Wiggle and a Yank

For some reason blogger keeps loading my pictures opposite of how I add them. Was it always that way?
Anyway, this first picture is the "After" If you squint and cock your head to the side you can see the adult tooth peeking out back there. It's actually pretty far in. We couldn't believe that his baby tooth didn't fall out weeks ago.
That's just nasty. Teeth should not be able to do that.
Somebody get the yankers!

For those of you that enjoy videos of this sort of thing... here's some wigglin' in action. I had to pretend that I was fascinated by the bloody little wiggling tooth because Joseph was not looking forward to losing his first tooth. Other than this particular morning he NEVER wiggled. I wanted to hide under the table, but I sucked it up and video taped the whole thing. Memories. Beautiful memories.


Did you watch? Ok, I know you didn't even get to see the grand finale of the tooth coming out. My camera will only record for 1 minute. (technically 1:01) I got him all excited about pulling some more. Refolded the tissue. Gave him some yanking instructions and he went at that tooth with gusto. It popped out and he threw the tissue on the table. 5 minutes later I finally found the tooth. Joseph cried that his tooth was gone. 20 minutes later he finally ate his (now soggy) cereal.

I think all joy was restored when he got money. He earned enough from his 1st tooth to get 2 matchbox cars.
He has 3 (three!) more loose teeth. He's not wiggling.

SNOW?!?!

I think I tried to skip this post but there were some cute pictures so I decided to acknowledge the snow.
The kids woke up with shouts of joy "MOMMY! IT'S SNOWING!" ugh. go back to bed.
I endured hours of "can we go out to play NOW?" before I decided to be a fun Mommy and actually take them outside.
They were thankful.
They worked together to build a snowman. (that in the first picture they *ahem - Joseph* destroyed.)
Hannah wore mittens from when she was 3 months old. It was all I could find.
My flowers were still going strong. Snow in November? All wrong. ALL WRONG!
I don't think he is posing in front of anything, he's just posing in the snow. I think.
Shovel. Roll. Build.
Ahhh, the power of the shovel. To my surprise they shared our one little shovel like they have known how to share their entire lives.
They even listened when I said "stand by the fence and smile for mommy" I actually have about 6 pictures that are cute.
Thats not our tree. We don't have any. It's our spongebob neighbors tree. I just thought it was pretty. Snow can be pretty. From a far. In the warmth of a home. With hot chocolate in hand.

I'm crossing my fingers that the next snow fall doesn't come until February. Of 2011.

A girl can dream.

Finished sewing project

This has been in my "to-do" pile for quite some time. I had the fabric forever and then it sat half finished for awhile too. FINALLY it is done.



It's a reversible bag. I plan on using it as a diaper bag/purse thing.
I like it better with the pockets on the inside so that is the way I will be carrying it, but it can be either way. :)

One project down, many, many to go. :)

Yee-Haw!

Do you remember this thing from last year? It's back, and cooler than before. :)

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

My Birthday ~ Part 2

For my birthday my sister took me to my favorite restaurant.. Applebee's. Just us, no kids. It was lovely. I snapped a picture of her, but was too busy being excited that Applebee's is the best place ever that I forgot to take anymore pictures. Why was I excited? Because not only does Applebee's carry Pepsi products (!!!) they also have a Cowboy Burger and...

behold...



The Quesadilla Burger. Have mercy! Did you ever try this thing?

I was so torn between the Cowboy burger and the Quesadilla Burger that I ALMOST called Roger to decide for me. I knew that if I did my sister would never let me hear the end of it. So I just sucked it up and made a decision. After all, they both came with the killer Applebee's fries.

I'm still full. That's a sign of a wonderful birthday meal. Thanks Jen for dinner! Ya know though... tomorrow is my actual birthday.... and that Cowboy burger does look really good! :)

My Birthday ~ Part 1

We celebrated my birthday with Roger's family on Saturday. Not many pictures here but we had fun. My father would not believe that fun could be had when a camera is not involved but yes, it's true. We had fun, with few pictures to prove it. :)

See? Fun.
See? Cake.
Pumpkin Spice cake with Pumpkin filling and cream cheese icing.

