The Week Between

We were home for only about three weeks from Thanksgiving until nearly Valentine's Day, whew!  Life on the road has its challenges but is not without its own joys, as well. Hopefully I'll get to sharing more trip pictures soon, because there are some precious memories there! For now, though, since it's February it does seem to be about time I scribbled down some goals for 2015 (in no particular order), sprinkling in some updates about the week we spent at home post-Christmas for good measure. 

(We watched these cuties so their parents could enjoy a date night!)

House goals:

- Clear pictures from under the guest bed and make a gallery wall

- Give the guest room a face lift in preparation to become the big girl room

- Chalkboard and plate rack in the kitchen

(Ruthie had her first day of Sunday School, and loved every minute :))

Personal goals:

- Expand my Biblical literacy by keeping up with an in-depth personal Bible study all year

- Reread Pilgrim's Progress and/or read John Adams

- Workout at least 4 times per week

- Blog a bit more than last year, about once per week

(Our friends watched our little ones and we enjoyed a fancy dinner out.)

Goals for my children:

- Research more educational theorists, especially Charlotte Mason

- Continue last year's goals of daily reading and outdoor play

- Make time to play with my children more and involve them in my work more

(Ruthie and Gemma had their 2 and 4 year old checkups.  Gemma got her kindergarten shots and didn't even cry!)

(John got to see his PhD project live at our local Museum of Life and Science!)

(And there was lots of this kind of thing.  :))

You might think you could accomplish most of my year-long goals in a month, and you might be very right about that.  :)  However, I find that making small goals helps organize me with discouraging me.  

Here's to another year with my precious little family, and another year walking hand-in-hand with the Lord Jesus.  "The Lord knows how to order things better than I. The Lord sees further than I do; I only see things at present but the Lord sees a great while from now." --Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment

Pancakes and Princesses - Gemma's 4th Birthday

Well over a month ago, our big girl turned 4.  If I think about that fact too much, I just about start to cry, so let's focus on the happy things and talk about her birthday party!

After going through the (75!) pictures from that afternoon/evening, I concluded that there's more to tell than show . . . not too many winners in that batch of photos.  

Back in the summer, I shared a picture on facebook of Gemma cleaning my baseboards with a toothbrush, and John's cousin suggested that her next birthday should be Cinderella-themed.  Perfect idea! Cinderella is actually Gemma's favorite princess, for the simple reason that the Disney Cinderella wears a blue dress!  (Gemma's favorite color is blue and other than reading a few fairy tales, she doesn't really know the stories.)

I had some ideas for the party brewing for a few weeks, but actually threw it all together in just a few days. With two daughters born in December, that's the way things seem to happen . . . maybe I'll get better at the planning as the years go on.

Four other little girls arrived on a Saturday afternoon to a table set up with jewels, sequins, and glitter-glue to decorate crowns I had traced onto posterboard and cut out the night before.  It was a good little activity to keep them busy while everyone else arrived. Lesson #1 learned: Glitter glue takes forever to dry! I had wanted to the girls to be able to wear their crowns later in the party, but that didn't work at all.  One of the party guests had brought some glitter markers, though, and if we'd only used those (and maybe stick-on jewels), then that probably would have worked.

We moved to the living room to do our Cinderella chores.  :)  I had a basket of dusters waiting for them, and we cued up the "work song" on youtube.  This kept them busy for about . . . 2 minutes :)  while my sister, Heidi, and I frantically tried to transform the dining room into a ballroom by taping dollar-store plastic tablecloths to the ceiling!

We then improvised a little bit.  Heidi threw on a blanket, one of the Elsa wigs, and found a fairy wand in her car(!!) and made an entrance as the fairy godmother, directing the girls to hunt for the four little pretend mice (from John's childhood knick-knack collection) and two mini pumpkins (leftover from autumn) which I had hidden around the living room.  Another fun acitivity, during which we cued up "Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo!" Lesson #2:  Put together the youtube list ahead of time!

At this point, I had envisioned the girls getting into their princess dresses and crowns to be all ready for the ball, and I had set up Gemma's little princess tent in a corner with the extra dresses we had (and some of our guests brought), but let's face it--all the girls showed up already dressed up, including my own daughter. ;) Despite the lacking "transformation" element, they all seemed to enjoy dancing around the dining room. There were some daddy/daughter couples, some circling, and some freestyle ballet moves, all to the dance song from Cinderella and some Bach thrown in for good measure.

