Now It Is Winter

We have a favorite book in this house.  Well, we have a lot of favorites, but that's beside the point.

"Now It Is Winter" is about a little mouse who wants to do all sorts of "springish" things, but his mom keeps repeating, "Now it is winter....".  We haven't had much of a winter this year, but it finally came.  We are currently under a "Winter Storm Warning" for hopefully close to a foot and a half of snow.  A foot and a half!!!! 

I love snow.  I love how snow makes the house feel so much warmer and "snuggly".  I love that my husband loves making fires in our a fireplace and I love cooking "comfort food".  I love that we have the perfect sledding hill right out our back door.  I love almost everything about snow.

Warning

Consider yourselves warned.  I'm a mess.  I'm a big a-year-ago-the-Monday-before-Mardi-Gras-was-the-last-time-I-felt-our-unborn-baby-move mess.  Oh yes, it's true.  I expected to be like this on her birthday, but this?  I did not expect this. 

Our Big Backyard

Yesterday afternoon we enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather and went for a hike...out our back door.  I haven't posted much about our new place.  We are on about 5 acres and quite a bit of that is woods.  We've spent most if not all of our "free" time fixing up the house and haven't paid much attention to the land yet.  We have a lot of clearing to do and years and years worth of wood we will be burning. 

So, out we went, hatchet in hand, and went to explore.  I will admit that the thought of taking every one for an afternoon hike was not mine.  Like many things, it never really sounds like a good idea, but I'm always so happy we did it.  I never used to be like that.  Weird.  Anyway, Felicity loved being outside and pointed and enjoyed the trees, watching the cats hike with us (I'm telling ya, they think they are dogs), and feeling the maybe-a-little-too-cool breeze on her face.

 

Learning Obedience

We are studying character qualities in school this year.  I vividly remember doing a program in school called "Character Counts" and I thought it was the cheesiest, worst waste of time ever.  I was ten, what can I say?

I hesitated doing this to my children, but in the end I decided that I can't expect my children to understand what it means to be a person of character if they didn't know what character was in the first place.  So, enter our character study.  It's been pretty fun actually, and I have to say that I love being able to say things like, "What is obedience again?  Was what you just did obedience?"

So, this post is on obedience.  I don't expect my children to be little robots who just say (now use your best "robot" voice), "Yes, master.  Whatever you say, master."  But, when given an instruction, we do expect them to do it.  Preferable without telling us what they think about our instruction. 

I had a moment today when I saw the beautiful fruits of all of our hard work.  Veronica and Gianna were in the school room arguing about something.  They were in the typical, "stop it", "no, you stop it", "no, you stop it", "no, you stop it", part of the fight when Nica took it to the next level, volume level, and yelled at her sister.  This mother went down the stairs, looked at the sweet red-head and said, "We do not yell at our sister.  You need to take a little break and go sit in your chair in the family room.  Do you understand?".

It was made clear that yes, she did understand and off she went.  Not happily skipping, but dramatically stomping to her chair.  Okay, good.

I was helping Gianna with a craft that she had gotten for her birthday when it dawned on me how obedient Veronica was.  She was sitting in that chair, not fussing or saying a word.  By-golly I was going to go in there and tell her what a big girl she was for doing just as she was told.

 So much for that!

Gianna's Turn

Gianna turned six today!  Six?!?! I guess I should probably get used to this kids-are-growing-up-way-too-fast feeling because we have a few years left of this.  Okay, maybe more than a few. 

To date Gianna's entrance into this world is my favorite.  Small town hospital, family practice doc, quiet, low-key, intervention free, calm, joking about wine right up to delivery type birth.  I will never forget when the doctor handed me a girl who looked exactly like the first girl I had given birth to 2 1/2 years earlier. 

Gianna is and has always been our lovey, super affectionate little girl.  If you're not the affectionate-loving type, too bad.  Gigi has no problem with that.  You will be hugged or snuggled with anyway. 

Gigi is currently our middle child.  Not currently because I'm making an announcement, just currently because that's a fact.  She wears her spot well.  That's all that will be said about that topic.

I think she had a great day.  She had fun with her presents and looked forward to a special friend of hers and his family coming over for dinner tonight.  Her friend is from our karate academy and the two of them are so stinkin' cute together.  I think they both had a great time tonight playing and just being kids.  Too fun!  I much prefer this type of birthday party. 

Gigi was so excited about all the cool stuff she just had to hug someone.  Felicity happened to be in the right place at the right time.

You're Welcome

Dear Future-Spouse of my son,
   I'm raising a man who knows how to have fun while doing the dishes. 

Sincerely,
  Your Future-Mother-in-Law

P.S.  He also knows how to cook as is evidenced by the bacon-grease scar under his nose.  It's fading, don't worry. 

A Heart Full of Love

She's getting so close to walking.  She is practicing standing on her own.  How did the world's longest year go by so quickly?

The kids woke up to a little treat at their spot.  My mom would sometimes have treats on our beds when we came home from school.  I loved that.  When we go home I still check the beds for a little surprise. 

St.Valentine's Day comes in the middle of a very busy, very sugar-filled week at our house.  With a birthday the day before and a birthday three days after (not to mention two more birthdays in two more weeks!) we have a lot of celebrating around here. 

