Esther complained periodically yesterday that her gum was hurting on her lower left side in the very back. I looked at it and felt it and couldn't find any evidence of anything wrong, but it reminded me somewhat of when she was teething on her two-year molars. So I looked up tooth development this morning and found out that six-year molars can come in at five years, and are normally the first permanent teeth to erupt. I had suspected with her two-year molars that she felt some discomfort several months before they actually appeared, so I thought it was just possible that her six-year molar was moving deep within her gum and that was what was bothering her.
Well, apparently the molar wasn't all that deep, because tonight when I was brushing Esther's teeth--viola, there it was! It hasn't quite broken skin yet, but it's clearly visible under the gum. For cryin' out loud, not only is the child not six yet, she isn't even five! What does she think she's doing, growing up so fast??
For Esther's part, she has been envying friends' loose teeth and new permanent teeth for some months already, so she is pleased as punch to be starting the process. I'm just hoping we still have a while before we have to decide what to do about the tooth fairy!
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
The picture says it all
On the plumbing front, a friend who does contracting came over (on a Sunday night!), removed the irreparable piece of pipe and capped off the pipes leading to it so that we could turn on our house water again. This is the husband of the woman who rescued us when we were stranded by the side of the road after our car accident in the fall--I think we need to start referring to them as our knights in shining armor! The tub itself is going to be out of commission for a while. Our friend discovered that there had been a long-term leak back behind the wall (a different leak from the one we created), and parts of the wall and tile are going to have to be replaced. We may just be getting a vinyl tub insert; it's easier to take care of! But those decisions can wait until Tim's work quiets down a little; thankfully, our downstairs bathroom has a shower, so this bathtub isn't critical to our well-being. And we are reminded how much we appreciate clean, convenient, indoor, hot-and-cold running water!
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Projects
Daniel is a project guy. He is not good at entertaining himself, but give him a project and he will work hard at it until it is completed. So in order to keep from going crazy when Daniel is off of school, we look for projects for him to do. This can sometimes end up being more work for us than we had anticipated. For instance, one afternoon I asked Daniel to vacuum out the lint hose leading away from our dryer. Three hours, a trip to Lowes, and considerable involvement from both Tim and me later, we had a whole new hose in place. We needed that hose (and it made our dryer much more efficient!), so I'm not complaining, but it wasn't quite what I had in mind when I suggested what I thought was a five-minute chore!
Over Christmas break, Daniel cleaned the washing machine, cleaned the microwave, defrosted and cleaned two refrigerators, helped Tim replace a leaking faucet in the bathroom, installed a light on our living room ceiling fan, and probably a few other projects that I'm forgetting right now. He didn't have a working computer at that point, so if he wasn't doing projects he was following me around. One day he followed me all.day.long...upstairs, downstairs, flipping light switches on and off in our wake. (He has this habit of reaching out to passing light switches and flipping them on and off several times...drives me nuts!) Since Tim was also on break, he was able to "spell" me by having Daniel do projects with him while I played with Esther or got some of my own work done.
But Tim was working during Daniel's spring break, so we knew we were going to need a good project if I was going to survive a week by myself with both kids home! Daniel has been bugging me for literally months about renting a carpet-cleaning machine to clean our carpets (yes, these are the things that float his boat!), so that was the project we chose. It required sorting through boxes and piles of stuff on the floors of two rooms, moving all of said "stuff" and all of the furniture out of three rooms, of course the actual cleaning of the carpets, and then moving everything back in. It was definitely a week's worth of work! In fact, I told Daniel that if I was going to be giving my attention to cleaning the carpet rather than my normal "maintenance" chores (laundry, dishes, etc.), he was going to have to help with the other chores. And with only minimal grousing, he agreed! (This is huge, because normally when I ask him to help with a maintenance chore he complains that that's my job.) I asked him to choose whether to be my laundry helper, my dishes helper, or my cooking helper. He chose laundry, and was quite independent with running the loads, switching clothes to the dryer, and even some of the folding and putting away!! (I still sorted the clothes and told him which temperature each pile should be washed at.) It really was a huge help, which freed me up to do sorting and putting away of piles without letting the rest of the house go to pot. He also helped me some in the kitchen. AND, on Monday, he willingly entertained Esther (in my earshot) for several longish stretches so I could sort in peace. Like I was saying a few weeks ago, that sibling bond is making progress! (Okay, so after attending the kids program of our foster-adopt support group that evening, they got into an altercation and both got in big trouble on the way home for spitting on each other. But at least the first part of the day went well!)
