Close encounters of the spotted kind

Well it has been officially 14 days since my children had an encounter with spots. Not in the usual way, but non the less an encounter. These spots being chicken pox. However no one has spots yet!!! Moira has come up with three spots of bug bite nature. Maybe, MAYBE it's chicken pox and she has a REALLY MILD case???? One could hope. We have stayed home from church these past two weeks to not expose anyone else. We are feeling a bit of cabin fever over here. Ha, ha.

In other news....hmm....nothing new really. Jedidiah did pass the 22 pound mark! That is exciting. He is growing cognitively wise as well, being able to see an action and replicate it in another fitting situation. Something he could not do before. For example: All the girls when they were younger, without being shown how, would one day throw out their dirty diaper when I mentioned that it needed to be thrown out. I never showed them how, but they had seen me do it and heard me tell them that is what I was doing. They saw me throw something out, and were able to do so on their own. Jedidiah has not been able to do that as of yet. I have actually had to walk him through various situations because he could not relate what we were doing to what I told him to do. But I have seen that change these past two weeks. Very encouraging.

I have been spending my time reading some books on child nutrition and gardening. We are hoping to put in a large garden this year with fruit trees/bushes as well. There will be a lot of work to be done in order for this to happen. I want to make gardening a big part of our day. I would really like to have fresh, organic veggies for the family. We will be changing our diets very soon to be more veggie and anything we can grow here will help in that direction. I will be writing a post on our diet change....soon...later....sometime :-)

I have made up a plan of action-sort of-to put into place here. We need more structure here than what we have been having. Jonah is a bit more Flannery like these days, making getting things done a wee bit more difficult. He has had this spotty rash for a week now and it seems to be an allergy of some sort. I am thinking that is contributing to his fussiness and lack of sleeping. At least I am hoping, because that would mean there is a possibility that he can go back to "normal" sometime soon! But anyways, we've been lacking structure for the last...oh....six months or so (my that is exactly how old Jonah is ;-)). We are all feeling the lack. But I have not been good at doing a routine/schedule all at once and so I have made three phases to work into it. I have an accountability chart that I may share one of these days to show you what we are working on getting done over here. Time has been limited these days due to fussy baby boy. The girls are doing their share to watch him, but I use those moments to hurry and get other things done.

I also started back to exercising recently. Usually I try to jump back in as soon as I can after a baby. Not this time! I am starting slow and steady and am already seeing results! I started with T-Tapp one three times a week. Then I added in an extra day doing the T-Tapp step (aerobics). The great thing is that the level one is only 15 minutes long. Something very doable.

Well it is time to get some things done. I need to make up a new menu for next month and that is going to take time since I have to find new recipes! I found a gem of a book at the library full of different salad combinations. Usually the vegetarian recipes I have found have been too frilly and not conducive to feeding a family. But this book is great. Real ingredients, as opposed to ones you would have to special order, and simple combinations. I like the sound of the homemade dressings as well. I'm excited about trying some of them out.