Lilyish hymns, pictures, and life is hard so get over it already

My little parrot (also known as Lily) is singing her version of "All Creatures of Our God and King".  It goes like this:
"All creatures of our God and king, ha-way-woo-yuh, ha-way-woo-yuh, so much going on, ha-way-woo-yuh, ha-way-woo-yuh!"

I don't know if she's interpreting "burning sun with golden beam" as "so much going on" or if she's just inserting a phrase she's heard me say a few times!  I love the way she sings what she hears :D

Lily (Jack and Charlotte too) loves her Grandpa!

Jack's half-birthday (he's 6.5 now!).  I made shortbread cookies with his help, and he ran around the house in pure excited joy between bouts of "helping" me.  He was thrilled to get to ice the cookies, and I was impressed with the effort he put into his creations!

This is his "camera" smile.  I love it because it's crooked :D

This is his real smile!

Charlotte got some new clothes (yay!) because I canNOT find the clothes Lily wore when she was Charlotte's size (boo!).  Charlotte also got to pose on the couch, just like baby Lily did!

Yes, I think my daughter looks like a supermodel, only prettier :D

This is her "I'm chewing on my tongue" face!

And this is her "I'm trying to blow spit bubbles" face!

She loves her Daddy, and he loves her too!

Oh aren't babies fun!  They see a stream of water and think it's something solid they can grab!

Charlotte got a bath in the sink because I HAD to cook supper right then, and she HAD to have a bath right then too.  So I cleaned out the sink (one-handed, with a naked baby in the other) and multitasked for a few minutes, then looked over and saw that Lily and Charlotte were talking to each other.  There is a special bond between those two; there is also a special bond between Lily and Jack, and between Jack and Charlotte, and just as none of the three of them is exactly like another, all these relationships are unique.  It's fun to watch!

Halloween 2012: a ladybug, a flower, and a ballerina princess (and their parents)!  This was before going to the ward chili cookoff and trunk-or-treat.

Halloween 2012, revisited: a care bear, a flower, and a ladybug!  This was at the little festival in downtown (ha!) New Boston.  Since Halloween fell on a Wednesday, Tim was in church activities (he's the Young Men's president) and I didn't want to take the kids trick-or-treat-ing without his help, so we went to the party instead.

Today was one of those days in which I felt imprisoned by my daily duties and harassed by my kids and husband.  All I wanted to do was go outside and work on the garden site (well, that and eat bon-bons and read fiction... but working on the garden is both productive AND fun so I tried to just do that!), but there were 4 mouths that would not be fed if I didn't feed them, two bums that would not be wiped if I didn't wipe them, two girls that would not sleep if I didn't soothe them, and a houseful of clutter that would not be picked up unless I supervised it.  I tried to tell myself that my children are only tiny for a short while and I should enjoy them while I can, and that did help immensely while the thought stayed nicely in my mind, but the stress of my duties overwhelmed me at times.  Jack was spectacular, and every time he noticed I was stressed he sidled up to me and rubbed my arm and gave me one of his smiles.  That helped a bit!  A friend came over to play, too, bringing her 3 kids.  I take my hat off to her, she has the same number of kids as I do, but her oldest is a year and a half younger than my oldest, and her youngest is a year and a half older than my youngest; in other words, when her youngest was born, she had three kids under three years old!  Her kids are intensely curious and not always so good at listening, but they have kind hearts and gentle spirits and they play well with my kids.  She herself (Samantha) is creative, intelligent, kind, and just fun to be around, so I was happy when she showed up to play!

Finding balance, or more correctly, the attempt to find balance, is almost always the source of my stress.  One the one hand, the kids need my undivided attention and love, and they feel it best when I play with them.  On the other hand, I am the keeper of the home, and it needs to be neat and orderly.  To further complicate the matter, the kids need to learn how to keep the home as well, and I show them love by teaching them and working with them to keep the home.  I don't think it's a good idea to spend all day inside the house, cleaning it, but neither is it a good idea to spend all day playing and just do some token tidying.  At lunchtime I was making bread, and every single room in the house needed some tidying, but the kids were playing.
Me: "Jack, do you notice what I'm doing?  I'm making food for all of us.  Can you do this?"
Jack: "No."
Me: "Since you can't do this work that I'm doing, can you do something for me that you CAN do?  Every single room in this house needs to be tidied.  Can you and Lily tidy one of them?"
Jack (groaning): "Do I have to tidy the whole room?"
Me: "You know, we counted all the rooms in the house once.  There are fourteen!  I only asked you to tidy one of them."
Jack was getting up to tidy, but he was still dragging his feet, and I wanted Lily to get involved, too, so I sweetened the deal with an offer of a chocolate chip for anyone who tidied continuously for fifteen minutes.  They liked it so much they did it twice!  That helped my mind a lot, but the house needed much more!

