A bad hair day

On Friday the four big kids were upstairs playing with Mr. M's new RC helocopter while I was on the phone with my Grandma. Miss E came down and asked me for help. It seems the chopper crash landed in her hair!

I don't think it hurt her any since she was laughing about it and when I took her picture she asked if I was going to blog about it. I said "yes, if you think its a good idea" she said she thought it would be a good blog post, so here it is! At first it looked like a terrible mess and I was afraid we would have to cut it out, but it only took me a few minutes to painlessly remove the chopper from her hair.

fancy phones

last night was AWANA night, but Mr. S's cubbies class was canceled so he got to come with us to run some errands.

We were in the Walmart electronics area getting some pictures printed out when we walked by some phones.  

Mr. S says "Wow! look at those fancy phones!"

Yep, he was talking about the plain old phones WITH cords!   

Bathroom and nails

Over the last few months many things have been left undone around the house and it now badly needs to be de-cluttered. I'm feeling more myself and wanting to get the house back in order, but still wanting to take it easy, enjoy my new baby, and enjoy the holiday season with my kids. I figured I'd just start slowly and see what I can get done while trying to keep up with the regular things that need to get done too.

I started with the bathrooms this week. I figured it would be more encouraging to me to spend a little bit of time in a place that my effort would show the most. Too many things had just been left sitting/hanging around in my bathroom. In only 15 minutes my bathroom was looking great! Miss J helped me clean up, and Mr. S helped me clean out the bath toys!

We replace the regular towel racks that our houses always have with rows of hooks for towels. This has been a great way to handle the many towels we have, I got this idea from an e-mail loop for large families that I'm a part of.

Later I organized the space under the kids' bathroom sink. This only took me about 4 minutes with Miss J's help, but it made a big difference.

After doing our morning chores and a bit of school Miss E asked if we could watch "the fourth wise man" and do nails, so that is what we did. Since the boys' can't do their nails they sometimes ask to do mine. This is what happens when 4 and 6 year old boys get a hold of their sisters nail polish and do Mommy's nails!

They were so cute when they were doing them. They knew what colors they wanted and worked so hard to make them look nice.

One month!

Wow! Has it been one month already since Miss C was born? Time sure flies! I can't imagine life without her and it seems as though she has just always been a part of our family.

Besides getting the cold that her big sister so sweetly shared with her (with all of those kisses followed by sneezing on her), she is doing very well. I had her in to see the doctor this week just to make sure her cough was nothing to worry about (doc said she is fine) and she weighed 10 pounds! Thats about two pounds in two weeks! Obviously she is a good eater, is thriving, and growing!

Despite having a cold she went six hours between feedings last night! She normally goes about five hours. Its nice to see those times stretching out! She is also having more alert times during the day and responding more to us!

Everyone still thinks she is wonderful, and they are always asking to hold her. Miss J does not seem to mind that she is not the baby anymore. She loves to take care of Miss C, kiss her, and pat her. Miss J is growing up too, she sleeps in the bottom bunk in the girls' room now and I can tell she is ready to potty train, she keeps telling us she needs to go and wants to sit on the potty. No success yet, but then we're not really in potty training mode yet, I'll get to that in the next few weeks (once everyone is feeling better).

Hmmm.....

There are so many titles I could give this post- "trial by fire" - "sink or swim" - "feast or famine" are a few that come to mind.....

Not only did my mom leave on Monday, but the day before Rob headed out of town for a convention in Florida!  I've been on my own with five sick kids and a newborn since Monday morning (and I've been fighting off whatever the kids had, but never fully got it).  I was a bit worried, mostly because I knew I would not be getting much sleep, but also because Miss J and Miss C often seem to "need" me at the same time. I knew I'd be fine during the day, its the evenings that seem to be hard when daddy is gone.  All went fairly well this week though and Rob is now on an airplane on his way home to us now that the convention is over!  He will be here in about an hour or so!

I'm so glad I made the effort to plan ahead for simple school/Christmas activities for this month.  I think it really helped us this week to have those little things to do, and I did not even have to think about it!  Today I knew we needed something else and I knew just what to pull out!  Auntie J had sent a box before Miss C was born and I was saving it for a "rainy day" and today was it (it arrived the day before Miss C was born, I WAS going to pull it out the next day.)!  It had a little goodie for each of the kids as well as a puzzle and some Odyssey CD's.  This box kept the kids busy all morning!  So, that coupled with some spiced cider and pumpkin cookies for snack I had a bunch of happy kids and I was a happy mama!  Just what Rob will want to come home to!

Russian Christmas activities

Every year at Christmas time we do some "Christmas around the world" school, its a fun way to learn some geography, learn about other cultures and even see where some of our traditions come from! It can also be a good way to learn about family history. This year I asked the kids what countries they would like to do, and also mixed in some that had something to do with family and/or friends.

One of my Great Grandfathers came to America from Russia, so this was one of the countries we did this year. We talked/read a bit about Russia and then read the story of Babouschka. Looked at our Matryorshka dolls and then made ornaments by covering balls with fabric scraps. Then Miss E and Miss J made a Russian spice cake for us (Miss E is feeling quite a bit better, but I was not sure she was up to baking. She told me she wanted to make up the cake. The girls seemed to have fun with it). This all had me thinking of Auntie B too, I always think of her when reading the story of Babouschka or when I see Matryorshka dolls and she always seemed to have great crafts for us to do at Christmas time.

We kept it quiet for the rest of the day since everyone is still dragging. At nap time after I took a quick nap with Miss C I made up Egg Nog Lattes for me, Mr. M and Mr. R. Oh, and for snack this morning Miss E and Mr. S got to eat a pomegranate. Miss E had asked me to pick one up for her, those two enjoyed it- the rest of us passed on it.

back to "normal" and sick kids

Well, my mom left yesterday. It was so nice to have her here and she was a great help. Miss J got a cold early last week and passed it on to the other kids, it was rough enough around here with Mom's help, we would have been miserable without her!

Miss E and Mr. M were still feeling fairly sick yesterday morning. But after Mom left I felt that the best thing to do was to try to at least do a bit of the school I had planned. We did a little bit of Christmas reading and then I told them I had a craft they could do if they wanted. That got Miss E and Mr. M off of the couch. They all made a couple of paper chains for the school room and a couple kids made little pagoda lanterns with the "holy family" since our quick little lesson was on Christmas in China. After lunch Miss E seemed to go down hill again and spent most of the afternoon resting on the couch. Mr. M seemed to be making a better recovery and was outside playing in the afternoon.

Everyone is doing better today, though Miss E is still rough around the edges and everyone still needs more time to recover fully. Today was errand day and I had an eye appointment. This was my first time out with all of the kids on my own, and it went quite well. This was a good errand to run for the first time out with all of them since we are in that office so often everyone knows what is expected of them, and this doctor is always quick and on time. We'll take it easy the rest of the day to give everyone more time to recover.

Since today was December 1st we got to start our advent calendars today! SOMEONE bought 6 of the kind with chocolate in them even though we only really needed 5 this year. Since Miss C has one and I would hate for her to miss out on her chocolate I guess I'll be eating hers this year.... I'm thinking Rob will help me out by eating hers when he is around at lunch time though, I don't think she will mind missing some. Miss J was quite excited to see that hers contained chocolate, I'm sure she will be even more excited when she finds out we will be doing this everyday!

*after her evening cry Miss C settled right in and fell asleep holding on to me this evening. She is awake more and more during the day, and doing better at sleeping at night!