Napkin Head, Lists, Lubs, Trains



This past week Noah has decided to use his hair as a napkin for dinner.  It gets really bad if we have spaghetti and meatballs.  He usually gets a shower after dinner every day :/.  I am still wondering why he thinks it is a good idea to do that....At least it keeps some of it off his shirts and shorts.

 

Matthew passed the sacrament again this week.  Other than trying to wave at us as he went by with his shadow (someone in the Deacon's Quorum presidency) he did really well.  I stress out every time, but so far so good.  Hopefully it will stay that way!!

 

We finally have found another piano teacher for the boys.  Our last one we really loved, but he had to move.  I am really excited about our new one.  She is really nice and loves teaching.  Hopefully the boys will get back into learning the piano again after taking the summer off.

 

Sarah has started dance up again.  She takes from a lady who teaches out of her home which is about four houses down from us.  When it is time to pick her up from dance Matthew happens to be home from school.  Matthew likes to come along with me, but only as a train conductor.  He puts on his safety vest and Union Pacific hat.  Then he puts Noah inside the train and walks (or drives the train which is his wagon) down to pick Sarah up.  Now when Sarah gets done there is another class that is getting ready to start.  When we get to the house against my protests Matthew walks up to all the girls waiting to start class and asks them if they would like a train ride.  The girls don't know quite what to do, so Matthew will start asking the moms if he can give them a train ride.  He is pretty funny.  Luckily most of them are figuring out that he is autistic so they are nice to him and politely decline.  However, some of the moms are nice enough and let him take their younger kids on a train ride around the drive way.  Matthew keeps things interesting that's for sure! 

 

Now it is no secret that Matthew loves trains.  He likes to offer train rides to everyone.  He even asked one of his fellow young men who is 12 years old as well if he would like a train ride.  He politely declined, but one time he did let Matthew pull him around in the wagon.  The poor kid could barely fit, but it was really nice for him to let Matthew give him a train ride.  This same kid brought Matthew a present the other day.  The boy was at his grandma's house while she was cleaning out her closet and saw a train game.  He immediately thought of Matthew and asked if he could give the train game to Matthew.  His grandma and mom said yes so he brought it down to Matthew.  Wow, Matthew was so excited.  It was so nice!  I really have to say that although Matthew can be hard to deal with sometimes, we really have run into a lot of really awesome people who love Matthew and try to help.  That is awesome!!

 

Well we have started back into a routine of sorts.  It only took two weeks to get there, but it is nice to have structure again in my house again.  Matthew rides the bus in the mornings since he goes to Jr. High as for the rest of the kids I am thankful we live close enough to the school that Josh, Daniel and Sarah can walk. In the mornings Josh and Daniel like to go to school early to play with their friends so that leaves me, Noah and Sarah to walk 20 minutes later to drop Sarah off for kindergarten.  Sarah and Noah play so well together that Noah really misses her when she is gone.  Mom is no replacement for Sarah!  Occasionally they will hold hands while we walk to school.  I think it is cute.  Sarah seems to be enjoying kindergarten. 

 I love fall harvest time.  I was able to bottle 11 more quarts of tomato soup.  This time Daniel, Sarah and Noah were all interested in what I was doing and came over to the sink to watch.  When they all saw how much fun it was to peel the scalded tomatoes they jumped in to help.  When you boil a tomato for a minute the skin just pops right off.  I, myself, think it's fun to peel scalded tomatoes.  There was an even bigger mess with all the extra 'help' I got in the kitchen, but the kids had fun.  Daniel thought it was especially funny when a tomato exploded all over my clothes, he couldn't stop laughing at me.

 Speaking of harvest time we did an experiment in our garden this year--we planted okra from seeds.  Now growing up in Utah I had never even heard of okra until I visited Texas for the first time after meeting Aaron so it really was an experiment for me.  We got our first batch of okra this past week from the garden.  We only got a few, but we still got some.  Aaron was telling the guys at work about it and one of his friends gave him some more okra from his garden so I had enough to try making gumbo.  I had never made it before so I took a stab at it with Aaron's Grandma's old recipe.  I made it in the crock pot so when Aaron got home from work he could smell it.  He said it brought back all kinds of memories from family get-togethers at his Grandma's house.  The kids all loved it as well.  We only had a little bit left over after dinner which is great since my kids can sometimes turn their noses up at anything new.  Josh ended up having three big bowl fulls.  How that kid can eat like that and still remain rail thin is a complete wonder to me.  Anyway, we might have to plant some more okra next year :).  Since the kids had never heard of Gumbo, they kept calling it Jumbo.  It was pretty funny.

