Archive - 2006

Whew! We’ve been soooo busy getting ready for all our visitors that I have become a bad blogger. Not to mention our comcast high speed internet went to comcast no speed internet for 5 days…Anyway, I’m back.

The CHCH challenge has been a great blessing in trying to get ready for our family. To start the week, I check to see which rooms we’ll be working on. I turn to that page in the organizer and check off the tasks that I don’t need to take care of and write in the things I need to do that aren’t listed. I try to schedule in 2 15 minute blocks of time to work on my CHCH tasks each day. More than that and I have a hard time getting into it. But I can work for 15 minutes at a time and it is really amazing what I can do in that time. For some of the areas, I have less that I need to do so I work on other areas of the house. Other times I work on another room altogether. Because we are expecting 9 people this week, I really needed to work on our guest room, living room and backyard more than I need to take care of our bedroom. That’s ok, because when the backyard comes up on the CHCH calendar, I’ll be working on our bedroom.

Here’s the before picture of our front flower beds:

Everything green is a weed.

Here’s the after:

I’m not thrilled with the hose being there. Maybe I’ll move it to the backyard. But those are the petunias the children and I planted. Petunias are one of the only flowers I can grow, along with impatiens. I have also had success with tomato plants. I am the grim reaper to ivy and ferns.

Here’s the “after” for our backyard:

We bought this gazebo at Target and Phil and the kids put it up in about 30 minutes. The picnic bench was made by the inmates at Ft Leavenworth and it converts into 2 benches. Since we put it up on Saturyday, I don’t think we’ve eaten one meal inside the house, including breakfast. I need to take an after after picture of this area. Phil moved those boxes on the right to another area.

Here’s one of the flower beds. I’m trying my hand at violas. I put in 2 varieties of cherry tomato plants for Charlotte plus some basil for me. I found the tomato plants covered with tiny little flying things today so I sprayed them with biodegradable soap and water. That should take care of them.

The dining room is completely unpacked and spring cleaned! Right now it’s my favorite room in the house.

The bakers rack was also made by the Ft Leavenworth prisoners.

More pictures later. I have to take an after picture of the living room and today I’ll be finishing up the guest room. It’s my next favorite room.

Bip had a well baby appointment today.  Our Very Fat Baby is now 24.5 pounds at 8 months old, definitely our all time fattest baby.  He’s in the 96th percentile for weight.  Boo has never even gotten out of the 10th percentile, LOL!  So what are we feeding him?  It’s all breastmilk, baby!  Ok, a little bit of bananas or avocados at dinnertime.  Which is really funny to watch.  The avocados are usually cold from being in the fridge so he makes the funniest face when he gets his first bite.  But he comes back for more!  Feeding him during dinner has made our dinnertime much more pleasant.  He had been fussing and whining during dinner.  I guess he wanted his share.  Now I give him a bite, let him work on it for a bit while I eat, then feed him some more.  I also give him cheerios to play with.  He has yet to get them in his mouth, but they keep him busy.

Looking back over all our children, it is funny to see have we have grown and relaxed as parents.  I followed the perfect solids feeding timetable with Boo.  With each subsequent child I have delayed solids a little bit and each child has been easier to feed.  I never would have given Boo a cookie until after his first birthday, but Becca so enjoyed having a vanilla wafer with her siblings during snack time.  We also gave her shredded cheese when we ate at Taco Bell.

And Bip actually missed his 4 month and 6 month well baby checks.  I just got busy and he’s perfectly happy and healthy that it just fell through the cracks.  That’s also a difficulty of homeschooling, especially when your children are young.  Making an appointment for yourself or one child requires dad taking some time off, or dispersing the kids to the neighbors, many of which also homeschool.   But we made this appoinyment so we could do a weight check and adjust his meds (for VUR) according to his weight.  He’s right on track, even has stranger anxiety.

