She’s developed an affinity for sucking her thumb. I try to nurse her whenever she does it, to make sure she’s not hungry. But it turns out, sometimes she just wants to suck her thumb just for the comfort of it. Occasionally she’ll get her whole hand in her mouth, and then I hear a gagging sound and have to go rescue her from choking herself. She hasn’t yet figured out that her fingers are the problem and how to take them out of her mouth.
She loves to practice her letters and numbers on a little dry-erase board, and is getting better at it every day. I can’t believe how much my little girl is growing up already, and she’s only 4 ½!
Eva’s also recently crossed the final potty-training hurdle: using the big toilet without a step-stool or the padded toddler seat insert. She’s so proud of herself now that she can perch all by herself. Public toilets are still a challenge, though.
Still, he enjoys working with seniors, he’s familiar with the job, and he’s grateful to be working again. We have several friends who aren’t as fortunate right now – who are struggling to keep their homes, and one even struggling for the funds to keep their adoption going. I can’t imagine having to worry about something like that. My only challenge at the moment is learning to adjust to being a busy SAHM of 3 while Dave goes back to working long hours.
We stayed in the little guest house that Grandma and Grandpa had set up for Uncle Tim and his family when they were on furlough from China. Grandpa had gotten Aunt Barocha and Uncle Caleb a Wii for Christmas, and decided to break it out early for the kids to play with. Eva and Amanda had a blast playing baseball, frisbee, fencing, and pretending to row canoes with the little Wii controllers.
I decided to try making gluten-free Christmas cookies so the girls could decorate them. The first batch didn’t turn out very well. I made it with an all-purpose GF flour mix from Bob’s Red Mill, but after the first bite I figured out why it tasted so awful. The first ingredient in the mix? Garbanzo bean flour. Yuck! For the second batch I chose a GF yellow cake mix from Pamela’s Products, and that came out much better. Her flour mixes are made with rice flour, tapioca flour, potato starch, and other less offensive flavors. They came out really well, and the girls had a great time decorating them with colored icing and sprinkles.
We pulled out the traditional Christmas videos, but this year the girls are enamored with an obscure Disney cartoon called “Small One”. It’s about a boy who can no longer to keep his beloved donkey, so he brings it to Jerusalem to sell. After a series of adventures, they meet Joseph, who offers to buy the donkey and give him a good home. Small One, of course, becomes the donkey who carries Mary to Bethlehem, where she has the baby Jesus.
Amanda would watch it a dozen time a day if we’d let her. She always points and says, “Look, Mommy! Look at the horsey! Where’s the horsey going?” She brings out her stuffed horsey and gently combs his hair while humming the “Small One” tune. It’s amazing how impressionable they are at this age, and how everything they see has the potential to fire the imagination and make a huge impact on them.
As soon as we put Amanda down for her nap, Eva calls out, “It’s school time!” and gets out her little lap desk and crayons. Her favorite activity is cutting out pictures with her little scissors and pasting them where the directions say on the page: behind the kitten, on top of the mountain, on the girl’s left hand, etc. It’s adorable to see how proud she is of her accomplishments.
Eva’s very observant and imaginative, and it always makes for entertaining conversation.
“Why are you girls on my bed?” ”Cause this is Home Depot,” she replied, “and I’m buying tools to fix the tent.” Alrighty, then!
The girls love to watch the squirrels in our backyard scamper around, gathering food for winter. We leave apple cores and other treats for them sometimes, and it drives Rebel to distraction watching them chatter and scold at him, safely beyond his reach through the window. It’s become next to impossible not to track pine needles into the house from our neighbor’s tree. Occasionally one of us will find a stray one in the carpet that pokes through our socks, but thankfully they’re easy to vacuum up.
Dave also spends a lot of time with the girls. He loves to take them on the local bike trail when the weather is good. Eva rides her tricycle and Amanda scoots along on her little Fisher Price ride-on. When it’s raining, the community center is always an option. There’s plenty of space for them to run around and burn off all that pent-up steam.
A couple of weeks ago Eva found a toy catalog. She flipped through a few pages, pointed to a toy she wanted and said, “Daddy, you buy me that!” Awhile later I took the girls shopping with me, and they kept asking for things that caught their eye. They had started to develop a little entitlement attitude. A normal stage of childhood, but one that has to be nipped in the bud before it gets out of hand.
It’s a normal life lesson that every one of us has to learn eventually: you can’t always get what you want. So now we’re making an effort to remind the girls to be thankful for what they have. I continue to take them shopping with me so that they once again get used to the fact that most shopping trips don’t involve buying a new trinket. I had Eva help me pick out toys to donate to Goodwill. We remind them to say “Please” and “Thank you” when they want or receive something, and we’re trying to scale presents back to special occasions, like birthdays and holidays.
Amanda handled her sister’s absence better than I thought she would. She whimpered a bit the first time she had to go down for a nap by herself, and climbed into bed with me half-way through the first night, but other than that she did really well, even playing well by herself. I took her on several outings to get us both out of the house and try to make our time special for her. Having only a two-year-old and a newborn gave me flashbacks to when Eva and Amanda were that little and I had just the two of them.
The other morning, Dave noticed that Amanda had a dry diaper (which never happens) and wondered who changed her, since I was still asleep. As it turns out, Eva had pulled out a fresh diaper, made Amanda lie down on the floor and changed her all by herself! She put it on a little loose and crooked, but hey, she did it! I’m honestly surprised that Amanda cooperated enough to let her. As impressive as that is, she won’t be changing Bethany’s diaper any time soon. That requires much more skill. Already I’ve had a couple incidents where I took the baby’s diaper off to change her, only to have her cut loose and projectile poop. The first time she got it all over our bed sheets, and the second time she overshot the changing table, hitting the couch and carpet. Good thing she’s only breastfed! That could be a lot more disgusting than it already is!
Thankfully Bethany has been sleeping pretty well at night, but with the seasonal and swine flu going around (we already know 3 people who’ve come down with it), I decided to play it safe when she started spitting up and took her to the midwife, who is also a Naturopathic doctor. No flu, thank God, but she did discover that Bethany has thrush in her mouth – a clear sign that her immune system is fighting something. It’s notoriously difficult to get rid of in nursing babies, but thankfully I haven’t gotten it from her. I’ve been told by other nursing moms that it’s extremely painful. Now I’m on phytobiotics and have to give Bethany Nystatin four times a day. She hates it and spits most of it out , but I’m told that having the medicine coat her tongue is the most important thing.
I was also told to lay off the sugar because yeast thrives on sugar and it makes it difficult to cure the thrush if my milk has too much in it. I’ve got such a sweet tooth, I went into withdrawals just hearing her say that!
