Category - Family Life

Event Number 1, Bip’s baptism is completed and was a great success. He was a little sweetheart all through church and didn’t make a sound at all during his baptism.  He just looked around and took it all in.  He is such an easy going little guy!  During the rest of church he got really silly.  He kept shaking his head no and raising his arms above his head as if to say "yay!"  We suspect Rebecca was there playing with him.  We know she was with us in the church.  We requested the song "On Eagles Wings" (the lyrics are at the end of this entry or click here to listen to it) and we sang it during communion. Pumpkin Girl started to cry as she started to feel sad about Rebecca.  We sang the song during Rebecca’s funeral, but it has such a joyous message and has such special meaing for our family. Pumpkin was comforted though at the thought of Rebecca "shining like the sun."

We had brought a cake to share with the congregation after mass and everyone came up to admire Bip’s cheeks.  My aunt Mary is Bip’s godmother and our neighbor/friend stood in as his proxy godfather.  Later we went to the "Slip Inn," a restaurant on the dock here on base.  They serve the "best fried chicken in Washington, DC."

We topped off the day with an impromptu night tour of the city’s monuments.  We didn’t get too lost and actually knew where we were most of the time.  Phil’s brother John got a great picture of the Washington Monument lit up and it’s reflection in the Reflecting Pool.  The best moment came when the Phil’s cell phone rang.  He put it on speaker phone and the whole car could hear that it was his mom.  She told him, in Chinese, "Philip, it’s getting late, it’s time to come home.  You and the boys are tired."  We all had a good laugh.  Wait til she finds out we had the baby in the car with us!  (He had the good sense to sleep through the whole thing.)

    ON EAGLES’ WINGS
    (Michael Joncas)

    You who dwell in the shelter of the Lord,
    Who abide in His shadow for life,
    Say to the Lord:"My refuge,
    My rock in whom I trust!"

        And he will raise you up on eagle’s wings,
        Bear you on the breath of dawn,
        Make you to shine like the sun,
        And hold you in the palm of His hand.

    The snare of the fowler will never capture you,
    And famine will bring you no fear:
    Under His wings your refuge,
    His faithfulness your shield.

        And He will raise you up on eagle’s wings,
        Bear you on the breath of dawn,
        Make you to shine like the sun,
        And hold you in the palm of His hand.

    You need not fear the terror of the night,
    Nor the arrow that flies by day;
    Though thousands fall about you,
    Near you it shall not come.

        And He will raise you up on eagle’s wings,
        Bear you on the breath of dawn,
        Make you to shine like the sun,
        And hold you in the palm of His hand.

    For to His angels He’s given a command
    To guard you in all of your ways;
    Upon their hands they will bear you up,
    Lest you dash your foot against a stone.

        And He will raise you up on eagle’s wings,
        Bear you on the breath of dawn,
        Make you to shine like the sun,
        And hold you in the palm of His hand.
        And hold you, hold you in the palm of His hand.

    Adaptation of Psalm 91. c1979, New Dawn Music

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Well, everyone’s all here.  Phil’s parents and brothers, my parents, my grandma, aunt and cousin.  Nine extra people in total. They are not all staying at our tiny little house, though at some point today I expect them all to be here.  But the weather is nice and our gazebo gives us a whole extra "room" to sit in.  It’s kind of cool that so many of our family could come out to be with us this weekend – hardly anyone has ever visited us as we’ve moved around the world.  I wish some of them could have stayed longer though.  Washington, DC is so full of things to see that it is a shame that some of our guests are just flying in then flying out again.

Tonight is Bip’s baptism.  I found a very nice boy’s gown online which he just barely fits into with his fat little self.  I searched all over the internet and bought him the largest size I could find.  Each one of my children have their own gown. Looking back, each one expresses my personality in some different way.  My oldest wore my baptismal gown.  He was almost too big to wear it but he looked so cute.  I didn’t know better at the time, so I don’t have any formal pictures of him in it.  Pumpkin Girl, the next baby, has a very simple, very sweet gown with Battenburg lace.  Rebecca’s is extravagant.  She was such a sweet pouffy cloud!  It was all lace and very long.  Bip’s is simple and sweet, with a pointed collar and decorative buttons up the front.  It is also long.  Someday, when I get some spare time, maybe I will embroider each child’s initials on the slip of their gown.

