“Where flowers bloom, so does hope.”  –Lady Bird Johnson

Spring is one of those things you can’t help but notice. That’s the way it is with beauty. It is inspirational. When beauty surrounds you, you can’t help but feel better.

I took this photo on my walk the other day.

It’s funny how on my sick days I often feel too miserable to want to do chores, but I’m rarely feeling bad enough to not want to go out for a walk in the sunshine. It’s positively healing, isn’t it?

Even paths that lead to nowhere look best in spring.

I think that when you are surrounded by small, needy preschool darlings, (And they are darling. They can’t help that they are needy), you need to frequently step away for at least 20 minutes to regain perspective. It’s a battery re-charge that is REQUIRED to go on providing love to others. My favorite place to re-charge is a walk.

Nature is so obvious with its beauty. The Lord’s handiwork surpasses anything man can make. I’ve never been as inspired by concrete as I am by a good cliff or a stately tree. And yet, also, I love what man does with a green space. I’m always inspired by gardens of order and symmetry. Wild nature or well tended gardens, I love it all.

Do you know what else is obviously beautiful? Small children.  I’ve been mommy-ing for 10 years. I’ve rarely been truly depressed in that time because these little devils keep me so busy and challenged and yet so darn happy!

I can remember only one phase of feeling depressed, and it was during my second pregnancy. But we had just moved. Alan had to work long hours, and it was just a bad combination of hormones + circumstances. Plus, I was pregnant, so even though my depression was caused by hormones, I couldn’t take anything for it because I was pregnant.

Thankfully, I gave birth to a healthy baby boy, and with the pregnancy hormones gone, I was actually happier postpartum than I had felt in years. (I do realize it’s usually the opposite that’s true. I am grateful it didn’t hang on.)

These children bring us so much joy.

learning to blow bubbles under water

Little minds at work. Work, minds, work.

JD and his locked up latch board. He was quite proud of his accomplishments on this board. Don’t you love it when they are excited to accomplish things?

I passed this cat on my walk. I’ve always thought cats were prettier than dogs. Sorry, dog people. I will always be #teamcat.

The day I took this photo I thought my living room was so messy. Now I’m looking at it and thinking we were doing pretty good for four kids. Don’t you think?? I should chill.

P.S. How cute are my new Clarks loafers? And they are oh-so-cozy!!

JD, the ultimate Classical Conversations toddler, playing his tin whistle

I feel like JD is the quintessential Classical Conversations little bro toddler. We have to keep up our CC memory work next year because we’ve come too far to let it go. Next year, the big boys will be going to a Christian school. Daniel will be going to a neighborhood kindergarten, and JD will be home with me, but I still hope to keep up the CC memory work.

Let me tell you what JD walks around the house singing lately:

“us, us, ui, um, uuuuuu”

Yep, those are Latin noun endings, I forget which declension that is, but still, I think it’s hilarious that my two-year-old is walking around singing Latin.

I’m taken with these trees. Lovely in the day time, haunting in the evening.

my little ball player, tracing his w’s

I hope you are all having a great week. Alan and Caleb just got home from baseball practice. It’s Alan’s final stretch in completing his thesis, but you know Alan, that didn’t stop him from signing up to coach both Daniel and Caleb’s baseball teams. He’s also still teaching TNT boys at AWANA on Wednesday nights at church. He could probably use prayers even more than I can!

But we aren’t fooling ourselves. We know that we’re living a beautiful life here in California. And today we are counting our blessings, and thanking you all for always being so supportive.

“Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music; make music to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing, with trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn—shout for joy before the Lord, the King.”     Psalm 98:4-6

because this old picture just never gets old to me *hehehe*

Okay, one more quote, because this one is just too good to not leave you with:

“Imagine a world without beauty and dare to say that the beauty is vanity.”  –positivethesaurus.com

Beauty isn’t vanity, is it? It serves a purpose, and beauty is no less of a gift than any other.

The post Beauty is no less of a gift than any other. appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

my chubby little cherubs

Soccer season is officially over. We have a couple of weeks of peace and quiet. (Sort of. We do still have four children.) Then basketball season starts. Caleb and Joshua will be playing on the same team this year, with Alan as their coach!

Daniel is now enrolled in a pre-school! Just half day, and he doesn’t start until January, but  I’m excited for him. He’s going to love it.

