Addendum to My Last Post

So, I wrote lots of cute things about the Mikage (a nickname) the other day, but later that day I thought of several things that I should have included in that post about him. So, here they are...

Micah does this adorable little "food dance" when he thinks he's about to get something to eat that he really wants. He will dance at other times if hears music, but this is a special dance reserved only for the prospect of yummy foods. It's usually when he's in his high chair (since that's where he eats), and he just sort of rocks back and forth really fast while kicking his legs 90 to nothing. It's hard to describe, but really funny to watch. I might ask him if he wants a cookie, and instead of nodding or saying "yes" (which he normally does both of those things) he will do the dance in giddy anticipation of said cookie. Wish you could see it!

I mentioned that he's talking more and more these days. One of the cute things he does is repeat the last word of whatever song that I'm singing. I almost always sing a little song to him before I put him down for sleeping. Lately almost every time I finish the song, he will sing the last word after me. It's so precious. He's also asking (at least I think this is what he's doing) how to say things. He points to something and says "that" in a a questioning way. He says "that" a lot in reference to anything and everything that he doesn't yet know how to say. It's kind of like the word "smurf" for him.

And lastly, he is reaching for everything these days. Nothing on the kitchen cabinet or table is safe anymore. At least he hasn't started climbing up on the stools to grab things, though I'm sure that's only a matter of time. The other day I was at the kitchen sink and turned to discover him holding the bowl of honey without the lid on it. Thankfully there wasn't much honey left in it, so it didn't make a big mess. But he's come very close to turning things over and spilling things on the floor. I suppose it's only my fault when I leave things too close to the edge. I still remember when Joshua was this age and he brought me a big knife that he had pulled from the sink of dirty dishes. I was sick! But I was grateful that he hadn't hurt himself. Another time he brought me a glass mug with water in it that had been sitting on the table. He hadn't even spilled it! Hopefully Micah won't have these opportunities. :o) We just have to be more careful now that's he bigger!

17 Months Update

For all the fans, I thought I'd give a little update on what Micah is doing now. His cuteness factor has only increased since the last time I wrote about him. He can say most words now and repeats a lot of what he hears. We may be the only ones who really understand what he's saying, but he's communicating nonetheless. He will ask for his "wawer" when he's thirsty (that's water). The other day in the middle of breakfast he refused his yogurt and said "tootie" to me, meaning he wanted to eat a cookie right then. He didn't get the cookie, but it was cute when he tried. Recently he's started saying his version for the word cucumber because he knows I'll give some to him before it's actually time to eat, "tumber!" He also likes to ask for "apa" which is apple. He loves looking at "bopes" (books) and will ask for them. His two most favorite recent words are "Wook" and "Josh-a". If he can't see his brothers, he is looking for them. Sometimes he'll stand in the hall and yell their names trying to figure out where they are, "Woo-ook". I wish you could hear him!

Other than talking up a storm, he's just a very playful little fella. As long as he's well-fed, he's pretty happy. And I do mean well-fed. He can eat so much if it's something he likes. There are times he eats more than his brothers. Speaking of which he currently weighs 28 lbs. I wouldn't say he's chubby at all, just solid. He's beginning to outgrow some of his 18 month clothing already. In unfortunate news, I think he's ready to move to one nap a day. This is kind of really bad timing for me as we're getting ready to start packing up our house and I really need him to take 2 naps. :o( He's just all over the place when he's up. He will sit at the table doing activities like stacking and sorting for a little while. But he doesn't last long doing that if I'm not right there. He does want to be helpful, he'll take off to do things you ask him to do like throw something away, or wake up a brother, or put something in his room. We'll see what happens with the nap situation. Maybe I can just cut them short and still get two out of him for a little while. If we can just make it through the next two months...

Here are some pictures for your enjoyment. Currently if he sees a camera, he just puts this big grin on his face that's really adorable. And he loves wearing hats! I can't wait for many of you to meet him in person!

Another School Update

We've done a lot of fun things in our homeschool lately. I thought I should post some pictures of our fun times!


Recently we studied rocks, so this is the boys painting a rainbow rock garden.


