Happy 100001th birthday to Ryan!

Ryan had a birthday in November. His cake has his age in binary. Can you figure out how old he is?

Usually Ryan makes the cakes. I decided I wanted to be ambitious and try making a nice cake from scratch. I made a four-layer chocolate cake with hazelnut cream frosting. I had a couple of tablespoons of sliced almonds in the cupboard, so I decided to sprinkle them over the top. It was delicious and I learned a lot in the process of making it. I'm not sure when I'll try making another one because I'm more of a pie/cookies/chocolate kind of a person, but now I know how to do it.

I got Ryan a new case with a keyboard for the tablet. Then a couple of days before Ryan's birthday it occurred to me that this wasn't as great of a present as I thought it would be because we started using our new smart phones and now we don't use the tablet as much. It will still be useful, just not quite as exciting as I was thinking it would be. Hopefully Ryan had a nice birthday.

sour milk, farm days, chores, and Mount Laundry

Life has become really hectic. It's getting harder and harder to get even the basics done. And normal life never seems to happen because there's always something or other to disrupt my plans.

Ann Marie is pulling herself up on things to stand now (as of a few of weeks ago) and will kind of walk if you hold her hands. Army crawling is still her primary way of getting around, but she is transitioning into a regular crawl. I don't think many of her onesies are going to last for another child because she loves exploring the kitchen and inevitably gets stuff all over her front. And the sand park is an even worse culprit. She signs more and food and says more (Mah! Mah!), Dad (dada), and Mom (nanana or mamama). She is starting to figure out how to drink out of a sippy cup. Lately I feel like I can't make food fast enough for her to eat it. The other day I made sweet potato fries and I'm pretty sure she ate an entire sweet potato by herself.

Heidi can't keep her hands off of Ann Marie. Every time I turn around I see her carrying her by the armpits somewhere. I think being a big sister will be more fun once Ann Marie is walking and knows how to play and talk better.

Kevin has been doing a lot better with his reading lately. Sounding out words is not as much of a battle (still hard, but not as bad), and he's learned a lot of sight words, so that helps him to be able to read faster. It sounds like at school they are starting to learn more phonetics. He told me about how super E at the end of words can jump on the vowel in the middle and make it say its name, and he's been learning about some word families like the ones that end in -ay and words that have ee in them. He's been using a website called Raz Kids at school sometimes, and even though we have access to it at home I hadn't really had him do it at home much because I was getting things from the library for him to read. But a few weeks ago we got on there with him and realized he was way behind, and when we looked at the parents page we realized it was because he didn't understand how to take the quizzes and he was repeating the same five books over and over. So Ryan sat down with him one evening and helped Kevin understand it better and got him motivated to try to aim to get from Level B to Level C. In just a couple of days he read forty books and did all the quizzes and had moved on to Level C. He was pretty excited. So now he's working on getting to Level D. The books are even more dumb than the ones he's been bringing home from school, which I didn't realize was possible, but he's motivated by the levels and it does give him some practice with sight words and learning new words. Plus I was just a little embarrassed when I realized how behind he was.

Last week Kevin didn't miss the bus once in the morning. This is a huge accomplishment because we had a couple of months where I don't think he caught the bus once. I finally decided to stop fighting the daily half-hour battle of having him get himself dressed because it's much, much more convenient for me to dress him myself so he can catch the bus. If he misses the bus I end up spending twenty minutes in rush hour traffic both ways getting him to school.

Ryan is really close to having his first paper ready for publication. He keeps having things that need to be edited and tweaked, but he's close. He's also been working a little on his second paper.

A little over a week ago I bought groceries while Heidi was at joy school. I brought them home and was putting them away as quickly as I could so I could go pick up Heidi, when I realized that one of my jugs of milk had a hole in it. It made a puddle on the counter that I had to clean up, then I realized the stroller (which I had used to bring in all the groceries) was sopping wet, and then with a terrible sinking feeling I realized that meant there was probably a puddle of milk in the back of our van. My fears were confirmed when I went out to check. I had to call the mom who was hosting joy school to let her know I was going to be late because of the milk, but since she had to leave right away to go teach a class at a gym, she had to ask one of the other moms to stay with Heidi until I could get there. So I was grateful that I could take some time to try to clean up the milk. The floor of the van wasn't quite as bad as I had feared, but it was wet on one side, so I dried it as well as I could and then scrubbed at it with wet washcloths, then went and picked up Heidi.