Tasted great. Looks... so-so. My scroll work was a little wobbly. So was the cake. It's iced nice and smooth, but the cake seems to lopsided. The pictures make it look even worse than it was in person. The roses and bottom border are chocolate marshmallow fondant. That's Nehemiahs favorite part. Although today, for the first time ever, Nehemiah ate cake. The actual cake. :)

Birthday Part 2 coming tomorrow!

Homeschool

The fun is gone. School is dull. Annoying. Long.

Help. Anyone? What do you do to make homeschooling fun? Or at least less dull? :)

Any pointers on teaching the calendar? A good way (or a good song) to teach the months? Teaching how many days are in each month?

Joseph is doing great in school. His grades are amazing. (And yes, he does have actual grades. The curriculum we use doesn't just do a pass/fail thing like when I was in Kindergarten) (4score and 7 years ago) Joseph is a visual learner with little patience though. And while I get the visual thing I don't get his no patience thing. I don't think I ever acted is if i expected him to get everything in school right the first time. I realize this is just Kindergarten. I realize he is just learning and it can take time. He doesn't. He gets very upset if it doesn't all just click right away. Then he stops trying.

I'm open to any and all ideas on how to deal with that too:)

Maybe I should have changed the title of this post to HELP ME WITH HOMESCHOOL. :)

I'm giving us a nice long vacation next week for my birthday and Thanksgiving. (Sometimes it's nice to be the teacher!) :)

Bedtime again?

Ok, so I thought I had come up with the perfect solution to bedtime battles. Over the summer the kids were always ready for bed and we really didn't have much argument over bedtime. The colder it gets and the less we are outdoors the harder the kids fight at bedtime. I had a solution. I stumbled upon it one evening. It's a little something we all know as Youtube. The boys climb into bed, watch a short Monster truck video (anywhere between 40 seconds and 3 minutes) and then we go about the regular routine. They are asking to go to bed at night. It's all kinds of wonderful. I thought I had a fool proof plan. Then I realized that there aren't that many monster truck videos on youtube. Then Nehemiah decided that sleep is overrated and monster trucks are not. THe amount of screaming going on because I closed out the youtube window on the computer is insane. Far worse than the I don't want to go to bed screams.

So much for that brilliant plan.

I am so ready for Spring.

It snowed today.

It's missing

Hannah's earring. They made it almost 2 months. Ugh. I really thought it would last longer than that. Being my daughter though she really didn't have a chance. I have such bad luck with earrings. (I got my ears pierced right after Roger and I were engaged. We had a 7 month engagement. While in the car driving to the beach for our honeymoon I took out my earrings. I had different ones in my suitcase that I was going to put in the next morning. When I tried to put them in the next morning I couldn't. One ear was well on its way to being closed.) Her earring couldn't have been out for more than 24 hours. I have pictures of her from the other day with it in. Now... gone. Like me, her ear began to close up already. I tried to put one of my earrings in it and it wouldn't work. So now she has one ear pierced. We are trying to decide if we should take the other one out or leave it in and just get the bum ear re-pierced. Any suggestions?

And just so you know, it fell out. Her ear is fine... no scratches or anything. She didn't even know it was gone. It was never tight, I was constantly pushing that one back on to make it tighter. It just fell off.

I guess Christmas pictures will be taken from the left side this year. :)

And for the super curious among you... yes I currently have my ears pierced. A few years ago I got them done for my birthday. I leave the studs in all the time. The longest I have gone without earrings has been aprox 3 minutes. Well, actually while wearing dangling earrings once I lost one of them. When I got home I ran to put my studs back in and had to push really hard to get it the whole way through. So if you see me and wonder why I always wear my fake diamond studs, you now know why. fear. fear of losing my earrings forever. :)

Keep the presents rollin'

The presents are now pouring in for my Birthday.

Ok, not really. Only from my mother (Hi Mom!) She got me this Wilton cake decorating set. It's the mother of all sets and I love it. Along with the Wilton set she also paid for me to take some cake decorating classes at the local craft store.

This is my final cake for Course 1 (there are 4)
The bow is hideous. It was my 2nd try. I couldn't keep peeling off the icing to try again so this was it. For the most part though I am happy with it. I love taking the classes and am looking forward to Course 2.

