Green Eggs and Ham

This year Savannah is learning how to read which is very exciting for all of us. She learned a bunch of sight words in preschool last year so the first batch of sight words she's been given in kindergarten has been review for her. We bought her some little readers and have been reading those but a few days ago she decided she wanted to tackle an actual book. She chose Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss and, despite a handful of words, she was able to read the whole book on her own. David and I were so impressed with her and I could tell she was very excited. One has to love those Dr. Seuss books...all the rhyming and sight words and short words that are easy to sound out. In honor of Savannah reading Green Eggs and Ham I made green eggs and ham for the kids' dinner last night. I abstained from the green eggs myself but Savannah and Xander gobbled theirs right up.

My Late Night Monster

The face of an angel...or is it? My darling little Noah started sleeping through the night at 6 weeks and I mean he really started sleeping through the night. I always laugh when people say their child is sleeping through the night when he/she goes to bed at midnight and gets up at 6:00...I hate to break it to them but that is NOT sleeping through the night. Noah goes down at 8:30 and usually sleeps until 7:30 or 8:00. It has been fabulous! Now, for those of you who always think that I'm bragging about Noah I just have to say that it's not really bragging...it's just such joy at having a baby such as Noah and I just can't keep my happiness from overflowing. You see, I served my 16 month sentence in hell with baby Xander (and it truly was hell; I am not exaggerating the 3 hours it took to get him to bed or the subsequent 8-12 times I had to get up during the night to try and quiet his screaming...every night of his first 16 months!!!) and so Noah is just a dream come true for us. But the past few nights he has started waking up around 4:00 and it takes almost an hour to get him back to sleep. Then it takes me awhile to fall back asleep and then it's time to get up just a little while later which leaves me dead for most of the day. Yes, I have been spoiled with Noah...but this is rough! My neighbor said that her little boy who is a few months older than Noah started waking up in the night when he started teething and yes, Noah is teething right now. She said resist giving him a bottle and eventually he'll get out of the habit of getting up. I sure hope so...I enjoy my sleep and want to go back to how it was before my little late night monster started waking me up!

Eating-Baby-Food Challenged

Okay, I've never had this problem with any of my other kids - Noah, after 2 months of trying to eat baby food, still can NOT do it. I thought that he would LOVE baby food because he's such a little porky pig. But he just can not seem to grasp the concept that you need to open your mouth in order to eat the food. David and I are becoming extremely frustrated with the whole process. He clamps his jaw shut and sucks his bottom lip in with the upper lip tightly over it so it is almost impossible to crack his mouth open to get any food in. Once he gets a little food on his lips, both hands come up to smear the food all over his fingers and then he sucks the food off of them. Yes, sounds funny but I just want him to open his mouth and take the food in. You'd think he'd get it by now. At least HE still finds reason to be happy.

A Beautiful Hike

Late Saturday afternoon we decided to take a hike so we headed out our back door and into the woods behind our house. We have been so lucky to have these beautiful trees behind us instead of other homes because it has allowed us privacy as well as a much better view from our back windows. As we hiked down the hill I didn't know if we were going to make it very far...I have never heard so much whining and complaining (okay, maybe there was more from the Schaeffer kids when we had to work in the garden or hike through the Redwoods with the banana slugs). But once we got to the bottom of the hill the kids seemed to enjoy themselves much more. We had a deer run through the woods pretty close to us but David, with his eagle hunting eyes, was the only one to see it; the rest of us just heard it which was cool in itself. We walked along for a little ways, enjoying the beautiful colors of the leaves and the Winters Run River. We also came across the ruins of what was once a house. Most of it had fallen down except for two walls and the oven. It was up a little hill, really close to the river, a good spot for the people who had once lived there. I could tell that Savannah and Xander were having a hard time imaging who would want to live in a house with no roof! As the sun started to go down it got a whole lot colder so we headed back home. Both Savannah and Xander told us how much fun they had had on our family hike.





