Southern Peaches Farm

Life on the farm.....well our "farm" is a bit on the unusual side. Here we have cowhand Flannery riding on Australian Stock Horse Isabella:

Then there's cute farmer Jed:

We even have our farm patroled, ya gotta watch out for them thar squirrles:

And then some of farm hands learning the ropes:

I need to get a picture of Isabella doing her new found "hobby"....archery. No I am not joking. she took the bag that the folding lawn chair came in (it is tube shaped), found some sticks that have "y" notches on one end and put them in the bag. Tha bag goes over her shoulder. Than she found a large stick, tied a bunch of rubber bands together and attatched them to the ends of the large stick for her bow. It really shoots! She has been setting up all sorts of targets. She also has planned a camp for kids and families to come and make their own bows and arrows. At the end of the camp they will go hunting with their bows and arrows. She's got it all planned out on paper. So much for princess stuff!!! I have consoled myself with saying she's a Princess Warrior. I've got to do what I've got to do to have hope :-) Gotta go feed Farmer Jed. By the way he looks great with no tube in him in the above pic. However it was just short lived. We were waiting for Jerry to come and help us put the tube back in. We;ve had problems with them not staying in place.

PS...click on the pic of Jedidiah and check out his hair color!!!! I think we have another red head!!

A quick update

I finally am able to get on here. But not for long! The kids are getting dressed to go outside to play, and we are losing daylight to do that.....I will try to write more later on tonight, but I have baths to give and meals to prepare....so we'll see. Everyone is doing well. Jedidiah is gaining. He's been a bit fussy lately. I think it may be the new tube I put in him. I really can't put my finger on it, but am probably going to put a new tube in anyways to ease my mind. The tube has been in for about 5 days and after 5 days of fussing I'm thinking it has to do with the tube as his fussing started then. We have switched him from a 3 hour routine to a 4 hour routine. That has been really good for his naps, but he is having to adjust to the food intake difference. He is taking in more at one feeding. He is also taking in solid foods on a regular basis.

Some great news is that we qualify to receive therapy for him without us having to pay for it! There is a program that is for children birth to three years old. The idea is to catch problems in these early years and intervene if there are problems so that when they get to school age those problems have been dealt with already and the kids are not trying to learn skills that they need for school during the school year, putting them behind.

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Ok, I wrote that yesterday and I never posted it. We had a wonderful Easter. Nanna and Grandpa came to celebrate the day. The kids had an egg hunt and then put on a reading show. They love to put on a play or read something they have written. It was a bit chilly out, but it warmed up enough for the egg hunt.

I am reading a book called LEAN Kids. We need a bit of help in this area. I know what to do for an adult who needs help with their weight, but not with kids. I know that children are not supposed to lose weight, but grow into their bodies. I have gotten some good ideas and the needed encouragement to implement some changes. It will be a few days before I gather those thoughts into a workable plan though. We have a few errands to run today and school to accomplish.

I have been feeling a bit of a failure recently. It is normal for me to feel like a failure as a mother as it seems I can't act and do the very things I want to act like and do. I have been praying about that lately and the Lord has been good to help me see the baby steps I need to take to change that. And then it just kind of snowballed from there into feeling like I have failed in all that i have done. To be more acurate I haven't failed in what i "have"done (except in the mothering/wife department) but what I have "not" been doing. You see before we had kids I had "ideas" of how I wanted things to be. Some of my thoughts were: All natural foods, no sugar, open ended natural toys, gardening, lots of outside time, and other things......But the idea here is that I haven't stuck to my convictions. These are my non spiritual convictions, which are indeed secondary to the spiritual ones, but important non the less. I think seeing how big Isabella is now has had an impact on the feeling that time is slipping away. I know that I already have regrets. I would like to minimalize those if I can, because if not they are only going to grow bigger.

Ok, I best be going. We need to get some milk and other groceries and then take Jedidiah to his dysphasia appointment.

Have a great day! I'll try to get some pictures of the kids somtime soon.

Some other pictures

I thought I would put up some miscellaneous pictures. We had a very small quiet birthday party for Flannery (read: us only). Jerry had picked up some birthday things to celebrate with. And with an ice cream cake added to it, it was a hit.

Here are a couple of cute ones of Jedidiah trying out the excersaucer. I'm thinking he's wondering what the heck he's doing in there. At least that's what he looks like he's thinking in the first picture. His toes barely touch the bottom, so he only stayed in there for two minutes. Hopefully he'll grow longer soon so he can enjoy it.

And the last picture (well at least its supposed to be last, you can't actually place the pictures where you want them!) is of the girls playing in the woods. They dragged their tent out there and were pretending that it was on an island (the rock). You can see Moira trying to "save" Saoirse from the "sharks" in the "water". Pretty funny. We've been spending much more time outside as it has been so nice. We have to get our long playing days outdoors early in the spring as it will get too hot to play outside when summer hits.

That's all to share for now. Happy Spring!

Jedidiah's hit the 12 pound mark!

