Monthly Archives: July 2008

Gallery Opening

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Our ARTistic Pursuits lesson this week included information on how to plan and hold an opening to show your art. This inspired Ani and Cameron and so during rest time they made several works of art and put them up on the walls in the rec room. That evening they helped Jamie make a snack and then they had us come down so they could show their art.

Cameron sat at the entrance with the snack and “money” they had cut from paper. The money was so we could pay for our snacks of course. After paying for our snacks Ani took us on a tour of the gallery and explained the art pieces to us. They took turns telling us what their inspiration for each piece was. It was very fun and the kids were so proud of themselves.

art1

art2

My Sous-Chef

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Most days Ani helps me make dinner. Sometimes Cameron pitches in, though he is usually watching Fritz and Adrian while Ani and I cook.

Ani has gotten pretty good at following directions and doing things like making salad dressings, preparing salads, mixing seasonings, etc. She’s truly a great help in the kitchen. Plus, as an added bonus she’s getting one on one time with me (or Jamie if Adrian is needing extra nursing time that day) which is pretty scarce in a family with four kids including a toddler and a newborn.

Jamie set a couple video podcasts on cooking to download to our AppleTV and both Ani and Cameron enjoy watching those very much. One of them is cooking basics and they are just loving that one.

No More TV

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We cancelled our FiOS TV effective yesterday. We had it for a year. That was enough for now. Very likely in a couple or three years we’ll go back to having TV. It’s what we do. We go back and forth having TV and not having TV.

We really got sick of the commercials. Cameron is VERY easily influenced by them. If it’s advertised on TV he wants it. Having the “smart” channels was nice, but a lot of the shows are total fluff and it’s a pain to go through the listings guide to find a few good ones to record.

So we’re back to downloading TV shows from iTunes and renting movies from NetFlix. At least now iTunes has all the episodes of The Revolution. This time last year they were missing the last one. We have AppleTV now so that makes watching the shows we download (and movies) much easier and more pleasant (no more crowding around the computer).

Fritz is 2!

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It’s hard to believe that in just two short years Fritz has gone from a 7 pound 13 ounce baby to this
fritz2

He saw his pediatrician this morning for his two year check-up. He’s 26 pounds and 33″ tall. He is so cute holding up his thumb and forefinger to show us he’s two.

His Nan (Jamie’s mom) sent him a toy phone. He opened it this morning and has barely stopped playing with it. It teaches colors, shapes, and numbers as well as acting like a typical toy phone. The fun part about it, though, is that Jamie’s mom lives in Ireland so the voice on the phone has a lovely British accent.
fritz6

We got him a little potty from IKEA, a soft quiet activity book to keep in the diaper bag for church, and a plush soccer ball. The potty he was not thrilled about. The book he loved until he got the ball. Then he was in heaven. He absolutely loves balls.

Ani’s Warts

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Ani saw the pediatrician on Thursday right after Adrian did. She has warts on her hands and feet that need to come off. She had a couple for a few years and we tried everything to get rid of them and nothing worked. Eventually they started spreading and she has tons all over her toes and a few elsewhere on her feet and hands now.

The doctor used liquid nitrogen to freeze some off. He just did three clusters of them. It’s apparently rather painful to have that stuff applied. The doctor said he was surprised Ani neither screamed or cried while he was working on her. He is hopeful that the few he froze will help her immune system mobilize to get rid of the rest as well.

All three spot have blistered, one of them a blood blister, and her foot is slightly swollen. She says they are not comfortable and it is hard for her to walk since the biggest blister is on the bottom of her foot. Poor kid. I’m not sure what’s better: what she’s going through or having them cut out like they did to me when I was near her age.

anisfoot

Cousins… aka My Kids are Short

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We spent yesterday afternoon and evening at my parents’ house. Mid-afternoon my brother, SIL, and four nieces arrived. Our kids all were born with a short amount of time of each other and alternate theirs then ours. Together our children are 9, 8, 7, 6, 3, a week from 2, a month from 1, and just born.

cousins

Every time we are together (which isn’t too often since we live a thousand miles apart) we have to see how much shorter my older two are than my brother’s older two. Ani is 9 months younger and several inches shorter than my oldest niece. Ani’s a few inches shorter than my second niece. My second niece is 14 months younger than Ani and 6 months older than Cameron. You can barely see Ani in the picture because she and Cameron are almost dead even in height (and she’s 19 months older!).
fourcousins

Fritz and my brother’s youngest daughter got along incredibly well. They had a lot of fun playing together. Yesterday was the first time they met.
fritzviolet

Two Weeks Old

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Adrian is two weeks old today. He “celebrated” by going to the doctor for the first time. We absolutely love our pediatrician. He’s very AP-friendly and fine with all the odd choices we make. They didn’t even bat an eye when I said he was born at home. In fact the nurse laughingly said it made her job on the PKU form a whole lot easier since she didn’t have to fill in the section for which hospital the baby was born at.

Adrian’s a big boy. In 2 weeks he has gained 1 1/2 pounds and is now 10 pounds 1 ounce. He’s added 2 1/4 inches and is now 22 1/4″ long. That’s 90th percentile for both height and weight. His head is 15 5/8″ now which is 96th percentile.

Back to School

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After a little less than a 2 week break thanks to our new cute little guy we decided to go back to school yesterday. I figured we’d do as much as we could and then stop. As it turned out we had no problem getting through everything. Adrian slept most of the time in the Peanut Shell and Fritz chose to hang out upstairs only coming down every once in a while to show us the treasures he was collecting.

We had stopped right in the middle of a week (third day of the eighth week) which meant the kids had spelling tests the first day back. Cameron only got one word right on his last spelling test (he’s got the same problems with spelling that his dad has) so I was curious to see how well he would do with a break between reviewing the words and spelling them. He only got two wrong (here, are). You just never can tell how his spelling will be.

Ani wrote a paragraph about how her life would be if she was living in a totally different time. For who knows what reason she picked Texas in 1520. Her paragraph was pretty good and I showed her how she could expand it into a whole paper by adding details and making individual sentences into whole paragraphs. She just needs to remember to not throw in random capital letters (she has ever since we used the kindergarten Handwriting Without Tears) and to remember to leave bigger spaces between the words.

It was nice to get back to doing school. My goal this week is to do our normal routine through lunch. That’s just my personal scripture study when I wake up (which is generally between 6:30 and 7), Miracle Music at 8, school after that finishes, and lunch after school. We did it yesterday. Hopefully the rest of the week (or rather today and tomorrow since Friday is a holiday) will go as smoothly.