Verity: 9 Months

Age: 9 months

Weight: 18 lbs, 14 oz - 59%

Height: 27 1/2 inches - 44%

Eating: Mostly just breastmilk. Verity started solids when she turned 9 months (so a few days now). First food was egg yolks. Didn't like. Then we tried bananas which she appeared to like a bit better but her gag reflex is ridiculously strong and so she didn't like the whole swallowing process. Then we tried avocado; both in chunk and puree form. Once again, didn't like and gag. She even gagged on the puree. I've never had a kid with such a strong gag reflex especially at this old. It's a good think she's plump enough on breastmilk!

Sleeping: Little girl is no longer swaddled. She's getting to be a big girl. Unfortunately however, I've created a crutch of feeding her to sleep and thus she is now waking more than she should. Looks like we have a hefty dose of sleep training coming up.

Accomplishments: Still crawling (obviously), pulls herself up, cruises, "dances" while holding on to something, will stand unassisted for a few seconds and she's very proud of this feat. Getting good at that whole pincher grab (aka "guess what crumb Verity found on the floor") and can climb stairs now. (oh yay…)

Other Random Stuff: Verity loves water. If we're in the bathroom she'll stand by the tub and squawk away. If the kids are playing in the pool she'll try to climb in.

Mama's Log: Day 3

Mama's Log: Day 3

Morning routine went the same as always: morning movie, breakfast, school.

We finished a school book, Red Sails to Capri in which they discover a blue cove that sounded pretty amazing…Logan said he wished it was real. Few clicks on the internet and voila! It's real. The Blue Grotto in Capri and yes, it does look pretty cool. Now of course, Logan wants to go to Capri. I have a feeling he'll be wanting to go to a lot of places this school year.

Grandma (Justin's Mom) sent the kids a care package because she knew we'd all be going crazy. New activities books, tracing paper, pencils. So the kids did that while I made lunch.

Lunch today was Pumpkin Feta Pasta. What can I say, it's easy and we're
ready for Fall.

Finally wasn't raining so the kids got to play in the pool after lunch. Here's Verity in all her chunky glory. Might be hard to make out but she's twisting her tongue. All the kids can do this and they get their weird tongue talent from Justin. I cannot twist my tongue like that, it's totally strange.


Nap time. Same as usual. Boys were actually good because they knew they wouldn't get their surprise snack if they weren't.

Kids woke up, we got ready and I brought up the double stroller from down in the basement. Yeah, it's heavy. Got all the girls in the stroller and off we went on our walk. Now it's hilly where we live and even just walking some of those hills is a work out. Pushing a heavy double stroller with about 40 lbs of kids is insane. I don't think I'll ever do that again. However, I wanted to walk so walk we did. First stop was the grocery store to get some more needed items before our big grocery shopping trip when Justin gets home. Then it was off to 7 Eleven.

Ah, Slurpeeland as my dad deemed it when I was a kid. A cheap, although completely unhealthy snack. Logan learned that he loves the Pina Colada flavor and I learned that even with a straw, Everly will end up with a cherry mouth.

That whole trip took us a bit over an hour.

Then it was home to Skype Grandma. The kids think Skype is some sort of be crazy talent show I think. Everly ranged from extremely happy to major melt down. Probably part slurpee sugar rush and part whatever she's been dealing with lately.

Dinner, bath (yes I insanely bathed all 4 kids…but they needed it), and bed.

Once again Verity hung out with me most of the night. Here's what she did while I watched chick flicks. Apparently she wasn't interested in the movies. (she's laying in my lap, hence why she looks upside down)

Daddy comes home tomorrow afternoon.

Mama's Log: Day 2

Mama's Log: Day 2

It's not been over 24 hours since Justin left. We all seem to be surviving.

Sleeping with Verity has been rough. Not that she's been hard to put to sleep… she just has decided that she wants to sleep in bed with me for pretty much the whole night. This means I sleep in odd positions.

Woke up, to the boys at 8am for their morning movie. Everly still asleep. She slept in till 9! This is rather unheard of. All that crying from the previous night must have worn her out.

Breakfast, school, all usual.

It's payday and thus we are scraping the cupboard bare right n

ow. We go grocery shopping when Justin comes back. Because of this, we made a random soup for lunch. Kids liked it. There were a few surviving biscuits (aka I didn't eat them all) so they got to have some of those with lunch.

Nap time went as to be expected. Nothing new there.


I decided to try on my wedding dress when the kids woke up. I'm weird like that. I like to pull it out every few years and play dress up…I guess. Hey, the thing cost enough money and I only wore it once! Might as well have some fun every now and then. Kids thought the whole things was fun. Logan kept telling me that maybe Everly could wear it when she got married. Yeah…we'll see. I'm all for it but I know how that all goes. My dress is basic enough it might age ok but who knows what
wedding dresses will be like 20 years from now!

Everly decided she needed to try my wedding dress on too… it made her very happy.

By this point, I was done. The kids were themselves, aka yelling, fighting, just loud (I don't do loud. I'm an introverted mother and loud doesn't do well with my stress levels)

And it was raining. I'm happy Fall is around the corner but not when I'm stuck inside with the kids and no husband to relieve me.

So to the store to get ice cream we went. In case, you some how didn't know… ice cream is my crutch, my way of relaxing… if I drank alcohol I'd be doomed I'm sure. And thus one more reason why I won't  even try alcohol. We spend enough money on ice cream, thank you very much.

Taking four kids to the grocery store by myself. I've done it before but it's never a relaxing trip that's for sure. Add to it, that we went to our store near by (aka I don't like the cities stores…I prefer the ones 15 minutes north of us, where we used to live and still do our once-a-month shopping) and it was tiring. But we got my ice cream, along with some needed milk (we go through SO much!) and a few other things.

Got home, had to park at the bottom of the hill. It's a decent hill and with four kids, one of which I have to hold, and groceries…I wasn't looking forward to it. But that's what I get for not wanting to squeeze into the parking spots that I'm sure are adequate but my parallel parking skills are sorely lacking. I made Logan carry the milk.

Dinner was just reheating some pumpkin waffles that I'd been saving for this night. Yay for no cooking!

The Muppets Movie for after dinner wind-down time. Logan wasn't thrilled that he lost the vote. 2-1…what can you do?

Put the kids to bed. No major break downs tonight.

Oh and I forgot to mention, Verity decided to be napless all day. With the exception of maybe 30 minutes while nursing. So by the time 7pm rolled around she was dead tired. She slept from 7 - 10:30 which was nice. Put her down again after she woke up and she stayed asleep….

Until I decided to go to bed. Then she realized she didn't want to sleep on her own. Lovely. Oh and there was a mosquito that I heard, saw, and then couldn't find so I couldn't kill.

Life of a single mom…it's not for me.

Tomorrow should be better but we'll see.

Mama's Log: Day 1

As many of you know, Justin is away for 4 days on a mission/prayer trip to North Dakota. This means that I get to play single parent for these 4 days. Previously, 3 days had been my record and I'll admit I believed to be my max…but apparently I'm supposed to be stretched to longer bouts of playing a single mom. (side note: I'm totally in awe of single moms or military moms. I do NOT know how they do it!)

Through all of this I've felt like I could related to Star Trek. Ok not really, but for some reason the whole "Captain's Log, Star Date…" idea seemed to fit. So….

Mama's Log: Day 1

Justin left at 7 pm on Tuesday. I got the kids to bed with a decent amount of ease and headed to the kitchen where our roommates had friends over as they do on most Tuesdays. This meant yummy bruschetta…Kyle makes the best bruschetta, someday I'll bother getting the recipe. Verity was still awake…we put her in a box.

Stayed up late with Verity the night owl watching The Princess Diaries. Yes, it is not quite an old movie, yes it's best watched by teens, but it was in the house and this is the type of stuff I watch when Justin is gone. Chick flicks.

Woke the next morning to our usual. Kids watched a movie for the first hour so I could wake up a bit on my own time. Made them their breakfast smoothies then started school. My voice is not used to reading aloud after summer break and it's slowly dying. The first few weeks of school are brutal on my voice.

After school, we had lunch. I made the mistake of making a full batch of homemade biscuits…I should have known better; I know how good they are. I think more biscuits found their way into my mouth than the kids' mouthes.

Nap time did not go well. Everly slept but the boys did not. Now they don't always take a nap and I know that to most they are ridiculously old to still be taking naps…but you know what? They will occasionally and so we still try for a nap. If they don't nap, I'm fine with them being quiet in their room…. they were not quiet. They were in each others beds, rough housing, talking, throwing pillows…repeatedly. Privileges taken away. No video games for a month (they had just played for a few days after their last month off of video games). I was planning on taking them to the park after nap… but no. We now didn't get to go.

Everly on the other hand was nice. She took her usual nap and when she woke up, I asked her if she could watch a show while Verity and I napped.

Dinner was a new version of mac & cheese. Kids seemed to like it. I'm not a huge fan.

Then after dinner movie time. This is what we do when I'm the only one with the kids…I resort to movies. In my defense, it was Biblical and educational…Joseph: King of Dreams…. Not the most accurate but those movies never are.

Bedtime was… interesting. The boys went to bed as normal. But Everly….oh man….When something doesn't go her way, it's all over. So the whole time she was getting ready for bed it was, "Daddy, come back." "Daddy come back to me."

Here is just a clip of that sorrowful scene. At this point it's just "come back to me" and it's shaky because I'm holding back laughter…I'm a mean mom.

Eventually, I had Justin call so Everly could say good night.

Three kids in bed. Just my night owl and me. We decided to watch Emma…the BBC version. It's much longer and more detailed…and Dumbledore plays Emma's dad. Good old BBC.

I watched it late into the night..ok maybe 12:30. But when you are a mom that's late.

Turned the lights out and went to bed to hopefully rest up for Day 2.

First Day of School

We started school last Monday. This is our third year of homeschooling. Three years…That makes me a pro now right? I feel like it's become such a normal thing. It's not overwhelming (outside of actually buying all my books), I pretty much know what curriculum we will use each time (most of that is thanks to being homeschooled myself for 8 years) and I generally can get us through the school day without incident. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure I still have much to learn and I know next year will be more annoying as I'll officially have to do the paper work and sign the affidavit and all that jazz.

Anyway….

As I've mentioned before, this year we beefed up Logan's schooling and now that Ransom is in the "real" grades (aka not Kindergarten) he has more school too. I was curious as to how they would handle the new work load. Naturally they of course seem to love it. How many more years do I have before they dread school?

We added on grammar and vocabulary to Logan's workload. So far the grammar has been fun and rather easy but it's 2nd grade grammar so I wouldn't expect anything too crazy. Vocabulary will be interesting. It's definitely going to be a challenge for Logan and for the first time in his school life, he's actually going to need to really apply himself instead of just breezing by with an A. However, despite the difficulty Logan loves it. In fact, currently grammar and vocabulary are his two favorite subjects. Granted he seems to love all his school work. The boy clearly does not take after his mother.

Now Ransom learns differently than Logan. Logan is like his dad, he can learn something, soak it up, and have it memorized in an instant. I almost do not need to teach the kid because he'd learn on his own. Ransom I actually have to teach. I have to work with. This of course is not a bad thing but it means that he has to adjust to not learning things as fast as Logan. In fact, I think the speed of learning is one thing that causes him to just guess the answers (for instance he'll see a word with a S and guess that it's slide instead of sounding it out and finding out it's slip.) He can clearly sound the words out but he just wants to get the answer so fast that he just jumps to conclusions. In any case, he's doing great with the work load so far. He still begs to to phonics first, despite phonics being one of the harder subjects for him. He took his first spelling test and did great. I'm really excited to see if he'll love reading as much as Logan (and the rest of us) when he gets more proficient at it toward the end of the year.

Everly, of course, isn't in school yet but she has an old school workbook that she's scribbled in last year and has picked it up again. We get into the room to do school and Everly instantly grabs her workbook, gets a pencil, and starts adding to her scribbles. Eventually I'll get her something so she can actually learn her letters, numbers, etc but for now I'm fine with this routine. Besides, since she has a November birthday she won't be starting Kindergarten until she's 3 months shy of 6! (this seems totally crazy to this April birthday mama by the way) So I have a good 3 years before I even need to worry if she's prepared for Kindergarten. How insane is that?

Oddly it's Verity who is having the hard time with school. There's only so much a baby can do on her own and while school is over in just 2 hours she has a hard time being a happy baby when all her siblings are not playing with her. Hopefully, she will adjust to the schedule soon or at very least become  more independent and learn how to let us do school for a couple hours.

1 week of school done, 35 more to go...

Fun in the Water

Washington is not known for it's pools. In California, almost everyone has a pool or at very least has a friend with a pool. Here in Washington, we only have about 2 months that you would want to go swimming and therefore nobody has a pool.

Because of this swimming does not happen very often.

However, Justin's sister, Aunt Hannah lives in a condo complex with does have a pool. Better yet, it's a rather deserted pool!

We took the whole family over one day so the kids could get in a bit more swimming practice and fun.

Everly had never even been in a real pool and she actually did well. She spent more time out than in but it was a good first dip in the pool.

Logan is still quite adventurous as he was last year. Still wearing the water wings but making laps around the pool faster and faster.

Ransom has finally gotten more comfortable in the pool. Last year, he wouldn't leave the steps, even with the water wings on. This time, he was very slowly making his laps by way of doggy paddling.

Verity had her very first pool trip and just like in the bath, she absolutely loved it. She is definitely a water baby. We probably could have left her in there all day and she would have been quite happy.

But rather than explain it all, I think I'll just show you…


Here's Logan showing off his swimming skills.

Verity making her laps around the pool.

Simple Pizza Crust

Saying that my family eats pizza often may be an understatement. We eat it VERY often. At least once a week. The only saving grace to this habit is that it is homemade pizza and so therefore it's really just as healthy as any standard meal.

I've been making our own pizza ever since I married Justin. I first got this recipe from my mom's bread machine recipe book and while I've changed it a smidgen, it's still essentially the same recipe.

Pizza in case you've been living under a rock, is a very versatile meal. You can go with plain old cheese pizza (our usual because we always have those basic ingredients). You can get a more hearty pizza by adding meat like with a bbq chicken pizza. Or you can get fancy with a colorful pepper pizza or a pear gorgonzola pizza. We've tried them all and are continuously making up new pizzas but they always use this same basic pizza crust.


Simple Pizza Crust

1 cup warm water
1 tbs honey
1 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp yeast

Directions:
Place all ingredients in this order into a bread machine. Select Dough cycle and let the machine do it's job. When cycle is complete, remove dough and form into crust on a baking sheet or preferably a pizza stone. I like to pre-cook my crust before adding toppings (to avoid any soggy issues) if you would like to do the same, just cook the crust in a 500 degree oven for 6 minutes. Remove from oven, add all your toppings and place it back in the 500 degree over for another 6-10 minutes.

If you do not have a bread machine, you can use the same ingredients except you will want to mix the water, honey, and yeast. Let proof for 15 minutes add the remaining ingredients and let rise for an hour.