JD is becoming quite the blabber mouth. It used to be that Dan followed me around all day and talked my ear off. Then the cold and the rain came. JD does not enjoy the cold or the rain, so he stays inside now. He’s like a leg appendage half the time, and he has plenty to tell us. There is no word that he cannot say. There is no feeling that he cannot express. There is no need or want that he does not feel compelled to share with me.

“Gert? Gert? I want gert.” That’s right. JD correctly uses pronouns. Hurray!

“JD, please get out of the fridge, and yes, you may have a yogurt, but get out of the refrigerator.”

“Poon. Poon. I get it. I get a poon,” as he fishes around the drawer, which is so high compared to him, that he can only peek into it with one eye, as his hand searches for a spoon.

“Got it!” He runs to the table.

“Nakin. Nakin.”

“There’s a napkin right in front of you. See?”

“Oh.”

He says ‘oh’ all the time, and it’s adorable. He tells people hello, and it’s adorable. He says pretty much anything and it’s adorable. That’s the beauty of being two.

“Done! Cars. Cars. Cars. Cars book. Read me. Read me this Cars book,” as he shoves his laptop-sized book in your face.

I try to at least read to him once per day. The others all got so much more of my time. I want to squeeze this poor little home-school toddler. If his brothers were at school, he’d get so much more of my time.

There are so many pros and cons to the home schooling. JD may not get as much one-on-one, but he adores running around with his big brothers, which he gets to do so much more of this way. He’s much better at entertaining himself than he probably would be if he were my sole focus. He made a Duplo tower today, all by himself, that was as tall as he is.

Oh, and the boy has sweet manners. I never have to ask him to say ‘thank you,’ he does it naturally. He also says, “No, thank you,” when he doesn’t want something.

**********

I’m off to bed. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. My old lady hip is angry with me. If it doesn’t improve, I will be tempted to cave and get a steroid injection. I keep reminding myself of the long term disadvantages to that, though, so I’d rather not.

I did receive the rheumatologist referral in the mail this week, so maybe I will soon be getting more answers. God knows. God knows what is causing my pain, and he knows what I need.

This home-school experiment has forced me to lean on the Lord more than I ever have, and  I’m learning so much. I would that everyone would have the opportunity to be given more than they can handle! Haha! That’s what it has taken for me to learn how to trust God more.

Okay. I will really go to bed now. Bring on the weekend!

The post So let’s just talk about the two-year-old and other updates appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Case of the Missing Lightning McQueens: Solved!

JD is obsessed with three things: dirt, Lightning McQueen, and Mom. After all, he’s two.

He inherited at least one Lightning McQueen car from his big bros, but he has also been given several as gifts. He got at least one for Christmas, he got three or more for his birthday, plus he got one when Nonna visited. All total, I’m thinking there should be a pile of 10 Lightning McQueens somewhere in this house, yet we can never find ANY of them.

The other day, JD was under the dining room table, when he suddenly began shouting, “McQueen! McQueen! McQueen! Lightning McQueen!”

Alan was home alone with JD. I have no idea where the rest of us were. Alan crawled under the table with Dirt Boy, and sure enough there was the cache! FOUR Lightning McQueens and several race cars were all hiding in a panel under the table. You could just see one on the end poking out, and the rest were still in the panel. Alan had to slowly work them out from this wooden tunnel that we did not even know existed under our table.

It was the event of the week. Caleb and Daniel arrived home and pounced on the opportunity that I have been promising them but have yet to deliver them.

Daniel snatched one up, “Write my name on this one! Write my name on here!”

JD was in bed, so the collection was left undefended.

You see, JD is a HOG of Lightning McQueens and race cars. No one else gets to touch one if he’s around. I dutifully wrote Daniel’s name on one and Caleb’s name on another.

Our boys take the whole name-stamped-ownership thing as gospel truth, an unbreakable definition of ownership. Even JD understands the importance of it.

Unfortunately, I wrote Daniel’s name on a rusted one, so he keeps trying to trade JD, only to be met with, “NO! This yours (points to Daniel’s name). This mine!” as he points to his own name on the shiny new one.

There can never be enough Lightning McQueens.

**************

A couple of weeks ago, Nonna texted me a question that went something like this, “Can you post your favorite pics of the boys? I’m working on a Christmas project.”

I texted her back, “Christmas!? It’s only August!”

“Get with the program, girl! Christmas is only 11 weeks away!” she sent back.

So I sent her this picture, because this is how I feel about Christmas shopping, airplane tickets, and suitcases:

Oh, Christmas….

I have my reasons….

