Year 3, January 8-9, 2018: Janaury Thaw

Finally! The temperatures are rising to be back to the average for January in Indiana.  I don't mind the cold, but only if it's outside.  The sunroom finally is warmer than 70 degrees! Although tonight, my fingers are freezing as I type so put on my arthritis gloves where you can still see the tips of your fingers.  But with the thaw, comes the mud.  And for some reason, Socks has wanted to be outside more frequently.  He seems to be charging the fenceline, so maybe he's found a new doggy friend, who knows? But that means more paw wiping.  If you ask me to rank the seasons in order, Fall would be #1, then Winter, then Summer, then Spring.  Why? Because I grew up cleaning horse stalls in the spring thaw after a hard New England winter and the mud was so thick you could loose your boot in it!  So, while some focus on the newness of spring, I prefer the colors of fall and the cleanliness of winter.  I can deal with the snow because it's mostly water, but the mud? Nope, nada, not a fan. 

Anyway, it was nice to go to the library for Poke'mon club yesterday and not have too bundle up so much!  The high on Thursday is going to be 50 degrees!  But there's also a chance of precipitation every day for the next 10 weeks.  We might even get some significant snow on Friday night!  But Indiana snow comes and goes, so you see the dead grass often between "storms" or "snow events."  It's been a complaint of mine for 20 years.  ANYWAY, think positive! Um,....

Poke'mon Club interrupts one Monday a month for us, but, Keturah and Abishai stayed home with Grandma because Keturah had been sick the night before, and there's no need to drag Abishai when it's really his naptime.  So, it was just Justin and I.  Yeah!  That means I got 90 minutes to just sit and talk with friends instead of chasing the almost preschooler around.  And it did break up the first day back from break, which was a little rough.  It wasn't horrendous, thank goodness, because I tried to get them psyched up for it last week, but I am finding Justin is less and less engaged and would rather goof off, and Keturah's not far behind.  There's a time for fun, but not while we are talking about a serious subject like the United States Constitution and the Roman Republic, and especially NOT when we are listening to patriotic songs.  I had no idea that they had not heard any of them besides our national anthem.  Eek!  I need to add some of those songs, and memory work of important documents, to the long list of things to do, lol.  It's never ending.  And it's always weird that they don't know the pledge of allegiance.  I even couldn't recite it perfectly today and I went to public school for 5 years! Oh well, there's always more to learn.

Later on in the evening on Monday, Justin felt ill, too.  Will the sickness ever end? Thank goodness Tuesday was a totally at home day, so we hit the books hard.  Even Abishai played with some sand for more than 30 minutes!  Life is about to ramp up, though, with appointments, field trips, meetings, and of course church activities.  And I'm taking this computer in to be looked at tomorrow, so I probably won't be able to post anything until Friday night.  We have some errands to run tomorrow and some fun things on Thursday!  Stay tuned!

Yes, I bought myself a large "Cat in the Hat" white chocolate raspberry coffee, made with soy milk and topped with whipped cream.  I'm going to be doing the Whole 30 thing again (not a diet, but a reset) starting later this week.  Plus, well, mama can have a big treat once in awhile.  It tasted super yummy, maybe because I drink mostly tea at home without sweetener or cream, and plain coffee with just unsweetened almond milk is not great.  I have a new on plan creamer coming in a box of on plan goodies tomorrow.  I'm super stoked to try them all!

Because some weren't able to make it in December, they did a gift exchange today of anything related to Pokemon.  It could be cards, it could be figurines they were done with, or in Justin's case, he drew some Pokemon to trade with.  But our fearless leader had a different way of doing the exchange.  It was based on silly things like "make an exchange with someone with brown hair."  Or, "exchange with the tallest person."  I don't think the gifts were opened until the very end though.  So not quite like a white elephant gift exchange.  We couldn't stay the whole time because Grandma needed to go somewhere after babysitting, but I was glad I at least got him there.  He has a lot of fun and it seemed like we had more kids this time!