By Friday evening, we had three rooms and a hallway of clean carpet (the rest of the upstairs is wood or tile), one clean dining room rug, and clean(er) upholstery on our dining room chairs. (Seriously, who designs white upholstery for something that's supposed to be sat upon??) I also had red callouses at the bases of all my fingers on my right hand from pushing the heavy carpet-cleaning machine, plus a bonus blister on my palm from trying to dig a hole in rocks to plant a new blueberry plant, and a small cut on my index finger on the same hand courtesy of Friday night's dinner preparations. Needless to say, I was avoiding the use of that hand for a while! But it was nice to have all of that work done and to be able to move stuff back into our rooms. Tim put Daniel in charge of rinsing out the machine before he returned it to Lowes, and the people at Lowes said they had never seen one come back so clean. That's my boy! :-)
Meanwhile, since all the stuff was out of the bedrooms, we decided to go ahead and switch up our sleeping arrangements rather than waiting for the summer. So we moved the desk and computer stuff out of the study into our bedroom, moved Esther out of our bedroom and into Daniel's room next door, and moved Daniel down the hall to what used to be the study. The bed we put Daniel in when he arrived in our family is an elevated bed a little lower than a top bunkbed would be, with drawers and a cupboard that fit under it, and a ladder going up to it. I think it's a cool bed, but Daniel doesn't like being up that high. At all. And while he has come up with various solutions (re-engineered the bed to make it lower; put his mattress on the floor under the bed; etc.), he has been begging for a new bed almost since he got here. Ordinarily I wouldn't put a new bed high on the list of priorities, but since we needed one anyway as soon as Esther outgrew her crib, we agreed that we can have a new (to him, anyway) bed for his main 15th birthday present from us. Since Daniel's birthday is still several months away, he is currently sleeping on his mattress on the floor in his new room. Esther is sleeping on her crib mattress under the bed in her new room (she uses the top of the bed as a place to read books and do art). And we are really, really enjoying having our bedroom all to ourselves for the first time in four years! We did love having Esther so close to us all that time, but...sometimes it's just nice to be able to sit in your own room with the lights on and have a normal-voiced conversation while kids are sleeping!
We hadn't been sure how Esther would take to the transition, being as how she nixed the idea of moving to her own room in no uncertain terms when we last proposed it a year ago, but she is loving having her own space. (It probably helps that she got to take over Daniel's room! Nothing like sibling ownership to make something look attractive.) She was pretty cute hunting through the house for her stuff so she could squirrel it away in her room. At one point she pulled some pieces of packing foam out of our closet (I'm not even sure why we were keeping them in there in the first place, but sometimes she uses them for padding when she practices gymnastics). She asked if she could put them in her room. We asked her why, and she said earnestly, "Just in case!" So we let her. :-)
And right now, as I type, Daniel (and Time) are at it again! Yep, another project. This one started out with a clogged pipe (due to the yucky stuff we dumped from our dirty water tank after cleaning the carpet)...that led to a newly discovered leak...which turned out to not be coming from where we first thought it was...and then in the process of fixing that, Daniel bent something and now it looks like we have to replace a piece of pipe before we turn the main house water back on, or we will have a flood. You know how I wrote at the beginning of this entry that projects seem to expand on us? I hadn't intended for those words to be prophetic! Sigh. Never a dull moment!