Thank you, Merry Christmas, Excuse Me, I’m Sorry…..On the return trip it took a month to get all of our suitcases back…

Our Nightmare Before Christmas….You would cry too if it happened to you.

Melancholy Christmas Cards and Dental Nightmares

I need to remind myself of this one: Best Christmas Ever

***********

 JD ate three bowls of cereal this morning, and when he was finished he took both of his spoons and ran to the kitchen. He opened the spoon drawer, tossed in the two dirty spoons, and proudly proclaimed, “Did it!” Then he dashed to the living room.

A super-mom probably would have taken that opportunity to show JD how to put his spoons in the sink. Actually, Super-Mom would have only allowed him the one spoon in the first place…

I, on the other hand, busted out laughing and rushed to find Alan to tell him the story. Oh, but first I made a note on the wipe-off board to put it on my blog.

Then I finally fished the offending spoons out myself.

*********

Roll Tide, y’all!

The post Just the Funny Paper: Hilarious Toddler Stories appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

sweet little dirt boy

JD is the definition of “all boy”. He requires 2 baths and 3 sponge-downs/day. He plays in dirt, sand, mud, and water. He’s the easiest toddler in the world because you will hardly hear a grunt out of him all day.

He wakes up, and he says, “Dirt?”

“You want to go play in the dirt?”

“Yeth.”

Sometimes, I promise, he wears shoes.

“Sure,” and we open the door to our mini-fence. It is literally a mini-fence. It is the size of a bedroom, and since there is no air-conditioning or bugs, we just leave the door to the house wide open. JD spends half the day in his tiny play yard.

He’s so filthy by noon that I bathe him, feed him lunch, and put him to bed. He sleeps for a couple of hours. Then he wakes up and says, “Dirt?”

“Dirt? Beach?”

He calls his sand box the beach.

Right now JD and Daniel are actually inside. JD has 2 Sarge jeeps from the Cars movie, so Dan convinced him to let him hold one. JD is very serious about his car collection. His favorite is this random hot rod called Boost. We only know his name is Boost because it’s written on his license plate.

All day:

“Boost?”

“Beach? Boost? Dirt?”

“Where Dad?”

“Boost.”

“Where Dad?”

He’s so cute, we just can’t leave him alone, and he’s two so he still likes to cuddle with me.

Notice the halo. Apparently, he truly is an angel! Or I should turn my flash off…

He was not impressed with the Potty Training Pep Talk that I posted last week. He’s boycotting the potty.

trampoline time

I was all geared up for the process too, y’all. I took a deep breath, Alan bought underwear, and I announced our plan to the tiny man.

“Look JD! Underwear! You are a big boy. You can pee on the potty and wear underwear.”

His eyes filled with sudden panic. His jaw set in utter determination.

Hmmm. The family stubborn gene is also strong with this one.

“Nooooooooooo!”

Uh-oh.

This is not how I had this planned.

I forged on. He wore the underwear, not that he approved of it.

I took him to the potty.

“Noooooo!” He fled the potty as though it were a rattlesnake. I don’t get it. Three weeks ago he loved the potty.

Why do toddlers pull this kind of mess?

Sooooo…..I put the underwear in the drawers. I put the boys back in Luvs. I’m going to have to buy a stupid tiny potty. I didn’t want to. It’d be so much easier if he’d just use the big potty like the rest of us. That’s what Daniel did.

But let’s face it. JD and Daniel are about as alike as a dog and a cat, so my next step is to try the little potty.

What? Does your house not look like this? Yes, they also play with my shoes. Shoes are obviously magnificent toys.

Do any of my California peeps have a potty they aren’t currently using that we could borrow for, oh, I don’t know, 6 months?

Each baby continues to remind me: As a parent, we never have this thing figured out. Each baby is unique, and some babies are down right humbling.

Embrace the humbling. Pride cometh before a fall.

Hope you are all having a great week! Anyone have any similar potty stories they’d like to share?

Do tell.

Update:

Getting a little potty did make a huge difference in JD’s willingness to participate in potty training. He used it right away. He even pooped on it the first weekend, which he followed by not pooping on it again for months. No, really months. Sometimes potty training is a long drawn-out process, and that is the truth.

The post Dirt boy does not wish to go to the potty. appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I’ve been talking a lot about my hermit problem, and I want you all to know that things are getting so much better around here. The boys are finally opening up a little more at tutoring. I had to practically drag them away from there today! Even John David doesn’t cry when I drop him off for the tutoring childcare! We have all met plenty of people that we truly like, and the fact is that I haven’t met one single person here that I can’t find something to like about.