We don't have any big plans for today.  I know for a fact that my husband is not taking me out to dinner, no surprise baby sitter, no lavish gifts.  I'm okay with that.  My ideal date is a quiet night with my love at home.  Truly, I'm that easy to please. 

Currently I'm letting the kids' blood-sugars level out a bit before I try to make them learn something.  Of course they were petitioning for the day off...uhmmm...no. 

Our Rojita

That's "little red".  Our sweet Veronica Therese turned three today.  What to say about this girl?  I can't imagine my life without her.  She's been fiery from the beginning and has a great personality.  You don't want to cross her on a bad day though, watch out!  She spent her birthday in quite a sombre way.  She didn't get too excited about anything although the rest of us were partying all day long.  She's serious and thoughtful, yet funny and spunky.  There are three years between her and her "birthday buddy" Gianna.  We lost a baby between the two of them and that really opened my eyes to the fact that we don't always get to meet all of our children here on earth.  I was so overjoyed when my (favorite!) doctor handed my sweet girl to me. 
Nica is the current favored playmate in the house which I think she is becoming aware of.  She's old enough to play fun stuff with, yet young enough to be 100% cute at all she does.  She loves sleeping in Emma's bed, loves sitting next to Aidan at the table, and loves playing "Kaya and Lucy" with Gianna, all...day....long.
Happy Birthday sweet one!  

Quote of the day

Gigi has four stitches on her knee (have I told you that?). 

Gigi has been working on a "store" selling pipecleaners twisted up as "mice".

Gigi took a bath tonight.

Gigi put her pajama shirt on, but we were letting her knee air out a bit.

As she left the bathroom, "Oh, it looks like I have a customer.  I better go put some pants on."

Short lived

I'm not sure how much I have shared here about our ongoing sleepless nights struggle with Felicity's reflux.  Medications haven't seemed to help, some making it worse, a strict elimination diet helped for awhile, but didn't cure the problem.  It's been such a part of our life that I stopped trying to find a solution and just figured this was "normal".

A couple of weeks ago Felicity was diagnosed with a double ear infection.  Apparently her ears were like those of a child who has had numerous undiagnosed/untreated ear infections.  Great.  Our (new!) doctor prescribe some antibiotics and her ears cleared up, and....her reflux disappeared.

I wish that was the end of the story.  It's back, and back with a vengeance.  Upon further research I discovered that antibiotics are sometimes used to treat reflux because of what they do to the GI system.  However, once the abx are over the reflux comes back.  And, did I mention it's back?  The poor girl doesn't know what it's like to eat without her food coming back up to irritate her throat and nose, and we don't know what it's like to sleep at night without being awakened by a choking, gagging baby. I shudder to think what would happen if we didn't have her in our bed.  Yeah, not going there.

So I'm not sure what her/our future holds.  We have an appointment with a Pediatric GI doc in like 23 years (maybe a slight exaggeration).  In the meantime I'm going to be more systematic about cutting foods out of my diet (again), and we'll see if that helps. 

Felicity is 11 months old.  I'm a little bit of a mess thinking back to the past 11 months.  There are often times I want to say, "Enough is enough!", but it would do no good.  If I've learned anything it's that everything happens for a reason.  Even this trial that seems to be so overwhelming has its purpose.  Am I handling it with grace?  I know for a fact that I'm handling it with coffee (and do I realize that caffeine can affect reflux? the answer is yes, but I'm convinced we are dealing with much more than a 1/2 cup of coffee can cause).  I also know for a fact that Felicity Perpetua is worth all of this "hardship".  My, oh my, how our hearts are full of love for this girl.  

A Stitch 'n Time

The Stitch:  Actually, make that 4 stitches, and in Gianna's knee.  This poor girl.  First her sledding, "head meets pole" incident and now this.  The story isn't really that great either.  We were at a neighbor's house for dinner, the kids were playing quietly in the living room, and bam, a sliced knee.  Gianna thinks she maybe, might have been walking, or maybe running, and her eyes might have been closed.  I still don't know what she cut her knee on, but it was bad.  We said, "Thank you very much for dinner, sorry to eat and run" and Brett dropped the rest of us off at home and took Gigi to "Urgent Care".  I hated not being there for my girl, but I knew that Brett was fully capable, and he played the "rescuing father" quite well. 

The Time:  I performed an experiment today.  I didn't check my phone or turn on my computer all day.  Wanna know what happened while I was "not checking in" with the whole world?  A couple of things. 

#1: Nothing.  Every one's life was completely unaltered by my "absence".

#2: Everything.  I was present to my children and we had the absolute best day possible.  We got a lot accomplished in school, all of the household chores were completed, the kids got some free time outside (except for the above mentioned one who is on injured-reserves), every one's moods were great, fighting was at an all-time low, and I could go on and on.  I won't.  Let's just say my little experiment confirmed to me what I already know.  Enough.  Enough blogs, enough facebook, enough articles, reports, "findings".  Enough is enough.  It is important to be informed, but it is not important to know that "friend #123 ate at Taco Bell and saw the funniest dog in the car next to him".  Okay, I completely made that up, but you get the gist (nope, still don't like it...if you were wondering or have any idea what I'm talking about).  The point is, the technology will be turned off during the day and if/when I have free time I will spend a minimal amount of time doing necessary things.  Like blogging, of course.  And reading friends' blogs, and posting adorable pictures of my children or writing about controversial topics.  Would she? 

Wait and see....