

We finished up the spring session of school this past week.  The girls both took the first grade CAT standardized test.  I am mailing that off this week, but it looks like they did pretty well.  We also had friends from Germany come in and have been helping them out.  On top of all that, we have had a lot of skin rashes and issues.  Here's my sweet Genna with her second face rash this month.  

It does not show up well in pictures.  I should have taken some pictures earlier when half of her face was swollen.  I am guessing this was poison ivy, but there's no way to know for sure.  The doctor gave her Zyrtec and a stronger topical steroid and sent us on our way.  It took about 5 days to be pretty faint.  After finding out Isaac had a Staph infection on his face a few months ago that I had let go on for two months thinking it was Excema, I am a little more sensitive to the rashes and run to the doctor. 

She looks so grown up in my bandana!

 It has been very busy around here, and the blogging may have to be light for the next couple of weeks while we get some things accomplished and pack up for our big road trip.

Leaving the nest

I am so thankful that I am talking about the baby birds in our backyard and not my own baby birds.  I am in no way prepared for them to leave the nest.

Hannah, Drew, and I saw one of this baby bird's first flights ever.  He couldn't get very high, so we were able to get a picture of him when he landed on the fence.

Wrapping up!

Isaac is drawing Darth Vader.

 The official school year is coming to a close.  We have only to take the California standardized test in the next few days and then we are taking a break for a week or more.  Then the more relaxed summer session will begin.  We will be doing some traveling and will be taking our work on the road to catch up in Math, Spelling, and History.  I only plan to do about 3 hours a week of school work.  I have teaching some sewing on the agenda, but that seems to be pushed out by priority a lot.  In addition to that, the girls both have summer reading lists, and I am trying to come up with projects for them to do for their books.  

Hannah's Summer Reading List:

Winnie-the -Pooh 

Mary Poppins

The Railway Children

Genevieve's Summer Reading List:

Charolette's Web

The Trumpet of the Swan

 We have been having school upstairs in the dining room the last few weeks.  Drew gets bored in the basement and I haven't had the time to make it fun for him yet.  

 

School time

The girls built this for History.  It is the Pharos lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

I had my home-school review yesterday and it went even better than last time, mainly that it was much quicker this time.  Last review was great, but took an hour.  This time I was in and out in 15 minutes.  She let me do the girls side by side which really helped with the time since they are doing so much of the same work.  She was very impressed with the girls reading level (You have to bring in a sample of what they are reading, so I always bring the latest book they've read.)  All is well, and it looks like I am free to go on with another year of home-schooling.

Drew's 36 Week Update

He was playing nicely and I tried to sneak a picture.

When he saw what I was doing he stopped to give me a big smile for the camera.  This was how Hannah was when she was a baby.

First time for Drew to pull up all by himself!  Sorry, his face is a mess because he was in between dinner and a bath.

Drew is officially crawling on all fours all the time now, even on the hard floors.  As you can see in the picture he is pulling up on low things now.  He is pretty obedient, especially when you look back at how Isaac was at this age (i.e. into the dog water bowl and the computer cords 300 times a day.)  Drew will listen most of the time with a firm "No, Drew!" without me having to even go redirect him.  Huge blessing!  Things that I have to tell him "No" about are cords, floor vents, and the lowest level of wine bottles on our wine bar.  I am a firm believer in doing minimal baby-proofing, meaning we only baby proof things that are a real danger and not everything we don't want him to have.  So the things that we have baby-proofed are the standing lights and confining "too small" toys to tables and the girls' bedroom.  Isaac has only one bucket of small things that is kept up high in his room.  Also, we have a gate that blocks off the hall upstairs from the stairway.  As of now we are blocking off the girls' room with their toy chest that slides right in front of the door because they can get over it easier than a gate.

Saturday night as we walk in the door from my uncle's party at 11:30pm, a half asleep Drew throws up all over me.  Brian wiped us down so we could make it to the bathroom upstairs and get him cleaned up in a midnight bath.  I nursed him a very short time and put him to bed after rocking him for a little bit to make sure he was okay.  He was pretty awake from the bath, but he settled down and went to sleep quietly in his bed.  He threw up a little bit in his crib, but I guess it didn't even wake him up because I discovered it in the morning when I went to check on him.  Poor baby had a mini stomach bug that only really lasted 24 hours.  He is still not eating normally, but he wasn't really eating much all week compared to how much he usually eats anyway.  The only new food I recall is sweet potato "fries."  He's had sweet potatoes before, but not the actual baked "fries" that I make.

After some rough days at the end of last week, I decided to add the third nap back in to his schedule.  He fought it a couple of days, but then settled into it again.  I just think he wasn't able to handle the long stretch of wake time at the end of the day.

