haircut

Lazarus just got his first haircut. He slept right through it. It was past his nap time, and getting his hair combed just felt so good. I wasn't able to record much since i had to hold his sleeping head up.

I also got mine cut to donate 12" to Children With Hairloss.

 

And Evalana's keeping her pretty hair

Lazarus's before pictures:

     

    

It's not easy to take pictures of your own head. Here's what i got:

 

My conversation with Evalana:

 E: Your long hair was beautiful, Mommy.

 Me: What do you think of my short hair?

 E: I like Lazarus's the best.

 Me: Do you think I should grow mine long again?

 E: Yes, I really like your hair long.

I do intend to grow it out again, but it'll be nice to have it short for awhile and get a little change, too.

P.S. Joshua said if i donated my hair, he'd blog.

clean cuties

slow EC

Well the pottying is going quite a bit slower with Lazarus than it did with Evalana, but we are working on it. We do usually at least get the morning peepee in the potty.

prayer for Heaven

Last night Evalana said our dinner prayer, and it came out something like, "Heavenly Father, thank you for our food and our family, and, Jesus, please come soon and take us to Heaven with You, and, if You don't, we'll die and go there ourselves." Then during dinner, she picked up her bread and said, "Remember when Jesus said, 'This is like my body.'" And she picked up her milk and said, "He said, 'This is like my blood,' except it was wine. And he told his friends, 'Whenever you do this, remember me.'"
Today we had our Thanksgiving dinner here with the four of us and Grandma Kidd. We went around the table to say what we're thankful for. When it was Lazarus's turn, he pointed to Joshua and said "Da" with a big smile.
Our kids are such a blessing.

Thanksgiving

Joshua left early to spend the day with his family in Arkansas and Joplin, and Evalana, Lazarus, and I went to my mom's.

Evalana loved watching the parade. She thought those giant balloons were so great.

We got to have dinner with my mom, Greg, Greg's parents, Greg's nephew Jacob, Michelle, Michelle's roommate Randi, Doug, David, and Cindy. After dinner most of the men, Michelle, and Evalana took naps. Then they worked on some wooden puzzles.

 Lazarus only had a short nap on our way over to my mom's, and Joshua thought he'd be home about 6pm, so we went home, and then we all got to watch the plaza lights turn on on TV. Evalana really wanted to be there. It was great weather for it this year, but maybe some other time. 

Christmas in the Sky

We got to go to Christmas in the Sky again, and we had a great time. The weather was nice. We walked up to the stage and watched the dance show before the fireworks. Evalana liked the hippo for the "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" song. Near the end of the show, a snowman came out, which she thought was great. Then Santa came on stage, and Evalana urgently asked me to hold her. I thought maybe it was because she thought Santa was scary or something. No, it was because the snowman moved to the back when Santa came out. She didn't care about Santa; she wanted to see that snowman!

11 months

My cutie boy is getting close to his first birthday, and this 11-month-old is a lot of fun. He loves his sister. He also likes most family, but he’s still unsure about church. I’ve never left him in class; I always teach in his classroom, but he doesn’t like it when I walk away from him, even just a few steps across the room, and he really doesn’t like it when adults there look at him. As long as I’m beside him and it’s not his nap time, he does love playing in his classroom. At home, he and evalana love playing together. She’s wonderful with him. Spending time with these two kids is quite a blessing. Lazarus is “talking” more and more. He says and signs words I can understand. He now walks everywhere and reaches more than I want him to. He usually takes one 2-3 hour nap around 11am and then sleeps around 6:30pm-7:30am. He likes both nursing and eating. Evalana helps him with his lunch, and he’ll usually sit in his highchair for awhile. At dinner when daddy’s home, he prefers daddy’s lap.

earthquake!

