I thought it was broken...

Matthew's been home all week. He's sick with the virus that is apparantly running rampid in these here parts. Every time I have taken his temp. it's read 103.3 give or take. After 5 days of this I actually used it on myself thinking, it's got to be broken. How can he always have a 103 temp.? It's not broken and he's still sick, although I dare say he might be turning the corner. A chest x-ray today revealed no pneumonia so he's just on an antibiotic to get rid of the virus.

Meanwhile Sara started her own fever 2 days ago and is extra snugly and sleepy because of it. We've been housebound except for trips to Ella Jane's preschool where she gets to escape the confines of the house! It's been a welcome break for each of us. Everyone was so excited to go to the doctor today; what does that say?

And it's been awhile since I've taken ALL three out somewhere so we got a lot of "wow, you have your hands full", "what good helpers", "aww, she's so cute", and "are you the big brother?" It's a little like hearding animals sometimes and I realized I'm not sure if it's better for me to be in front or back while we're walking the hallways of a doctors office or the aisles of Target. If I'm behind them, I'm holding doors, and ushering them forward, but then they don't know where to go and we hold up the line even more. If I'm in front of them, then I'm always looking over my shoulder, "come along, children". I like to feel like Mary Poppins so sometimes I say this to EJ on the walk up to get Matthew from school..."come along Jane."

Anyway, here we are at home now where it looks like someone took our house and shook it upside down. How does that happen in less than 24 hrs.??

I think we are on the mend.

home sick...

Matthew is home sick yesterday, today and I suspect tomorrow as well. He hasn't been hit this hard since July of '07. So, we are home enjoying some craft time (he's really into coloring, and making books), movie time (we finally saw H.S.M. 3), and story time.

Sara has been sleeping better at night, only getting up once or maybe twice. Such an improvement! Hooray for sleep.

We've started playing shirades as a family after dinner and let me tell you it is hysterical. The kids love it. I think it boosts their confidence as well as their imagination and we all end up laughing. I think we're getting back to that stage of family life where we enjoy things all together; and the kids are able to understand and participate instead of us doing all of the leading. So fun and healthy for everyone. It somehow makes me forget that Matthew and Ella Jane had been at each other's heels all afternoon!

And then some...

Where do I begin? When you go this long w/o posting there is a lot to catch up on. Let's start with the reason for the long silence. This little family of ours has been tired. Really tired. A lot. We are all healthy, we're not sick or anything; we're just tired from the year long absence of a good nights rest.

We have a friend who refers to some days as "just too hard to put your socks on" kind of days. While those are fine to have once and awhile, when you have a whole string of them it can be hard to pick up the pieces. (pieces...I'll get to that a little later)

Our Internet connection has been on the fritz for a few weeks so to get online at all has proven more frustrating than it's worth. I was on the phone with tech. support for an hour yesterday and still did not get anything resolved. But while I'm on the phone everything else takes a back seat, like, the kids for example. So by the time I get off the phone, it's dinner time (well past actually), they hungry and I'm still burried in a mess of laptops, modems, routers and cords.

At the moment the above painted picutre is of the living room. (that all happened yesterday) There is a Monopoly game strewn about the floor that Ella Jane is in the middle of sorting and putting away, there is a U.S. puzzle that got accidentally dropped and therefor dumped (and who has time to stop and put together a 50+ piece puzzle?), there are various clothes (how did they end up in HERE?), and a few other toys.

That's just from this morning.

When it's too hard to put your socks on it gets to be like it was LAST weekend. And here's where I wish I had the picture to post. LAST weekend in our overwhelmed state we let the kids play "money machine". They invent so many different games and this one I have to admit was pretty clever. It involved pieces of games to be put through a little slot in the bottom of a box. We have about 30 or so games and puzzles. Can you picture this? EVERY dice, little round circle to connect four, cards to Guess Who?, shapes from geometric matching boards, bingo pieces...you get the idea. ALL OVER THE FLOOR. They saw game, I saw stress and craziness. It took 45 min. of very focused sorting and putting away. Great learning activity at the end I suppose but I made it clear they would not be playing the money machine again.

So, we are here, alive and well, just tired and stressed.

Some fun things that have happened are...Ella Jane now has bangs! We had to cut them because her hair is just so thin on the sides and it was getting really difficult to keep out of her face. A hair clip doesn't have much to hang onto for the lack of hair. She looks like a different child. It took me a few hours to get used to it, but now I think she's super cute with them.

Sara is 10 months old and all over the place. She's very active, climbing stairs, crawling and squealing as she goes. She is in a very playful stage right now and just fascinating to be around. Well of course she is, I AM her mama after all.

MJ, EJ and I went to an Owl Prowl at the nature center last night. We learned about different speices of owls and how to call them. About 100 people or so were gathered and taking a hike in the dark while our leader called for owls. Matthew LOVED it, was very in tune to the sounds and waiting to see if the owls would call back. Afterwards we headed back into the ctr. where Matthew gave EJ and I a tour. He has been there before for a class field trip and took on the leadership role of "teacher" very well.

