re-gifting

Re-gifting. I think it's a term that usually refers to wedding gifts that you didn't like... wrap them up and give them to someone else. Voila. You re-gifted.

In our house, re-gifting is a bit different. It's watching a younger child begin to enjoy something that our older ones have already been enjoying. I LOVE it!

My girls liked this swing. A lot. They still like it.... All three of our kids are in and out of the swing regularly.

But Isaac is my first who really loves this swing. I mean loves this swing. When I hang it up he squeals with delight. When I buckle him in he quivers with excitement. I give him a big push and he kicks and laughs. So fun.



Since we live in an apartment, the swing is hung inside. Not super typical, but it works great for us.

When 5pm rolls around and Isaac is getting fussy and dinner needs to be cooked, I get out the swing. I give him a big push and head to the kitchen. I chop the vegetables, start the water boiling, preheat the oven, and look over my shoulder at Isaac's big grin.

Depending on your perspective, Isaac's either in the worst position, or the best.

Sure, he gets lots of "previously enjoyed" stuff. But he also gets the best of the best. The toys that withstood the test of time. The ones that will probably never make it to our give-away pile. It's like having two big sister toy evaluators - and best of all, he gets to listen to their delight as he enjoys his 'new' stuff!

PS - We've got at least one more 'money in the bank he will definitely LOVE this' re-gift coming up this Christmas.... it was Julianna's 1st birthday present, and Lydia's first birthday present and this December it's got gift tag marked "ISAAC"! Perfect.

Any guesses as to what he's getting?

decorating for Christmas

The girls have been helping me decorate for Christmas. With three children under the age of 4, "Christmas decorating" takes on a whole new meaning. Christmas magazines talk about decorating themes - there's the nautical look, the Santa theme, trees decorated entirely in antique ornaments.

My Christmas decorating theme? Indestructible.

If it can't be chewed on, toted around, fought over or soaked in drool, it's not really an option :) [There are a few exceptions, and we're all working hard to establish good boundaries regarding how to enjoy certain decorations!]

This morning we decorated our front door. The front door is one of the prime locations for potential destruction. When I'm standing outside our door fumbling for the key Isaac lunges for and rips anything within reach. When Julianna beats me to the top of the stairs she plays with the door decorations. While Lydia waits for me to put on my shoes she fiddles with the door artwork.

Not exactly the place for a fancy wreath (if we even had one). Instead, we opted for a bit of preschool art.



It's entirely possible that we have the best Christmas door decorations in our entire stairwell.


Of course, no one else in the stairwell celebrates or decorates for Christmas, so the competition wasn't too tough!

the turkey boy

Guess what Isaac's favorite Thanksgiving food is? TURKEY! He ate gobs and gobs of it.

In fact, he's the only one in the family still eating leftovers - the rest of us finished up most of the goodies last night, but there were a few remaining scraps of turkey in the fridge and Isaac ate it again this evening :)


He also got a sneak preview taste of some Rice Krispie treats. I think it's fair to say that he's going to be a pretty big fan. And also fair to say that I would have never dreamed of feeding Rice Krispie treats to 8 month old Julianna. Isaac is definitely living the life of a third child. Let me tell you, it has its perks!



Matt took one bite of the cereal + marshmallow + buttery goodness and declared "they taste like America"! It is one of the few recipes we enjoy that consists entirely of imported ingredients.

Now that Thanksgiving weekend is over we've set our sights on CHRISTMAS! Our advent calendar is hung, our nativity scene is out, and our girls are humming Jingle Bells. Good times.

tree sneak preview

The day after Thanksgiving we bought our Christmas tree. Every year Matt is wonderfully willing to shelve his sense of reason and cater to my crazy desire that we have a REAL tree.

Keep in mind that the nearest frasier fir is in the parking lot of the Food Lion two miles from my parents' home.

Adventures were plentiful and fir trees were few. But we had fun.

Here's a sneak preview....

It's a big one :)

Happy Thanksgiving

Our thanksgiving morning photo.....


Full of fun! Details coming....

thankful challenges

Matt has a theory: Every year at Thanksgiving, our thankful hearts get challenged. And I think he is right. It's just uncanny, but we seem to always run into "thankful challenges" right around this time of year.

