Tonight, my baby girl and I sat down to watch the “Grandma No-Hair” movie (the slideshow that was played at her funeral). At one point, as we were seeing some of the pictures of “Grandma No-Hair” as a teenager, my little girl turned to me and said “Grandma No-Hair is a princess”. I paused for a moment and responded that yes, she is. It’s just one of those things I don’t want to forget…so I’m putting it here.
This year Ethan made his Valentine box at home. I told him we could make it anything he wanted, and he replied that he wanted it to be a piggy bank.
Ethan painted the box, nose, and feet…he colored the inside of the ears with sparkly blue…and decorated the pig with hearts for Valentine’s Day. Ethan let Jacob help put hearts on the top. Adam LOVED the pig! He kept trying to grab it and was yelling at it (because he doesn’t talk…he yells) the whole time the older boys were putting stickers on it.
We used stencils to put his name along the side. Ethan picked out red and a sparkly reddish brown for the colors in his name.
According to Ethan it was the second coolest box in his class…because one little boy made his look like a rocket.
Ethan lost his first tooth on January 6th! He was eating an oreo at lunch – scraping the middle out with his teeth – when it came out. I got the good news as I picked him up at the end of the day. His tooth was put into a tooth necklace so that he wouldn’t lose it. He was so excited!
Adam went in for his well-check, and we discovered that the eczema on his cheeks was infected. It flared up really bad sometime the week after his blessing (the week before Christmas). Poor little baby. You can see a little better how bad it looked in the picture below.
The pediatrician thinks the eczema is caused by an allergy of some sort. I went dairy free for an entire month because that was the most likely culprit, but it didn’t make a difference. It’s mostly on his face…and seems to look as bad as it does partly because he is constantly drooling!
Shortly before the four month mark, Adam started waking up at night to eat. We got the okay to start introducing cereals at his four month appointment so we gave him his first cereal on January 4th…after which he started sleeping longer again. He did not care for his rice at all. Then, when his face flared again, we pulled him off food for about two weeks…having to deal with the lack of sleep yet again. We just want to make sure we take things nice and slow since it appears that he has an allergy of some sort.
Also at about four months we talked to the pediatrician about his head tilt. She suggested that we get him into an occupational therapist. Before we did that, we went ahead and did some of the exercises that we did with Jacob when his head was starting to flatten on one side. When we contacted the therapist, we found that it was going to be pretty expensive to be seen. We talked to the pediatrician again when we went in about Adam’s cheeks (again), and she noticed a difference right away. We told her what we had been doing and that the therapist was a little pricey. She told us that what we’ve been doing is working and to just keep doing that instead of having him seen. If it starts looking bad again…we’ll go ahead and contact the therapist again. The picture below really shows how bad his neck tilt got.
Adam really liked playing with the spoon after he was finished eating!
For whatever reason, every time we start a baby on solids, all the other kids get extremely excited. They all crowded around Adam as he ate…then begged to have their picture taken with him when he was done.
I love my four crazies so much!
Our Christmas was so good! We decided a couple years ago to start doing a triple rotation for the major holidays….Easter, Thanksgiving, & Christmas. So I wrote up a schedule…2011 – Easter with James’s family, Thanksgiving with mine, Christmas at home!
Christmas morning we had lots of fun as the kids (and grown ups) got lots of fun new things.
Jacob calls this his “cutie picture” of him with his new plane.
Ethan begged and begged for Loopz…and at least 25 books…but Loopz was his number one request.
Deanna (as she is now calling herself…she even corrected her Daddy when he said Dee) told us over and over again that she wanted “Run-a-punzle”. Christmas morning she spilled water on herself before we even got to the living room and the gifts…which quickly turned into a mini freak out session. Her Daddy scooped her up and took her to look at her unwrapped gifts. As soon as she saw her Rapunzel and dress she was fine. After we officially came out she wanted her dress on…then added a flower to her hair…then put on the pink boots she got from Grandma.
Poor Adam had to use a borrowed stocking from Uncle Joshua because we failed to get his boot made. I don’t think he noticed.
I’ve been wanting to try to make a turkey for years, and since we actually stayed home Christmas Day I figured it would be perfect. Unfortunately I was busy feeding my littlest child when it needed to be prepared, so James did the turkey. We also had some sort of carrot soup, strawberry/spinach salad, homemade rolls (a recipe from Pioneer Woman), au gratin potatoes (also from Pioneer Woman), green beans, and pumpkin pie for dessert.
I really enjoy cooking and especially like to try new recipes. Most of our Christmas dinner was made up of new (to us) dishes! Our guests (and Ethan) said the turkey was good…neither James nor I care for turkey…my brother said that the outer meat was a little dry, but we managed to keep most of the bird pretty juicy! Only my mom liked the soup…which is why I don’t even remember what kind it was. If I didn’t have to worry about what Adam would tolerate I would have made a carrot and red pepper soup…which I LOVE! We’ve made the strawberry/spinach salad before. I’m not sure where we got the recipe, but we changed it a bit anyway. James and I both like it, so we made it even though it didn’t seem to really go with the rest of the menu. I really liked the rolls and potatoes and will probably make those again someday. The green beans are a staple in our home…Ethan loves them! I don’t seem to have many of my family’s recipes, so I make the America’s Test Kitchen pumpkin pie. I’ve made it for holidays with James’s family and have had several people tell me they don’t like pumpkin pie…then they try it anyway and tell me they like this one. So I guess it’s a good recipe. I don’t like pie…but intend to start trying them again to see if I’ve changed my mind. We’ll see what happens.