Sorry it has been awhile since my last post. Our internet blocker has blocked me out of my blog! They are still trying to resolve it, but just now the service went down, so I thought I would write really quick! We are getting more into the swing of things around here. Jedidiah has been going to the Pediatric Dysphasia clinic now each week. Here is a new pic of Jedidiah in his bouncy seat, with an old pic right below it. It was there that they figured out he has silent reflux! He has started on some Prilosec (spelling?). It has started to make a difference. He has taken to stage one bananas. He really likes them, and we are having to try to sneak in another food on the spoon with the bananas. We have been needing to use the tube less often. I wanted to take a picture of him today, with him being 12 pounds and .5 ounces. I will have to wait till he wakes up.

Along with eating better Jedidiah has been active in other areas as well. Like having an attitude :-) It is too funny. I mean he's 8 months old and ready to start telling us what he doesn't like, but he's still newborn size! I have to remember to treat him at his age, and not what he looks like. He does NOT like for us to take away something that he is holding. And if we do....oy! Jerry was holding him the other day in the kitchen and the sunlight was coming from behind him. The sun makes his hair look red, like Moira's. Well he looked like a split image of Moira as a baby! It was totally freaky. Moira was a butterball as a baby and now that Jedidiah is filling out he's looking just like her. Finally two siblings that look alike! It figures that one would be a girl and the other a boy. All four girls look nothing alike.

The weather has been wonderful and the girls have been enjoying playing out in the back with the dogs. I have had the sping cleaning bug hit me and I've been cleaning up a storm. The kiddos are getting over a cold so the outside time is doing their bodies good. And I am feeling good just getting the house cleaned :-) So we are all happy!

Jerry has interviewed for a new position at work. This was literally dropped in his lap. He's bumming as he really does not want to leave the position he is in. But there have been hints that his group is unstable right now and they are not sure if they will be there much longer. So it may be a blessing that this is happening now and not after he gets layed off! But at the same time this change has been unexpected and it's made Jerry uneasy as to how to proceed. It sounds like he is a shoe in for the job though, so I'll let you all know how it goes.

WE'RE HOME!!!!

We are finally home! I can not tell you how excited I am to be home. It was a very long two weeks in the hospital. We would have been home a day earlier but they needed to run one more test, and the results did not get back by the end of the day so we had to stay an extra night. I was non too pleased. It has been a bit trying to continue his feeding regimen at home. Not as bad as I thought, but still a lot of work. The first night we were home he did awesome, taking in all his calories from me. But it's been down hill from there. He did come down with the tummy bug the night before we left. and knowing how it has effected all of us, it is possible his lack of appetite is from feeling yucky. I know I felt yucky on and off for a week. He still does not want the bottle, making it take longer for his feeding. I need to give him a try with the bottle at each feeding. But he of course refuses and then I need to set up his tube feeding. Then when that is cleaned up I have to pump as I need to keep my supply up for when he finally realizes he's hungry and needs to be eating a lot more than he has been. It does seem like we will never reach that point. But non the less we persist. I have a few pics to share of the hospital stay. I have a before photo of him when he first got the feeding tube. Then an after pic of him at home, two weeks later of tube feedings. I am not sure if you can tell a difference, it is more noticeable in person. But he is getting just a hint of some cheeks :-) Notice his hand mitts in the before picture. He had to wear them until he stopped pulling on the tube. He managed to pull off the mitts (we didn't' put the tape on them) one night and pulled out the tube.

There were a ton of things that happened at the hospital, too numerous to count. One funny though...The doctors had come in to assess him and asked if he could roll over from his tummy to his back. As they were saying that they were putting him on his tummy. So there on the bed lies Jedidiah with his big heavy head on the bed. I told them that he wasn't even capable of lifting his head off the floor, let alone roll over. The VERY second I said that Jedidiah raised his head high (as if he's been doing it for months) and rolls right over!!! We were all laughing. It was totally unbelievable. The same thing happened when the speech therapist asked if he was making any consonant sounds. I told her no, he just coos. This time it took him till the end of the session and he was babbling on and on with the "b" and "m' sounds! I figured, hey maybe if I say he can't walk, he'll just up and start walking. No such luck though. So here is the before and after photos. I couldn't put them next to each other. The one with him in the lighter outfit is the before, and in the darker outfit, after.

Jedidiah in the cage, er I mean the hospital crib (it looks like a big blue cage though).

A better view of the cage, oops I meant to say crib :-)

Ok, I look dorky, but this is Jedidiah purposely hitting my hand with his foot, IV and and all. It was a little game he decided to play. He started doing all sorts of new things while we were in the hospital.

Here is Moira's doll all doctored up with some stuff I brought home from the hospital. They have been watching me do Jedidiah's tube feedings and were setting up the doll for tube feedings as well (you can see the syringe and tube that leads to the baby doll bottle). Plus the baby has a few splints on as well. They had to put a splint on Jedidiah so that he wouldn't pull out his IV that he had in his hand. They had us on contact isolation at one point. They had brought these extra splints in and couldn't' take them out of the room, since we were in isolation, so now my girls are playing with them.

