30 March 2014

Some photos left from when we spent February and March being sick!

Nut Brown and Bobo

 

Bobo taking his antibiotic all by himself

 



Rose Pink, who never got all that sick, constructed a Fairy Cafe restaurant in the kitchen, with a sign, a menu on the wall, and drawings of all the fairies that worked in the cafe.  She and Nut Brown took and filled orders for lunch while Mr. Brown and I were not feeling well.

27 March 2014

The day after Grandma and Grandpa left, we loaded up the bikes and drove over to a church parking lot nearby to ride.  Rose Pink and Nut Brown both have new bikes (Nut Brown's is a hand-me-down) and Rose Pink is bumping up to hand brakes and gears, so we tried out our new equipment in a traffic-free zone first.

Rose Pink rode her bike for a little while and didn't have any trouble with braking.  Then she decided she'd rather take photos, so she took the rest of these.

Bobo was very pleased to have his chariot come back out.  He rode very patiently around the parking lot and did not want to get out when it was time to leave.

Nut Brown is riding 'Skull', Rose Pink's old bike.  It's just a little too big for him, so he has trouble starting.  But otherwise he's very pleased with it. 

Here's what I look like on a bike.  The snow finally melted enough that I started riding in again this past week, happy happy.  An advantage to such a cold winter is that it seems warm enough to ride when temps hit 25 degrees.  Previous years I thought it was too cold.

Photos of the most stressful part of the whole exercise - convincing three bikes to go on the bike rack.  At least I know they all fit now.  There are some great bike trails in some of the Metro Parks around here, and I daydream about getting our whole family out to ride them.  Someday when it's actually warm again.

26 March 2014

Last week Grandma and Grandpa came to visit during Grandpa's spring break.  They took us to see the samurai exhibit at the DIA (fabulous) and we also went to the zoo.  The kids loved seeing them and Mr. Brown and I were glad for the chance to have a little time together while the kids were busy with them.

Actually, it might have been two weeks ago they came, not last week.  March has gone by really quickly.  Mr. Brown has been really depressed this winter so we've been taking it one day at a time, and the days just keep passing.

Rose Pink's indoor soccer games started.  Her coach organized it as a chance for their team to get some playing in before the regular outdoor season begins.  Grandma and Grandpa got a chance to go to her first game, and we went out for ice cream afterwards, yum.

Indoor soccer is more like hockey.  It was a lot of fun to watch. 

Here are my boys being cute at the indoor arena.

15 March 2014

Last Sunday, I took my Sunday School kids on a trip to a 'museum' in the gym - some pictures I taped up on the walls for their review and discussion.  The little girl in the class with Down Syndrome was wandering around in that big open space by herself and then sat down on the floor at the other end of the gym from us.  Nut Brown said to me, what about Amy? and I said, she'll join us when she's ready.  Nut Brown wasn't satisfied with that, and after a few minutes he walked down to the other end of the gym and talked to Amy, invited her to come join us and brought her back over to be part of the group.  I am humbled by his example of love and consideration.

12 March 2014

I guess because Bobo has been so slow to talk, it's been really interesting to listen to him pick up more sounds one by one.  At first he was really good at 'b' words: baby and ball and bear and so on.  He learned to say his brother's name and then his parents' (although he still uses Mama and Papa interchangeably sometimes).  He picked up 'k' and said 'cat' instead of 'meow'.  He loves a book about an apple farmer we have, so he learned to say 'An' (Annie) and 'ap-em' (apple) and 'chuck' (truck).  Then he learned to say 'oo', as in 'moo' and 'ow', as in 'owl', and there's only been more and more sounds since then.  Yesterday he finally came out with a long 'oh' sound and came out with a name for his sister - now he can call her 'go-ko'. 

There are a lots of sounds that he still doesn't say - like 's'.  But he's learned to try to say anything, and we always encourage any effort on his part even if it doesn't really sound like anything.  He has enough sounds now that it's starting to be really rewarding, and he'll even try out some two-syllable words as well, like 'apron' (when he wants to help cook) and 'open' (this piece of candy).  He is great at repeating but we're still working on encouraging him to use his words that he's learning when he wants something.  Since he's learning so slowly, it's easy to see his progress step-by-step, and it's been so fun.

10 March 2014

Sick again last week - it has been a long winter.  It was a stomach bug, fortunately short-lived, that caused nausea and vomiting.  The boys had it last week, Mr. Brown and I got it Tuesday night, and then Rose Pink came down with it on Thursday night.  Once again, she had the easiest time of it.  When she was sick, I was grateful that our house is a no-nap house: when she threw up in the middle of the night in her room, I heard her and got up to help so she didn't haven't to try and come get me.  We're all better now.

Bobo's current favorite thing to listen to is the most exciting version ever of the Wheels On The Bus.  It's a song by Selena Gomez called 'Round and Round' and he asks for it all the time by bringing you the (cordless) mouse and saying, 'Wown?'  We listened to it so much this weekend that Mr. Brown and I had it going round and round in our heads all night.

26 February 2014

I wish I had a photo of my baby's sweet smiley face for this post.  (When you ask him, who's the baby?  he smiles and points to himself.)  This weekend we faced the bedtime demon and defeated him.  Bobo outgrew his crib several weeks ago and we moved him into the bottom bunk and put away the pack'n'play.  He was okay with it, but he kept getting out of bed and we tried a whole bunch of strategies to convince him to go to bed, but none of them worked.  (Part of the problem was that we made this move while we were all sick, Bobo included.  With horrible sinus congestion.) We were getting less and less sleep, and finally after he stayed up until 2 a.m. last week, we decided we were done with creative strategies and that Bobo was just going to have to figure it out.

Friday night we put him in bed and then I held the bedroom door shut for an hour and a half while he complained about not being allowed out of his bedroom.  Nut Brown went to sleep in our bed.  Finally he got himself back into bed and went to sleep.  We'd tried this before but he'd just screamed for two and a half hours, so we let him out and moved on to other ideas.  This time I decided that I was ready to hold the door shut for hours and hours until he went to bed, because him not sleeping was making life so hard for the other four of us!  I felt very fortunate that it was only an hour and a half - not sure what's different this time around, maybe that he's a whole three weeks older?

Saturday night he made a half-hearted effort and went to bed after half an hour.  Sunday night he only fussed for five minutes.  At this point he'd figured out that he wasn't going to be allowed to open the door, so instead of twisting the knob, he started knocking on the door and calling 'mama!' (heartbreaking).  Last night he still fussed, but we are definitely making progress.  He still gets up in the middle of the night and comes to sleep in our bed, but I'm hopeful that once he finally gets rid of the last of the cold/sinus bleh he'll sleep all the way through the night.

Thank goodness for small mercies, like a baby who learns to go to bed so I can go to bed too.

25 February 2014

Rose Pink has been doing a lot more writing.  Some samples:

 Not exactly sure which of her identities signed the above note.

 

 

 She asked me to teach her to write in cursive.  We had a couple lessons and then she just decided she could figure the rest of it out herself.  This is the first note she gave me that was written entirely in cursive.

 

 

 Mr. Brown and I have been carefully tracking expenses as we do the weekly shopping.  One week she decided she would do it for us, and wrote out the week's list in the car on the way to the store, checked off the items, and noted the prices.

 

 

When I was really sick, she made my lunch, wiped off the table, and set it with this note and two candles made out of paper (which are now on my desk at work).

 

I decided to get out some of my old paper dolls for her.  She was totally excited by the quantity and variety of my collection, and I told her that if she took reasonable care of this group of paper dolls (the Ginghams) then we could get some more out for her as well.  That night she left this note for me on my dresser.

 

In Rose Pink's book, it's always Mother's Day at our house.

23 February 2014

What with all the being sick and Mr. Brown's ongoing depression, there's been a fair amount of tv-watching in our house lately, especially superhero cartoons.  Some of our Treo block sets are superhero themed and have blocks with images of superheroes on them.  The other night Bobo came out to the kitchen where I was cooking holding some of those blocks, and he was obviously pretending to be a superhero, roaring around and bashing things.  It was so cute to see in someone who is not yet two.

22 February 2014

Some random artwork by Rose Pink:

21 February 2014

Bobo outgrew his pack'n'play so we are working on transitioning him to the bottom bunk.  It has not been going smoothly, in part because a) he is child #3 and b) he is so independent-minded.  We tried letting him cry it out while holding the door shut, but he just screamed for two and a half hours so we gave that up.  We tried putting him back in bed consistently every time he got out of it, but gave up after about fifteen times.  At the moment, he stays up watching tv on mute with Mr. Brown until he falls asleep.  Then Mr. Brown puts him in bed.  Some nights he stays there, but usually he gets up at least once and comes and gets in bed with us.  He falls right asleep once he climbs in, and sometimes after a half hour or so I can put him back in his bed and he'll stay there.  Other times he wakes up again and comes right back to our bed.  The last couple nights we've skipped his afternoon nap on purpose, hoping to wear him out so he'd go to bed on time.  Last night he fell asleep at seven, but woke up at nine o'clock or so and was up for several hours before going back to bed.  Timing of this transition was maybe not the greatest, because we've been sick and now he's sick, but it has overall been very hard on his parents.  It seems like he's forgotten how to put himself to sleep, which he used to do just fine, and so he can't go to bed until he's completely exhausted.  We're thinking about buying a crib and starting sleep training all over again.

Last night Nut Brown asked me to play chess with him (we just inherited a second hand set from a friend).  After we were about five minutes into it, he said, 'Wouldn't this be more fun if they had spells?' and then he made up a bunch of spells for each piece to have, including summoning players back from the dead and dealing death to other players.  I opted out of the rest of the game, since a lot of other rules changed at the same time, but he was happy to play both sides until white had completely wiped out black.  'My armies are courageous,' he kept saying.

20 February 2014

Rose Pink made up a warranty at the request of her grandpa and accidentally mailed it to her other grandmother.  Grandmother filled it out and sent it back, and I really wanted to preserve it.

 

 

Tuesday nights Nut Brown has gymnastics lessons, so Rose Pink and Bobo and I usually head to the library for their Tuesday night family activities.  This Tuesday they had the local nature society there with their collections of interesting stuff - fossils, pelts, bones, fish (yes! alive! in a tank!) and also... owl pellets.  Rose Pink got to dissect several and found a variety of skulls, jawbones and ribs from various rodents.  The people from the bat house were also there with some of their live bats.  Bobo was completely fascinated with them and kept wanting to go back and look at them.  Mr. Brown has trained the kids well- Rose Pink asked lots of questions of the presenters and really enjoyed the whole evening.  It was pretty awesome.  I learned a lot more about the kind of wildlife we have in our area.

19 February 2014

I teach Nut Brown's Sunday School class.  This week we talked about families and love, and we all drew pictures of our families.  Here is Nut Brown's drawing: 

 

Here is mine:

Rose Pink colored it when we got home.  She drew herself wearing one of her favorite shirts, which is a hand-me-down from her good friend Cora.  It has Cora's name on it.  I offered to unpick the stitches, but one of the reasons she loves it is because it has Cora's name on it.  Mr. Brown says that one of the things I missed out on because I was the oldest is how cool your older siblings made their clothes before they passed them on to you.  Rose Pink's affection for the shirt is certainly evidence of that!

18 February 2014

We're *still* sick.  The two older kids got off pretty lightly, although Nut Brown is still markedly slightly deaf from ear congestion.  This week Bobo went to the doctor and came home with antibiotics for a double ear infection.  Mr. Brown, who is the one who started all this, seemed to be mostly better but was complaining last night about a sore throat due to drainage.  I actually went back to the doctor yesterday because my ears hurt so much, but he said no infection, just plugged Eustachian tubes and I would just have to tough it out.  I finished the antibiotics almost a week ago (Mr. Brown finished even before me) and we are still waiting for all the drainage and soreness to finish up.

