Watching Movies

So I had decided long ago that I didn't want my kids to watch movies/TV until they're two years old. And I did that with Parker and Aria. 

Terra has gotten lucky.

She is not much of a napper and so she is not asleep long enough in the day to allow the big kids to watch a movie. So after several weeks of Parker asking to watch a movie I gave in and let them watch it even if Terra is around. 

We still try to keep it to 90 minutes a week, so I try not to feel bad about letting go of my rule.

And it turns out she is super cute while she watches movies

I also love when she growls at the characters in the TV.

Pie for Dinner

Hypothetically speaking... if I were to make pumpkin pie and let my kids eat it for dinner I would be a 'fun' mom, right?

Well, what if that pumpkin pie were made with tofu, fresh pumpkin, agave instead of sugar and an organic whole wheat pie crust?

Am I still fun?

Who cares, it was yummy!

Athletes

So the kids were digging around one day and found some sweat bands:

While digging they also got out the tent and Aria used the tent poles as a horse:

Poor Terra Berra

So I had said before that at Terra's 15 month appointment she was labeled as 'underweight'. Because of that they wanted her to come back six weeks later to check on her weight. We ended up hanging out at the Doctors quite a bit in those six weeks.

At her 15 month appointment she had a yeast infection and we got a prescription for that.

Two weeks later her rash was different but not eliminated, and she had a bad cough so we brought her back to the doctor.  She had a Strep diaper rash infection that replaced the yeast infection, pneumonia, and she had a staph infection on her toe where she had the tiniest little cut you can imagine. So she was put on a broad spectrum antibiotic for all of those and we were told to be very careful with her... because she was so  sick she had actually lost weight from her already 'underweight' size.

We finish the antibiotic but the staph infection didn't clear up completely so we put her on another antibiotic because even though I don't love antibiotics, I fear staph infections more.

A couple days later she was breaking out in a semi-severe rash all over her body (except her face) thinking it was a reaction to the antibiotic we went back to the doctor, stopped the antibiotics, and treated her staph with tee tree oil. 

The rash didn't get better right away when we stopped the antibiotics and it didn't get better with basic treatment for Eczema (though the rash was much more sudden and widespread than eczema usually is) so the doctor asked us to use another medication on her and it finally got better.

Then we finally had her weight recheck 6 weeks after it started. She had gained exactly 6oz and hadn't gained any height so she was back out of the 'underweight' category and was just a lightweight.. 

She was also teething more at this time, so that was awesome

So she had 6 Dr appointments in 6 weeks and was administered 8 different medications of one kind or another.

But at last, she is healthy again.

Here was my sweet Terra cuddling with her blankets one day when she wasn't feeling well.

Also I had recently had a conversation with Parker about death and one night while she had pneumonia Parker looked worried and quietly said "Ummm, Mommy, I don't remember what kind of sick you said it was when babies can get really sick and die. How sick are babies before they die?" (as he watched Terra with concern) Oh sweet Parker, he was worried his baby sister was going to die.

But thank goodness his fears didn't come true she is doing great now!

Random Catch Up Pics

So I have been less than diligent about the blog lately, and it makes me a little sad, but I am going to get back into it because I love having this little journal of my family, especially since I can share it with grandparents, etc.

So here's a post full of random pictures from the last few months just to show you a little bit of how cute my kids have been

Parker, purposely giving himself a mustache with his smoothie

Terra, wearing Parker's shoes

Parker and Aria being monsters:

The kids love playing with umbrellas and since it rarely rains they end up using them as a 'tent' (though it did rain a couple of days and they spent lots of time outside with their umbrellas.)

Terra likes to cuddle her blankets and pillows and it is so cute. And when she would do it I would make a comment about how cute it was, so Parker started cuddling up to blankets and pillows to and pointing it out to me so I could say how cute he was.

And this time he asked me to take a picture:

Both the big kids managed to use their smoothie cups to give themselves unibrows:

They got lollipops somewhere (library, I think) and for some reason I thought it was super cute so I took pictures.

Mostly this one,
that little baby hand and holding the lollipop in between those baby cheeks was to die for

More shaving cream and food dye in the bath:

Homeschool Art

Our first unit for homeschool this year was art.

I was SO excited

The kids-- not so much, they were not super interested in it so the unit fizzled out a bit at the end, and so we started our space unit early.

There were a handful of activities that we did that they loved though. 

One, We learned about cave paintings and then I got a refrigerator box from Lowes and the kids were able to color in it like they were coloring cave walls.

Silly, I know- but they loved it.

Next was shapes with toothpicks and Marshmallows

So proud that he did 3D by himself

Of course this was a hit not only because they liked building with them but they also got to eat the marshmallows.

We also pulled this stuff back out and built Temples for FHE because the kids loved it so much.

We worked with mixing colors several ways, 

the kids favorites were in the bath;

We popped water balloons filled with food dye and water while they were in the bath to see different colors mix in the water.

We also melted different colored ice cubes for the same reason.

Making colored ice cubes

Patterns:

Fine motor color matching:

And this was a HUGE hit... salt paintings. 

The kids put glue on paper, sprinkled salt on the glue and then colored with water colors, the paint would bleed and run through the salt.

Aria's salt paintings

Parker's salt paintings

Another one they really loved was drawing on balloons; we drew on inflated balloons and deflated them to watch the images shrink and then also drew on flat balloons and inflated them to watch the image stretch.

All that plus some play with yarn and fingerpaints and such; and it turns out it wasn't a complete failure... at least they had some fun and got some hands on activities out of it, even f they could care less about any of the lessons..