Today we learned about the letter Y. After I introduced the Y and told the boys what sound it makes, I taught them how to yodel. Nathan did a really good job of it, but Lincoln was too shy to give it a try. Oh well. To demonstrate yodeling, I showed a clip from The Sound of Music of the Lonely Goatherd song. I love the Sound of Music, so any excuse to show some of it is a good one. :) And the kids were really into it too.
After that we talked about yaks. I asked the boys if they knew what a yak was. They didn't. So I showed them this picture of Lincoln's Uncle Kelly riding on a yak in Mongolia, where he served his mission.
We talked about how the yak is part of the cow family, and how they live in cold parts of Asia like China, Russia, and Mongolia. People raise herds of yaks and use them for milk and to carry things.
After that we made our own yaks using the letter Y and some yellow yarn.
First we glued a yak shaped body onto a white piece of paper. Then used the letter Y for the horns and face of the yaks. We talked about how yaks have long hair to keep them warm because where they live it gets really cold. I gave the boys some small strips of yarn, and let them glue the yarn on their yaks for hair. Then we got out the markers and crayons and drew grass for the yaks to eat, and mountains behind them, where they live. Lincoln made his grass orange and blue, and his mountains look and are more like "pokey dots", as he called them. But I think these yellow yarn yaks turned out really cute.
For the last activity we went outside to play a game. I used Word and Clipart to find pictures of things that started with Y and I printed them out and cut each one into a square. Then I folded up each square so you couldn't tell what was on it, and stuck the papers in a bowl.
For the game, the boys took turns drawing out pieces of paper. Then we talked about the Y word that was on the picture. Then we had a yelling contest. We had to yell the word on the picture as loud as we could before anyone could draw out another one. The boys thought this was so funny. I'm sure our neighbors didn't appreciate it.
And I slacked on a treat this week and didn't do one. I thought of York Peppermint Patties, but didn't have time to run to the store, and yogurt, but didn't want to fight the battle of not letting Ivan have one when everyone else was. So I left it at no treat. Sorry guys.
I love fall. It's my favorite season. Our little family started a tradition when Lincoln was just a baby, of driving up Provo Canyon and up the Squaw Peak road in the fall to look at the leaves changing colors. Aaron and I always enjoy it, but this year Lincoln got really excited about it too. He kept saying "We're way up high on the mountain! Look down there! We're way way up. Look at the leaves Mom, they're all kinds of crazy colors." And he jabbered on and on from the backseat the whole way up to the top. :)
Here is the view from the top of Squaw Peak. It was really hazy. Someone said something about a forrest fire somewhere. But the haze made the sun reflecting off Utah Lake look really cool.
Here are the five of us at the top. Aaron took this picture, but you can't really tell. He is good at faking candid. It was pretty windy at the top too. So we all look like models with our hair blowing in the wind. Ok, maybe not.
Lincoln and Ivan were at the height of their glory throwing rocks off the mountain side. Gotta love cheap entertainment. And I didn't get any good pictures of Adelia. The wind was blowing and she wasn't very happy about it, so she just burried her face in my shoulder for the duration.
In my spare time (haha!) I've been spending every possible second online, seeing what I can learn about milk intolerance, mostly for what to put in place of dairy products when planning meals, because lets be honest, spaghetti and meatballs is getting rather old, and so are the other three recipes I have that don't have any milk, cheese, etc. in them. And fixing lunch has kind of become a nightmare...I can't do pb&j every day. Anyways, I've heard of the greensmoothiegirl website before, but never really checked it out much. But then while doing some milk research I stumbled upon it again, and read her "my story" which I thought was really interesting. Before you roll your eyes at me, I'd just like to mention that this website has a lot more on it than just green smoothies. I've spent the last hour on there and haven't even come close to covering all the health/nutrition info she has on there. But one that caught my eye was this one on her Nutrition Myths page about "Milk and Dairy Build Strong Bones".
Ok, I promise I'm not turning into a freak or anything...at least not yet. I like a glass of milk and ice cream just as much as the rest of you. But in my mind lately I have kind of been wondering, "If Ivan can't have milk, and he never grows out of that, how will he have strong teeth and bones?" So this article stuck out to me, and I found it to be super interesting...I like it and wanted to share it.
Dairy Products Nutrition
Myth #8: “Milk and dairy build strong bones.”
The most powerful industry in America is the dairy industry, earning over $50 billion and spending over $200 million annually to spread the lie that dairy products nutrition is necessary for human children’s health. They’re smart enough to target mothers (and they started, very successfully, with our grandmothers), because they can create habits for life if a child is drinking cow’s milk at an early age.
