Category - Family Life

Our family loves babies! If we could, we’d always have a baby in the house. Boo, the oldest, has even said, “I’ll take as many siblings as God will give me.” So our house was in a bit of an uproar this afternoon upon the arrival of these little cuties:

Bip was so enamored of his baby, he could hardly wait for him to come out of the box. He kissed his baby and fed him a bottle and helped change his diaper.

Boo, a veteran of many a baby, supervised the feedings.

Pumpkin quickly wrapped her baby in a blanket and fed her baby, too. She very sweetly used the toy ketchup bottle for her baby so Nicholas could use the baby bottle. She named her baby Star.

In my never ending quest to produce well behaved, self sufficient adults, I have updated the children’s daily chores.

Boo (8 yo)’s morning chores are:

• Make bed
• Clear breakfast dishes and load dishwasher
• Wipe placemats
• Get Nicholas’ schooltime snack ready
• Sweep and swiffer kitchen, dining room and entrance way
• Brush teeth
• Shine bathroom mirrors and sinks

His afternoon chores are:

• Return his water cup to the table (he often takes it to his room during quiet time)
• Put napkins on the table
• Fold the blankets in the living room
• Make sure all the coats are hung up in the closet
• Help put away the baby’s toys
• empty out his blue basket
• Clean the playroom (all toys in their bins, dress up clothes in basket, crafts away, legos and blocks in their tubs, magazines and books on shelves, fold blankets)

Pumpkin Girl (6yo)’s morning chorese are:

• Make bed
• Open the blinds in the bedroom
• Brush her hair
• Clear her breakfast dishes
• Clear off and wipe dining room table for school
• Brush teeth
• Clean glass storm door and sliding glass door

Her afternoon chores are

• Return her water cup to the table
• Put forks or spoons on table
• Fold blankets in living room
• Help put away baby’s toys
• Empty out pink basket
• Close the blinds in bedroom
• Return all the toys in the bedroom to the playrom
• Put her books and dolls on the proper shelf
• All of her stuffed animals on the animal tree
• Clear off the dresser
• Empty out the “Pit of Never Return”
• fold blankets

Their pink and blue baskets are small Rubber Maid totes that sit on the staircase. When they leave a toy out, I toss it into the appropriate basket rather than having them stop whatever they are doing to take care of that item. They use the baskets too, if they are done playing with something but don’t want to take it all the way upstairs right then. It’s an easy way to try to tame the chaos.

Because they tend to bicker, I only have them working together on chores while folding blankets and putting away the baby’s toys. I also tried to put their morning chores in a particular order so that they are not both trying to brush their teeth at the same time.

I have been using the Managers of Their Chores system, but the chore pack holders are still missing from our move. I got tired of waiting to find them, so I improvised by just writing out their chores on an index card. That seems to be working out fine. I only listed the chores that they won’t think of doing themselves. Some things they do without being told, like getting dressed and getting breakfast for themselves. Having their chores all written out, step by step if need be helps me not have to nag them. Just a quick reminder to “start your chores” and they are off. I could go on and on about chore training, but if you’re interested, I highly recommend the MOTC book.

Next I’ll be working on giving them weekly chores. I’d like Boo to start vaccuuming and bringing in the trashcan and recyling bins and maybe getting the mail. We have one of those community mail boxes, so I have to check to see if he’s tall enough to reach our box. Actually, I guess getting the mail is a daily chore. I’m not really sure what sort of weekly chores I’m going to have Pumpkin Girl doing. Part of the problem is that so many of these things I can get done better and faster, but that’s not the point. They need to learn to do these things for themselves. And I need to let them.

One huge benefit that I found from having the children doing chores, especially at a particular time, is that I can do my own chores at the same time. Some of my own chores tend to be follow ups to their chores. For example, after Boo has swept and swiffered, I check to see if I need to mop.

I’d like to say that our home runs smoothly and is neat and tidy all day. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. We’re still trying to sort through the moving boxes and just get all that stuff put away. We’re making progress, though, slow as it may be. And at the very least, we are all getting the basics done every day.

Being an Army Family, we move quite a bit.  Not counting our recent emergency move, we have moved 9 times in the last 14 years. That’s a lot of living out of boxes and ordering fast food.  After about a week, the eating out/ordering in thing gets old.  As much as I dislike cooking, I start looking forward to getting back to some healthier, home cooked meals.  The first few times we moved, I would pack my recipe box into our car.  Then once our kitchen was unpacked, my recipes would be readily available and I could start cooking whenever I was ready.  At some point we decided that we were carrying too much stuff with us in the car and I let the recipe box get packed with everything else in the house.

That worked out fine for a couple of moves, until we moved to Fort Leavenworth.  Almost the entire house was unpacked and I couldn’t find that recipe box.  I was able to put together some meals using the cookbooks I have, but we were really missing our favorites.

