Games

It's been a long week. Monday is Cora's fussy day. Every Monday she is not very fun. Monday is also Buddy's soccer day so that makes for an especially long day. Last Monday was no different with the fussiness. By the time dinnertime came I was not movitated to make dinner and just wanted to get out of the house. I decided to take Bohdin to a Korean restaurant. Buddy didn't play soccer that night so he joined us. Bohdin fell asleep in the car and when we woke him up he was grouchy. He spent the majority of the meal crying or whining. His favorite part of the meal was the free desert at the end. It was some sort of cold drink.

Tuesday was playgroup day. Afterward we ran some errands. When we came home we were met by our friends who came over to play. Wednesday morning we met the same friends at the science museum. Bohdin and Nyla took a nap when we came home but Cora did not. It was brutal. She was up for many many hours.

Grandma arrived on Thursday. The kids have had a good time with her so far. I'm too tired to remember the details. Nyla did choose to sleep with grandma one night.

It's a good thing I titled this because it reminded me what I was actually going to blog about. Bohdin and Nyla were eating breakfast one morning. On the table was a spinning hand thing that is used for choosing who goes first when playing board games. Bohdin came up with a game that made me chuckle. He would spin the hand and whoever it was pointing to needed to take a drink. It kept landing on Nyla so she was chugging down her pink milk. Also this week Bohdin and Nyla played a hiding game. He would hide something and Nyla needed to find it. Bohdin was still wrapped in his towel so he decided to hide it in his hand under the towel. At one point he opened up the towel and yelled, "Suprise!". He thought this was a great hiding spot so he used it repeatedely.

Cora is definitely a third child. I have way fewer pictures of her than the other kids. Bohdin has the most. I took some pictures this morning to prove that she was with us this week. As I was taking pictures of her on her belly she rolled over. I put her on her belly and she eventually rolled over again.

 
 
 
 

I'm in the middle of roasting peppers and tomatoes from the garden. I meant to write more but I'm distracted with thoughts of burning peppers in the oven. Cora could probably eat and Bohdin is hungry.

Smothered

Bohdin and Nyla are completely in love with Cora. They shower her with attention. Right now Bohdin is stroking her head while talking to her. His favorite thing to ask is, "What do you want to do today?". They both like me to make her talk and answer their questions. I don't like it as much as they do. Bohdin likes to explain things to her. Sometimes when we're talking about something he'll go on to explain what the various words mean. I wish I could think of an example right now. Nyla does the physical affection. Cora gets probably 100 hugs and kisses from Nyla every day. She just showers her with them. Cora doesn't mind the kisses and even smiled this morning. The hugs are a different matter. Nyla forgets to be gentle with her hugs so she's often pulling on her neck or smashing her head. Buddy joked that Cora will have a misshapen skull due to Nyla's hugs. She likes to hug around the head.


 
 

Japanese

Bohdin wanted to move on to our next country which is Korea. There are not that many books for his age about Korea so I decided to supplement with a visit to the Korean grocery store. I had checked out a cookbook and the recipes looked really good. While buying red chili paste the kids were hungry and we ordered Korean sushi from their snack bar. Bohdin has been wanting to try bibim bap but when I looked at the picture I just wasn't sure. Sushi seemed a safer bet. Maybe we'll go back another time. The sushi took forever to make because they made it fresh. It had beef, tuna, carrot, cucumber, egg, and something yellow I couldn't identify. It was warm and tasty. On the way out of the store I noticed a sign for the Japanese festival the following day in Lexington. Bohdin really wanted to go.