The next day the van definitely smelled like milk. It didn't smell like sour milk yet, but it smelled like milk. So I did a more vigorous scrub with Simple Green and water and got more worried. The next day we came out to go to church and the van smelled like rotting milk and I started freaking out that our car was going to be ruined. I didn't feel like scrubbing it myself was doing any good and I just wanted it taken care of. So finally I decided that the best thing would be to get it shampooed. That evening I did a lot of research about various car wash businesses, and I realized that it probably wouldn't cost as much as I had been thinking, so the next morning (Monday) I called and made an appointment. As soon as the worker opened the trunk and got a whiff, he said, "Oh, milk. I've dealt with this before." He shampooed the carpet pretty thoroughly and sprayed it with the same stuff they use to get rid of the smell of cigarette smoke. Then I spent as much time outside with the kids as possible so I could open the back of the van and keep an eye on it while it dried. Fortunately Tuesday was a warm sunny day, so it dried pretty quickly once the sun was shining on it. Now our car still smells like the stuff that was sprayed on the carpet, so we're getting a little tired of that smell, but so far the smell of rotten milk hasn't returned, even after a week, so I'm feeling hopeful that the problem is taken care of. I guess in the future I will make sure the milk isn't sitting right on top of the carpet in case something like this happens again. We are very grateful that the milk smell seems to be gone. One of my friends commented that whoever said "Never cry over spilled milk" was a fool.

I took Heidi to the NCSU Farm Animal Days again this year. I forgot to take the camera, but she had a good time. She still talks about holding the baby chicks from last year, so I knew she would really like to go again. She enjoyed looking at all the animals and trying a few of the tractors, and considering how long we had to wait in line to see the chicks she was pretty patient. I was a little annoyed because as we were getting close to the front of the line, three moms with about eight kids jumped in front of us in line. Apparently one of them had been saving a spot for everyone else so they wouldn't have to wait a long time with all their kids. On the one hand, it made sense, but it was still irritating to have that big group jump in front of us after we had waited so long. I decided not to say anything. Heidi was happy to finally get to hold a chick. When we had seen everything they gave us some free ice cream. Kevin was disappointed that he didn't get to come, but it only lasted until 2:00 every day and I didn't want to take him out of school since he's already missed eight days this year. Maybe next year I'll check him out of school so he can go.

We are trying to establish Saturday chores for the kids. We talked about it in family home evening and told how helping to clean up is part of being a family, so yesterday they asked if we were going to have a chore chart. We had them clean toilets and mirrors with a lot of guidance from me. We are also trying to be more strict about having them pick up the toys themselves and put their own clothes away. Most of the time it seems like a lot more work to get them to clean up after themselves, but I'm trying to remind myself that this is an investment in the future.

Every once in a while I feel like I'm close to being caught up on laundry. When that happens it usually means it's time to start washing all the clothes again. When Kevin was a baby I didn't understand why putting away clothes that are too small or out of season was such an ordeal for other moms, but now I get it. When you have several kids and a dozen bins full of clothes to save, it's a lot more work. I also realized that there were several cute girl outfits I had saved from when Heidi was a baby that are already close to being too small for Ann Marie. Whoops.

general update

This week Ann Marie learned how to play peek-a-boo and clap her hands, which is absolutely adorable. It totally redeems her from all the times she bit me and scratched me while nursing last week. And I can't believe I just said that on my blog.

Heidi is enjoying preschool. This week she had a Valentine party and learned about the letter R. She likes and hates Primary. There hasn't been a single week when she hasn't cried in Primary. However, she is already singing the songs she is learning there. Heidi is our worst sleeper right now. She almost always comes out a couple of times after being put to bed, and she also almost always comes out and sleeps on the couch at some point during the night. For months we were getting up and putting her back in her bed, but now I've given up. I just turn the hall light back off and go back to bed. My sister slept outside my parents' bedroom door every night for months and she turned out just fine, so I've decided I don't care anymore. Heidi's a really sweet kid and she's having a hard time figuring out how to deal with all of her emotions. She's really interested in the concept of people getting older and the changes that happen with that (like being allowed to do more things).

