I'm So Glad When Daddy Comes Home

Between June and February, Jaron spent about seven weeks at our house and the rest of his time at rotations and interviews in various other states.

 

But now he's home for good and the signs of his presence are everywhere:

Jaron actually doesn't have a rotation until April so we're soaking up the two months of family time we get to revel in.

 

Jaron's days at home have taken on a sort of pattern. 

First, he exercises with Eli.

 

Then he takes the carpool to school.

Much of the rest of his day involves playing cars or superheroes (or nerf guns) with the boys and dolls and "house" with Gracen.  Much of this playing takes place while I am at the library doing homework.   He has decided to also "be productive" and has taken on learning the guitar during this time.

 

At the end of the day, we work as a team to get dinner cleaned up, the house put back together, and the kids into bed.

 

Heaven, people.  Having so much family time is like heaven!  I'm so grateful for this much needed break!

 



Warm Weather

In about a month we'll find out where we'll be spending the next years of our lives.  It more than likely won't be Kansas.  So we're starting to think about the things we're going to miss about Kansas and mild weather is one of them.  Both this winter and past winter have been really mild.

 

We like to take advantage of the warm days when they come by hitting up the many fantastic parks our city has to offer.  Our favorites are the lakes and the bike paths.

 

 It'd be way less fun if there were empty seats in the van!

 Can you even see the kids on the far side of the lake?  Should've cropped these, I guess. :)

I'm already dreading the winter winters of wherever we'll live next!

 

P.S. Gracen dresses herself and refuses almost everyday to have elastics in her hair.  I choose my battles and those are not them. :)



Thumb Sucking

When Alden was 2 1/2, we took away his binky (pacifier, soother, whatever you call it) and within a couple of days, Alden started sucking his thumb.  I was very surprised that a kid would start sucking their thumb at such an "old" age but, knowing that Jaron sucked his thumb until he was 9, I was determined to nip the habit in the bud. (Is that the expression?)

 

We tried pickle juice.  We tried over-the-counter thumb yuck stuff.  We tried taping his thumbs up.  Nothing worked.  After about a week of mine and Alden's fighting almost constantly over the issue, Jaron wisely advised me to just let it go (What would I do without that man?!).  Unsure of what else I could do, I gave in.

 

Over the next four years, people lent me endless advice.  "You shouldn't let him suck his thumb." "You should make him stop." "You know, thumb sucking will wreck his teeth." "Does he suck his thumb all  the time?" "Think of all the germs on his thumb!"

Haha, people can be sooo helpful sometimes.  I'll admit I would lose my temper with it sometimes and gruffly pull the thumb from his mouth or demand that he take it out.  I'm still not sure why it bothered me so much.

 

About a month ago, Alden came home from school with a picture he'd drawn of himself sucking his thumb.  I asked him about it and he said that while at workshop ("What on earth is workshop?!") the teacher told him he couldn't play the game because he was sucking his thumb and made him sit at another table to draw a picture of himself sucking his thumb instead.

 

"What?!"

 

OK, I realize it's totally hypocritical.  How many times have I lost my temper with the thumb sucking?!  Still, should a teacher at school be losing her temper?  I thought about the picture from time to time over the weekend and by Monday I had decided to email his teacher about it.  She forwarded it to the "workshop" teacher who called me the next day.

 

She sounded like a sweet elderly lady who began by apologizing, acknowledging that she shouldn't have handled the situation the way she had.  She explained that workshop is a special group that Alden goes to each week for a little advanced work ("Why didn't I know about this?!") and she expressed frustration at all the germs Alden was spreading through his thumb sucking.  She described what had happened on Friday and then apologized again but also advised that Alden needed to stop the thumb sucking.

 

I told her that I wasn't happy either that Alden sucked his thumb and told her of my efforts to try to break the habit.  She helpfully warned me that Alden would be teased if he didn't stop soon.  I suggested that she could discourage the habit by having Alden wash his hands each time she caught him sucking his thumb but I also advised her that it was inappropriate and definitely unhelpful to punish him for sucking his thumb.

 

Apparently the incident created enough thumb sucking conversation in our house that Alden decided he was ready to quit.  Jaron got a BB gun as a quitting bribe when he was nine.  Alden has wanted an Air Hog remote-controlled airplane for a long time so we decided that would be the reward. 

