A Birthday and Other Milestones

Nick is six years old! We celebrated his birthday quietly at home, with a yummy chocolate pudding cake and a pinata. He was pretty amazed to see that his clothes still fit him, now that he is six and all, but he's pretty sure that the water in the swimming pool we frequently visit doesn't come up as high as it used to.

Please excuse Jacob's outfit. He'd spilled something on several outfits that day and ended up having to wear things that didn't match.

This is how Jonathan passed the time while we opened gifts.

Nick is really growing up into a young man. He started reading lessons this January, and now he's reading really well. He's enjoying Amelia Bedelia and Little Bear books from the library, and he can even read more difficult books when it's something he really wants to read. He and Jacob just started taking piano lessons, and I think he's going to do very well. He's also a loving big brother to both Jonathan and Micah. He gets me if he thinks they really need me, but when he can, he tries to make them happy and help them himself.

Speaking of Jonathan, he just started crawling and pulling himself into a standing position. For the first few days he only crawled a few feet when he saw a toy he wanted, but now he's started exploring everything he's been curious about for all this time.

This is him looking out the window while his brothers played in the backyard.

And this is him enjoying some quiet time under the table in the foyer.

It's back-to-school week around here, but we've been doing school all summer, so it's business-as-usual in our household. I just teach them the next thing they need to learn, regardless of their age or grade designation, but when people ask what grade they're in, we tell them that Jacob is starting second grade and Nick is starting first grade, since that's where they'd be based on the public school calendar. This week they'll be learning about British history, studying the geography of the Great Lakes area as we read "Paddle-to-the-Sea", learning from Aesop's fables, finishing up Charlotte's Web, studying King Solomon's reign and learning from the Proverbs in the Bible, charting the high temperature every day, and beginning a year-long study of astronomy. Jacob is working on some basic grammar, like punctuation at the end of sentences and capitalizing the first word and proper nouns. He's working on place value and beginning multiplication in math class. Nick is doing addition and subtraction for math. He's still working on proper letter formation for writing, but he's making a lot of progress.

I'm Still Here!

I know it's been a very long time since I posted. We got busy looking for a new house, and then we moved, and then I got pregnant, and now here we are with a whole new member of our family. Jonathan is 5 months old now. He's a very happy baby and such a blessing to our family. I will be better about posting now. I promise.

Here are some pictures of Jonathan:





I'm going to drop the whole codes for names. I can't think of anyone else in the 100 Acre Wood to name Jonathan after, and it's just too confusing. I'll just have to hope that there aren't any bad guys stalking us online.

The older boys are all growing up so quickly. Micah is going to be 3 this week. He never stops talking and has quite an imagination.

Nick is finishing up kindergarten. He started learning to read in January and is doing a great job.

Jacob loves to read and reads everything he can get his hands on. In fact, he just read a book about stop motion animation and then made a movie. This is it:


That's all for now, but I promise I will post more regularly now.

Look Who's Six!

Piglet turned six last Thursday, on January 1. He's very excited to be six years old. He's pretty sure that he's gotten taller because six is so old.

We had a fun birthday. Grammy (Chris's mom) and her younger children came over to celebrate with us. I stayed at home with baby Roo while the rest of them went to the bowling alley. (Roo would have been difficult to tend to a bowling alley because he always wants to do what his brothers are doing, but he obviously can't bowl.) Piglet was very excited when he came home because he beat Tigger and Chris's youngest brother.




When he got home, we had birthday cake and opened presents. We had a yummy, gooey chocolate cake that looked like dirt, served in a dump truck. He got a lot of presents that he has enjoyed, but his favorite was a set of race cars that Grammy got for him. He's had a blast racing them across the kitchen and teaching Roo how to play with him.

Chris and I are very proud of Piglet. He's growing into a wonderful young man. He shows a lot of attention to his school work, and he is very concerned with taking care of his younger brothers and helping them to be happy. He thinks a lot about the man he will be when he grows up, and I think that he is on the path to develop into a God-fearing young man.

But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.
II Peter 3:18

Marshmallow Shooters

Chris made these marshmallow shooters for the older boys this weekend, and they're a lot of fun. He made them using these instructions.

