Silly kids and keeping busy

We have so many pictures of this funny girl sleeping in such funny positions and places. In the picture above, she has her baby-doll tucked under her shirt... that's how we found her sleeping a few nights ago. Guess we've got too many pregnant friends! Below you can see evidence that she did, indeed, fall asleep while hanging half-way off her bed a few days later. How would she fall asleep like that? Her feet are dangling a few inches off the floor and she's just fast asleep. Seems like it'd be more comfy to just put your head on your pillow and lay flat, but you're right, I haven't tried sleeping this way!

The kids entertain themselves all day every day, although Annie is delighted if I offer to do a craft with them and both kids are thrilled if I read to them or play a game with them. But I'm pretty busy these days.
Here's what I found them doing not long ago. Annie often rides in this backpack when Nate or I are carrying her, but this time, she had gotten in it herself and Will was trying to carry her on his little back. It didn't quite work out - both because I found them rigging this up and because Annie is too heavy for Will to carry like this. Oh well, it was a good try. Who needs toys when there are real, every-day, useful items around to make use of?
So I have finally returned from too many days away from my blog. My mother will be after me sometime soon if I don't hurry up and post some pictures of the grand kids and fill her in on life at our house. In one month we'll be at her house, and we're all looking forward to that! I am realizing that with only 4 weeks left, I have TONS to do! I am working on all the hidden places - the closets and cupboards and storage areas - to clean and sort and figure out what's coming with us and what we can pass on to others - while leaving the house feeling like we can still live here. It has been really fun to be able to give to people who need and want our things. I am blessed to be able to fill other people's needs in such an immediate way - and I pray often that I will be able to be generous with our things as God would want me to be. I find it hard to know how much to 'provide' for our own family (esp. the kids) with toys and clothes and things, and how much to let go, knowing that God will always provide for us. I pray for a generous, considerate, and attentive heart. So far the kids have been incredibly generous and understanding as they watch friends and strangers walk away with their treasures. I am thankful.

I have also been quilting. quilting to no end, it seems. A group of us women has been making quilts for the past few months. We just gave one we made to our friend who will be returning 'home' to have a baby in less than two weeks! Here she is with the quilt for her baby:


Annie's quilt still sits mostly finished... I've got to get working on that. There are SO many things to do right now that sometimes I just wander around wondering what to work on next.

Some fun things we've done recently:

1. Crafts telling the creation story from Genesis 1.
2. The kids and I attended a concert together today.
3. Will is learning to ride a 2-wheel bike... sort of (but he's REALLY excited about it!)
4. Nate finished yet another university course toward his MA. (GO NATE!)
5. Nate took Annie on a date (hike up to the top of the mountain), while I took Will on a 'date' to a birthday party.
6. God gave us RAIN! - more on this in my next post hopefully!
7. The kids and I had a 'play date' with another neighboring mom and kindergartner, which was enjoyed by all of us.
8. I am LOVING being back to normal-sized laundry loads as Annie no longer wets her pants all day long! Yippee! It's been a VERY long potty-training season with her!
9. I made iron-on-Dora shirts with the kids
10. We've made numerous trips to the library to stock up on books - it's especially nice since our own things are finding their way to other people's homes.

Well, that's it for now. We are certainly staying occupied!

P.S. Thanks for all the kind notes about my music. I really don't deserve credit for the songs... they are songs that God has given to me and helped me to write over the years, and I feel that I am meant to share them so that they can be a blessing to you and others. But thank you for letting me know that you appreciated them... I am encouraged to continue writing when I hear that people appreciate my efforts- smile. Thank you.

Progress Report

This weekend all the students at our school got progress reports. The last quarter of the school year is underway and we're making progress at our house as well.