(Apparently I forgot to take my apron off!)

When they tired of that, we pushed the table back into the middle of the room, sang "Happy Birthday" and served the uber simple menu of cupcakes and fruit wands. The fruit wands were dowels with star fruit on the ends, something I'd seen on Pinterest. Afterward, there were several princess plates with cupcakes that merely had their buttercream licked off and Gemma was the only one who chowed down her star fruit, but at least the birthday girl was happy!

Honestly, that probably wasn't enough activity for a party, since this whole sequence lasted under an hour, but the girls free-played and changed dresses a lot while we waited for their parents to come and started making dinner. At the library a few days later, Gemma magically picked out a Disney CD called "Happy Birthday Princess" which had a musical chairs game and fun Belle pretending game on it. They would have been great additions (Though maybe they would have been a bit beyond some of our little guests.)

Now for the pancakes part! When I asked Gemma Grace what she wanted for her birthday dinner, she repeatedly requested pancakes, leaving me a bit befuddled. Pancakes followed by birthday cake? What about vegetables and protein? What about filling up the tummies of her daddy and uncles?  (Gemma was privileged to have four aunts and uncles and two cousins within driving distance and able to come for her birthday! Now, the army has moved or is in the process of moving them all away, so it was a very special birthday!)

Many folks gave encouragement and suggestions on Facebook, and I eventually settled on this menu:

Spinach salad with pomegranate, apples, and carmelized almonds

Buttermilk pancakes (I use the recipe from Southern Living.)

Homemade chunky applesauce 

Cottage cheese

Bacon (We made a big tray of it in the oven.)

I wish I'd made her special Mickey pancakes or something, but we had 10 at our table and it was a little crazy. Thankfully Heidi and Liz helped me with the dinner immensely--I heated two cast iron pans on the stove and mixed up a double batch of batter, but Liz cooked all those pancakes for me! And Heidi did the bacon, salad, and generally helped me not to feel overwhelmed.

We all felt satisfied with that meal, especially the birthday girl, whose opinion mattered the most that day. ;) Then we brought out the cake--chocolate with "white" buttercream. :) I'd just made one layer, using the rest of the batter for half a dozen cupcakes for the princess party.

And that funny kid took forever trying to blow her candles out. She even tried using her nose for a while! But she eventually got them all by herself!

Then it was time for giggles and presents and cousin-love. :)

Everyone else delighted Gemma's heart by giving her very on-theme Disney gifts--a Frozen paint set, "glass" slippers, and even a birthday ball book!

But from mommy and Daddy she got some boring clothes (including a pink Duke shirt!) and homemade bunny slippers. ;)

And Daddy gave Gemma a new little stuffed Minnie that she'd wanted from Walgreens but couldn't have. She'd been disciplined for throwing such a fit over being told "no," but then he went back and bought it secretly to save for a gift.

That was Gemma's 4th birthday-to-remember! We love you loads, big girl!!

minnie mouse all day and no means no

I've been meaning to write an update on our girlies for a long time . . . and many nap-times, I just don't know if I should choose blogging, cleaning my house, running errands, or making Christmas presents . . . ahh!

Well, today I choose blogging!  Actually, Ruthie is the only one who naps these days, but she's a super duper napper at that, sleeping usually 2-3 hours in the afternoon, but sometimes longer!

Gemma is almost 4!!!! *sigh* Her favorite little friends right now are Auna and Nadia, though I'm sure it helps that she sees them twice a week when we do our babysitting swap and at church on Sundays.  She pretends all day long.  All day long.  She's Daisy Duck, any of the various Disney princesses (though she's only actually seen Tangled (which for some reason I always want to call Twisted at first, yikes).  Cowgirls, ballerinas, brides, Emily from Little Bear, and Angelina Ballerina have all been recent characters, too.  She takes her pretending to its logical conclusion by assigning corresponding characters to the rest of us in the family.  I try to go along with this, practicing my Minnie Mouse, Little Bear, and Miss Lillie voices, and she often responds more cheerfully to these characters than she would to mommy.  I always have to stop her from correcting me, though, when I call Ruthie, who has no idea what is going on, by her real name instead of Hen, Webby, or Princess Phoebe.  She loves for me to draw princess pictures for her to color, and usually a corresponding wedding picture of each princess with her prince, flower girl, and baby :).

Rhyming and spelling with her fridge-magnet letters are two other favorites, and I think she's doing a great job starting to learn her letter sounds and how they fit together!  She can read a handful of words from sight.