Update on Jedidiah

wow it's been a while. I hope my blog works the same way. They had an upgrade that I really was not interested in trying at this time, but it wouldn't let me in to my old account and I had to make a new one. Ugh.

So I have a lot to fill you all in on since my last post. I don't have the time, nor energy right now to go into great detail. Jedidiah has been in the hospital now for 11 days! I have been here with him this whole time. Talk about hard. The longest time I have ever been away from my girls was about 8 hours! I did get to see them finally yesterday. We were trying to keep them from getting sick. However Jerry just called me this morning to say they are now sick! I am glad I got to see them when I did. It does look like we may be able to come home on tuesday. But that will depend on Jedidiah gaining some weight. The past few days hasn't been too impressive for weight gain. So they are going to fortify his tube feeding with extra calories. This child is NOT interested in eating. He is refusing the bottle. LONG story there, but it has to do with his fasting while waiting for his MRI. He took the bottle before, but wouldn't ever since. I have a lot of work to do to get this boy his food. First I have to weigh him, then I nurse him, then weigh him again. That gives us the number of milliltters he took from me. He is supposed to be taking in 120ml at each feeding. Sometimes he does, but more often he doesn't. So then I have to make up the left over mls in a tube feeding. He has a small tube that runs through his nose to his stomach. I do that and then I have to pump! We are trying to build up my supply. Since he has not demanded the milk from me we have to artificially stimulate the milk to build up. He has to be fed every three hours (the time starts from the start of one feeding till the next). the regimine takes me 1 to 1 1/2 hours to do! That leaves me with only 1 1/2 to 2 hours before the next feeding. And I have to do this in the night as well.

All of his tests have come back normal. And I assure you he has had a ton of tests! CT scan, MRI, arterial blood draw (multiple attempts), a half dozen heel sticks, a spinal tap, whole body x-rays and even an eye exam. We've seen neurologists, eye doctors, nutritionists, speech therapist, physical therapy, occupational therapy and a lactation consultant! It has been a VERY LOOOONNNNNGGGGG 11 days. I want to go home. Jedidiah has been such a trooper through all of this. He is such a happy baby. It is sad though to see that he is hesitant now to give someone a smile. That really breaks my heart. He was always giving everyone he met big happy smiles. He smiled ALL the time. But now he doesn't. I hope that changes once we get him home. He came into the hospital weighing 10 lb 8 oz. And today he was 11 pounds even. That's only an 8 oz gain.

Ok, I am worn out. The nurse will be in here in a few minutes to teach me to put in a feeding tube, as Jedidiah will have to have one for a while. And they won't feel comfortable sending us home until I can do it. Then we start the feeding process :-)

Prayers are needed!!!!

Ok, it is late and I have written a few emails about this already and am too tired to write it all out again. So I copied something i wrote earlier and put it below. It is the bare minimals on the situation. I will try to update tomorrow if I can.




This has been a long road, and it seems it is going to get bumpy here for a bit. I have had to write a few emails about this and am tired right now, so I may not get all the info here, but enough for you to know what is going on and what to pray for. As many of you know Jedidiah had started out small (he is 7 months now!) and was growing along his own little growth curve about the 1 %tile. Then he started falling off the curve. I fixed a latch on problem and he gained weight, but no height. So the doctor said to come back in a month for a weight check. Well that was this past thursday. He didn't gain any weight, nor had he grown taller! So we did some blood tests and urine/bm tests. The good news is that it is not a milk supply issue--otherwise we would have seen evidence of that in some of the tests. The bad news is we still don't know what is going on. He had three readings that were off on his blood test. One the doctor feels is just off because a baby's reading would be higher and they probably have the norms set for an older child/person. Then he had one of his liver readings off a bit (not a whole lot) that could be totally fine, maybe an indication of an allergy even, so nothing that points to a specific problem. Then he had one of his thyroid readings off. *they only got two of the four thyroid readings done as they couldnt' get enough blood from him. It indicates a low thyroid. Our doctor is stumped and has us seeing someone else tomorrow. My sister (who is a nurse) thinks that it may be his growth hormones. If it were a thyroid problem she thinks that all his thyroid readings would be off. But growth hormones are from the pituitary glands and they could be effecting his thyroid, which is why only one of them is off. She has done a bunch of reading up on this for me, and the fact that his head keeps growing (it's the normal 50% for a 7 month old) but his weight and height are not are a strong implication of a problem with growth hormones. But obviously we are probably going to have to go through more testing. it has been stressful, so please pray for our peace, and wisdom for the doctors. Please pray for Jedidiah's health (to not get sick as he is so small). And pray for just the logistics of arranging child care for the other kiddos. We have a great church who are really helping us, but a lot of this will be last minute needs. We found out the results today and had to get an appointment with another doctor and then needed to call around to get a babysitter on short notice....

A quiz for you....

