w more times down Idea Alley and he should be a bit more receptive. A few nights later, I presented the idea again. "Soon Nathan can have your little crib and John Michael will get a big boy bed." I expected more of the same, another appeal perhaps to pawn the whole thing off on David or perhaps a cleverly devised stall tactic. Instead, he began to climb out of his crib and happily said, "Ok Nathan can have my bed. I'm going to sleep with Philip." I urged him back into his crib and explained to him that Nathan didn't need his bed for at least a couple more nights... sure wasn't prepared for that quick turnaround anyway! So the very next day we moved beds about the house and now John Michael has his big boy bed and Nathan can snuffle and snort his way through the night all he wants while we remain blessedly unaware of his nocturnal noises.
Destination: Sainthood (via the Funny Farm)
Monday, September 25, 2006
The Big Boy Bed
We lost our big boy bed in the fire. From Kid One we'd been using the under the bed trundle as our transition bed. It was the perfect size for a toddler to climb up fearlessly and the top to floor measurement made Mom and Dad feel safe just in case of a learning-to-sleep-in-a-bed accident. When we replaced Miriam's bed we bought her a pretty little daybed with a trundle underneath, specifically with John Michael in mind. Now JM is very particular about his things. He likes order and he likes things to be just the way he knows them to be so I knew I would need to do some preparing to get him to transition from the crib to the big boy bed. The first night I presented the idea to him of giving Nathan his crib and gaining a big boy bed in the deal he got a panicked look on his face. "No!" he wailed. "This is MYYYYY bed!" He looked around the room and quickly formed an idea in his head - a great idea, "Nathan can have David's bed!" I left him in his crib, knowing that I had at least planted the seed of an idea. A fe
w more times down Idea Alley and he should be a bit more receptive. A few nights later, I presented the idea again. "Soon Nathan can have your little crib and John Michael will get a big boy bed." I expected more of the same, another appeal perhaps to pawn the whole thing off on David or perhaps a cleverly devised stall tactic. Instead, he began to climb out of his crib and happily said, "Ok Nathan can have my bed. I'm going to sleep with Philip." I urged him back into his crib and explained to him that Nathan didn't need his bed for at least a couple more nights... sure wasn't prepared for that quick turnaround anyway! So the very next day we moved beds about the house and now John Michael has his big boy bed and Nathan can snuffle and snort his way through the night all he wants while we remain blessedly unaware of his nocturnal noises.
w more times down Idea Alley and he should be a bit more receptive. A few nights later, I presented the idea again. "Soon Nathan can have your little crib and John Michael will get a big boy bed." I expected more of the same, another appeal perhaps to pawn the whole thing off on David or perhaps a cleverly devised stall tactic. Instead, he began to climb out of his crib and happily said, "Ok Nathan can have my bed. I'm going to sleep with Philip." I urged him back into his crib and explained to him that Nathan didn't need his bed for at least a couple more nights... sure wasn't prepared for that quick turnaround anyway! So the very next day we moved beds about the house and now John Michael has his big boy bed and Nathan can snuffle and snort his way through the night all he wants while we remain blessedly unaware of his nocturnal noises.
Friday, September 22, 2006
If You Give a Kid a Lego...
He's going to make something really cool. Here's what JT and Ben were up to in their spare time today: 
Ben made this cart w/a battering ram that has a really neat mechanism to make it go out and in and another form of weaponry on top.
JT decided to combine his electronics kit with his legos to make this little lamp in the shape of a house so that the light shines through the front window:
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Adora!
We now have two new "family" members living with us. On Sunday, Adora and Nehemiah moved in with us. Nehemiah was born last week while we were on vacation and celebrated his one week birthday yesterday. Adora hopes to stay with us for the next year or so. We are thrilled to have her and her beautiful baby with us! That's Nehemiah on the right and his buddy Nathan on the left. Nathan looks so big now that there's a real newborn around again!
A Birthday for Boo Boo
I can never remember if Betsy's birthday is the 20th or the 21st of September but it worked out better this year on the 21st so the 21st it was...