Lately I've been really amazed at how much Kevin's behavior has improved. His arousal level is much more stable than it was when he started school, and I feel like I can trust him to do things independently a lot more, which is really convenient. Just as an example, last Wednesday at a doctor appointment (more on that in a second) we ended up waiting for a really long time, and Kevin was really, really good the entire time. He didn't run around or scream or bang things. He mainly sat still and observed things. Doctor visits used to be a nightmare with him because he had to touch everything, so this was amazing. We have our hard things too, but there have been huge improvements.

So, the doctor appointment was with an Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist. Last fall Kevin had a pretty bad ear infection, the first he's ever had. The first round of antibiotics (amoxicillin) didn't completely get rid of it and the penicillin caused him to break out into hives. The ear infection didn't come back after the second round of antibiotics (Cefdinir), so that was good, but unfortunately from the hearing tests he had at school we learned that the ear infection had impacted his hearing, so the doctor recommended that we see a specialist. He was still recovering from the ear infection the first time we saw the specialist, so she asked us to come back in a couple of months when the ear infection should have completely healed. So on Wednesday he had a hearing test and then we saw the doctor. We learned that he still had fluid behind his ear drums and his hearing was not too bad, but it should be better. So the doctor recommended that Kevin get tubes put in his ears. Then on Thursday night Kevin started complaining that his ear hurt and we learned that he had another ear infection. So it looks like the ear tubes are a good idea. We haven't been able to schedule the surgery yet, but it will probably be at the beginning of March. From what I've read, it's a pretty simple procedure and recovery isn't too bad (most kids can go back to daycare/school the next day), but he will have to have general anesthesia during the surgery. So if you could keep him in your prayers that the surgery will go well and the tubes will help, we would appreciate it.

We also found out that we will be staying here an extra year. Ryan and his advisers feel that he needs more time to finish his dissertation and that he will have a better chance of getting a job if he waits a year. I feel good about this and I'm happy that we can stay another year because I love it here. We are probably going to stay in the same apartment because anyplace bigger would be out of our price range and we feel that Kevin would benefit from staying at the same school. I was sort of getting excited about the thought of finding a little house with a fenced backyard to rent, so that's a little disappointing, but we can handle it.

Lately my main focus has been to get as much sleep as I can. I am realizing that I've been operating on a sleep deficit for a long time and it's affecting everything else. It means that I'm not getting as much done as I want to, especially in the evenings when I normally try to get things done, but I'm hoping that will get better once I'm more rested and not feeling so lethargic and out of it all the time. I really wish Kevin's school started about an hour later. My body naturally wants to wake up around 7:30, so it's been really rough to get up at 6:15 to get Kevin ready for school.

I am on Week 6 of the Couch to 5K program. A little over a week ago I ran for 20 minutes straight, which was a huge accomplishment for me. I think I am running at a rate of one mile every fifteen minutes, so I'm guessing that once I'm running for 30 minutes I will still have a while before I can run a 5K (3.1 miles), but it's still exciting to see how much progress I've made. Before I started Couch to 5K last fall, the most I had ever run at once was half a mile, and that was really hard.

It's going to be really cold this week. I can't wait for the weather to get warmer.

first week of school

Ann Marie is three months old now! She rolled over from tummy to back on Tuesday (Aug. 26). She has taken longer to roll over than the other two kids (Kevin did it at 2 months and Heidi did it at 3 weeks [!]), but it still seems early. I think she will probably figure out rolling from back to tummy soon too. She gets most of the way there, but then she finds her thumb and starts sucking on it instead of going the rest of the way. I have to hold her or put her in a baby seat with me in the kitchen a lot to protect her from the kids, so she doesn't get as much floor time as Kevin and Heidi did. She has started laughing. One of her favorite games is when I touch my nose to hers and say, "Beep." It makes her giggle hysterically. At her two-month appointment she weighed 12 lbs. 6 oz, so I'm guessing she's probably around 13 lbs. now.