I’m starting to remember. Oh yeah! I do like people!

Transitions are just hard, aren’t they? John David and I seem to have the hardest time with them. Every time I see him pitching a fit over some great new change in his life, I just remind myself, “This child is me.”

Moving across country and beginning home school all at one time was a huge transition. We’re over the hump. We still have rough days. I still make regrettable parenting errors, but I’m feeling hopeful.

That’s why I could never name my blog “Biblical Homemaking” or something like that. Can you imagine the pressure!? Ha!

All it would take was one time for a neighbor to overhear me losing my patience with my family, and I would be completely discredited. Nope. Not trying to act like something I’m not. We’re just a family, trying to do what is best. We listen to God. We make mistakes. We get back up again. 🙂

I have some really great news for you. John David has successfully made the transition to toddler bed!

Oh! Do you see those black out curtains? I’ve been storing those for 3 moves, and they finally came in handy! John David slept until 8 am for three mornings in a row.

I know! I hope you’re okay. Didn’t mean to make anyone choke on their coffee here. I was shocked too…

Happy JD. Happy parents. Sometimes he still wakes up at 1 am for cuddles though. yep. cuddles. I know. You hard-core folks would never put up with such, but hard-core we are not.

I was sitting in his recliner yesterday, and I chuckled at his neediness, “Oh, JD, you are so spoiled,” and as soon as I said it, I felt so sad! This child is not spoiled. This is the FOURTH baby. He rarely gets Mommy to himself. He gets a fraction of the amount of time with me that Joshua, or even Caleb or Daniel, got. With Daniel, I sent the big boys to school, and I was his all day long. JD doesn’t get that, so let the world shake their heads. If my baby needs some 1 am cuddles, then that’s just what he will get.

….And that’s why I have a strict policy about going to bed at 10pm now. It has changed my life! Over Christmas, I did all of that relaxing and sleeping, and I came home feeling like a new person. I decided then and there that I will never kill myself with sleep deprivation, stress, and unrealistic expectations again.

Do you remember my psoriatic arthritis theory and this thumb nail?

Well, it got a whole lot worse than that by Christmas, but guess what. You won’t believe it. My thumb nail is now completely NORMAL.  It’s all GONE!

So is my shoulder pain! You cannot convince me that the two are not related. I am quite sure that stress and sleep made a difference. I don’t want to end up with those nails, popping Advil 800, ever again.

In other news….Apparently, sleep is important to Alan too.

Caleb came home from the Spongebob movie Saturday and said, “Hey, Mom, just to tell you, at Spongebob Squarepants, Dad fell asleep through a lot of it.”

haaaaaaaa I asked Alan about that. He looked a little ashamed. hehehe

Alan and the boys have a few things in common, when it comes to deciding what is interesting and what is not. The other night, they were taking too long to eat their dinner, so I whipped out a magazine article on glaciers and started reading it to Joshua, Caleb, and Alan. Alan protested and started digging around for the Childcraft book on great battles for freedom.

I thought the glacier article was fascinating. Halfway through, I stopped and quizzed them all, “Wow, so what animal lives in this glacier?”

Three blank stares.

Alan said, “No idea. That was boring. Can I read my story now?”

humph!  Caleb said, “Polar bears?”

“No! Didn’t y’all hear me say the part about the little black worms that feed on the invisible algae!!???”

They all sort of giggled and started making worm jokes. I still made them listen to the rest, though. The boys said they liked it, so at least we know they’ve learned to try to make their momma happy!

I wonder if they liked Alan’s story about the Battle of Tours better.

It’s 9:45, so I’d better get to sleep. Guess who is coming to visit this week!!  We are all so excited!!!

As Joshua said, “Aunt Jennings is coming!!  You remember, Caleb, she has the glasses. Don’t you remember? She gave us the Hank the Cowdog books!”

The Hank the Cowdog books are a hit. I even enjoy them!

Hope you all have a great week!   We’ll be having a ball showing Jennings our favorite California spots!

The post Making Transitions and Solving Sleep Problems appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

JD’s new room setup

It all started with Caleb’s scooter accident on Sunday…apparently that was an omen of sorts. The next big challenge was that we promoted J.D. to a toddler bed. This has never been a big deal for us. I remember Joshua was so good at sleeping on a toddler mat, that at 14 months I could put Joshua on his mat in the hallway of a friend’s house, and he would go right to sleep.