When we woke up Saturday morning there were geese right outside so the kids fed them. Then we went to Costco for tile I had seen the previous day. We now have tile for the future kitchen. Buddy had to go back to pick up the tile so the kids and I headed to Lexington without him. Bohdin and Nyla said they had a good time. The only reason we went is because we're studying geography. Bohdin really enjoyed the martial arts demonstration. He didn't get much else out of it. He tried origami, we heard drummers, we saw kimonos but didn't try them on. There were bonsai trees, a tea ceremony, and calligraphy. The other favorite of the kids was the balloon game. I thought it was a very elegant design. There was a pool filled with water filled balloons with a piece of elastic attached. The child is given a piece of paper with a sort of S shaped metal hook. The child needs to use the metal to hook the elastic loop before the paper falls apart in the water. They let the kids take a balloon even if they failed. The balloon becomes a sort of punching toy because of the elastic. As we were walking out Bohdin's balloon popped. He went back for another try. I sat nearby and fed Cora while he did this. He somehow came back with two balloons. In addition he was able to get the balloon up before the metal hook fell off.

As I was feeding Cora I realized I had made a mistake. She had been asleep the entire time we were there. That meant she would most likely be awake for the drive back. Evening is her most alert time. We made it just past Lexington before we had to stop. It didn't work well and we had to stop again in just a few miles. This time we stopped longer. It didn't work. Cora became fussy a few miles down the road again. A loud motorcycle passed us and she quieted for a moment. The vacuum at home can sometimes calm her so I wanted to follow that motorcycle. It was going way to fast though. I pulled back over into the right lane and had a brilliant idea. The rumble strip makes a lot of noise. For the next many miles I would wander onto the rumble strip several times per minute. I surely looked like an idiot driver. I know this because nobody would stay behind me. I cleared out the traffic around me. It worked though. Everything was going great until we reached the construction zone and our rumble strip disappeared. Cora became fussy again so we all started singing quietly to her. She finally fell asleep as we reached the outskirts of town.

 
 
 
 

Twenty Questions

Bohdin likes to play 20 questions in the car and Nyla must join in. Playing with her is different though because she doesn't have a good grasp on categories. One time I was playing with her and one of my first questions was whether it was a person. She responded yes. I went on to guess daddy and Bohdin which were both incorrect. I then decided to point out that both daddy and Bohdin were persons. She disagreed. Bohdin has come up with a genius solution to this problem. His very first question for her is "What is it?". She tells him and then he guesses it. Her response is always an enthusiastic yes as if he worked hard to figure it out.

I was demonstrating this to Buddy in the car over the weekend. Nyla was thinking of something and I asked her what it was. She responded horsies. Just for the fun of it Buddy and I asked questions like does it have four legs. After a few questions Buddy guessed horse. He was wrong so I guessed horsie. I was right! Bohdin pointed out to Nyla that horse and horsie are the same thing. She disagreed because a horsie has a tail. By the way her most common thing to have us guess is a pogo. She has no idea what that means though. Bohdin's most common thing is something in space. I always know to ask him if what he is thinking of is on this planet.

Her guessing is also quite interesting because she will guess every thing that comes into her head. One time she was trying to guess something I was thinking of. "Is it a car? Is it a house? Is it a pineapple? Is it grass? Is it my shoes? Is it Cora?" I think it's quite amusing to hear all of her guesses. It may be ruining the game for Bohdin though because he will wait for her to finish talking before asking his question and there is just never an opportunity.

Sleepy

I'm falling behind on the blogging. I'm actually falling behind on everything. I'm tired. Cora is a decent sleeper for a newborn but the stars have to align for me to be able to take a decent nap. So far that hasn't happened. I've been able to get 10 minutes here and there but it's just not enough. Monday's seem to be the most awake day for Cora and that held true yesterday. I couldn't even wake her to feed her today. That would have been great for me if we weren't out of the house for most of the day. This morning we went to playgroup for about 90 minutes. The weather was beautiful with low humidity. The humidity has been a killer this summer. Afterward we stopped at the hospital where Cora was born. Buddy had received a phone call that we needed to repeat her newborn screening. That turned out to be untrue but Bohdin and Nyla came home with a free book so it wasn't a complete waste. They have an area in the main lobby with children's books. The kids were each looking at books while we were waiting to be called. When the person came out and apologized for the unnecessary trip Bohdin said he wasn't ready to go because he was still looking at his book. She said he could keep it. We've already read it tonight.