I think Kevin had a good first week at Kindergarten. He was disappointed on Saturday morning that he didn't get to go to school. He also took a nap that afternoon of his own initiative, which was the first time in many months. He doesn't talk about Kindergarten much, but occasionally he mentions things. Here are a few of my favorite things he said this week:

"The cafeteria is this place at school, and it has a restaurant in it."

"My bus driver is a farmer. He was doing naughty things because he just drove past Baity Hill and didn't stop."

"At school there are rules, like no running, and respect others."

(Not school related)
Me: What are you eating? Spit that out right now!
Kevin: (spits out wrapper) I think it was some kind of wrapper at some point.
(Name that movie.)

Heidi was very upset that she didn't get to go to school with Kevin at first, but she is also enjoying that she gets to have the toys all to herself for a while every day. It's certainly quieter during the day without Kevin's noises, and the house stays cleaner too.

I am on week 3 of Couch to 5K, but I am repeating the first week for the third time. I am feeling some pain in my knees and I'm having a hard time deciding if it's the good kind of pain that means your muscles are growing or the bad kind of pain. I am thinking of going to Aqua Aerobics at the Y a couple of times to give my knees a break. Even though my knees are sore, I can tell that my heart and lungs are really improving, so that's encouraging. If my knees weren't hurting I would probably be moving on to the second week of Couch to 5K.

For those that are wondering (a lot of people have been asking), Ryan and his advisors have talked about him graduating next May. He is trying to get a couple of papers published before then and he is looking for a postdoc position at Who-Knows-Where University. He's working really hard and the kids and I are very proud of him.

6 years

Yesterday I put our wedding anniversary on my Google calendar and set it up so that the calendar repeats it every year. I had to smile when I saw this:

Ends: Never.

There is no doubt in my mind that the family is central to Heavenly Father's plan and that if we are faithful we will be able to celebrate our marriage for all eternity.

Snow Day #2

On the 12th we started getting our second snow storm of the year. In the morning I went to class as usual, met with my advisor after class, and then did some work on some of my samples. I went to check and see when the next bus was coming and found out that classes for the rest of the day had been cancelled. Then as I walked out of the building I saw a professor walking into the building alongside a student and he said, "Esta nevando, ¿no?" Then I looked up and, sure enough, tiny flakes were starting to come down. By the time I had gotten to my bus stop it was falling much faster and in fluffy puffs of snow. There was a group of girls on the bus who were talking about whether to go home or proceed with plans to work on some school projects. By the time we had gotten to my bus stop the snow was sticking and one of the girls said, "I'm just going to go home. The snow's already sticking and I have to go all the way to Cary." What went through my head was, "You're not going to make it to Cary." Honestly they probably should have cancelled classes about an hour earlier than they did.

The rest of the day my news feed on Facebook was full of pictures and status updates from friends who had gotten stuck in the snow and had to walk home, friends who barely made it home and had seen lots of abandoned cars, and friends whose husbands had taken five hours to drive three miles home. The roads were really slippery and there were tons of accidents and abandoned cars. As much as I'd like to take some credit for us already being safe at home, a lot of it has to do with living so close to campus. I'm certainly glad I wasn't stuck somewhere facing the possibility of walking home with two kids.

Classes were cancelled on the 13th and 14th as well and the university told everyone except emergency personnel not to report for work. Usually they tell teachers and such to continue to hold office hours, so this was quite the snow. Overnight the snow melted slightly and refroze, so the bottom layers of snow were still powdery while the top layers of snow had turned icy. Ryan took Kevin outside to play in the snow for a while, and when you stepped on the snow it was hard on top and then your foot would break through to the soft layers underneath. There was also a lot of ice frozen on all the plants.

Apparently Kevin found this toy guitar at the playground and spent the entire time walking around strumming the guitar and slipping sometimes because of the icy snow, but he still wouldn't let go of the guitar so he could keep his footing better. It made some cute pictures, though.

Yes, these are flowers with ice frozen on them.

After the kids were down for naps, Ryan went back out to get some more pictures and then walked to his office to get some homework to grade. The snow was very good for making snowballs. He threw some at our bedroom window, but I opened it and told him I couldn't sneak out because my dad would probably find out and I would get in trouble.