Joshua and Caleb were both crib jumpers that had to be promoted at 15 months, to keep them from injuring themselves!

I remember Aunt Fran telling us, “You know they aren’t ALL going to be this good, right?”

hehehe  I’m sure we just thought we were the bomb, and of course they’d all be compliant nappers.

Caleb took us down a peg.  He liked to wait for me to leave the room and then pass out in his floor, playing with toys, but he was quiet, and he left us alone, so we were satisfied.

Daniel, around 18 months, sleeping soundly in his crib

Then came Daniel. By the time you have your 3rd kid, you are too busy to recall such details. Three is a stressful number because you’re still trying to live like the average American family, despite the fact that you have three children, six and under. I don’t recall Daniel’s transition at all.

But we have this one kid who has been sure to keep us humble in all of our endeavors: enter John David: both mover and shaker, a spunky man indeed! The boy has pluck.

This is John David helping me unload the dishwasher. One year olds make wonderful dishwasher unloaders!! He takes his job seriously.

A few months ago, Alan made his weekly run to the dump. Yes, we recycle, but our local California town gives us a trashcan that is barely bigger than the trash can in your kitchen to put each week’s garbage in. There are SIX of us. Seriously, you should see our teeny tiny garbage can.

So Alan was at the dump, dropping off our extra trash, when lo and behold he spots a beautiful toddler bed sitting off to the side. People around here move a lot, and sometimes the easiest way to get rid of things is to just set it by the dumpsters and figure someone will pick it up…….someone like us.

Did we NEED a toddler bed? No. We have 2 extra twin beds that we aren’t even using, but I can’t explain it. We thought the free dumpster toddler bed was cute. We proudly added it to our garage collection of “stuff we never use but couldn’t possibly give away.”

Eventually, we got tired of it taking up space, so we decided to go ahead and promote our little fella. Ready or not, here we go!!

Some people just can’t handle freedom of any sort. That boy could no more control his little self to stay in that bed than I can turn down a Krispy Kreme chocolate covered donut!! It was ridiculous! Any time he would wake up, he’d roll, or sometimes fall, right out of bed and head straight for his door. He figured out how to work a doorknob, and he was on his way to adulthood, he really seemed to think!

I already mentioned the first night, when he headed down the stairs at 1am. We have remedied that situation.

It’s been a week now, and I’m happy to report that things are much better now. It isn’t perfect, but it’s better. J.D. is a gregarious little individual. He has very set ideas for how he likes things, and change takes him a while to adapt to.

We love this outspoken, opinionated, animal loving, raisin bran crunch eating, cuddly, cuddly, cuddly little rascal so much.

Let me tell ya what is new in John David’s world:

-He has earned the nickname Angry Bird, because he reminds me of a bird sometimes, and he can be quite grumpy.

-He is usually the first person awake every single morning. I took a page from Aunt Amy’s book and hung black-out curtains. We’ve never felt the need to do this until J.D. Yes, the others all woke up early. No little boy here ever slept past 7am, but 5am is a WHOLE other kettle of fish! That is unacceptable, for sure.

I’ve always encouraged their early to rise routine (between 6:30 and 7) because I think it is a WONDERFUL habit to form as a young person, and I hope they will be able to keep it for the rest of their lives. Waking up in the morning, to this day, is my greatest struggle. I seriously need to be up and running at 6am, and that is the hardest thing in the world for me to do! Even when I go to bed at 10pm, which is my new habit for 2015, I still can’t wake up early! If you are tempted to say, “Then go to bed at 9pm,” you obviously do not have four young children. That is not actually possible in my position, I can assure you.

-JD eats breakfast with his daddy every morning. They eat eggs and Raisin Bran Crunch together. I was awake at 6 this morning to witness it, and JD mixing his eggs and cereal and eating them with his spoon, his fork, and his hands was both messy and adorable.

-JD is mostly only allowed to drink water, except for his nightcap of milk. This is because we are trying to get him as full of nutritional food as possible, in hopes that he will sleep better. Vanity, really….it’s all in vain….

-JD is starting to show interest in going to the potty. I don’t potty train 18 month olds. It’s hard enough at age 2. He will wait, and he will be just fine.

-favorite expression: “Ruff ruff! Ruff ruff!” He barks all day long.

-Favorite activity: puzzles, trains, Batman, and following his mother around. He also likes to color.

