Nose picking

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Ok people, I want some advice.  What do you do about nose picking and has your solution decreased the frequency of this behavior?  I think anyone with a kid who has both fingers and a nose will at some point find the fingers in the nose.  It’s embarrassing and gross.  One time in church one of my children pulled out a particularly big, gross booger.  As I reached into my diaper bag in search of wet wipes, I saw a look in the child’s eyes that said “what am I going to do with this” and I pulled a wet wipe out just in time to save the booger from entering the child’s mouth.

We haven’t made a big deal out of this behavior.  We usually just tell the offending child that it’s bad manners, send him or her for a tissue, or make some comment about mining for nose gold, but the behavior is still witnessed regularly and I wonder if anyone knows a good way to decrease this behavior.

Posted in General

Our New Van

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The process of getting this van completely ready for me to drive has been a little frustrating, but we’re almost there. Its a 2002 Ford Windstar.  We ended up with a newer model of the same van (we had a 1995).  We didn’t plan to get the same thing, it just worked out that way somehow.  Ironically, the paint scheme is even the same.

Here are some pictures that I took today:IMG_1290

The interior is leather and this van has many interesting features that we didn’t have in our old van, like a built in garage door opener, built in VCR with screen, and a little mirror on the headliner above the rear-view mirror designed to allow the driver (or passenger) to see the kids in the back.IMG_1289

It has power sliding doors on both sides and buttons in a variety of places to allow you to activate the power doors.IMG_1283

This is not the best picture of the back, but with 4 car seats in, it’s hard to see it all well.  It has captain seats in the middle and a bench with three seatbelts in the back.IMG_1285

It’s hard to see from the picture, but it has a nice wood trim around everything.  All I know about the stereo is that it has a 6 Disc CD changer.

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Anyway, you should get a basic idea of what it looks like from these pictures.

Posted in General

Nicole Videos

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I took this video of Nicole using her walker this morning

Later, I turned on So You Think You Can Dance while I fed Ila and Nicole just got up and started dancing in circles without her walker

And finally, this last one is just for fun.

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Nicole’s Sunday Book

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Awhile ago I was evaluating our books to determine which ones to keep and I came across this tattered old book.  It was missing all of the little characters that slide into little slots throughout the book.  It seemed like the perfect candidate for the trash, but I got an idea to adapt the book so that perhaps it would entertain a child in church. IMG_1189  I printed out little wallet sized full body pictures of the kids and laminated them. IMG_1194 I even went so far as to changing all the characters in the book to my children. I changed every character except Bear, perhaps one day I’ll be ambitious and change him to Mom or Dad. 7.17.10 Bear book project (2)  It didn’t work as well as I had planned, not only did it not entertain her for as long as I had hoped, the skinny little family member cut-outs kept slipping deep into the slot causing Nicole to cry out in frustration as she tried to retrieve them and before long, all of the pictures I had made were missing (the pictures above are the second set that I made) 7.17.10 Bear book project (2)When Zach was called into the bishopric, I racked my brain for ideas on how I could keep Nicole entertained without him.  I pulled this book out and made new family inserts, but was carful to make inserts that couldn’t fall completely into the slots and get lost or stuck.   A week or so later I got the idea to add some of Nicole’s favorite cartoon characters (Curious George and The Man in the Yellow Hat). IMG_1195 The last addition was a big hit.  She spent the entire meeting on Sunday happily playing with ‘George’ and ‘Hat’ as she called them.  She made them dance and hug and sing.7.17.10 Bear book project (3)

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Keeping Kids Quiet in Church

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Lets face it, that hour of Sacrament meeting is challenging on Sunday morning when 5.2.10 Sunday Morning (8) you have young children, possibly when you have older children too, but I don’t know about that yet.  I spend a lot of time and energy fretting about how I can keep my children in their seats behaving well and for the most part we don’t do too bad.  Having Zach on the stand now has presented some new challenges and I have not completely figured out how to deal with our children without him.  So this particular blog post has two purposes: 

1)   To keep a record of how things are now, including a record of how they used to be and how we came to do things the way we do them and

2) To solicit ideas on how to improve the way I do things.

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Charlotte Quote

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For some reason, Charlotte has advanced the following theory more than once, but this last time that she said it, I wrote it down (maybe two weeks ago).

“Ila thought I was a boy when she was in your tummy and when she was born and saw me walking, she was so happy to see I was a girl!”

7.3.10 matching shirts (3)

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A short video of Nicole, just because

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I was trying to take a new video of Nicole moving around with her new cast on, but she didn’t really go anywhere.  She just kind of wiggled around.  I did however capture her trying to read this book filled with addition and subtraction problems. 

I didn’t know that she recognized numbers yet, but whether she actually saw the numbers on the page that she named or just recognized that they were numbers and started saying numbers, I don’t know.  I suppose it’s a silly video to post.

Posted in Kids

Co-Conspirators

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Charlotte and Paul have been the best of friends.  They have played together almost continuously since Paul arrived.7.12.10 Charlotte and Paul They shared some frosted cookie.  Charlotte told Paul that if you mix the blue frosting with the yellow frosting you would get green frosting.7.12.10 frosted cookie (3)Their fingers and mouths were not the only thing that became that bright blue color. . .

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Ambulatory Nicole

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Here are some videos that I took of Nicole learning to move with her leg splint:

Here she does some climbing:

Here is a still picture with her cast:IMG_1007 So far she seems much happier in the cast.  I think it’s less painful for her.