For her date night she chose to take her good buddy Emma to Chuck E. Cheese with her Dad. Apparently, they had a great time and the best part was, I didn't have to go! We had dinner before they went (Macaroni and Cheese) and cake when they got back. Betsy's latest horse craze is a passion for pintos so I fash
ioned her one out of chocolate cake and, at her request, iced it 
with lemon icing. She loved it until after she blew out the candles and tasted it. This here is her "That tastes disgusting, Mom" face. Hey, she picked it out!
After cake and icecream Ben had a special activity planned. He spent a lot of time fashioning this pin the rider on the horse game. He had a jockey and a princess and a few other specialized riders as well. The birthday girl pinned her rider closest to the saddle and won the big prize (I'm not sure what that was - candy, I think, from Ben's personal stash).
She brought in her idea of a good haul on the presents - a princess nightgown, a notebook and fun pen, some candy on the diet and a really cute hamster playset from Emma. She woke up to her new bike sitting in the dining room and spent a good part of the day trying that out.
She stopped opening presents long enough to have a birthday chat with Grammy and Tata. Nathan enjoyed the whole party from this angle...
WELCOME TO 5, BETSY BOO!
For her date night she chose to take her good buddy Emma to Chuck E. Cheese with her Dad. Apparently, they had a great time and the best part was, I didn't have to go! We had dinner before they went (Macaroni and Cheese) and cake when they got back. Betsy's latest horse craze is a passion for pintos so I fash
ioned her one out of chocolate cake and, at her request, iced it 
with lemon icing. She loved it until after she blew out the candles and tasted it. This here is her "That tastes disgusting, Mom" face. Hey, she picked it out!
After cake and icecream Ben had a special activity planned. He spent a lot of time fashioning this pin the rider on the horse game. He had a jockey and a princess and a few other specialized riders as well. The birthday girl pinned her rider closest to the saddle and won the big prize (I'm not sure what that was - candy, I think, from Ben's personal stash).
She brought in her idea of a good haul on the presents - a princess nightgown, a notebook and fun pen, some candy on the diet and a really cute hamster playset from Emma. She woke up to her new bike sitting in the dining room and spent a good part of the day trying that out.
She stopped opening presents long enough to have a birthday chat with Grammy and Tata. Nathan enjoyed the whole party from this angle...
WELCOME TO 5, BETSY BOO!
Friday, September 08, 2006
Jamestown
We started off our vacation this year with a long weekend in Williamsburg. We stayed at the Govornor's Inn - the first time we'd tried a hotel in a long time. We had two adjoining rooms. The big kids slept in one side and the babies slept on the other side with us. It worked but I wouldn't want to make it a permanent arrangement...We decided to do Jamestown this time around and spent half a day romping around on boats and visiting the settlement there.
Here's the kids on one of the boats. I don't remember the name of them (there are 3 in Jamestown). That's more of a guy thing in our household - anything of a seafaring nature which may be reminiscent of piratey things...
This picture is actually misplaced but I'm too tired to delete it and rearrange the rest..lol..This boat was at the museum in Roanoke Island.
The rest of these pictures are from the Jamestown settlement. It was pretty neat - much smaller scale than historic Williamsburg but still had folks dressed up in costume who talked about their homes and their lives.
Davey was born to be a sailor! He fit right nicely into those little berths.
And here's David in Saul's armor...
The kids decided to make armor a family affair. Fr. Joel looks rather dashing in a breastplate and pointy hat, I think!
This was the odd-ball moment of the whole trip. Miriam went from one skinned animal to the next petting the furs and lamenting the poor dead animals. The day we were there they had just stretched a freshly killed deer's skin and left this hoof laying on the ground. Miriam was more than happy to pick it up and play with it
(and yes, she did know exactly what it was !)
Ben Bear with the Bear...
Here's the kids on one of the boats. I don't remember the name of them (there are 3 in Jamestown). That's more of a guy thing in our household - anything of a seafaring nature which may be reminiscent of piratey things...
This picture is actually misplaced but I'm too tired to delete it and rearrange the rest..lol..This boat was at the museum in Roanoke Island.
The rest of these pictures are from the Jamestown settlement. It was pretty neat - much smaller scale than historic Williamsburg but still had folks dressed up in costume who talked about their homes and their lives.
Davey was born to be a sailor! He fit right nicely into those little berths.
And here's David in Saul's armor...
