Long Time, No Blog

Another Project

I recently made these wall decorations for the girls' room out of some fabric scraps I've been hanging on to. It's a garden/flower/butterfly themed room, so I thought these would fit in nicely. Joe says they look like modern art--not my typical soft edged style.


Austin's Midnight Moment

Austin, our five year old, has never wet the bed. If we forget to take him potty before bed, he cries in the middle of the night, I wake up, take him to the bathroom, and he goes back to sleep. The other night, I heard "the cry", and was about to get up when I heard stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp (I could tell he was running in place, not towards to door). I jumped up and ran to his room. When I flipped on the light, he was standing on the area rug in the middle of the room with his pants down, peeing on the floor. He pulled up his pants and got back in bed and went to sleep. I pulled the area rug out and took it straight to the front porch so I could deal with it the next day. When morning came, Austin asked where his rug was. I told him he peed on it in the night. His confused look said it all--he had no recollection of the incident. Is that what they call sleep walking?


The Big Experiment

This month is our big food storage experiment. The rules are 1) we can't go to the store to buy anything and 2) we keep track of everything we use. At the end of the month, we'll multiply everything we used by three to make sure our three month supply will actually last three months. To help out, I made menus (breakfast, lunch, dinner) for the whole month. Before the month started I stocked up on stuff we didn't have already in our food storage, including three huge packs of TP from Costco. Our experiment will actually end next Wednesday when we leave to visit my family for Thanksgiving. It's been so nice not to have to shop for groceries--a chore I'm not fond of. I think shopping once a month is a habit I would definitely like to keep. Today we drank the last of our milk, so it's powdered milk for the rest of the month! I've also been grinding wheat and baking bread every other day with pretty good success. The other night for a treat, we let the kids take a quarter out of their piggy banks and we all went to Safeway and got a quarter pop from the machine. You wouldn't believe how happy the kids were to drink pop.

We're also not spending any money other than pay for phone, electric, water, sewer bills etc. We're not even buying gas. We filled the cars up on Oct 31, and if we run out we'll walk everywhere. Joe's been walking to work, and we've only driven to church and back, so for now I think we'll have enough gas to get by. Joe's having a hard time not ebaying and doing impulse buys at Walmart; hopefully this will break him from these habits. I can't wait to see how much money we've saved!

Independent Spirit

Austin celebrated his fifth birthday last weekend and has manifested his independent spirit several times this week to prove just what a big boy he is.

Take this picture for example:


He's capable of turning on the kitchen faucet by climbing the cupboards or getting a chair, but why work that hard when there's an easier way? I found it funny that he thought to turn it on using his "special stick".

How he found the "special stick" is another story. A very scary story. A story that I really don't want to remember but I'm sitting here posting about it anyway.

On Thursday, Joe, Hans, Joseph, and Grant walked to soccer practice which was at the park about 4 blocks away. Austin wanted to go with them, but I told him he had to stay home with me and the girls. He and Jennabee played inside the house for about 20 minutes while I worked on dinner. They eventually mosied into the backyard to jump on the trampoline and I checked on them every now and then to make sure they weren't getting into trouble.

Then the phone rang, it was Joe, and the conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi, what's up?

Joe: Not much. How are you?

Me: Great. Just working on dinner.

Joe: OK. How are Austin and Jennabee?

Me: Fine. They're outside in the backyard playing.

Joe: Oh. (pause) Actually, they're here at the park. They just showed up at soccer practice.

Me: (Cough, sputter, choke...) WHAT??? I just checked on them not that long ago and they were on the trampoline! This is bad... really, REALLY, BAD!

Joe: Yeah, I know.

Joe told me not to pick them up because there were only fifteen minutes of practice left. Those fifteen minutes seemed like an eternity to me. All of the bad things that could have happened, flooded into my mind over and over again. Run over by cars (they had to cross two fairly busy streets to get there), getting lost and wandering from street to street, getting snatched from the side of the road...the hazards seemed endless. And to think, at the precise moment they were walking to the park, I was in my happy little world, cooking and thinking "Wow, maybe we don't need to fence after all. The kids are so good about staying in the yard."

Once we were all together again, safe and sound, we asked Austin how he found the park. He said "I went bench to bench, just like Grandpa said". Grandpa had recently taught the boys that the way to find the park was to follow the benches to get there. There are several benches along the way within sight distance of one another. I'm so glad he knew the way! I shudder to think of him and Jennabee aimlessly wandering the roads trying to find Dad and the boys. It was while on the walk to the park that he found his special stick that "helped him walk when [his] legs got tired".

We had a firm chat with him and I'm keeping him on a tighter leash, but I can't help but wonder "what's next?" with him. He has had an independent spirit since his birth. His mannerisms as a baby were always different than my other babies. I've always known he was unique from Day 1.

I LOVE this kid and I never want anything bad to happen to him. Is it possible to tame such an independent spirit without destroying it completely?

And finally:

A picture of him on his birthday with his dragon cake. Thanks to Julie P. for the inspiration and for sending me the directions on how to make it.

The Adventures of Double Man

The other day Austin (4 years old) came out of his room with not one, but two Superman capes on. He announced, "Mom, I'm Double Man!" Joseph asked him what his powers were. He replied that he could shoot bullets out of his stomach and also shoot his eyeballs out of his head and make them come back again. Does that make Double Man a super spy? I can't think of any other use for boomerang eyeballs.

Also, during family home evening tonight, Joe, who was conducting the meeting, said, "The first thing we are going to do tonight is practice saying "Family Home Evening". Austin has always called it "Fammy Ho-neenee" and Joe decided it was time for him to learn what the real words were. I'm going to miss his cute way of saying it.

Scratching Beef and Other Austinisms

A few little things Austin has said recently that I have to document:

I was giving backrubs to the boys this morning and during Austin's turn he said, "Mom, will you scratch my beef?" I asked him what his "beef" was. He pointed to his spine and said, "Right here, where all these bones are." I am happy to report he now knows what a backbone is.

A couple of weeks ago Austin woke up with a tummy ache and said "Mom, I think my kidney stone is coming out!" I admit to complaining (unwisely in front of the kids) of aches and pains in my back and belly when I was going through the kidney stone problems; enough to convince him that any pain in that region was caused by a kidney stone.

In every prayer he has given for the last couple of weeks, he says, "Please bless that we can go to the jungle." ??????

Driving home from a one-on-one outing to the store with me, I thanked Austin for coming and having such a good time with me. He replied with, "It was my pleasure Mama!"