We did 4 weeks of wild animals. Penguins was one week. So I drew (at least attempted to draw) 3 different penguins as their actual height. The Emperor penguin is actually 4 feet tall! I learn so much when I'm teaching them.

Micah wanted to measure himself against the life-size penguins also (since that's what big brothers did). He is about the same height as a chin-strap penguin.

One week was about elephants, so we made these ears and trunks. The boys really liked these! We also watched some great footage on Planet Earth of elephants. Yay for Planet Earth!

The boys put on the pilgrim hats (thanks Grandmother!) and we made a feather headdress for Daddy so he could pretend he was Squanto. They had a fun time acting out the story of the pilgrims.

This picture is not actually school related, but I included it so you could see Micah's cheese face. He's totally into getting his picture made these days. So cute. I'm hoping to post a cuteness update soon!

Pumpkin Pancakes

We decided last year to begin a new tradition of eating pumpkin pancakes for breakfast on Thanksgiving morning. So we've been building it up for weeks now, how yummy they were going to be, how unique they are, etc. Thanksgiving morning, I'm slaving away in the kitchen making these yummy pancakes when Daddy walks in and tastes one. He looks at me and says, "Have you tasted these?" A horrified look crosses my face, what have I done?! Luke comes in and sneaks a taste of one and his face screws up into an ewww-yucky-kind of-face. Now I'm almost in tears. I taste one, hoping they're exaggerating, only to realize that somehow I've ruined our Thanksgiving morning special breakfast. :o( Daddy suggests that we try to eat them anyway, maybe the boys won't really notice. Of course, Luke had already noticed. We sit down at our lovely decorated table with cute little Thanksgiving plates. Joshua starts tearing into the pancakes. Finally, he says, "Usually I like pumpkin pancakes, but when I swallow, I don't like these very much." In the end, I had to confess to the boys that I had messed up breakfast and maybe we could try again the right way the next morning. We threw the rest of the pancakes away.

It was the vinegar. It calls for 2T of vinegar. When I was pouring it into the measuring spoon, I spilled a little. So I just figured that maybe I had spilled more than I realized. The thing is, the vinegar taste was SO strong in the pancakes that I couldn't figure out how I possibly could have spilled that much. The more we pondered (and tasted) the problem, the more we tried to figure it out. Later Daddy had to run outside to get some eggs for me at the little store in our apartment complex. He noticed the vinegar that he had bought for me the day before (which I had used that morning) and saw that it said 70% proof. When he got home, he checked out what we were using before he had bought this new stuff. It was 6% proof! No wonder my pancakes were awful! The vinegar I used was more than 10 times as strong as normal vinegar! Just another adventure of living overseas and not really being able to read food labels. Later that day we bought a new bottle of "normal" vinegar and I made the pancakes again the next morning. They were very yummy! And I was able to redeem myself in my children's eyes. :o)

Joshua-isms

It's hard to limit this to one post, but I've been collecting some of Joshua's cute sayings/conversations for a while now. For those of you who we will spend time with in the U.S. next year, this is just to whet your appetite for conversing with a 5 year old who talks like a 25 year old. :o)

* One day I showed him this page of 6-8 squares that I wanted him to cut out (still practicing his cutting skills). And he said to me, "Aaaaw, Mom, I only wanted to cut out 8 less than 10 pictures today." (That's two in normal language.)

* A different time Joshua came up and hugged me as he commented on my pretty blue sweater. "It feels just like llama wool, Mom!" He learned about llamas on one of his computer games and has ever since talked about llama wool quite a bit.

* "Mom, I think I'm just going to drink milk and eat vegetables forever so I can not ever get sick again. That will keep me healthy because those are healthy foods." ("Healthy foods" learned from Sesame Street)

* When trying to remember where his Exodus memory verse was found, he asked if "Excolonians" was the name of the book. :o) I had a hard time not laughing when he said that.