OK, can you all tell me what these are?--------



















Well, if you answered "markers" you would be only partially correct. I know you are wondering what I mean. Let me put it this way:

Kids + markers = lightsabers

Here are some pictures to show what I mean:




















Here is Yoda with his red saber. I think that he is ridng one of those ton-tons (or whatever they are called).
























Here is a Jedi knight on another animal. In real life that would be a pink stuffed elephant. So I suppose I need another equation.

Kids + stuffed animals = Star Wars action figures

Hey, its called being creative and frugal! Nothing like killing two birds with one stone. It's frugal because we already have a ton of stuffed animals here in the house, so there is no need to go and buy the actual plastic action figures. Below you can see the very beautiful Princess Leah:






















You can see that the Princess has her own huge stash of lightsabers or herself.

have a great day!

Just hanging out

It's Sunday afternoon and we are relaxing. Yesterday was a fun day. We went to a birthday party for a little girl from our church. Flannery was invited and the invitation was extended to the whole family. Flannery was sooooo excited to be going to a birthday party that she, personally, was invited to. It was a beautiful day and they got to play some games outside.

Saoirse is getting a bit better each day. I am not even sure if I wrote about her. She was doing this "breathing thing". That's the best way I can describe it. Finally after two and a half weeks she is getting better. Everyone else has a little something, so maybe it's just her body's way of reacting to the germs. Who know! This week we go in to get Jedidiah weighed. I am excited and scared at the same time. Other people have been commenting on how he's getting bigger. My back is getting sore trying to get him and his car seat in the van. So it seems that he has indeed gained some weight. But the truth will be known on thursday. He has definitely grown, but he is still so small. We had lunch with someone today with a baby who was two weeks older than Jedidiah and he was soooo much bigger. i have to remind myself that each baby is different and God has a plan for Jedidiah. And if that plan if for him to be small all his life, then we need to accept that. I just want to do my best to give him the best.

Here are some pictures I took the other day that didn't have time to post the other day:
















The girls have this little tiny orange laptop computer from thier doll house. They love to play with it, carry it around pretend to use it. So one night Jerry was doing some work and I thought it would be cute to get one of them with it next to him. You can barely see it in Isabella's hands in the above picture. So we decided to take the next picture, using Jerry's new laptop. (His company had just given him a new laptop to replace his old one and he needed to transfer all his stuff to the new one.)



















The next one is of the girls playing store with the puppet theater. They made these lego ice cream cones to have an ice cream shop. They come up to the window and order their flavor of ice cream and pay for it. Isabella gives them the correct change. (Hey, nothing like using those math skills!) Moira has a vanilla cone in her hand. Saoirse is reviewing her food choices.

Check out....

Isabella's post on how to field dress a deer. I warn you ahead of time, it is pretty gruesome. But I figure it should count for a writting assignment.

We have been busy catching up on school. We got behind due to many things. Only a couple of days behind, nothing major. Jedidiah has been really fussy. We think he may have an ear infection. But not sure at this point. Giving it another day to see if he goes back to being his happy little self. Saoirse had this breathing thing going on. Really weird. She kept taking in these big breathes. It freaked me out to say the least. She did this every 5-15 seconds ALL day long! I took her to the doctors. We decided that since the benedryl was helping (at that point) we would wait to see what happened. Well she got worse the next day so I took her to after hours. They said she had an ear infection. I thought they were joking. Ok, not really, but it would be too long to get into here. So I took the presciption home with me, along with a bunch of other freebie meds. I got the inhler, but it didn't do a thing for her. So my sister thought that maybe she did have an ear infection and the breathing in deep was her way to pop her ears. Hmmmm, sounded good to me! No one else could tell me what was wrong with her. It's been 4 days of antibiotics and she is breathing better each day. Thank the Lord!!!!

So now we are trying to get back to normal here. I have some cute pictures to share, but will have to do so later as I hear Jedidiah crying. Poor thing is having a hard time going to sleep, even though he's been up for almost 6 hours!

Have a great day!

A con to homeschooling in the south

Can you believe a die hard homeschooler is going to admit that there are inded cons to homeschooling? Shocking, I know!! Unfortunately it is a con for the poor children. Yes, sad but true. And this con is only found in certain parts of the country. You see I woke up this morning to this:




















That would be SNOW!!!! Now for all my northern family it still comes as a great laugh that when there is ANY amount of frozen white stuff, everything is CLOSED. So all the shcool going children have the day off. And this is where the con comes in. As homeschoolers, it was still a school day. Yes, my poor children still had to do their school in spite of the snow while all the other school going children had the day off. There you have it, true confessions of a homeschoolig mom. But I'm not all evil, I let them go out and play in the snow right away. You have to get to it right away, because there is no telling how long it might last! They spent about 20-30 minutes out there and came in for some hot chocolate. Hot chocolate before breakfast breaks all sorts of rules ;-)

And for anyone who thinks we are too easy on our kids, well here is a pic to prove that we work them to the bone:


















I'm only joking of course. Actually this is a picture of a 2 year old who didn't have a nap and had been given some benedryl an hour earlier. Poor thing. But it was too cute to not take a picture first before getting her in bed. Please pray for Saoirse. She has been having some breathing "issues" for about 8 or 9 days now. I am assuming it is only allergies. But it's been every day and sometimes it is worse than others. I am taking her to the doctors tomorrow morning. I don't want her living on benedryl.

