Look at my Shiner

Posted on February 11, 2009 by Abbie

As we left church so cheerily on Sunday night, Zoe was swinging her bag (because she was mad that she wasn’t getting her way) and Liam was walking behind her. Consequently, Zoe walloped Liam with her bag, smacking him right in the eye. I took him inside to see if she had actually hit the inside of his eye. I noticed a little blood in the tears so I started to go back to get a paper towel and ran smack into our pediatrician, Dr. B. I love Providence and Dr. B! She looked at it but didn’t think it had actually hit the eyeball, just around it. His eye was nice and swollen before I even finished talking to her, so I headed back to get a little ice. I thought I’d share (for the grandparents) a picture of Liam’s first nice black eye.

Update: I wrote this post on Sunday night thinking that his eye would turn black…but it didn’t (hooray). Instead, Josiah decided to take a nose dive (or rather lip dive) down some concrete steps at a Valentine’s day party at a friend’s house. I haven’t got a picture of his fat upper lip, but will get it tomorow and post it…it’s a beauty!!

Our Annual Raking Leaves

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Abbie

Taking advantage of the beautiful spring like weather this weekend, we embarked on our annual leaf raking adventure. The kids all had to help but we only had two rakes, so Mark pulled out a broom for Liam…he swept our yard! Anyway, after some raking, I suggested Mark call a friend and ask to borrow their leaf blower. He called. And within about 20 minutes, he was able to get the leaves up to rake in to large piles. Unfortunately, his transportation method broke and there are three piles of leaves in the yard that still need to be moved…but at least they’re (mostly) out of the yard.

Josiah got to sweep the yard some.

But then decided his “bu bu” was a better read.

Taking a break from raking to have a little sword fight.

Taking a break from raking to have a leaf fight (there were a lot of breaks).

Ahh, now the work begins.

“Fighting” the leaves from the leaf blower.

Liam has a “sword.”

Sweeping the leaves some more.

And finally, enjoying hard work by jumping in the pile!

Creative Juices at Work

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Abbie

The kids decided they would camp out in the hallway. No reason…just because. They got all the pillows out of every nook and crannny and piled them up with blankets. And what day was this??? Why Monday of course…Destruction Day!

To the Rescue!

Posted on January 20, 2009 by Abbie

Liam announcing as he ran to potty at supper time (he always has to go then…not sure what it is about my food).

“Pooperman to the Rescue!!!”

Just had to share.

Umm, Happy New Years!

Posted on January 13, 2009 by Abbie

Still trying to catch up on pictures and realized I didn’t post of the kids playing with sparklers on January 1st. Tracy and Kevin came over and it just so happened that we had sparklers left over from their wedding! Josiah got in on the act this time and thoroughly enjoyed himself. It was fun watching the near misses and almost pokes of fire from each of the kids…no really, it was!

Josiah with sparkler in hand! Don’t try and take it away either. He likes fire!!

Just some fun pictures of our light show. I think this is Zoe’s work with Kevin behind her.

He’s making this face because Mark was trying to move the stick further up so he wouldn’t get burned. Bad daddy!

On guard! Yes, Liam and Ace thought it’d be fun to sword fight with them.

More cool sparklers fun!

Well Check Time

Posted on January 12, 2009 by Abbie

I was able to convince Dr. B and her staff to allow me to bring three kids in for their well-checks instead of the standard two. Zoe’s was for six years, Liam for three, and Josiah for his 18 month. This all went down on Friday at 8:30 in the morning…oh yeah, I got the kids up and ready by then…no matter they had a nutritious breakfast of pop tarts on the way there.

It went over okay, besides that Ace had to act out because he wasn’t getting any attention. Problem solved when I didn’t allow him to have the “reward” of a lollipop or sticker…and no I didn’t give in to the screams and utter embarrassment he caused in front of the staff or our doctor, who happens to go to church with us.

So here’s their stats:

This’ll probably be the last time I post Zoe’s stats as she’s a girl and probably would get embarrassed at some point that I put her weight online. Oh, a funny was that Dr. B asked Zoe if she knew all her letters and was learning her letter sounds. She just politely said, “yes ma’am.” and nothing more. I nicely slipped in that she was reading on a 3rd grade level and Dr. B was happy with that. I wonder if she thinks I’m exaggerating, but Zoe was leaning over her reading all her paperwork that she was writing on, so maybe not.

Anyway here go the stats now:

Zoe
wt: 75%; ht: 93%; BMI: 40% So, she’s a little underweight…go figure…look at her percentage on height!

Liam
wt: 50% (that’s stayed the same percentage from last year); Ht: 40%; BMI: 60% (not sure how that came out…if you’ve seen Liam in person you would see he’s the skinniest of all our kids and he’s a decent height. I wonder if he fidgeted when she checked his height.)

Josiah
wt: 74%; ht: 90% (I got some tall kids I guess)–He came out just fine on the ear check. She felt his spech was good. He can say about 20 to 25 words or so…that I can understand. He still won’t drink cow’s milk and barely drink’s soymilk but Dr. B said to make sure and buy the calcium fortified juice for his morning drink (my kids only drink juice and other “flavored” drinks at breakfast and on special occasions).

