Friday, March 21, 2014

Change is the new normal

We have a 6 year old in the house!!  Wednesday was the big day, and he was thrilled when he opened his gifts of a fart gun (yes, you read that correctly) and a magic loom.  The fart gun lights up and makes farting noises when you pull the trigger (thanks to the minions of Despicable Me for that!) and the Magic Loom loops small elastics together to makes rings, bracelets, and necklaces.  The two things he'd been talking about for the last few months were finally in his possession, and he is loving them!

We had a cake and movie night that night, birthday party will be tomorrow with some school friends, and he is so excited.  This morning we went to the dollar store to pick up goodies for the loot bags.  So much fun!

More big changes here.  Hubby finished his course, had this week off for leave, and then a week from Monday he'll be sailing again on the Halifax from the 31st to the 25th.  After that he flies from here to Borden from the 27th of April to the 31st or so of May.  At least this time he'll be home for a day or two in the middle!

Last Saturday was busy and fun.  We got Girlie into a big girl bed (yay, because now she can get snuggies in her own bed!), moved Monkey into a toddler bed (yay, because now I don't have to get out of bed when she starts crying at night, she can just crawl into bed with me), got our spare room set up downstairs, and we picked up and set up a new bed frame for Hubby and I.  Saturday night was absolutely horrible, but the nights after that seem to be much better.  I think we're all sleeping better now too.

It's been neat this last couple of weeks listening to the kids.  Smarty is getting so big and responsible, and super creative.  Last night Sergeant picked out a book to read before bed and I was going to just read it, but Smarty asked if he could sing it.  So I told him to go ahead.  He made up a little tune to sing the story to and did great.  Held the attention of the other three.

Sergeant has broken out into random songs lately.  Usually this one or this one and then those songs get stuck in everyone's heads.  And he'll stand on the hearth, jump up and down, singing his heart out.  Girlie gets into it, Monkey starts dancing along, Hubby and I smile at each other.

Blankets all over the girls' room floor as they play at putting stuffed animals and dolls to sleep.  Moving the rocking chair, stools, pillows, they get little aprons on when they see me getting mine on so they can "help".  Monkey is starting to rock the wardrobe changes.  Girlie used to do it, need to change her clothes if they got wet or dirty.  Monkey just has to see another pair of pants and she'll try to take the ones she's wearing off and put the new ones on.  Lots and lots of laundry.

Our snow is nearly gone, I've been hearing bird song that I haven't heard in t few months, but the wind is still quite chilly.  Yesterday was raining, pouring even, all day long.  No letting up, river running down our street.  Made me glad we live on a hill and there is no water in the basement!

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Spring Break

The museum was so much fun!  They had the new exhibit up and running (bugs), and there was an Australian area that wasn't there before.  We saw a kangaroo, breaded dragons, blue tongued skinks, and there was a man playing a didgeridoo.  So awesome!

We filled Monday with painting, practicing our sorting by sorting laundry and sorting toys to put away.  Tuesday was filled with a morning play date, cowboy cookies, blueberry bread pudding with a toffee sauce that Hubby did (sinfully good!).  Yesterday I decided to make tortellini.  Yup, you read that right.  I used the spinach we had in our fridge (with Parmesan cheese) for the filling and the boys helped seal and form them.  Now they don't want to go back to dry pasta!  I think that's awesome.

Today we went to a friend's for tea and cookies in the morning and came home for lunch and naps.  While my two angelic and very tired girls were sleeping, the boys and I got busy.  We started washing floors, doing dishes, sweeping, cleaning, putting books and toys away.  At least the ones on the main floor.  The basement is still a mess of cars, blocks, pillows, and dolls.  When Girlie woke up she had to help wash the living room floor too.  And the boys helped sort more laundry.  Since that really is a never ending job.

All in all, it's been a busy, fun, and fast March break.  Tomorrow Smarty will be making cookies, I'll be making a peanut butter pie, and we'll make another trip to the library.  The girls have really enjoyed having the brothers home all day.  And that they can have their nap and not have to be woken up to pick the boys up from school.  I mentioned to Girlie that preschool was on for next week and she just started saying that she couldn't go to preschool because she was too tired.  Poor girl didn't hear when I said next week, I guess.

