Look who's eating big people food!

So there I was, with Jonah in my arms, cutting up an apple for Jed. Jonah likes the taste of apples, so I let him suck on one of the pieces. However, the apple was too soft and it was starting to break up. So I peeled a granny smith apple, but it was a bit too sour. Poor Jonah was beside himself as he really, REALLY wanted that apple. So I broke open a container of sweet potato baby food. I thought, lets see what he can do with this. That child ate, and ate and ate!!! He ate half of a stage 2 container!!! He LOVED it. He was obviously very ready for it. He never made any yucky faces nor did he spit any back out. All my children had a few tries at food, pushing it back out, not sure what to do with it before they got the hang of it. Not Jonah boy. The poor thing is teething or something. He is not a happy camper. Here are two pics. One of just Jonah enjoying this new food experience, the other of both boys enjoying the sweet potatoes.

Our Christmas

Christmas was quiet. Relatively speaking that is :-) Christmas Eve over the years has dwindled down to nothing. I did make the pierogies for Christmas Eve. I had a lot of help, as I did with all of our Christmas preparations. I wrapped one present, Isabella did the rest. This was a good thing seeing as I had caught the buggies. Hey, it takes a while for the garlic to work! ;-) Hee, hee. So we found ourselves on Christmas day being loudly greeted by a swarm of girls who woke a wee bit too early. We went light this year for gifts, one each (with the exception of Jed who got a "side" gift of a rubber duckie, and Jonah who got two teething rings). Isabella and Saoirse got real looking baby dolls. Moira and Flannery share a castle with horses and people. Jed got a tractor/plus a rubber duckie, and Jonah got the teething rings. Let me tell you, it is so nice not to have a whole bunch of stuff!! Then we got ready for Jeremiah's parents who arrived around noon. We opened some very lovely presents. The girls each got these neat t-shirts. They have what seems to be just line drawings on their white shirts...until....they go outside in the sun. then the whole drawing gets filled in with color! Very neat. My best gift I saved to tell about last. Isabella, on behalf of the girls, got me a pretty necklace. It is a gold heart with the word "Mom" inside of it. Daddy helped with the choosing. Later in the afternoon we started dinner preparations. We had ham, a LOT of ham, pierogies, chicken, collard greens, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, garlic green beans and the beloved cranberry sauce. Now we have lots of left overs :-) I have been looking up ham casserole recipes! If you know of any good ones please send them my way!

Flannery is the last of the girls to have the pink eye. She is now getting the sore throat part of it. And Jed is the last of the boys to have it. He has been handling it well, but has looked horrible. The whole area around his eyes have been swollen. The poor thing woke up this morning with his eyes glued shut. I thought he would be freaking out, but he wasn't. We had to get a wash cloth and wipe his eyes really well for him to be able to open them. Jonah boy is THE chunk miester!! Jeremiah decided to weigh him the other day. I thought he was kidding when he told me how much he weighed......17 pounds and 7 ounces!! He just turned 5 months old! I was looking at baby pictures of Flannery and Saoirse, Jonah really is a cross between them. His personality (thus far) is also a cross between them. Very neat.

Jeremiah and I continue to talk about the changes that need to go on here in our home. The first important step will be the changes that need to take place with ourselves. I was able to have a long conversation with Isabella about some things in her life that need changing. With all of this talking it is hard to put together a concrete plan. Not necessarily a Step 1, Step 2, etc. kind of plan. But certainly something that we can look to and see if we are working on the things that need working on and to keep us on track. But the bulk of all of these issues are spiritual. And those are some hard things to measure!

The castle! The girls have really been enjoying it.

Jed and his tractors. You can see his duckie too.

Isabella and her new "baby" Ruthie. The girls gave informed me that I am a grandmother. They lined up all their dolls and I am a Grandmother to six! Ha, ha.

Saoirse and her new "baby" Abigail (although her name changes often!) .

Baby cakes is awake. He has been very interested in making new sounds. Too funny. He is even experimenting making them while nursing. He's choked a bit as a result. Hey, live and learn!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to everyone! I do hope it is a blessed time with your family recounting the Lord's birth. We will be having Jeremiah's parents over for the day tomorrow. We have all been sick. I have to tell you all about my "fight" with my sister. Things said between us:

Tracy: You never listen to me, no one listens to me.

Me: You are yelling at me, you don't love me.

Now before your eyes bug out let me just say it was all in fun! I know, silly. And do you know what are argument was about? Garlic. Yes, garlic. You see it went something like this:

Me: Ugh, the kids are sick, so and so has this....

Tracy: Your kids are ALWAYS sick.

Me: That's not true.

Tracy: (conferring with her hubby) Hey Joe, how often are Kerri's kids sick? Joe: All the time.

Me: Hey...we weren't sick for a few weeks these past few months.

Tracy: My kids have only been sick for a few days these past few months. Aren't you giving them the garlic drops, I thought you bought those..

Me: Um, I did buy them...but I haven't been giving them any.

Tracy: I give my kids a few drops a day, and they don't get sick. See, you don't listen to me.

