Random Photos from the Summer

I need some roasted green chile in the worst way, so I improvised.

Our kids like beans, a lot. They think it's fun to sort and clean them too.

What a great big sister. Sarah loves to read to her siblings.

David cut down this tree limb that was hanging over our front yard. It looked so much smaller when it was up high. I took this far away picture so you could an idea of the size of that thing.

This is the "before" picture of our blue bathroom and our next project. As of today, the old floor is out, the blue tub is gone, and the blue toilet just came out tonight. So far, we only have the new tub in, but flooring and a new toilet are coming this week (I hope).

Look closely. David is IN the exersaucer with Rachel.

One of the few times he slows down during the day - nap time.

Awwwww...

David and I went bowling with our good friends Martin and Carrie and had great double-date night.

David found this awesome jacket that someone had left at the bowling alley who-knows-how-long-ago. He called it lucky and wore it for a few sets. He actually got a strike this time. =)

Chillin.... we had the entire place to ourselves. No joke. Who knew that 6pm on a Friday night would be so quiet at the Orchard Lanes? I guess everyone comes later for the cosmic bowling (w/ black lights and disco balls).

First day of homeschool - at "recess" 

The next Gerber baby? =)

New tub, in process

What kid doesn't love painting?

Last Friday, this little guy wore the same pair of underwear all day long. So I took a picture and bragged about it to my mom. Then 5 minutes later he peed his pants. Oh well. (And, there's the finished tub in the background...we've only used it once because the floor is all ripped up and it's kinda dirty in that room).

A little of this, a little of that

Our furnace died about a month ago. The electrical panel is fried. When it happened the house smelled like something was burning. I'm glad it didn't catch on fire because the house would be gone. Our furnace sits under the house in the crawl space. We've been heating our house with space heaters since then because we don't want to pay several hundred dollars to fix a part that might not fix the whole problem. The furnace is nearly 30 years old, so we're saving up for a new one. In case you're wondering, yes, the electric bill was really high this month. A week into our space heater days we came home one night to the house smelling like burned plastic. Then we found this:

We had a bad connection in this socket and all the extra amps caused it to get too hot. That's not even where the heater was plugged in. And let me just tell you, we must have guardian angels at this house because that burned up socket was behind a curtain and left a burned spot going halfway up the wall.

At the same moment that we discovered that socket, I got a text message from our renter in Tennessee saying that our house had been burglarized AGAIN. Last year the front door was kicked in and we had to replace the whole thing. This time they broke in the front window. Thankfully, we only had to replace the glass and not the whole window.

It's a good thing I have this adorable baby to cheer me up...

As if the baby wasn't cute enough by herself, Sarah decided that she needed a snugly bear to sleep with her. 

David is multi-tasking.

This is the lovely hair cut that Sarah gave to Kathryn.

Sarah didn't think it was too much of a problem to hack all of Kathryn's hair off. (I sure did!) This isn't the first time that she has cut someone else's hair and I wasn't really sure what I could do to teach her that it's not okay to cut hair (on anyone or anything).

Later that day.....

This is the haircut that Kathryn gave to Sarah's ponies. Kathryn said "They didn't like having hair in their eyes". 

 And here is how Sarah felt about it. It took all my self control to not laugh when she started sobbing over the cut hair.

Maybe, just maybe, she'll think twice about cutting someone else's hair again. In the meantime, Kathryn gets to buy Sarah a new pony...but not until her bangs have grown back to a normal length.

That sleeper is a genuine NMSU aggies outfit. (Un)fortunately, baby wasn't too fond of it. She always gets too hot in fleece unless we're outdoors.

At his 2 year check up, David weighed 28 pounds and is 33 inches tall -- around the 20th percentile for both. 

Green chile and cheese biscuits. Yum. (before baking)

Davey is helping make dinner. He made up this recipe by himself: combine spinach, salt, and a little egg. Whisk together, then pour it into the Bosch mixer.

She's all smiles! 

Sarah likes to get her hair braided now. Her favorite is a "crown" braid, or one that goes all around her head.

Davey wants to potty train. He likes to sit on the potty and wipe. He tells me every time he needs to go (or just went). Sarah thinks it's fun to help him go potty. (Hmmmm...maybe I can get her to train him?) He's still in a diaper for now, but come summer, we'll work on it full time and I'll bet it won't take too long. (I'm crossing my fingers).

