My email Christmas card

I had a request to update my blog, cause, you know, it's been sooooooo long. So here: Merry Christmas! THE LINK IS FIXED

THANKS MICHELLE! The kids got a big kick out of it!)

Brave Boys in the bathtub

I was trying to catch a video of Justin singing while he was playing but I only caught a second or two. It was VERY cute, so of course he refused to do it after he noticed me.

(NOTE: you might want to turn the volume down, Timothy yells in the middle of it). It also shows the big thing for baths right now-putting your head in the water. Leanna started this craze, it's a big deal for her to do this. She's still afraid and doesn't like the sound the water makes in her ears. Justin had no problem whatsoever doing it from the first time on and now Timothy has to immitate his big brother. They still get a big kick out of hearing me say how brave they are. I like how you also see how quickly Justin puts his head in the water after hearing me praise Timothy-a little competitiveness there!

Pictures of Jacob

These are Jacob, just taken this morning.

The world according to Justin

Tom had to work early this morning so I had all three boys with me to take Leanna to school. On the way home a helicoptor flew by and we stopped to watch it. It was close enough that we could see the blades turning. Justin informed me, "That has a fan on it. That's why I'm so cold!"

Bugs

I've not been posting a lot lately because of the holiday and being sick and now bugs. We've been in lice hell here. It's mainly Leanna and I, but I pulled lots of baby ones out of Timothy and Justin's hair yesterday. My Mom's been coming over once a day to check my hair but she's too tired to do a thorough enough job and Tom's too tired and impatient to do it either. (But thank you for helping at all Mom!!) My hair is a nightmare to do. I have such fine hair that it's almost impossible. I really really hate bugs. At this point I think I have all the adult ones out of all the kids' hair-which means I just have to keep on top of the eggs which can be hatching every day.

As I was going through Justin's hair at night he said, "Bugs, it's MY body and you can't break it!" He was completely serious and oh-so cute.

Holiday Lights

I walked to the grocery store with the kids tonight and it was early evening. It was actually a pretty good trip for them, mainly because Timothy fell asleep, he's my biggest trouble maker when we're out right now. By the time we left the store it was dark. Leanna and Justin agreed that it was a little scary being out in the dark like that, but it was actually a good thing because they got to enjoy the few houses that have Christmas lights up already. And Justin particularly liked it. The blinking lights really amazed him-he asked, "How do they DO that!?" (I said "magic!") They oohhed and ahhed over every decorated house we saw.

Even though I've been through this stuff before with Leanna, it still amazes me how kids just get blown away by the simplest things. The look on Justin's face and the sound in his voice-stuff like that is why you have kids.

For Laura

Underoos!

Cyber Monday

The article shows many online companies giving discounts for shopping online on Monday.

Claire's boyfriend

I tried, but this is the best picture I could get! They were in a hurry and he didn't even get out of the car-they've been together for about two months.

Justin, being himself

Claire, dancing

and Maree' posing. She took about a million and 2 pictures of herself with her camera. And mainly in the pose you see above. I swear, I even saw her throw her body on the floor and then gaze into the camera as she took her own picture!

Love the pose

Note the crossed ankles!

Group Shot

Need I even comment? LOL, they're cute, even though not perfect. That's our bunch.

Thanksgiving

Maree' had giant hoop earrings and an unnecessary slanted belt, she looked cute.

Claire shows off the dessert she made for HER BOYFRIEND's FAMILY! (We do not rate, she's never made a dessert for us!)

It took a while for the food to be ready-or maybe Leanna was just waiting for the mashed potatoes.

Grocery list

I dont' remember adding one of these items to the grocery list:

Well, I guess he's right too

I almost forgot this one.........Did you ever see that Charmin commercial with the annimated bears? The one where the bear is wearing a bunch of necklaces and they talk about how kids always take too much (Obviously meaning toilet paper).......
The other week that commercial was on and Justin walked by me, sadly shaking his head, "Yeah, kids always take too much jewelery."