I'm also very proud of the physical endurance she is building up!  She frequently goes to the gym with daddy and a couple of times a month we walk somewhere to eat dinner, and she has been known to run along and keep up for well over a mile.  She can run about half a mile without stopping.  :)  She just loves being outside and will pretend outside for hours!  She still can't properly jump, even though for a while every time she got to the last step on the stairs she would pause, try, and pronounce "Gemma jumps!" while taking a dramatic leap with one foot landing first.

Ruthie, my little pumpkin, is going to be 23 months old next week.  She still asks for milk once in the mornings and has developed a will of her own.  She does this adorable little jump-dancing thing when she is excited, flapping her arms like wings.  She likes to try to give me hair clips or my phone when I'm in the shower.

She loves to smile for the camera to the extent that it's hard to sneak candid shots of her!  She also loves to put her dishes in the dishwasher and help set the table with the children's plates I hand her.  (She has known for months which ones are Gemma's favorites and which are hers!) Once when I was making dinner, she found her salad and ate the raisins out of it, so I added a few more and put it on the table.  It was not out of reach, however, because when I returned to the dining room in a few minutes, I discovered that she once again had eaten the raisins out of her bowl, dumped the spinach on the kitchen floor and put her bowl in the dishwasher!

Ruthie's favorite baby :)

Ruthie's gross-motor skills are quite impressive--climbing, etc., though she has yet to do anything really dangerous.  Her fine motor skills surprised me, too, since she learned how to unzip zippers and open screw-tops much earlier than Gemma did.

She likes to sit on the potty and prefers to wear a pullup instead of a diaper, so I tried some potty training with her last week.  After three days, however, she still hadn't told me when she needed to go, so we decided to back off on the underwear for a while.  She still sits on the potty a few times a day to read books, however, it's always her idea, and she wants to sit on the big potty now!

And, finally, she has truly entered her language explosion.  Of course she learned the word "no." :) On a Sunday about a month ago, I asked her if she had had a good time in the nursery, and she surprised me with "no."  At the time I wasn't sure if she understood what she was saying, but a month later there's no doubt.

Her only phrase so far is to say "Hi ---" to baby, daddy, or whatever.  (Oh, and she loves to point to her baby and say "baby" and to herself and say "mama" (which comes out as "baba," which is distinctly different from "baby").  It's adorable!)  It's almost all the more amazing since Gemma didn't say a phrase until after she turned 2, and for a while we were quite concerned about Ruthie's speech development.  The ear tubes most certainly helped.  She still puts some words through her nose, however, which makes me wonder if her hearing is still a little funny.  We work on her with it, though, and are mostly thankful for how normal she truly is.  Do you know how unmotivated I was to write an update on her when we thought she was delayed?  All the cute things seemed unimportant in light of our serious concerns, but also it's almost embarrassing to brag on a child who is learning everything late when everyone else is bragging on their child learning everything early.  The Lord has helped me to have an increased love for children with special needs and their families.  Though our world is marred by sin, yet He does all things well, and even genetic abnormalities can be redeemed and used by Him for good!

Ruthie's first haircut!

Now that it's been a month since the big Florida family vacation, maybe I'll finally go through my pictures and share some!  Until then, here's what is new!  Gemma and Ruthie both got their hair trimmed by mommy.  :)

Ruthie got to sit in the bathroom sink.  :)

Her hair didn't need a trim per se--it's not in her eyes--but her bangs were a little uneven, and I thought we'd test the theory that trimming her hair a bit will help it to become thicker.

See the whispy unevenness?  It was a little easier to see when I wet it down.

And here's the back before.

*Snip snip* Ok, smile!

Maybe only Mommy can tell . . . 

Gemma was a little easier, and it was actually Gemma's hair that got the haircut ball rolling for me!  I hadn't trimmed it at all since her first haircut almost two years ago, and it was looking like this:

So long and pretty!  And yet a bit thinner at the bottom, with lots of breakage from lots of pigtails.  Hmm.

I don't know why I didn't wash her face for this!  (And isn't it funny how early in the morning one's shirt can get marked with strawberries?)

Straight across.  And somehow I didn't cry!

Precious you are, both of you girlies.  I wish I'd been recording and sharing as many entries for Ruthie as I did for Gemma two years ago, but such is life.  My two gifts, my two gigglers, my two daughters, and Ruthie is now officially a toddler!  Now with shorter hair.  :)