Tomorrow we have a lull in activities.  We’re planning on brunch at the Officer’s Club.  We’ve never been to it here, but if it holds up to the standards of other brunches at other clubs, it will be quite the feast.

Monday is Philip’s promotion.  It may very well be his last promotion, but of course, that is all in God’s hands.  We did something silly with his cake, I’ll take a picture and share it later.  I wish his old battalion commander (and Rebecca and Bip’s godfather) was going to be here to see it.  I think he would have gotten quite a laugh.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Pumpkin Girl has a hermit crab named Rose. Before she came to live with us, Rose was named Larry and belonged to my cousin Mallory. Mallory is stationed in Norfolk and so were we last summer. We got to see her quite a bit which was a lot of fun. She took me to get a pedicure on my poor preggo toes and I let her do laundry at our house. She brought Rose, then called Larry, over one day for the kids to see and Larry, now Rose, stayed. Pumpkin Girl loves him, uh, her so much! Rose is the perfect pet because she is so low maintenance. Since we have been working on chores with the children, Pumpkin’s weekly Sunday chore is to take care of Rose. With my help, Rose gets a bath, fresh food and water and her cage rearranged. While we work on her cage, Rose soaks in a baking dish full of water. We found that she prefers something you can’t see through. I think she feels safer that way, and then she will come out of her shell. Today I could see that she was attempting to climb out of the dish, but I was in a hurry, having lost an hour to Daylight Saving Time and had to go bathe the children. I left Rose to soak as usual. Forty minutes later, I am changing the baby and seeing if he’s sleepy yet (hah!) and I remembered Rose. I just prayed that if she did get out, that she wouldn’t fall off the counter or into the sink and down the drain. As soon as I was able, I went to check on her. This is what I found:

Silly crab. The children thought this was tremendously funny. So now as I type, she is back in her bath and I can hear her shell hitting the dish. I’ll put her back in her cage soon.

As you can see, Rose is a very big hermit crab, so is probably very old. And she is quite the crabby crab. She gets a burst of energy after her bath and cruises around her cage, rearranging things to her liking. She does this until about Wednesday then curls herself back into her shell and sleeps until the next Sunday.

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Last summer Boo starting putting his new-found skills to use by writing me notes. He would slide them under his closed door during quiet time, since he was supposed to stay in his room. They would say things like, “Is it raining,” “can we go to the pool” and “is it snack time yet?” Sometimes during the day he would come up to me and hand me one of those magnetic doodler things and say, “Here, Mama, I wrote you a math problem.” He’d say it so casually, like doesn’t everyone write each other math problems during the day? He’d check back with me, too, to see if I had come up with the answer. One day, his quiet-time note came shooting out from under the door and it read, “Is it snack time? Is Daddy home? 2+5=____” I sent it back to him with all the answers and an additional math problem. We went back and forth a couple of times until a new note came out saying, “No more math problems!” Who can blame a mother for trying?

Yesterday morning, before I had gotten ready for the day, a note came under my door:

Front

Back

It says “Brectfist on the othr sid” (breakfast on the other side) and Eegs (Eggs). This one really made me laugh. He’d been wanting eggs for breakfast for a couple of days. I particularly like the rubber stamps he added for emphasis.

Seeing him learn and using what he learns is such a pleasure . He reads road signs, which he thinks makes him a good driver, and sometimes tries to read the computer over my shoulder. OK, that’s not such a pleasure. But the little notes he writes really make me smile. He writes so many that I can’t keep them all, just the best ones.

Watching both of my older children learn these fundamental skills of reading and math is greatly satisfying. That moment when all the hard work pays off and a whole page is read without struggle or math facts have finally sunken in- those moments are golden! And they belong to me! We share a hug and maybe a whoop (or quiet whoop, a whoop-ette, if the baby is asleep) and then a sigh of relief. The sibling who was also in the room offers congratulations and shares in the victory. We may even stop and call Daddy at work and share with him. I’m glad I don’t have to wait until the end of a long school day to hear about it. These golden moments, they are blessings not to taken lightly. I am grateful for each one of them.

