feast of trumpets

Last week we were able to go to a Rosh Hashanah celebration with some other Christian homeschool families. We had dinner together, learned more about the celebration, met some new people, and had a good time. The spring feasts celebrate Christ's life on earth, and the fall feasts look to Christ's second coming.

paci

 I have mixed feelings about this, but Ezekiel seems to be a paci boy for when he falls asleep. Before i tried this, he was sucking on the wrap or chewing on his hand and fussing a bit.

overnight unders

This big girl is now wearing underwear to bed at night!

AC

Yesterday our air conditioner stopped working. Joshua made this little AC contraption to help cool off the kids. Today we were able to get it fixed, so now our house is cooling off. This week the highs are around 100, so the kids and i spent the day at Grandma Mo and Grandpa Greg's. I got a chance to talk with the kids about what a rare privilege AC is and how many people in the Dominican Republic and many other places live. Evalana said she hadn't realized how special air conditioning is.
Our other issue last night was that while Joshua was putting the kids to sleep, i started to walk into the kitchen and saw and heard a brown creature running to the other corner. i screamed and ran down the hall (i had to protect the baby in my arms). it was bigger than a mouse but smaller than a rabbit, so i decided it must have been a baby rabbit, and i called Meema. She said it was a rat. Aghhhh! So she told us how to get rid of it. During the night (while joshua was still up since he works sooo much these days), Abner grabbed the thing by the kitchen table, and the hero dog with the screaming rodent ran out to the backyard where the rat went silent. So we've decided to keep feeding Abner. We had a baby pool on our deck, so joshua thought the water must have attracted it, and then it came in through the door we had open for the breeze yesterday.

bottle

Sunday Evalana and i had American Heritage Girls. i was going to take Ezekiel with me, but Joshua suggested we try Ezekiel with a bottle. When Joshua first put it in his mouth, he looked very confused, but then he got the hang of it and drank it right up. So the boys stayed home to watch football while the girls got to go to AHG. When Evalana was a baby, she took a few bottles and then decided she didn't like them. Lazarus never tried a bottle. And Ezekiel seems just fine with the idea.

 

nap with sister

This afternoon I asked Evalana to hold Ezekiel so I could go to the bathroom before i put him to sleep. She gave him his paci and cuddled him, and he went to sleep for her! Then she sneaked away from him, and he stayed asleep without anyone holding him for the first time in months! I was so impressed. 

sweet kids

this morning we had our first Moms Together meeting at church. We had to be there at 9am, which sounded early to me, but the kids were so helpful and sweet to each other. Evalana took care of Ezekiel, and Evalana and Lazarus kept hugging each other and saying they were best friends and love each other.

And everyone had a good time at church.

5 years old

Five years old sounds big. Our Evalana turned five on August first. She loves being a big sister. She even wears her Big Sister shirt whenever it's clean. She is a great help to me with her brothers, too. Evalana loves learning. She thinks pretty much all of her subjects are her favorite. She's pretty proud of the two bottom teeth she's lost. Her cooking specialties are scrambled eggs, sandwiches, and lunch meat spinach cheese mustard roll-ups. She's 3'10" tall and 69 lbs.

1 month

2 months

Ezekiel is a great little two month old. He loves his time with his big siblings, and they certainly love him. I'm still amazed that Ezekiel lets me eat whatever i want. Having a normal diet has allowed me to track my calories in trying to lose my pregnancy weight, although having to constantly hold this baby and the heat of summer have not helped with exercise, so the actual weight loss is going veeery sloooowly. ezekiel is doing a great job with his growing though! and it's fun to see him more interactive. he has a very predictable routine, which is funny to me. when evalana was a baby, i could never figure out when she might not need to nurse because she was pretty much always wanting to nurse. ezekiel wants to eat when he wakes up, then he's awake for around an hour, then he gets a tiny bit fussy and is ready for another nap, although he does not want to nurse to sleep and will cry at me if i try to give him milk. he likes to be put to sleep in the wrap (with a little bit of bounce and some sucking on the wrap). he's crewing hard and drooling a lot, so i think he might be getting a tooth soon. While he's awake, he likes to be able to watch Evalana and Lazarus. And evalana loves to hold him.

3 months

I just realized i've never finished Ezekiel's 1-month or 2-month posts, or Evalana's 5-year post. guess i'd better get working on those, starting with this one. I love this sweet three-month old. Usually he sleeps until about 7am, but today he had a little runny nose and woke up at 5:30. He almost always goes to sleep in our wrap. Overnight he sleeps in my bed with me. He usually nurses a couple of times during the night. Recently he has been taking more shorter naps. The day before he turned three months old, he figured out how to get his arm out of the way and roll onto his belly. actually Mema helped teach him how while she was visiting this week. he's good at grabbing toys and getting them to his mouth. a few weeks ago, both he and i started losing our hair, although the falling out seems to have slowed down some now. He weighs around 15 pounds. At his appointment on Aug. 23rd, he was 14 lbs, 14 oz (90%), 25" (91%), and his heard was 16 1/2" (81%). As long as he's being held, he is a very happy boy. He still hates the car seat. And he doesn't like baths either. He's decided he does like a pacifier as he's falling asleep, which i have mixed feelings about.

school pictures

with very limited computer time and only having a keyboard when i borrow joshua's on the weekends, this blog is hard to keep up with! Here are the "school" pictures Uncle Alex took for us on Aug 18th.