My first three consecutive Thanksgivings here we were without power on Thanksgiving Day. I mean, really, what are the chances? Definitely a "thankful challenge".

So this year, what are our challenges? Well, for starters, the dryer is broken. Again. Laundry is mounting up and the dryer fix-it man has been "on his way" for two days. I'm hoping he shows up tomorrow :)

Challenge #2? Our landlord is selling our apartment. In a country where I understood all the laws and rules and regulations regarding rental contracts, it would be slightly unnerving. Here, it's definitely disconcerting. We have a contract on this apartment signed through July 1, 2010. But we're wondering how our current rental contract gets worked into the buy/sell contract that our landlord is writing with the new buyer.

For the past week our landlord has been showing our apartment to prospective buyers. A few days ago I asked her to please give me ten minutes notice before she showed up with someone. Tonight the phone rang during dinner. When she arrived she told us she had a buyer. We communicated once again our concern that our rental contract would be honored by the new owner. Please pray.

In the interest of maintaining my thankful heart, I'm going to stop listing challenges! My sweet Lydia is sitting on the couch listening for "the bear upstairs" and exclaiming with glee when she hears him .... a topic for another post. But I will say this: I'm grateful that the bear upstairs is not a thankful challenge!

making conversation

The girls say the funniest things.

Recently they've been really into words like bigger, stronger, faster, slower, smaller, taller, etc. Lydia loves to say "look, I'm running faster than daddy." And Julianna is very concerned with ages (after all, she is almost 4!) and always wants to clarify her position in regards to others: Am I older? Am I bigger? Is my hair longer?


They also ask some really ridiculous questions.

"What is bigger, our house or that crane?"

"Can a bus carry our car?"

"Is that train stronger than a dump truck?"

Most of the questions are unanswerable. I mean, buses weren't designed to carry cars, and I have trouble visualizing how that might work... so what do I say? And how exactly do you determine the train vs. dump truck thing?

Then, this morning on the way to church Lydia came up with this one: "Is a forklift strong enough to carry a long piece of string?" Ridiculous. But at least I was confident of the answer.

A few other random examples:

Last week Julianna told me "Isaac is looking more and more like a frog."

Friday night before bed I am talking with Lydia who says, "My hair is a little bit messed up." "No it isn't", I assure her. "But one day it was and daddy fixed it" she exclaims. (Which is even more hilarious if you know that the closest Matt has ever gotten to "fixing" the girls' hair is a brisk rub with the towel after a bath.)

Lydia is also in a groove where she claims "that's my favorite song". All the time. For almost any song that she hears. Right now Julianna is singing Happy Birthday to You (not sure why she is singing it) and Lydia just said "That's my favorite song".

And another funny one from Julianna while she was playing with Isaac: "He wants to grab my face and eat it. But my face has bones in it and they will get stuck in his throat." Ugh.

When referring to her snow coat Lydia says "zipping up it" instead of "zipping it up".

And the other day at breakfast she told me "In 5 more minutes Carolina [her stuffed bunny] will be two and a half." (She gets that from Julianna, who is frequently asking how many more weeks/months/days until she is 4.)

When they say something really funny I often grab a pen and write it down, so I can tell Matt when he gets home. They are so funny I just don't want to forget all these great "conversations" I am having with my little ones.

upside down

This little guy is upside down, in more ways than one.

For some reason my almost always happy, fun-loving, grinning, smiling, easy to be around little guy is in a bit of a funk. Is he cold? Is he teething? Is he just cranky?

Not sure. But man he is wearing me out! For two straight days he has either been a) in my arms, b) sleeping, or c) crying/fussing/complaining. He was happier this afternoon, so I am hopeful we are on the upward swing and my sweet little guy will greet me in the morning!

snow coat practice

In the past 24 hours the temperature has dropped at least 20 degrees. Since we don't have any especially effective means of heating our apartment, when the outside temp drops 20 degrees, the inside temp drops 20 degrees. It's chilly. Welcome winter!

The girls were excited to try out their 'snow coats'.