-Things his brothers say about him:

Caleb, while taking a bath with JD, “Look, Mom, I taught him this game.”

They promptly began hurling foam alphabet letters at each other and laughing hysterically. Right, well, I guess those foam letters are good for something after all…

Daniel: “Mommy!!!!  Baby took my Batman!”

“Moooooooom!!  No baby play my Batcave!”

“No, JD!”  “No, Baby!”  “NO!”  “Can JD sleep in my bed?” (Answer is no.)

“Me wake up baby now?”  (Also no.)

We were in the car the other day, and I said that JD looks so much like Joshua did. Joshua chimed in, “Except he’s way fatter than me.”

“Um, actually, JD is the skinniest baby we’ve ever had.”
“What!! I was chubbier than JD!!” Yes, Joshua, yes you were.

Caleb proudly proclaimed, “but I was the BIGGEST of all, but Daniel really was the fattest.”

Caleb, pictured here at 2 months, was off the growth charts from day 1. Extremely tall.

Daniel: His rolls had rolls.

All true, Caleb, all true. Come back tomorrow! Hopefully, I will find time to write about Caleb’s week of exciting new adventures: new sports, new friends, and one very happy Caleb.

The post You know they aren’t all going to be this good, right? appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

 The morning hour was going extremely, unusually, unbelievably well today. No one was talking over anyone. No one was saying, “Mom! Mom! Mom!” No one hit anyone. There were no crayons in the floor. No one pooped in their pants. No one was sitting on top of the table. The room was almost silent. It was like the twilight zone.

I told the boys, “Isn’t it nice in here? Wow. School would be so easy if it could always be like this.”

They giggled and nodded.

“Of course, I don’t hear your brothers at all, so I should probably go check on them.”

I knew Daniel was downstairs watching t.v., and that accounted for the quiet and the absence of violence, but where was the crayon-eating, table-sitting, diaper clad, work destroying, drooling new student???

Then there was a knock at the door.

J.D. was outside.  ??????

What!?

Daniel covered his mouth with his hands, scrunched his eyebrows into his guilty face, and said, “Me sorry, Mommy. Me open the door. Let baby go outside. Me watch my movie. No me watch baby.”

See, today had been a little off from the start because Alan was able to stay late this morning, and I got to sleep a little. (Thank you, Honey!) Normally, we are ALL upstairs to start school, but since the littles had been playing so nicely downstairs with Daddy, I didn’t go get them when he left. It just felt so GOOD to teach two big boys with no interruptions!  So incredibly peaceful and easy and so so…

not my life.

So lesson learned…..I’ll take my Failure Mom trophy now.

Moving on…..

Did I mention that JD is our newest student here at Pacific Christian Academy? Sure, he’s been around all year, at our feet, tearing up puzzles, eating crayons, and just totting around looking for something fun to do. He was messy, but he wasn’t really disruptive.

And then he learned to climb up in chairs, climb up on top of the table, and became suddenly interested in writing. What? Eating the crayons wasn’t enough of a challenge anymore? Now he wants to scribble on people’s tests, worksheets, and occasionally still give the crayon a lick. Today he even drew on his forehead.

You can see his art work on his head and on the easel behind him. Good job, JD. Meanwhile, his Curious George coloring book is still blank, but whatever.

So this is my newest challenge. It’s so important to him, and to his safety, as seen in the “Me let baby outside” story, to be WITH us while we have class, but man oh man. This is difficult! In the first 9 weeks, he went down for a nap at 10. Now he goes down at 11, so we are readjusting. The boy is certainly a force to be reckoned with.

Here are a few more JD moments:

He was really into the geology project the boys did. It was a Smithsonian kit, where the children dig the stones out of a clump of dirt. I loved the project because it kept Caleb and Joshua busy, without any need for my help!

Once JD joined their dig, they had to get creative.

“We have to put the rocks in the middle of the table, like this, so JD doesn’t get them.”

See, he does wear clothes sometimes. 😉

It’s so fun to watch these two becoming best friends. I believe it’s very important to tell small siblings constantly, “Oh, your brother is your best friend.”

“Oh, he is such a good friend. You are so lucky to have him as your best friend.”

It works.

I know it sounds crazy, but the longer I do it, the more I like it. And when things are wild, this is a verse that always brings me great comfort:

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 29″Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS.…

Matthew 11:28-29

There have been phases where I literally chanted that to myself just to pull myself out of bed in the morning, but things are really looking up around here lately.

What do you know? I think we’re finally settled in.

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