Our Kids

We went out to the Pumpkin Patch this week and it was fun. It was so windy and uber dusty but the girls had a great time. There was a bounce house, a barrel ride, a corn maze, a hay maze, some animals and of course pumpkins. They had a great time but I think I am still getting dust out of my ears!

Stay tuned for pics!

I have an honor badge for the way the girls eat. I mean I get all the looks (good and bad) from friends and family. Those girls eat fruits and veggies like they are going out of style. They eat beets, kale and all other sorts of vegetables. Now that they are older they eat cookies and other things too but they are totally easy to feed healthy foods.

Landis on the other hand has been more of a challenge. She had some serious texture aversion since I started feeding her at about 8 months. She would gag if anything was pureed but she had no teeth to eat anything else. I started giving her chunks of broccoli, sweet potatoes and such and she ate them and then her body sent them right out whole! TMI I know. But that is all she would eat, chunks of food and anything white (potato, rice cake, cracker, noodles).

Here is the thing about kids, never give up! Keep trying the same thing over and over. All of a sudden Landis is eating pureed baby food, LOL! So bizarre, now all cubed food is chomped and spit right out but pureed food is like nectar from the Gods. Can you believe that? So now she is eating pureed sweet potatoes, carrots and green beans (she still eats the noodles, rice cakes and crackers). Oh well, just like anything else in parenting it changes every day and keeps you on your toes!

I am so bummed when I go to my blog reader and find that my top blog stalking sites have not updated:( Then I think why should I be bummed when I am not even updating my own blog. So for all those that are too busy to tell me about your lives via your blog this one is for you, lol!

You can see from our Flickr site that Jason has been in charge of the photos. Thank you very much Jason they are great photos.

The girls and I have been busy with their school two hours, two days a week, gymnastics for 1 hour a week and swim lessons for Piper for 30 min once a week. They seem to be having a blast and I am too. Landis is more active than EVER, she goes and goes and goes until she collapses. She is too cute and practically runs everywhere and climbs on everything. I have found her on the toilet (lid down of course), on the dining room table, on the kitchen island, on the kitchen table, on the sofa and especially at the bathroom sink using everyone’s toothbrush.

This next week is super busy with Halloween coming. Tomorrow we are heading out to the pumpkin patch and hay maze, then school, then gymnastics and swimming, then school and Friday will be our second halloween party (IF we go) and trick or treating. On Saturday we are doing the JDRF walk that I have been nagging everyone about and then Sunday we have the day off:)

So let’s all take a collective sigh and get ready for the week.

What a great Sunday morning. Got to sleep in a bit (6:45)… got up with Landis and started my routine of putting the dishes away out of the dishwasher. The girls used to help me when they were younger, even before they could talk. They’d pick something out and hand it to me with a little squeek.

This morning… Landis did just that. Just one bowl, but she did it! I thanked her and put the bowl away. I love the way Landis brings back memories of the girls, but with her own twist on it. It makes me remember this age with the girls and just reinforces the memories I’ll have of Landis.

Since then it’s been a great morning… spent some time with Piper while Mystique and Lela slept for a bit. It’s always nice to have some alone time with each of the girls.

The rest of the gang got up and we’ve all just been having a nice lazy morning. Everyone made some toast, even Landis was eating a piece of toast while riding her car. So pretty much a boring morning, but that’s what makes it so great! Everyone could do their own thing, and we did… I downloaded some pics from my camera (look for them soon), Lela read a catalog, Piper “cooked” some muffins. Fun.

It’s around 10am and the blissful morning is ending, though… Landis is wandering around bugging the girls (unintentionally) and I think Piper and Lela are getting more and more restless. Ah, well… it was good while it lasted

Landis is becoming such a little person. She is full on walking and is so cute and wobbly on her feet but determined. She climbs up on everything, chairs, step stools, boxes, beds, you name it, she laughs in the face of danger and sometimes cries when danger slaps her down. She is very helpful with everything, for example, when I put on her clothes she puts her arms and legs in purposefully. You can also find her throughout the day trying to put her own shoes on which is so cute.

My favorite thing my lil’ person does is if you hand her a baby (or any doll, animal etc.) she holds it close and tucks it under her chin, then she smiles, gives it a hug and pats it back. Often times she will pull it away from her, give it another smile and then repeat the whole hugging patting thing. I sincerely hope this is an indication of her future personality, it is enough to make me weep at times she is so sweet. It also makes me feel good about us as a family when I see them mimicking behaviors that we do.

If you give her chalk she will draw on the ground and she loves to imitate any action that she sees me or her sisters do. She is very in to her surroundings, very aware of what is happening around her at all times. I think that she has imaginary toothpicks that hold her eyes open when she doesn’t want to sleep just so she can soak up a little more of the day. I could learn (and am learning) a lot from this baby, she has such a love of life and you can see it in almost everything that she does. She is a constant explorer and a real joy to spend time with.

I love to see how the girls play using their imaginations. We talk about using our imagination as much as we talk about compromising. I think the girls grasp both concepts because they put them in to action. When they are imagining that they are at a store or buying something I love how they open and close imaginary cabinets and put away imaginary spices. It is cool to see their minds working that way. I know for myself if I get an imaginary (or real for that matter) spice out of the imaginary cabinet I will not put it away. I get treated to many imaginary things throughout the day, coffees, ice creams, cakes, pies and the like.

I have been posting about how the girls are competing for attention, time and with each other and it has not gotten better or worse. In this weeks parenting class I got a gentle reminder about why kids do what they do, how they cause us to react and what we can do about it. Barb has this awesome “mistaken goals” chart that tells you when your child acts like xxx and it makes you feel xxx then this is what is really happening and this is what you should do. I had forgotten about the chart but when I looked up what we had been seeing I could see that the girls were telling me they needed more attention. MORE ATTENTION, WTF! But what I was forgetting is that needed undivided personal attention not food on the table, shoes on the feet, butt wiping attention.

On that note I started “Just Be” time with the girls this week. I have been dreading it and putting it off but now that I am doing it I quite like it. So for 10-15 per day per child I spend time with just one child doing whatever it is she wants. She has my total undivided attention, no tv, no computer, no cell phones nada, just she and I. It seems to be working well. Today the girls were at each other and me all day. So we decided to have our 15 min of just be time and now the girls are all lovey dovey, happy clammy! It is the littlest things some times that can make the biggest difference. I know they see me nursing Landis throughout the day and see that she gets my undivided attention and that might be driving some of the girls behavior. I am hoping we can add some “just be” time into Jason’s routine as well. After all who would not want to be the apple of someone’s eye for 15 min a day?

Well it is true, Landis is officially walking. It is now her most favored form of transport other than being carried in your arms:) She is so cute, like a little Frankenstein. She is extremely pleased with herself as she toddles along. I am afraid it will make her all the more lethal since she puts everything in her mouth and is already grabbing for things out of her reach. Oh well! I am sort of glad because the weather is finally cooling and we will be spending the next 5 to 6 months outdoors where it would be better for her to be toddling than crawling. On the crawling front she is finally a speed demon getting to where she is going in no time flat. Fun times ahead, keep the bathroom door closed:)