I couldn’t imagine where the recipe box could be.  We pulled things out of the outdoor shed, we double checked closets.  Nothing.  I tried with minimal success to find recipes online.  I found similar things, but not exactly what I was looking for.  Of course, I kicked myself for not just hand carrying that darn recipe box.

Finally, after about a month, one little box in the guest room caught my eye.  It was labelled “Living Room papers.”  I had seen the box several times, but never opened it because the recipe box had not been in the living room.  It was in the kitchen, of course.  But I couldn’t figure out what they meant by “living room papers.”  So I took a peak.

Right on top – my recipe box.

If you’ve ever had so called professional packers pack up your house, then you know exactly what happened.  For the most part, they do pack the contents of one room all together.  However, when they need just one last thing to fill up a box, they will go into other rooms to find just the right sized item.  And they don’t bother labeling the box in a way that you’ll know to look for your recipes in a box from the living room.

So it was that year that I started our family cookbook.  I bought a very nice cookbook from Hallmark along with matching recipe cards.  I started the painstaking task of writing out every one of our family’s favorite recipes.  Yes, I could have typed them into the computer, but I was, in part, trying to create a keepsake.  I wanted the recipes to be in my handwriting for my children.  I also included our favorites from other cookbooks.

When I came to a recipe that had been given to me by someone else, I included the person’s name, where and how I knew them and any special circumstances surrounding the recipe.  Having moved around so much, I have recipes from the friends I had made all over the world.  Some of the stories behind the recipes are simple, like Patty’s Spinach Dip that she served at Thanksgiving in Sierra Vista, AZ while we there for the Military Intelligence Advance Course.  Others are more amusing, like the bean dip that my friend Melanie and I loved so much that at every get together, our other friends would know to make 2 plates, one for Melanie and I, and one for everyone else!

My Family Cookbook and Lost and Found Again Recipe Box I actually hope to make a family favorites cookbook for each of my children when they leave home.  But if somehow that doesn’t happen, at least they will have this one book to fight over treasure. My current family cookbook is getting full, in fact, it’s not going to hold many more recipes.  As much as I don’t want to, I may have to find a bigger binder for it.  I don’t really want to rewrite all the recipes again, so I’m going to have to look into a way to preserve the recipe cards while moving them into a larger, sturdier binder.

If you would like to start your own family cookbook, I would recommend starting off with a pretty decent sized, no frills binder and a pack of sheet protectors.  Type out the recipe into any word processing file and print it out from your computer.  This way, the recipe itself will be easily read.  Hand-write any story that goes with it, even if you hate your writing.  Future generations will cherish it, even if you don’t!  If you can, take a picture of the person who gave you the recipe and include it on the page.  Even better, try getting a picture of the person actually cooking the recipe or holding the completed dish!  This is how I plan to create each of my children’s cookbooks.  Depending on your time and motivation, you can embellish your recipe pages with all sorts of scrapbooking supplies.

I now have two copies of all our favorite recipes, one in my personal cookbook and one in my recipe file. If a recipe card gets misplaced, which does happen on occasion, at least I have my family cookbook to fall back on. Now when we move, I let the packers take the bulkier recipe file and I carry the binder with me. When we moved to Korea and needed to fly there, I actually put the cookbook in my carry-on because it would be just my luck to have my luggage lost!

I went to the gym with Philip today. I spent 30 minutes on the treadmill doing the “fat burning” workout. I made my little legs walk about 2.7 mph. That’s quite a brisk walk for someone my height. I don’t run anymore after injuring my knees playing varsity soccer. Our coach used to make us run stadiums all the time and those steps were just way too tall for me to try to running up. So I don’t run at all anymore. Anyway, so there I was, walking my little heart out, sweating like a pig. The first 15 minutes were fine. I amused myself by watching the gauges on the machine tell me how fast I was walking and how many calories I was burning. The second 15 minutes were a bit tougher. All the treadmills are conveniently facing a wall of mirrors so you can watch your out of shape self jiggling along. Lovely. I discovered that Nicky B and I have the same legs. Fat thighs on a baby – very cute. On me, well, not so much. I tried to distract myself watching the subtitles on the soap opera on TV. I started wishing for an Ipod. I checked my heart rate. I tried not to look in the mirror. I contemplated the wisdom of trying to exercise. Really, if God had wanted me to exercise, he would have made me Florence Griffith-Joyner or Mary Lou Retton. Honestly, I think God likes me as a couch potato. When the man on the treadmill next to me left, I turned around and stuck my tongue out at my husband. That was when I noticed that there was a woman on the machine behind me. Heh heh. Oops. Finally the work out was over. I sludged through 1.3 miles, uphill, both ways. I burned 200 calories. I was sweating. I hate sweating.