Here is a picture of too cute Jedidiah in his own bed!! This is a new thing for our family. All our kids have slept in our bed. Jedidiah still does as well. But he is going to be able to roll around soon and needed a safe place to sleep. When he wakes up at night to nurse I will just bring him into our bed where he will spend the rest of the night. But for nap time and for the early part of his night time sleep he will be in his crib.




















And last but not least here is a picture of our stupid dog. She needs to go to a doggie homeschool or something :-)




















She is only stupid because she is sitting out in the freezing cold, all wet from playing with the girls when there is a HUGE dog house right behind her where she could be warm and cozy!

ok, Isabella is really wanting me to tell you all that she has learned how to field dress a deer. Well theoretically that is. They (Jerry and Isa) looked it up on the internet. It is pretty disgusting.

I am almost done with making a small crochetedbaby blanket. I wish I had better colors for it. I will take a picture of it when I am done.

Ok, I have to go. The dishes are calling my name. I'm trying to ignore them, but if I ignore them any longer they will get up and come after me!

Creations

I am showcasing some new creations. One is mine, another is Isabella's, another Flannery's and another is a friend from church's. Take a moment to look.

Ok, the copy and paste mode is NOT working on this bloggin site right now!! UGH! I wanted to put captions under each of the pictures, but will have to give my commentary off the side, or wherever it may end up once I hit the publish button.

The first picture is Flannery's rendition of her End of Game Tunnel. At the end of the girls' soccer games the parents line up opposite each other and hold their hands up to make a tunnel for the kids to run through. Here she made her Playmobil people make the tunnel. Very cute.





Here is Isabella's Old Life Cabin. You see there is enough room for a horse and some small farm animals. A lovely table for 3 (the other chair broke). And plenty of room for the cat to roam around. (The cat is on he green roofing above the lodging area.)










Here is something that we just received last night. A friend from church made this quilt, that Jedidiah is laying on. It was made for him. It's called a prayer quilt. She prayed for him as she made it. I think it is woderful! Jedidiah really likes it as well. I had it laying over the back of the couch and he was just staring at it.













Here are some hats that I crocheted over the weekend. I wanted to send them to the organization called Newborns in Need. They are for premie babies and the hats were very quick to make. The things on top of the hats are flowers. Well except for the hat to the left, it has some curly q's.








Ok, so this is not a manmade creation, but beautiful non the less. Just some cuties we have here in the house. :-)

A new look

OK, I'm not crazy over this one, BUT they are Jerry's favorite colors. So I thought I would change to this one, for a little while at least. For me, gray is depressing. It is the color of a cloudy sky, a drab day lingering on and on....But I shall persevere (hee, hee).

Not much going on here. It was a cleaning day. Although not much cleaning got done. Or so it seems. Sometimes it seems to get messier before it gets better. It was a beautiful day. I went for a walk. It seems the rain caused a bunch of salamanders and lizards to come out. Unfortunately the met their demise on the road.

We have church tomorrow. Then a quiet day. We have a lot of food to put together for the next day. I have been doing the soaking of the grains. We had the pancakes today. The girls LOVED them. They were soooo soft, you wouldn't think they were made of all whole wheat. It's a "keeper" recipe.

Have a great day!

A whole 11 pounds!!!

That's how "big" Jedidiah is now! Which is actually a good thing. That means he gained a whole pound in one month as opposed to only one pound in two months like he did between his 3rd and 5th month. He went down a bit on the chart in his height as well, but not too much. The doctor said that because we seem to have found the cause of his lack of weight gain and he is sleeping better and making more messy diapers then he should be o.k. We have to come back in for a weight check in one month instead of waiting till his next well baby check up at 9 months. As long as he gains another pound then we are fine, if not we will have to talk with a breastfeeding consultant. He feels pretty confident that he will catch up. Catch up to his head that is! His head is in th 50th percentile. His body is below the 1 percentile. So he needs to fatten up and sprout some (his height is off the chart as well---below the chart that is). He said that wherever kids are when they are 3 years old is where they stay. So we have a bit of time to get him caught up.

Today was a beautiful day. We had a picnic lunch outside. The girls decided they wanted braids in their hair. That led to them thinking that they looked like the girls in Little House on the Prarie. So they renamed themselves. Isa was Mary, Moira was Laura, Flannery was Carrie and Saoirse was Grace. They insisted that they were permanently changing their names that way! Ummmm I don't think so :-) If we wanted your names to be those we would have named you that ourselves. Ahhh children. After the picnic we had an unsuccesful nap time. Can we say, "Early bedtime."? I know I can. Then we did a quick clean of the house using the principles I read in the online book. She calls it the Clean Sweep. Very effective. Then we had a yummy dinner of taco salad, a family favorite.

