Can you jump rope better than a 12-year-old?

This was 8 minutes well spent. I think this might have resurrected Miriam's interest in skipping rope.

Chuh!

Or, to translate from Josephspeak:

TRUCK!

Remember me whining about how our beloved HOA saw fit to tear up all the sidewalks just before Halloween? Today the construction crews came through and poured all the new sidewalks. It was a BIG day for the resident small fry. We halted school so we could all watch.

Even if they watched from safe distances.

Amazing to think that this disgusting glop turns into beautiful, smooth, bike-able, non-litigious sidewalks. It was interesting watching the workers get right in the middle of it and smooth it all down, over and over. They must have spent a good 10 minutes just on that little stretch there.

Making sure they got it right.

The only annoying thing was that I had to park like a half a mile away, because you weren't allowed to park anywhere near where they were going to pour, unless of course you WANTED to be towed (as I was hunting around for a spot, I thought it almost might be worth it to have THEM find me a parking spot!), and of course all the free street spots were full b/c everyone else for two blocks had to park somewhere else too!

But now we have a beautiful new sidewalk, poured just in time for the afternoon rain shower...

Here we go again

blah blah Halloween blah blah sewing blah blah HOA blah blah...

Let's get to some REAL news.

Drumroll, please, Maestro......
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Introducinnnnng,

for the Very First Time on the Internet,

(and surely not to be the last),

the Newest

Member

of the Pickles Family!!!

Toot-ta-toot!

(c'mon, it's the fourth kid -- it deserves a little pomp!)

(and WHY do doctors always give you the ultrasound that makes your baby look like a peanut-shaped lump, and never print out the cute teddy-bear ones where you can see their little hearts beating? WHY?)

So, here we go again! We officially have Too Many Children (depending on whom you ask). I'm going to get a little notebook and carry it around with me, so that when I inevitably get asked the inevitable questions that everyone believes it's their business to ask, I can tally that particular question, and respond with the handy previously-decided-upon answer. (Like, "No, I guess we DON'T know what causes that! Can you please explain it to me?")

Well, all the rest of you are so nice, ONE of us has to be snarky and shut the busybodies up. Or at least make them go home and re-think their purpose in life.

So, the pregnancy is going really well -- all hormone levels where they should be (praise God), baby's heartbeat looks good, it wiggled around for us on screen, so now we can draw a collective breath of relief and really start to feel glad. A miscarriage really changes you forever -- every rejoicing at a new pregnancy is carefully measured, until you feel you're "safe." Still, prayers are much appreciated.

So far I feel pretty good -- the nausea is really understated this time (again, PRAISE God!) and I haven't noticed any true moodiness -- but I am unbelievably, overwhelmingly, t-i-r-e-dddddd. I could get 11 hours of sleep at night and still wake up tired, need an afternoon nap, and go to bed early. (I actually did that once.) I am sleepy ALL the time. This is making driving reeeeeally interesting. I'm happy though -- I will take crippling exhaustion over mild nausea ANY day. Tiredness, I'm used to -- I'm a mom who likes to stay up late, for goodness sake. But nausea I could easily, happily, joyfully live without. I haven't escaped it completely -- it still likes to creep up on me, particularly whenever I'm making dinner.

So, stats -- I'm about 8 weeks along, due date mid-June-ish. (Happy Birthday, Uncle Dave!) It will be nice having a summer baby. School will be finished, PLUS I can spend the last few weeks of pregnancy floating in a pool! Ah, bliss.

It's going to be a busy summer for the family -- there will be baby cousins born in March, May, and now June!

Life is a beautiful thing.

(art credit: "Hope: Baby Hands and Feet" by Laura Monahan from art.com)

So how did YOU spend the last week of October?

Well, I spent it chained to my sewing machine. Because, total shock to all of you who know me, I put off starting Halloween costumes until the last minute. (I know! SO unlike me!) However, nothing helps you focus better than a mild case of panic, I've found. And I'm happy to say they were ALL done in time. I may or may not have finished the last bits that afternoon, and Mr. Pickles may or may not have had to child-wrangle independently for several nights in a row. However, we all agree it was worth it.

Two colonial girls (with non-period turtlenecks), and an elf (with non-period glowstick doubling as a sword). I just want you all to admire the elf's hat for a moment, because after all my hard work adjusting and redesigning the resizing the pattern and then putting it together, said elf allowed it to grace his head for all of .024 seconds (or however long our camera's shutter speed is). (I'm not the numbers person in the family.)

This is how Joseph feels about hats in general. Oh, going outside in winter is going to be SOO fun!

Like the good community-minded citizens we are, we supported our local high school's athletci boosters and bought their overpriced pumpkins to carve. I let the girls choose their own pumpkins (with the caveat that they had to be able to carry them off the lot -- with Katie I compromised by having her carry Joseph's while I took hers -- she's such a lightweight most of the pumpkins weighed more than she did). They also designed their own faces, as is pretty obvious.

