Category Archives: Brenna

I’m here again

Back from my trip. Tons to do. Wish I had a couple hours to write all about it. Check out Barry’s blog for details.

Here are a couple things I don’t want to forget to write:

Logan has his two bottom teeth. They sprouted up on Tuesday, December 28th. He’s only 5 months old! My other kids got teeth later. Brenna at about 10 months and Jonah at 8. So, I was in denial that his drooling and screaming meant he was getting teeth. My mom discovered them.

One night while we were in Idaho Brenna was feeling a little under the weather and kept complaining. She said things like, “The white blood cells in my body are just battling and fighting with the germs all around my body and I’m bursting with pain.” And, “Oh, I’m so tired (fake yawn) and my ears just don’t work anymore, and I think my brain is going to break!!” Fortunately the white blood cells won their battle and she feels fine now.

Rabbit Condo and Toe Grabbing

I have many things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving weekend. Barry was tired of having my rabbits in the garage, so he built them a two story condo with a built in fort. They are now winterized, even though Lizzie still wasn’t smart enough to take shelter in the rain.

Here’s what else is new in no particular order:

  • Logan was 18 lbs. and 27 inches at his 4 month check-up last week
  • Logan figured out how to grab his toes. He has to roll on his side to do it, and then they have a conversation complete with slobbery raspberries.
  • Jonah was a super roller skater at the ward skating party tonight. He went around the rink with Dad the whole time.
  • Brenna–well, not so good. She was pretty upset that other kids were better than her.
  • Thanksgiving dinner was good. We had it here with our friends the Cromwell’s and some new neighbors that are kidless. Barry did the slimy stuff this year. I liked that.
  • I made a pumpkin pie sweetened with fruit juice concentrate that was actually really good.
  • Um…I sold another spindle kit.

    • So, not super exciting, but good for me. It is really cold and rainy. It’s winter in Ohio. The sun will come out…

    in May.

    …with pain in the neck and shoulders

    I don’t let my kids watch much TV. We don’t have cable, so of the 3 or 4 channels that come in clearly, the only thing ever worth looking at is PBS. On a good day they get to watch a half our episode of ZOOM or Sagwa. Anyway, sometimes I watch Oprah–when the contents of the show won’t emotionally scar my kids for life. You know, shows about how dad’s rape and beat their wives and children then go on to find new wives and children to destroy, or shows about how wonderful Sex in the City is. I don’t watch those. But if it is something about moms making millions working from home or feeding African children I’ll watch it.

    And with Oprah comes comercials.

    Brenna remembers everything she hears. And commercials are so convincing. Last winter she mentioned daily how she needed a certain lotion because she had “winter itch.”

    On Saturday we ran around from store to store getting stuff together to make Halloween costumes and more wood for me to make spindles and other errands. I had already sat through a 3 hour meeting that morning and was just feeling tired. My neck hurt, my jaw hurt, my shoulders hurt…so I told Barry. Brenna overheard and said,

    “You have a tension headache–you know, with pain in the neck and shoulders. You need Excedrin Tension Headache medicine. It’s for tension headaches, with pain in the neck and shoulders.”

    Now, I’m sure you’ve seen the tension headache comercials. Who wrote those? Who directs those? Who, in real life talks like that? You can see the commas when those poor actors plagued with tension headaches are looking piercingly into the camera. They annoy me and I laugh at them.

    But they’ve got Brenna convinced!

    I CUN BE CHOOFL FOR UTHERS

    Brenna’s Primary lesson yesterday was about honesty. At the end of the lesson the kids just got to color and Brenna figured out how to write this all by herself. Yes, my four year old is a phonics genius!! And, she even put a period at the end of her sentance!!

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    (It’s supposed to say “I can be truthful for others.”)

    This is a treasure.

    I have more pictures to add. I took some on our good day on Friday, you know, the day I bathed all three of my children. Well, I felt so ambitious, and my kids were too clean, we had to make play dough for school. What mother in her right mind would make play dough for her freshly bathed children? I don’t know. I obviously wasn’t in my right mind, and now light blue (food coloring just isn’t potent enough to make anything other than grayish ugly light blue) salt dough is smashed into my dining area carpet. (Someday when we’re rich we will put tile down in the dining area. Carpet and eating toddlers or play dough playing are definitely not a good combination.) So, my good day got a little stressful…but then, while I was trying to clean up the salt dough mess, Jonah went to the bathroom by himself. Which was fine until he washed his hands and filled the sink up , and then tried to scrub it with half a roll of toilet paper. Wet toilet paper doesn’t have a whole lot of scrubbing power, but it sure is fun to watch it break up to little bits in the sink full of water, then pull the plug and watch it go down the drain–for awhile. Because eventually it stops going down the drain because it is completely clogged. Anyway, my day was pretty good until then. I didn’t take pictures of any of that, though. I just wanted to run away.

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    So we went outside and spread out some blankets under a tree and read a little bit of Wind in the Willows. The kids were being good, so I gave them suckers. I simply had to ruin the clean kid thing even further by letting Jonah drench himself in sticky slobber. (You have to click on this picture to get the full effect of the slobber. I mean, there is some slobber!)

    Barry unclogged the sink. He can do anything.

    We went for a pretty fall walk yesterday, so I have to include these pictures too.

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