Things that are making me smile today

• This mucky little boy is such a delight! And that messy face makes me so happy because he is eating!! We saw his dietitian yesterday and his weight gain is within the required parameters for him to still be classified as underweight but NOT failing to thrive (he is gaining 6 grams per day). Such a relief, although there is still a long ways to go! But I have discovered a new yogurt that he loves with 300 calories/14 g. fat per cup, so I'm sort of ridiculously happy about that (it seriously tastes like ice cream).
• I am almost done painting all of the woodwork in our home. I've been dreading painting the doors (there are 14 of them--and so many hinges!!) for so long and on Monday I finally bit the bullet and started. I am now about 90% done and yippee!! Things are looking so bright and cheery. I love the change. 
• Speaking of painting, Neil came home from work Monday night at about 1 am and I was still painting--he looked around in amazement and I showed him all my blisters and then I was like, I think I deserve an area rug (because I have been dithering for the longest time over whether it was worth spending the $$ but I HATED looking at our stained living room carpet and it made me grumpy every time I walked past, no matter how many times I scrubbed at the stains)...anyway, he was like, yes, go get your rug. So yesterday I did and it's gorgeous. 
• I am sending out some feelers for some summer work. During the school year I am so busy with teaching that once summer hits I'm like, hey, project central! I think I should spend money with all my free time! So I'm trying to get some more editing projects going to give me something to do other than think about Pinterest (need an editor? Shoot me an email!). I really do enjoy editing...I was working on a paper for one of Neil's colleagues over the holiday weekend and it was fun to learn more about what is happening in Neil's lab.
• The kids are done with school on Friday! Yes, there's some definite trepidation in my mind, but overall I am really excited because I have so many fun things planned! Same sort of schedule that we've always done--adventure day, learning day, art day, etc. etc.
• I spent last week with my parents, two of my sisters, and my maternal grandparents. I took the boys with me and we spent Tuesday-Friday with them all. It was so nice and so relaxing and so fun to see my sisters. Really just delightful! When I got home the house was shining and immaculate and I was so excited to see the girls & Neil again. We hired a babysitter and Neil and I went for an 8-mile run and talked a million miles a minute and then showered at his lab and had dinner and then wandered around Target (Neil is so kind! He does not like that sort of thing but I love it).
• The kids and I hit the library yesterday. Always such a delight. Jules was being a total stinker later and hiding in my room with a book when it was time to go to piano lessons...Neil told her that she had lost reading privileges for the rest of the day. That night she was crying in bed and I went in to talk to her and she looked up at me with her big brown eyes and said, "Mom, it's just that reading is my life! I pinky promise that I will be so so good forever if I can have my reading privileges back tomorrow!" So sad but also so cute at the same time.
• Right now the boys are sitting on the couch looking at a book together all snuggled up against each other's shoulder. This is an awesome change from yesterday when they were wrestling ALL DAY long. Super fun for 5 minutes and then they whack each other and get mad and start hitting and biting and then I have to separate them and then two minutes later they're friends again for the next five minutes...repeat, repeat, repeat. We ended the day with a bloody bite on Isaac's shoulder from feral Luke.
• I am so in love with our chickens. They are so funny and I love watching them gallop around the yard and chase the scraps that we throw to them (it makes me feel so much better about all the food the kids don't eat!). Isaac was telling me in great detail today which of the chickens have the reddest combs and wattles and then we had a very long talk about eggs vs. chicks and how the chicks grow from eggs. I just love that this is a part of our life now...and I love that the kids get so much joy out of watching the chickens and reporting on their interactions (right now the speculation is that Pomegranate may actually be a rooster!! Oh, you cannot possibly imagine the suspense and drama that this is causing in my kids' world these days! It is easily the #1 topic of conversation ALL THE TIME. That and what perfidies that sneaky Gloria is up to...good thing we have all the Gertrudes who are considerably more docile if not quite so exciting (Juliet's favorite thing is to pick up a Gertrude and sit with it on her lap while she swings and sings to the Gertrude...oh and in case I forgot to mention this we gave up on telling the Buff Orpingtons apart and we just call them all "The Gertrudes" collectively).
• Lots more good things but Tot wants to eat the keyboard so I'm done for now. 

