So excited!

My Picassa isn't working so I can't post fun pictures. We had the creepiest bug yesterday, and it was certainly worth a pic. Bummer. My little Jonah is such a fun - and funny - kid. Yesterday when Anna made him mad, he called her a "mean man eating mammal." I think that was an upgrade from the previous day of a "meat eating Tyrannasaurus Rex." And, then. I have to give hugs to anyone who has a 2yo. Well, maybe to anyone who has an Eli. He's been my challenge since he started walking right at 9 months. Last night I put him to bed and then I took a shower. When I was done, I opened the door and found him laying on the floor outside the bathroom eating pizza. How many rules do YOU think he was breaking????? At least he hadn't sneaked out of the house again or spilled all the laundry soap again or crawled into Sarah's crib while she was sleeping again or taken his feast underneath our bed again. At least it was something new. Little Sarah is climbing everything right now. She loves to climb on top the dining table (at least she doesn't try to swing from the chandelier like someone else used to do) and on top the toilet. Sadly, she still likes to play in the toilet. Anna went to a birthday party yesterday! 13 1st grade girls walked from the school to the park for the party. It was the first time Anna had been in a public school during school hours, so that was fun for her. She said when she met the other girls, they all stared at her. Anna thought it was strange that they stared, but it didn't bother her at all. Why am I excited? I am going to my first real-life, ALL day Catholic homeschool conference tomorrow. My beautiful sister-in-law Nancy is watching the kids for me. I told her that it has been years since I was away from the kids for so long. She might think I was exaggerating, but I wasn't. It has been since I was pregnant with Eli which is almost three years now. THREE YEARS. And that includes 27+ months of breast feeding.

Five Words

One of the big milestones as a parent is hearing your babies start talking. We usually have a fun contest over whether the kids say "mama" or "dada" first. And you can guess who usually wins in our breastfeeding stay-at-home-mom life. So, Sarah is the age to start talking, and I was wondering which sibling's names she would say first. Of course I expected her to nail "mama" and then work through the rest of our names. Well.....here's her list in the order she has learned them:

1. shoe
2. cheese
3. boo!
4. tickle, tickle
5. up

Not only did the five members of her family not make the first five list, but CHEESE came before all of us. CHEESE????? Really?

This is for Grandpa G

Anna: I wish Grandpa didn't know the directions to the store. Mom: Why? Anna: If he didn't know, Grandma could hide his pipe and he couldn't get a new one. (pause) Anna: Do they have a printer? Mom: Yes Anna: Darn! He could just print new directions. Foiled by technology. And, Jonah questions: 1) If Dad hammered a little hole in the outside of our new house, would it come tumbling down? 2) What would happen if a big tree fell on our new house? 3) Who would win if a bear and a fox were fighting? 4) If a bee was in our van, could it get out? He always asks such random questions. My favorite are the fighting questions, but Mark gets most of those. He always wants to know who wins in various animal face-offs. Most of the animals wouldn't ever come together in nature, but I don't think he's worried so much about habitat logistics.

Come laugh with me....

Jonah: I would love a duck for a pet

Anna: A duck? That would be too loud!

Jonah: It's only loud with lots of ducks. One duck wouldn't be loud.

Mom: I think Dad hatched ducks once. You should ask him about ducks.

Jonah: ..(pause)....Mom.....Did he sit on the eggs?

Now, that had me rolling on the floor.

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I overheard this conversation when they were picking up a huge mess.

Jonah: Anna, do you want to be a king and queen? Then we wouldn't have to do any work.

Anna: That's a great idea. Our servants could do all the work.

Jonah: How do you think we could get that job?

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Did I mention that they are obsessed? Completely, totally, utterly obsessed. Our garter snake population is terrorized on a regular basis. These guys can catch a snake in minutes. Even Eli can catch them now.

Do you know what this is? Yep, it's snake scat. One of their snakes pooped out worms. It was a surprise since snake poop doesn't usually look like this. How sad that even I know this. The kids now know when their snakes are going to poop, and they even wipe the snakes' butts. How nice. I guess they needed to figure it all out after one of the snakes pooped all over Jonah's leg. Completely gross. Our one snake rule is that you have to be 2yo to touch them. Sarah wants to play with the snakes, but mean Mom won't let her.

Non house pics

We had a robin nest down low until Eli broke the eggs. This is Eli's alphabet line. He was exploring with our new movable alphabet - one of our first Montessori school products. The vowels are blue and the consonants are red. Eli was so cute lining up all the letters so they matched.

