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I regularly find rocks around the house.  I’m pretty sure Nicole has brought most of them into the house.  One day I picked up her coat and noticed it was heavy–I found 8 rocks in the pockets.  She picks them up on the way to and from the bus stop in the morning. Nicole’s favorite thing to do with her rocks is to give them a bath.  She will announce that her rock needs a bath and then fill the bathroom sink with water.  After washing the rock with hand soap and water she carefully dries it with a towel.  One day she said her rock was hungry and requested some bread.  She shared the bread with the rock, offering it a bite between each of her bites.

Charlotte has been bringing home flowers for me lately.  They’re always tiny and have very short stems, but she is so excited to present them to me.  Here is one that she gave me either today or yesterday:I think it was less smashed when she gave it to me, but all the flowers she has been bringing have been about the same size–too small to even attempt to display or preserve in water.

I think this is Nicole’s way of saying that she wants me to go cook dinner.  I walked into the kitchen to find the chair at the counter, a pan on the stove, and another pan on the counter:In other news, she dressed herself this morning:(Did you notice how the shirt and pants are backwards?)

Last month, I had an idea to make a video of myself reading one of Nicole’s favorite books.  I had already read it to her 3 or 4 times that day and she wanted me to read it to her again.  So I made a recording of the book and played it for her.  She loved it and watched it over and over again.  A little more than a week later, I recorded several books with Ila and another one with Nicole.  I recorded a few more books today.  My current plan is to make a DVD for them to watch and read along with.

Ila has several of her favorite books memorized.  These two are my favorites to read with her because I love hearing her cute little voice reciting them.  The first one is “A Sick Day For Amos McGee”(sorry for the shaky camera work):
My other favorite is “The Shape of Me and Other Stuff”:
I tried to get Nicole to do a similar thing with me, but she just wanted to listen.

I have been trying to overcome the effects of lazy parenting.  I was so tired and achy by the end of my pregnancy, that I started turning on the TV more and more.  This bad habit continued when I came home with our new little family member.  Now he’s almost two months old and I’ve felt very guilty about the amount of time the TV is on. 

For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on breaking the habit/addiction of having it on.  The first battle has been with the girls who keep requesting their favorite movies (currently WALL-E and Monster’s Ink).  The first day or two was the worst because they yelled and cried when I wouldn’t turn on the movies that they requested.  We’ve had a gradual withdrawal, because let’s face it, it’s exhausting keeping a 2 and 3 year old busy while trying to keep the house clean, care for a new baby and feed (and launder the clothes for) a family of 7.  So the second battle is with me, because it’s so easy to turn on a show so that I can get the dishes done without worrying about what they’re getting into.  Instead of being frustrated with myself when I finally gave in and turned it on, I told myself that I should be proud of the amount of hours that we had it off.  I think yesterday was the first day that I made it through an entire day with no TV/Movies.

I am already seeing the benefits of my efforts.  Ila and Nicole are playing together more and they are playing more creatively with their toys again.

Anyone who has spent much time around Nicole lately will recognize the title of this blog as Nicole’s request to color/draw pictures on a tablet, phone, or computer. She’s been a little obsessed with coloring on technology ever since Zach let her color on his tablet while I was in the hospital having Thomas.  She will spend hours carefully coloring in pictures.  I don’t know that I have ever seen her tire of this activity and she spent entire days drawing after Thomas was born.  Last week, I let her color on my phone so that she would sit still while I cut her hair.Another thing that Nicole really likes is thick books.  I used to think that she really liked the thick Curious George book because she liked Curious George.  I have since noticed that she shows similar interest in any thick book.  Last time I went to the library,  I picked out two books from the children’s section for no other reason than that they are thick.  Nicole has loved both of them.  This week she found a phone book and spent at least an hour carefully turning each page.

This is what happened while I was writing the last post:

(and it was a short post too, I guess I won’t be writing any long narratives during the day anytime soon!)

Ila pointed out an “owie” on her finger.  So I kissed her finger.  She picked up the kiss with her little fingers and placed it back on my lips and demanded that I return her owie.

She’s a funny little girl.  She likes finding “owies” and has actually been disappointed when one of her owies has healed and she can no longer find it.

This picture is unrelated to this post, however, I thought it was cute.  This is Ila all ready to walk to the bus stop.  She insisted on bringing two books and her blanket.  I’m not a fan of bringing blankets to the bus stop because we live in (near) Seattle and the sidewalks are often wet in the morning.  So I have to wrap the blanket around her neck to keep it from dragging and I usually have to re-wrap the blanket several times before we return home from the bus stop. 

Ila and Nicole have started to interact more with their new little brother.  At first they mostly ignored him, but would talk about him or order me to “put him in the swing.”