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Civil War Days

Last June we spent a day at Conner Prairie, which is an amazing interactive living history museum (I would highly recommend it if you're ever in the vicinity!)

We had a wonderful time last year, but I was thrilled to learn during our visit then that every May they organize "Civil War Days" and provide a venue for a mock battle with lots of reenactors--so of course I put it on our calendar!

Conner Prairie already has a pretty large focus on how the Civil War affected our state, but it was neat to learn even more, since they tailor the focus of some of the other exhibits (i.e. 1836 Prairietown becomes 1863 Prairietown and everyone changes their clothing accordingly). It was so fun seeing all of the reenactors there wandering around in their period clothing--my favorite was that it wasn't just men; there were tons of women and children too! They had all camped on site the night before and so there were two areas designated as campgrounds for the Union and the Confederate troops...we wandered through the tents and talked to people cooking over fires and sampled hardtack.

Surprise! It was super hard.

 There were lots of fun things going on--cavalry drills and musket practice (and bayonet practice, although we skipped that one) and drumlines and cannon demos and whatnot (oops, this one is a bit too zoomed in!).

A few hours after we got there, we found our places (front row!) for the battle. I think the most exciting part was that we were hanging out in Prairietown watching chickens, which we had been doing for almost an hour because all of us were completely fascinated with comparing them to our chickens at home--and Neil and I were both discussing our crazy envy of the awesome rooster!--and we heard the drums and huzzahing and realized the Union army was marching by on their way to the battle, flags waving and boots stomping and all that. So we caught up and enjoyed the noise and spectacle. 

And then we watched the Union troops come at the Confederates, who were hiding behind some cabins and fences. The Union eventually won (although we thought that in reality the Confederates would have won since they had a way better position and were firing from cover at a tightly massed group of soldiers who were marching veeerry slowly and making no use of their cavalry).

 Anyway, it probably wasn't very realistic but it was lots of fun to watch--lots of cannons making "shaky booms!" as Isaac called it, and I think the most interesting part was that we were right next to the field surgeon's tent so we had the entertainment of seeing actors come in on stretchers to be evaluated for their "wounds"--some of them were very into it and some of them totally weren't at all. We decided that the best actor we saw all day was this kid who was probably 12 and toppled over very realistically rather than carefully lowering himself down and finding a comfortable position. There were definitely different degrees of authenticity. :-)

I made it into exactly one picture the entire day and this is how it turned out. Oh well! I was there!

One of my favorite things about Conner Prairie is that pretty much nothing is off-limits and the people who work there are really friendly and informative, but not pushy at all--you know how sometimes you go on a tour and you have to hear every single detail about the provenance of each piece of china? I'm sure that the Conner Prairie guides could tell you about that sort of thing if you'd like, but they are SO great about being helpful without being intrusive. And everything is set up for you to actually DO something--it's not just a look and learn kind of thing. Want to learn how to spin or weave? Awesome, give it a try! Want to milk a goat? Sounds great! Right over here! Want to gather eggs? There's a bunch in the nesting boxes.

Case in point: my kids learning to use a draw knife.

Or Luke happily filling this wheelbarrow with straw and running it all around the barnyard.

Or Juliet getting things set up for milking (the guide here told us what dates we should return if we want to help with milking).

(At this point Neil turned to me and said, "We need a farm.")

 So, for instance, at this particular homestead, here are the things you can do:

1) Pump water and water all of the herbs.
2) Pump water and take it to the pigs (there is a map by the water pump so you know where the pigs are).
3) Pump water and use it to wash clothing, which you can then hang out to dry.
4) Go in to the apothecary shop and grind up the dried plants hanging there, which you can see growing out in the raised beds.

We love this little homestead and always seem to spend quite a bit of time there! I love the spicy-sweet smell of the apothecary and Abigail and I passed some happy time grinding up sage and thyme.