It's been another busy month and at least 2-3 times a week the kids ask if it is spring yet. "Almost" I say, we can't wait to play outside!

She's such a love...

Letting go...

...and learning to trust.

During our short stint of spring like weather we got outside for some fun playtime. We said hello to the scooters (who I think forgot who we were after all this time inside) and took off for the culdesac. A few minutes of that and MJ and EJ wanted to ride their bikes. I'm just not so kean on the whole bike thing. Too stressful. Are they going to fall? Will they crack their head? Too stressful.

Reluctantly, I agreed and lifted the monsters down from their ceiling hooks in the garage. By the way as a result of the bike riding, I had to take Sara out of the Moby (she was not happy) and put her in the little green push car. Which she loved. She squealed. And giggled. And carried on and on. Oh how I wish I had a video camera. It was precious.

But anyway, back to the bike riding. Matthew was deadset on learning to ride and he thought that since he had mastered the balance on the scooter perhaps he could learn the bike as well. He had a point. So, I grabbed the back of the seat like you're supposed to and took a few steps with him. And he took off. He totally got it. Except that after I let go I was afraid he'd fall and ran after him (like two steps) to grab the bike again. "Whew, let's take a break there Matthew." He was all geared up to go again and I was so nervous to let him try. What if he fell? How long am I supposed to hold on? What if I let go to soon? Of course we hooped and hollered..."YOU DID IT!!!" and it truly was so exciting. In that moment I was remembering the time when I first learned how to ride a bike; how my mom held onto the back of that pink banana seat and finally let go...oh the sheer joy I felt. I had done it. I couldn't help but wonder the same for him. Would he remember this?

So I am letting go and learning to trust... his judgement, his instincts and his ability to learn.

**On a sidenote, Ella Jane has demonstrated for me that she knows how to hulahoop and it is HYSTERICAL. We don't have a hulahoop mind you so it's just her moving her ENTIRE body. Oh, my goodness, it's so funny.

She did it!...

Sara started climbing the stairs! Wow, we were so excited and going crazy over here just watching her go. Mind you she doesn't race to the top of course but manages to do quite well I must say.

Our first two kids were raised in a one level house and I was always so grateful that I never had to deal with the whole stair thing. Just one more thing to think about. Well, I do have to say though that it's really fun to watch her.

Jim was at work at the time (actually, Tracy I had literally just gotten off the phone with you!) and I called Ella Jane over in my excitement. She then called Matthew over in her excitement. And Sara just beamed...

The girls...

Ella Jane's new love is playing soccer. I kid you not, this is the outfit she dawns just about 1x a day as she runs through the house kicking this ball and telling me to tell her "go Ella Jane!" (I don't know why she has 7 pairs of socks on...)

Here is Ella Jane, The Statue of Liberty. She's into this pose lately too. I'm not sure why. She proclaims this phrase, "I'm the Statue of LIBERTY!"

While Ella Jane is kicking a ball, or playing princess, Sara is usually in one of three places;
here...

here...

Or here...

and sometimes here...

Change...

There has been so much change around here lately, it's hard to keep up. I started with changing the look of our blog and then petered out. I like change but sometimes it's just too hard and with the amount of sleep I've been getting sometimes it's REALLY hard. So, the blog is still in a process of getting a new look.

Sara has been EVERCHANGING this entire month. She has really grown leaps and bounds. It never ceases to amaze me to see a child learn something for the first time. And it just seems to be inate. Like Sara pulling up, or saying mama, or signing the word "more", or sitting up independently and unassisted. She's been a changing machine! And I love it. I love how she is becoming so interactive and learning to communicate. I'm so amazed by her.

Ella Jane has done some changing in the past 4 months and is now LOVING preschool. She just wasn't ready in the fall and we pulled her out. I was happy to have her at home and it just didn't make any sense to me for her to get past the crying stage and start to love preschool "in a week or two". We've had a lot of girl time and after a few convesations decided it was time to try again. Not one tear has been shed and she tells me how excited she is to go to school. I'm so proud of her...growing in her own time.

Matthew has been a crazy reader in the last few weeks. Reading books on his own that he brings home from school, following along in the stories we read to him here (I remember doing this too), and even being the author and creating a story from scratch. He and I were working on one the other night and he is the author while I am the illustrator. As I was drawing a picture he was telling me how to do it, and I kindly reminded him that I was the one who drew the pictures; to which he quickly replied "yes, but I'm the one who writes the book so I tell you what to do..."

So, as you can see we've been going through many changes around here. All good! Tomorrow Sara turns 9 months old. She's spent as much time in this world as she did in my belly. She's a May baby so that must mean that spring is right around the corner. Ahhh....

I'll leave you with this final piece of exciting news. The smurfs are making a comeback. Saw them in the toy aisle at Target today. Not nearly as cute as the originals from the 80's but still fantastic.