Sisters. Anna was trying to do some school work, but it's hard with a 1yo in the mix. Anna's into writing in her math journal for fun. I have fun watching her write math facts over and over and over. I can see it is sticking!

More weekend pics

We set up the food in our garage. You can see we are using the garage for storing the stuff taken out of the house.

Here's Mark's brother Jim, Mark, and Jonah on the roof. They are closing the hole from the chimney.

Here's the last bit of chimney in the basement. It took the men most of the day to get the chimney down. It was neat to see the progress as they started with the chimney on the roof and slowly pounded it out brick-by-brick through the roof, second floor, first floor, and into the basement. Slow and steady all the way.

Here's Mark's dad working on the walls in the dining room.

House Pics from the Weekend

The pictures aren't blurry. What you are seeing is the stuff in the air. This is Mark's sister Nancy taking drywall off the bedroom closet. This is Mark taking down the living room ceiling.

The ceiling was a pretty big project. Here is Mark in the background and his brother Jim and nephew John in the foreground.

Nothing Much

Here they are making mountains yesterday. Our literature unit this week is Climbing Kansas Mountains. Do ya see the mountain connection? I made a big batch of playdoh and had them make a mountain in a tuperware container. Then they added blue water to turn their mountain into an island. They then made a lake and poured water into it (kinda like the inverse of a mountain). Here are some cute kid quotes: Eli: "Mom, I saw God!" (said with great wonder and excitement after shaking Father Ray's hand after Mass last Sunday) Jonah: "Mom, I see the Father who owns the church." (He saw Father Ray getting into his car after church.) And perhaps the best, at least for my side of the family: The kids were so very excited to catch three snakes one day this week. They brought them to me and were telling me the names....Lizzie Anna, Little Mark, and......for the biggest snake....Big Bob. I was rolling on the floor.

Kids on the loose

Playing prairie chickens. I'm not sure what that is other than they were mentioned in The Little House in the Prairie books. Looking for adventure with their snakes.

Snakes. They are obsessed.

After shots...upstairs

This is looking from the small bedroom into the large bedroom. This is looking into the attic room.

This is looking from the larger bedroom into the smaller bedroom. We're going to add a small bathroom between the two bedrooms.

Before shots...Upstairs two bedrooms

My before shots are after Mark took out the carpet and some paneling. This is looking into the attic room which we are hoping to convert to a playroom. The door is odd shaped because this addition wasn't matched up to the rest of the house. This is the bigger of the two upstairs bedrooms. The boys will have this room.

Still the bigger bedroom.

This is the stairs coming up to the second bedroom. This bedroom isn't really a bedroom since you have to walk through it to get to the back bedroom. Very old style. You can see the white door to the attic room.

This is the smaller upstairs bedroom. The chimney runs through the room, and that is going to be taken out.

Remodeling...living & dining rooms

Mark's family came last weekend to start deconstruction. Here is a series of before and after shots. We are so blessed to have their help. We both couldn't believe how much got done in less than 24 hours. Before shots...This is looking into the dining room from the living room. The kitchen is to the right. This is looking the other way - from the dining room to the living room. There is a hallway in the middle of the room on the left and some storage shelves to the left along the wall.

After shots....looking from the living room to the dining room. See that dark wall in the dining room? Those are from the original outside of the house in the 1870s. We hope to keep keep those as is.

Here is looking from the dining room to the living room.

The DOCTOR

Oh, my. This was by far my worst trip yet. First, though, stats: Jonah was 47 lbs and 44.5 inches. He's squarely in the 75th percentile. He failed part of the hearing test in his left ear, so we will be watching that. Guess that might explain why he's the kid we are constantly asking, "Jonah, Do you HEAR me???" The answer might actually be "no." Sarah was 22lbs, 7oz and 29.5 inches. She is also squarely in the 75th percentile. Their hair color is pretty much exactly the same. Funny since Jonah was so white at first, and she's always had this shade.

And, here's the story. We all arrive for our well kid appointments at 9:00am. As you might expect, I wasn't in a good mood since I was determined that the kids had to get their chores done before we left the house. That means I harped a lot and they whined a lot as I pushed to get them out door. So, anyway, we arrived slightly late. We waited in the waiting room while the kids fought over the waiting room toys. Sometimes it's just easier if the waiting rooms aren't kid friendly. When we finally saw the doctor, he was very s-l-o-w and the exams took forever. Insert outrage: Can you believe they gave Sarah her immunization shots before the doctor even came into the room? What were they thinking? It's difficult to proceed with an exam when your patient is screaming.