Tomorrow is another day!

Christmas gifts!

Gift ideas for us!

Tim:
-Nice headphones
-Toblerone
-Magic cards

Mir:
-Chocolate, of any kind (as long as it does not involve coffee)
-"Brave", the latest Pixar movie on Blu-Ray
-Picture frames

Jack: (wears between size 5 and 6, size 12 shoes, footed pajamas need to be size 7 since he is long-bodied and big-footed)
-board/card games
-someone to jump on the trampoline with him
-Hot Wheels cars and tracks

Lily: "Just, a bunny!"  (wears a size 4, size 8.5 shoes)
-"I just want a monkey on my back for Christmas!" (she does love stuffed animals)
-books, puzzles
-art/craft supplies

Charlotte: (wears size 6-12 months, size medium diapers, dresses at least 17 inches long)
-any toy that doesn't require batteries


As I've said before, publishing this list is not my way of asking for gifts, it's my way of giving the people who want to buy gifts for us, some ideas of what we like!

Does anyone have some suggestions for how to make Christmas more about giving than about getting, for my little ones?

Can I be done having sick kids, please?

I have to laugh at myself. I'm frustrated that my middle child is getting sicker, b/c I'm tired of having sick kids. Having sick kids means I can't take them anywhere that's indoors, and I can't have people come visit, and I'm tired of that. I feel like I've had sick kids for months, though it's only been a couple of weeks.

But really, it's the kids that are sick that are suffering the most! They're sick!BBBBBBB On my birthday, (August 21st, over a month ago), I came down with a flu, and Lily and Charlotte both caught it around the same time but they got over it very quickly, whereas I developed a nasty cough. I'm not kidding when I say nasty, it was so bad I couldn't sleep b/c lying down triggered coughs and I can't sleep sitting up. For two nights in a row the only way I could sleep was on my stomach, and since Charlotte doesn't think she can fall asleep in any way other than nursing, this presented some challenges to our bedtime routine. Tim got less sleep b/c he rocked Charlotte to sleep while I napped on my tummy; I got less sleep b/c I can only sleep so long in one position before I wake up sore, and I couldn't sleep in any other position or I'd cough, so I would just have to sit up until I was exhausted enough to fall asleep again in the same position.

My coughs were so strong that my torso muscles got sore from coughing, and every couple of days during the two weeks of severe coughing I would develop soreness in some new muscle group from coughing in an odd position. For instance, one morning I was lying on my side, and when a coughing fit hit, for some reason I tensed the muscles in my thigh, and that thigh was then sore for two days. I tried herbal teas, I tried hot soup, I even asked for soup when sweet ladies from church asked what they could do (and they delivered, too, which was SOOO nice!). After two and a half weeks, I had had enough and went to the doctor..... who said my cough was only caused by snot dripping down my throat and prescribed a cough medicine that had never been studied in breastfeeding mothers. I was deeply frustrated and a little angry. FINALLY, it was time for us to travel for Tim's convention in California (September 4-6), and as I worked to pack up the house, I started to get better. I researched cough medicine and found a cough suppresent drug that was compatible with breastfeeding and started taking it, and also started using menthol/herb cough drops at night. The first night at Tim's convention was the first night I slept the night through without coughing, and I continued to improve every day.

All this time I was coughing, I was assuming that the cough was just an aftereffect of the flu, and didn't think I was contagious. After Tim's convention, while we were staying in California in preparation for him to fly to China and for me and the kids to visit his sister in Utah, Lily caught the cough! Then Charlotte! So we went to Utah with two coughing girls. Charlotte got over it very quickly, but Lily is still not over it. Then, in Utah, Jack caught it. Lily seems to be getting better, but Jack's cough wakes him up at night, just like it did me. And he's so tired, he's always the first one to bed at night, and there for a few days he was even napping multiple times a day.

So, tonight, Lily vomited. And that was when I said out loud, "Can I be done having sick kids, please?" And then laughed at myself and started to be a little more compassionate for my child who had just puked and felt awful.

So, while everyone has been battling various levels of illness, life has gone on and we've had fun. We were in California for about a week, first at Tim's convention in the middle of nowhere in Marin County (north of San Francisco), then in the San Francisco metropolitan area visiting friends and favorite places. Tim worked during the workdays there, but during the evenings and the one weekend, he spent time with us and we had a great time. We went to the beach, we hiked in the Muir Woods, we visited dear friends that I've really missed (and the kids had a great time playing with their kids), we went to the Palo Alto Junior Museum that Jack has been asking to go to for the last few months, and we went to the park that we used to live near in Palo Alto. Then when Tim went to China, we went to Utah to visit his sister, Jessica, and her daughters, Leslie (almost 5) and Elysia (just turned 2). It was so beautiful to see my kids playing with hers, watching them deepen their bonds, hearing them sing together, and getting to know Jessica better. She is such a faithful and patient woman and I'm so glad I married her brother! Jack and Leslie played pretend games, he introduced her to games and movies on the iPad (which I would have limited much more strictly if he hadn't been so sick and tired), and Lily joined in when she wasn't busy playing by herself. Leslie and Elysia both loved Charlotte, and by the time I'd been there a few days they were pretty gentle with her.

Jack is really honing his math lately. While we were in California, he said "Ten tens is the same as five twenties!" Then in Utah, he said "Four twenties and four fives is a hundred!" When I asked him how he figured that out, he said "Because two twenties and two fives is half a hundred!" (Somehow, "half a hundred" has become absolutely synonymous with "fifty" in Jack's vocabulary.) After we came home, we played Carcassonne, which keeps score with markers on a number line that wraps around and starts over at 50 (so, it runs from 1-49, then if you put your marker back on 0 you pick up a tile with "50" on it and just keep on going). He had his marker on 36 and earned 21 points. I was about to move his marker for him, but I stopped and asked him where his marker would go. He studied the board for a few seconds, then asked me to show him where the 6 was. I showed him, then he put his marker on the 7 and smiled up at me. I asked him how he knew that and he explained that from 36, he would put his marker on the 46, then on the 6, then on the next one after 6. In other words, 21 is made up of 10, 10, and 1.
Here's the thing he's having trouble with: recognizing the numbers 5-9. For some reason, he does this with almost everything academic that he learns: he picks it up from just everyday life, then starts to second-guess and doubt himself and almost completely unlearns it. He used to easily recognize the numbers 1-20, but now he only knows 1-4. He sometimes knows the others at first, but then as soon as he realizes that he just recognized them, he stops saying the number and asks me what number it is. I think that if I stop bragging about his accomplishments so much in his presence, he'll stop feeling so stressed about getting it right.
But even with all this refusing to read the numbers 5-9, he has advanced to being able to read 2-digit numbers; as long as both digits are between 1 and 4 he can read it right off, but if one of the digits is between 5 and 9 he'll ask for the name of that one before he'll tell me what number it is.

It's almost 11pm. Good night!

Jack is a math whiz

Just now, as he was sitting on the potty while I folded laundry nearby, Jack asked "Is twenty twenties something around four hundred?" I told him that it is exactly four hundred, and reminded him that squaring something is multiplying it by itself, just like twenty twenties, so we can say that twenty squared is four hundred. Math comes easily to him, but names take a long time to take root in his mind. I wonder how long it will be before he remembers the concept of squaring.