Of course we had a sprinkling of school here and there. The girls actually did most of it on their own. Usually after I teach Moira's math lesson I will read each math problem to her for her written work. Her reading skills are improving so I thought I would see how she could do to do it on her own. She did pretty well. All except for the mixed numbers!! Which my sister knows about. Let's just say it's a good thing God answers prayers for patience! We have been working on fractions for some time now. Simple stuff. They have you color 3/4 of a square or they show you a circle with 1/2 of it shaded and ask you to tell them how much is shaded. She was a pro at that. Got the concept very quickly. However....they now added whole shaded shapes to the mix. So they color 3 and 3/4 squares and have her write how much is shaded. She doesn't get it! We go over it again and again. I say, "How many whole squares are shaded?". And she'll look at me like I have two heads! Go figure. She'll catch on shortly I am sure.

Good night all.

Just some ramblings...

Hey Angie-----I've tried posting to you blog, but it won't let me! Ugh! I will call you soon though.

Well not much to write really. Just had a few minutes. Jedidiah had a hard time going to sleep this evening. He had a nice long nap this morning-3 hours! But then we were out all afternoon and he only had a cat nap between the hours of noon and 7 pm!! Poor little guy. We went to get his birth certificate.....finally! You have to have proof that the baby is yours, so you need an ultrasound report or a letter from a pastor saying you were indeed pregnant. We had an ultrasound and our midwife sent it to us through email. However it was sent to the trash folder. Something yahoo mail will do sometimes if you have an email with an attatchment. So it got "thrown out". Thankfully we were able to get ahold of her to fax it directly to the vital records department. Then you have to bring some mail that has your physical address on it. So I got that together. But then last minute I realized that they would need the address to our last residence. You have to apply for the birth certificate in the county that the birth took place in. But we moved when he was 6 weeks old to a different county. Ugh. So off I went to search for old mail with our old address on it. It all worked out in the end.

We got a new to us extra fridge for free!!! It's huge! We got it off of free cycle. I am not ure the whole story of why they didn't want it. It had a bunch of mold in it. But Jerry sprayed a bunch of bleach on it and it is on its way to being a useable fridge. It's a nice one too. The only 'problem' is that it doesn't fit in the space that we hoped it would in the laundry room. Oh well, that just means that our laundry table needs to stay out in the family room. I think once Jedidiah gets big enough to where he's not napping so often then I could move the table to our bedroom. We have a lot of room in there for it. We have the room in our family room as well. Its just when we have company over....well ya know it's a bit odd to have stacks of clean, folded laundry on a 5 foot table in your family room. But i could imagine that the table being out of site might mean that the laundry goes out of my mind...so maybe moving it is a bad idea.

Jedidiah has his 6 month appointment tomorrow. I'll let you all know how that goes.

I've "enrolled" Flannery in our school. I decided to start her off after the holiday break. I'm starting small, just reading and math. Of course Saoirse is feeling left out now and insists that I teach her to read as well. Her attention span was longer than Flannery's! But for us that's not too suprising. Flannery has a big heart. She loves to hug and show her love for you in physical ways. She's a ball full of energy, the energizer bunny all the way. She can sit and draw for a long time. Or when she gets the notion in her head she will copy letters over. But when it's not in her timetable....well keeping her bottom on the seat is close to impossible. She knows how to write all her letters and knows what they are. The funny thing is that I've never spent more than a minute here and there teaching her!! Her sisters have taught her as well.

The girls are all enjoying their new sign language words. The videos we got them for Christmas had a lot of animal signs on them. We also got a series of videos called "Creatures that Defy Evolution". We learned a lot from those videos.

Ok, I need to talk myself into getting up and start preparing for tomorrow. Jedidiah's appointment is at 10:30.

A new year

HAPPPY NEW YEAR

Well we started new years eve with anticipations of having a chicken fajita dinner, and brownies. We had bought some sparkling grape juice for us to clink in the new year. We had planned on putting the kids to bed at normal time and then waking them abot 10 minutes before the new year. BUT.....my first clue that something was up was when Moira only asked for a small piece of browie (she asked me to cut it smaller!). Then on our way to get milk Moira started crying that she felt she had to throw up. Oh fun. So she cried the entire time until we got home. I left them with Jerry and I ran out to get some popcicles. By the time I got home Jedidiah had just woken up and he was crying up a storm. He was evertired from a long day. He settled down. Phew, no some quiet time.....yeah what was i thinking. Isabella later stabbed herself with a pencil (she walked into one that was on the floor) in the foot.

So we did NOT wake the girls up for the new year. I fell asleep and woke up at about 12:01. Oh well, bet luck next year. We did have a funny for the night. Right after I woke up I heard Jerry ask Moira if she was o.k. She had come out of her room. I jumped up thinking that she was sick to her tummy. Jerry repeated himself, to which Moira answered, "I think Saoirse has the clothes." Haa, haa, she was sleep walking. So anyone have any new years resolutions? Me? ummm, I'll have to think about it! No seriously I do. After reading all of those free online books that I linked to about a month or so ago I really want to draw closer to the Lord. My walk with Him has been a bit slack. The other thing would be to revise our way of eating. I will be glad to be rid of the last of the brownies and be clear of sweets. I can really notice a difference in how I feel when I have sugar running through my veins. Yuck!