It's a pretty simple concept. You make them with a length of PVC pipe that you cut into specific lengths and use joiners and caps to put all of the pieces together.

When you're done, you put a marshmallow into the gun and blow. The harder you blow, the further they go. You can shoot them at least 20 feet. Since the bullets are marshmallows, you can shoot other people, which Chris demonstrated to the boys by shooting me.

I'd highly recommend these for all families with boys between the ages of 3 and 15. Older boys can make their own, of course. The one caveat is that younger ones to do need to be monitored with them. Our boys have a tendancy to take a deep breath in with the guns in their mouths, sucking the marshmallows out of their guns and into their mouths. It could be a potential choking hazzard. Baby Roo likes to wonder around the yard and pick up all of the sticky, used bullets.

In Which Tigger Falls off a Train

Another blog I was reading today had a story that reminded me of an incident that occured when Tigger was younger that I've always meant to record so that I won't forget it. I'll share it here, and maybe it will cause a few other people to giggle.

Tigger is very gifted verbally and has a lot to say, but when he first started talking, he did it one word at a time. My dad called him the One Word Wonder. He could tell you anything, but he did it very slowly and without sentences.

When he was about 19 or 20 months old, the two older boys and I went to visit my parents at their house in Florida. (Roo didn't exist yet.) One of the things we did there was go to the Jacksonville Zoo. There's a neat train at that zoo. It's inside the zoo, and it has multiple stops, so you can use it to get around the zoo.

We had enjoyed a nice but exhausting day at the zoo, so when it was time to head out, we told Piglet that we'd ride the train one last time and then go. When we sat down, Tigger asked about a seatbelt. My mom and I laughed and told him that we didn't need seatbelts on a train that goes about 3 MPH. It was a nice ride until the train just came to a complete stop in a very abrupt, jarring fashion. Tigger bounced out of his seat and landed on his hands and knees on the floor of the train. (The conductor announced on the speaker a few minutes later that we had been driving past a construction site, and there was debris on the tracks. That's why we stopped so suddenly.)

Fortunately, the seats were a good distance apart, so he didn't hit his head on the row in front of us. He was fine but very scared. He stayed on the ground looking stunned for a few seconds, and then he started to cry. I picked him up and nursed him, and he was soon happy again. (Incidentally, nursing is always called "open" in our family. Piglet named it when Tigger was a baby. That piece of information becomes important later on.)

When we got home, my dad asked the boys what we did that day. This is what Tigger told him: "Zoo. Fun! Train. Fall. Sad. Mommy. Holdyou. Open. Better."

Now, at age 4, Tigger can go on and on about things in very long, sophisticated sentences, so it's funny to think about the very humble beginnings his speach had.

Plans for the Future

Tigger and Piglet informed us of their plans for the future last night over supper. Apparently, they when they're men and need to get their own house, they're going to get an apartment together. It's going to be the highest one and as far away from the stairs as you can get.

Chris asked them where their wives would sleep. Tigger immediately replied, "They can sleep downstairs!" Piglet said, "Well actually, I think they're supposed to sleep with us."

I've asked them before if Roo can live with them, but Piglet tells me that Roo won't be a baby any more then, but he won't be a man like he and Tigger, so he'll need to stay at home with us.

Piglet also plans to buy a blue Mustang when he's ready to drive. He reminds me at least once a week that I'll have to drive him to the car store because he won't have any way to get there when he's buying his first car.

Stores Going Out of Business

I just got an email that had a list of stores that are going out of business or closing some locations in the upcoming months. I knew about Linens and Things and have been going in there every once in a while to see the new markdowns, but some of the ones on this list are news to me. I'm surprised that J. Jill is on the list. I thought that I kept them in business with my own purchases!