Sesame Street has changed......

I didn't realize Sesame Street was THAT different! The Sesame Street I watched as a kid is now labeled NOT FOR KIDS!
Not the point but I have to mention it: I found this story on the parentdish website and some people blame Elmo for the shift(Or his introduction would be the jump-the-shark moment). But I love Elmo!! He is so cute and furry and red! He is Grover, little and dipped in Kool-aid!! I don't know any kid that doesn't like Elmo. In fact, when Tickle me Elmo first came out I really wanted one. One day while working at McDonalds word was out that the local toys R us just got a shipment in and one manager left work to try to get one. She came back empty handed but said if she had been able to she would have bought one for her neice or nephew(I don't remember which-that was a while ago) and she said she would gave got me one also! I had to wait a couple years to finally get mine. Timothy plays with him now. Poor Elmo has a bad rep now!

Fighting colds

Generally I love that information is so available today through the Internet. Sometimes it's scary. We've all been fighting a minor cold here for a while(the kind that doesn't seem to go away, it's nothing major, and doesn't really bother us much but it's there!) and yesterday Jacob's turned into a cough as well. I don't like that in an infant. So stories like this only make me worry: killer cold virus

The internet can be a good source of info as well. I've been fighting off what I'm pretty sure was tonsillitis and it seems to finally be going away. (They no longer take tonsils out just because they get infected. If it becomes a repeated thing or it's cancerous, then they remove them) (Also there are two ways to become infected-if its bacterial, then antibiotics will help. But if it's viral then antibiotics can actually make it worse.) I can't afford to go to a doctor, so in this case it was nice to be able to look up symptoms and get an idea of what I'm dealing with. I know it's easy to misdiagnose, and in my case, made me feel better to know that even if I went to the doctor they wouldn't necessarily be able to make it better anyway.

Prayer request

It just occurred to me to add a plea for anyone who reads this site and is also religiously inclined, please pray for my Uncle Bob (Aunt Cindy's husband) and my Dad. Both have recently been diagnosed with cancer, prostate and skin, respectively. I don't know much in the way of details yet except that Uncle Bob's is the most aggressive kind. My Dad doesn't know much about his yet, they told him he has skin cancer and not much else. He has to wait for the appointment to find out details.

Aprons

While I'm posting I'll just add these. They are some of my Aunt Cindy's aprons she's been making from jeans or pants. She sold them at a craft fair for her church. I think she's selling them for $15.00 each. Actually I think the first batch was cuter, but here are a few of her aprons. I took pictures of them for inspiration for my own crafts (If I ever have time to do them again!). I think the gingerbread and the purple ones are my favorites from this batch.

Homework

Tom is really annoyed with the whole idea of first graders having homework every night. In kindergarten she had homework once a week, and occasionally not at all. This year she has it every night but Friday. Tom says it's the teacher's job to teach that stuff at school, not ours. I don't exactly agree with that. I think some homework is ok, to help reinforce, not teach, what they are supposed to be learning in school. With large classrooms and so many things to do, I think it would be hard to get enough practice with everything just through school time. Particularly if a student has trouble in an area.

I've really been amazed at the stuff they do at such a young age though-in kindergarten learning to tell time and do graphs and such! But this kind of takes the cake-she's doing algebra! It says it right on the homework paper. I suppose this would count as pre-algebra, since they're not using an X (as in X-2=5). Instead there's just a blank space for them to fill in. I just don't see how this is helpful. Why do they need to know that in first grade? We had trouble getting that homework done-I didn't know how to explain to her how to do 78 take away 10. The way she does it is to draw 78 circles and then to make Xs over 10 of them and count what's left. Do you know how long that takes? Forever! I mean, she still occasionally forgets numbers when counting to 100, so how is this something she needs to know? Am I the only one who thinks this is rediculous??

It really annoys me because it seems as though the entire educational program is geared towards testing, not actual learning. I have the parent/teacher conference on Tuesday, we'll see what she has to say about it. Unfortunately I don't think anything can or will be done about it.

The parade

Beginning a very bad week, we missed Leanna in the parade. We were 8 minutes late, it was later than I had realized and I had no idea that the Veterans day parade was so short. It was only a half hour long and they had the girl scouts right at the beginning. I wish I had known that they would be in front I would have made sure to be ready early. My Dad made it out, and he actually saw the girl scouts, but didn't see Leanna. I am so very dissapointed about it. I ran all the way down to the end of the parade, with Jacob in the sling, but they were already walking back(they were headed to the PPL to earn a badge) so I saw her, but not in the parade.

So here you can see her walking back with her troop leaders. There were other girls behind her from other troops too, but she was the only one from her troop to march.

Monkey doctor

It occured to me this week that the Curious George show is kinda silly. The episode where Curious George takes over for a doctor and sees a bunch of patients was on. I love how the patients have no problem being seen by a monkey. No clue anything's amiss, there's just a monkey here today! LOL. The kids all love that show though.

Timothy playing

An illustration of what I was talking about in the other post. He also likes to make a train of cars and they zoom around the living room.

He fell asleep like this

He was actually sleeping like this the other night.

Observations

Before I forget to record these:

*Jacob is the only one of my children who cares that he needs a diaper change. Seriously, the other three had no problem sitting in their own mess.

*Timothy is fun to watch playing. He sits there in his own world playing with his cars (usually) or whatever toy, and just enjoying himself. To be clear, the others will play alone, it's not a problem. I just don't remember them being as involved in it.

*It's also really cute to see the three of them playing together, for example doing Ring-around-the-Rosie and similar games (motorboat).

*Earlier this week I was giving Jacob a bath and Justin walked in and said "You're washing his hair off!"
(Jacob's doesn't have much hair in the top front, and with his hair wet, well, it looked like the washcloth was taking the hair away)

Just cause

I thought a few of you might enjoy this........I don't agree with all their choices, but there's a few good ones in there.....

Raven

Remember little Olivia from the Cosby show? She's all grown up and has her own show on the Disney channel(That's so Raven) and even a series of movies she starred in(Cheetah Girls). She also has a website where she gets all Martha Stewarty: http://ravensymonepresents.com/
I sent the link to Maree but I'm putting it here to because it's really kind of interesting. She shows you how to fix an underwire bra when the underwire keeps coming out, how to make mini-sandwhiches, and how to glam up your phone. Among other things.

I love that she's a bigger girl and has her own show and dresses fashionably. She is talented so it's nice to see that she hasn't been discriminated against simply because of her weight. So many tv and movie stars today are interchangable and even look similar. Good for her for breaking out of the mold!

Sweet Book

I found this book when I worked at BNN while pregnant with Justin. It makes me cry. The author has written many many books, and I just found his website. He has audio recordings of himself reading the books (Great for when you just can't bring yourself to read it once again, or if you just want something besides games for the kids to do on the computer). But my favorite part is the story behind the books he's written. I find it interesting to know what inspired the story. For this particular book, it is sad, but nice that so many people love the book that was inspired by his loss:

Love You Forever started as a song.
"I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
as long as I'm living my baby you'll be."

I made that up after my wife and I had two babies born dead. The song was my song to my dead babies. For a long time I had it in my head and I couldn't even sing it because every time I tried to sing it I cried. It was very strange having a song in my head that I couldn't sing.
For a long time it was just a song but one day, while telling stories at a big theatre at the University of Guelph, it occurred to me that I might be able to make a story around the song.
Out popped Love You Forever, pretty much the way it is in the book.
My regular publisher felt that it was not really a kid's book and I ended up doing it with another publisher.
One day the publisher called up and said "This is very strange. It is selling very well in retirement communities in Arizona. It is selling in retirement communities where kids are illegal. This is supposed to be a children's book. What is going on?"
"Grownups are buying it for grownups!"
In fact, it turned out that parents buy it for grandparents and grandparents buy it for parents and kids buy it for everybody and everybody buys it for kids.
As a matter of fact, everybody buys it for everybody. That's why it sells a lot of copies. I think it's my best book. So far it has sold about 15,000,000 copies.
Everybody makes up their own song for this book. I would like to put different versions of the song up on this site, now that the site has sound on it. If you send me your version, either as a tape or an audio file or a MR3 file, I will try to put it up in the LOVE YOU page. If lots of people send me their versions, I will not be able to put them all up, but I would like to hear them even if I can't put them on the site.
The way I sing it in the story is just MY version. You are supposed to make up your own.

Picture-taking

Whenever I try to take Jacob's picture he is captivated by the flash and I end up with pictures like this, lol.

(We just put the swing up tonight, we couldn't put it up for the last two babies because there was no molding around the doorway).

Parade

Anyone is welcome to join us in watching the Veteran's Day parade tomorrow afternoon. Leanna will be marching as a Brownie(With pants and a coat though, way too cold for this outfit!) Email me if you want details. Afterwards she'll be earning another Try It patch. It ought to be interesting to see how she does marching in public, she can be soooo shy sometimes.

Decorating

On Tuesday Leanna had off from school. (After the early morning meeting with our landlord) we got crafty. I brought my little paints down and we made handprint Turkeys to decorate with. I think someone needs to get them lots of fingerpaints and big paper to go with because they had way too much fun with the paints. I spent twice as much time cleaning up as I did actually helping them paint. (Hair, clothes, table, floor, sink, you get the picture)

I decorated Timothy's handprint for him and Leanna kind of copied what I did.

Just like Daddy

When Tom worked on the staircase earlier this week, someone was paying attention. He went and got his hat and a pencil and sat at Tom's feet, watching.

On the subject of embarrassing your kids.....

I think the worst thing my Mom ever did was to wear a sweatshirt that said "Sex Olympics" on the front. In public! (COMPLETLY INEXPLICABLY!) She got the sweatshirt from my Aunt Cindy. She even wore it to work, when we both worked at the same place. So people I knew and worked with saw her in it!! The horror!

(Of course now, I can appreciate that she had a sense of humor. Back then it wasn't funny at all)

Parenting a teen

From that same blog(I'm catching up, I haven't been there for a while) a glimpse at what the teen years will be like. I'd guess those of you who've raised teens already would enjoy this.

Also from that blog

Also from the blog that inspired my blog's name:

Embarrassing the kids

Talks like this are coming, sooner than I'd like. I'll have to remember her tactics, she makes it fun for her. (She loves to tell stories about how she embarrasses her kids and/or husband or friends)

An excerpt from the blog my blog title comes from(follow the link for the full story):

So I look at my son and say with a perfectly straight face, “So, would you like to talk about sex now? I know the word penis and I’m not afraid to use it.”
*Cue shocked and appalled look from my son. He replies to me in a very preteen, angsty way, “Mooommmmmm!”
Seeing that I have pushed a button, demon mom kicks in.
“Seriously. Shall we talk scrotum? Which, by the way, is the plural of scrotum scrotums? Scrotumeses? Scroti?…..”

Well, I don't mind the baby.......

It would be so nice to take care of no one but ME. No one at all but myself. I don't need it to be forever, just for a little bit. That would just be lovely.

Descriptive

LOL, Timothy just told me "diaper.....burp" I had to first establish that his diaper was dry and clean before I realized what he meant!

Homework

I feel like I have homework again now. It's not that it's horribly long or difficult to do.......every night but Friday she has to do some type of math problem(usually involves drawing a picture and writting out the math), a series of sheets of words she has to read correctly to me, and a book she has to read for me. I sign papers that she's done the last two. It's mainly difficult to find a time I'm free to sit with her (clear a space on the couch or table or wherever is convenient) and get her to concentrate. Particularly with the words and book she has to read, she gets very silly. She has a tendancy to rush through, making simple mistakes on words she knows. It's a pain in the butt!