I’ve been expressing milk and bringing a bottle with me whenever I need to go out.  On Tuesday, I was out with my three youngest when Thomas became hungry.  When I got out the bottle, Ila wanted to feed him.  She really enjoyed feeding him and kept saying “I la you, Thomas.”  She asked several times if she could kiss his hair before giving him a kiss.  When I picked him up and started patting him on the back she started patting his back too.  Since then, whenever she sees me patting his back she says “I want hurt his back” which is her way of asking if she can pat his back too.  She also loves to bring him things that are his and she tells him that she loves him many times throughout the day.

Today I had Thomas in the bouncer when I heard Nicole saying something to him. I came over to see what she was doing just in time to catch her trying to pick him up.  Not knowing if she can hold him without dropping him, I grabbed them both in my arms and moved them over to the couch.  Thomas was starting to get upset so I told Nicole that I needed to help Thomas be happy.  She held onto him with both arms and said that she was going to help him be happy.  When I tried to take him from her, she wrapped her arms and legs around him and said that he was hers.  She held on with all her strength and it took some effort to extract him from her embrace.  I helped him clam down and got a pillow so that she could hold him more comfortably.  I let her feed him the remainder of a bottle that I had from earlier today.  The bottle didn’t have much milk in it and was gone quickly.  Nicole kept saying that he needed more milk.  As soon as I took him from her, she got my breast pump, lifted up her dress and said “help me put it on my bobum!*” 
*She says bobum which I think means bottom, but she uses the term for both her bottom and her stomach.  When I was pregnant I remember her saying something about getting the baby out of my “bobum” and proclaiming that she had a baby in her “bobum.”

I just think this little outfit is too cute not to share—and I’m trying to ease myself back into the routine of blogging more frequently with picture heavy and text light posts.

Unfortunately, Thomas was not cooperating with my attempts to photograph him:And by not cooperating, I mean he was not very well pacified and he didn’t want to put his hands down so that I could take a picture that showed the whole outfit.  Here’s a picture from yesterday that shows a calm, happy baby:Here he is in his suit two weeks ago, I also didn’t get a great picture of him that showed his whole outfit on that day:Maybe if I’m lucky,  I’ll get one I really like before he grows out of it

In December, I wrote about Nicole being evaluated through the school district for special services.  One of the main areas of concern is her difficulty answering questions.

Here is a video of a Q and A session with Nicole in October:

And for comparison, here is a Q and A session with Nicole from yesterday:

As you can see, she is improving.  In the first video she repeated the questions that I asked without answering them.  In the second video she answered my questions.  Some of her answers were wrong and it’s unclear if all of her wrong answers were just because she’s being silly or if she doesn’t completely understand the questions.  Like when I asked her where her eyes were and she said “my eyes is orange.”  I wonder if she just hears one word that she understands and responds to that, like she knew I was asking about eyes, but did she understand that I wanted a location, not a color?  Also, I’m fairly certain that she does know that she is a girl (or “grill” as she says it). 

She has a long way to go to get to completely normal interactions, but she’s making progress.  She still says things that make no sense, like last night she kept saying that she was scared that someone would turn into a bird.  I cannot figure out where she would get the idea of someone turning into a bird.

Last week I took some pictures of the girls with their little brother.  The pictures were looking like this:The girls were all starring off into space.  My solution was to ask them to give Thomas a kiss on the head.  I envisioned each of them leaning over to give him a sweet little kiss on the top of his head, but Nicole grabbed his head with both hands and planted one a firm one right on top of his head.I don’t remember if I asked Nicole to give Charlotte a kiss or if it was her own idea, but she grabbed Charlotte’s hair and pulled her in for a kiss on the lips.Charlotte was surprised by the forceful kiss and erupted in giggles:Ila did not want to be left out:So, I didn’t get my fantastic picture of all the girls with their brother–maybe next time.

the ban on children using markers resumes:

Today Thomas had his first well-check.  He is 11 days old.  They expect babies to lose some of their birth weight and then get back to their birth weight by the time they are about 2 weeks old.  Today, Thomas weighed in at 7 lbs 12 ½ oz.  He was 7 lbs 6 oz at birth and down to 7 lbs on the day that we left the hospital, so he has more than passed his birth weight.  He has also grown a little in length and is now 20 ⅜”.  He has been such a good baby so far.  He hardly ever cries and is easily pacified when he does cry.  He sleeps most of the day and has an amazing ability to sleep through noise.  I am continually astounded that he sleeps through his big sister Nicole yelling and dancing around right next to him.  I’m glad that they do a hearing screening at birth, because I would be worried about his hearing otherwise.

He was a good sport through a particularly rough appointment which included both a circumcision and a PKU screening (the test where they poke the baby’s heel and then squeeze it for what seems like a very long time as they fill all the circles on a card with his blood).  I was nervous about the circumcision because I didn’t think I could handle being in there with him while they did it, but I was overcome with guilt at the thought of sending him in by himself to go through it alone.  The nurse did a good job keeping him soothed with sugar water while the doctor did his thing and my good natured little Thomas didn’t even cry. 