A Shout-out to Kathryn

(I know I said I wouldn't mention potty training again, but I just have to brag for a minute!)

This little lady earns the award for easiest potty-trainer (so far) in our family. She has now been dry at night for three days in a row. A couple of the nights I still didn't think she could do it, and wanted her to wear a diaper, but she refused. I didn't want to fight over it, so I figured I'd sneak in later and put one on her. I forgot, but she didn't need it anyway.

On Friday she got to visit the Montessori school in the morning. She was thrilled! She took a pair of slippers because that's what they wear in the classroom. The teacher said that she didn't say much, just kind of took everything in and was very well behaved. She even used the potty there.

"First" day of school.

She'll start going to preschool regularly in the fall. She's excited about it, but she also enjoys doing "home school" with Mom, too. 

Kathryn is "Grown Up"

Remember when Kathryn told me that she would potty train when she was grown up? (See this post:
http://wisemanweekly.blogspot.com/2011/02/snow-day.html ). Apparently she decided to be a grown up now because she has been doing so well with potty training and taken all of the initiative, that I can't claim to actually be "training" her. I'd say that she is more likely to keep her underwear dry and clean all day long than is Joseph. (He's in that phase of "I'm busy playing or working and don't want to stop to go to the bathroom". It's not that he soaks him daily, just leaks a little, then finally decides that he'll make a trip to the bathroom.) Some incentives seemed to play a small role in her decision to grow up.

1. Only kids who wear underwear get to go to school; and she recently decided that Sarah and Joseph's school is really cool. Today she told me: Mom, I'm ready to go to school now. I want to go today.
This reminds me of my sister Ashley, who supposedly has a very similar potty training story. Incidentally, she is also the 3rd child whose older siblings attended Montessori.

2. Kathryn likes sweets, especially chocolate. We don't normally have much of that around here, so when I offered her an M&M for every time she used the potty and let her taste one so she knew what she was going to get, she was suddenly going every hour or more and never forgot to claim her prize.

For a while I was concerned that it would be difficult to take her on outings because we would need to stop at bathrooms every 45 minutes, but this Sunday she proved her ability to hold it for long periods of time when her personal "froggie" potty isn't available. She has an aversion to full-sized toilets (especially if they're public ones), which could explain why she wasn't interested in sitting on ours or using one before our recent purchase of said "froggie" potty. Anyway, the girl has great bladder control abilities because she went 3 1/2 - 4 hours on Sunday (while we were at church) without an incident. When I tried to take her around the 2 hour mark - thinking surely she couldn't last much long - she flipped out and refused to sit.

So I'm calling her fully trained now and maybe I can move on to other subjects...

Like, did I tell you that Joseph was sick today? (Oh no, not more bodily fluid stories).

It's official, Sarah is going to Kindergarten

This week I completed the paperwork to register Sarah for kindergarten in the fall. She'll most likely be attending the school that is just two blocks from our house in the morning. She'll still go to the Montessori school in the afternoon. It was a difficult decision to make and something that we thought about a lot. Before we even had kids, David and I decided that we wanted to home school our children. As Sarah has grown, we've realized that home school cannot be a pleasant experience for me or for her at this point in time.

While Sarah is in kindergarten, I'm going to see how home schooling goes with Joseph. If it's successful throughout the year, then he'll likely stay home for 1st grade too. We'll see.

Kathryn is going to start attending Montessori in the morning. So that means I'll only have the boys at home in the morning. She has been doing really great this week potty training. Even after being up half the night throwing up a couple of days ago, so still wanted to wear underwear and has had only one accident in 2 days! She told me she's doing it so she can go to "Joseph's school".

School was cancelled today because their teachers were sick, so we made up some school projects to do at home. This is a "Hundred Number Board", similar to what they do at school. They match up the little squares of paper with numbers 1 to 100 on the grid (the cardboard) in order.

Making Progress

It's been an eventful week around our house.

Over the weekend baby David took his first solo steps - 3 on Saturday, then 4 on Sunday. I missed it both times -- I was out and David was home with the kids. He finally walked for me early this week. It was just a few steps and he'll only do it when there's an incentive. Crawling or cruising are still the preferred modes of transportation. He also cut another bottom tooth, which brings the total count up to 7 (4 on top, 3 on bottom). I think he's working on #8 tonight because has has woken up twice already and he's really grumpy. He's also been sleeping better at night, except for when those teeth come through. He sometimes sleeps for 12 hours straight now! You'd think I was getting a lot of sleep now, but there are 3 other kids who often wake up at least once every night too. Sarah likes to get up and dig around in the kitchen for a snack around 3am. She is also prone to nightmares. Joseph wets the bed almost every night. Kathryn...she's my best sleeper right now. She'll sleep for 12 hours straight nearly every night (probably 29/30 nights).