I also gained 4 pounds. We had to bring a cake to class each week. I ate a lot of cake.

Anyway, thanks for the early Birthday present Mom. I'll be checking my mail often for everyone else's gifts. If you lost my address I can quickly email it to you. :) Oh I kid. I'm not celebrating my Birthday this year. I'm too old. But we will have cake.

(If you are offended that I am saying I'm old and you are older than me, please calm down. I am not insulting you. I am just not enjoying the number slapped onto this years birthday.)

Spa time for 2 year olds?

Hannah is apparently going to be lover of the spa. At lunch today she gave herself a facial... by rubbing her buttered bagel all over her face.

Her skin is wonderfully soft. :)

(Do you think I could market a spa treatment and sell Blue Bonnet butter in a jar?) ;)

Out of Egypt to...where?!

Joseph is finishing his 2nd quarter in school this week. We've been reviewing Bible lessons. I asked him "What land did God lead his people to when he brought them out of Egypt?"
Joseph, with a very thoughtful look on his face answered "Babylham?"

Needless to say, we reviewed some more.

Hannah

Watching Roger carve a pumpkin. (We never did this before. The kids were loving it)
I've been making a lot of cakes lately (thats another post) and Hannah wants to "help"
She loves to sit here. Actually, I hear her climbing up there right now.
I am so glad I took her shirt off.
Stinker. Notice the two lollipops? I gave her the yellow one first. She licked it and said "yuck!" and put it down. The pushover that I am, I pulled out a different flavor and gave it to her. She then picked up the yellow lollipop and went running with her loot.

I can't tell you how often she falls asleep at dinner. It's a regular thing around here. She still needs a nap but short of hitting her over the head with a frying pan, I can't get her to take a nap during the day.
Cuddling with some stuffed friends.

Hannah is 2. Very 2. Is 2 a verb? Hannah makes it one. She is busy from the moment her eyes open in the morning until she conks out at night. She can scream with the volume of a room full of schoolgirls. Which she does often. Like when Nehemiah looks at her. Or when she can't reach a toy. Or when she can't find her cup. The girl has attitude.
On the flip side she is very sweet. She always greets the boys in the morning with a sweet "hey buddy". If someone gets hurt she's there to offer hugs and kisses. She likes to help and will set the table, throw away trash, and put away toys.

And now... she is busy being 2... digging in the fridge and taking off her clothes. Ahh, thats my girl.

Our Weekend

We went to the Lego store this weekend. A new one opened in a mall closer than the one in Jersey. Sweet.
We had fun, even though the mall was full of trick or treaters and teenagers waiting for an autograph from some famous (I asume) skateboarder.

By default I got to buy Hannah a cute dress from Old Navy. I had no intentions of really shopping at the mall, we were just out to have a fun day and check out the new Lego store. So how did Hannah get a new dress? She peed. A lot. And while I was prepared with snacks (and extra drinks!) I was not prepared with a spare outfit.

You would think that after that I would have learned my lesson. Guess what happened at church today? Hannah peed. A lot. Roger had to go home and get her a new outfit. (with a spare) We changed her diaper right before we left for church. She drank an entire cup of water in the car. We got to church, sang one song. Had offering. Stood up to sing another song... the girl was wet. Embarrassingly wet. Thank you Roger for going home for clothes! :)

So that was our weekend. :) A little soggy, but we had fun.

Oh! And we also discovered RedBox. Do you have one around you? You can rent a movie for $1! We watched Enchanted. I thought maybe the kids could watch it, but after seeing it we decided it's not for kids. It was a good movie though. Better then we thought it would be.

Off to finish baking a cake now. Hope you all had a good weekend too.

I don't know how to start this post, so I'm just going to jump right in.

I had a miscarriage. I was 12 weeks on Tuesday, but the baby stopped developing long before that. At my 10 week Dr's appt they couldn't find a heartbeat. Neither of us were too worried about it but as time went on I knew something was wrong. My Dr thought I was more like 8 weeks after doing an exam. And an ultrasound yesterday showed that I am miscarrying.