Over Christmas break, Daniel cleaned the washing machine, cleaned the microwave, defrosted and cleaned two refrigerators, helped Tim replace a leaking faucet in the bathroom, installed a light on our living room ceiling fan, and probably a few other projects that I'm forgetting right now. He didn't have a working computer at that point, so if he wasn't doing projects he was following me around. One day he followed me all.day.long...upstairs, downstairs, flipping light switches on and off in our wake. (He has this habit of reaching out to passing light switches and flipping them on and off several times...drives me nuts!) Since Tim was also on break, he was able to "spell" me by having Daniel do projects with him while I played with Esther or got some of my own work done.
But Tim was working during Daniel's spring break, so we knew we were going to need a good project if I was going to survive a week by myself with both kids home! Daniel has been bugging me for literally months about renting a carpet-cleaning machine to clean our carpets (yes, these are the things that float his boat!), so that was the project we chose. It required sorting through boxes and piles of stuff on the floors of two rooms, moving all of said "stuff" and all of the furniture out of three rooms, of course the actual cleaning of the carpets, and then moving everything back in. It was definitely a week's worth of work! In fact, I told Daniel that if I was going to be giving my attention to cleaning the carpet rather than my normal "maintenance" chores (laundry, dishes, etc.), he was going to have to help with the other chores. And with only minimal grousing, he agreed! (This is huge, because normally when I ask him to help with a maintenance chore he complains that that's my job.) I asked him to choose whether to be my laundry helper, my dishes helper, or my cooking helper. He chose laundry, and was quite independent with running the loads, switching clothes to the dryer, and even some of the folding and putting away!! (I still sorted the clothes and told him which temperature each pile should be washed at.) It really was a huge help, which freed me up to do sorting and putting away of piles without letting the rest of the house go to pot. He also helped me some in the kitchen. AND, on Monday, he willingly entertained Esther (in my earshot) for several longish stretches so I could sort in peace. Like I was saying a few weeks ago, that sibling bond is making progress! (Okay, so after attending the kids program of our foster-adopt support group that evening, they got into an altercation and both got in big trouble on the way home for spitting on each other. But at least the first part of the day went well!)
By Friday evening, we had three rooms and a hallway of clean carpet (the rest of the upstairs is wood or tile), one clean dining room rug, and clean(er) upholstery on our dining room chairs. (Seriously, who designs white upholstery for something that's supposed to be sat upon??) I also had red callouses at the bases of all my fingers on my right hand from pushing the heavy carpet-cleaning machine, plus a bonus blister on my palm from trying to dig a hole in rocks to plant a new blueberry plant, and a small cut on my index finger on the same hand courtesy of Friday night's dinner preparations. Needless to say, I was avoiding the use of that hand for a while! But it was nice to have all of that work done and to be able to move stuff back into our rooms. Tim put Daniel in charge of rinsing out the machine before he returned it to Lowes, and the people at Lowes said they had never seen one come back so clean. That's my boy! :-)
Meanwhile, since all the stuff was out of the bedrooms, we decided to go ahead and switch up our sleeping arrangements rather than waiting for the summer. So we moved the desk and computer stuff out of the study into our bedroom, moved Esther out of our bedroom and into Daniel's room next door, and moved Daniel down the hall to what used to be the study. The bed we put Daniel in when he arrived in our family is an elevated bed a little lower than a top bunkbed would be, with drawers and a cupboard that fit under it, and a ladder going up to it. I think it's a cool bed, but Daniel doesn't like being up that high. At all. And while he has come up with various solutions (re-engineered the bed to make it lower; put his mattress on the floor under the bed; etc.), he has been begging for a new bed almost since he got here. Ordinarily I wouldn't put a new bed high on the list of priorities, but since we needed one anyway as soon as Esther outgrew her crib, we agreed that we can have a new (to him, anyway) bed for his main 15th birthday present from us. Since Daniel's birthday is still several months away, he is currently sleeping on his mattress on the floor in his new room. Esther is sleeping on her crib mattress under the bed in her new room (she uses the top of the bed as a place to read books and do art). And we are really, really enjoying having our bedroom all to ourselves for the first time in four years! We did love having Esther so close to us all that time, but...sometimes it's just nice to be able to sit in your own room with the lights on and have a normal-voiced conversation while kids are sleeping!