 I ran out of iPad battery pretty early on in our day, but another thing that the kids LOVE and probably could spend (literally) all day doing if time had allowed...there is a general store with a ton of wooden boxes stacked along one wall and a sign posted overhead asking you to move the boxes out to the waiting Conestoga wagon outside. And then once you finish moving them to the wagon, of course the wagon has a sign asking if you'd mind moving the shipment to the store! I don't know why this was so fascinating but I think the kids did box-moving three separate times. I offered repeatedly to let them carry groceries from the car to the 'fridge but they weren't interested.

No surprise here that Jules and Luke raided the dress-ups before we left home and Abigail and Isaac totally refused. :-) Oh these funny kids and their determined little personalities!

Isaac's last preschool program

A few days ago Luke, Nathan, and I went to Isaac's preschool for his last program of the year--he is now officially finished with preschool! It was bittersweet--he has LOVED preschool so much and he was very sad to finish (you can see some of that in this photo with his dear teachers!).



I can't say enough good things about our experience with preschool. Juliet attended the same one and I was so thrilled that Isaac was also able to go there! At the beginning of the year I was SO worried about him--he absolutely hated to be separated from me and every Sunday he would scream and cry and kick at his church teachers whenever I dropped him off for Primary. I felt awful every time (fortunately his teachers, a husband and wife, have 6 children of their own and were totally amazing with him, even when he bit one of them during the Primary program!). I really didn't know if he would be ready for preschool but I felt like we should try in hopes that it would help with some of his separation anxiety.

After Isaac's tonsils and adenoids were removed, almost every day I told Neil that I thought we should just pull him out of preschool, but his teachers were so patient and loving with him as he re-acclimated to the schedule (oh boy did he make it exciting for them for a few weeks!). And over the past year I have seen his confidence and social skills just grow by leaps and bounds! He always talks excitedly to me about his friends and what he did at recess and was so thrilled last week to spend the morning playing with a buddy from school.
 

Isaac has always been my child who is most interested in art/puzzles/projects/building/whatnot. He has absolutely LOVED this aspect of preschool! An art project every day is his idea of heaven. I was so touched that his teachers would often take the time to tell me a few extra details about Isaac's focus and intensity with whatever they were working on that day--he is truly passionate about his creations!

I am so grateful for Isaac's amazing teachers and all of the time, energy, and love that they have invested in him this past year. They are incredible!!

Luke turns 3!

Oh, how I adore this little monkey!!--and monkey he certainly is! The years are flying by--I can't believe that it's already been three years since I first held this darling boy of mine. And oh, I am so glad that he is still a cuddler and a snuggler! He was upset about something today and I was lying down with a book (aren't Sundays the best?!) and he came in and got in bed with me and I rubbed his back and just soaked up the sweet little boy smell of his skin while he told me in great detail about his woes.

As I've written here before, Luke has the most delightful imagination and is constantly narrating his inner stories--I love to just listen to the dialogue between his toys (he has unique voices for every single toy and character!) He is almost always wearing a dress-up of some sort whether we are at home or out running errands--if you see a little blond boy wearing a Yoda hat or cat ears or a monkey suit, it just might be Luke!

Luke is certainly edging into his third year with a three-year-old's temper, and some days I have to chant out loud to myself, "I love Luke! I love Luke! I love Luke!" But like most three-year-olds, within moments he swings right back to my sunshine boy and the world is right again. Luke definitely does best when he has 100% of my attention, and I must say I'm a little worried now that school is coming to an end and we're facing the imminent demise of our one-on-one mornings when Natie is napping and all the biggies are at school! Luke and I usually spend those mornings curled up together with a giant pile of books (he always always always must sit in my lap, and he's getting so big now that I can't see over his head!).

When Isaac is at home, Luke is invariably following him around imitating whatever Isaac does. Isaac, being a clever child, assigns Luke tasks like, "Find me 17 yellow K'nex short pieces" and Luke patiently hunts through the K'nex bin and brings his spoils to Isaac.