That’s it. Zoe was such a big help and went with Liam for the weight/height and blood pressure checks as well as his eye checks and when he got to pick out a toy.

When Potty Training a Boy, Don’t Forget

Posted on January 12, 2009 by Abbie

One of the things I just didn’t think about when potty training Liam was to explain how boys need to sit on the potty when doing #2 even if they have to do #1. I’ve suspected that he has been standing first to do #1 and then sits down to go #2, however, I never really went in to watch, and he would have just argued with me that he was doing it right in the first place.

Anyway, so last week, he hollers from the bathroom that he needs help. I go in and see that there is #2 on the floor and on his hands and his legs and his pants. Yep, he had ran to the bathroom to do #1 and couldn’t hold #2 until he was done. Did I mention he also missed with #1 and it was all over the floor (near the toilet of course…because he probably turned around to see what was going on on the other side).

Needless to say, Mark did some tutoring when he got home.

Oh, and at Liam’s 3 year well check on Friday he had to tell Dr. B all about what had happened and that big boys sit down to go poopy!

I’m so proud (sniff, sniff).

Happy Birthday Liam!

Posted on December 29, 2008 by Abbie

Liam actually celebrated his birthday nine days earlier than the actual day…so I’ll post birthday pics later. He had a fireman’s party at our fire station headquarters. These guys were great and so friendly with the kids (and the men who asked all sorts of questions and drooled over their equipment!). Lots of pics so little typing here!

They gave us hats, badges, and coloring books for all the kids…didn’t know this in advance so I have a dozen fireman hats that I ordered…anybody need them??

The birthday boy, Fireman Liam!

Playing hot potato!

The fireman came in and gave a fire talk to the kids…a very little fire safety stuff.

And just to add a thrill, we allowed the fireman to scare the kids to death by dressing in their fireman garb!

Watching the fireman dress up…getting a little apprehensive.

Wide-eyed at the fireman equipment!

All ready to fight a fire (and freak out the kids)…actually they (being the fireman researchers, etc) just realized that kids were hiding from them when they went in to get them causing many of them to be injured or worse…they were hiding because they were scared. So, this was a good thing, the kids have seen a fireman dressed up now and know what to look for. They also let his equipment go off so the kids could hear all the weird sounds it made.

Trying to coax the kids to come up to CJ, the fireman dressed up. That was a hard one for Liam and he wouldn’t actually do it. He loosened up as we went on a tour of the station and watched them slide down the pole!

And played in the firetrucks…until Liam turned on a flashlight and made the air compressor somehow go off!

Liam was thrilled with the gifts and loved his cake (which I didn’t include in here for some reason). He was showing his cake to K, a friend, and said, “‘Dis is my birfday, TA DA!”

So, the firemen told us this was our station (paid for by us) and that anytime we wanted to bring the kids by for a tour to feel free to do so. I’m not sure, but I believe all stations are like this. These guys work so hard, do so much, for so little reward, or pay. We were all very grateful for them, especially since they let Liam invade the station with a few friends!

The Football Story (or why there is a football in all of Liam’s pictures)

Posted on December 23, 2008 by Abbie

Yeah, I know that’s a long title but the story is kinda funny.

When the photographer started taking pictures, Liam decided it wasn’t what he wanted to do so he threw himself down and started frowning. Mark grabbed a stuffed animal and tried to get him to smile. Our photographer didn’t seem to confident in her entertaining and picture taking skills so she got another photographer to come in and try to get him to smile. He put a feather boa on his head and Liam looked at him like he needed to see a shrink. I kept looking and searching all the props, etc. I tried a puppet…all hope seemed lost.

Then I spotted it. It was brown…hmmm, could it work??? I began to wonder. It was worth a shot though. I grabbed the big brown “pigskin” and showed it to Liam.

“What’s this Liam?”

“Football” and a grin spread across his face from ear to ear. Thus, the football got the kids group shot and then we went on to individuals, etc…I didn’t dream of taking the football away!

When she got to the boys’ shot she asked us if we wanted the football in the picture.

“Why not?” we replied…it’s part of our family!

Family Pictures

Posted on December 23, 2008 by Abbie

We get family pictures done every year. I would love to be one of those mom’s who does the pictures like every six months, etc…but we just can’t afford it. I have a friend who told us about Portrait Innovations a few years ago and we willingly make a trek to one each year as the pictures turn out awesome and they are very reasonably priced. Recently one opened up where my parents live, however, we could not get schedules to coincide with going there so we had to travel to another one! They take a ton of pictures and Mark and I were really brave in letting the photographer know what we wanted this year. Without further ado…the pictures.

I just pulled these from our cd, so I didn’t get a chance to crop any…sorry!

This year, we picked out pictures to keep that really went with each child’s personality. However, there was some other really good ones I wanted to share. I’ll point out the ones we actually bought, though as wall pictures (since they’ll go up on the wall for a year!).

Zoe’s picture to go on the wall!