Family News

We are (Lord willing!) coming out of a black hole of sleeplessness.
Natasha was having frequent night terrors, Elisha would wake 4-6 times in the night, and Melody would take forever just to get to sleep.
Melody still takes the longest of anybody to pass-out, but she’s generally quiet about it, and now that I’ve quit trying [...]

Jay got home Tuesday from his 3-day snow-machining trip.
We did okay here, but I’m really glad my sister was in-town for the weekend. She helped with bedtime Saturday night then came back and helped with baths Sunday morning. She also joined mom in helping shine the house before Jay got home Monday night.
The [...]

We are *so* not buying brand-name Children’s Motrin again. The generic tastes so much better.
I’m looking today, and if we don’t have any generic in the house we’re going shopping this morning. Elisha’s learning to resist medicine, and that wasn’t the case before. This stuff is nasty, and I hope we can [...]

Elisha was up three times in the night (I can’t remember what his top-wakings number was– that phase was an understandable haze).
But thankfully we seem to be at the next phase of sleep teaching.
(The first, if I forgot to mention, at its worst had him up nearly every 45-minutes. That was doubled maybe once [...]

Elisha didn’t sleep a lot more than usual last night, but I was able to soothe him down without nursing after a couple of short wakings, *and* he put himself back out for the first time since I can’t remember when.

If I get around to posting the goals I drew-up last night, you’ll understand better why these were so significant to me. Either way I enjoy going back over my morning and creating a “done” list:
Today (and it’s just naptime) I

Did an involved (messy, new) craft with the girls
Had an extended reading time

Both while [...]

Thank God for yummy medicine!
Elisha’s been teething and is now having pressure in his ears. But he’s taking his “symptom managers” without a blink and they’re doing their jobs (Aw man– has it been 6-hours already???).
He’s so good at it I can give him the “children’s” strength instead of the infants’ drops. He [...]

You can’t feel them yet, but when he’s crying, wide-mouthed, there they are: two on the bottom.

Elisha is definitely crawling now, knee and hand, even on the new floor. Good time to have the floor clear enough to keep clean.
If I haven’t said so already, he has left the baby-look behind and is taking on an alert, cheerful personality that is written all over his maturing features.
He’s also taking solids [...]

Growing up each of us kids received an ornament at Christmas, usually representing something significant that had happened or changed. When each of us left home, Mom gave us our bucket of ornaments for our own tree.
I’ve started a similar collection (at least, so far I’ve managed a representative “first Christmas” ornament for each [...]