I Don't Think It Was An Accident...

I know her face looks spazy.  It's because she's half asleep and grabbing her cheek with the rest of her fingers. The important thing here is that yes, she is in fact sucking her thumb.

Look What I Can Do...

It is a possibility that Malia may turn out to be a thumb sucker.  It would be pretty normal for my kids.  Matthew is the only one who didn't suck his thumb when he was itty bitty.  He just sucked on his tongue.  So I guess we'll see if she takes to her thumb as she gets more coordinated or if today was purely accidental.

Amping Up His Brain Power

This morning Matthew told me he wanted to make a thinking chair.  What's a thinking chair, you may ask?  Besides the obvious (a chair to sit in while thinking), I asked Matthew and he told me it is where Steve sits to think about what he can make.  With a few more comments about sitting in the chair and thinking about clues, I realized we were referencing Blues Clues.  Anyway, Matthew wanted a thinking chair.  So I told him he could use pillows from downstairs instead of the cushions from the furniture, helped him scout out a location that would be beneficial to the structural integrity of a thinking chair, and gave him some tips on how to arrange the pillows.

When I asked him what he was thinking about, he said, "F-14's."  Ahhh.  Airplanes.  There are not many better things to think about if you are a four year old boy.  Or a thirty-four year old boy...

Boo!

It's October which means that it is time to make cute Halloween things at preschool.  Matthew brought home his first ghoulish project of the year and I loved that he gave his ghost four eyes instead of the standard two.  And he even let me take a picture of him with his project...about eight hours after I wanted to take it, but that is far better than the grumpy faced photos he was giving me last year.  I do not expect him to want to cooperate on every occasion, so I thought it would be wise to share a picture when he is actually cooperating.

Thus the Halloween season begins...

She’s Got No Strings!!

Malia is off the oxygen!  Yay!  Yay!!  And did I say yay?!!!!  Her blood oxygen stays in the 90’s except when she holds her breath, and that doesn’t count.  So no more tubes to trip over and we can take those crazy stickers off her.  It is probably going to take awhile for the skin on her cheeks to recover, but that is no biggie.  I’m inclined to agree with Matthew who says, “It’s a happy, happy day!”

She has also gained nearly two pounds in the past two weeks and has the chubby legs to prove it.  She now weighs 9 lbs. 6 ounces.  And I have to tell you that I’m a lot more comfortable with the full-fat legs as opposed to the fat-free version.

In other news, Matthew had his yearly blood draw this morning and although he cried a lot more than usual, (I think having the staples in his head last month contributed to this.  He was pretty traumatized.) he sat still and didn’t try to pull away.  Afterwards I took him to the store to get a treat.  Guess what he chose?  Fresh strawberries.  You gotta love when your four year old chooses fresh fruit as a treat.  He offered to share a few with me and then ate the rest of the pound with his lunch.  With two older brothers it is rare for him to be able to eat as many strawberries as he wants, so I let him.  Besides, it’s fresh fruit!

Awesome Matthew

Last night Matthew drew me a picture.  Then he asked if we could take a picture of his picture.  I told him we could if he would be in the picture with his picture.  He agreed.  This is the result:

This is just one of the many reason why I love this kid.  He's such a cheeseball!  And he drew a picture of me and a flower because he knows I like flowers.

Blog Stalking Has Its Benefits

It means that I can beg, borrow, and steal great ideas from all over the internet.  And that is exactly what I did as I was getting ready for General Conference.  In the past I've printed packets, put together bingo games, all the normal stuff you see to help keep your kids interested and reverent during conference.  At the last General Conference, the packets lasted about twenty minutes and then chaos reigned which meant that when we got to the end of two days of conference, I realized that I had missed pretty much all of it even though I was sitting there in front of the t.v. the entire time.  This time I decided I needed another plan of attack.  I remembered that Tiff has posted links to some ideas of activities for conference, so I hopped on over to her blog and looked them up.

On Monday our family home evening lesson was on General Conference.  I used Elder Uchtdorf's message from this month's Ensign and we talked about how we can prepare for conference and what the benefits of conference are.  Then I told the boys we would have a couple of new (hopefully fun) activities to help us focus on conference and be reverent so we could all listen and learn.  After wondering all week what the activities would be, I unveiled them yesterday.  I used our gospel art kit to put pictures representing different topics up on the wall (including a sheet labeled "Other") and provided pictures of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and a pad of post-it notes to write down names of other speakers.  After each person spoke, their picture or name was taped to the picture representing the topic they spoke about.  Matthew wanted to tape up a picture every now and then which is pretty much the most I expected out of him.  And Daniel was perfectly content just doing his own thing.  But Nathan really loved this activity.  He listened carefully to each speaker, watched to make sure he spelled their name right, and then we discussed what they talked about if he wasn't sure.  He told me he definitely wants to do this again.

I also created some conference buckets, each one with a topic on it (faith, family, scriptures, etc.) and a small treat inside.  Each time they heard the word that was written in the bucket, they got to take two of whatever treat was inside.  If the entire talk was on the topic of a bucket, they got to take five treats.  All the boys liked this one, but again Nathan was the one who listened the best.  Matthew did pretty well for being four, but by the end of conference on Sunday he was pretty much just jumping up when Nathan did and grabbing whatever treat Nathan chose.

But overall I think our experimental activities were a success.  I think we will do it again next time.

Where’s Pluto?

Earlier this year, just after I finished Matthew's quilt, I started on one for Daniel.  His first quilt was just a printed panel that was tied since I hadn't discovered that I love quilting yet.  So I found a pattern that he liked and in spite of being pregnant, managed to get the quilt top finished in August.  The main part of the top was assembled using strip quilting (which is not as naughty as it sounds) so it actually went together fairly quickly.  My mother-in-law has a quilting machine so I gave Daniel the choice of hand quilting or machine quilting.  He opted for machine quilting because he has seen me hand quilt and knows that it takes forever and since he is a ten year old boy and not a quilting fanatic, he wanted what he knew would be quicker.  So we got the quilt on the machine, I picked out thread and a quilting design...and then had a baby a month early.  Needless to say, having the quilt done by the time it got cold was not looking good.  But then my wonderful mother-in-law stepped in and offered to help.  She did a fabulous job and brought the finished quilt to Daniel this evening.  So here it is, pieced and appliqued by me and quilted by my mother-in-law:

The quilt features the solar system as they teach it nowadays (minus Pluto, that is) so it is perfect for Daniel.  He is very excited to have a fancy quilt of his very own.