Pumpkin Girl  is so like me in ways that I don’t always care to admit.  She is a free spirit and very much has her own mind.  I certainly don’t want to change her, but I know from experience that those traits will sometimes land her in trouble.  Right now we are working on her accomplishing her chores.  Boo, who is a very task oriented, get the job done so we can move on to better things kind of guy, is doing will with his ChorePack. Pumpkin on the other hand, flits through her chores like a little fairy, a little bit here and a little bit there.  Instead of turning her chorepack in when it’s finished, I have sometimes found it on her bed, still on chore #2, even though she claims all the chores are done.  I have reviewed with her how the chorepacks work and how she’s supposed to use them.  She completely understands and can show me she knows what to do.  But then the next day, she’s flitting around again, not getting anything done.  So now I wear her chore pack.  She finishes one chore, hands the chore card to me and I give her the next one.  It’s an inconvenience for her, especially when her chores are upstairs and I’m downstairs.  Our goal is to ultimately wean both children off the chorepacks.  I think Boo is almost there, but I bet he’ll want to keep using his – he likes the check list aspect.  When Pumpkin can demonstrate that she can accomplish her chores correctly in the time alloted,  I will be able to loosen up a bit.  I want her to be able to accomplish her chores in her own way, as long as the end result is her chores being completed.  Someday she’ll be able to go in to her room and put her things away in what ever order she chooses.  It’ll be good for her to have that responsibility.

Training our children to do chores is such an important responsibility for a parent.  Children need to learn to be productive members of a family and to take care of themselves and their home.  The goal is to raise responsible adults who can function in the world.  Chores aren’t always fun, but they don’t have to be.  Everyone in the family has their own jobs to do to keep the home running.  At the ages my children are at, I insist the chores are done "my" way.  Soon enough they will find their own ways of doing things and that will be ok too.  As long as the floor is swept, it doesn’t matter to me if they start in the kitchen or the entrance way.  We are also learning that a job done quickly but poorly takes much longer because it will need to be redone.

My desire is that by training my children early, good habits will become second nature to them.  They will see the benefit of doing their work consistently and well and become used to an orderly, peaceful environment.  I hope they carry these lessons with them for a lifetime instead of having to learn them as an adult the way I did.

Whew, busy weekend. Bip hasn’t been sleeping well since we changed the clocks.  Could it be teeth?  Hunger?  Approaching a new milestone? Whatever it is, he’s not telling.  But we’re beat.

Saturday was a rainy day.  We haven’t had a good all day rain in a while.  We needed it. Phil took the kids out while Bip napped so I could get some work done.  They went exploring and found a mama goose sitting on a nest of eggs while the daddy goose, I guess that would be the gander, floated in the Potomac, chasing off other geese.  I got my guest/craft room closet cleared out again and ready for guests.  I also cleared off the bed and a good portion of the floor.  When the Phil and the children came home, we all headed out to go bowling.  We had lunch there, too, making for a good "adventure."  The kids meal now have  new french fries which are shaped like happy faces.  Boo brought one home because he couldn’t finish it but didn’t want to throw it out.  "I like it.  It’s smiling at me!," he said.  Back home for some rest and then to church. Bip and I got to go this time since he was awake.  He flirted with the lady behind him and took off his sock which he chewed on happily.  After church was the annual parish Seder meal which was a new experience for us. Pumpkin Girl started falling apart when it was 7 o’clock and we still hadn’t eaten.  They’d provided bread and butter for those who couldn’t wait and so we let her have some. Bip fell asleep in the sling, which then energized him for the rest of the evening at home.  He sat happily playing with his toys while Phil and I watched "The Two Towers."

Sunday afternoon we went shopping at Andrews AFB.  Picked up dress shirts for Boo and then hit the garden center.  I bought two tomato plants for Pumpkin Girl who loves tomatoes, some basil, a geranium and some petunias for the front yard.  We planted the tomatoes and basil in the back in the full sun.  Charlotte didn’t believe me that the tomatoes weren’t going to be ready for a while.  She said she would have to ask grandpa about it.  She talked to him on the phone today and he explained to her that she had to wait for the plant to get flowers which would then turn into tomatoes.

Then as a fun end to the day, we decided to give Bip his first solid food.  I mashed up a banana for him.  I gave him his first taste and he looked at Phil, who was manning the camera, as if to say, "Daddy?  What’s Mama doing?"  Then he started moving the banana around in his mouth and he got a good taste. I loaded up the spoon again and as I moved it towards his mouth, he grabbed the handle to help me.  He is our first baby not to spit back out his first food!  He was so happy about it.  He kept leaning forward for more bites and even grabbed the bowl from my hands to see if there was anymore left in there.  He ate about an inch of banana.