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 long
Birth 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>>
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!
Additionally, nowadays, it’s quite difficult to generate money, so why not try your luck at casino games? Alternatively, you could look for a foreign casino anywhere in the world that has the best online casinos. If you want to win exciting cash prizes, then make sure to check out Seru88.
This is Nicole’s current favorite book. She picked it out from the stack the day we came back from the library and she has talked about it or read it just about every day since. Some nights we read it to her multiple times:
She has several names for it. At first she called it a princess book. Now she either calls it “The Big Head King Book†or “His Head Goes Back to Normal book.â€
We thought it would be fun to start a new tradition this year and celebrate our wedding anniversary as the birthday of our family and have a piñata. We got a silly looking green dinosaur/monster and filled it with treats.
The kids enjoyed whacking it, but in the end it proved too tough and Zach had to help them.
I took Isaac, Charlotte, and Ila to their second cousin’s birthday party which featured a reptile show. They absolutely loved it and very excitedly told Zach all about it when they got home. Here are some pictures:
I love the range of emotions I was able to capture as they watched:
Ila was more interested in her second cousin (the brother of the birthday girl) than the show.
I walked into the bathroom recently and found the following scene:
(the black above her eyebrows is mascara)
Last night I found Nicole sitting on the changing table completely naked and pouring powder all over herself.
Everything was covered in a layer of powder and the air was so thick with it that I could taste it as I cleaned up the mess.
I have to say that I’m incredibly grateful to be married to such an awesome (and handsome) man who is now half way to 70!
We had a nice birthday celebration with just the 6 of us. We started the day off with a breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast, and Orange Julius. We spent most of the day at home, but went out for lunch as a family at a little Mexican restaurant not far from our house.
I made his favorite cookies (pumpkin-raisin), and 7-layer bean dip.
He opened presents
with an audience:
Instead of cake, we had cookies:
And just for fun, we used re-lighting candles–the kids loved it:
Here’s a little video share of our Christmas Eve Nativity. It is by no means a well prepared and well executed Nativity, however, I thought it was worth sharing for those family members who weren’t able to be with us on Christmas Eve.Here’s last year for comparison. I think we improved a little—no one was crying this year and Nicole was able to at least say half her part before getting distracted.
Here’s another little nativity flashback (2008):
I’ve been meaning to write this post for awhile. As many of you know, we’ve taken Nicole in for some testing through the school district. 
Nicole is an energetic, friendly, creative little girl. She speaks clearly with good articulation and good sentence structure. She likes things that most little girls her age seem to like and she plays well independently. Of all our children, she is the most outgoing and friendly. It can be a little unnerving how easily she allows unfamiliar adults to pick her up and hug her. Many of our friends were surprised to hear that we suspected that something was not completely normal about her.
The tricky part is clearly defining our concern. Zach and I discussed for months whether we thought that maybe she has an issue/disability or is within the range of normal. Luckily for us, the school district is required by law to provide free testing for any 3 year old whose parents request it (there is testing for younger children through early intervention as well).
Her problems seem to lie primarily in the area of language comprehension. I say seems to, because it is hard to know what someone else comprehends. This problem is most clearly demonstrated
in a question/answer situation. She does not respond to most questions in a typical way. It’s almost as if she doesn’t understand questions or that she doesn’t understand that a question requires an answer. She does not answer even the most basic questions like “what is your name†or “how old are you.†When you ask her a question she often repeats part or all of the question or gives you a confused look and doesn’t respond at all. This problem was very clear in the testing situation because asking questions was their primary means of trying to evaluate what she knows. By the end of the first screening test, my concern had increased because I could see that if something didn’t change, she would have a lot of difficulty in a school setting. The official testing placed her at a 28 month level for comprehension which is more than a year behind her age.
She also has difficulty following verbal instructions. In a group setting if a request is made of the group, she will wait until the other kids respond and watch how they respond before responding in a like manner. She does not seem to understand unfamiliar requests without some sort of visual que. I say unfamiliar because there are some routine requests that she can do on her own such as put on her shoes or sit in her seat. An unfamiliar request can be as simple as “point to the purple block†or “stack the blocks.†I observed her in a group where she was asked to circle a snowman. She knows what a snowman is and she can draw a circle, but she didn’t respond to the directive until she looked over and saw a peer circling a snowman.
For a long time, we had a hard time getting her to understand discipline. She would cry when we raised our voices at any of the children as if we were yelling at her, yet she would smile and laugh or just look confused if we scolded her. It was as if we were speaking a different language, she often seemed to be trying to interpret our tone or facial expression more than our words. We finally had a break-through in discipline when we spanked her. She soon learned that if we said the word spank, then she needed to stop what she was doing.