We hadn't been sure how Esther would take to the transition, being as how she nixed the idea of moving to her own room in no uncertain terms when we last proposed it a year ago, but she is loving having her own space. (It probably helps that she got to take over Daniel's room! Nothing like sibling ownership to make something look attractive.) She was pretty cute hunting through the house for her stuff so she could squirrel it away in her room. At one point she pulled some pieces of packing foam out of our closet (I'm not even sure why we were keeping them in there in the first place, but sometimes she uses them for padding when she practices gymnastics). She asked if she could put them in her room. We asked her why, and she said earnestly, "Just in case!" So we let her. :-)
And right now, as I type, Daniel (and Time) are at it again! Yep, another project. This one started out with a clogged pipe (due to the yucky stuff we dumped from our dirty water tank after cleaning the carpet)...that led to a newly discovered leak...which turned out to not be coming from where we first thought it was...and then in the process of fixing that, Daniel bent something and now it looks like we have to replace a piece of pipe before we turn the main house water back on, or we will have a flood. You know how I wrote at the beginning of this entry that projects seem to expand on us? I hadn't intended for those words to be prophetic! Sigh. Never a dull moment!
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Happy Family Day, Esther Si Di!
Four years ago yesterday, a tiny baby with wide observant eyes and a shock of black hair changed our world forever. One of my fondest memories from that day is of her falling asleep in my arms on the way from our meeting with her to our hotel.
(I'm having a hard time believing Esther was ever that tiny. Or that it's already been four years!!) So, yesterday we celebrated!
In the morning, Tim and Esther and I went to the huge playground at a county park, then had a picnic, and followed up by going for a walk, on which Esther threw rocks into a river. In one picture she's holding up four fingers to signify four years together (her idea).
Then last night we all went out for dinner, at Esther's request. I brought the camera but forgot to take any pictures. Both kids maintained good manners throughout, to my pleased surprise. We still haven't had the cake Esther originally requested for her family day; maybe tonight?
We are so blessed to get to know and love this girl as she grows up. I love too many things about her to count, but here are a few:
Her sense of humor. Esther has the best laugh, one that make you want to laugh along. And it doesn't take much to tickle her funny bone. One day she was complaining that her leotard had a funny smell, and I told her (somewhat tartly) that she wasn't going to be wearing it on her nose. She laughed so hard she literally fell over!
Her curiosity. This is a girl who finds interest wherever she looks. Lately we have been watching birds building their nests in our yard. One day while watching a robin go by with twigs in her beak, Esther exclaimed, "Mommy, I think there's going to be eggs in a few whiles! They're materialing!"
Her energy and athleticism. Esther is go, go, go kind of girl! She has been in gymnastics for a little over a year now, and it is the perfect sport for her, drawing on her energy, her strength, her coordination, and her fearlessness. She is pretty good at it, too! She can already do a respectable cartwheel, and she loves trying to use a ribbon or a hoop "like the big girls" (our gym specializes in rhythmic gymnastics).
Her persistence. When Esther wants to do something, she keeps working at it. That's how she's able to do a cartwheel! The preschool class at her gym is about having fun and learning pre-skills, but she really wanted to do an actual cartwheel, and she kept working at it until she could. She's also working on a handstand, though with a little less success so far!
Her compassion. Esther can be territorial and aggressive with the best (or worst?) of them, but if someone (that she's not fighting with) is sad or needs help, Esther will be the first to notice and try to make things better. Most of the time, she is very, very sweet, and we love loving on her.
I could go on, but daily life is calling me. But I just couldn't miss the chance to give my special girl her very own blog post as we celebrate the fact that she is in our lives.
(I'm having a hard time believing Esther was ever that tiny. Or that it's already been four years!!) So, yesterday we celebrated!
