My day with Lucy

Today the boys had a field trip with their Chinese school. I must admit, it was rather glorious.  I am so thankful I get to spent most every day with them and I love them and am thankful...but a day every once in a while where they are gone all day was really a gift.  It was quiet.  I had Lucy's nap time all to myself.  And I enjoyed some fun time with Lucy, who is changing so quickly and getting big.

What did I do with all this free time?  Well, I had a longer-than-usual time with the Lord, which was quite refreshing. I did my PT exercises, which I have not done in 2 months probably...definitely fell off that wagon.  I made granola ( we finish one batch every few days now), made some sugar cookie dough to freeze so we can pull it out throughout the month, printed and laminated our Jesse Tree devotional and ornaments for Advent season (from Ann Voskamp, a new favorite writer - author of 1000 Gifts- and homeschooling mom blogger), read to Lucy, took her for a walk on her new pink trike, worked on pizza night, listened to Christmas music...and some other things I am sure.  But it was a nice day.  Keeping up with Lucy is no small task these days either.  Here are some shots of what she is into ...

 I am no longer afraid she will be illiterate...she really likes books these days as well as climbing up and sitting in this little chair.  She can turn the pages, chatter as if she is reading, point and make the right animal noises...so cute.

 She can also climb up on the couch now.  Not so excited about this new feat....it is still difficult for her, but she can do it. Note about this outfit.  Yes, she is wearing a shirt and tights.  I was planning to take her out and her thick pants to go outside were still drying so she played in tights for awhile.

Well, she has this love/hate relationship with shoes.  She doesn't really like to wear them and bunches up her toes when you try to put her shoes on.  Drives me a bit crazy now that the weather is so cold and shoes are necessary.  But if she finds them, she acts like she wants you to put them on.  Or she will try to put them somewhere near her feet.  As you can see she is wearing one pair and mad because I will not put the other pair on. Such a girl!

 Uh oh Mommy, it came off (b/c you bunch up your toes and they won't fit).

She is in a rather destructive phase...at least destructive to any attempts at cleaning the house.  She loves to empty the hat and glove basket, pull all the books off the bookshelf, ransack cabinets and close doors (and nearly pinch her finger or get stuck in a room since she can't open them.  She is keeping me on my toes.

 Here she is on her new bike.  She seriously loves this thing...more than her brothers ever liked bikes at this age.  If the front door is open, she makes a beeline for it in the hall.  Today I took her out for a little walk in it.  It was SO cold, but she just makes these singing noises and rocks and bounces happily in it the whole time.

 Her doll.  She has loved this doll (and all dolls and stuffed animals, but especially this doll ) for several months now. She has to have it when she wakes up and gets out of bed.  Loves and cuddles and kisses it. Sleeps with it.  Such new territory in our house!

Sweet sleeping face.  Another new development is her reaction to the word "no".  She sometimes ignores you at first but if I raise my voice even the slightest bit when she is into something she shouldn't be she gets this trembling lip and tears fill her eyes and she gets SO sad.  Twice Chris has said "no" very firmly (but not loudly) and she will put her head down on the high chair tray and just SOB.  Totally bursts into tears and needs lots of comforting.  Chris turns to putty instantly and gives her hugs and kisses. Wow, quite the drama queen already and much more sensitive to being told no than her brothers ever were.  Or knows how to work it, hard to tell at this point, ha. Not that it keeps her out of mischief, but she does seem to pick up pretty quickly on what she can and cannot do.  After a few days of telling her no, she mostly is already leaving the Christmas tree alone, which I thought might be impossible.

Tomorrow we start our first day of Advent reading, are planning to make some salt dough Christmas ornaments... posts of our tree will come.  Good night.

Thankful

Again our internet has not been very user friendly lately...so I am very far behind in the blogosphere. We had a nice Thanksgiving, though I must admit the time seemed to fly by.  I really love the Thanksgiving season of being grateful, but did not meditate on that as much as I would have liked.  One thing I am very thankful for is a good health report for Austin.  The Friday before Thanksgiving he    started a headache.  He has started to get headaches occasionally and unfortunately has probably inherited both his parents' tendency to get them. I started at age 5.  But Saturday he still had the headache and Sunday he woke with a headache, fever and neck ache.  Not very good signs so I took him in to the doctor (and we unfortunately had to miss one of Chris' big events of the year, The Gift charity bazaar and concert). His good response to advil and ability to move his neck made the doctor think it was not something serious.  So we went home.  No fever Monday but still the headache, Tuesday, Wednesday still had a headache.  We went back to see my favorite pediatrician ( I am so thankful also for the doctors in this city).  She thought most likely it was a virus causing the headache, possibly even a mild case of viral meningitis, but wanted to do a CT scan to make sure.  This doctor does not quickly prescribe any medication or treatment unless she really thought it important, so we did.  Austin did great though I got a little choked up seeing him lie still on the CT bed. He lay very still like they told him and it lasted less than 3 minutes.

He got a great report from the CT scan the night before Thanksgiving, so we think it was a virus.  He still says he has a very mild headache ever since then, so I don't really know what to think of that.  I have had a lot of headaches these 10 days too and am wondering if the weather, pollution, etc is also affecting us.  We are not too worried about anything anymore but I am sad that it seems like headaches will definitely be in his future.