They started off by watching home videos of when Abishai was really little.  Then they moved on to other babies laughing and maybe more sports car videos.  They don't just bond over the screen though.  Daddy roughhouses Abishai as much as possible and Abishai adores it!  Thus the swords also in this picture, lol. 

Does anyone remember the movie, "Shark Tale," made back in the early 2000's?  It starred Will Smith as one of the fish, and maybe Angelina Jolie?  Anyway, oftentimes, when I see Benaiah plugged in to his device and not responding to my words, I'll say, "Hey, Headphone Guy!" which is a direct quote from this movie.  Basically, Headphone Guy doesn't notice his surroundings because his music is too loud, so the Will Smith character has to save him from being hurt by a whale at the whale wash (car wash for whales).  That's Benaiah sometimes, but it could apply to Justin, too. Anyway, I trolled Benaiah on Instagram with these pictures, because I know his friends might remember this movie.

Headphone Guy from Shark Tale

See? Headphone guy, eating MY chips meant for MY taco salad the next day!  Next time, I'm putting my name on them and hiding them!

I am trying to keep Abishai out of the other kids' way in the morning and NOT use screen time until lunchtime or after.  So, I'm pulling out all the preschool activities I didn't find the time to do with the other ones.  Well, I think I did them once or twice, but not often.  I'm thoroughly enjoying this one on one non screen time with him.  It also keeps me off of my screen as well.  I'm setting a timer for myself for 1 hr and I'm not allowed to look at it, especially social media, until the timer is done.  I can pick it up if there's a text or direct message from Facebook (which is like a text).  I was 50% successful with it today.  Anyway, we pulled out the colored sand to play around in and he had a blast!  He played mostly independently for 30 minutes!  I had forgotten how he loved playing in the sand just a few months ago.  Yeah!

There was only a little bit of sand, because I had bought a multipack of different colors and had only dumped in two colors.  So, I let him slowly add in half of what was left of the other colors.  Remember, I have this "save it for later" mentality but I am also trying to let it go and USE the supplies I have bought for them (same goes with play dough) because I can buy more if necessary.  Abishai seemed fine with whatever I let him do.

Abishai said he made church and then Daddy's office at the church.  So sweet!  He also recognized the letter "A" in the box.  There's a few magnetic letters, and a couple of erasers in the form of a fire hydrant and a fire truck, as well as the shovel and scoopers.

That's a cool array of the colors we just added!

Then he started driving the fire truck around in the different colors, and wasn't upset when they started to all blend in.

So neat!  I'm glad I took pictures so I could show Daddy because soon enough, all the colors were mixed in.

Preschool blog ready picture?  Maybe! Lol.

All mixed in!

Driving and swirling for a LONG time!

Sissy joined in for a little bit between school and chores.

Among Benaiah's stuff we found this game he's had for a long time.  It's one of those puzzle games where you have to move pieces back and forth until the right one can pass through the "door."  But Abishai just had fun arranging them on the board and on each other!  He was very precise, correcting me when I put one on backwards.  And he could name every color!  He called the black one, the police car.

Update: I guess my burn from last week started to peel today and I didn't even notice!  It never blistered, probably because I was diligent with putting on oils for the first 36 hours.  And I got to show the middle kids just how smooth new skin is.  We are reviewing our human body stuff, and making sure we hit on other health issues, so this was a timely thing!  Remember, I wanted to be a large animal vet so I'm not grossed out by this stuff.  In fact, it fascinates me!

And here's where the boys rough house!  Abishai insisted they wear fire helmets and use light sabers, which fit neatly into some holes in the wheels of his tricycle causing him to stop.

The feeding trough of the Little People nativity set comes in handy to serve tea in!

And then we showed Daddy how we played in the sand today.  They played there for a good 20 minutes.  Oh, AND this kid is very clean!  He only sort of spilled outside of the box once and when I told him to hold still so the sand wouldn't go everywhere, he did hold still!  He even used the little vacuum to clean up the flecks of sand on the floor!  Yeah!  Start those cleanliness habits while they are young!