This one is happening completely different from my first miscarriage (4 years ago). The Dr doesn't think I'll need a D&C though, which I am very thankful for. (and actually I didn't need one with my first miscarriage either. Again, thankful)

I don't know how to say the rest of this without sounding rude and heartless, but I want to say it because it will help me.
Please don't let out a deep sigh, cock your head to the side and tell me how sorry you are. It makes my blood boil. I don't need or want pitty. I understand that in times like this people feel the need to say something and often don't know what to say. It's ok. I don't need you to say anything. Honestly I don't want to talk about it. Roger and I talk about it and that is enough for me. I want to heal (both physically and emotionally) and move forward.

Really, I don't mean to sound rude. Just letting you know how I feel about it.

Thanks for being excited with us over this pregnancy. We were excited too. And although this pregnancy was a surprise, we will be trying again when the time is right. Joseph won't have it any other way. :)

The Fair

Our little town fair was here a few weeks ago. I don't know how I managed to avoid a post on it for this long.

Thursday was Kiddie Day. All rides were one less ticket. Perfect.

Roger had the day off of work and we headed out after lunch. With a sheet of 20 tickets we were ready to let each kid ride between 2 and 3 rides.

These pictures are out of order. Because Nehemiah? He didn't like the rides. Not one bit. At the VERY END he asked to go on this one. It wasn't a ride, but a walk through mazeish thing.



He was ok with it. But he did not want to do it again.
Joseph was cool with that. It meant the last ticket was his.
Hannah? She wasn't diggin' the rides either.
Weeee!
Oh how he enjoyed using everyone else's tickets.
Hannah BEGGED to go on this one. Seriously. She wanted to go on. Until her bottom touched that horse. Then she wanted to get OFF. This was not the first time she did the beg, scream, get off thing. So Roger held on and assured her that she was not going to die. (That was her last ride)
This was Nehemiah's first ride. He was kinda sorta maybe excited.
And then it started to move. It was so NOT cool anymore.
And once again Joseph was cool with that. Because he got all of his tickets.
Get me down from here!! She wanted to go on this one too. This was her first ride. (I told you the pictures were out of order) She did not make it. We got our ticket back.
Ride number 4,098
Happily watching from the sidelines.
No fear


And that sums up our Kiddie Day. Joseph had a blast. Hannah cried. Nehemiah chilled with his cup in the stroller.

Ahh, the fair. Same time next year? :)

Only My Nehemiah

Numbers. I think I have already established the fact that Nehemiah loves numbers. One of his favorite videos to watch is Math Circus. (It's a Leap Frog video and it is wonderful) They count from 1 to 10 and then they count by tens up to 100. (I'm not a number person, did that make sense?) Anyway, the other night Nehemiah was in bed lulling himself to sleep by solving math problems. "10 minus 5 is 5. 2 and 2 is 4. 10 minus 2 is" (for some reason thats all he would say with that one. I guess he didn't know the answer) He didn't always say the right answer, but he was very happily going over his numbers while drifting off to sleep.

Keeping Math Circus in mind, there was a tent sale in the parking lot of our grocery store the other day. We parked - facing the tent. Nehemiah's eyes lit up "It's a math circus!!" He was bummed to find out it was only a few rocking chairs and snazzy fireplaces.


Here's Nehemiah in the driveway. We were playing with chalk. Hannah wanted me to draw flowers and puppy dogs. Joseph wanted me to help him spell words. Nehemiah wanted me to write out math problems.



Bless his number lovin' heart. This homeschooling Mama doesn't do math beyond elementary level. We have to join a really good co-op! :)

Question to the kids

Do you want a new brother or a sister?

Joseph: a sister

Hannah: a brother (which is surprising that she didn't copy Joseph)

Nehemiah: a garbage truck

Somebody help me

I want one of these. Bad.

Drooling. On. Keyboard. Mmmmmm.

A mess

Do I laugh? Do I cry? Do I beat the 2 year old that broke it? Do I scream because while picking up the broken pieces one fell between the counter and the fridge?

Do you want to know how my little 2 year old broke the platter?

She was getting a loaf of bread...

...to hit her brother with.

The dish came down with the bread.

It's been a long day.