Me: Hey, I did listen to you. When you first told me about the drops it was in relation to them being able to ward of bug bites. And to help with Jed's yeast problem. See, I did listen to you.

Tracy: But you haven't been giving it to them.

Me: That's because it's not bug season!

Tracy: I know I told you about it keeping them from being sick.....you never listen to me, no one listens to me!

Me: I did listen to you! You're yelling at me, you don't love me.

By now we are laughing hysterically. I am very happy to announce my children have been getting garlic drops multiple times a day! So there :-P

I was giving them some homeopathic drops. From everyone who had this illness it is the norm for you to be in bed for three days. Isabella, being that she gets everything 10 times worse, was in bed for one day. The rest of us didn't have to be in bed! I did take a one hour rest time yesterday and today. But, I think that says something. Not to mention the drops really, really helped stop the pink eye in its tracks. It is still hard to get around the workings of homeopathy. And it is hard to think in a homeopathic way in regards to illness. The homeopathic medicines do not suppress your symptoms. So for the first day we were all feeling yucky. However, homeopathy does help your body to fight the illness. So you have to be patient. But it really cut down on illness length and severity big time!

Well I must be off. I need to get a few things done tonight. I'll leave you all with these pictures:

Jedidiah reviewing paperwork :-) I'm not sure what he was looking at, but too cute non the less.

Jonah, doing what he does best....eating toes! Look at that pudge!

Just a cute Jonah picture.

One of the 3-D paper snowflakes we made. They look really nice in the windows. Isabella also strung up some cotton balls to make the effect of snow falling. The combination looks very cute. I don't have pics of the cotton.

Its been over two weeks since I last wrote!!

Wow! It's been a while. I keep meaning to get on and then something comes up. Not anything bad, just busy stuff. Like right now I have a whiny baby, making it hard to type. This baby, I tell ya....he's being a fussy one. I think he is teething. So that means less sleep, more fuss.



We had a wonderful conference here two weeks ago. We ended up hosting one gentleman for the weekend and three other young men for one night. I was just absolutely stunned by these young men's manners. They were so polite and helpful. Totally the opposite picture that the world paints for what young men should be like. It was very encouraging!! I was able to hear a lot of the conference this year :-) It was very uplifting and challenging at the same time. A lot of things that the Lord has laid on my heart just came together that weekend. I think I am still sorting some things out though.

We were going to go caroling this evening, but unfortunately sickness has hit the other families. I suppose we shall spend our evening singing here in our home and eating up all the yummy cookies :-) We've been eating WAY too many sweets!!! I. need. sugar. Ha, ha.

On Jed news...he's doing pretty well. I put back a small (VERY small) amount of fat into his diet and he broke out with a rash and his teeth grinding has been much worse. Interesting, very interesting. But despite the fact that the fat gave him the runs for almost a week, he has gained weight. Bravo.

I have been spending my "free" time reading up on homeopathy. I would really like to be able to help our family and others to use homeopathy instead of the common OTC meds. Homeopathy is just so much more safer and effective in eliminating the problem as opposed to covering up the problem like OTCs do. There is lots to learn. It seems almost like a foreign language. I guess it seems that way only because homeopathy's premises on disease is totally different from what I've been taught all my life. It is very interesting and refreshing all at the same time.

My "free" time has been very limited lately, as one would notice on the lack of posts I have been putting up. Jeremiah and I had started to talk about changes that needed to take place in our family these past few weeks. No real changes had been made as we had been in talk mode. However a situation arose that has made us jump into implementing those "talks". I am so very thankful that we have a body of believers who are of like mind and who care enough to bring up 'hard' issues. On top of that we are still working out our school curriculum decisions. I think we will be slowly working in one or two things at a time. My goal is to have a few things lined up for those slow times around here. There will be a lot more working going on over here and less play. Not to mention a whole lot less movies. Actually all entertaining movies are out. We are keeping all educational movies. It was interesting that in the past few weeks I had really taken a notice about even our "good" movies. We had been letting them watch Little House on the Prairie. I never knew how much those movies were not in line with our family vision! Yikes!!! It is amazing when you really start looking at EVERYTHING with scripture as being the measuring stick.

Baby is awake, so I need to go. I have some pictures of some 3-D paper snowflakes we have made that I would like to put up. Maybe later on today when Jeremiah is home.

I wrote the following on Jed a few days ago. It was at the bottom of this post as it was in edit form. So I hadn't seen it. This is a bit more indepth than the above info on him.

Jedidiah is doing OK. He has been Prilosec free for over a month now!!!! Truly amazing! He was looking so great that the doctor asked for me to take a picture of him. I couldn't get to it that day and when he woke up the following morning he looked horrid!!!He was a fussy mess for the next two days. Since then he is looking on the slim side. He may have grown taller. But he also lost a few ounces, however he has not "lost" anything by mouth. Hmmmmmm. As I told someone earlier, I am ready to get off this roller coaster. So seeing as how he was slimming down I put some fat back in his diet (coconut oil). And two things happened. 1. He started grinding his teeth a whole lot more. 2. He broke out with a rash on his upper torso, one which he would commonly have in the past. Insert a picture of person banging head against wall here!



Ha!