The kids decided to make armor a family affair. Fr. Joel looks rather dashing in a breastplate and pointy hat, I think!
This was the odd-ball moment of the whole trip. Miriam went from one skinned animal to the next petting the furs and lamenting the poor dead animals. The day we were there they had just stretched a freshly killed deer's skin and left this hoof laying on the ground. Miriam was more than happy to pick it up and play with it
(and yes, she did know exactly what it was !)Ben Bear with the Bear...
Monday, September 04, 2006
What's Up With That?!
We had our open house on Saturday and Mom and Dad came in the morning to help me set up. It was great to have their help! We sent Dad and Betsy out to get some flowers for the tables - Dad was the financier and Betsy was the designer. Anyway, apparently, they had quite a conversation while they were out and about. Betsy informed him of her future plans to have 3 children and she also laid out our detailed plan for the school year this year. Apparently, I'm putting them all on the schoolbus so they can go to public school this year. That way I can have some peace and quiet during the day. (I don't think she accounted for the fact that this would still leave 3 of the loudest little people behind in the house with me all day!) Her story was so convincing that Dad came back to the house just waiting for us to drop the news that we'd bagged the whole homeschooling idea. It wasn't until he brought it up with Mom later in the car that they realized she had fed him a whole line of hooey. This is the same child who couldn't decide if she wanted a baby brother or a baby sister so she just announced to everyone at her friend's birthday party over cake and icecream that I was expecting twins - a boy and a girl. When we arrived to pick her up from that party, we got some awfully expectant looks from people waiting for our big, official announcement....Maybe I should just let Betsy manage our home for awhile since she seems to have some strong opinions about how things should go...
DFI
I don't wanna do it and so I'm procrastinating by writing a post on my blog about not wanting to do it and surfing Steve Irwin obits. What is it? you might be wondering. Well, it involves swearing I hate it so much which is why it's earned itself a nick-name - DFI. It stands for Damn Fire Inventory. So far a 30-something page inventory of every item destroyed in the fire we can think of. The addendum is another 20-something pages of photocopied receipts for items we have since replaced. The inventory has a column for cross-referencing each item on each receipt with each item on the inventory. It represents I-have-no-idea how many hours of my valuable time spent putting the thing together, losing the file on the computer, rebuilding it again and again and now a deadline of September 15th handed down by our insurance adjustor - aka Gene, or sometimes Gene with a similarly unflattering epithet attached to his name....I guess the guy is just doing his job but he could give us a break, for Pete's sake (whoever Pete is). I could probably get just as much of a contents settlement if I just billed him for a couple hundred hours of my time. But we need the money and we are leaving on vacation on Thursday so today is the day I get it done...maybe...it seems as monumental a task as building an ark in the middle of a desert - and as futile. But hopefully it will be done before the floodwaters start rising and all the animals will be on board just in time...sigh....
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Welcome to the family, Nathan Lee
Nathan Lee was baptized at the Church of Reconciliation on Sunday, September 3rd, 2006 by his daddy, Fr. Joel. Here's a little pictorial walk through the ceremony...
Parents and godparents affirm our commitment to raise Nathan up in the love and admonition of the Lord.
Parents, godparents and congregation affirm our beliefs as stated in the creed. Jenifer and John were chosen as godparents after we spent the day in the LDR listening to John's CD, Wind of God. We knew they would blow the wind of God upon our Nathan throughout his spiritual walk.
Baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
Somehow we misplaced the official towel and had to improvise w/the blanket...
Anointed with chrism and sealed as Christ's own forever.
We welcome the newly baptized!
Baptisms in our family don't seem complete until the baby has fallen asleep on Fr. Jeffrey...
Parents and godparents affirm our commitment to raise Nathan up in the love and admonition of the Lord.
Parents, godparents and congregation affirm our beliefs as stated in the creed. Jenifer and John were chosen as godparents after we spent the day in the LDR listening to John's CD, Wind of God. We knew they would blow the wind of God upon our Nathan throughout his spiritual walk.
Baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
Somehow we misplaced the official towel and had to improvise w/the blanket...
Anointed with chrism and sealed as Christ's own forever.
We welcome the newly baptized!
Baptisms in our family don't seem complete until the baby has fallen asleep on Fr. Jeffrey...
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