 We made a turkey snack...we just happened to have one or two candy corns that Austin received at Halloween, completed by raisin feathers and cheerio eyes glued with peanut butter.

 Some of our Thanksgiving spread...we celebrated Thursday with 4 other families in our neighborhood.  It was a nice time, simple and definitely more restful than last year when I decided to cook the entire meal myself.

 Lucy was dressed in her "snow elf" looking dress...isn't she cute?

 The four families (including ours) have a total of 13 kids.  Five of those kids were added in the last year and a half!  

The goobies (as Chris often refers to the boys) eating their meal.  The boys loved the meat (turkey and homemade ham by Therese) and the bread mostly.  And pumpkin pie.  But neither like mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole or green bean casserole.  Not even Lucy would eat the mashed potatoes...guess that is not a winner in our house.

Still here

 Sorry if some of you might have thought we fell off the planet.  We are still here. And our internet seems to be at least working decently, though I still would not call it fast.  How is it almost Thanksgiving?  Our October flew by with trips and visitors.  And here November is half way over.  We have celebrated two more birthdays in the past week, so I will document here.  There is plenty more to blog about but that will occupy enough for one night.

So Lucy's first birthday celebration was put off again and again by our crazy travel schedule in October.  I spontaneously decided last Friday that we must celebrate before Austin's birthday or it would never happen.  She is only one and will not know the difference now, but I did not want to slight her when she is bigger without a first birthday celebration.  It was VERY simple.  Friday was pizza night.  The Hunemullers were already coming over.  We added Rebecca's family and it was a party.  It lasted about 30 minutes.  First up was the "what will you be when you grow up" game.  You put lots of toys representing different professions and the one she goes to first... is what she will be. I think this is a Chinese game, but we love it. She immediately went for...the guitar!  Takes after her daddy.  If her doll had been out, she probably would have grabbed that but we could not find out.  She does love music and bobs along to any tune she hears.

 I made a "Lucy bug" cake since that is what we call her.  She wasn't sure what to make of it.

 She started out with very dainty little bites.  Really she was so dainty at first with just the tips of her fingers in the icing.

 Then she seemed to like it more...check out that tongue.  Reminds me of Austin who still does a "Michael Jordan" tongue out whenever he is concentrating on something.

 Ok, I think this is pretty good.

 And she managed to have a messy cake face...though much neater than her brothers' first try of cake.  That was the end of her party.  Earlier we got her a little pink tricycle that can be pushed and steered by an adult.  She loves it.  Whenever we open the front door she wants to go out in the hall and sit in it.  We didn't wrap it or give it at her party...third child without as much ceremony.

 And wow, I have a 6 year old!  Hard to believe he is getting to be such a big kid.

 For months the plan was to have a baseball party.  Which we did, but it was SO SO cold and windy the game was rather short.  I took a few pictures and had to take Bennett and Lucy and a few other little ones inside.

 Austin running home.

Quite the blower (it was more like spitter) as he blew out the candles.  We also had a "6" pinata and otherwise was pretty simple.  We are so proud of Austin's thoughtfulness to others, especially his siblings, his growing mastery of Chinese and willingness to use it more, his quick mind, love of story and creativity.

Now we are birthday'd out and starting to think about Thanksgiving! Ok, better hit publish while the internet is working.

Hoping this works!

Internet speed has been, well, not speedy lately.  Blogging has been almost impossible but tonight it seems like it just might work.  This will be brief in hopes that it will be a go.  Since returning from our crazy trip, we have had a fun visitor (my good friend from college, Diane), two Halloween parties, a new round of colds, nice fall weather and then Sunday morning we woke to several inches of snow!  And no heat on yet.  The heat is now on a low setting and it takes the edge off, for which I am very thankful. 

 Took Diane to a trendy hotpot place around here...they have a playplace with childcare, free fruit and appetizers while you wait, this hip hop dancing noodle maker who makes your noodles before throwing it in the pot, free manicures and of course, yummy hot pot. Oh and ayis who will walk around and entertain your one year old for a long time!

Halloween (or actually, ahem, Harvest Party you dress up in costume for)..party number one...Chris gets points for getting the kids dressed up and taking them to the homeschool party by himself. I was out with Diane...he even cut out the black dots from construction paper for the little ladybug's costume.

 Great Wall...the three of us went.  It was fun, but we went to the closest part of the Wall.  I had not been to that part since 1997...for a reason.  SO SO crowded,ugh.  But still beautiful.

 Neighborhood party... number two.  Austin changed costumes as you can see.

 The Hosts with the Most...our neighbors Therese and Jim threw another great party..more perfect for our fam with a smaller crowd.

 These Dads (aka mummies) did a dance routine that will not be soon forgotten!  Chris "won" the contest. 

 Yes, early November snow is becoming a trend.  Lucy wasn't sure what to think of it. Bennett wanted to go in about ten minutes after we got outside. Austin would have stayed out all day i think.  

She could barely move in all her layers.  As Chris said, she now looks like a Chinese baby in September...ha ha.