Luke was and is my most flexible child in terms of sleep, routine, and diet. He is the only baby who has ever slept in my arms past two months of age--oh, the beauty of that little two-year-old boy asleep on my shoulder in church!!--and still naps whenever I can convince him to stop moving long enough to fall asleep. On Thursday I settled him on the couch with a pile of books after we finished reading Little House on the Prairie and he was out in minutes!

I love this kid so much. Such a darling sweetheart who fills my heart with joy.

Abigail is nine!

So guess what?! Abigail turned nine--almost a month ago! I've been waiting to post about her birthday until I remembered to get a photo of her under the birthday banner (I even hung it up again so I could take the photo; it was up on her birthday but Natie yanked it down), but I keep forgetting, so...maybe I can get one on Luke's birthday Monday.

Abigail designed her own cake. I love that kid! She requested a chocolate mint cake with purple mint-flavored buttercream frosting, topping with York patties (which she placed) and then drizzled with chocolate ganache. And yes, it was a pretty amazing cake. Yum yum yum.

This last year has really been delightful with Abigail. Neil and I were talking the other night about how she has suddenly become our biggest reassurance that we are doing this parenting thing right! It seems like overnight she has become helpful, compassionate, thoughtful, grateful, responsible, and self-motivated. Yes, she still has moments when she's a little stinker (Abs, if you're reading this, I'm thinking about tonight when you turned on the shower so I'd think you were in there and then went to bed with a book!), but by and large she has become so dependable and thoughtful and just fun! I love talking with her and hearing her thoughts on things--she is bright and articulate and analytical. One of my favorite things about her is how diligently she works to conquer difficult things--she has become such a good pianist and it's 100% due to her steady hours of practice. The other day she was working on some really tricky long division homework and she just kept plugging away! I was sitting next to her rubbing her back and remembering my own long division experiences in third grade, and I was so proud of my little girl who just kept working steadily until her work was done.

Abigail is not only quick to help, especially with Nathan, who as ever completely adores her! She is endlessly creative and is still just as much of a bookworm as ever--a very thoughtful bookworm who will often check a book out of her school or classroom library because she thinks it will appeal to me. I adore my little girl so much and I am SO incredibly proud of the choices she is making to be diligent, compassionate, hard-working, and righteous!

Mother's Day: Family ties

My first little baby, Abigail Grace, was born at the end of my first year of graduate school. I was so busy working on my thesis, teaching, and taking my own classes that I didn't even think about doing any research or reading on motherhood. It just seemed like something that would come naturally--right?




































After nine years as a mother, I have learned so much about how to mother effectively, but I've also learned that some things make me feel like I've had a good mothering day and some things make me feel like I've completely wasted my day. I've learned that I have to consciously plan and research and prioritize my choices as a mother, just as I did as a graduate student and just as I do at work.



I've written about this before, but the most transcendent thing for me has been realizing that I need to deliberately create situations that allow us to strengthen our bonds as a family and our love for each other. Somehow I just sort of thought that these kinds of moments would happen on their own, and that contriving them was cheating. And now I realize that sometimes the magic strikes without warning, but more often than not, I have to really work hard to get us out of our normal chaos and busyness and responsibilities so that we can focus on each other--and it is SO imperative to do so!!

For me, the best way to make this happen is to leave our house behind and go outside. I always joke that I feel like an amazing mom when we're out in the woods together, but it's true! Leaving all of our responsibilities behind--the homework, the piano practice, the laundry, the dishes--allows us to just be together and focus on finding the perfect walking stick. We're able to shed our personas and roles and just be together.

Every season I spend some serious time planning our family activities to really try to knit together this group of mine--I usually start a couple of months before the seasons change and sketch out a tentative list and then during Family Home Evening we make a list as a family.