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Our oldest son is being tomato staked.  I have reached the end of my patience with him in regards to how he treats his sister.  He loves her very much (though he’s too embarresed to admit it) and they are best friends.  But he just doesn’t know how to take "no" for an answer from her.  Every day during school, I need to stop and put the baby down for his nap. I tell them to finish their assignments and then take a break. Then I tell him, "Do not touch Pumpkin Girl," and to Pumpkin Girl I say, "No screaming at Boo." I tell them every single day. He is always doing something to her to provoke her. It could be pushing her, sitting on her, tickling her or even just ignoring her when she’s trying to talk to him. This results in her screaming at him. Part of this is because she is only 5 and is still learning to express herself with a talking voice, not a screaming one, and part of it is because he just won’t listen to her. In 5 years he has never once stopped doing whatever it is he is doing to upset her, so now she just goes right to screaming at him. I have literally pulled him off of her to stop him. I have talked to him and punished him until I thought my head would explode. I have told him that he needs to stop because he is abusing her and if he were an adult, he would be put in jail. That got him to stop for about a week. Then today, I went up to put the baby down and forgot to warn him. I came back down and continued reading to them when out of the blue, ds says, "I scratched myself" and shows me three welts on his arm. After a little bit of probing, he admits it was dd that scratched him. I turned to her and she immediately started crying and when I asked her what happened, she tells me that ds made her angry. OK, to make this already long story short, he was tripping her and wouldn’t stop grabbing her legs, so she scratched his arm. I was so angry at both of them, I sent them to separate rooms and went to read about tomato staking.  I am angry with dd to a lesser extent, for not using her words, but really, they are ineffective against her brother. I am very, very angry with ds for 1)being a little you-know-what to his sister, 2) continuing this behavior, 3)causing her to sin in an effort to get him to stop hurting her.

So now he is being tomato staked.  You can read more about that here. Look for it under teaching obedience.  The bottom line is, until he can demonstrate his ability to be trusted with his sister, he will be staked to my side except for quiet time and when he’s in the bathroom.  This is a very different experience for me as a parent, and I made a mistake earlier, leaving them alone while I took our lunch dishes to the kitchen.  He ended up hitting Pumpkin Girl again, causing him to lose all the rest of his time outdoors today, with or without my supervision.  The resulting afternoon was one of the best ones I’ve spent with him in a long time. Pumpkin Girl is not being deliberately staked at this time, but she tags along anyway.  After quiet time, they sat together playing with their Leappad books.  I was RIGHTTHERE with them, but not getting involved in their interaction and they were getting along so well. Then the three of us watered our newly planted flowers. Pumpkin Girl wanted to keep playing in the backyard and I went inside.  Boo stayed staked to me.  We ended up cleaning off the front porch together, with Boo volunteering to do most of the work.  He is a very good worker.  Then we made dinner together.  We are having one of his favorites, a very simple ravioli casserole.  He has asked me to teach him how to cook and said that this was the first thing he wanted to learn how to do.  I showed him how to do the first layer and let him help me.  Then I stood back and supervised him putting the second layer on.  He did a great job.  I really enjoyed the time with him.  I’m not sure how long he is going to be staked to me for this offense.  But in the meantime, we’ll have no more rotten tomatoes!

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Another beautiful day!  I tried really hard to spend my 15 minutes decluttering my living room, but the outdoors was calling. I also needed to plant my flowers.  I had already sent the children outside so I joined them. Pumpkin Girl helped me weed out the flower beds while Boo carted off the weeds in his dump truck.  Later he raked the beds and Pumpkin Girl helped me place the flowers.  The beds are in full sun, so we left room to plant tomato plants as soon as they come in at the garden center.  In Kentucky, they always say "Plant tomatoes after the Derby."  That is the first weekend of May, but I’ll be keeping my eye out for them in the meantime.

When Bip woke up, we put a hat on him and brought him out in his little chair.  After the flowers were planted we had lunch outside on our picnic bench.  As soon as quiet time was over, I sent them outside again.  It’s just too nice not to be out.  I wish the weather would stay like this.  It’s so nice that Phil even rode his bike into work.

Days like today are just one of many reasons I am glad we homeschool. Children belong outside in this kind of weather, just enjoying the sunshine, not cooped up in a classroom.  And they will be out there until the National Anthem plays at 5:00 when they come in for chores and dinner.  We as adults should get out more, too.  Had my children been gone today at school, would I have gone outside by myself?  Probably not.   I’m thinking of going back out with them right now…

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