In the morning, Tim and Esther and I went to the huge playground at a county park, then had a picnic, and followed up by going for a walk, on which Esther threw rocks into a river. In one picture she's holding up four fingers to signify four years together (her idea).
Then last night we all went out for dinner, at Esther's request. I brought the camera but forgot to take any pictures. Both kids maintained good manners throughout, to my pleased surprise. We still haven't had the cake Esther originally requested for her family day; maybe tonight?
We are so blessed to get to know and love this girl as she grows up. I love too many things about her to count, but here are a few:
Her sense of humor. Esther has the best laugh, one that make you want to laugh along. And it doesn't take much to tickle her funny bone. One day she was complaining that her leotard had a funny smell, and I told her (somewhat tartly) that she wasn't going to be wearing it on her nose. She laughed so hard she literally fell over!
Her curiosity. This is a girl who finds interest wherever she looks. Lately we have been watching birds building their nests in our yard. One day while watching a robin go by with twigs in her beak, Esther exclaimed, "Mommy, I think there's going to be eggs in a few whiles! They're materialing!"
Her energy and athleticism. Esther is go, go, go kind of girl! She has been in gymnastics for a little over a year now, and it is the perfect sport for her, drawing on her energy, her strength, her coordination, and her fearlessness. She is pretty good at it, too! She can already do a respectable cartwheel, and she loves trying to use a ribbon or a hoop "like the big girls" (our gym specializes in rhythmic gymnastics).
Her persistence. When Esther wants to do something, she keeps working at it. That's how she's able to do a cartwheel! The preschool class at her gym is about having fun and learning pre-skills, but she really wanted to do an actual cartwheel, and she kept working at it until she could. She's also working on a handstand, though with a little less success so far!
Her compassion. Esther can be territorial and aggressive with the best (or worst?) of them, but if someone (that she's not fighting with) is sad or needs help, Esther will be the first to notice and try to make things better. Most of the time, she is very, very sweet, and we love loving on her.
I could go on, but daily life is calling me. But I just couldn't miss the chance to give my special girl her very own blog post as we celebrate the fact that she is in our lives.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Good Friday
My Master Was So Very Poor
-- Harry Lee
My Master was so very poor,
A manger was His cradling place;
So very rich my Master was,
Kings came from far to gain His grace.
My Master was so very poor,
And with the poor he broke His bread;
So very rich my Master was,
That multitudes by Him were fed.
My Master was so very poor,
They nailed Him naked to a cross;
So very rich my Master was,
He gave His all, and knew no loss.
Love (3)
-- George Herbert (italics mine, for clarification)
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked anything.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
-- Harry Lee
My Master was so very poor,
A manger was His cradling place;
So very rich my Master was,
Kings came from far to gain His grace.
My Master was so very poor,
And with the poor he broke His bread;
So very rich my Master was,
That multitudes by Him were fed.
My Master was so very poor,
They nailed Him naked to a cross;
So very rich my Master was,
He gave His all, and knew no loss.
Love (3)
-- George Herbert (italics mine, for clarification)
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked anything.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Just in case life wasn't interesting enough
Last week we got to watch a toddler for a couple of days (and nights). I arrived at two conclusions:
1. Babies really are addictive! There's just nothing like feeling a little one securely squashed into your lap, absorbed in a book, or watching him spinning in circles cracking himself up. And I wasn't the only one who thought so, either. :-) Every single member of the family was quite taken with our little visitor
2. Babies really are a lot of work. This is especially true when your house isn't babyproofed.
We only had about an hour and a half's notice before our little guest arrived, so we managed to get the living room picked up and some toddler toys installed, but the kitchen remained in its usual state. So it was nearly impossible for me to cook until Tim could watch him: either I was listening to him and Esther in the living room and checking on them every three seconds to make sure they were still playing safely, or I had him with me in the kitchen and every time I turned around he was taking the cap off of a whiteboard marker or investigating our (not recommended for children under three!) refrigerator magnets. One night I finally got dinner on the table about 7, only to have the baby spit up his froot loops. I finally ate my dinner at ten, after administering a bath, rinsing neon colors out of toddler clothes, brushing several kids' teeth, giving medications, getting two little ones to bed, and helping one big kid process a tragic event that had happened at his school that day. I was so thankful the littlest one had daycare during the day so I could recover!
We did have fun with our little guy, though, and I loved watching how our two kids interacted with him. Esther, as I would have guessed, wanted to help him and play with him and tell him what and what not to do. She was really quite helpful, though she had to be reminded not to pick him up. He is used to having other kids around, so her antics were what cheered him up when he first arrived and was not happy about being left in a strange place, and they really had fun playing together. What surprised me was how much Daniel also liked him. Daniel didn't interact with him as much, but liked to watch him, and made several comments ("I heard him say Esther's name, but he hasn't said my name yet.") that made me realize that he was quite attracted to the baby. When the baby left, Daniel wanted to know when he would be coming back, and seemed rather disappointed when I told him the baby wasn't going to be coming back. At one point Daniel told me that it would be good if we had a kid around that age in the house, so that Esther would play with the other child and leave Daniel in peace. But then later he got annoyed at Esther bossing the baby around, so he came over and told her to shush, which of course led to her shushing him back, and the two of them started going at it so loudly that they even had the baby frowning and shushing them.
Oh, he was cute!! But on the other hand, I can't say that I'm sorry to have my life back. :-) And although he addressed me as "Mama" and wanted me to hold him when he was sad, I'm confident that he was happy to leave and go back to his own familiar people and routines.
1. Babies really are addictive! There's just nothing like feeling a little one securely squashed into your lap, absorbed in a book, or watching him spinning in circles cracking himself up. And I wasn't the only one who thought so, either. :-) Every single member of the family was quite taken with our little visitor
2. Babies really are a lot of work. This is especially true when your house isn't babyproofed.
We only had about an hour and a half's notice before our little guest arrived, so we managed to get the living room picked up and some toddler toys installed, but the kitchen remained in its usual state. So it was nearly impossible for me to cook until Tim could watch him: either I was listening to him and Esther in the living room and checking on them every three seconds to make sure they were still playing safely, or I had him with me in the kitchen and every time I turned around he was taking the cap off of a whiteboard marker or investigating our (not recommended for children under three!) refrigerator magnets. One night I finally got dinner on the table about 7, only to have the baby spit up his froot loops. I finally ate my dinner at ten, after administering a bath, rinsing neon colors out of toddler clothes, brushing several kids' teeth, giving medications, getting two little ones to bed, and helping one big kid process a tragic event that had happened at his school that day. I was so thankful the littlest one had daycare during the day so I could recover!
We did have fun with our little guy, though, and I loved watching how our two kids interacted with him. Esther, as I would have guessed, wanted to help him and play with him and tell him what and what not to do. She was really quite helpful, though she had to be reminded not to pick him up. He is used to having other kids around, so her antics were what cheered him up when he first arrived and was not happy about being left in a strange place, and they really had fun playing together. What surprised me was how much Daniel also liked him. Daniel didn't interact with him as much, but liked to watch him, and made several comments ("I heard him say Esther's name, but he hasn't said my name yet.") that made me realize that he was quite attracted to the baby. When the baby left, Daniel wanted to know when he would be coming back, and seemed rather disappointed when I told him the baby wasn't going to be coming back. At one point Daniel told me that it would be good if we had a kid around that age in the house, so that Esther would play with the other child and leave Daniel in peace. But then later he got annoyed at Esther bossing the baby around, so he came over and told her to shush, which of course led to her shushing him back, and the two of them started going at it so loudly that they even had the baby frowning and shushing them.
Oh, he was cute!! But on the other hand, I can't say that I'm sorry to have my life back. :-) And although he addressed me as "Mama" and wanted me to hold him when he was sad, I'm confident that he was happy to leave and go back to his own familiar people and routines.