So, I sent Anna & Eli back to the waiting room. It was just too much for all of us to be in there together for that long. As I was packing up to take the kids for bloodwork, Eli came walking back into our room minus his shoes and pants. Hello???? Why would a 2yo take off his clothes in the waiting room?

I put us all together - yet again - and headed toward the bloodwork area. As we walked, I briefed Jonah that he would get his blood taken. No problem. Then, the nurses handed me a cup for him to urinate in. Now, if you know Jonah, there isn't any way in this world that he would go into an unknown bathroom and pee in a cup, especially after having had his privates examined by the doctor. This kid is freaked out by windows in bathrooms and the idea of anyone seeing his underwear. I had my hands full with four kids, so I asked for a to-go bag and prayed that we could get him to do it at home.

We all then settled into the lab area. I had Sarah on my lap and Jonah sat next to us. Anna went down the hall with a nurse and Eli was crawling under the chairs. Well, ya know, he's two and my hands were already busy. So, they prick Sarah's finger and she starts screaming. Really, really screaming. Screaming like I've never heard. They prick Jonah's finger and he starts whimpering. Then crying. They get done with Sarah and try to bandage her finger but she was screaming so hard that they couldn't get her blood to clot and she tore off every bandage they put on her finger. She even resorted to using her teeth to get them off. Then, Jonah faints. Yes, he truly fainted. Thank God he was sitting next to me and he fell onto me. It could have been much worse. The nurse grabbed him and held him while he came to. He was so white and pastey, and he was crying even more. I was frightened for him, and I couldn't do anything since I had a screaming baby on my lap. Amongst all the commotion, Eli managed to climb behind my chair and was asking me over and over and over if I would open his fruit snacks.

I can't do the trip justice, but I can feel my blood pressure elevating just remembering the day. Oh, my.

Just because she is adorable...

Fruit Loops

And this is just one example of why moms of young children never get around to cleaning. We are too busy trying to maintain.

I didn't appreciate having a whole bag of cereal dumped in the hallway, but my kids sure did. They thought it was appropriate to have a picnic and eat the entire mess. I certainly didn't think the same.

The deed is done - we are property owners again

Well, actually we are property debtors again. Our closing went well. After we had the keys, I took the kids out to see inside the house and buildings. When we got out of the van, the boys headed to the trees out front and Anna headed toward the house. The boys didn't resurface until they had checked out a lot of the trees. Quite cute. We picniced for lunch and dinner at the new place on Monday. We tried to go back yesterday, but it was too windy. Mark, of course, started working on the house Monday night. There is a lot of work to do, but I think it will be pretty decent once it's all done. The wind out here is unreal. I don't know how any settlers survived the winters back in the day. Wow. I can handle the snow, but the wind may be too much. If I get computer time later today, I'll post updated stats from Sarah's & Jonah's well kid checkups. It was an interesting doctor visit, complete with fainting and all.

Proud hunters

Look at what our boys hunted this morning. This is the brush pile they tore apart while hunting the snake. Jonah reported that they stood very quietly to hear the snake rumbling in the leaves and grass. Then, they would watch it slithering, and that's how they knew where to grab.

Too bad Mark wasn't home to see their excitement. Jonah has now decided that they are going to hunt all the snakes in the world. Guess they'll be busy for the rest of the afternoon.

Another small town moment for ya

Walking into the grocery store, Anna found a dime. Even finding pennies brings exclamations of joy, so you can imagine her excitement. As we were walking through the store, she asked me over and over and over what she could buy for ten cents. I assured her (using my know-it-all mommy tone) that ten cents wasn't enough to buy anything in the store. You won't believe what I saw as we were checking out. Not one but two candies for under ten cents. Anna was able to buy tootsie rolls for all the kids and get change back. Obviously I need to keep my mommy tone in check. Also, where else could Eli sit down in middle of the "big" highway to take off his shoes and not get run over?

To Caseys or bust!

Why would I take this picture? Well, it's the completion of yet another milestone. Anna & Jonah went to Caseys and back all by themselves this week! They were so excited to make the big trip - an entire three blocks across the "big" highway.

G&G Gruenes visit

Yes, that is Mark's parents cleaning up our lawn. Aren't they great? Anna loved riding the lawnmower. Jonah didn't like riding the lawnmower. It was too loud for our little guy with heightened senses.

This little one played with worms all afternoon. He loves worms!