A few weeks ago around Nathan's birthday we started on our spring list--we went camping as a family. We picked the girls up from school and headed south to a state park which we had yet to explore--it was a perfect evening for camping and we had a delightful dinner around the campfire before we started roaming through the woods near our campsite. When we came back, we ate the Dutch oven cherry cobbler that Neil had made for Nathan's birthday. The kids started roasting marshmallows for s'mores (except for Jules, who wasn't feeling well and crawled into her sleeping bag with a book--she was such a trooper and insisted that we still go adventuring when we told her we could reschedule!). We sat around the fire laughing and talking together until about 10 pm, when all the kids insisted on going to sleep. The biggies fell asleep right away and Neil and I sat around the fire for another couple of hours talking about our hopes and dreams.

When we went to bed, Lukey woke up and decided he would be more comfortable inside my sleeping bag with me. The two of us had just reached an agreement regarding who would get the majority of my pillow (Luke!) and fallen asleep again when Natie woke up and made his displeasure clear in no uncertain terms! He was SO loud and so angry!! All of the other kids woke up and were so good-humored about Nathan's wailing (Jules and I went on an expedition to a nearby outhouse and were reassured by all of the snoring we passed on the way that our fellow campers were happily sleeping through Nathan's caterwauling). We ended up passing around a box of fruit snacks, chuckling as Isaac made a "disco party" with his flashlight, and Natie finally fell asleep again.

In the morning we had the obligatory hot chocolate, pancakes, sausage, and eggs that make any camping trip that much more delightful. The kids washed the dishes while Neil and I started packing up, and then everybody worked together to roll up sleeping bags and fold up the tent. It warmed my heart to see how cheerful and willing to contribute all of the children were, especially when Abigail bounded over and said, "Dad! How can I help?!"

We set off for one of the most delightful and challenging hikes I have ever been on. Sadly, no photos, since I still haven't replaced my camera (the lens jammed and neither Neil nor I have been able to fix it, even with all of the YouTube tutorials out there!) and I didn't want to bring my iPad on the hike. Turns out this was a good move, since we were hiking up a narrow, rocky streambed that necessitated straddling the stream and moving our feet along the sheer rock walls on each side! It was strenuous and quite difficult but immensely fun and incredibly beautiful. As always, the trickier the footing, the more interesting the hike is to our children--at one point we emerged from the watercourse into a beautiful forest and everyone was instantly bored/hot/too tired to walk until we hit the next bend in the stream and its tumbled rocks, at which point all our little gazelles took off again!


Highlights: we found a 5-foot-long black snake, we crossed a beautiful suspension bridge, we found lots of beautiful shells, and we got to clamber down a series of ladders bypassing a waterfall. Absolutely beautiful and we had an amazing time together as a family.

Yesterday we went on a trip that has been soooo long in the planning since it required a lot of coordination--we took the girls to spend a day at the Kings Island amusement park! The boys had a wonderful time here with a babysitter and we had an amazing time just focusing on our two girls. It was SO great to have time where we were able to do "big kid" things and really zero in on those oldest two of ours. It was the most wonderful day--just enough rain to really keep the crowds down (I think our longest wait was 15 minutes for any ride, which is CRAZY!), breezy and beautiful and cool, and the girls were so happy and cooperative and appreciative. Abigail stopped at one point and said, "Mom and Dad, thank you so much--I know you had to do a lot of planning and that this was really expensive, and I just want to tell you that this is the best day of my life." Can you say heart-warming?

Highlights from the day:

• Juliet's insistence that we go on a specific water ride, and then asking just after we had embarked, "Um, Mommy...what does "drenched" mean?"
• One of the kids' favorite bands came on over the park loudspeakers (Imagine Dragons!) and I started dancing and trying to get the girls to dance with me, and Juliet said, "Mom, it's not that I don't want to dance with you...I just don't want to look like a maniac."
• Abigail is a total roller coaster fiend! She rode more than anyone else (thanks to the Parent Swap program & Jules deciding that she would rather not ride most of the coasters, so Neil & Abigail would ride one, and then Abigail & I would ride it again). Neil and I both started to feel like we were aging out of our roller coaster-enjoying years, but boy, Abigail had the time of her life!
• Juliet found a few rides that she just adored and we did them over and over and over again--7 times for the flying-on-your-stomach one and 6 times for the bumper cars!
• We bought the insanely overpriced blue ice cream just when all of us thought we were so nauseated that we couldn't keep going. It magically cured the nausea and gave us energy for the next eight hours! (Word to the wise: if you get motion sickness, do NOT go on the roller coaster where you lie down on your back and zoom around backwards upside down.)
• Holding hands everywhere. I don't think I took very many steps all day without both of the girls holding my hands. I rarely get to do this with them anymore since my arms are always full of Nathan or Luke, and it was such a treat to have my little girls clinging to my hands while they hopped up and down with excitement.
• Getting a chance to just focus on 100% pure fun & enjoyment of each other's company. I love getting the opportunity to all just be friends together instead of Mom & Dad &  to let the kids see us as people with our own interests and preferences (Abigail really enjoyed categorizing all of us into various groups depending on what kinds of rides we preferred).
  
  I just had the best time being with my girls and my darling husband. They are such fun personalities and I adore them so much. So much fun to talk with and so funny and witty and perceptive and fascinating. And it was so lovely to come back home to my boys, who were all tucked up snoozing in their beds, and wake Isaac up to go to the bathroom and have him sleepily say, "Oh Mommy, you are back! Did you have a wonderful time?" and then wake up the next day to my three little boys ready for cuddles and stories. I am the luckiest. 

Random stuff

My imaginative Luke always has some sort of costume on. A month ago he was Yoda every day; two weeks ago we went to the kids' school (several times) while he was wearing a dragon costume. This week he's a cat!

A cat who loves monkeys. And chickens. Have I mentioned that he wears this monkey backpack every single day (the former Monkey of Shame!) and he also ropes the leash of the backpack around the neck of Juliet's stuffed monkey, which is now his thanks to persistent Luke/kind Juliet? Yeah. We take two monkeys with us EVERYWHERE.

Speaking of Juliet, this awesomeness came home a couple of weeks ago...

("If I was a pirate I would make a ton of people walk me deadly plank! I would find me treasure!")

I can't decide whether I like the pirate-speak more or the sad faces on the plank-goers plus the happy grin on the shark.


More monkey.

The girls had their piano recital last Saturday. They both played so beautifully and did a great job! Abigail and I were supposed to play a duet but her teacher forgot and played the duet part with her instead (totally fine with me since I was way nervous!) and then her teacher asked us to play the duet again at the end, which is why we have some little boys in this picture (since the recital was over at that point).

This is SUCH a characteristic photo--Abigail is like, dude, I played my songs, now can I please go home and get back to my book? And Juliet is like, ooh, a camera!! I will consciously pose but I am crafty enough to not look directly AT the camera (please note that Juliet specified what hairstyle she wanted and waited patiently while I braided it all up and then she informed me that she wanted ribbons at the ends of the braids and picked some out of my craft stuff...Abigail was like, do you HAVE to do my hair? I got this haircut so you couldn't do anything with it other than pull it up! Those two...)

A few of the treats from Abigail's Alice in Wonderland class party (I dropped the petit four which is why the lettering is smudged). I didn't get a shot of the edible teacup before Luke ate it, but I did manage to get a photo of these ones that we saved for Neil.

Incidentally, we found out last week that Juliet won a spot in the same high-ability classroom that Abigail's been in for the last few years--we are THRILLED!!




Chicken kisses! I love love love having our chickens. I feel a ridiculous surge of joy whenever I look out and see them pecking happily around (and it is so fun to see how eager the kids are to take our kitchen scraps out to the chickens and then excitedly report back on what the chickens liked best).

This Lukey boy is such a stinker some minutes and such a darling little snugglebear the next. I would be so bored and lonely without him in my life!!

 

And this boy. This boy looks SO MUCH LIKE HIS DAD. Like...I know that Neil and I have kids together, right? But I guess I always just sort of thought of Isaac in particular as looking like me, because so many people commented on it when he was a baby. But looking at this picture--it's mini-Neil!!

See? Total snugglebear darling boy putting away his laundry. I love love love my kiddies!