Since we have started back to school, mornings are pretty hectic.  I have to get five kids and myself up and ready for the day, pack lunches, find shoes, do hair, find homework, do breakfast, walk Sarah to school, etc.  Things can get pretty crazy.  I was pretty frazzled by 9 am to say the least.  Josh saw how crazy it was and for the first two weeks of school, he woke up extra early and packed everyone's lunches for me, started a load of laundry and cleaned out the dishwasher all just to be nice and helpful all without even being asked.  Oh.  My.  Goodness!!  I was so thankful for the extra help it was so sweet!  However, when I got up this morning Josh informed me that he needed a break and was not going to do all that for me for awhile.  I was fine with that.  I am just thankful he was thoughtful enough to even start doing that on his own in the first place!!!  It was pretty awesome! 

 

In the mornings in trying to speed everyone along with their routine, I kept asking the boys the same questions over and over and over again every morning.  I finally got sick and tired of being a broken record and came up with a checklist at the top of the boys' stairs.  They have to complete all the items on the check list before they can come upstairs for breakfast.



 It says: make your bed, clean up your bedroom, shower using soap, change underwear and put on clean socks, brush teeth, put on deodorant, clean up bathroom, turn out all the lights.  Yes we have had some problems forgetting a few of these daily rules.  One example would be that Daniel does not like finding clean socks every day.  To avoid getting clean socks he would just tuck his old socks inside his school shoes only to put them back on the next day.  I had no idea he was doing this until he took his shoes off by me one afternoon.  Holy cow I thought I would pass out from the stench of very stinky one and a half week old worn every day without being washed smelly, dirty socks.  Just take my word for it, it was BAD!!!  Also Josh has come to a point in his life that he needs to wear deodorant every day.  He came home from school the other day and I could immediately tell (or smell) as soon as he walked through the door that he had forgotten his deodorant that day.  Also if I wasn't following up on the kids they would conveniently forget to brush their teeth in the mornings.  YUCK!!  Now the list has helped me.  If they are upstairs I can rattle off the list and they know what they need to get done in the mornings.  I am hoping that all this will just become part of their daily routines....Matthew has the routines down already, but only because he is Mr. Routine anyway.  I don't want my kids to be the stinky kids at school.  I am keeping my fingers crossed this will work!

Aaron and I don't fight or argue very often which is great.  I am glad we get along so well most times.  However, Saturday was not a good day.  We had a rough morning.  Afterward, however,  Aaron brought me some flowers and chocolate so I think all is forgiven.  They are some pretty flowers, too.  I even got to have a nice bath later that day with my chocolate while he put the kids to bed by himself.

Friday night was movie night so we were watching a movie with everyone's pillow pets and blankies.  Unfortunately, someone was playing with an unopened soda when they dropped it and it exploded all over Sarah and Noah's lovies.  Noah is quite attached to his pillow pet and blanky so he made sure he kept an eye on it while it was being washed and dried.  However, watching it made it seem like it took that much longer to get done for him.  He was so giddy when it was finally done.  What a funny boy!

As for potty training, I think we have it down.  Not to jinx myself, but Noah has been the easiest kid yet to train.  We are still working on getting #2 down, but he has gone #2 in the toilet twice and once in his pull up.  However, I am excited to be diaper free.  He has also stayed dry at night every night except one in the last two weeks.  He even takes care of everything himself--I don't have to remind him to go, he will just get up and run to the potty and take care of it himself.  What a big boy.  However, we were at the park last week and he didn't want to tell me he had to go.  He just wandered over to the park bathrooms and went inside without telling me.  Luckily, I had seen him go in so I just ran over and he was trying to take care of it without telling me.  I couldn't get mad at that.  The other day he brought in some entertainment while he needed to go--his light spinny thing.  He wasn't happy I was taking a picture of him being 'otherwise disposed', though.  Notice how we are out of toilet paper?  If I don't let him take a toy in, he plays with the toilet paper roll and I don't really like trying to unclog a toilet full of a whole roll of toilet paper that he has decided to stuff in the toilet.  We only dispense the toilet paper on an as needed basis, but we make exceptions for guests ;).

Sarah got to have her "All About Me" week this week.  The teacher tries to get their special week during their birthday, but Sarah has a summer birthday so that didn't quite work.  However, Sarah was still excited to celebrate her birthday again even if it was a month late.  Aaron and I were able to attend her class on Monday and tell them all about Sarah.  Sarah then got to pass out her birthday treats to the class and wear her birthday crown.

 Every night when it's bedtime we get the same response from Noah, "I need lubs (loves) for two minutes."  So I will set the timer and when it goes off he is supposed to go to bed.  However, it isn't quite that easy.  As soon as the alarm goes off he will repeat, "But I need lubs for two minutes!!"  How can you resist that?!  Most times I will give in--and yes he is quite spoiled, but what can you do?!  He's my last baby and I am milking it for all it's worth!!!  Here he is telling me he needs more lubs: