Slices of Life, Vol VX

CHRISTIAN

(Christian found a purple moon shaped Lucky Charms marshmallow on the floor.)
"Look!  I found a golden pretzel!"

Sometimes feeding him can be such a battle.  I set his supper plate in front of him and he said,
"This will make my tummy hurt my feelings."

(I was holding Jonas)
"I can't see Jonas because he is too little!  Jonas is too small, Mom!"

He told me recently,
"It's so nice at our new big house!  We can do so many fun things here, like go poo and go to the bathroom!"

It's hard to get pictures of Christian these days, but here he is doing something to Lola while Lola is obviously thrilled about it.  

DAPHNE

(We're trying to get into the habit of getting all toys put away before David gets home so that our evenings can be spent hanging out with him instead of the pulling of teeth that is getting them to clean.)
Me: "If you pick up toys now, then when Daddy gets home we'll have time to do other fun stuff."
Daphne: "Maybe we can sing songs like we're a tiny choir?"

(Daph loves hosting parties and particularly making sure the people coming will have a good time)
"We can have a party with all our friends and have packs of gum!"

(I was trying to distract the kids from laughing and being gross about Winnie the Pooh's name)
Daphne: "Why is it Winnie the 'Pooh?'"
Me: "It's his name, it's not the yucky poo."
Daphne: "Oh, it's just the smell good poo?"

Daphne told me:
"I'm going to be in the para-Olympics and the Olympics so I need to go live out in New York City."

(We were discussing the BSF lesson)
Me: "What was your story about today?"
Daphne: "Moses came down from the mountain and the people were worshiping a calf."
Me: "Well, that's pretty silly."
Daphne: "No Mom, it wasn't silly, it was very bad."

Daph got a new hat from Papa's work.  Most days as we're heading out the door I'll here her mutter, "Oh, I forgot my hat" and dash upstairs to grab it.   It's fine because it's better than the AWANA vest.

JONAS

Now, what is this?!  A video?  Welcome to 2015, people.  I realize a video of a baby blabbering is kind of a bore...but still.  Watching it makes me want to eat his darling little face. 

This video was taken a month or so ago and his vocabulary skills have improved greatly since.  Lots of impressive consonants now. 

Jonas: 7 Months

Let's use all the cliches: HOW is he so big already?  WHERE is my tiny baby? Only 5 months until he turns 1!  WHY is this happening to me?

get over it, mom

Jonas's Favorite:
*Big Boy Food.  All the time. 

Jonas's Not Favorite:
*Being on his tummy.  Does any baby ever like that?  Usually he'll roll himself over but sometimes he'll just growl until someone rescues him.  Because there's no reason to do for yourself what someone else will do for you.

He got his two bottom teeth last month, the earliest of any of my kids.  He looks so grown up now.

wittle teefies!

One night last week he let me sleep from 10PM to 5AM.  I woke up at 5 and realized I felt fantastic from getting the longest sleep yet since he'd been born.  We haven't gotten to do it again, but he's such a better sleeper than his older siblings that I don't really care.  He usually wakes up once in the night, then again between 5-6, then sleeps until 7:30.  

He needs a little evening catnap, but for some reason that evening nap has always been hard for all of our kids.  Do other people have that problem?  It's rare but nice when we get him to take a little snooze for us.  Otherwise I try to chase away the evening fussies by sitting him in his chair with an apple slice or something so I can get supper going.  My goal is to teach him that when he's sad/tired/bored he should eat.  The lessons are going well so far.

I think he weighs around 14lbs.  Our scale is fickle so it's hard to tell.  He's still working on filling in his 6 months clothes.  He gets to wear mostly hand-me-downs from Christian, but the boys are off ever so slightly in seasons so that he needs some warmer things that C didn't have.  But I keep not buying him stuff so he'll probably just have to tough it out and be cold. (NO he won't, he wears hats and other warm coverings.)

I almost forgot his funniest thing!  He likes to store food in his mouth like a chipmunk.  I was trying to put him to bed recently and couldn't figure out why he wasn't relaxing and taking his pacifier. I finally did a little mouth swipe and pulled out a chunk of apple!  But he still wasn't relaxing so I did another swipe and found another apple.  So silly.  He likes to sit around with food hanging out of his mouth, too.  You can see this for yourself with Exhibits A, B and C:

It seems like most photos of him now are when he's eating.

bath time is a good time, too

He's such a good, wonderful, perfect baby.  And even though I miss his tiny-ness, 7 months looks pretty good on him.

at 1, 3 and 6 months

Daphne: 6 Years Old

Daphne's birthday is Christmas Eve and that is not a good day for a birthday.  My solution is: we should've lied to her about her birthdate.  Why didn't we? The 23rd would have been a perfectly fine birthday.

OK, lying is bad, so we'll figure out something perfect one of these years.  So far she thinks it's fun to have so many festivities at once.  We'll see what next year holds.

She chose Frozen plates and napkins for her party, as probably 99.9% of all girls are doing right now.  Fortunately Frozen means snow, and snow and Christmas work pretty well together.  A few snowflakes on the windows and walls and some cotton ball snow falling from the ceiling and we had a lovely birthday breakfast room (that transitioned well into a Christmas Eve dinner room).

David had to work but was able to sneak home for an hour, and that made Daphne extremely happy.

Here's the situation with her cake:  I didn't pay attention to the fact that I put the cake pans in the oven onto the pizza stone, so then the pans shifted and the cakes baked crooked.  That's not too awful because I could just layer the fat side of one cake with the skinny side of the other and it would all sort of even out.  Except I must've been out of my ever-living-mind because I accidentally put fat on fat and skinny on skinny.  It was terrible.  Daph did not complain, because she's either blind, or just blissfully happy to be decorating a cake. 

i know, worst thing you've ever seen

such sweet little cousins

But really, it's just a perfect example of who she is.  So good at figuring out how to find joy in all situations, even when her first inclination is to complain or be disappointed.  She often says, "I will be content with whatever I get, Mama."  Her tender heart...is there much more you can want in your child?  Because from a tender heart springs empathy, servant hood, loving others more than yourself, being a 'marigold-finder'; a Jesus-emulator. 

david built the house, i got the fun part of decorating it, others bought her the pieces

She's a good girl, our Daphne.  I get so overwhelmed sometimes with all the correcting and disciplining that I forget to notice all the things she's learning and growing in and doing so well at.  I make so many mistakes and yet she still wants to snuggle up with me every evening, still tells me she loves me every day, still wants to be my helper, and plans to never marry so she can live with us forever.

How did we get so lucky?

Our Christmases

David worked both Christmas Eve and Christmas this year, but if there is one thing years of an unusual work schedule has taught us, the date doesn't really matter and we get to have a wonderful Christmas even if we don't have a typical December 25th. 

the best 'Christmas morning' picture I could get

The 24th and 25th were full, busy, and fun, but the post-Christmas weekend was really nice and relaxing and reminded me more of Christmases of my youth, where little kids bugged the big kids and we played Pictionary even though it's such an exasperating game (you know, like when people draw what looks exactly like a spider and yet they claim it's a hand...not that I'm saying that happened).  Of course the weekend was probably relaxing only because I didn't have to do any of the cooking and because I wasn't one of the big kids being bothered by the babies.  Ha. 

Christian doing the Christmas Hover while visiting the downtown tree

I asked our kids what they loved most about Christmas this year, and Christan told me he loved our tree and the train track that went around it.  Daphne said she loved everything, and Jonas said he loved the constant smothering and love that he got.  I knew he would say that.

Here's a funny story for you:  Daphne had a Shriners appointment the week before Christmas to get her new shoes. (Horse pattern this time; way less obnoxious than the American flags.) The front desk people gave us a box and said, "Have a Gingerbread House!"  We thought it was so fun to be given the stuff for a Gingerbread House!  We got home and opened it...and found a perfectly put together and decorated house.  What?  Is this a thing?  People send each other completed Gingerbread Houses? (Because there was a card enclosed giving instructions for how you could send houses to your friends.)  I thought the fun was putting them together?  Anyway, after getting over our confusion, and once Daphne stopped wailing her disappointment at not getting to make a house, David said they could eat it as long as they used no hands.  So that was definitely second best in terms of Having Some Christmas Fun. 





















Daphne was much happier with getting to make and deliver Christmas cookies.  Christian's cookies were usually left off the plates, seeing as how there were bite marks/lick smears on all of his.  One neighbor in return gave us some tuna he had caught; I say we got the better end of that particular deal. 

(Daph also wanted to carol but I said No.  Maybe next year or maybe not.)

David's chore this season was to get some mistletoe from my grandparent's trees when we were down there after Thanksgiving, but he forgot and then I was mad at him until I made some out of felt scraps.  My kids are experienced mistletoe users; be careful getting yourself caught under some with one of them. 

Christian developed a huge crush on Santa this year.  We went back to our old neighborhood to visit the same Santa we've seen every year.  He rode up in his motorized wheelchair this visit, much to Christian's dismay.  "THAT IS NOT A SLEIGH!!" he yelled.  I bet Santa felt really great about that moment. 

J didn't love it

I wish we would've gotten a family picture, or at least a picture of the kids in their Christmas outfits, but in the busyness we didn't.  We took our Christmas card photo in November, in the front yard with the camera perched on a bench with some bricks.  We'll say that counts and call it good. 

Christmas was wonderful this year (aside from a few "are there more presents for me?" moments...I always said my kids would never say those types of things, so high five on that). 

And I was totally right: our new house makes a perfect Christmas house. 

and also plays host to some unusual holiday dance moves