Sorry, no Homestarrunner themes this year. I thought Katie's white pumpkin was pretty cool. It smelled like cucumbers while we were carving it.

I need to remember to take Halloween pumpkin pictures while it's still daylight out.

For dinner we had ghouled cheese sandwiches and gory soup. The previous night we had kept up family tradition by having Witches' Brew, with heads of lizards, tails of swine, chicken gizzards soaked in brine... that sort of thing. Although Miriam said she wasn't fooled and insisted it was just plain chili. But what does she know, she's only 7.

When it was dark enough we headed out to load up on more sugar than should legally be allowed in the possession of 3 children. I don't think the 3 children would agree with that, though.

(Joseph is pretty good at raiding the pumpkins for loot.)

Joseph was a very cute trick-or-treater. He figured out the loot-for-cuteness pretty fast. He's in the parroting stage, so after about the third house, he began to chorus with the girls, "Tweeeat!" Then he would blow kisses as he was leaving. Naturally, this earned him extra from all the middle-aged ladies in the neighborhood.

The kids were troopers. Amazingly, Joseph walked most of the way himself. For some inexplicable reason, our HOA chose the week before Halloween to tear up the sidewalks -- in between rainstorms -- so getting around the neighborhood was... interesting. And muddy. Katie's arm gave out towards the end and we had to carry her pumpkin for her. It drizzled almost the whole time -- and at one point it even opened up and began to pour -- fortunately we were close to home, so we ran home and were able to wait it out in comfort while we sampled some of the haul. We brought one of Miriam's friends along with us, too, which made things even more fun.

Ahh, just desserts!

The next day our homeschoold group had an All Saints' party with a parade, games, and again, more sugar than should be legal. Because of course no kid got enough the previous night. We ran a game called "St. Martin's Mice" in which contestants would race to push a "mouse" (small balls) across the room with a push broom. This was a big hit with the boys, especially. Mr. Pickles dressed up as St. Martin, in a white bathrobe with an old black T-shirt he had cut up to look like a Dominican habit. It was awesome. And naturally, I forgot the camera. RRRGH!

On the way home we picked up a pizza for dinner. I offered to go in and get it, since I'm not sure how many locals would recognize a Dominican habit when they saw one, or know it was All Saints' Day. :)

It was a fun, fun weekend. And now we are all flossing obsessively.

How soon before ThinkGeek comes out with a T-shirt in Cosmic Latte? (if they haven't already)

My new favorite beverage

Goes nicely with our new favorite TV show (to which we are quickly becoming addicted -- thank the Lords of Kobol for our friends' DVD collection, so we don't have to wait 2 whole days for the next disc to arrive from Netflix!)

Communing with nature

Miriam making a new friend.

Our annual October trip

Yes, once again we went back to the Alma Mater for Homecoming weekend/Medieval Festival/general family fun times. :)

For the trip out, we FINALLY turned Joseph's carseat around so he was facing forward. He was enthralled by how much more he could see. And he was in total heaven on the highway -- all the TRUCKS!!!

The kids were happily reunited when we arrived. They spent all that afternoon playing. The next day we went to the university's Medieval fair.

All the cousins are growing so fast... and growing in numbers! Edy's family is expecting another sibling next year!

Well, since we missed the pony rides last year, we made sure to stop there first!


That is one happy girl.

Joseph didn't understand why HE couldn't ride the ponies.


As per tradition, everyone get her face painted with the usual flowers and rainbows and stars and hearts. What? No skull and crossbones?

Even little Lucy got a happy face! She is such a sunshiney girl.

The crafts were awesome -- swords and shields and crowns and bead necklaces. We spent a long time at this table!


We also went to the food tent and bought "lamb's wool" from my old household (Love of the Lamb). :)

Joseph wasn't quite sure what to make of his first cotton candy. I think he was weirded out by the texture.

The rest of the weekend was pretty unstructured. We tried to get together with some other friends who were in town, but we ended up just hanging out with the cousins, which was fine by everyone!

Playing Princess Monopoly. In a surprising turn of events, Joseph refused to sit on Miriam's lap, and insisted on sitting with Aunt Rachel!

We had lots of great times together. Lots of loud times...


...and cute times.

It's a pity I didn't keep recording -- they got very cute right after the video cuts off, talking with each other and playing with their feet. It's so fun watching toddlers together! Lucy and Joseph take the cake for cuteness. They were completely enamored with each other.



On the way home, we stopped at our favorite BK for lunch. Not only did Joseph figure out how to give his mother a heart attack by climbing up into the playtower,


...but Katie was also brave enough to make it all the way to the top!


She also braved the BIG slide and was so proud of herself!


The first time she went down, she had this same look on her face, and was jumping up and down and clapping her hands and singing out gleefully, "I'm not afraid! I'm not afraid! I'm not afraid!"


Lucy and "Buddy". Thank heaven for family.

School Days

School is going very well. Much better than this time last year! Let's hear it for no-brainer pre-packaged curriculum! I also schedule lots of breaks into the year, so even if (who am I kidding? WHEN) we get behind, we'll have plenty of opportunities to play catch-up.