1. Circuit City stores... most recent

2. Ann Taylor- 117 stores nationwide are to be shuttered

3. Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, and Catherine's to close 150 store nationwide

4. Eddie Bauer to close stores 27 stores and more after January

5. Cache will close all stores

6. Talbots closing down all stores

7. J. Jill closing all stores

8. GAP closing 85 stores

9. Footlocker closing 140 stores more to close after January

10. Wickes Furniture closing down

11. Levitz closing down remaining stores

12. Bombay closing remaining stores

13. Zales closing down 82 stores and 105 after January.

14. Whitehall closing all stores

15. Piercing Pagoda closing all stores

16. Disney closing 98 stores and will close more after January.

17. Home Depot closing 15 stores

18. Macys to close 9 stores after January

19. Linens and Things closing all stores

20. Movie Galley closing all stores

21. Pacific Sunware closing stores

22. Pep Boys closing 33 stores

23. Sprint/ Nextel closing 133 stores

24. JC Penney closing a number of stores after January

25. Ethan Allen closing down 12 stores.

26. Wilson Leather closing down all stores

27. Sharper Image closing down all stores

28. K B Toys closing 356 stores

29. Loews to close down some stores

30. Dillard's to close some stores.

Stump the Grocery Store Cashier

One way to liven up trips to the grocery store is to buy the most unusual produce you can find and then watch the cashier squirm as he tries to figure out what it is. I don't really do this intentionally, but it seems that a lot of the high school boys my grocery store employs aren't familiar with anything except apples, oranges, and carrots.

These little baby cauliflowers we had for supper last night certainly stumped the guy who checked us out. Each of the pieces in the picture were individual baby heads, not pieces cut off from a bigger head. The fact that they came in orange and purple just made them even cuter. When I saw them, I just had to buy them. We've bought purple and orange heads of regular cauliflower in the past, but I'd never seen the baby ones before. Tigger loves cauliflower, and I knew he'd love these. I steamed them and put a little butter and salt on them, and he gobbled them up.

(On a different but related note, one of my favorite memories of Piglet as a toddler occured when I served cauliflower for supper one night. He was always trying to teach Tigger, so he picked up a piece of cauliflower, held it up in front of Tigger's face, and said, "See this? This is called a flower." I don't know if comes out as funny in writing, but he used the same inflections as the word "cauliflower", and he clearly thought we were saying "called a flower" instead.)

The poor cashier we had this time was just really baffled by a lot of our food. We bought parsnips, too, which he rang up as rutabaga. I corrected him, since the price of rutabaga was $.70/pound less, but he told me, "Oh, I always do it this way. They're about the same." I guess I've never thought of parsnips and rutabaga as being about the same. I know that my family will eat the pot roast I'm making today with parsnips in it, but I don't know if they'd be as happy with rutabaga.

My favorite clueless cashier was the one who rang up some jicama a few years ago. Jicama is a yummy Mexican vegetable pronounced hee-cah-ma. The cashier held it up, got a dreamy look in his eyes, and said, "Can you believe that a week ago I didn't even know what jee-ca-ma-ma was?"

Books We're Reading

A big part of the reason I created this blog is to create a record of the things we've done with homeschooling so that I can be sure to do the things that worked really well with the younger children and avoid repeating things that didn't go as well. If you're not interested in homeschooling, this is probably one of those "there's nothing to see here"-type of posts.

We spend a large portion of our day with me reading to the boys. At least three times a day, I read a short story or a chapter or two from a longer book. Right now, we're reading 26 Fairmount Avenue. It's the autobiography of Tomie dePaola, the children's author. Actually, it's the first in a series of his autobiographies. I guess he figured it would be too intimidating if he offered his whole autobiography in one large book.

One chapter of the book details him going to see Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves when it opened in 1938. He was four years old at the time. He did enjoy the movie, but he was disappointed that it wasn't exactly like the fairy tale that he was familiar with. After we read that chapter, I found a telling of Snow White in fairy tale book we had that was exactly as dePaola described in his book. I read that to them, and then I showed them the movie. I've had the DVD since before we even had children, but they'd never seen it before. After we watched the movie, we talked about the differences in the book and the movie. The boys really enjoyed it.

We're almost finished with 26 Fairmount Avenue now and still really enjoying it. I hope our library has all of the books in the series!

Beautiful Sewing Patterns

For those of you who sew, Jennie Chancey at Sense and Sensibility Patterns is now offering ePatterns for some of her creations. She has created many beautiful patterns sized for today's figures but using historic dress styles from various periods in history. Even if you don't sew, it's fun to look around her site to see some of the beautiful creations some women have made using her patterns.

I think my favorite is the little girls' pantaloons pattern. If I ever have a girl, I'm definitely going to buy this pattern.