Well I hear the baby waking. I have a long list of things to do today:
Do a "clean sweep" of the whole house (includingcleaning the bathrooms and kitchen)
Totally clean the laundry room.
Move the laundry table back to the laundry room (it's been in our family room due to dogs lodging in our laundry room).
Take Christmas tree down.
Make grocery list.
Go grocery shopping.
Check to make sure I have everything ready for tomorrow for school as our school break ends.

Ok, I'm tired just thinking about it all! :-)

A lot to catch up on

Phew! What a week. It has been busy and full. We are enjoying our time off of school. I have been able to accomplish a few things, although it always seems that when you accomplish one thing another thing decides to come undone. Oy. We had a very quite Christmas Eve. I felt out of sorts seeing as how I believe it's one of the first times we did not celebrate it traditionally. Normally there is turkey and perogies. This time we had sub sandwiches! The girls opened their gifts from my parents. You can see them below with their new dresses on. We also received a wonderful telescope from my Aunt. The girls are so excited to see the night sky up close. We gave Jedidiah his gifts from us on the 24th as well. He seems to really enjoy chomping on the cooled teethers. Speaking of Jedidiah, he is doing well with his weight. We gave him his first solid food today. It was rice cereal. You can look at the pictures below and judge for yourself if he liked it or not. Christmas Day Jerry's parents came over to celebrate. WE had a traditional meal that day. They gave the girls an incredible gift. Their very own puppet theater. Unfortunately the pictures didn't come out too great, but you can get the idea of how it looks.
I made a skirt for Flannery. I started on it last night and finished it this morning. I love it! It came out exactly how I wanted, it is very easy to do, no paper pattern to have to work with. And practically no cutting (you tear the stips). They have similar skirts that we bought for them last year that are worn out because they wear them all the time. This is much cheaper and they can have them in any color they want. I am sure there is a bunch more that I am forgetting to write about. But for now I have to get the girls some lunch. Enjoy the pictures.





















Isabella's Christmas outfit.





















Moira's Christmas outfit.





















Flannery's Christmas outfit.





















Saoirse's Christmas outfit. With a silly look to go along with it!
















Jedidiah playing with his just opened Christmas present. He looks too cute.
















Jedidiah is not too sure about this big boy thing. He's wearing Jerry hat.
















The production cast and members. The girls played out the Christmas story (the Biblical one, not the "shoot your eye out one") for all of us.





















Jedidiah getting a taste of some "yummy" rice cereal. I think there is a reason why adults don't eat this stuff.




















If babies could talk I am sure Jedidiah is saying something along the lines of: You've got to be kidding! I'm supposed to eat this stuff?!?




















Flannery's 3 tierd skirt. I plan on making all the girls one with the fabric I have on hand, then we will go to Walmart to buy some of the material that Flannery's skirt is made of. They had the same pattern in different colors. This way they can wear "matching" skirts without me having to figure out whose is whose (I don't plan on putting tags in them).

Jedidiah's gaining weight

We had our midwife come over today to weigh Jedidiah. He was an even 10 pounds two weeks ago and today he was about 10 pounds and 7 ounces. So that's a bigger gain than he's had in quite a while. My midwife had mentioned how some moms take their babies to the chiropracters for adjustments and have seen improvements with their latch on. So Jerry had an appointment for himself this evening and I asked him to call to see if the adjust babies. They do and told him to bring the baby in when he came. So there was just his very top vertabrea that was out of whack. I didn't even notice that she adjusted him, but she had. She said its a very little movement. She told me to expect him to be fussy this evening, but that he wouldn't be in pain. I am glad she told me that because he was one fussy little muffin tonight! Oy! But he's asleep now and I am hoping he will get some good rest in.

We just started our two week break today. We started our day with having to go to the farm nearby to get our milk. While there some of their goats and sheep decided that the grass was greener on the other side of their fence and escaped. The girls had a lot of fun with the farmer's kids rounding up the animals. Plus they had made soap and we got to take home a free bar. The soap is made almost entirely of the things they have on the farm, or from other farmers. I can't wait to use it. I still really want to make my own someday. I need to start looking for the equipment at the Good Will or garage sales.

So then after our farm adventure we had our midwife come over. Then I decided we really needed to dive into some training sessions. The neat thing about the sessions is they can be really fun. I have a few new ideas to try this time around. The girls have been having a hard time talking kindly to one another. So I brought out our ABC tiles. I had them take turns picking a letter tile and then they had to think of a word that starts with that letter that could be something nice to say about someone. For example the letter "L" they thought of "love" and used it to say I love you.