Lilyisms and Jack learning how to write with Uno

Lily, singing "I Will Go, I Will Do" sang it "I will go, I will probably do..." She loves to sing, and I catch her mixing up the words a lot. "Adam was a prophet, first he was a child! Eena eena eena, in the latter days! Follow the prophet, follow the prophet, follow the prophet, he knows the way!" I know "I Am a Child of God" in French and Spanish, and I caught her one day singing the first line in French, the second line in Spanish, and the rest of the song in English. Tim and I both sing "Divina Luz" a lot ("Lead Kindly Light" in Spanish) and she sang it perfectly one day in the car. Just now, she said "Charlotte has cute little legs and fat little rolls!" because I comment on my baby's oh-so-cute fat rolls enough, apparently :D One day last week, Jack wanted to play the card game, Uno. He was really excited b/c he learned the last time we played that one can keep score and play multiple rounds and have a grand winner. He wanted to keep score! I was nursing Charlotte, so rather than just wait for me to be done, he gathered the pen and paper, got an alphabet book to show him how letters are made, drew an "M" for Mommy and a "J" for Jack on the page, and set up the game. He was even so excited that he was writing that he wrote the numbers for the score the first 2 times. After that the paper was full (beginning writers write HUGE!) so I wrote the rest of the numbers. It was so satisfying for me to watch him do all this so cheerfully. If I had sat him down at a table and told him to draw those letters and numbers, he would have fussed and whined and barely tried. I know it's just a start and he's still got a long way to go, but he persevered and learned and even submitted to correction (I showed him how to hold the pen correctly).

Summer flu, nursing Lily, dear friend visited

We caught the summertime flu. Please don't send me lots of sympathy and "Oh I'm so sorry you're sick!" comments, b/c every time we're sick we grow closer together as we all pull together and take care of each other. Yeah, I'd like to gain that family closeness another way, but it's still worth it! I've been re-reading the beginning of this blog, smiling as I remember things I had forgotten, frowning when I read something and simply cannot recall it at all. I'm glad I wrote it when I did, and I wish I had started earlier in Lily's life. The only real failures are giving up and not learning from your mistakes, right? Today I napped with Charlotte while Jack and Lily watched movies. I also did laundry and played with Charlotte, and read to Lily and Jack and got food for them. I nursed Lily a few times... Yes, she is still nursing. And when she's sick like this, I'm really glad; all she ate yesterday was my milk. She's learning some better manners, asking nicely and not throwing a tantrum if I tell her I need to do something else first. She also is VERY sweet about staying carefully in a position to not hurt me (I thought the pain of nursing her would go away when I had Charlotte, but it didn't...). I can see that she doesn't need to nurse as much as she did when she was a toddler, nor as much as she did right after Charlotte was born, but neither of us is quite ready for weaning yet. It was tough right after Charlotte was born; I had my baby in Charlotte, and nursing Lily was painful and awkward. But we persevered (with tears on both sides), and we're in a good place now.

My dear friend came to visit a few weeks ago, with her four kids ages 1 1/2 to 9 1/2. (She doesn't publish her name on her blog, so I won't publish it on mine, but it rhymes with Selena Huf.) I laugh at myself b/c I was there for her youngest son's birth, the one that's holding Charlotte in the picture, and he doesn't usually like me. I feel so miffed and slighted. I say "I saw you come OUT of your mama, kid!" and he still runs and hides every time he sees me. But Charlotte gives me leverage! He LOVES her! So I can get close to him without him screaming, if I have Charlotte! Good night!

Things I don't want to forget: Charlotte cooed and gurgled at me for about an hour, nonstop, after we came to pick her up from Tim's parents' house. She missed me and had to tell me all about it! Lily hardly nursed at all today. The one time she did, I had to stop pretty quickly to take care of Charlotte. Lily started to cry, but she stopped when I suggested she look at a book. I even read it to her. It was our lift-the-flap Baby Jesus book, and after I read it to her, she proceeded to read it to herself out loud. I didn't get to listen to all of it, but what I did hear she got right! Jack asked me what I want for my birthday, and when I told him "Chocolate!", he said he would get me something else so it would be a surprise. I told him it's a good idea to get someone the thing they want, and it will still be a surprise because I don't know what kind of chocolate he'll get me. He was excited! We went out to a fancy restaurant for our 8th anniversary tonight. It was so yummy! Malina sent me a birthday card and I called her to thank her. I love how we always laugh when we talk to each other! She said she decided years ago to not be offended by people because it takes so much energy. I want to be like that! So I will. I love the way my sweet tiny one sleeps soundly as long as I'm cuddled up to her. She'll sleep all night long, only waking once or twice to nurse, and I don't mind that because I can just roll over and nurse her while I go back to sleep! My memory is affected by this depression. I cried last night when I realized how little of Lily's baby days I remember. When Tim and I discussed it, we decided that it's not so much my memory as my recall, because I remember a lot when he reminds me. In any case, writing it down will help!