I'm tandem nursing again even though I'm not a huge fan of it. It's fine for other people but I would rather not. For the second time in my life I'm stuck doing it though. It's not anywhere as bad as it was with Bohdin and Nyla though. Nyla hasn't really increased her nursing too much. Since Nyla doesn't nap consistently it can mess with my suppy. Most days she does have an afternoon sip. One day she didn't and Cora was hosed down in the evening.

 

I bought Bohdin a red chair for his room several weeks ago. Both he and Nyla like it quite a bit. I looked in the guest bedroom one night and he had put the chair on the bed and covered himself with blankets. When he saw this picture even he didn't know what he was doing.

 

I wasn't sure how much Bohdin was getting from our geography lessons. We've read lots of library books but I wasn't sure he was retaining anything. He has actually learned a few things. We've moved on from China to Korea but it's more difficult becauase there just aren't as many resources on Korea. Maybe it will be enough that he knows it exists and where the country is located. In other education news, Bohdin is learning a lot by counting money. I just asked him how to make 60 and he said "30 + 30 or 20 + 20 + 20 or 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10". We've moved on past the 3 letter words to some four letter words. Bohdin is having some difficulty with it but was able to spell the word chip tonight. Our current lesson is focusing on words with sh, ch, or th. It could easily be another week before we move past this.

Punished

I learned the hard way that it's best not to wake Cora up ever really but especially as the kids are going to bed. She can be difficult to get back to sleep sometimes and that's not a great time to have a tired crying baby. Last night Buddy had Cora while I was going to put the older two to sleep. Bohdin had to go downstairs to put his unfinished yogurt back in the fridge. I warned him to stay away from Cora because if he woke her up he would be in trouble. He couldn't resist and woke her up. I told him no tv or computer today. He was really mad at the time but handled it really well today. Better than me. I found it to be punishment for me. It was so hot outside today so the kids couldn't play out there for very long. They couldn't play with their toys in the basement because we discovered mold behind one of the walls last night and we have yet to clean it up. So they made a mess of the living room. I had to play Zingo many times and Union Pacific. That's a train game for kids 12 and up that lasts 90 minutes. It did last about that long. I just wanted to lay down and try to cool off in front of the fan. (Bohdin just walked in and said he wanted to play again.) Nyla was way too young so she looked at books, watched some tv, and did other random things while Bohdin and I played. I had to help him since he is only five. He could do the mechanics of the game but not the strategy. He ended up winning but in effect I beat myself since I told him almost every move to make.

While Nyla was napping Cora was awake so I took some pictures. Bohdin also recorded her. Maybe someday I'll post that. Right now I have to play Union Pacific again.

 
 
 
 

Not a disaster

At first I was going to title the post disasters but that's not true. I spent the weekend thinking about the same weekend last year. Our lives have changed a lot in the past year. Monday I think Cora was tired. I was trying to get a lot done and the harder I tried the worse things became. She cried and cried and cried that day. In the late afternoon we were going to make chocolate chip cookies. I melted the butter then took the flour out. It was infested with moths. So was the other flour and the sugar and nearly everything in the pantry. Instead of making cookies I threw a ton of food away. They were able to get into containers that I didn't think possible. It was hot and I was mad so I packed up the kids and took them out for dinner. A woman there said I was brave but I wasn't. It's just easier to go out to eat with three kids than cook and clean sometimes. That night was one of those nights. We stopped at the bookstore also before heading home. One the way home Cora cried. She cried more than she had ever cried before and was completely inconsolable. Nyla tried so hard though and it was really sweet. Even when we stopped and I was holding her she was fussy.