Charlotte made this little book at school:

(Chocolate)(Ander.  He is a boy in her class that she describes as her “best-est friend.”  She says that he likes playing pirates and that she will marry him.)(Hearts)(6, because it is her age)

Thomas Deane Cochran

7 lbs. 6oz. and 19.9 inches longBirth Story:

I woke up at 3:17 AM with a painful contraction.  I’ve had a similar experience several times in the last week so I wasn’t immediately sure if I was actually going into labor.  So I got up and ate a small bowl of cereal and unloaded the dishwasher.  The contractions continued to come.  They were painful and only 5 minutes apart.  My water broke after about 30 minutes.  At that point I woke up Zach and called his aunt Charlene to come watch the kids.  By the time Charlene arrived my contractions were getting even closer (about 2 min apart) and more painful.  We drove to the hospital and parked in the garage next to the elevator.  I probably should have had Zach push me in a wheelchair because the walk to the birth center seemed long and fraught with painful contractions.  They brought me to a small room where I changed and they checked dilation.  She said I was at a 6.9 (almost a 7).  But it seemed like the nurses were moving slower than they should and I was anxious for some pain relief.  I got my IV and they took me up to my birthing room. 

When we entered the room, nurse asked me if I needed to use the restroom.  I said that I did, but can I use it?  She said “you’d be surprised at what you can do.”  So she sent me to the bathroom, but I got a painful contraction as I sat on the toilet and an involuntary urge to push.  The nurse yelled “don’t push” and hurried me out of the bathroom and onto the bed as fast as she could–I could hardly walk.  The contractions were intense.  She kept telling me not to push, but I tried to stop and couldn’t seem to control my body and make it stop pushing.  The doctor barely made it into the room (or so I heard).  I was in so much pain and it was so constant that I had no idea who was in the room (other than Zach).  I had the realization that I was having this baby NOW, and that there would be no pain relief.  That really scared me.

Thomas was born at 5:09AM, less than 2 hours after my first contraction.Also, he just passed his hearing test.

I haven’t blogged in awhile, so here’s a picture of Charlotte on Mix n’ Match day.She’s wearing two different colors of ribbons, un-matching socks and as you can see her shirt, shorts, and pants don’t match.  Isaac was convinced that his class was doing backwards day since they missed that day during the snow storm so he just wore his shirt backwards to school.

I have to start off by saying how blessed we were to only lose power for 20 hours.  I talked to someone the day before our power went out and she told me that last year people were out of power for 5 days.  When our lights went off, my biggest fear is that we were in for a long outage and all our food would go bad.

<<This post is a really long narrative—consider yourself warned>>

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We’re still snowed in, but we’ve got power and food so we’re not complaining.  The kids have enjoyed having a sledding hill right outside the door—that is until they come in wet and cold and demanding hot cocoa!Also, they’ve had the entire week off of school.

We’ve been having interesting weather up here this week.  Part of what makes the storms unique is that one day it will be cold and snow will fall, then the snow will melt into slush by the end of the day and then snow will fall again the next day and then it will rain and freeze.  Today there is a warm layer of air in the middle of the precipitation which means the precipitation starts off as snow, melts and then freezes again before it hits the ground.  So we’ve got snow covered in ice and thick sheets of ice on everything.  The trees are cracking and breaking under the weight of the ice.  A neighbor came rang our bell and tried to tell me in broken English that he was concerned about branches falling on our house and as he spoke, I saw (and heard) two branches fall from the tops of trees in the forest that surrounds our Cul-de-sac.

I’m not the best photographer, nor do I have a super fancy camera, but I think you can get the idea from these pictures.

Isaac has been drooling over his Lego catalogs lately so I decided that it was time to use his intense desire for Legos as motivation for doing chores by rewarding him with money for chores.  So I made up a chart of chores that I felt he could do.  I made sure to list what I expected in order for the chore to be counted and how much each chore is worth:Most of the chores are worth 25 cents or less.  I made the cat litter worth a dollar because nobody wanted to do it, but I also added a requirement to vacuum around the box in order to earn the dollar.

Mostly since I have my own laminator, but also because the kids seem to lose money easily and I didn’t want to worry about always having the right amount of change and bills on hand, I made some fake money and laminated it:This system has worked better than I expected.  Isaac has been doing chores before and after school.  He has done the littler everyday, vacuumed the living room everyday, unloaded the dishwasher, emptied all the trashcans, cleaned toilets, picked-up toys, removed all the couch cushions and vacuumed the couch and done his homework right away without even being asked!  I am loving the extra help, especially since I’m slowing down as this pregnancy progresses.  He has earned a little more than $10.00 and couldn’t be happier.  He even turned down an offer to go to work with his dad tomorrow because he wants to stay home and do chores!

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