So on the way home I got thinking. One Poptart, not one package, but ONE Poptart is 200 calories. How long does it take to eat one Poptart? Maybe a minute. And it took 30 minutes of sweaty, heavy breathing, elevated heart rate excercise to burn it off. Kind of puts it in perspective, doesn’t it? A Big Mac has 704 calories. That’s an hour and a half on the treadmill! One homemade chocolate chip cookie has 138 calories. I don’t think I can eat just one cookie. Now I’m not going to go crazy counting calories. Frankly, I’m too busy to be bothered. But it really does make you think. Because really, are you just going to eat the one Poptart and leave the other one all alone? Of course not. You’ll try not to eat the other one, but a single Poptart isn’t that big. You’ll find yourself still hungry and go eat the second one, for a grand total of 400 calories. Yikes.

Check out this site: What Does 200 Calories Look Like? Pictures of different foods worth 200 calories. So many good/better choices out there. If weight loss or healthier eating was one of your New Year’s resolutions, you’ll definitely want to see this.

Look what came in the mail for me yesterday:

A wonderful birthday card from Orlando Bloom!(click on the Valentine to see that it really is from him)I guess he was no longer able to contain his youthful exuberance for me and had to make his feelings known, regardless of the consequences. I showed my husband right away, of course. Not that I could have hid it from him for very long. I think my giggling as I came through the door would have alerted him that something was up.

I have to admit, I’m not too surprised at Orlando. After all, take a look at my picture, I’m very cute! What does surprise me is that he would make this bold move and send me a love offering through the mail. What if my husband had intercepted it? Of course, Philip’s not a big guy, maybe Orlando thinks he can take him.

I’m sorry Orlando, but I just cannot run away with you. My children would insist on coming along and somehow I don’t think that they will fit well into your 20-something, Hollywood lifestyle. Plus, my husband would probably come after us and he’s got a black belt in Tae Kwan Do and I don’t want him to mess up your pretty face. I am flattered, though. I hope we can still be friends.

When my oldest was little, he loved the moon. He would search the night sky saying, "Where oh where moon be?"  Even now, when he spies a full moon he says, "oh look, there’s my friend the moon!" So on Tuesday when I spied the full moon rising over the houses, with bare wintery trees framing it, I thought of Boo and took this

How was I to know that it was not just any full moon, but a Full Wolf Moon. How appropriate for my Wolf Cub Scout.  From The Farmer’s Almanac Full Moon Names:

Full Wolf Moon – January: Amid the cold and deep snows of midwinter, the wolf packs howled hungrily outside Indian villages.  Thus, the name for January’s full moon.  Sometimes it was also referred to as the Old Moon or the Moon After Yule.

Hat tip to Dawn at The Nature Corner

We started off this morning in the predawn hours. We bundled three sleepy children into the minivan, covered them up with blankets and started off on a 45 minute journey to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The sun was just turning the sky blue as we passed the US Capitol. The beauty of the lit dome against the morning sky did not go unnoticed. We navigated the streets of DC along with other early morning commuters, remarking how happy we are to live 5 minutes from Philip’s office. Arriving at Walter Reed, we felt lucky to find parking after driving around the lot for only 10 minutes. Pumpkin Girl’s renal ultrasound was scheduled for 8 am and we signed her in at almost exactly the required 15 minutes early. She was a little nervous about the procedure even though this would be the third one she has had. The first one came a little over 2 years ago. After Rebecca died from urosepsis, we found out that she had a condition called vesicouretal reflux (VUR). It’s a condition that is quite common in children, chances are you already know someone who has or had it. Most children will outgrow it, others, like me, will require surgery. With proper medical care, it does not have to be fatal. With proper medical care, Rebecca could have survived her urinary tract infection. But that’s a post for another time. Because VUR runs in families, we had our 2 surviving children tested, as well as Bip shortly after he was born. Pumpkin and Bip both have it and have been treated with daily antibiotics to ward off infection. Pumpkin’s reflux was mild and today we were checking to see if her kidneys continue to be free from damage. We were relieved to hear the great news – her kidneys look as good as they did a year ago. We can now take her off her meds and the VUR should give her no more problems. In every way this is an answer to our prayers. However,prayers are often not answered in exactly the way we had hoped. While Pumpkin’s kidneys are healthy, they do not have appeared to have grown over the last year. Her doctor is not overly concerned because it is difficult to get an accurate measurement on something that small. So while we do have good news, we can not put this completely behind us. Pumpkin will have another renal ultrasound in one year. Until then, we will continue to trust in the Lord and thank Him, the Great Physician, for the prayers he has already answered.

So it’s New Year’ Eve. The Year That Was 2006 brought us Philip’s promotion, Bip’s baptism, a trip to Disneyland, a move, Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, dance lessons, new friends, my “job” as a product reviewer for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, and Phil’s appointment as parish council president. And finally, on Christmas Day, Bip – who has been able to walk since October – decided to really start walking so I can stop worrying about him. I wonder what this next year holds?