Monthly Archives: June 2012

Another shirt completed

My new hobby is cutting up old t-shirts and making them into a shirt that I want to wear. My first shirt turned out great. For my second shirt, I decided to take a chance redesigning my highly valued, but never worn Moose Jaw shirt. I have had this shirt 10 years but I have never worn it… Now I will. This design took more effort and time but I was still simple to do. I cut the sides and restitched them to have a tunnel in which to string a pull tie. I just kept cutting the neck until I liked it.

Today I went to the thrift store to get some other shirts to play with. Her is the final Moose Jaw shirt.

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A First Tooth!

Miller will be 7 months old on Thursday. I can’t believe how big he is getting. He is still small compared to Faith and Wilson and he is still my little baby, but he is officially getting older. This past Thursday I felt a tooth coming through and now it fully there. I looked tonight and I can see the second bottom tooth coming through as well. It must be painful because he was up for hours last night. He usually eats once in the middle of the night and falls right back asleep. Last night he would fall back asleep but would wake up as soon as I tried to lay him back down or would wake up 15 minutes later. It was terrible. After an hour of trying to get him to sleep Tom took Miller from 1:30 – 4:30am. I was on duty at 4:30am. Miller never did go back to sleep after 4:30. He finally took a nap while I walked around the house with him in the Ergo at 7:30 (which is like a Bjorn). Miller will always be my baby, and he still is right now. After he fell asleep tonight I just sat there and looked at him. I don’t get to do that very often, but when Tom is in town I can take my time putting him to bed. It is amazing how much easier bedtime is with two adults doing it.

After Miller went to be we had movie night in Wilson’s room. We all crammed into his single bed and watched the Lion King on the small TV that is hooked up to our only VHS player. It was fun eating popcorn together and sitting so close. Tom said that it was a great Father’s Day movie. Tom is a great dad. He takes the kids on a bike ride every Saturday and afterward he plays with them in the hose. They love their dad, as they should. Happy Father’s Day!! We love you.

Here is a picture of Miller in the swing at the park today.

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Good naked or bad naked?

So, my kids run around the house naked a lot. It is something that kids love to do and I don’t discourage it. I would do it too if I could…and if I looked as cute as they do. As Seinfeld said in one of his episodes,”there is good naked and there is bad naked”. Is bike riding bad naked or good naked?

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VBS is over

Today was the last day for Vacation Bible School at Little Church. this was the fifth year that I was the organizer of the whole thing. Five years ago we had 60 kids register and this year we had a record 99 kids sign up. It has grown by 10 kids every year. I have learned what works and what doesn’t, but each year I learn something new. This year’s theme was God hears you, made you, sees you, and loves you no matter what. I love that Faith memorized the verse for the week: “You have looked deep into my heart, Lord, and you know all about me.” Psalm 139:1. It was a busy week, but worth it.

After VBS I came home and took a nap. I have also been wanting to use this book I have called “Generation T: 108 ways to transform a t-shirt”. It shows you how to take old t-shirts, cut them up, do a little sewing or knot tying, and you have a much cooler looking t-shirt. Today I turned one of my Argentina t-shirts that was a little tight into a cool shirt. I cut out the neck and sleeves and then made a draw string across the shoulders. It really fits better and was very easy. I now have a stack of shirts that I want to redo. It will be fun to have a little project and then something I can wear. I am not interested in sewing properly, but this will be easy enough for me to do.

I also am continuing to try to teach Faith to read. We reviewed the letters M, N, O, and U again tonight. I now know why the book is called “Teach Your Child to read in just 10 minutes…”. Faith attention span is about ten minutes. She doesn’t want to do more than that. Her little brain is full after reviewing those letters. I think the process will be slower than I anticipated. We will be reviewing O and U for a week. Baby steps! We have all summer.

Teaching Faith to read

I am now reading a book called, “Teach Your Child to Read in just 10 minutes a Day” by Sidney Ledson.  I want to begin to teach Faith to read.  She is only four but she knows almost all her letters and their sounds.  We are working specifically on the vowels right now because you can’t spell without knowledge of vowels.  In the book it says that instead of calling the letters by name you just say the sounds of them.  I started to do this with Faith today because she always gets C, G, and the vowels wrong.  Today I just asked her, “What does this letter sound like?”.  She did much better.  Then we took the word “up” and sounded it out.  She was excited to know it said “up”.  Then we added the “c” to it to spell “cup”.  She did the best on the word “hot”.  She has the “o” sound down the best so those are the best words for her to learn right now.  I taught her the letter “o” by telling her to make her mouth look like an “o” and then make the sound.  She remembered it right away.  It was very exciting to have her start reading.  i also have some letter flashcards that I went through today to see which letters she knew the sounds to and which she didn’t.  We now have small pile of letters to work on. I plan to work on it a little bit each day.  I also used a kid’s writing board with the magnetic pen so that we could easily erase and write again.  It worked really well.  We will see how the summer reading program progresses.

VBS day one!

Today was the first day of VBS at Little Church. Since I am in charge, my parents were kind enough to watch Wilson and Faith last night so that I could leave early this morning. Miller and I got there at 8:00 and I ran around frantically answering questions and setting up for the first two hours. After that, it ran very smoothly. The kids love it. We have a low key vbs but still fun and meaningful for the kids. I got a great video of Wilson and Gabriel standing next to each other and singing. It was sweet. This week the kids are learning that God made them, hears them, watches over them, and loves them no matter what. Tom designed the shirts and did a wonderful job. Day two starts bright and early tomorrow.

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This too shall pass….

Today started out rough, but ended great!  We woke up as usual…well, not really…I woke up this morning at 6:30 am, not because Wilson woke me up, but because Faith was sleeping in my bed and was sniffing and snorting so loud that I could not sleep.  She has had a stuffy nose for weeks.  Almost as if her adenoids had never been taken out.  Usually Wilson wakes me up by 6:15, but figures the one morning that he actually sleeps in until 7:00, something else wakes me up.  I decided that Faith needed to flush out her nose with the squirt bottle thing.  Of course she hates it.  I would too!  I quickly found that it is impossible to make a 4 year old do something that she does not want to do.  You should have seen the wrestling match that she and I had going on.  I had finally had it!  I told her that we were going to the Y and that I had a headache.  Sadly enough, she would rather squirt water up her nose than go to the Y.  (that doesn’t say much about her opinion of the Y).  She stood there like a champ and flushed her nose.  I hope she can breathe tonight.

We then went to the playground for 30 minutes and then to the chiropractor, all 4 of us.  The kids usually play quietly and entertain themselves, except today.  Wilson wasn’t obeying me and went into time out at the chiropractor.  It was a little embarrassing. I made him run two laps up the sidewalk when we left so that he could run out some energy.  Then, after all of that, I decided to brave going to Trader Joe’s with the three kids.  For those of you who haven’t been to Trader Joe’s, it is a very small store with very small carts.  I had Miller in the Bjorn, Wilson in the big part of the cart and Faith walking.  Miller kicked around and danced to the music the whole time.  Wilson sat in the cart and ate almost an entire thing of cherry tomatoes while Faith walked next to him taking the tomatoes that he passed through the cracks in the cart.  They were very well behaved (of course, I did bribe them with potential ice cream after).  I had to laugh at ourselves.  We were a sight to see.  It was a little bit of comic relief for the day.

After we paid and opened the gummy bear rewards, we walked out to the sidewalk and got ready to cross the parking lot.  Wilson was hanging on to the front of the cart (he had to get out to make room for the grocery bags), Faith was hanging on to the back of the cart, Miller was still in the Bjorn dancing around, and I was pushing the cart with my arms around Faith.  We were all right there together like a big train.  I am sure I looked ridiculous!  A woman drove past me, slowed down and said, “This too shall pass.  Before you know it they will be graduating.”  I had to grin and think to myself, “I love having my kids even though the days can be crazy.  I will never have these fun times again. Laugh and enjoy them.”  The rest of the day was almost as tiring as the first half, but I had a much better attitude about it.

Late that afternoon I had a sitter come and I met Tom out for a quick date night.  We went to Cantina, had margaritas and appetizers.  It was nice to sit in a quiet, air conditioned place and talk without interruption.  We are trying to have date nights more often, even if it is for only an hour and a half.  You take what time you can get!  Overall, a successful day.