Saturday we had our first experience with an earthquake! About every time we go to California, I think maybe we'll feel some shakes, although i'm more scared of the idea than excited for the experience, especially as i love some hikes right along the San Andreas fault line. Apparently there was 4 magnitude foreshock earlier Saturday in Oklahoma, but we weren't aware of that. We got to spend the weekend visiting our southern family, and Saturday Joshua, Evalana, Lazarus, and I were all snug together in a queen-sized bed in Arkansas. A little before 11pm, our bed was shaking and woke Joshua and me up. Sometimes Joshua does strange things in his sleep, so I said, "Joshua, what are you doing?!" He responded with, "What is that?" and I realized he wasn't causing the shaking. The windows were rattling, and the bed was really shaking a lot. The kids were sound asleep. I was trying to think of what kind of machine they had in the garage or apartment that would be shaking everything, and would the apartment fall through into the garage? joshua was thinking that someone was breaking into the garage (below us) or that a washing machine was off balance (until he remembered there's not a washing machine up there). As the shaking continued, i asked, "do they have earthquakes around here?" After about a minute, the room stopped rattling, and Joshua got on his phone to look up the Arkansas seismology site, which didn't show anything (because the quake was in oklahoma, and i wasn't thinking about how close we were to Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas). He tried some news site and didn't see anything. Then he got on facebook, and saw that many in Kansas City felt it as well, and eventually learned that there had been a 5.6 earthquake about 150 miles away in Oklahoma. And we went back to sleep. In the morning we found out that everyone in the house slept through it and were disappointed to hear that they had missed out on it. So that's our earthquake experience we had in Arkansas. Maybe if we feel shaking in California someday, we'll be quicker to think it might be an earthquake, but i'll probably also worry that the ground's going to open up.
And, as i was posting this, i just felt an aftershock here in kc: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/usb0006lpf.php

one nap

Today, for the first time, Lazarus had a one-nap day! For the last few weeks, I noticed he was trending toward that, and I've really been looking forward to it. The last few months have been naps all day long: get up, get evalana breakfast, lazarus naps, evalana rests/naps (actually, after going no-naps for awhile, she's back to napping most days) while i try to keep lazarus away from her and hopefully get something to eat, try to get everyone lunch, lazarus naps, try to quickly put together dinner, clean up, bed. This morning Mo played with the kids while I went to the dentist, then I got home a little after 11am, and Lazarus nursed and then slept for 2 1/2 hours, and Evalana took her nap for the last hour or so of that. Only issue was then Lazarus was ready for bed about 6pm, but I was still trying to clean up dinner, and next week 6pm is going to be 5pm... Oh well, thankful for my happy, well-rested children :-)  Oh, P.S., Evalana has another dental cleaning/checkup next Thursday. For about the past nine months she's not liked going to the doctor, and she got a little nervous and cried at her last dental visit. We found a new video and some books at the library, so we've been reading those, and she's already watched that movie eight times; she says she's excited to go to the dentist. It seems like a really helpful movie for kids going to the dentist. I guess we'll see how everything works out next week. Unfortunately the week after, I also have to go back to my dentist to fill a cracked tooth/filling. I'm so glad we're able to get good dental care and that we're now all on dental insurance.
11/3: Well Lazarus is taking his third nap of the day today, and Evalana didn't sleep during rest time, but just now fell asleep at 4:30pm. It's too hard to keep her awake while letting lazarus sleep. Maybe i'll take a nap too :-)

chiefs

Fishnet had a pumpkin carving contest last week. Joshua did a great job carving the face of Gary Fish, the CEO, into his pumpkin. Joshua won 3rd place in the chili cookoff and also won a pumpkin carving prize, so i think he ended up with $20 best buy gift card and $65 visa gift card. Then yesterday morning he got an email from Gary asking if he wanted four club-level tickets to last night's Chiefs game. So Joshua, Evalana, and Grandma Mo went to the game together last night. Lazarus and i stayed home and passed out candy. Lazarus thought it was strange that costumes kept coming to the door. And he was frustrated that I wasn't letting him crawl around outside or eat the candy. This year we gave out some fair-trade chocolate, some organic hard candies (which lazarus is quick at putting into his mouth), and some fruit strips, all with Bible verses taped to them. About 7:30 we were almost out of candy, Lazarus was ready to sleep, and the Chiefs game was getting ready to start, so we turned off our light and closed up Halloween then. Joshua took a bunch of cute pictures of Evalana at the game, so here you go. It sounds like they had a really great time. At first Evalana was just taking it all in and a little overwhelmed by all the action and noise, then she got into it and was pounding on the seats along with everyone else. Joshua sold the fourth ticket he was given since we weren't able to find anyone to use it, so they had a nice man sitting with them as well. Evalana cried when it was time to leave and go home because she was having so much fun. She fell asleep as soon as they started the car, and she was happy to hear this morning that the Chiefs won in overtime. And Lazarus and Evalana were so happy to see each other and snuggle together this morning; they miss each other when they're apart.