Home Despot

Yes, we did make it back alive from Family Camp! (and count ourselves lucky to do so without being involved in any emergency trips to the hospital - it was a bad camp for emergencies!) Since then we’ve been busy doing lovely summery sorts of things. Barbecueing, playing tennis, weeding (a little), going for walks with the kids, and spending time with friends.

I’m trying to do school with the kids 2-3 days a week, which I thought would be easy, but so far has proved a challenge, due to the utter ease involved in filling up one’s calendar with more enjoyable things!

I babysat my brother-in-law Tuesday through Wednesday, which all of the children greatly enjoyed. We went to the spray park one afternoon, and the library, McDonalds and another neighborhood park the next.

Monica is getting cuter all of the time. She’s quite steady on her feet now, and is tackling verbal challenges. Her dad got her to say, “Cute-ti-pie!” the other day and she’s also starting to nod and shake her head - although she’s still a little confused about which means what. She’s been getting especially tender toward her brothers - running to give Ezra a hug when he’s hurt - then affectionately whacking him on the head.

I found Judah a new bike at a garage sale last week, on our way home from strawberry picking. It didn’t come with traning wheels and after a little initial defeatist thinking on his part, “I’ll never be able to rid it *sigh*” he really got going and now he delights in showing anybody how fast he can go up and down our little dead-end road. I’m really starting to appreciate our location more and more these days as our barely-trafficked street provides such a lovely area for riding bikes, pulling wagons, and pushing dumptrucks. Monica would like to go out to play with her brothers all day, but alas, a 5 year old, however responsible for his age, is not old enough to babysit a 1 year old unattended! For now, when he asks, “Can I take the baby out on the grass?” I have to answer a reluctant, “No, sorry, you’re not old enough.”

Well, enough chatter. I should go accomplish something before the 4th of July weekend truly arrives!

For my birthday this year (on Wednesday) I am going to go to the Oregon Coast with nearly all of my closest friends and family, live in a beach house, eat 3 square meals a day, plus entirely too many  junk-food snacks, drink lots of coffee and do absolutely NO cooking, cleaning, or dish-washing for 5 days!

Yes, friends, it’s called Family Camp. The best birthday gift a girl can get!

I feel bad that I have nearly every cute thing Judah did when he was little typed out, printed, and in a folder, while poor Monica will barely know anything about her young self. So I thought I’d type up a small update, so that people who don’t see her often will know what she’s up to, and so that I won’t completely forget!

Well, Monica is my darling baby girl. So I am entirely biased. However, I’m not the only one. Ezra just said today, “Monica is so cute!” He followed up with, “and she’s so pretty!” He also calls her, “Little Sweet-Sweet,” and both boys finish up my made up songs about her which I apparently sing frequently enough for them to know by heart. An example… “Monica, little Monica, sweet Monica, my girl!” Yes, I know, Frank Sinatra reborn. A couple days ago, as I picked up Monica to bring her inside, Judah said, “Oooh, I wish I could keep the baby out here..” in a very sad voice. Even though she gets into their games, destroys their lines of cars, and generally messes up their stuff, they still love to have her around - most of the time.

She’s walking now. I actually did write down exactly when she did take her first steps on the calendar. But that’s upstairs. Suffice it to way, it was around a week before she turned 1. Now she’s nearly running and seems to get into even more things than she did before. For instance, this evening I heard Michael calling me urgently, and her screaming, and I ran downstairs to find that, unbenownst to him, she had walked into the utility room and started playing in the laundry detergent. She was crying (probably with fright from him startling her), and starting to rub her eye with her detergent-y hands.  Long story short - called Poison Control - gave bath - squirted eye and dumped water on her repeatedly - she’s fine. She almost never crawls anymore, except perhaps on uneven ground.

She talks a little. Mostly she says, “Hi.” She says it a lot, but especially when somebody walks into the room. She’ll repeat “Judah,” “Ezra,” and “Monica,” “Da-da” but the only other word that she uses with much frequency is “Ma-ma.” Somewhat gratifying, after three children to finally have one who says “Ma-Ma,” before he/she’s a year and half.

Her most enchanting game is to pretend that she’s talking on the phone. She’s been doing that for about a month. When the phone rang yesterday she put her hand to her ear and said, “Hi!” before I even got to it. Naturally, she especially loves toy phones, real phones, if she can get her hands on them, and any rectangular shaped object that resembles a phone in her eyes - my camera for instance. One and all, they go to her ear and she says, “Hi” and sometimes jabbers into them.

Ezra’s favorite game is to put her into my papasan chair and play who knows what strange games with her and around her while she’s stuck in there. Generally she only likes that for a minute. Now she starts to call me when she wants to be rescued. She calls the boys, too. Not their names, necessarily, but if they go downstairs and leave her, she’ll walk over to the top of the stairs and loudly holler down at them. It’s quite obvious that she’s calling them, even if there are no real words involved - it’s a very commanding tone. You’d think she’d seen someone else stand at the top of the stairs and yell, “Boys!!!” before.

Lastly, she’s Daddy’s little girl. Especially in the last couple of months, she’ll immediately crawl/toddle to greet Daddy as soon as she hears his voice when he gets home in the evening. He calls her “cutie, ” and says, “What a sweet little girl!” She loves it when he counts to 3 and throws her up in the air. As soon as she’s down she starts to bounce in his arms again to indicate her desire for another toss. Also she likes to be swung down, although that tends to make her a little more nervous. She used to hate being upside down (unlike her brothers) but it’s fun now now - as long as it’s not for too long!

She smiles a lot, but still doesn’t laugh very much.

Well, that was probably more than most anybody could stand - even a devoted grandparent. So I shall adjourn and try to get a goodnight sleep before the frantic goings on of the Sunday before Camp.

Monica turned one on May 19.  We celebrated her birthday by going out for pizza - a bad idea. We forgot how long one has to wait in a normal restaurant for food, and when the pizza finally came, it was too spicy for the boys.  A lesson learned - repeated, really.  However, we went home afterwards and had chocolate cake, which Monica like quite well.

The following Sunday my in-laws hosted a joint birthday party for Monica and her Aunt Angela. It seems to be a universally held opinion that a little girl, just turning one, must be in want of dresses. I believe she received 7 of them!

Today a lady came and took our cat away.  No longer will we be supporting an outdoor cat from which we get little benefit and much frustration in the form of a much abused screen door. Not to mention guilt when the cat has to live outside without so much as a shed in when it snows in the winter.

I didn’t think anybody would want an outdoor cat, but the same day I put an ad on craigslist for said creature, I got an email from a lady who seems to be very into finding homes for cats and was actually looking for an outdoor cat on craigslist. That was over two weeks ago, and there were several delays, owing to this kind lady’s involvement with several other cats and dogs in the interrim, but tonight, she came and took the cat away! Hurray!!

My newest obsession is an online game called Xplorers, which closely resembles Settlers of Catan, although the site staunchly denies and refutes any connection. I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time playing it lately.

As addictions usually do, this one started out small. Rose, my sister in law, has the board game and invited us to play. I assented, even though I don’t normally like games, and discovered I rather enjoyed it. This lead to more playing with Rose, playing with other folks, and finally to the discovery of an awfully similar game online where one can play  by oneself with computer players known as  ”bots” or with bots and other people.  Sometimes I play with Michael online (almost every evening for the last week), and today I played a game with Judah online (with Michael advising him). He thrashed me. It wasn’t fair, I was all set up to win, then my resources dried up… well, anyway. 

The nice thing about the game is that, when played with computer players, a typical game takes less than half an hour. Also, Michael likes to play games and this is a fun, easy, low-time-investment thing for us to do together on weekday evenings, and Saturday afternoons… and Saturday evenings… and Sunday afternoons…

Judah’s been saving up for a bike. But to his joy, a family at our church had an extra that they were quite happy to just give him. Praise God! Of course, as you can see, it’s a tad small for him - he’s still saving for a bigger one. But for now it’s his newest obsession: “Mom can I go out and ride my bike?!” (at 6:15 am)

Judah proudly riding his new bike

Michael got tickets to Dozer Day, held in Vancouver, WA last Saturday. When he told the boys about it, they hardly believed him: they were going to get into construction equipment? they were going to *gasp* drive it? themselves? Oh, with a “redult” helping them? Good, because they were a little worried they might crash one. WOW!” When Uncle Zane and Grandpa Howard were included in the adventure, their excitement could hardly be contained. They mentioned it at least once a day for about 3 weeks. Maybe 4. I was worried that it would be a bust, but no:

I just really doesn’t get much better than that.

OK, I thought these were really neat, and really easy (relatively speaking). So, sorry Mom, I’m going to try to get double credit by showing them off to all of my (online) friends - who might not see them on your refrigerator!

Photo “Bragnets” as taken from a Crafty Mama book from the library:

Magnets of all 5 of my mom's grandkids (two of Monica) -a Mother's Day Gift