His bedtime routine improved a bit by having the room more lit during the story time portion.  I have the issue of not having anywhere to put a lamp for a story in his room, but the rocking chair is right next to the window.  So instead of using the light from the hallway which was minimal, I pull back his curtains for the story time and he is more willing to sit and listen to the book while sitting up in my lap.  I wasn't sure if this would cause him to take longer to settle in for a nap or not, but it didn't at all.  In fact, he settled quicker with less of the "wigglies" that he usually has while I pray with him.  He was more likely to be actually awake when I put him down which is preferable anyway, especially since he didn't even fuss when he drifted off to sleep on his own in his crib.

Sibling Update

I caught the girls like this during their reading/quiet time one day this week.

The girls are really getting along great.  Genna is like Hannah's shadow.  They prefer not to play with Isaac sometimes when they are doing girly stuff which causes a bit of trouble.  Isaac is having a hard time playing by himself (unless it is structured time,) and always wants to play with the girls.  The good thing is since Drew is crawling, everyone suddenly wants to play with him again.  Once he is bigger and playing cars and trains, maybe Isaac will have his very own playmate for all those times when the girls bust out the crafts or dolls.

First Try

This was my first attempt at a baby sling.  Too short for an adult, but there are two little girls who are greatly benefiting from my mommy brain.  I made two more adult-sized ones immediately after.  I had to go use a friend's sewing machine because my machines would not go through the thicker part of the pleats.  Also, she had a rolled hem foot which is going to have to be on my wish list.  Those are amazing!

Babies

 Outside my bedroom window, right by our deck in the back is a nest of baby  birds with two very devoted parents.  The kids are loving checking on these guys every day.

The leaves were blocking the view of the babies here.

You can kind of see one of the chick's heads in this picture.

Both mom and dad bird get very mad and loud when ever we get remotely close to the nest.  They try to distract us and draw us away from the nest.  I love their protective instincts.

Here's a better shot of either the mom or the dad. 

American Heritage Girls Award Ceremony

 
Hannah is a Tenderheart in American Heritage Girls.  Next year Genna will get to be one too.  Hannah's award ceremony, to give badges and such, was earlier this week.  She received the Joining Award and the Fire Safety, Toys and Games, Home Care and Repair, and Flag badges.  That means I have some sewing to do.

Hannah is posing for a photo after being given the badges.  It was an Olympic themed ceremony.

Now Hannah is posing for just me after the ceremony.

Hannah has made some sweet friends in this group and it is all homeschooling families (mostly Catholic) since the meetings are during the day.  I love that AHG is a great substitute for the more liberal scouting programs available to girls  and that AHG upholds the morals we want to instill in our daughters.

Pictures just for fun!

These two were being pretty silly, as usual!

Hannah was trying to brush Isaac's newly cut hair before Mass on Sunday.

Genevieve looked cute on Sunday with her signature side ponytail.  She doesn't like regular ponytails in the back because you can't see her hair and she thinks she looks like a boy.  Whatever!  Like she could ever look like a boy with her pink fluffies she is always wearing.

Drew's 8 months old now! (35 Week Update)

Drewy's eyes are still blue!

Drew has never been consistently fun to rock and read to before bed.   He has the bedtime routine wiggles.  It goes something like this...

Drew turns around to face me.  I try to read a book to him while he wiggles incessantly, alternating between straightening out his legs and rubbing his face on me.  I try to engage him in the book or show him a picture and he usually refuses.  Drew wiggles down where his face is buried in my stomach and his legs are on my lap.  I pull him up on my shoulder.  Repeat.  At this point I occasionally put the book down in efforts to hold on to the wiggle worm and read by heart since I have all these books memorized.  Then I pray with him as well as I can while he continues in the manner described above, usually praying for extra patience for me.  Then I sing the song.  Aah!  Here he finally settles down usually.  It is sudden.  One minute he is kicking and burying his face and the next he is still and blinky.  Usually before I can finish one song, many times he is asleep or almost asleep.  I lay him down no matter what he is doing at this point and he goes to sleep with little to no fussing most of the time.

So that is what I go through three or four times a day.  Every time I am about ready to throw in the towel on the whole routine and just lay him down he gets better about it and I change my mind.  I feel like that is our "special"(I use that term loosely since only the last 30 seconds are actually enjoyable to either one of us) time alone which is rare in his little babyhood, being number 4, and I think the rest of the kids learned a lot during story time and prayer time as they grew up.  I don't want to give up on him yet.  If I have the time I am trying to read an extra book to him right before we actually make it to the rocking chair and see if he enjoys that more.  The jury is still out on that one.