So, while for many this will be a revelation, it shouldn’t be: our mothers were conned! The idea that the milk of another species is an appropriate and necessary source of calcium is a serious thinking error that has led to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and autoimmune disease in epic numbers. Ask yourself why the U.S. consumes more than double the amount of milk and dairy than the #2 milk-drinking country—and yet has the highest rate of osteoporosis (and massive dental decay, despite the best dental-care system) in the world. Clearly drinking milk is not leading to strong bones and teeth.
Colin T. Campbell, PhD, one of the most preeminent nutrition researchers in the world, conducted the most comprehensive, longitudinal research study in history (still ongoing) known as the Oxford-Cornell China Project. The New York Times dubbed it “the Grand Prix of Epidemiology.” Published in 2004, The China Study examined dietary habits and disease rates in 6,500 adults in China over almost 30 years. Campbell started with animal studies duplicated by other researchers all over the world and progressed to his enormous human population. The researchers documented massive evidence that casein (the protein in milk) is linked to high rates of disease when ingested at a rate of 20 percent of the diet, which is the American average. He documents very low rates of those same diseases in subjects eating only 5% or less animal protein. The protein in all the studies, animal and human, was casein. Eight thousand statistically significant correlations resulted from this study. (“Statistically significant” means the likelihood the finding is due to chance is less than 5 percent.) These findings definitively decimate American mothers’ nutrition beliefs that feeding their children dairy products will build strong bones and good health.
Human calcium deficiency diseases are extremely rare for anyone on any type of natural diet. Our need for calcium is relatively low, in fact, and mothers needn’t worry about pushing on their children massive amounts of cow’s milk (often genetically modified and full of hormones and antibiotics).
I raised all four of my children without cow’s milk, and only one of them has ever broken a bone (when she was pushed off the top of a slide), despite all of them being competitive athletes and therefore constantly in injury-prone situations. I personally have never drunk a glass of cow’s milk in my life, and at 40, I was measured to have the bone mass of a 20-yr. old. I did feed my children a little raw goat’s milk and homemade goat yogurt as they were being weaned from breast milk, and I continue to do so. Goat milk more closely resembles human breast milk; it also has a smaller fat molecule that permeates the human semi-permeable membranes without being mucus forming. Additionally, fermented milk proteins like kefir and yogurt are predigested and often cause no problems even for those who are lactose intolerant. I asked Dr. Campbell personally about his opinion of goat milk, as well as of kefir and yogurt, and he said that his research did not address it.
Cow milk’s large fat molecule is acid- and mucus-forming in humans; thus we are all “lactose intolerant” to one degree or another. Our grandparents, with their strong genetics, withstood it well. Unfortunately, our own children with three generations of weakened genetics, are not faring so well. Every time I see a child with green snot running from his nose, I wish I could in some socially acceptable way beg his mother to get her child off cow’s milk.
I have counselled willing mothers about this a number of times, and every time the mothers reported that the mucous problems disappeared as the mother eliminated dairy products nutrition, and related asthma and allergies dramatically decreased as well. (Eliminating sugar at the same time, as well, is a very wise idea. It, too, is highly acid—and therefore mucous-forming.)
Fact: Baby humans need human breast milk until their eyeteeth come in at about 18 months (at which time they begin producing digestive enzymes to break down table food). Only baby cows need cow milk. Nothing replaces human breast milk for infants 0-18 months. The best alternative, if breastfeeding is impossible, is raw goat milk (and definitely not soy milk). Get your calcium from leafy greens, as the dairy products nutrition is bioavailable to cows but not humans.
Ivan and Lincoln and I have had the stomach flu. :( Late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning was the worst of it. I was so weak from throwing up that I couldn't even sit up to feed Adelia. Aaron had to lay her in the bed next to me so I could nurse her laying down. And as for the boys...I think we've washed every crib sheet and twin mattress sheet we own, several times. Not to mention, pillow cases, blankets, pajamas, and stuffed animals. So fun.
Lucky for me, I have a mother who loves me very much. She came down yesterday and spent the whole day taking care of all of us sickies, so Aaron didn't have to miss class. She held Adelia, played with the boys (why is it that my children never just want to lay down and sleep the day away when they are sick. I know I do.), did laundry, washed dishes, fixed lunch, put the boys down for their naps, and kept me company during the parts of the day that I felt well enough to come out and lay on the couch. Thank you Mom, I don't know how we would have survived without your help!