1. Annie's nose is all better as you may have noticed in the pictures from my last post! YAY!
2. My foot is almost all better and I am running again.
3. Nate made some good headway in his Narnia reading this weekend... now THAT'S progress!
4. Will is making some progress on learning the sounds that the alphabet letters make. If I'd just sit down and work with him more regularly, I think he might figure out how to read.
5. Annie is potty trained! FINALLY!!! - all day long (except naps) without diapers and only the occasional accident.
6. Our kids are great hikers! I just wanted to let the whole world know that they both plowed up our moutain and across it and back this afternoon without any complaining! Even I was impressed- and told them so! You'll just have to take my word for it, but they are an exceptional 2 and 4 year old on the 'hiking' scale.

Of Socks And Sweaters

I've had a lot of fun over the past few days making tights and diaper covers out of used clothes. YOU, TOO can make these things - so easy, (but I have yet to see if the diaper covers really will work... my husband has many doubts!)

Start with a pair of socks that are headed to the garbage can (like the one on the right in the photo below), and chop off the bottom part that is pictured on the left hand side in the photo below (this is the part of the sock that CAN go to the garbage can!). If you then trim the heels off a bit, you should be left with a lovely pair of socks that looks like the image above. Sew up the bottom part (so they fit baby-doll feet), and cut a 2-3 inch slit down the top of each sock and then sew them together to make a pair of baby doll tights:

(the inside-out view)

TA-DA:

Yup, I came up with that idea all by myself. It took a total of 10 minutes to complete a pair!

And now "Baby Dechen" is WARM... and has a pair of tights to match Annie's tights. :-)

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My second project was a diaper cover for my big boy who still wets his diaper nearly every night. He's at least 10 lbs heavier than the max weight on his current diaper covers (which are therefore ripping and too tight on his legs and waist) and I have tried several times fruitlessly to get a cover big-enough for him from the US. THEN I stumbled upon a tutorial for making your own wool covers complete with a pattern and lanolizing instructions. I dragged my family to the Bazaar to buy two wool sweaters for about 8 dollars (but YOU can certainly get them much cheaper if you have thrift stores nearby). I felted them, cut them up like in the pictures below, and sewed them back together according to the instructions given on this website.

The finished product!

Today I lanolized the covers and am waiting for them to dry before we get to try them out! Yippee!! If it works, I'll be a super happy mamma!

Lessons from potty-training

I have a 2-year-old who is potty-trained during the day (give or take a few accidents). She is very independent (as many girls are, I hear) and likes to get up quietly at naptime (after I've put her in a diaper and tucked her in her bed) and open the door to the bathroom and undress herself because she needs to go potty. This is very frustrating for me because by the time she finally gets to the toilet, she has already wet her diaper and since she can't get her diaper off on her own yet, I still have to come in and change it... again. Why didn't she just go two minutes ago when she was on the toilet?! The same scenario happens at night, too - every night, and every naptime... almost funny, but it gets old.

This afternoon it happened again and I ran to help her, hoping to get her to the toilet before she wet yet another diaper (because yes indeed, I'm tired of washing diapers all the time after 4 years of it!). I picked her up and in a yet-again-disappointed and exasperated tone, heard myself say to her: "You need to CALL me to come and help you instead of trying to do it yourself! Then you wouldn't make such a mess all the time. You need to say, 'Mamma! I need to go potty.'" Of course she repeated what I told her to say in the sweetest little voice as if practicing for next time. --And it was as if God whispered His truth to me right then. I realized that the scene is a perfect picture of how I am with my Father in Heaven. I take things into my own hands and speak too soon or try to do things my way in life and He's just longing for me to CALL to him FIRST so that He can COME and HELP me! Then I wouldn't make such a mess or have to do things all by myself.

Father, Help me!

running and more

I thought I'd just write something quick here. Some noteworthy items:
-We got good rain last week- praise God, because this land needs the water.

-Woodstock had it's annual cross-country race on Friday, and I ran with the 11/12 grade girls and came in 7th. I haven't run even once in a full year (since last year's race). I wondered what event the girls thought they had signed up for as some of them started out the 3 Km race walking, and I passed about 20-30 more who would jog, then walk... (yes I said THREE KM- and it was FLAT).
Someday I would like to run. a proper race... a scenic jog around somewhere... a marathon... just run. It was fun to do and I always feel like I'd enjoy it even more if I were more in shape. Maybe I'll start running again this year- but it will require an earlier bedtime!

-Annie is VERY accident-prone... in the potty-training sense of the word! she likes to tell me she doesn't need to go and then a few minutes later she looks down at the puddle on the ground and says urgently " Mamma! blabla!" But sooner or later she'll sort it all out, I'm sure - and at the moment, I'm happy to have fewere diapers to change every day!

-Will is almost 4 years old. I can hardly believe how big he's gotten. He's been really enjoying playing with duplo toys by himself- lining up cars and people and telling stories. The people, cars and animals all talk to eachother and time seems to fade away in his world. Last night we had sewing night at our house and I gave Will a cardboard sewing with a shoelace to work on. He hasn't tried 'sewing' in months, so I thought he'd need lots of help- but I went to do something and came back and he had nearly completed it and had done it very well - all by himself. He likes to walk by himself on the trails now, and he gets his own quiet reading time before he takes his afternoon nap. (That's one of our schemes to get naptime and bedtime more under control in our house!) He's growing up and it's so neat to watch.

Random 'news'

I walked into the living room to see it like this... such a funny pair they are!
There he is, standing next to his tower of cushions and wearing his beloved necktie. He rummages through his big toybox to find it every time he wants to play drums or when his Pappa is putting one on. Lots of times he just wanders around the house with it on. He's a character!

This picture was supposed to go with my last post, but our home internet connection has been really TERRIBLE so it was left behind. But before I get whining about our internet... I AM thankful that we even have internet, and I'd better stop there and head to bed! :)

P.S. other random 'news': -on the potty-training front, today Annie only wore her underwear around the house all day long and didn't have any accidents! WAHOO!! -on the Mamma front-I've had a lovely couple of days- even managed to write a song yesterday and made chicken pot pie yet again... and I might be addicted to york pepperment patties (which is bad because I only have one bag left until next summer... yikes! but they're oh so yummy!!!) -on the Pappa front, grading grading grading-and I think he's just amazing!

Ok, I'm off to bed!

another weekend down.

One of our friends who does not believe in Jesus Christ told us one time that he does not throw around prayers lightly. Neither do I. And because of that, I want to thank those of you who did pray for me this weekend on the retreat- I think it went well. I did not stay the whole time because there were a lot of chaperones and weekends are precious family time for us, so I came home after I was done speaking, which turned out to be a good thing because when I arrived home, Nate was in the middle of cooking lunch and had just run out of gas in our gas cylindar. It should be an easy fix- we SHOULD have an extra one in our house, but NO, we tried for several months to procure one and finally gave up out of cultural and communication frustrations. SO it was good that I came home and could send Nate over to finish cooking lunch on our neighbors stove. We got a man to replace our gas cylindar two hours later.

Saturday afternoon we sorted through our shed and broke up a bunch of scrap plywood to burn this winter. Nate cut a board to cover my ironing board (because there are screws sticking out of the top of my ironing board) and we found a board that will work for my stories I like to do with the kids. I found a bunch of clothes that will fit Annie in a trunk that was sitting out there and then after supper, Nate and I watched "Stand and Deliver" - a 'math teacher' movie :).

I talked with an Indian friend of mine on the phone because we've been meaning to get together. In our conversation, she told me that her son was potty-trained by the time he was 6 months old!!!!! Indians typically potty-train their babies very early like that, but still.... How in the world do they do it??? I imagine a lot of laundry and accidents... I'm pretty happy to have Annie mostly out of diapers by 21 months (but 6 months- that would have been great!-smile!)