Some people got creative on campus and made some sea creatures out of snow.

In the evening the snow had melted quite a bit on the roads and we decided to venture out and get some milk before the roads got frozen overnight. It was amazing to see all the abandoned cars still on the road. Some were stopped in the middle of the lane where they had gotten stuck. Most of them probably stayed there another day or two since all the slush on the roads froze again overnight and the roads were probably pretty treacherous. I wished I had a nice big snow shovel, because looking at some of the cars it seemed like a few scrapes from a snow shovel would be enough to be able to get the car out.

Snow Day #1

On January 29 we got a snow day! It doesn't snow here very often, so when it does it's a big deal. School was cancelled and everything (which was awesome since I had a quiz that day that I wasn't ready for).

Ryan got the kids all bundled up and took them outside, and I joined them a little later with the camera. Kevin and Heidi had a good time in the snow. It wasn't great snow for snowballs and snowmen, but we did try.

Fox prints in the snow

Heidi was done with the snow a lot earlier than Kevin, but when I offered to take her inside she didn't want to go in without Daddy, so we stayed out a little longer and then Ryan took her inside.

Kevin stayed out much longer. He was having a fabulous time. We found this cute little snowman that someone had made and Kevin picked it up and carried it around.

At one point he wanted to play but didn't want to let go of the snowman, so I told him to put it down in the snow and I would keep an eye on it for him. Unfortunately I got a little distracted talking about kindergarten to a friend and before I realized it some mean kid had grabbed the little snowman, carried it off, and stomped on it. I was hoping Kevin would forget about it, but later he noticed the stomped up snow and immediately recognized the little snowman. We were not successful in rebuilding him, but fortunately Kevin wasn't too upset about it. (He has his challenges, but fortunately when it comes to stuff like this he rarely gets dramatic.)

update

Kevin has started doing basketball with the YMCA this month and is really enjoying it. He is participating with his team a lot better than he did with soccer. I think it's partly because he has developed and is better at participating in a group and also partly because basketball is a better fit for him. Sometimes his mind wanders and he loses his focus, but that happens with all the other kids too. He always has a grin on his face throughout the entire practice. He is improving with his dribbling and he does a great job with his bounce passes.

His favorite things to draw lately are electricity and a jiggly-jiggly. Don't ask me what a jiggly-jiggly is, but whatever it is it must be something absolutely hilarious. It has something to do with grabbing the unused seat belts and tying them around the car seats. He draws zig-zags for electricity (inspired by the warning pictures on the big green electrical boxes).

All of a sudden Kevin has an opinion about how his hair should be fixed. After we comb his hair down flat he will spike up just the bangs in front. It actually looks pretty cute. I suspect that he likes the bangs spiked up because then they're not touching his forehead.

Recently we checked out Castle in the Sky from the library. I had seen the commercial many years ago and always wanted to see it, and I was not disappointed. We are pretty big Hayao Miyazaki fans in this house. The kids loved it and have asked to see it several times. I'm amazed at the little details they noticed. Yesterday (1/28) Kevin asked me to roll up his long sleeves "like Pazu," and later he told me he was drawing airships. They also build airships with the duplos and run around acting like characters from the movie.

Heidi is obsessed with favorite colors. Her favorite colors are pink and purple. And if you ask her what her favorite anything is, she will still respond that it is pink or purple. Favorite food? Pink. Favorite book? Purple. Favorite movie? Purple.

Heidi loves to learn little songs and poems. Some of her recent favorites are Where is Thumbkin? and Popcorn Popping. She does a pretty good job of quoting the nursery rhyme Ladybug, Ladybug from memory and does so every time she sees a ladybug or a picture of one. I keep trying to get a video of it, but she won't do it for the camera.

Ryan enjoys the Asterix and Obelix comic books and he's been checking out 2-4 of them every time he takes the kids to the library. The kids enjoy looking at them too. However, I do not like reading comic books out loud and pretty soon I started refusing to read the books to them. (I read a lot of books to the kids, but I reserve the right to refuse to read them books that drive me nuts. Mainly this applies to dumb children's books that have an average of two words per page and should never have been published, but comic books are just awkward to read aloud.) As a result of this, I have this conversation with Heidi at least once a day:

H: Mom, you not like Ashes? (Asterix)
M: I have no objection to Asterix, but I don't like reading comic books out loud.
H: Oh. Well, I like Ashes.
M: I know.
H: Daddy like Ashes.
M: Yep.
H: Kevin like Ashes.
M: Mm-hmm.
H: You not like Ashes?

Ryan has needy students who would happily keep asking him questions until midnight.

We've all had a cold except Kevin. I was the last to get it, and I'm really bummed because I was being really diligent about handwashing and hoping it would pass me by. And just as I thought it was going away after about a week, I seem to be either getting a relapse or a different cold. I hate having a sore throat. Now I have a tickle in my throat that makes me hack and cough. In the morning I wake up with a really dry throat and I have to drink copious amounts of water to eventually get it bearably moist. I was trying to take a break from sugary things for a week so I could reset after all the Christmas treats, and now I'm having to eat lots of cough drops, although I wouldn't call cough drops a treat no matter how sweet they are. Maybe sometime I can get my sugar back into a normal balance again.

I am blessed to have fairly good pregnancies, but I'm ready to just be done, and considering that Baby will probably be two weeks late like Kevin and Heidi, it feels like there's still so much time left. I just want to meet the baby. Oh, and maybe I also want to be done with all the homework and quizzes and have my honors thesis all finished, which all has to be done before Baby comes. Since we have all the kids' clothes and infant cloth diapers stored in their closet and we have the crib and a swing, I feel like there isn't really anything to do to prepare. On Saturday we got a bigger car seat for Heidi so we can pass her convertible car seat down to the baby (and we saved 25% because of the Babies R Us Great Trade-in Event), so that's taken care of too. Mainly I am trying to get rid of stuff so that we can find a place to put the crib. And of course the apartment office has been so helpful by deciding to tell us we can't keep bikes and strollers outside our door anymore, which means I have to find a place inside the apartment for those too. I keep telling myself we can deal with apartment living for a little longer. We have been very blessed to live in clean and affordable housing close to campus, but we're looking forward to the time when we can get a place with a garage and an extra bedroom.

Speaking of getting rid of stuff, I got rid of an incomplete travel chess set after it took a dive out of the hall closet and landed on my toe. My foot was throbbing in pain and I was desperately trying to get all the pieces picked up while trying to cope with the pain, but I couldn't seem to get the box to close, and finally I just got so mad at the thing that I threw it in the trash. It felt awesome. It would have been nice if I didn't have to hurt my toe to decide it was time to get rid of the chess set, though. Something similar was the motivation for selling five dozen of my Mason jars a couple of weeks ago. I was trying to rearrange things in our closet and a box of jars fell in such a way that all of them broke all over the floor. I had to call out the door and ask Kevin to bring me the vacuum because I was stuck inside behind all the glass. When I realized that I hardly cared about the jars and was only upset because I had to clean up so much glass while the kids were terrorizing the rest of the house, I decided it was time to admit that I will not be canning for the next two years and it's not worth it to store all those empty jars and risk breaking them when we move. It has definitely made our closet less crowded, although Project Reclaim My Closet still has a lot of work left.

Oh, and apparently some cool person taught Kevin how to play Button, Button, Who's Got the Button? because while I was icing my toe he wanted to play it. He didn't seem to have a problem with the fact that the game doesn't really work with only three players, because to him and Heidi it was still just as fun to find out who had the button every time. At any rate, it makes me wonder why we have any toys when we were able to get an hour of fun with nothing but a button.

giant watermelon

Ryan and Kevin found this enormous watermelon at Costco and bought it. We already had an average-sized watermelon at home, so we measured both, and for reference, the circumference of this huge one was about ten inches longer than the average-sized one.

Copied from Ryan's Facebook wall:

Heidi wasn't sure what to think about the latest addition to our family, especially since it weighed more than she did. She was more than willing to take it to the kitchen to be properly dispatched.

The last picture is for all my Argentine friends. Oh yes I did. And I'm still alive. 

Heidi unsure of the watermelon. 

Was more than happy to take it to the kitchen. 

On the operating table. 

In surgery. 

For my Argentine friends. Yes I did, and I am still alive.