So Valentine's Day was pretty quiet this year.  I didn't get chocolates or flowers, although I did manage to get small boxes of chocolates for each of the kids.  V-Day is the favorite holiday of our friends the Truskies, but they had a hard week too, so we ended up have a Valentine's party on Monday the 17th, which is the federal holiday in February.  It turned out to be a playdate rather than a party, but the kids had fun and we exchanged valentines, so it was all good.  Rose Pink made the valentine at the top of the page for me.

The Truskies made up a box for us of things for the kids to do while their parents were so out of it with being sick and tired.  (We've been eating a lot of ramen noodles the last several weeks.)  It was called the 'Being Sick With Flair' box and had a bunch of silly stuff in it.  The kids loved the new games and activities, and it was such a relief for us to have something to entertain them.  In a great show of tender mercy, we also received two other random infusions of new playthings during our sickest weeks, which helped the kids stay busy while we were lying around.  Neither one was timed purposely like the 'Being Sick With Flair' box, but that made it even more evident that God is looking out for us in our hour of need.

I'm back at work now but we're cancelling a lot of evening activities and weekend plans because we are still sick and still too tired to be happily social.  I can't believe we're halfway through February - we've spent most of it feeling horrid.

10 February 2014

A friend brought us a 'being sick with flair' box that included party decorations.  Saturday I was feeling a lot better (thank you, antibiotics) and made muffins.  Nut Brown said with his mouth full, "When you talk with your mouth full, it's a different kind of English, like Scottish."

He is sick now, poor guy, and Bobo is a bit sick.  Rose Pink got it and blew it off, lucky her.  Nut Brown asked if we could take down the party decorations and Rose Pink said, "No.  We are still sick."

5 February 2014

Mr. Brown and I have been sick sick sick for three weeks now, first him and now me.  Various friends have brought us food and some new games for the kids to help out - so thoughtful of them.  Nut Brown, when the latest gift was delivered this morning, exclaimed, Wow!  I love being sick!

Ha.  I'm sure it's because he hasn't actually gotten it yet.

2 February 2014

Mr. Brown has been sick sick sick for the past ten days (sinus infection and bronchitis) and lucky me I just came down with the sinus part of it.  Lots of decongestants for the last couple days and today I'm really low energy.  We didn't make it to church today.  The kids are having a hard time because their parents are so tired and sick, blerg.

Here they are, moments ago, sailing the trampoline rocket ship in the living room (aka the Alexandrian Galaxy).

24 January 2014

Some photos from last fall, on one of the days when we were actually raking leaves in daylight.  We seemed to do a lot of yard work last summer after sunset - mowing and raking, I mean.  The interesting stuff (like planting and weeding) I did during the day.

 

22 January 2014

Rose Pink's birthday party was last Saturday.  The theme was snowflakes so we had a snowball fight with a friend's stuffed snowballs, played freeze tag and pin the hat on the snowman.  She had a round cake on which she carefully outlined a snowflake. We made a pinata this year instead of buying one and it turned out to be made of steel and really took some beating before it gave up its prizes.  Lesson learned: duct tape and cardboard are less fragile than they appear.  Mr. Brown and I had a good time decorating it the night before.

One of her friends gave her a 'make your own clip on earrings' project that required using nail polish to color some beads, and while she had the nail polish out she decided to paint her nails.  She opted for 'safari nails' and painted one hand with tiger stripes and one hand with leopard spots.  She had a bandaid on the top part of one of her index fingers, but that didn't stop her - she just painted on top of the bandaid.

Monday was MLK Day, so I got to stay home from work.  Yaaaaaay for federal holidays.  We did the shopping and when we got home I opened the back of the car and the eggs fell out.  Smash!  The kids checked them over carefully and discovered that 17 out of 18 were broken, so we had omelets for lunch and then baked that afternoon!  Brownies (4 eggs), pecan pie (3 eggs) and pumpkin pie (2 eggs).  What we proved was that Browns can consume large quantities of eggs at the drop of a hat.  Rose Pink was so interested in the experience that she wrote a short play about it and asked me to have a line in it.

20 January 2014

 Mr. Brown suggested that Rose Pink try drawing something other than a face from the front.  So she drew the back of his head.  I recognized it immediately.

Note the zombie-like appearance of super-mom.  It's because she's not getting enough sleep.