I love that children are easily thrilled by small things. Getting bundled up and heading outside to "see if their snow coats kept them warm" was a highlight of the morning! I mean, really, when was the last time you got really excited about your winter jacket?!?


Isaac isn't a pink jacket type of guy. He opted for his WFU hat and Fighting Sioux jacket. Divided allegiances. But he's got time to work on that :)


Matt has started growing a beard, the weather is cooler, and Thanksgiving is next week. Oh yippee! The holidays are just around the corner!

Saturday's dinner

So what DID we eat on Saturday night?

Matt got home and I explained the empty fridge predicament. With a little convincing from him, the whole family headed out the door to try a noodle restaurant near campus.


We ordered our food and the girls entertained the restaurant owner while Matt started feeding Isaac.


Our food came and everything was going pretty smoothly


when Lydia managed to dump a bottle of water onto her big sister. Julianna's dress was drenched. The sun was low in the sky, the temps were cooling off, and we were riding home on bikes. There was only one option.....


Matt's shirt. (He was wearing two, so he took off his undershirt and put it on her.) She was pleased to be "dressed like daddy" but also noted that she "did NOT like to wear white". Happily, she was willing to make an exception to her white clothing boycott.

Not sure if I'm willing to do this every Saturday night, but it worked!

what's for dinner

I usually plan meals on Sunday nights. Last Sunday I was (apparently) still deliriously refreshed from the moms conference and my meal planning suffered. I clearly remember looking at my meal plan sheet and thinking "Saturday night is blank. You need to fill something in for Saturday night." But I didn't.

The week started off with a bang, and I never dealt with the Saturday night issue. Before Xiao Li goes to the market she almost always runs through the next few days of meals, just to double check that the freezer and pantry are stocked up (yes - she is amazing and I am not sure what I would do without her!) So on Thursday she asked about Saturday dinner and looked at me a bit askance when I answered, "Not sure about Saturday. I'll figure something out then."

Well, then is now. It's 3 oclock Saturday afternoon. I just took a quick fridge inventory: two pieces of leftover pizza, almost 2 liters of milk, one slice of bread, half a jar of homemade salsa, carrot and pumpkin puree (at least Isaac is provided for!), 2 eggs, about 2 cups of leftover rice, ketchup and barbeque sauce. Hmmm, this is going to call for a bit of creativity!

I would suggest going out. But if you haven't taken three young children to a local restaurant you haven't experienced the art of truly stressful dining. At the end of a long week, I'm just not up for that kind of dinner.

We could call and get the restaurant to deliver. But I'm just not in the mood for that either.

The freezer has some meals, but none of them sound appetizing to me right now.

These are the moments when I start dreaming of what we would do if we lived in America. I name restaurants I enjoy, imagine all the convenient food options at the grocery store, day dream about asking Matt to 'pick something up on the way home' (ha! can you imagine what he would show up with? Let's just say this isn't the kind of place that is full of appetizing options!)

What do you do for last minute dinners? I'm starting to think we'll have to do pancakes, and I'll need to run out for more eggs. Any other ideas for me? It might be too late for tonight, but I'd love to have a few more options the next time I blatantly ignore one entire day on my meal planning sheet :)

just having fun

I'm really tired.

Which makes perfect sense, seeing as how it is already 8:15pm!

Aaaahhh! What is happening to me? I mean, really. How can I be this tired at 8:15?

I get up early. The days are full. And by 8pm, I'm wiped out. So I'm headed to bed pretty soon. Matt is out late and I'll probably be in my second REM sleep cycle before he makes it home :)

Earlier this evening the girls and I read Green Eggs and Ham. It's my current favorite Seuss book. And since I'm the mommy, we get to read my favorites.

Fox in Socks leaves me tongue-tied and frustrated. The Sneetches are just so dang petty. Although I love to hear Lydia say "zizzer zazzer zuz" I didn't feel up for another round of the ABC book. I can recite The Cat in the Hat from memory ("The sun did not shine, it was too wet to play, so we sat in the house all that cold cold wet day. I sat there with Sally, we sat there we two and I said How I wish we had something to do. Too wet to go out, too cold to play ball so we sat in the house we did nothing at all." ....... It's a great book. But I need a break.)