Miriam is reading very well now, which is great, because it means she can READ DIRECTIONS and WORK INDEPENDENTLY! Yay for workbooks! I can let her do math, spelling, grammar, handwriting, and some geography and science independently. I think she actually actually enjoys the responsibility of doing her work herself. Now I need to stock our home library with good children's literature -- she's already devoured everything I had!

Katie also loves to "do school." She's busily learning her letters -- writing and sounds. I'm hoping to have her reading by Christmas, at least simple words, but I know I have to wait for that magic click in her brain. So far, she gets it. She already knows most of her letter sounds, we're just going through the alphabet systematically to make sure everything's covered. Her drawing has also really improved -- sometimes it's hard to tell who drew which picture of a princess. :)

Joseph even has school time -- by which I mean I lay out a blanket and put out his basket of toys that are only for school time, like stacking cups and stringing beads and puzzles and things. If he gets interested in something, he's actually good for about 20 mins., which is enough to listen to Miriam read, or do phonics with Katie. Whenever the girls are doing their handwriting though he HAS to sit at the table with them and scribble too!

We go to the library about every other week -- ideally I'd like to go each week but it hasn't always been practical. We get the bulk of our science and history books there, plus lots of good literature and early reader books. Science started this year with learning about reptiles. I found a great craft book and we made models of the three types of reptiles:

Of course, Katie's turtle is a girl. With orange eyelashes.


Next is the human body. I currently have a chicken bone soaking in a jar of vinegar to leach out the calcium. For a field trip we went to see a display of illustrations from David Macaulay's new book, The Way We Work.

For history we're studying Medieval times and the Renaissance. We just finished a great children's adaptation of the Canterbury Tales (heavily, heavily edited!). We also read Beowulf, and a story of Sir Gawain. I need to find a good version of stories about King Arthur. Any suggestions?

Last week our homeschool group went on a field trip to Emmitsburg, MD, the burial place of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. What a lovely shrine.




We broke for lunch at the seminary a few miles down the road. These are our pastor's stomping grounds, so he felt right at home. :)

After lunch we went up to the Lourdes Grotto, an old, prayerful place where St. Elizabeth Ann and her sisters used to like to come and pray. (before the Lourdes apparitions, of course!)


Despite the cold and the gray and the traffic heading back, it was a lovely day spent with our homeschool group. We're so blessed to be a part of it!

Yet Another Desperate Attempt to Catch Up

Wow. I am just a pathetic blogger. Apologies to all you adoring fan(s). I finally cleaned off our camera after we ran out of memory (we had pictures going back to February!). Everyone is either gone or asleep, and I'm awake, so since the planets seem to be aligned I'm going to take advantage of this rare occurrence!

All hail, King Joseph!

So, obviously we're not dead yet. We've just been sucked into that swirling vortex known as The School Year. Wait, I thought homeschooling was supposed to be relaxed, flexible, customizable, and all those happy go-with-the-flow things?


must... keep... straight... face.... Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaa!!!!! Who am I kidding? Any family that is certifiably insane enough to assume the full-time task of educating its youngest members is destined to be suck into the educational vortex for a couple months. School itself only takes up about 3 hours of every day -- even less, excluding breaks. But there are weekly library trips, field trips, CCD, co-op classes on Thursdays, art projects, science projects, plus all the usual homemaking stuff like cooking and dishes and laundry and housecleaning and phone calls and doctor appointments....


So, yeah, that's where I've been the last couple months. Not that I'm complaining. Life is very full right now -- in a good way.



(Speaking of pathetic -- our garden's yield this year. I'm finally coming to grips with the realization that I just do not have a green thumb.)

One thing I've learned in the last few months is that I need to take better care of myself. Why do we mothers think that by completely sacrificing ourselves, we're doing our families a favor? I'm not being a good mother when I stay up late at night, even if it's doing something important (and not just watching free movies on Netflix). ;) Our daughters are watching us, and learning what it means to be a woman through our example. I don't want to appear tired, frumpy, and run-down on all time. My family is not forcing me into slavery -- I'm doing it to myself. So I've taken Mr. Pickles up on his many offers to take time off. Often I go shopping (SOMEONE has to support this economy!), :) sometimes I'll just go to a bookstore or the library. Another mom and I have also worked out an arrangement where we trade off babysitting each week. I've had to use most of my days so far for medical appointments, but once I did get a haircut and go to the mall. I'm learning to squeeze in these little breaks that I now know are so important -- I'd lost sight of who I was outside of Homeschooling Homemaker. I'm much more at peace with my life and children, now that I know I don't have to surrender everything I am to them.

Another benefit is that the kids get more time with just Daddy. Daddy is fun. He takes them to parks and McDonalds and all those fun things that their mean mommy NEVER does. :)


Ah, playground static!



Why yes, I do have monkeys for children.

Sigh... the baby is getting so big...