Lemony Webbles

It's picture day!

Georgia playing at soccer (not to be confused with playing soccer, but certainly a good precursor).

She's got great coaches that talk great coach talk to all the little kindergarteners: "Get on line for the drill, man" "OK, Georgia's the goalie. Niiice." "Hustle on over here Jacob." "Make your shot Sage." They're very calm and all about having fun. Noone's really interested in the score at the games, everyone just cheers. And the kids are mostly into the running around together, though a few are very serious about scoring and being fierce.

Here she is, happy from running around, eating her after-game snack.

And Teresa's getting more interested in being photographed, or perhaps more tolerant.

She's got two little teeth now so we can't do this anymore, but she REALLY loved sucking on the corn while it lasted.

We've been making bread lately:

quilting.. quilting..

I've been quilting madly and will post pictures as soon as I can of said quilts (plural!) (yeah!).

Also, we've been playing lots with cousins and figuring out homechool routines. It's fun! I'm enjoying myself.

to the hospital and back

Well, Georgia did end up having to go to the emergency room last night. She got IV-ed and anti-nausea-ed and, thankfully, came home late last night. She's over the worst now and recovering well. She's talking and sitting up and drinking and even eating a little. Yeah! She says, 'I can't wait to start my life again.' Sweetie.

Billy went with her and I stayed home with the little ones this time. I'm glad not to have had to deal with the whole hospital experience, but Billy said it went really well. He also said that Georgia was very brave and determined. It helped that she knew what was going to happen since she's gone through this before.

grab grab

Today Teresa showed me how well she can grab. I was holding her in the Baby Bjorn and was rummaging in the fridge when I heard the toy she had been holding clatter to the floor. I peeked around her head and saw that she had grabbed an open grape juice concentrate container and had managed to get it to her mouth and was about to drink it! She's been working on this skill with gusto using her sippy cup and has managed to feed herself pretty well that way, but I didn't realize how transferable that skill was! Later, when she was on the changing table, she managed to grab her foot and chew on her toes. It was pretty funny because she was disappointed not to be able to shove her entire foot in her mouth. I think the whole grab and stuff thing means more teething. I can barely see the tip of another tooth on the bottom.

I'm glad to have such amusements today. It's been a little stressful for me because Georgia has a stomach flu sort of thing and the last time she had it (more than a year ago) it turned out to be some weird super strep and she wound up in the hospital for a week. Happily, she was really not sick at all between then and now, due to, I hope, our renewed commitment to getting her to eat vegetables every day. I've been slacking off on that front lately and now feel amazingly guilty that she's sick so soon after the slacking occured.

tooth news

In the same week Teresa got her first tooth and Georgia lost a top tooth (her fifth- the rest were on the bottom). Teresa is a very easy teether, so far. She's still acting squirmy, though, so I think she's getting another one (or two or three) already. Georgia is very changed from her tooth loss. You can really see the hole left by the top one and she's got a little bit of a lisp from it which reminds me how little she is, even when she's talking about very serious plans- like how she's a five year old farmer and is going to sell tomatoes at the farmer's market for seven cents apiece and sell them to the grocery store in the winter. She's an entrepreneur in the making- and she didn't get it from me, that's for sure! She's always trying to think of ways to make money. Her last scheme was to catch rainwater, bottle it and sell it to people. Before that she was going to make soup and sell it and before that it was homemade bubble solution. I don't know if we need to have a talk about how her education is really important and she doesn't need to be making money to be doing something useful or if I should encourage her to think of ways to sell things and explain real life issues about marketing, etc etc. Maybe a little of both.

No slouches here boy...it's full out life.

So how's it going over here? Let's see...I've discovered a new level of 'busy' and am searching for a rhythm that is manageable for everything that I'm doing. I'm pleased to have a few new avenues of Baha'i service (teaching Sunday school classes and attending planning meetings for said classes as well as Local Spiritual Assembly meetings) and Georiga just started soccer with the park district twice a week and a couple new playgroups each week and an art class once a month. It's all possible since Teresa is such an agreeable baby.

If she was not, I would only be doing the LSA meetings and nothing else. But she is happy to be out and about with new people to meet and wave her arms at. And I am giddy with delight at how easily she's taking teething. She's working on her first tooth right now and I can barely tell from her behavior that it hurts! I think I'm more anxious about it than she is! I was dreading the onset of the teething phase because it meant so many sleepless nights and so much screaming and illness with the last two. Not so this time. She sleeps. She doesn't scream. She barely cries! She sqeaks a little more than usual and doesn't crow with happiness as much as usual, but that is SO manageable. Phew!

Maya seems to be having the hardest time right now, I'm not sure why. There are a lot of tantrums and hitting. Is it the increase in activity level? Is it the loss of the pool? (Closed for the year since Labor Day) It's still so hot here every day that we feel the loss of pool time acutely. When the weather turns cooler we my go to the gymnastics open gym where you can just play on the equipment, but we may have to put that off for another year or so. There's too much hanging from things involved in gymanastics and Maya has this issue with her elbow where it will sometimes get dislocated if there is a sudden tug on it. She had an episode of it again last week (it's happened about three times in the last year) and we need to make sure she doesn't do any hanging by the arms or tugging sorts of things for a year or two while her joints develop to a point where this isn't a problem any more. I wonder what little kid sport-y thing would be good for that.

In my free moments after the kids go to bed I am researching curricula and I am making interesting progress. On one hand, I'm making progress because I've waded through enough information about general schools of thought to know what resonates with me, namely Waldorf, Enki, and Oak Meadow so far, which are all similar and the second two are mostly Waldorf inspired anyways. So things are coming into focus a little, but as that happens, I can see so much more deeply just how much I don't know! There's so much to learn and many shades of difference between various curricula even within the Waldorf-inspired group. And I'm being really stubborn and only paying attention to reviews that come from sources that I trust or at least someone I know trusts, not just what anyone on the internet says, so it's taking me a while to get the whole picture. But I'm really committed to getting this right for my kids so they have what they need and I have what I need and can reasonably do with a baby in tow so I will keep at it. Right now I'm trying to discover just how much structure is needed by children to thrive so I don't try to impose too much or leave them wandering with too little. It's a lot of exciting and important stuff to think about and I have very little time for reading so mostly I read a little, try the idea behind it with the kids for a while, and see what happens. Then make judgements and explore different avenues or keep looking closer to ones that seem to fit.

I'm also making headway on the latest quilt. I sew when I need time for meditation and integrating what's going on.

That's all I better say for now- this is getting long. I feel like I just wrote a letter to someone I haven't seen in a while... So I hope you're doing well. What's going on with you?

Love,
Bahiyyih

weighing in at 17 pounds...

It's been a while since I put up pictures of Teresa. She's getting big. Six months old and sitting up. She's also making great babbles and enthusiatically eating up her sweet potatos and applesauce with rice cereal.

It's really weird to see Teresa playing with this doll because they look so much alike.

She still likes to be carted around in the Baby Bjorn so she can stay close to mommy. Uh.. I just noticed what a weird look she has in her eyes here. Like her mouth is trying to smile but her eyes are saying, ' what the heck is that weird silver box on your face Maya?'