I’ve also noticed that when she gets emotional, she seems to lose the ability to comprehend. She would understand and respond appropriately if I asked her to go get dressed, but if I yelled at her to get dressed she would seem flustered and confused and just cry.
Sometimes she’s just odd. The other night we had some people over for family night. In the group were some adults that she was a little familiar with and some adults that I don’t think she had ever met or interacted with before. She climbed on each guest’s lap, but only stayed for 2 seconds before moving on to the next adult. Then she hugged each guest’s knees. After hugging knees, she went around the room and felt their hands and announced whether they had warm hands or cold hands. Then she started stroking their shoes. She made no distinction between the adult she had spent some time with and the adults that she had never met.
Her social interactions with other children primarily consist of parallel play or copying what they do. She will play a cooperative game with Charlotte, but generally Charlotte directs the game and tells Nicole what role to play and what to do.
The results of her testing are that she qualifies for services under the classification of communication disorder and she will start 45 minute therapy sessions once a week at the school in January. I will be interested to see how she responds to these sessions.
I told Charlotte that she could invite 6 friends to a birthday party. She helped make the invitations by decorating them with crayon and cat stickers.
When her guests arrived, we put homemade cat headbands on and painted their faces. We had cat themed coloring pages/worksheets for everyone to do while we waited for all her guests to arrive.
We also played Jingle Cats music which is basically Christmas songs that have cats meowing instead of singing. Lunch was cat shaped peperoni pizza:
The girls picked out cat names and made cat collars (most of the girls decided their cat name should be “Hello Kittyâ€): 
Activities included “mouse-mouse-cat†(duck-duck-goose) :
pin the tail on the cat:
and musical cat beds (like musical chairs):
They also played a game where they had to find 18 toy cats that had been hidden, they had a meowing contest (they had to give their best meows in different moods = angry, sad, excited, sleepy), they played a game called poor kitty, and they played hot cat (hot potato with a stuffed cat toy).
The girls all gathered around for present opening: 
Also cake (the girls all helped put candles on):
They all helped blow out the candles and soon discovered that we had a few relighting candles mixed in:
Charlotte had a lot of fun and was very was happy with her cat party:
Here’s another catch-up post. We went sledding on the Saturday between the girl’s birthdays (December 10th) with some friends.
It rarely snows here in Seattle, and when it does, it doesn’t snow much–or at least that’s what I’ve heard. I haven’t been here through a full winter yet, but it hasn’t snowed yet this winter. We drove up into the mountains until we found snow and a good sledding hill. I think the pictures speak for themselves:
I took several short videos of sledding, but they’re not incredibly interesting so I’m only posting one:
After the snow, we warmed up and had a nice lunch with our friends before making a gingerbread house:
One of the most beautiful things is being outdoors in a heavy snowstorm where there’s no wind. It’s a frightening thing if there’s no home close to warm up in, but standing alone, it’s a beautiful and quiet thing. Voices and footsteps are muffled, and there’s a near perfect stillness in the air. I have a vivid memory of a snowstorm like this as I was walking through the parking lot at the BYU Art Museum, probably when I was 17 or 18.
We live in noisy times. One of my flaws is that I crave constant input. I listen to audiobooks and podcasts in the shower. I watch TV while I clip my nails. I have magazines next to the toilet. I will be eating, watching a football game, and surfing the web simultaneously. It’s jarring how much my mind demands distraction. I don’t think I’m alone in this. As a result, demanding quiet time for meditation and pondering starts to feel like an urgent need. On some level, this constant flow of stimulus is diabolic. It makes me think of Elijah:
“And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.”
Charlotte’s birthday was on a school day this year which was just fine with her since she loves Kindergarten. We made cat shaped cookies for her class and decorated them to look like her cat (Jill). 
Charlotte helped me frost them. 
She started off her day with a special breakfast of sparkling apple-grape juice and a breakfast sandwich. 
I gave her the option of taking the bus or having me drive her to school. She choose to be driven to school. In the afternoon, I arranged a babysitter for the little girls and volunteered in her class from 1:00 until school ended at 2:38 then I was able to drive her and Isaac home from school. 
For dinner we picked Zach up at the Park n’ Ride and then went to Pizza Hut where she and Isaac were able to spend their Book-It certificates on their own personal pan pizzas. We skyped present opening and cupcakes with the Orem Cochrans (grandparents and aunts). Here is her cake (we ate cupcakes for her birthday so that we could save the actual cake for her party).
We also celebrated her birthday on the Sunday before with a dessert and some local Cochrans (Great-Grandma, Great Aunts, and Great Uncles) and on the Saturday after her birthday with a cat-themed birthday party (blog post to come).