Wilson Halloween

Tom decided we'd take the kids Trick or Treating in Wilson afterall because he was disgusted with how little they got trick or treating. I didn't mind that, but it was much more fun to do it while it wasn't raining. And they got to go with Maree'. Don't you love her eyelashes? She took them off right away though and only put them on so I could get a picture. If you can't tell Maree' was half devil half angel, or as her Mom put it, "herself."

Pop-Pop J. got to hold Jacob again, and he was done before Jacob was(meaning Jacob let him hold him with no problems). That's quite a relief for me! It's no fun having a baby who won't let others hold him!!

Recent stuff

Random recent stuff:

1. *This morning Justin was lying on the couch reading Jacob a story-very cute.

*I've heard from two different people this week that Leanna's school is a good one(one of them is a teacher at the high school, so presumably knows what she's talking about). That's good to know.

*My parents got bluetooths, and they're so excited about it I thought it was worth mentioning.

* I was looking forward to a slow paced week after spending the first week of the month trying to clean and prepare for Timmy's birthday party, then the next week trying to get Leanna's costume made and cleaning for a home meeting with our Forrester's Rep. Then I had the two days where I was preparing for trick or treating-we did go to Wilson also (ironing the costumes, get the clothes to keep warm underneath the costumes.gathering all props and baskets, make sure I have extra bags in case it gets too heavy for them, bring along coats/blankets in case it's too cold, charge the camera batteries and unload pictures, get the stroller ready and bring the sling just in case, and get everyone dressed and fed and ready), and we also had the nurse from the Forrester's group make a home visit, so again the house needed to be relatively clean. I was really looking forward to things being normal again after Monday, but then our landlord called. We're supposed to sign papers next week to buy the house. And the price was lowered a little, which makes me sooooo relieved, you have no idea! So it's finally happening. But our landlady has never been in the house since we moved in. And part of our agreement was lower rent in exchange for Tom repairing the damage previous tenants had done to the house. So she's at the very least going to want to walk through the first floor, possibly the whole house. ARRRRGGGGHHHH! Now this woman had five children herself so she must at some point have had some messes. But she seems extremely organized, she runs her own mortgage company and has a real no-nonsense attitude. And I'm pretty sure her kids weren't as rambunctious as ours are! So I don't think she would be as sympathetic as some. This means Tom must clear his junk off the front porch (Hallelujah!) and the backyard. He might even try to finish a few home projects he started but never finished. But it will be a lot of work to have everything presentable enough for a tour. Wish us luck-both with the house deal and the mess!

An Official Brownie Girl Scout

Last night we watched Leanna's Investiture Ceremony into Brownies. She's official now! It was really cute because her troop is only 3 girls-and the one girl is mildly autistic so she was too shy to do anything but sit at the table, she wouldn't talk at all. One of the leaders read the brownie story and Leanna and the other girl acted it out as she read. Except that in front of people she doesn' t know, Leanna is very shy. So she would only act it out when the other girl started, looking at her before making a move. They were very cute. The ceremony ends with each girl looking down in a mirror (representing water) and the leader says, "I looked in the water and saw_______" and the girl says, "myself." The girl is supposed to repeat the promise but with Leanna, the leader looked down at her and asked if she was going to repeat the words. She glanced at Leanna and said, "Ok, I'm getting the look. She's not going to talk!" I know exactly what look she means, even though I couldn't see Leanna's face at that point!

She got her two pins, one representing Girl Scouts worldwide, the other her Brownie Pin. The Brownie pin stays upside-down until she does a good deed. She also got two Try It patches, one was for the stuff she did at the field trip, I forget what the other one was from.

I think Leanna will be marching in a Veteran's Day parade next week. They also said they'll have a skating party and a dorney park day. I'm excited for her! It sounds like lots of fun.