Tuesday! :)

It's Tuesday today, and guess who's almost potty trained? My 21-month-old ANNIE! :) I'm a happy camper- you bet! I'm already dreaming of upcoming days when I can put away most of my cloth diaper collection-wahoo!! And I won't miss washing washing washing nasty diapers, that's for sure.
Annie was completely dis-interested in re-starting to potty-training after we returned from Korea, but in the past two weeks she's gotten interested again, and yesterday and today we've had great success!!! One time I even came into the bathroom to find her cleaning the toilet with the toilet brush, with no underwear on. When I had finished reprimanding her for all of that, I looked down at her potty-chair and saw that she had gone again, without my even asking her or making her try it. Oh, it'll be great when she's out of diapers!
Besides keeping an eye on Annie, I washed laundry, wrote some planning emails for this weekend, ate some more pumpkin bread, and hosted Bible Study this morning, which was nice. Our group is doing Beth Moore's Esther study and it is such a neat study. This afternoon, I fixed us a chicken pot pie (from scratch scratch scratch like everything else we eat!) that only took me about 1.5 hours to make- and now my whole house smells yummy. My honey just got home and it's supper time so I'm off! Just wanted to share some of life from our happy home.

Gotta love bags!

Looking down the path in hopes of seeing her Pappa coming home from work.

We've been working hard on potty-training. The weather has been perfect to hang out outside all day long. Annie seems to be getting the idea - but she still won't tell me when she needs to go... in fact, her communication is very poor overall, but we think that maybe someday she'll learn English.

May pictures

Here's what we've been eating at our house: Danish Puffs! :)

Annie is our Dandelion girl, we decided. We like to blow her fluffy hair so that it waves around like white dandelion flowers do when they're not quite ready to fall apart. Annie is all grins when we blow on her hair.

After naptime, these kids are enjoying a snack of candy sent from relatives back in the US.

We think this doll is such a cutie!

Check out her teeth- yup, she's got molars and a third bottom front tooth! Go Annie!

And this one is getting so big!

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Last but not least, a picture of Potty Training (which is going remarkably well considering that the princess can't talk yet and fits all the way IN the hole of the potty chair...)

Happy 17 months, Annie!

Well, we didn't really celebrate for her today, but we have indeed kept Annie alive for 17 months now. One funny thing I did today for her was dig out her last summer's clothes (yeah, the ones she wore in the US when she was 6 months old) and I dressed her in them yet again. I guess we're getting our money's worth out of things with this little lady - she has definitely grown since last summer, but the tops and bottoms still fit her well... so we'll be using them again on warm days, cuz they're cute clothes and I can't resist-smile.
I haven't taken pictures in awhile- been busy baking and getting my house cleaned. The weather is just perfect. I've also been working a bit on our garden, which feels extensive at the moment, and also hopeless. The air is so dry that you can almost feel the dust settle deep in your lungs when you breath, and that's not great gardening weather- plus there is a water shortage, so I feel guilty when I water my plants. Oh well.
This IS perfect weather for washing windows, washing rugs and quilts and blankets since things dry in just a few hours in the intense mid-day sun. So my windows are sparkly clean now and we can see out of them really well- it makes me feel like I'm a good housekeeper, but I'm not. I admit that I have an amazing woman helping me do all the hard work 5 days a week. And it's not Annie. Annie has been keeping me busy since she's been teething. Her molars are coming in and she is miserable most days and insists that I carry her about the house. She still only has two bottom front teeth and only four top front teeth. Then there's a gap and the molars are starting to shine white in the back of her mouth. I guess I never saw teeth come in like this before- (maybe she's missing some?) - more likely sometimes they just come in different orders.
She's eating and growing, and that's all we ask these days. God has been giving us peace about our kids. Will continues to be seizure-free for nearly 4 months now. Praise the LORD!

The last item of home-front news is potty-training. We pulled out the "potty chair" for Annie and she loves to sit on it, since she understands very well that it is her special chair. She did manage to use it appropriately twice- but probably by accident. She's pretty far from comprehending its use, I think, but at least we're on our way with this. Will is nearly done wetting his bed when he sleeps and this will be a relief! It's been a long 3 1/2 years of diapers with him (yeah, only at night for about 1 1/2 years now). Anyway, we consider this stuff "progress", and "news", but maybe you weren't really interested to know. :-) Sorry- I'll try to think of something more interesting next time!