Category Archives: Family

Here’s what we look like today.

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Taking Medicine

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 has to take a larger volume* to get his full dose, but since he’s so good at it, it doesn’t matter. This way I only have to have one bottle, and it’s the less-expensive stuff too.

Nice

* Infant drops are the most concentrated formula, since the purpose is to have the smallest most effective dose.

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N: I don’t like dreams. Make it so I don’t have dreams tonight.

M: I like dreams.

Interesting how the girls seem to think they can’t feel differently. They have to fight over it.

And they have to assert their individuality by giving their own answer (even if it’s the same), and asking the same question, even when I’ve already answered it for her sister, right in front of her.

This extends to rules and rebukes. One will see the other told no, then do the exact same thing, as though to test if the rules are the same for everyone.

It gets old, but I figure it’s not that different than it would be with “real” twins, so I just keep trying to be gracious.

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Hockey

The girls went to the hockey game tonight with Mom and Dad. It made quite an impression.

Jay says says that when Natasha sees something she wants to do that’s she’s not big enough for, she’ll pick an age at which to do it.
For example, tonight after we picked her up she was talking about how big the hokey players are, and how she can’t skate with them yet.

“When I’m 14?” she said, “When I’m 14, can I play hockey?” I asked if that was the ave Uncle Mark said she needed to be. “No.” Fourteen is just a good age? “Yes.”

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Then Melody needed a diaper change, but refused the new one. So she managed to keep her pants dry the whole time she was there, making a couple trips to the bathroom. She knows what to do–when she’s motivated. But I suppose that’s where her sister started too.

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First Reading Lesson

I did lesson one in the Distar book with Natasha tonight. I think she wasn’t really very interested, but the premium mama-time was too valuable to pass-up.

I saw right away the difficulty resulting from of teaching letters before sounds (something the introduction expounds on, eloquently, though I honestly don’t know how to avoid it: “You, there, Grandma! Quit telling the girl her alphabet!” I mean, really!)

Natasha made both the mistakes the introduction describes: wanting to say letter names rather than sounds, and (at one point) exclaiming, “M! That starts with mouse!”

What ended up working well was describing names, as opposed to the sounds they make. I used kitty as an example: “Its name is cat, but it says ‘meow.’ Yes, this is an ’em,’ but is says ‘mmmmm,’ and that’s what we’re using right now.” The analogy seemed to work for her, but the “say it fast” game didn’t go smoothly at first.

I think we’ll repeat lesson 1 before we go on to lesson 2. Tomorrow, I hope. She almost seemed to get the idea of things toward the end, but I didn’t want to hammer things into the ground on our first day.

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Mobile Boy

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 with gusto. I’m hoping we’ll have the table in by tomorrow, and with it his eating seat. So far we’ve been sitting on the floor together, which only works as long as he isn’t distracted. Thankful for the increased taking of solids though– his night-waking has been just killing me.

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A dream

Natasha was telling me this morning about her dreams, and I managed to record this much:

“I had a dream about you got married in that big dress. It was pretty pretty. And I was not there, and Melody was not there. Only Dad was there.”

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Night-time Prayers

Thank you, God, as this day ends
For my family and my friends.
Taking time to sit and pray,
Thank you God for this great day.

This little prayer, followed by some episode-specific praise, comes at the end of each Boz story. The girls have been watching their Boz DVDs back to back for a couple days, now.

Tonight Natasha sat up in bed with her fingers interlaced and said, “I’m going to pray tonight.”

That was just the coolest to me. I thought to myself, “This is why you buy Christian movies: to let the kids see the type of “normal” you want them to internalize.”

This self-initiation was mostly so exciting because we’re about as consistent with bedtime prayers as we are with bedtime teeth-brushing. Neither is every night.
It wasn’t so much the repeating of the formula that was neat to me (though that was sweet in its own way) but the practice of adding something unique of their own at the end.

Natasha’s latest (as I wrote that last line): “Thank you for rocks and neat toys to play with.”

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Natasha is Four!

Well, we didn’t get around to making a cake today, like we’d planned, but now think I’d like to do a cat cake (the kind you make with two 9″-rounds), so I’m glad we didn’t make it yet.

We aren’t having a party until Sunday (if that– depends on the flooring, and we still haven’t invited anyone but Mom and Dad. The floor situation has made the atmosphere here just generally stressful.) but we’ll probably just make cupcakes for that, and use whatever left-over cake we have.

I wanted to do something special on her birthday. We were going to start reading, but she was up late last night, and wanted to nap, so we put that off for a day too.

Mom and Dad called at bedtime to sing “Happy Birthday” to Natasha. She wasn’t sure how to respond, really, but passed-on a coached “thank you” quite smoothly. Then Mom asked her how it felt to be four, and whether she was growing.

“I been trying to,” she answered seriously, “but my skin won’t grow.”

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See what happens when you teach children new words?

They use them.

“Melody needs to lift up her countenance,” Natasha said matter-of-factly this morning.
Melody’s current M.O. is to dissolve in cries and screams when she’s scolded for misbehavior. It’s gotten real old really fast.

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I made sure I used the same phrase on Natasha the next time I had occasion to. I don’t want her to think she’s… better than her sister, as if Melody needs to do something she (Natasha) doesn’t.