Speaking of Kathryn, she decided over the weekend that she was ready to be a big girl and start using the potty. Previous attempts at potty training have been utter failures because she had no desire to use the toilet or ditch her diapers. Now, she won't even let us put a diaper on her at night. She's done well - today she didn't have any wet accidents. We're still working on getting #2 into the potty..but all in good time. She is doing almost all the work herself. She got a new little potty so that she can "take herself" whenever she wants to...and she does! I think she prefers going alone. We're are fully into the "I can do it myself!" phase. (Yes, she speaks in clear and complete sentences).

Joseph and Sarah got a little guitar this weekend ($5 at a garage sale). They've had fun tinkering around with it and playing alongside their daddy. They took it to school for show and tell this week and got to play on it during singing time there. At school Joseph is making a lot of progress with reading and writing. He surprises me everyday with his ability to read random things around the house or while driving. Sarah reads some too, but mostly she is artistic and will often choose crafts over reading/writing work. Her ability to focus on one task and finish it has increased substantially in past few months as well.

Today I found some babysitters and went to school...to hear David give a lecture / speech on Mario Vargas Llosa (the main subject/author of his dissertation). He spoke for nearly an hour and a half to about 60 students and teachers. He was awesome! I learned a lot of things about Vargas Llosa and it was quite entertaining.

David has been super busy. (What's new, right?) In the next two weeks his To Do list is going to get much shorter. He'll be done with a lot of committee work and other mentoring projects at the college, not to mention the semester ending, and his work load with his second job will decrease substantially too. Until then, he's putting in 12-15 hour work days to get it all done.

We're both looking forward to the summer when he'll be home half of the day and we can finish some projects around the house.

Other good news - I am getting my own brand new laptop!! For FREE! I am going to be teaching an online Spanish course for the college this fall and they are going to provide me with a laptop (owned by the college, of course), to aide me in my work. =) It came in this week so once I have all my accounts set up with HR and IT then I'll be able to use it. I'm so excited. Our current laptop is nearing its 5th birthday and has seen better days. It will be nice to have two computers in the evening too when David and I both need to be working at once.

Hooray for Baby! Happy Valentine's Day

This week our sweet baby David learned how to clap! He looks so cute and happy when he does it. The other kids like to encourage him by saying "Yay!!" and clapping too. He watched his first episodes of Baby Signing Time, so I'm hoping that he'll start using a little sign language soon. At dinner he signed "milk" when I gave Kathryn a cup of juice. It's a start. =)

Kathryn didn't do anything new this week. She is feeling well again and with the weather warming up, I'm thinking about starting potty training with her. We've talked about it a lot and she can tell me all about what she is supposed to do. She says "If I go poo in the potty, then I'll get a treat!" and "No poo-poo in my diaper, just in the potty." However, she has never really liked or wanted to sit on the toilet. Any ideas?

Joseph is really excited about Valentine's day coming up. At school they made little mailboxes out of half-gallon square milk containers. At home he made valentines for each classmate and is working on a map of Africa to give to his teacher. He wanted to stay up late tonight to finish the map because he's worried he won't have enough time in the morning to finish. He gets his work ethic from his dad, I guess.

Sarah is also very excited about the Valentine's day party that she will have at school. She has been talking about all the candy she might get, but then she tells me that she doesn't want to eat any sugar because it "makes her sick". She has been going to bed on time and sleeping so well at night. She has been really very pleasant recently - happy and helpful, and much more obedient. She has matured a lot recently and I can't believe she is almost 5 years old!

This week we made some cute cards to send to our grandparents. We haven't mailed them yet, but we will tomorrow. Better late than never, right? The kids sure love all their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Sarah and Joseph always want to mail their little projects to one or another of them. Sarah wants to move to Utah so she can see her cousins everyday. She is such a social butterfly! Joseph says he wants to live at this house forever, because this is "where our swing set is", and I don't think he likes to move.

We love all of our wonderful family and friends and hope you have a fun Valentine's day!