Today we are all doing much better. But I wasn't sure if we were still contagious or not, so I kept us all away from people. But after spending the entire day inside yesterday, we were all feeling a little stir crazy. Almost a year ago, we made paper boats and sailed them in the little man-made stream on campus with some of our friends. Lincoln loved it, but the boats were made out of paper and so they didn't survive very many runs down the stream. Today we decided to give sail boats another try. But this time we made a super-duty boat. :)
I duct taped two empty two liter bottles together. Then I cut out one side of a cereal box and taped it on top of the bottles. For a mast I taped two shishkabob sticks together and we poked those through the cereal box. While I did all of that, Lincoln and Ivan colored sails. Actually, Linc colored his sail, and Ivan took the paper he was supposed to color into a sail and ripped it up all over the kitchen floor, and then colored his library coloring sheet from a couple days ago that had a teddy bear on it. So on one side I taped the sail Lincoln had colored, and on the other side, I cut out the teddy bear and taped it on. It actually turned out a lot cuter than I thought it would, but I didn't get a good picture of it on the teddy bear side.
Since it was a lot later in the day than I was planning on, I packed a lunch for us to eat up on campus, so when we got home the boys could go right down for naps. We drove up to campus and called Aaron to see if he wanted to take his lunch break and come sail the boat with us. He did.
We started right after the water goes under the sidewalk going away from the duck pond. The current wasn't as strong as I thought it would be right at first, so the wind actually caught the sail and took the boat in the wrong direction up stream. Aaron found some big sticks and he and Ivan went on one side of the stream and Lincoln, Adelia, and I went on the other and used the sticks to push the boat down stream. The boys liked this part best of all I think.
Our boat made it all the way to the end of the stream. (The water goes through a big grate and underground to be pumped back up to the top down the water fall that fills the duck pond.) We took it a little ways back up, to where the current starts getting fast enough that not much prodding is needed, and let it do another run. Then Lincoln got in trouble for not listening (he wanted to go on the side of the stream by the road, but neither Aaron and I were over there at that point, so I told him no, and he went anyway), and threw a huge tantrum because I made him have a time out. At that point I knew we were past time to go home. But we had a lot of fun with our little boat, and I think we'll try to remember to go sail boats more often.
This post is half out of order. We actually made this dinner last week, but I never got around to posting about it.
My kids aren't super picky eaters, but sometimes they are S.L.O.W. especially Lincoln, who would rather play with his food than eat it, and only decides he wants to eat it when his other option is bath time/bed time. My friend Misty and I joke around all the time that with toddlers, it's all about the presentation, especially when it comes to food. And I thought this idea of "presenting" dinner looked like a lot of fun.
Anyways, I was reading the Show and Tell Tuesday on ABC and 123 and someone had done these super cute sloppy joe cars. My boys are WAY into cars. Cars are really the only guaranteed hit every time, while other toys come and go. So I thought they'd get a kick out of seeing a car served as their dinner.
It was really easy too. You just take a hoagie bun (I split one bun in half for Lincoln's and Ivan's cars), cut a square hole in the top of it, and fill it with sloppy joe filling. The lady on the website I got this idea from used cucumbers as her wheels and cherry tomatoes cut in half as her headlights, but since I didn't have either of those, I used a zucchini for the wheels and pieces of a cut up tomoato for headlights. (We took all the leftover tomato and zucchini pieces and sauted them in butter with salt and pepper to go with, and it was delicious!) Stick the wheels and headlights in place with tooth picks, and wha-la! Dinner "to go". :)
Aaron thought this was a silly idea, but like a good husband went along with it. The kids loved it! Although, it didn't really help Lincoln eat any faster, I do think it made the meal a little bit more fun for him, and it was a nice break from the usual dinner routine.
Ok, now we're back in order. Adelia is still having a "rough" stretch at nights between about 10pm and 1am (on a good night) or 4am (a bad night). We decided that the acid reflux medicine wasn't doing any good, and so we've stopped giving it to her, and are just left with the crazy things we can come up with on our own to soothe her. One of them, I think is rather funny...but she tends to like having the blanket up over the top of her head. I have no idea why that's comforting, but my dad used to do the same thing with his blanket from Ethiopia when he was getting his chemotherapy treatments. I think she looks like Golda (from Fiddler on the Roof) when she has the blanket wrapped around her head, but hey, if it helps her to be calm then bring it on. Another thing that will usually calm her down is to put her in the Snuggly and walk around with her. It's an okay method, if you like having her weight on your shoulders all the time, and you don't mind pacing back and forth in the living room over and over. The only problem is that she'll usually wake up when you take her out of it. Sometimes not though, and that's probably why we keep doing it. Every once in awhile she'll go in the Snuggly, fall asleep, and then stay asleep when you transfer her to her bed or bouncy chair. When that happens it's like heaven.