* After getting out our fall decorations, Joshua spied the orange plastic pumpkin candy dish. Remembering that we had candy corn in it last year, he asked if we could put some of the "triangle candies with 3 colors" in it again. We told him we didn't have any candy corn.
"Well, where can you get it?"
"You can get it in America."
"But that's on the other side of the world!"
Sorry, Joshua, no candy corn this year. :o)

* One day Joshua and Luke were picking up the 50 puzzles they had all over the kitchen floor so that we could get lunch ready. Well, Luke was picking them up, but Joshua was just kind of just sitting there. In trying to encourage Luke for doing the right thing (as well as try to get Joshua going at it too), I was praising Luke. So I said, "Luke, you're just going to town!" Since they didn't really know what that meant, I had to explain it to them. Then Joshua says, "Yeah, Luke, you are going to town. But I'm not going to town because I'm too tired." The two of them proceeded to have quite a lengthy conversation about who was going to town and who was not.

* Earlier this week I kept hearing something banging in the washing machine. I was afraid it might be broken until I realized that there were 2 toys in there being washed with the clothes. One was a toy phone that was turned on, so the lights and music were going off the whole time (though we couldn't really hear the music because my washer sounds like a rocket is taking off). Anyway, the washer is a front loader and you cannot stop it until the entire wash cycle is finished and it stops on it's own. Even if you turn it off, you can't get the door open. So we just had to let the toys get washed. When I took them out of the washer to inspect and see if they still worked, Joshua says to me, "Well, I guess we'll just have to sell them for junk now." I have no idea where he comes up with this stuff.

* When eating a new kind of lemon cookie the other day, I asked Joshua if it tasted like lemon or not. His thoughtful reply, "Hmmm, I think it tastes like banana, lemon, and lime all mixed together. It's quite delicious!" Thank you, Joshua, for your cookie commentary.

I'm sure there's more and I KNOW there will be more in the future. But these are just a few that have come up recently. That Joshua - he is something else!

The Home Stretch

Well, Daddy has been gone on his trip for 8 days now. Counting today we have 3 days left before we can see him again! He will arrive in the middle of the night Sunday night/Monday morning, and we can't wait! I must say that my boys have done remarkably well for only having one parent around, particularly the not-fun parent. :o) We had one day-from-the-pit where they got in trouble for everything and I had little to no patience for anything - not a good combination. But most days have been pretty good. I've really been impressed with how Joshua has stepped up on several occasions to help me. Daddy had a talk with him about how he was the biggest boy in the house when Daddy was gone and how he really needed to help Mommy. Joshua has mentioned it several times, so I know he's thought about it. He has had his moments off and on, but this week Joshua has really shown more maturity than I thought was there. It's been a delight. And I can even tell at times when Luke is following his lead. Luke has been more challenging this week, but he is 3 (which naturally explains it all). I've been so grateful that we've all been healthy (except for Micah's runny nose) and safe so far. There were several projects that I'd hope to get done while Daddy was away, but I've pretty much stuck to surviving and haven't really worked on much extra. Oh well, it'll all get done someday. Thanks to all of you who have been praying for us this week. We are so thankful for you!

Cha-os

Having multiple children proves to be rather chaotic at times (okay, pretty much ALL the time with my kids, but sometimes more than others). See, each child has a mind of his own and each child has something to say that MUST be heard. Let's take this morning at breakfast, for example. We were just finishing asking the blessing on our food, everything is ready to eat, Daddy has just said "Amen". Then the noise and chaos ensue. Micah has gotten into the habit of yelling, "Aaaaaaaaaaa-men" after we pray. He holds the first syllable out so long that you think he's just yelling to make noise, but he always adds the "men" to the end of it. It's really funny, even if a bit loud. So, Micah is doing that, while Luke immediately starts asking for help with pouring the milk. This also is not unusual, but Luke asks in his own special 3-year-old way by stuttering a little and repeating words until he gets what he needs. And at the same time as all this, Joshua is telling Daddy all about how the South Americans grow potatoes in the mountains, and they also grow corn, which is good because he likes both corn and potatoes. I'm so not kidding, either. So, Daddy looks at me and I look at him and all we can do is laugh through the chaos. The nice thing is that it was only for about a minute until we could start getting food into all of them, then the table quieted down a little. :o)

Trying to get out the door with the entire family is also a rather chaotic time, but that deserves its own post. Hopefully some other time... Until then I'll leave you with a few pictures...