So we settled on Green Eggs. I like it. I like the rhymes and I like the rhythm. I like the pictures. And I like that I can skip some of the longer passages :) [Shhhh, don't tell the girls]

So we're plowing through Green Eggs, just minutes from bedtime when Julianna looks at one picture and asks, "How come that car is in the tree?" And immediately answers herself, "I bet he [Dr. Seuss] just wanted to have fun."

I smiled, agreed with her and kept reading. Lydia hung on my left arm, insisting over and over that he really did like to eat green eggs and ham. (She'll probably grow up to be the one who always spoils movies by giving away the ending!)

I didn't skip any words in Green Eggs and Ham tonight. I was too busy just having fun. So much fun that I'm going to bed before 9 :)

what I should've bought

I am home. The mom's conference was so awesome. So awesome. Seriously. I loved it.

But I also missed my husband and my children and was glad to come home.

I bought a few things while I was gone - a really cool sweater dress for myself and two pairs of bright red leggings with rainbow stripes and ruffles for the girls.

The good news is that the leggings match approximately 0.5 % of the items in the girls' wardrobe. In other words, THEY LOVE THEM!!! I'll have to get a photo. As Julianna so aptly put it, "I don't like white very much." (She told me that one morning when I was trying to convince her to choose a white bow for her hair. I thought that her clothing already included way too many colors and a nice white bow might soften the look a little. Ha. She wouldn't touch a white bow with a ten foot pole.)

Unfortunately, this morning at the breakfast table I realized that what I should have bought was a nice indoor raincoat. Because Isaac is in some sort of super-spit-up-challenge and I spend most of the morning getting blasted with all kinds of regurgitated junk. Ugh. He seems to slow down after his first nap, but the early morning hours are brutal. I think he might be teething so maybe the extra drool is causing all the spit up? Whatever the reason, some sort of waterproof clothing would have been a nice investment. oh well.

So I'm home. And delighted to be here. Rainbow leggings, morning spit up and all :)

the weekend

I leave tomorrow afternoon for a weekend-long moms conference.

Matt stays home with this crew....


You can pray for him :)

I am excited for the opportunity to get away and spend time enjoying fellowship with other moms who 'live my life'. But I'm also a little sad to leave my kiddos. Especially Isaac. It's always hardest for me to leave the littlest one.

I know he will do fine. They all will. But it's still sad to say goodbye, even for a short time. I debated taking him with me, at least for part of the time, but Matt insisted that I leave him here for the entire weekend. "You won't have nearly as much fun if Isaac is there, and it won't be as restful for you."

I'm wondering if Matt will live to regret his eagerness for me to leave him with all three :)

The fridge is full of food, the laundry is washed & folded - and I'm away from (most of my) mommy duties for a weekend!

roommate anniversary

It's not on the Hallmark calendar, but November 2nd is a big day around here. It is ROOMMATE ANNIVERSARY, the holiday I created to celebrate the day (night?) that Julianna and Lydia were roommates for the first time.

This year's celebration had a little extra something special.... Isaac is a member of the roommate club! I'm not sure he's a permanent addition to the girls' room, but for now we're enjoying all three of them sharing a bedroom. And so are they.

To celebrate we went on an afternoon adventure outing, shopped for a little gift, and ate a special dessert. The gift was a new wake-up-number-clock. The girls are not allowed to come out of their room until 7 am, and Julianna is keeper of the clock. The clock is used (and abused) daily and we replace it about once every 4 or 5 months. Thankfully, there is a store in town that stocks a wide selection of 4 dollar plastic alarm clocks.

The previous clock was on it's last shaky legs and Roommate Anniversary was the perfect excuse to buy a new one. The girls picked out a spiffy yellow Winnie the Pooh clock.


Last year I started a Roommate Anniversary journal and put in photos of the girls in their beds. So I took new pictures to add to the journal.




Isaac doesn't care a whit about the Winnie the Pooh clock. And he didn't get to enjoy the Roommate Anniversary dessert. But he is a roommate now, so he got his photo taken too.

Happy Roommate Anniversary to my precious kiddos!