Tuesday night Hubby decided to grab an ice cube and put it down Smarty's pants.  Lots of giggling, more ice cubes, Smarty grabbed some, Sergeant grabbed some, Girlie got involved.  They kept it going for quite a while.  Then Wednesday afternoon Smarty decided to get it going again with Sergeant, and then again at bedtime yesterday.  Good thing ice cubes are renewable!

Sunday, March 9, 2014

A sunny afternoon

So, last night's post was written because I decided that I needed to, not because I felt like writing.  It felt disjointed for me to write, and I'm sure it wasn't the most enjoyable to read.  But now I'm feeling like writing, so this one should be better :)

This morning I decided that whomever decided that there should be no school the week following the time change was brilliant!  The plus side is that the kids didn't wake up until 7, the downside is that we were pushing it to get to church on time this morning.  But we did make it. Of course.  We are a well oiled machine of cooperative parenting.

As I was thinking of ways to fill the week and keep the kids occupied and involved I came to the conclusion that I was going to let Smarty make our bread this week.  It's a (nearly) foolproof recipe and I think he'll enjoy it.  He does like participating in the kitchen and will sometimes ask me if I'll trade him my washing dishes for his sweeping the dining room.  I think I want to nurture that more.  All of them already have some input on our meal plans, but it'll be good getting them slowly more involved in reading and following recipes and seeing first hand how a meal comes together.

And I'm sure we'll have our fill of painting, play dough, dolls, and building.  The tent will likely come up this week too.  And we'll try to fill it with play dates and outside time.  I hope this hint of spring we've been glimpsing will stay long enough to get to some parks and maybe some longer walks.

This afternoon I think we're going to make it out to the museum (Yay!) and then play the rest of the week one day at a time, see what play dates solidify.  And weather seems to be fickle, so that'll have a lot of bearing on what we do.

Right now it's gorgeous out, Girlie and Daddy are starting to stir as I send the boys outside to play.  Time to gear up and roll to the museum!

Saturday, March 8, 2014

getting dressed

It's been a good week.  Today we wanted to get out and see the school that Daddy has been doing his course at, so we loaded up and drove out.  Beautiful drive, started to rain, saw alot of the ocean, discovered new roads along the sea front, pretty little houses, quaint little shops. 

Today I've been very grateful in my codirector of parenting.  At lunch Sergeant asked how babies came out of the mommy's belly.  I told him I'd answer after nap time, Hubby looked over and told him straight that they go through the vagina.  Sergeant just looked incredulous from Dad to me and said "No, they don't."  So Hubby just told him that he was too young to understand how or why, but that was the truth.  I'm still not sure he believes it.  Hubby told me later that it was up to me to tell him how the babies get in the belly to start with!

And at bedtime, as I was sitting in the girls' room, I heard the boys asking what the word "redeem" means.  I didn't really get a chance to hear the response, but I am grateful that the kids are asking these questions.  It means we're doing our jobs well as parents.

We have had kitties, puppies, girls playing house, boys reading, library visits, tasty dinners, yummy baking.  We have spring break coming up this week and I'm not sure who's most excited about it, the girls, the boys, or mommy.  Daddy has leave coming the week after, and that's when Sergeant turns 6.  EEK!

Monkey is dressing herself.  She has decided that I'm not allowed to put her pants on or pick out her clothes.  I "flat" her pants, lay them on the floor up right so she can pull her legs through, and she pulls them up.  Then I help her pull them over her diaper.  Then she stands on tippy toes to dig in her shirt drawer and then I leave her room.  She finds me a few minutes later after not being able to put her shirt on by herself and gets me to help her.  It's very cute, and it seems to have cut down on the fight that usually happens when I try to hog tie her down to clothe her.

I'm really looking forward to this next week off from school.  No rushing around, nap time whenever we need it, no waking the girls up to pick up the boys.  It's going to be very nice!

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Little things

There have been   a few moments in the last while that have made me think "I need to write that one down!".  And then I forget.  So here are a couple of them while they are on my mind.