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Injury Update: The Grisly details

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We’ve been on the phone detailing injuries to families for the last few days, but I know we have some close friends and family members who get their updates here. For their benefit, as proof for compensation after a traffic injury, and for our written record, I will write the details of the injuries sustained during our car accident on Friday night. Since the pictures are a little gross, you will have to click the “Read more” link at the bottom of the page to read about them and see the pictures. If you’re dealing with similar circumstances, it might be helpful to consult a car accident attorney to ensure you get the support and compensation you deserve. If you follow us in a reader, I’m sorry because you may not have the option to skip looking at the entire post. If you or anyone you know needs legal assistance, consulting a New York personal injury lawyer could be very helpful in such situations.

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Paying Attention

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Note: I know it’s probably a little gauche to blog so soon after an event like this.  However, I want to get my feelings sorted out and writing is a good method.  Might as well update everyone while I’m at it.

I left the house this morning in a somewhat grumpy rush.  Often I’ll forget my morning prayers during my usual routine, so I’ll pray in the car before I pull out.  I was in enough of a rush this morning that I only really prayed for two things; that I’d be safe and my children would be safe as we traveled about today.

2010-07-09 2010-07-09 Van Disaster 001

For some reason, my attention wandered and I did not see that the light was red.  We got hit on the driver’s side, smacked a pole on the passenger side, and wound up where you see us.  As we were smashed from side to side, I was calm; I’m generally calm enough when these things happen, but I felt for some reason that things were fine.  I had reason to doubt when we saw the children.

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Posted in Family History

Guess Who?

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I got this idea yesterday as my children were struggling to come up with good questions during a round of Star Wars Guess Who:

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I’m very pleased with the final product and it didn’t actually take too long.  The kids enjoyed a few rounds today after they helped me swap out the Milton Bradley cards for our own.  It was nice that they knew all the people well enough to ask and answer questions about them and they weren’t confused about anyone’s gender like they are on the other Guess Who games.  Charlotte has in the past insisted that one guy was both a man and a woman! 

I can provide  a tutorial on how I did it if anyone wants one.

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Independence Day

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I reflected back to July 4, 2004 during testimony meeting today.  That year, the 4th also fell on a Sunday, it was when Zach blessed our first Child. 

Our celebrating mostly took place on July 3rd this year.

Video = While throwing Snaps, Isaac shows off his missing tooth, Jackson shows off something else.

7.3.10 Celebrating the 4th (3)We lit sparklers during the day and then again at night.  Nicole held one too, but when it started the “popcorn” phase, she dropped it in the grass and ran away.  7.3.10 Celebrating the 4th (10)The kids enjoyed chasing parachute fireworks.

Poor Nicole was scared of all the fireworks.  She hid under my chair or hugged me or Aunt Dee whenever she saw Zach approach the launch site. 7.3.10 Celebrating the 4th (7)She was even worse in the evening.  She spent the majority of time under my chair, mostly with her face buried in the grass and her feet sticking out the front of the chair.  A few times she sat in my lap and hugged me.  When I tried to turn her around, she gripped the back of my chair over my shoulder and wouldn’t let go.  I had her facing towards the fireworks once, but she covered her eyes the whole time and refused to look.

Decorate your own fruit pizza7.3.10 Celebrating the 4th (12)

A movie (Shaun the Sheep) helped pass the time until it was dark enough to light more fireworks7.3.10 Celebrating the 4th (14)After fireworks we drove home.  A good time was had by all and luckily, bedtime was simple: 7.3.10 Celebrating the 4th (15)

Posted in Kids

To nap or not to nap?

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Nicole is at that age where naps are becoming more irregular.  It seems too soon, but here are the details:

  • On days she naps, it takes her hours to fall asleep at night when she doesn’t nap, she falls to sleep quickly and easily
  • She often gets very grumpy for the last hour or two before bedtime with no nap, but sometimes she’s just fine.
  • If she falls asleep in the car, but wakes before I lay her in her bed she will not nap, even if she was exhausted and only slept for 5 min.
  • It is very difficult to get her to fall asleep during the ideal naptime.  I’ve even resorted to trying a movie nap, but it hasn’t worked.
  • She will fall asleep for a nap if I put her in her bed with a movie on around 4 which means she wakes up shortly before bedtime and that doesn’t work well.

This picture is from today when she fell asleep on the floor in her room, watching a movie at 4:00.  She woke up as the other kids were going to bed. 7.2.10 Nicole's napWhat would you do?

Posted in Kids

Dress-ups

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Nicole has been walking into the living room wearing other people’s shoes so frequently, that I thought she might enjoy playing with the dress-ups.

She put everything she could possibly put on, notice how she is trying to pick up a 3rd glove to put on.6.30.10 Dress-ups (3)Once she was all decked out, she didn’t smile and dance around, she just started playing blocks with everything on as if nothing was out of the ordinary.6.30.10 Dress-ups (11)Charlotte put on her ballet slippers and picked up two purses and announced that she was “a mom with slippers on.”  I was proud that she dressed up as a mom instead of a princess. 6.30.10 Dress-ups (17) Then she was a mom with a tail.6.30.10 Dress-ups (15) Isaac put on a tiger hat and tail and he was done.6.30.10 Dress-ups (19) Even Ila participated, although not really by choice.6.30.10 IlaThe End

Posted in Kids
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