 

Alden tried to quit but kept forgetting and after a few days, decided he wasn't ready.  About a week later, though, he decided he was ready to try again.  We tried putting band-aids on his thumbs to help him remember but those never lasted long.  I looked on the internet at a few $20+ "thumb guards" and decided they looked like glorified stretchy gloves with the fingers cut off.  So I cut the fingers (and left the thumbs) off a few winter gloves and they were really effective at helping him to remember.  We set up a reward schedule of going out for ice cream after three days, going out for dinner after a week, and getting the Air Hog after a month of no thumb sucking.

 

And guess what?!  He did it!!  I couldn't believe that it was just as easy as him deciding he wanted to do it and then doing it.  Alden now hasn't sucked his thumb in over two months.

 

Chick-fil-A for dinner.

 We were blessed to score this Air Hog set for only $25 at the after Christmas clearance! 

Alden and Eli LOVE it.

 

We're so proud of you, Alden!  Way to go!!

Fun

I have a bunch of random photos of good times that I want to post.  

One day Alden was trying his hardest to snap an "action" shot of Eli.  He never succeeded, but I did!

 It snowed for the second time a few weeks ago and stayed around for a few days.  The kids had fun building a snowman with our neighbor, Addie, and her Dad.

 My aunt sent us a Christmas package that didn't arrive until a few weeks after Christmas.  It was filled with fun things like a novel for me written by one of the 4th grade teachers from my elementary school.  My aunt's a knitter and always knits the kids these socks.  They call them their "sweat socks" and felt the need to strip down so that all they were wearing was underwear and their sweat socks. :)

 I've had a VCR that I bought from a garage sale when we first moved in. We've never used it and I really wanted a magnet for some kid fun. I thought there was a magnet inside a VCR so I told the kids they could rip it apart.  We couldn't find the magnet.  But the kids did have fun tearing the VCR apart with a hammer!

 We bought a black light to have fun with.  I got this idea from a blog off of Pinterest.  You run a highlighter into the bath water and under the black light the water glows.  So, so fun!!  Definitely worth the $10 black light and there's so many fun things to do with it! 

Sick

We have spent the last week being sick around here.  I captured a little of it with the iPod so I could keep Jaron updated.  I figured I'd do a post just, you know, so I can always remember how tough life gets sometimes. :) 

I was actually the first to get sick.  It started with a tickle in my chest but after a few days where I particularly spread myself thin, I was suffering a raspy cough, sinus congestion, and a headache.  A couple of days later, Eli started with a fever, a headache, and throwing up.  Eli definitely got it the worst of all  of us.  He spent a couple of days not getting up from the couch.

 It can be tough to care for Eli when he's sick.  He's clingy normally but when he doesn't feel good, he wants to be always touching his Momma.  It was a good chance to snuggle a lot but...sometimes a mom's got to do other things. :(

 Two days into it, Eli really wasn't doing well.  His little heart felt like it was racing in his chest and he was so lethargic that he couldn't lift a cup to his lips.  The skin on his lips was so dry it was chapped and peeling.  He was eating and drinking almost nothing and throwing up the few bits of fruit he did manage to swallow.  I texted Jaron to see what he thought and Jaron got pretty concerned, telling me I probably needed to take him to the ER.  I know how expensive ER visits are so I called the doctor's office.  The nurse's line told me that since he hadn't urinated in 12 hours (it'd actually been 36!), he needed to go to the ER right away. 

 I don't know about you, but when people start telling me I need to rush my child to the ER, I start to panic a little and feel like said child just might be dying.  Haha.  At this point, I may have gotten a little emotional for a minute. :)

I didn't know what to do with my other kids so I quickly gathered a backpack full of activities and snacks and called the school to tell them I'd be coming to get Alden early.  I knew that we wouldn't be back by the end of school and also that none of my neighbors wanted to be watching my kids when someone in our house was so sick.  We got Eli to the ER and they gave him some Zofran intravenously to settle his nausea.   Then they gave him an hour's worth of IV fluids.  The doctor said that he "looks like flu" but swabbed his throat just in case.  The strep test came back positive so she determined he probably had both the flu and strep and gave us a prescription for Amoxicillan.  Poor kid!  By the end of the night, I was exhausted.  It's amazing how hard an ER run and a pharmacy stop are when you have sick kids and no spouse to back you up.

The next day, Eli was doing considerably better but was still on the couch for most of the day.  Gracen started a fever by mid-afternoon and spent the next twelve hours being miserable.  Alden got the headache/fever thing the next day and the pattern continued for a few days.  Each kid got feverish at least twice and each kid spent at least one rough night crying/sleeping in my bed.