His nap schedule is changing.  He started sleeping for two 2 hour long naps, and so I dropped his third nap on the days he did that (most of the week,) but Saturday evening I gave him that third nap since he woke from his second before 3pm.  I put him to bed for the night just a tad later (since he had an evening nap) and he cried for 30 minutes before falling asleep which he almost never does.  I can only think of one or two times he has done that in his whole life at bedtime.  Since then he has been off.  The last 2 days when I put him down for the evening nap he cried through it, only 30 minutes.  I am not sure yet if this is due to my changing his schedule around or just another one of those mysterious baby phases. 

He is getting better at crawling on the carpet, but still scooting a lot on the hard floor.  He has learned to play "Where's Drew?"  He hides his face and then looks at us and giggles when we say, "There he is!" 

Drew eats a lot.  None of my other kids ever ate more than one jar of baby food, especially not Isaac.  But Drew can finish 2 easy most meals.  I am just now adding in a lunch for him.  Another thing that is startlingly different from the other three kids is that he doesn't gag when I add texture of finger foods to his meal.  Hannah and Isaac took a while before they could eat anything that didn't dissolve in their mouths.  This week Drew tasted some finger foods, like tiny pieces of chicken, diced banana, pears, and raspberries, and even pasta that I squished up pretty good.  He has really caught onto the drinking from a soft spout sippy cup or bottle.  He sucks down the water pretty well now and this has helped the constipation tremendously!  Praise God!  In fact, I could swear the boy is signing "drink" now.  I'll have to see if it is reproducible though because it was just Tuesday morning.  I thought he was signing "eat" but he got mad when I tried to feed him and it was right after Isaac brought me his sippy cup.  So I offered it and he was happy with that.  Time will tell if it was really a sign.

Hannah is a natural with babies!  It's great to have a helper who knows how to make a baby happy.

Mother's Day

Here are my gifts from Mother's Day this year.  Hannah made me the toilet paper doll that we named Clyvette.  Genna made me the sign and the hair clip (with a birthday kit she received.)  The girls both made me the "golf" card.  Initially I was thrown by the golf picture since I am not really a golf person, but then I figured out that she wanted to make a flag with a piece of ribbon and needed something to go with it.  The bottles are from Sweet Saurus and are flavoring to add to drinks, namely my diet caffeine-free Coke obsession.  It was as close as Brian could get to bringing Sonic or QT to me, and if you know me that's one of the best presents ever.

Silly Kids

The kids were being super silly the other day after lunch, and I video taped some of their antics.

Watch for Drew in the background too.

 

DIA (Drew In Action)

This video was taken last Wednesday of Drew doing his remix crawl.  He switches in the middle of the crawl to different methods.  Usually it starts with the belly scoot, then the one legged crawl, then on both knees, and then back to the scoot when his clothed knees slip out from under him on the hard floor or his bare knees start to hurt.

Sing it!

I love memorization!  I always have.  Kids are great at it too.  I have been underwhelmed by the amount of memorization in the First Language Lessons and, therefore, I have been adding our own poetry, Bible verses, and other things to memorize.   When they have trouble learning a list of something, I looked for a song on the internet about it first.  (I found a song about coin values this way.)  If that failed I made up my own lyrics to an old tune.  (I made up songs about the 7 sacraments, the brain, and even the Phoenicians this way.)

Then I discovered Classically Catholic Memory.  It is a program that does all that for me.  The best part is that since we follow a basic 4 year rotational classical curriculum, it matches up with our studies exactly.  Next fall we have a new co-op that will be devoted to this memorization as well.  I am very excited about that because I finally found a group of Type A women (these women put me to shame!) who are using the same curriculum as myself and have similarly aged children.  There are 6 families and 20 children all under the age of 9, and 5 of them are infants right now.  It will be great!

Here are some videos of some of the memorization performed by Hannah.

34 Weeks, Our Drewsy Update

This guy is going through a tough time right now.  All four front teeth are coming in one right after the other.  Last Tuesday two had poked through and now the other bottom one is poking through.  The top one is close behind.  He is also learning to crawl.  All of this adds up to some irregular naps and a cranky baby...still.  I know I have said that the last several weeks, but it is what it is.  Some days he maxes out his three naps, some days he only sleeps half an hour for two of the naps.

You can't see his teeth in these pictures.  I'll have to get some in a week or so once they are out enough to see in pictures.

His favorite toys are things that roll, but especially cylinder-shaped things such as oatmeal containers.  In fact, that was the first time he did the Army crawl was chasing an oatmeal can around the kitchen just after his last blog update last Tuesday.  His first real crawl on hands and knees was to get Trinity, our cat.  She flopped down a little ways away and was swishing her tail all tempting-like at Drew.  So he took her challenge and went after it.  Funny thing is she let him grab her tail and shake it around.  I was waiting in the wings, ready to jump in if she got hurt or mad.  She never did though.   I guess Trinity has learned tolerance from her 6 1/2 years of babysitting.  Drew loves that kitty!

He has finally figured out how to actually suck on the sippy cup and is getting more water down each day.  This has made a huge difference in his constipation problem, and I am hoping that glycerin suppositories will stay in our past.  His new foods this week are graham crackers, a tiny bit of refried beans and guacamole (we were at a Mexican restaurant, what can I say?), spinach, and plums. 

I guess I don't really have many pictures of this guy this week.  It has been busy with the party and visitors, and now we have a couple of sickies in the house.  Hannah has a relatively mild stomach bug and Brian has a fever.  They are holed up in the master bedroom together as I write, quarantined.  No fun!

Trees in Isaac's head

At dinner, Isaac interrupts our conversation with the girls about a spiritual matter to say, "Inside my head I have a tree with fruit on it."

We are giving him the benefit of the doubt that what he meant was he was thinking about a tree with fruit on it, but you never know with this boy.

Somewhere over the rainbow Genna's turning six!

 Genna's Rainbow Party was this afternoon.  This was a really fun party to put together.  Genna lucked out because I had my energy back for this one.  First we made a list of all the guests and assigned them all colors of the rainbow.  This turned out to be a lot handier than I even imagined because I was able to serve food and cake by rainbow color instead of having a 10 little girls and 3 little boys all asking me for something at the same time.  I also assigned teams by color and there wasn't anyone left out.

The invitations were super easy.  I found these card stock already cut and in the colors of the rainbow.  I printed out the info in different color font.  Then I added the adorable stickers of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

 

Baking the rainbow cake was a little more involved than I thought it would be, and definitely a lot messier.  The cake is always my favorite part of any party though.  The plan was to make the cake a rainbow swirl and to decorate it with a Skittle rainbow.

I made my regular white cake batter and then divided up the cake batter into small bowls.  I used food gels to color the batter.

Then I layered (starting with red since I would be flipping it over) in two different pans.

This is what the baked cakes looked like in the pans.

I sorted Skittles.

 To ice it, I colored most of the icing blue with Wilton dye, and left a bit white.  I put a layer of white icing in between the layers of cake and used it for the clouds also.  I had a vision of the rainbow fanning out and was pleased that it worked out.  When I was adding the clouds, I was inspired to curve around the edge and down the side of the cake.  This led me to extending the rainbow down the side of the cake as well, but I did have to wrestle the Skittles back from my brother-in-law first.  Then I added Skittles around the bottom edge instead of piping.

Rainbow party prizes

Genna's rainbow wreath- I got the idea for this here.  This is a stinky picture, but there are flowers from the whole rainbow made out of felt.  I also put stickers to spell her name on the mini banner.

Extra mini rainbow fruit trays- These were a big hit and there was only a few pieces of fruit left on one of the three fruit trays at the end of the party which Genna quickly ate while we were cleaning up.

Rainbow fruit tray with marshmallow clouds and a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow

 We set up for the party and the girls helped with some last minute details after mass.

Notice the rainbow goldfish next to the cute birthday girl?

Skittles jar for anyone who doesn't get a skittle part of the cake.  Yea for not having kids ask for a certain slice of the cake!

Brian even found some multicolor potato chips.

 I made the pom poms hanging over the table and outside from the tree from tissue paper after watching a YouTube video.  I just hot glued the banners together. 

Hanging pom poms from the front tree to help people find the house.

 The favors were a headband that I made out of rainbow ribbon and elastic, their t-shirts that they decorated during the party, a note pad I made out of paint samples, and some "gold" from the pot at the end of the rainbow (AKA mini Reece's.)  All the favors were, of course, the color that the child was assigned to when they received their invitation.

As guests arrived they donned an apron and got to decorating their shirts with fabric markers.

After a quick game of rainbow tag the pizzas arrived and everyone dug in.

They modeled their shirts for a rainbow picture!  I am going to print these to send with the "thank you" cards.

My favorite part...the rainbow picture!

 Games included rainbow tag, an egg on a spoon race with matching plastic eggs to their assigned colors, and a three-legged race.  The blue team won the three-legged race.

Red Team!

Add they're off!

Singing to our Rainbow Girl!

Look how the inside turned out.  I was very happy with the result.

Opening gifts

 The final activity was the water balloon toss.  This was saved for the end in case everyone was soaked.  Nothing like picking up your daughter from a party sopping wet, right?  Better than having 13 wet kids trampling through my house!

Water balloon toss turned into water balloon chaos.

This party totally wore me out!  Whew!  I am going to bed!