This morning at breakfast, I said that right after breakfast I needed to go to the store.
Brandon’s response?
“Good luck with that.”
LOL!
Quick funny about Brandon
December 17th, 2005Narnia
December 10th, 2005Yesterday was Brandon’s 4th birthday. His party was last week, but we wanted to do something special for him, so we took him to the Chronicles of Narnia movie on opening day. It was a great movie. I highly recommend seeing it (although I don’t think it absolutely has to be seen in the theater). Brandon was a little bit bored and distracted. He really wanted to go play the games in the lobby, so he kept asking if the movie was over yet. We also let him pick dinner, so we picked up his favorite McDonalds dinner on the way home 
Today the kids are getting ready for tomorrow night’s Christmas program. Alyson and I just went and spent $100 on clothes for her (yikes). At least I can finally clean out some of the clothes in her dresser that she keeps wearing every week even though she’s getting too big. She’s really going to need more clothes in the summer – if only we could move her birthday LOL. I would have bought her more 18 months clothes today, but they were all long sleeves and fleece. I also picked up a set of gloves, hat, and scarf for her stocking… she keeps stealing mine, so I don’t think it’ll matter that they’re a little big for her
Christian got to go on a field trip to see a play about the elves and the shoemaker (whatever that is about LOL). He was upset about it because he missed two recesses. I also sent him with money for the bookfair this last week and he forgot every day to use it. I guess we should have gone on parent night afterall. Oh, well, he has lots of books and I’m sure there will be another bookfair in the spring.
Some good news, I’ve been getting more calls and emails than I ever expected thanks to my listing on bookkeepinghelp.com. I have another meeting with a potential client Monday night (and this is after I met witih 2 new clients less than a month ago). I’m excited for what January will bring!
Snow!
December 1st, 2005
What a great day to be stuck at home. Grandma was sick today and couldn’t watch the kids, so I got to stay home. While Alyson and Brandon aren’t terribly helpful when I’m trying to work from home, it was ccertainly fun to be able to tell Brandon, Look it’s snowing! He got SO excited. He had to put his shoes on and go outside. Alyson liked it too. I’m hoping to get snowed in and not have to go to work for a couple of days 🙂
Alyson’s a year old!
November 30th, 2005Alyson sure has grown up in her first week as a one-year-old. She’s starting to walk more, and she’s teething again (finally). I was beginning to wonder if any more teeth were ever coming in 
She’s also communicating more. She’s certainly a Mommy’s girl at this point. She signs ‘eat’ and something like ‘gimme!’ She’s chattery and loves to blow kisses and wave.
While she’s doing great, I’ve gotten this stupid cold again. I’m hoping to kick it before Brandon’s party on Saturday. I can’t believe he’s almost 4! He’s really looking forward to his race car party!
Reidar
November 26th, 2005First of all, Mom and Angie, see I haven’t forgotten how to update my blog LOL.
Wow, what a day! Today was the day after Thanksgiving, the traditional shopping day!
Christian and I got up at 4:30 (yes, AM, LOL) and went with Crystal and Joy to join the rest of the crazy shoppers for the 5am opening of JC Penney. We each got our free Disney snowglobe and started on our shopping mission. I must say, opening an hour ahead of any other store in the mall was genious of Penney’s. We were stuck there for an hour before we could move on to any other store. It helped that they had great deals, but I completed most of my Christmas shopping (that I hadn’t already done online) within that hour. At 6, we moved on to Macy’s, where they brilliiantly gave us each (including the kids) $5 gift cards. Well, we HAD to find something to spend them on! $50 and an hour later, we finally left Macy’s and the mall behind.
As we were done with the mall, we moved on to IHOP for breakfast. Great timing, too, because when we left, there was a line of people waiting for tables. Christian and Joy entered a coloring contest. The winner will get a HUGE stocking, bigger than the kids. We went to Office Depot, and I’ll spare you the saga of my frustration with their advertising. Let’s just say that when I got home, I went to Staples.com and placed a large order. We also picked up diapers and stocking stuffers at Rite Aid.
We had a fairly quiet afternoon at home. Fast forward to 6pm. We dropped off Alyson (who is adorable, by the way, and is SO close to walking, and who loves to say ‘Done!’ and Mama, Dada, and ‘isin’) at Grandma’s house and headed down to Seattle to hear Reidar play live. This is the band that Bill spent all of August September and October recording and producing their CD. This is also the band that did a day’s worth of yard work for us They put on a really great show. The kids were EXHAUSTED by the time the show ended at nearly 11, but they did enjoy the music and seeinig a bunch of people we know.
Well, it’s nearly midnight now and though I had a latte at the concert, I’m tired too. The kids are to bed, the house is quiet, and it’s bed time
Oh, one more thing… if you want to know more about Reidar, click the link to Bill Abella Productions! The new CD is out and it’s wonderful!
Parent Teacher Conference
October 25th, 2005Bill and I met with Christian’s teacher today. Nothing came up that really surprised us.
The negative:
He needs some help with his phonics still. He’s still struggling with some sounds (we mainly notice that he has a really hard time with b and d). It doesn’t help that he rushes when he’s reading.
He had a hard time counting a group of 32 blocks… not because he can’t count to 32 (we know well that he can count to 100+), but because he had trouble organizing and keeping track of which he had already counted.
His handwriting needs work, mainly because he rushes through it.
He is very social. He doesn’t know when (or how?) to ignore someone else and concentrate on his work.
The overriding problem is that he doesn’t slow down and do his work carefully. He visits until he absolutely has to get something done and then rushes through it to turn it in.
The positive:
He is really good at using the context to help decode words when he’s reading.
He can already break down the number 7 (they are supposed to be able to break down groups of 8 by the end of the year). Overall, his grasp of math concepts is good.
He is very social. (LOL) She said he was a great choice for ASB Rep. She said he is very bright and articulate and cooperative/helpful. He’s really right where he is supposed to be for a first grader.
We are very proud of him
Marbles
October 25th, 2005
Brandon swallowed a marble. Came right down and told me about it, at least. Said his throat hurt.
Thankfully, the triage nurse said to just watch him for 3 days. 3 whole days.
Isn’t parenting great.
Talking about And baby makes … 18? – Women’s Health – MSNBC.com
October 13th, 2005Holy cow! How on earth does a family of 18 function?!?
Sick kids
October 12th, 2005
Well, i took two of the three kids to the doctor tonight for these coughs that have been lingering. Sounds like we’ll need to get Christian in tomorrow.
Alyson has the crud and is on antibiotics. She slurped them right down too 🙂
Brandon is also on antibiotics. He spit it out. I don’t know how I’m going to get him to swallow them tomorrow. The rest of the appointment was interesting though. The doctor (actually we saw the clinic nurse) said that Brandon’s ongoing cough is probably an immune response – not exactly asthma, but similar. She said he may grow out of it, but she said it’s very common when they have sensitive skin (Brandon’s only other prescription ever was Elidel for excema). She also found it interesting that Bill has asthma/allergies. So Brandon now gets to try kid Claritin every day, and he gets to try Alyson’s nebulizer. Great fun.
One thing I wanted to write about Brandon that’s so funny. The kid is obsessed with gas stations. He points out every single one we ever pass, tells us what color it is, and asks if we need gas. Too funny 🙂
Well, Alyson’s in the bathtub (love having a laptop) and her water just ran out (the seal wasn’t good), so I need to get her a bit more water and get her washed up. Hopefully they’ll all be feeling better again soon.
Parenting is hard
October 9th, 2005
What a day. What an understatement. It was one of those lightbulb days. When you know something is really wrong in your home and haven’t been able to quite figure it out.
Christian has been having trouble… nothing that has made it into this blog, I don’t think. It’s been little things at home. He’s been doing great at school and has been fairly happy. But at home, he’s been getting into trouble left and right. There were little holes in the wall in the kids’ room, which they got into trouble for months ago. Suddenly they were much bigger. We think he knows better than to put holes in walls.
Today, he was supposed to be doing his Kindermusik homework, which was to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the dulcimer. The teacher gave them the first part, and they were supposed to figure out the second part. Christian played the first part no problem, but threw a fit instead of finishing. Nothing I could say would help. I suggested singing the song as he plays it. I suggested playing the first part again. He huffed, rolled around on the floor, said he was going to do it his way (yet did nothing). I sent him outside to sit and get some fresh air.
Did it work? Absolutely not. He drew on the house with chalk. We think he knows better than to write on the house with chalk.
Bill was furious. Christian was in tears.
After Bill went back in, I went out to try to talk to Christian. I tried to get him to talk to me. I got a lot of ‘I don’t think you love me!’ and ‘Maybe I’ll just run away!’ and ‘I hate having to do jobs!’. We talked about jobs for a little while, but it didn’t seem to be doing any good. I explained that we all have jobs to do around the house. I don’t like cooking every day or doing the laundry every week, but I do it because I love my family. That didn’t work. His response? ‘How about I just won’t eat for TWO YEARS!’. LOL, in hindsight.
I asked him specifically which jobs he doesn’t like to do? All of them. No, Christian, WHICH jobs? I was trying to get him to name something, to tell me what exactly he was upset about. He refused to nail it down. I kept trying. I went off on another tangent, explaining that if there’s something specific he is upset about doing, all he has to do is talk to us about it. Tell us he feels like he’s got too much to do and could he please have a week off from garbage duty. Or ask to trade one job for another. I felt like I’d been talking til I was blue in the face (as my nose was running like crazy and my head felt like it was going to explode). But it was yet another tactic that didn’t work.
But he did say something very interesting. He wants to have a kid life. Wow, what a lightbulb moment.
I finally figured out he feels we expect too much of him. We do expect a lot. He’s the oldest, and the other two look up to him. We expect him to remember to do things without being asked, and we do get mad if he forgets. We’ve decided to try to lighten up a bit, and he’s going to try to remember the things that bug us the most (it really bugs me that every single day I have to ask him to put his backpack away).
Some afternoon. With a sigh and a prayer, I’m off to bed, to start hopefully a more peaceful new week. I hope everyone else’s weekend wasn’t quite so interesting.