First, this morning after bringing everyone who needs to be at school to school I came home with Monkey and did a half hour on our elliptical (kijiji is wonderful!).  When we went up so I could shower I set her up on my bed with books and the leap pad.  Since those are things that would have kept the others occupied while I was busy.  Halfway through, the bathroom door opened and I peeked out to see those bright blue eyes looking up at me.  Okay, not the first time she's decided to check in while I'm in there.  But when I turned off the water and grabbed my towel, I saw her by the toilet, pants off, diaper still on (thank HEAVENS!), new diaper on the floor, toilet seat up.  She really, REALLY wanted to sit on the toilet.  This is by far the earliest any of our kids has wanted so strongly to be on the toilet.  If she's serious about this, she could be fully toilet trained by the time she's 2!  That's huge!

Yesterday the girls had a lot of fun with their toys.  Violet, Girlie's Leap Frog puppy, was carted around with a pull-up on, blankets, she tried to put her favourite pants on it, three of the puppy stuffies had a nap on the girls' room floor and we all had to be quiet so we didn't wake them up.  It was very cute.

Yesterday I received a phone call from the school to tell me that Smarty had taken a header on the play ground and scraped his nose and a bit of his forehead.  He enjoyed retelling what exactly had happened and he always starts off saying that he and two of his friends were rough housing.  Yup.  That is a frequently used word in this house!

Sergeant had his first "naturally lost" tooth!  Saturday night I pulled it out and the new one is already popping through.  No sigh of his other top tooth, but I'm sure it'll be there before too long.  His other one seems to have come in nicely.

Some time last week, I heard Girlie head into the bathroom, singing to herself.  Then I hear her voice get louder as she announces to me "I think I'm big enough to pee standing up, Mom".  So I rushed to the bathroom to see her just putting herself in position in front of the toilet.  I quickly turned her around and got her sitting down, while explaining that she doesn't really have the right anatomy for peeing standing up.  Didn't get into the fact that there are women who have accomplished this feat, just that, because her bits don't stick out (I used proper names, we always have.  Just don't want to type them here...) she won't likely be able to even consider trying for quite some time.  She just looked at me and told me she wanted boy parts.  Didn't want to be a boy, just wanted the parts so she could pee standing up too.  Five minutes later she was dancing and twirling, talking about how she wants to be a kitty cat when she grows up.  That's my happy girl!  Think big, Sweetheart!

With another birthday nearly upon us, the boys sat down yesterday after school to write down a list of children Sergeant would like to have over.  Turns out, he wants his whole class!  Told him that it was too many people and we would narrow it down by the time we do invitations.  Next we'll do cake and game planning.

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Sunday Morning lazy

So I decided to give the blog a bit of a face lift.  I like it!

Sunday morning, kids had early breakfast (because they are always up early) and now are watching a bit of cartoons so Mom and Dad can be a little lazy.  Hubby finally updated his blog (YAY) and I thought I would too.

It's odd for me to be sitting on the couch with the tv on downstairs, listening to the quiet followed by chuckles at whatever the Cat in the Hat is doing.  We used to have it on more, now we've moved away from it as the older kids are getting older.  These poor girls don't get near as much screen time as their brothers did!

We've had an absolute;y beautiful last day and a half but it's grey again today.  Warmer, but no sun.  I think I'd take the sunshine and colder weather over this.  But we're supposed to get a bit more snow too, so that should be fun.

We had an amazing supper last night!  For Christmas the kids got a new cookbook that they have been going through off and on, but one of the meals they wanted back in January we never got around to making so we did that yesterday.  Tasty pasta casserole that we adapted for what we had in the kitchen. It was supposed to only have the pasta, cauliflower, and ham in a cheesy garlicky white sauce.  I added some broccoli, used mozzarella cheese instead of the sharp (just because it's what we had.  The sharp would have added a kick to it), completely forgot about the Parmesan, and put it a bit of powdered mustard instead of Dijon. It was very, very good.  Sergeant wasn't fond of the broccoli (he loves broccoli soup, really dislikes simply cooked broccoli), Girlie didn't like the cauliflower, but they ate it, because that is what they need to do.

Then there were games brought up.  Our friend Coastal Transplant came over for supper and visiting so the boys wanted to play games with her while Daddy ran a bath for the girls.  We had Zingo (Bingo with a ZING!) and Candyland.  Bathtimes, teeth, then bed, with Hubby and I playing cards a bit longer with Coastal Transplant and chatted a while before she headed home.

Well, Girls are starting to loose focus on the cartoons now.  They are dressed now (in matching pink dresses) and I should get moving so we don't fall behind before church.  Plus I'll need to take a bit more time for another cup of coffee :)