Last night, after I'd been up with her for about 4 hours, I finally got her to sleep, or so I thought. I went to my own bed to lay down, and half hour later she was crying again. I must have been really out of it at that point. Aaron got up to go get her, and asked me when I'd fed her last. I told him in a really annoyed voice (annoyed that she was up after only a half an hour of being down, not annoyed with Aaron.) that I'd just barely fed her at 2:30. And I was very adamant about it. Aaron looked at the clock and started laughing, and said, "But it's only 1:40 now." Laugh all you want, I was tired. Thankfully by 3:00ish she was once again well fed, and asleep, and she slept until 7:00am. It was a nice stretch of sleep. It would have been a lot nicer, if Lincoln and Ivan hadn't gotten up twice somewhere in the middle of it. Oh well.
I also thought I should take a quick paragraph to update Ivan's situation. We've been doing a lot of reading and a lot of talking to different people. Our conclusion, for the moment, is that Ivan has a milk intolerance, as apposed to an allergy. From the research we've done, we've determined that when you have an allergic reaction, you're body digests the food, the food then gets into your blood stream, and then your body doesn't like it, so you get an allergic reaction such as a rash or hives. But with an intolerance, your body can't digest (or tolerate) the food you've eaten, and tries to get rid of it as quickly as possible, like throwing it up or pooping it out. It would be like us eating grass. Anyways, there's really nothing an allergist can do for an intolerance, so we've decided, for now, not to take Ivan in to see one. Also, Aaron's sister was telling us, that when you have an intolerance, your body spends so much of it's energy trying to deal with the intolerance, that you are more susceptible to getting sick, and you are likely to stay sick longer because your body is trying to do so many things at once. I think I can see that in Ivan.
So for now, we are just keeping him off of dairy, and learning what all has dairy in it (like the Cheez-it crackers I didn't even think about twice before giving him that he threw up everywhere. Oops.) and trying to avoid those things. I'm trying to find a good, child friendly, dairy free cook book. Anyone know a good one?
I'm enough behind in my blogging that my "Sunday Thoughts" aren't coming out until Monday afternoon. Oh well. You do the best you can. We had a wonderful regional stake conference yesterday that pretty much went right along with other thoughts that have been swirling around in my head lately. I love when that happens, when if feels like all the talks were written just so I could hear them.
I tried something this time, which I'm well aware that I should probably do every time, but I don't. Saturday night I prayed that by listening to the conference talks I would find the encouragement and strength that I feel like I am in such need of while we're going through the ups and downs with our kids right now. I've been feeling a certain kind of desperation lately, like I just have no idea what do to next or how to help our situation, or make the kids feel better or sleep peacefully, etc.
Sunday morning we were late getting out the door, so we missed the first speaker, I was sad about that, but had to tell myself that (since we'd been up most of the entire night Saturday night) we were doing the best we could do, and that would have to be good enough. Adelia wanted to eat the very second we got inside the church, so I went straight to the mother's room. This turned out to be a huge blessing, actually. They had the talks playing over the speakers, and the room was quiet, almost empty, and once Adelia was nursing, free of distractions. I got to listen and follow along with every word. And I am so grateful.
Julia B. Beck was the first speaker, and her talk hit home. Her main theme was this, "We are doing better than we think we are. But we still aren't doing as much as we could be." When I first sat down to think about this the points seemed to contradict one another, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how exactly right she was, at least in reference to me. If I sit down and analyze it honestly, I can truly say that I don't give myself enough credit for the things that I am trying to do and the things I am doing well. I tend to focus on the things I'm not doing, or the things I wish I were doing, and I dwell there instead of focusing on the positive things that do occur...For example, I've been pretty terrible at personal scripture study, and I focus on that a ton, and think about what a slacker I am. But on the flip side, Aaron and I do well at couple scripture study and we even do alright having scriptures in the morning with the kids. And I do need to give myself credit for what we do accomplish.
At the same time, if I analyze myself honestly again, I know that I'm not doing as much as I could be. Taking my previous example, instead of just being depressed that I am not doing so hot on my personal scripture study, I can say instead, "Ok, I'm not doing as well as I should be, how can I do better?" And then I can come up with some ideas and try implementing them until I conquer that challenge.
This same idea has been floating around in my head lately. I think about being better all the time, but I don't always take any action. And I've been thinking a lot about what I can do to improve. A friend of mine wrote a very inspiring blog post about her thoughts along this same line, and she came up with some great ideas about how to bring the spirit into her home. She said a lot of good things that I think I'd like to try, but what I came away from her post with was the idea that changing, being better, and getting the results that you want...for any goal even, not necessarily just the gospel related ones...requires action. I can think all day about what I want and what I'd like to have done, or how I want my household to run, but if I never put forth any effort to change anything, then it will still just be wishful thinking on my part.
Elder Holland gave an excellent talk on faith. And used several pioneer stories to illustrate his point. He talked about how we need to have a deep foundation of faith, and that if we do our children will see that, and can develop their own faith from it. What I took the most from his talk and the pioneer examples, was that the Lord is not going to stop life from being hard. But He will help us through it. I really like that idea. I sometimes find myself praying for life to go back to being easy, for the burden to be lifted, for the trials to magically disappear, for my children to just please sleep through the night. And most times those prayers don't materialize. But I have noticed that when I pray for strength and patience despite my lack of sleep, or the will power to keep taking care of the baby in the night, or cleaning up Ivan's throw up, or to not be angry with Lincoln, even when I'm still tired and know I'm going to be more tired, even when I feel cranky, even when I think I've given every last shred I have to give to my children and they still need more...somehow when I pray for the the ability to come out of the trials alive rather than that the trials will just go away...those are the prayers where I get answers and where I feel blessed to be able to keep going when I thought I couldn't anymore.
President Packer's talk was great too. He told some amazing stories about how the Lord puts people in our lives when we need them. I didn't really come away with anything specific from his talk, but I felt uplifted and strengthened by it.
I came away from stake conference very encouraged. I felt cheerful and happy all the rest of the day. I let Aaron have a nap and did the dishes and folded the mountain of laundry that's been sitting on our couch all week, I got dinner started, and we planned to have friends over for a game night. It felt good to feel to lite for a change, instead of just weighed down and tired.
We had another rough night with the kids. I think I got a grand total of two hours of sleep, and I don't think Aaron did much better. The last few nights that Aaron has been up, he's been watching the Mormon Messages off of lds.org. For something to focus his mind on and keep him awake while he's trying to rock Adelia to sleep. Last night, I decided to check it out while I was up. I was feeling a little bit discouraged again . Why does that always happen in the middle of the night? It's like you can shove the discouragement aside in the day time, but as soon as it's late and you are the only one awake it creeps up on you.
Anyways, I just started watching them in order. There are some really good ones, all really good messages. The Church has done a wonderful job with these, I think. Then I got to this one, and I'll be honest, it made me cry. I needed to hear it. And I don't think I'm the only mom out there who has challenges, or who wonders sometimes if it's all worth it. So, I wanted to share this in this post. And I hope that if it touches you in any way that you'll share it too, because I think so many of us out there need the reminder late in the night when we feel alone and things seem too hard.
My friend Suzy is a pure genius. She came up with some awesome X day activities for the kids. X is the toughest letter, and she did such a good job with it. I was very impressed, and the kids really enjoyed the day too.
To start out, she showed the boys a letter X and talked about the sound the letter X made. She handed each boy two cut out letter X's and explained that by using the shape of the X you could make different kinds of pictures such as a person or a butterfly. The boys got to glue their X's to different paper, and then use markers and crayons to turn their X's into a person and a butterfly.
I don't think Lincoln totally grasped the concept of using his X as a person's body, but his person did come out looking like a person jump roping, even if it was completely unintentional. :) He did get the concept of the butterfly right off though, and was excited to use the tooth pick as the body. He did ask me to help him draw the flower for it to sit on, but other than that the rest of the coloring was done by him.
After that we did a wiggling activity. Suzy found a video that showed the letter X moving around to music on Youtube (seriously, what would we do without Youtube?). She showed the boys how to spread their arms and legs apart and use their bodies to be X's. She had them walk as X's, jump as X's, and dance as X's. They thought it was hilarious, and asked to do it again and again. In fact, the first thing Lincoln asked me when we got home was if I would turn on the X movie so he could dance. Ivan and Kaitlyn even got in on the dancing, although they didn't really do it as X's. Everyone had a really good time with this activity.
For the last activity Suzy took us on a treasure hunt, because, as you know, X marks the spot. :) She had X's hidden all around, and each X had a clue on it. Something like, "This is where you eat dinner." And the boys would have to find the next X under the kitchen table. Or, "This is where you hang your coat." And the X would be in the coat closet, etc.
The last clue was, "This is where your mom bakes cookies." The boys went into the kitchen and looked in the oven and found their treasure.
Cupcakes! In the shape of an X of course. The boys then got to sit down again at the table, and decorate their cupcakes with frosting. Then Suzy gave them rope Twizzlers and they got to make a big X on their cupcake. And as always, they liked eating the cupcakes best of all. :)
Lincoln's X got a little top heavy and therefore looks more like a cross between an X and K, but it's the idea that counts right?
Mom, Tanner, Melissa, Adelia, Ryan, Ivan, and me. Aaron and Linc were taking the picture, and Kerry was by the grill.
Labor Day is one of my favorite holidays. Probably because of the time of year. It's perfect weather, fall is just starting, so it's still warm but the air has a slight coolness to it. I love that! I love being able to wear long pants and a T-shirt while being a comfortable temperature. I need to figure out somewhere to live that has a longer fall season, because it just doesn't last long enough here.
Ivan really likes chocolate chip zucchini cake
So a quick update on Ivan. We are pretty sure he has a milk allergy. He's been off dairy completely for the last five days, and doing a lot better. So today I decided that I would give him some lactose free milk, just to see what would happen. So I gave him about 6 oz of it with his lunch. He drank it happily, and then about 2 minutes later threw it all back up, along with everything else he'd eaten. Gross. I looked up milk allergy symptoms online, and it says that a milk allergy can cause vomiting, diarrhea, runny nose, and a cough, among other things. Hmmm...this sounds all too familiar. Especially since he only throws up randomly. Especially since he's been miserable for the last month. The website also said it can cause the digestive system to be upset, which might explain why the kid has had so much trouble sleeping at night for his entire life. We think we might take him in to get him tested, just to see if it's an allergy or just an intolerance. And to find out how severe it is. Like if he's only allergic to straight dairy products like milk, cheese, yogurt, etc. Or if even things with dairy in them will make him sick. I'm hoping for the first option, because avoiding milk and cheese is going to be hard enough on it's own, let a lone if I can't even use milk while cooking. But we'll do what we have to do. The good news is that (from what I read anyways) most kids outgrow milk allergies by the age of 3.
Ryan and Melissa making a tunnel for the kids to run under
To celebrate Labor Day, we invited Aaron's brother Ryan, and Ryan's wife Melissa over to BBQ shishkabobs out back. While we were putting the shishkabobs together in the kitchen my mom and Kerry and Tanner surprised us by dropping by on their way home from San Diego. They been out there visiting my step-brother Bryan and his wife Emily and their daughter Penny for the weekend. We were glad to have them. They stayed for dinner too. Lincoln and Ivan loved having all that adult attention. :)
Aaron and I also came up with a game plan to get more sleep (since we got literally about zero hours of sleep last night). We decided that around 9:30-10:00 after Adelia eats, that I will pump out enough milk for one feeding, and then I will go to bed. Aaron will stay up with Adelia while she fusses etc. and feed her with the bottle. And then once she goes to sleep around 1am or so, he will come to bed, and I will be responsible for her for the rest of the night. That way we each get a reasonable stretch of uninterrupted sleep. At first I was worried about trying to give her the bottle, because once we gave Lincoln the bottle he would never go back to nursing (not that he ever really nursed anyway). But we figured that since she's been nursing for a month now, she's probably got it down pretty well, and since she will only get one bottle every day and the rest will be nursing, that it will probably be ok. I surely hope it works, because I don't think Aaron and I can run on no sleep for very much longer. And it would help a lot if Ivan wasn't getting up in the night too, but we're trying to work that out as best we can too. We'll see how it goes.
Anyways, we had a relatively low key, but fun Labor Day. The weather was beautiful, the food was excellent, and the company was even better.
Well, despite our best efforts yesterday to wear the kids out, no one got much sleep last night. We made it through church okay, and came home and put the boys down for naps. Aaron and I weren't lucky enough to score naps however, since he went home teaching and Adelia had other ideas for me.
My patience must have been wearing a little thin, because later in the afternoon Aaron offered to take the boys out for a little while. It was a much needed break for me. And even though Adelia still didn't let me take a nap, the quiet was very helpful and refreshing.
Aaron took the boys to Rock Canyon Park, right behind the Provo temple. It has a huge grassy area at the bottom of a big hill, so the boys could roll down the hill or run around with minimal energy exerted by Aaron to keep them close or safe. I love places like that! Anyways, Aaron took some great pictures.
Ivan "rolling" aka scooting on his bottom, down the hill
Linc and Ivan with the mountains in the background
Lincoln pointing out a smiley face someone made in their yard
Today I was in desperate need to get away from our house. So after all the morning chores were finished, and the naps taken, we decided to escape. We didn't go far, but just going somewhere made a huge difference. We decided to take the kids up to campus, since that is a fairly large area where they can run around without me worrying about something awful happening to them.
We drove to the parking lot just across the street from Brick Oven, and then walked up the hill. The boys (and this includes Aaron) had fun trying to pick plums off of the trees to eat. They never did manage to get any though, they were all too high up. Lincoln and Ivan had fun climbing on the light posts, and running back and forth underneath the railing. And they did all this while going up hill. I'm fairly certain they'll sleep well tonight. At least I hope so.
When we got to the top, we decided to go inside the Joseph Smith Building and show the kids the little "Sacred Grove" room inside. Well, to get to it you have to go inside the building, but then you go out another set of doors into a little court yard that's actually outside but it's always shaded in there so it's a lot cooler than outside. We showed the kids the statue of Joseph Smith and had a small snack while they climbed around on the rocks. After that we went out into the visitors lounge area and looked at the displays. One of the displays was on ancient south american gold jewelry and how they designed it and made it. I thought that was the coolest display. Lincoln really liked the replica of the sword of Laban.
Lincoln playing on the laser table
After the JSB, we headed over to the Eyering Science Center. In the front area of that building they have all sorts of cool things to look at and hands on science type stuff to do. The kids had a blast here. We got to see dinosaur bones, lots of cool geological rocks, a weather display, we got to look at the light spectrum through cool glasses, play with a magnetic sandbox, play lots of different little games that had to do with physics principles, try our hand at reflecting the light from lasers to see how far across the board we could make it go, and our personal favorite...play with the holograph machine.
Ivan's favorite hands on activity was the water fountain!
After we had our fun at the ESC we decided it was probably time to head home and have some dinner. We'd forgotten about the BYU game, but somehow we managed to miss all the traffic. Awesome! Although, I bet someone out there was probably mad at us for taking up some prime game day parking. Oh well.
Adelia was a good girl the whole time we were gone.
Adelia Mae is one month old today! It's amazing to think we've survived for this long already. I guess a lot of exciting things happened the first month that kept our minds occupied. Now that we're back to real life, I'm realizing that real life is hard. Don't get me wrong, it's been good too, but it's also been a bit of a struggle.
Adelia is a wonderful baby and we love having her around. It's funny because even though all she really does so far is eat, sleep, and poop, which is what all babies her age do, you can feel the difference in her being a girl rather than a boy. I don't know how to explain it really, maybe it's just her little spirit. Maybe it's that she's more fun to dress...who knows :)
She sleeps great...during the day. We've been having some trouble at night. She has about a three hour stretch every night where she'll eat and then pull away and arch her back and cry and cry, and the only thing that will soothe her is eating some more, but then she pulls away and cries. So basically, she and I get to hang out awake together for three hours and listen to each other cry. It's a little bit frustrating. We took her to the doctor, because we thought that she might have acid reflux, even though she's not really very spitty. He gave us some medicine to try. He said if it was going to work we'd notice a significant difference in about three days. We are on day number two so far with no changes. If it's not acid reflux, the doctor said it was probably colic, which means we're probably in for the long haul, because there isn't really much you can do for a colic baby except wait for them to grow out of it.
Ivan is another story. Ever since Adelia was born he's had a very runny nose. But up until the last two weeks it's always been clear. Then it started turning yellowish and getting thicker and he started coughing. He also started waking up a lot in the night, probably because the snot was running down his throat and bothering him. We tried the humidifier, which didn't really make much difference. Then every so often he started throwing up. Not after every meal or anything like you would expect with the stomach flu, but every other day or so at random times for no real reason that we can determine. We thought maybe he was gagging on his snot, and that's what was causing it. We took him in to the doctor, who thought he probably had allergies. We got some allergy medicine and have been giving it to him, with no improvement at all. Then he started also having really nasty diarrhea. Super. So now I'm thinking that maybe he has a food intolerance of some sort. My guess is milk. We have had him off of all dairy for about 4 days now. He hasn't thrown up in the last two, and his diarrhea is improving slowly. But who knows. A food intolerance wouldn't really explain his nose running off of his face all the time. I think the hardest part of being the parent is the guessing game we are constantly forced to play. I just want to know what is wrong with my children so I can fix it. I would like it if Ivan would go back to sleeping at night, because of course he's never awake at the same time as Adelia, usually he wakes up right after I finally get her down.
And of course the list wouldn't be complete if we didn't include Lincoln. Thankfully, he is perfectly healthy at the moment and mostly sleeping at night. My dilemma with him I can't tell if it's just age or stage. He's always had unlimited amounts of energy, but lately he seems hell bent on using it to drive me up the wall. He's in to everything he's not supposed to be. He's decided that using an inside voice no longer applies to him. He's mean to Ivan, takes his toys, hits him, pushes him, shuts him in rooms, etc. He's only slightly nicer to Adelia, he throws things in her general direction, shakes her chair when she's sitting in it, tries to climb on top of her when she's in my lap, steals her blankets, etc. He's contrary about everything. He fights everything. He won't do anything he's asked the first, second, third, or 20th time he's asked to do it. He whines a lot. Cries a lot. Gets sent to time out and won't stay there a lot. And he won't nap. I keep trying to be patient with him, but I'm having a rough go of it. I've usually morphed into Mom-zilla by the time Aaron gets home from work.
I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining. I knew that having three kids was not going to be easy. I guess I just wasn't expecting so much all at once. And I do know that eventually, we'll get it all worked out and we'll come up with some kind of schedule again and things will feel normal again. Maybe I'll even get to sleep again at some point in the distant future. :) But for now I guess we'll "just keep swimming, just keep swimming..."
W day turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be. Lots of things start with W when you start thinking about it. I was grateful, because my mental capacity has been somewhat lacking lately due to lack of sleep.
To start out, I showed the boys the W Room clip from Leap Frog's Letter Factory DVD. I really like this DVD a lot. It goes through each letter and has fun little ways to remember the sounds each letter makes. Lincoln really likes it too, and it has helped him tons with his letter sounds.
If you're interested in the Leapfrog DVD, here's a youtube video that tells a little bit more about it. And we found our copy of Letter Factory on Amazon for $9 and that included shipping.
After introducing the W and it's sound. I read the boys Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak, which is one of my favorite books (although I haven't seen the movie and don't really plan on it, I've heard it's depressing) and it has a lot of good W words in it.
Even though it's a bit early for Halloween, Lincoln has been really into spiders lately. So for our next activity, I gave the boys each a black piece of paper and some chalk and had them draw webs. They did a really good job. I think we will do this activity again closer to Halloween for decorations.
Next we headed back into the living room to get our wiggles out. We have recently discovered The Wiggles at our house, and my boys LOVE them. Even Ivan, who isn't much of a movie watcher, will sit and watch The Wiggles...and dance of course. :) So I showed The Wiggles song Get Ready To Wiggle, and let the boys dance and wiggle to the music. They really loved it. Even the little kids, Ivan and Kaitlyn, decided to join in on the fun. Thank goodness for Youtube, or we wouldn't be able to have the enjoyment of The Wiggles in our home, haha.
Our next game was my favorite...probably because I came up with it all on my own. :) I printed out a walrus that was missing it's teeth (I had Aaron remove them on the computer before printing) and cut out a bunch of W's. Then we blind folded the kids (we didn't spin them around though, thought they were a little too young for that just yet.) and had them play pin the teeth on the walrus. The boys loved it, but I think Suzy and I were the most entertained by it. They got W's everywhere. By the end they had managed to get three W's on the paper at least, but the walrus remained toothless. Fun though. We saved the last two W's for Ivan and Kaitlyn to do. We didn't blind fold them though, they had enough trouble trying to get the tape off of their fingers and onto the poster. :) It was cute to watch them trying to be as big as their older brothers.
For our last thing we took the kids for a ride in our wagon (still the best $5 I've ever spent). I wasn't sure if all four kids would fit, but we put a big kid and a little kid on each seat, and they were so excited to be going for a wagon ride that the big kids were even nice to the little ones. Yay! And Adelia got to ride in the Snuggly. I pulled the wagon while Suzy dispensed our W treat, which was Wafers. We went around our block. The kids loved it, I think it was their favorite part of the day.
Little girl at the park: "Hey, do you want to be my friend?"
L: "Um... I'm just Lincoln."
"Holy cow! I say holy cow, but Tanner says Gosh dang it!"
(Walking into the womens bathroom in the Clyde Building on campus) "Wow, this one's really nice in here."
Uncle Kyle: "Linc, who made your dragon cake for your birthday?"
L: "Jesus."
(Looking in the mirror) "I'm not cute." (Picking up a brush and brushing his hair a couple times, then looking in the mirror and smiling) "There! That's better!"
"Mom, I don't have a Delia in my tummy. Not even a little one."
"I just don't want to be tired."
Aaron: "Lincoln, I love you."
L: "Ya, could you go get Grandma?"
"I just let my eyes out so I can see."
"Buzz, Buzz! Where are you? I missed you so much, Buzz!"
"Mom, are you done feeding Adelia? Can I have the rest?"
"Gosh my dang it!"
"I can see Peter Pan through my stelegope (telescope)!"