On Sunday I was released from my calling as YW President. Of course my feelings are a little mixed; I will miss the girls and the leaders I served with but I feel as if a huge load has been lifted off my shoulders. It was becoming increasingly difficult to take care of all the responsibilities in my life and make sure that my kids and husband were getting quality time from me. I'm sure they'll have me serving somewhere else soon but for now I'm enjoying the relaxation of only having to worry about 3 kids, not 20 teenage girls.

Savannah's last soccer game

The weather forecasters said today would be sunny and 61 and, as often happens, the forecasters were WRONG! It was overcast, windy, and cold. We headed off to Savannah's last soccer game this morning, all of us sad that the season was over. Only half of her team showed up and the other team was missing a lot of girls as well so the coaches decided to only play a 20 minute half. The assistant coach was gone so I got to coach again which I so enjoy! The girls played really well and were able to win their last game, 1 - 0. Savannah ran her heart out and had several collisions, unfortunately with her own teammates...kids this age just run in packs on the soccer field. At the end of the game the girls received trophies and Savannah has proudly displayed hers on her nightstand in her room.

Trying to stay warm!




What a great season, Grasshoppers!

The sign of a good soccer player...dirty knees!

Pink Eye

Tuesday Savannah came home from school with some redness and swelling under her eye along with some discharge coming out of her eye. I asked her what had happened and she replied that she had picked at it the night before. I didn't think anything other than she had probably irritated it in some way. But by the next morning I was pretty sure that it was pink eye, especially when by midday her other eye was starting to ooze. I kept her home on Wednesday (Halloween) but still let her trick-or-treat (yes, we probably infected the whole neighborhood). Thank goodness I just called the doctor and they were willing to call in medication without me having to take her in. Savannah can be a little wimpy about some things and applying the medicine to her eyes has been a tough ordeal. She has cried and whined the whole time I'm trying to get her to hold still long enough for me to get the drops in her eyes. I tried to explain to her that the medicine will help her eyes feel a whole lot better but she wasn't buying it...until today. Her eyes look much, much better and they feel better too because she's no longer complaining about the drops. I'm just hoping that the other kids don't get it. We tried to get some close-ups but she kept closing her eyes on me. You can tell from the pictures we took when my friend Jenn was here that she has swelling under her eye (sorry, Jenn, that your kids were definitely exposed!) The hardest part for Savannah, other than the drops, was that she had to miss school on Wednesday. She cried and cried but seemed to understand that it wasn't a good thing to expose her friends to this. Thank goodness there was no school Thursday and Friday so she only missed one day of school for double pink eye.

Halloween

Halloween - my favorite holiday. I know it's kind of strange considering I don't have a sweet tooth and could care less about candy but I've always found the whole monsters/witches/ghosts/haunted house thing really cool. My love of Halloween has rubbed off on my kids and since the day we decorated they have been looking forward to this night. The kids looked really great in their costumes. Savannah was a very sweet looking vampire and we pulled out the bat costume for Noah. But Xander won the costume contest! David did a great job with his face makeup and Xander's whole personality just fit the Frankenstein character. He would walk up to get the candy, hold out his hand without saying a word or looking at the person, take the candy, grunt something which unfortunately was not "thank you", and then walk away. Almost every person handing out candy or that we passed on the sidewalk commented on our little Frankenstein...he really did look great! One of the benefits to living in a townhouse is we didn't have to walk far to get to a bunch of houses. Plus, out here, everyone just sits on their porch to hand out candy so that cuts down on the waiting time for someone to answer the door. The kids were able to get a ton of candy and we loved seeing all of the wonderful decorations that people had put up. Xander was so tired when I tucked him in bed that he was falling asleep as he was giving me a good night kiss...an obvious sign of a night well spent.






Savannah really wanted us to match so thank goodness we were able to find these costumes. It's amazing how hard it is nowadays to find an adult female costume that isn't prefaced by "sexy".

The vampire and her adorable bat baby. Watch out for his fangs!

We made off with a pretty good stash...now we just have to convince Mom and Dad that candy is acceptable for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.


A better view of our pumpkins!