By Sunday, seven days after it all started, I took this picture for Jaron and told him I felt the same way. :) I felt like Bilbo Baggins in Lord of the Rings:

"I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread."

Fortunately, today we seem to be coming out of the fog.  Nobody has run a fever in over 24 hours and nobody has been stuck to the couch.  We managed to hit the grocery store and re-stock our sparsely outfitted fridge.  Everyone's still snotty and running on little energy, but we're almost back!  All I can keep thinking is, man, you can accomplish so much with a healthy body!  I am thoroughly renewed in gratitude that my kids and I have healthy bodies!!

I am also filled with gratitude for good friends who watch over us.  Although I have a hard time taking people's help, we had a few offers to have dinner brought over.  My sweet friend, Billie, also kept calling to check and see if there was anything we needed from the store.  I am so amazed by how in tune with other peoples' needs some people are!  Friends are awesome.  

Crown Center Christmas

One of our favorite things at Christmas here in Kansas City is to go see all the fun things at Crown Center, a shopping center sponsored by Hallmark, who is headquartered here.

The Mayor's Christmas tree is supposedly one of the tallest real Christmas trees in the country.

 It has a "life size toy land" around it.  I cannot rationally explain why Gracen's extreme girly-ness makes me happy but it does.  She is drawn to all things pink.

 Eli is not. :)

 Crown Center includes Kaleidoscope, a fun place where kids can go to get imaginative with paper crafts.  Our favorite activities here are making your own puzzle and the black light room where you can paint with fluorescent melted crayons.

 

Crown Center is connected by a series of sky walks to the beautiful and historic Union Station.

 I absolutely love being inside the grandeur of Union Station that is reminiscent of another time.

 Each Christmas Union Station puts up an impressive display of model trains.

 We also noticed for the first time this display of model roller coasters in one of the side rooms.  Each one is a replica of a real roller coaster from Worlds of Fun, some that are past and some that are present.  Seeing them made me sad that we've never been to Worlds of Fun; even though, judging by the replicas, I probably couldn't stomach half the rides there!

 This display of a gingerbread village ain't to shabby, either.  That's all real gingerbread and candy!

 One of Hallmark's subsidiaries is Crayola and the center also puts up this fun little Crayola Funland where the kids get to climb on giant Crayola art supplies.  The display in this room changes every few months.  In the summer we went to a fun little dinosaur exhibit in this same room.

Last Christmas post, I promise!  It's been fun living in a city where there's so much free stuff to do at the holidays.  I'm definitely going to miss that next year!

Kidisms

I've been writing down funny things the kids have said.  Here are some gems I want to remember:

Gracen (on the way to drop Jaron off at the airport at 4:30 AM): "Look!  The moon is following me!"

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Gracen: "This is my baby."

Me: "What a cute baby."

Gracen: "Her will bite you.  She won't bite me because I'm a pretty mommy."

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Alden: "How come in cartoons everyone can just reach behind them and everything they need is right there?!"

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Eli told some "hilarious" joke and then said: "I am just so curious."

Alden: "Eli, curious means that you want to know about lots of things."

Eli: "Oh.  I am NOT curious then."

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Alden and Eli were tying balloons on strings to be pets.

Eli: "I want two so they can be twins."

Alden: "But Eli, twins are way so much more work."

Eli: "I know. But one of them will be a baby so he'll just take a nap or something."

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Gracen: "Mom, your eyelashes smell pretty!"

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Gracen, after falling off the couch and rolling across the floor: "Well, that was pretty."

Me: "Are you okay?"

Gracen: "Yeah, that was my dance move from dance class."

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Eli and I were talking about fire safety.

Me: "What do you do if the fire alarm goes off?"

Eli: "Wave a towel in front of it until it stops beeping."

Haha, I guess I've burned dinner one too many times. :)

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Alden: "Mom, do you know why I don't want you to throw up again?"

Me: "Why?"

Alden: "'Cause I don't want the baby to come out of your mouth while you're throwing up!"

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On Christmas morning, Gracen opened up a little plastic teaset and said: "I wanted this for the whole time!"

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Eli: "How did they get the orange in the peel without even making a slit?"

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Eli, stepping onto the bathroom scale: "Whoa!  Look how old I am!"

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One night at bedtime, Alden finished the prayer and Eli said: "Well that wasn't a very thankful prayer."

Alden: "Last night I prayed for the baby and for people who are sick."

Eli: "Well, last night I prayed for blind people."