Tuesday started much better. Cora was exhausted and slept really well. I was able to get a lot of cleaning done. The fridge was emptied of old food, the dishwasher loaded, floors swept, laundry started, and lunch made among other things. Bohdin and Nyla's friend came over and they played downstairs while I was getting so much accomplished. Everything was going really well until evening. Bohdin was ready for his before bed snack and wanted a peanut butter sandwich. We were out of bread so I needed to go to the freezer and grab one I had frozen. I had almost bought bread the night before but decided not to for various reasons. That turned into a lucky thing because when I went out to the big freezer I saw that it was not freezing. At the time I thought Bohdin had left the door open. He was very sorry. I transferred some meat that had defrosted to the the fridge and made some meat for snacking. Later I was trying to put Cora and Nyla to sleep when I started thinking about the freezer again. I decided to go down and check it. Things didn't seem to be freezing in there like I expected. I told Buddy and when he went down he realized that it had just stopped working. The motor was running but it wasn't cooling. We spent the next almost hour transferring as much as we could into the little freezer and fridge. We ended up not losing that much. Ice cream was thrown out and some vegetables but everything else should be okay. We'll be eating a lot of meat and drinking a lot of juice in the next few days. I'm not looking forward to cooking it all in the hot kitchen but it could be worse. We were lucky that it wasn't worse.

Last Friday which feels like forever ago we went to the art museum. It was really crowded so we didn't stay long. Saturday we went to a birthday party. We had plans to go to an art car show later but I didn't have the energy to do so many things in one day.

 
 

Missing time

I don't have as many hours in the day as I used to. Even though Cora is an easy baby she is still a baby. I estimate that I probably spend at least 30 minutes per day changing diapers. She can easily go through 30 diapers in one day because she is a pee and poop factory. She just pooped right now while she's laying in my lap. Last diaper change was about 3 minutes ago. I spend maybe one hour feeding her and another 30 minutes just being slower because I have a baby to deal with and that's a very conservative estimate of two hours per day. I've also started my overly ambitious plan for Bodhin's geography lessons this year so there goes another 30 minutes each day.

 
 

Cora had her two week appointment on Wednesday. I couldn't make it on Tuesday when she was actualy two weeks old because it interferred with playgroup. I can't remember what she weighed on her two day appointment. It may have been under 7 pounds but I can't remember for certain. It wasn't over 7 even. She is now up to 8 pounds 7 ounces. If I had known she weighed so much I wouldn't have lied about her breastfeeding habits. She doesn't eat as often or as long as they weould like so I just told them what they wanted to hear.

Paul says I haven't been talking about the other kids much. They have been keeping themselves occupied fairly well. The other day I overheard Bohdin spending 10 minutes explaining intricate rules to Nyla about how her robbers should try to get to the pyramid. She was bored after hearing the rules and went off to play by herself. I fully intended to write more about the older kids today but I've run out of time. To top things off Cora just pooped again.

Quilts

I picked up the quilts last week and have been working on the binding. I only have one done so far and will leave the other two for my mom who volunteered. I only have the desire to do blankets when I'm pregnant and now it's completely gone. I'm working on a small pink one that I am quilting myself. It may never be done now. I meant to take a picture of the back of Bohdin's big one which came out quite nicely. He did a really nice job choosing the fabric for that. I was in a big hurry because I had a dozen other things to do.

 
 
 

Cora is a very sleepy baby. I've never had a baby that sleeps so much. She wakes up to eat and pee then goes back to sleep. Every few days she'll have some significant awake time. I don't know how long this will last but I've been enjoying it. In addition she will be put down which is awesome. I remember what a tough time I had with Bohdin who needed to be held always. When Bohdin was born he had the usual just born sleepiness. I didn't know about that and thought he would be a breeze. I remember bringing him home and setting him down to take a shower right away. I thought smugly to myself that this baby business wasn't as hard as people made it out to be. Five minutes later I learned my lesson. Not only did he want to held all of the time but he slept horribly and was the world's slowest nurser. I was exhaused. I've forgotten what Nyla was like as a newborn except that she slept pretty well at night and cried loudly.