I am not sure if I have any other pictures to share. I've lost track. I have been trying to continue reading the online book. Not to mention that we are really going to revamp our diet. I have had a hard time trying to figure out the exact type of diet that I want to go for. I think I have come to a good mixture of what I've read. If my copy/paste is still working I'll link you to the site. I think I would want to make sure there are more raw foods each day, but I do want to make sure to "treat" my grains and make keifer and other homemade milk products with our raw milk. The first article was called Nutrition 101. If you visit her site soon it should still be on the first page at the bottom. If not then it may get put to another page as she puts up new posts. But it's a neat site. Go to: http://musings-of-a-mountain-mama.blogspot.com/index.html

We are still here

It's been a bit since my last post. We are all well, just been busy. I spent two full days cleaning like mad! I shoved all (almost all) the girls' toys in one room and locked the room. Then Jerry and I attacked our bedroom. And we actually have a real bedroom and not a storage room! Yeah! I have been keeping up with school as well. My next "project" to tackle would be to start training the girls in their chore cards. I will also be training them in general as well. We have a lot of work to do. Things have been a bit slack here lately. I took a bunch of pictures over the week and wanted to share. I will try to see if I can put captions under them. I have an idea of how I can do it, but it may take me a while.

BTW---Angie, I tried to send you message on your blog, but it was down. I've been reading it.

And----April, I received your letter and wrote you one as well, but it's still sitting on my kitchen counter to be sent out. I really need to get a system down for mail. I'll get it to you soon though.

Ok so here's our week in photos:




















Isabella and Moira took it upon themselves to clean the kitchen. They got a nice reward for their effort.
















The girls made up shops. This is Isabella's "The Baby Shop". She got out all of Jedidiah's clothing and put them on the chairs to be bought. Moira made a pet shop as you can see below. She used the chairs as little cubbies for the animal.
















Flannery shopping in Moira's Pet Shop.




















Jedidiah and Moira. Jedidiah is sporting his new Winnie the Pooh outfit from Dziadzi and Grandma Jo. It's a 0-3 months size, which he still fits into!!




















Saoirse being cute. She has been watching her sisters put on their kerchief and wanted one on for herself, but she put it on backwards. Too funny.




















Isabella being a big sister and holding her little brother. A cute match.

So that's all I have for now. Jedidiah is being a bit fussy today. I think he has the same thing his sisters had this week, some stomach pain. Thankfully it was only tummy pain and not the all out stomach bug!

F.M.I.T.

Now what do those letters stand for you may be asking yourself. I couldn't decide between F.M.I.T or F.M.A. for a while, but chose one finally. If you scroll down to see the pictures I've tacked on to this post, you may have an idea. If not I'll let you know: Future Mommies In Training. The other one was for Future Mommies of America. But since there is soooo mych training that goes on I thought my final choice was more fitting. The girls have been carrying around their baby dolls all day. They have nursed them when I nursed Jedidiah. They have changed their dolls' diapers. They have put them down for naps....etc. They did this all on their own by the way. They told me that they want to learn how to take care of babies so they would do everything I was doing. Not only that but they even helped me cook dinner with their babies in their slings!!! I wish I had gotten pictures of that.

We have had a much better day than yesterday. Jedidiah was back to his normal self after spending the whole day yesterday being overtired. I have been trying to tackle the house and at the same time spend bits here and there getting the Jesse tree ornaments made. I need to catch up. One of the snags I had encountered was that the "tree" we used was felt glued to felt. Well the glue didn't hold up during the year of storage and I decided to sew it on. But that just takes more time. Plus I have to sew the snaps on around the tree so we can "hang" up the ornaments. But all this work is paying off. The tree looks great and the girls are having fun with it.

Speaking of fun. It seems we are taking a good turn towards our goals for our family. I don't want to make this too long as I need to get Flannery to bed. Last year or so we had purchased a book by the Maxwell's called "Summer with the Moodys". It is a children's chapter book that is very wholesome and Christian. Well at the time the girls had been watching too much T.V. So every time it was time to read the book they would whine about it. Well a few months later I was on the Maxwell's site (www.titus2.com) and saw that they had another book out to make a series to the first. This one was called "Fall with the Moodys". I was excited about it as I really enjoyed to first book. I figured that the girls would balk at the idea of getting it though. I showed them the book (on line) and they kept asking if we could get it. I wondered why as they didn't seem to enjoy the first one. So the second book came and by this time we had cut way back on our T.V. intake. They really enjoyed it and looked forward to reading it. Well we just got done reading the third book in the series (anyone want to take a guess at it's title? ...."Winter with the Moodys"). This time around we are not watching any T.V. I can't believe the difference in their attitudes about this book!!! They were begging me to read it! When I couldn't read it due to allergy problems, Isabella took over. Not only that but they have been acting like the Moody children. Which I assure you is a REALLY GOOD thing. I found Isabella in her bed reading her Bible on her own. They have been very attentive to serve others at the dinner table and other things that they have read in the book. It is amazing! They will have a "Spring with the Moodys" coming out sometime and I will be right there ready to order it when it comes out!

Ok need to go. Here are our Mommies in training: