Simple machines

Homeschool doesn't just happen around here. It takes some serious advance planning to muster up the level of education these kids are getting. Like today's lesson on levers, wheels and wedges.

I began by making a mess.

Who left that stack of very heavy books in the middle of the floor? Those can't stay there! Let's see if we can move them...

Nope. Too heavy. What if we try some teamwork?

Nope. Still no progress. Anybody have any ideas?

"Mommy!" Abby exclaimed. "We have a book about that!" (Oh, really?) "Remember how you lift a lion?"

"Use a lever!" Caleb proudly interjected. 

But first, we'll need to build one, which will involve me allowing my two-year-old to use a hammer.

Now let's load up the books and try it out.

Cool! It works!

"Can we try it with a real lion?" Abby asked.

No. We don't have any lions handy, unfortunately. But if we did, I bet you could lift him with this awesome lever.

"Can I try Abby?" Caleb wondered aloud.

Sure. Why not.

Fourth and Eight

Now is definitely the right time of year to be eating for two.

And with eight months to go until we welcome our fourth little fish into the family, that's just what I plan to do.

I'm about eight weeks along now and have been given a tentative due date of mid-July. I'll be able to narrow that down a little once I get word on my OGDDDP (Official Gary Dyksterhouse Due Date Prediction). Gary's predicted two out of three of our kids' birthdays with stunning accuracy. That's a much better record than my doctors, who have been wrong every single time.

We're calling the little one Sprout for now. Except for Abby. She's convinced the new baby is a girl, and has already named her Aurora. And considering she has been praying for a baby sister since some time in August, she may very well be right.

Caleb is pulling for another little brother, and is convinced that if he yells it loud enough, that's just what he'll get. He's also caught up in a never-ending game of Poke the Baby that involves him sneaking up beside me and poking my belly with his fat little fingers. It's kind of cute right now, but I'm sure it's going to get old pretty quickly.

Please join us in praying for our new little one as we anxiously look forward to meeting him or her next summer!

The day we (almost) had a cat

If you give the kids a stray kitten, they're going to ask you for some food.

When you give them something to feed it, they're going to need a bowl to put it in.

When you put the bowl of food on the floor and the kitten starts to eat, the kids will crowd around it. They'll begin to pet it, and the kitten will begin to purr.

Hearing the kitten purr will remind them of the kitten at Nana and Granddaddy's house.

They'll remember how much that kitten liked to chase string. So, they'll ask you for some yarn.

And when you give them the yarn, they'll run through the house trailing it behind them.

The kitten will chase it. He'll leap and run and slide, and the kids (and their dad) will have so much fun, that they'll quite forget...

This isn't our cat.

When you remind them that it isn't our cat, they'll ask whose cat it is, and why it's in our house.

Good question, you'll reply.

You'll tell them that you found the cat trapped on the screened porch this morning. It must have gone there to get out of the big storm last night, you'll say.

You'll remind them that the cat (who is not ours) needs to go back outside so it can find its way home.

When she follows it outside, Abby will realize how very cold it is. So she'll want to make the cat a little place to stay warm.

You'll have to find towels to make a bed, and she'll tuck the cat in under them, where it will promptly fall asleep.

You'll realize this cat has no intention of going home anytime soon.

So you'll call the neighbors, and eventually someone will claim the cat.

When the owner comes to retrieve it, she'll thank the kids for taking such good care of her lost kitten.

When they realize the cat is leaving, the kids will cry. So you'll comfort them with blankies and snuggles.

And chances are, while you're giving them those snuggles, they're going to ask you for a kitten.

Tannenbaum

I always had a real Christmas tree growing up. My husband did too, until the year of the tree with the hatching spider eggs (or something like that), after which they went artificial.

When our first Christmas as a married couple rolled around, I assumed we'd go pick out a real tree. My no-nonsense husband had other plans. As I recall, he talked me into buying a fake tree with a hug and some line about how "We'll always have our first tree." I fell for it, and we brought home and decorated our plastic tree. I lit a pine-scented candle to give the illusion of the real thing, and thought about how romantic and sentimental my husband was being, what with wanting to keep our first tree and all.

(Well played, honey.)

So after seven years with our fake tree, it was no small thing when my dear practical husband suggested we get a real tree this year. It seems the sentimentality of dragging the kids somewhere to pick out a tree finally got to him. (Letting them help unfold branches just isn't the same.)

Abby and Caleb had a blast running through all the trees and spinning the ones that were suspended from the ceiling. While the parents debated which tree to bring home (eventually settling on the fact that they all look the same once you put lights on them), the kids busied themselves with collecting discarded pine needles and branches to build a tree of their own. They were enthralled by the process of strapping the tree atop the van, and were only a little worried about how windy it was going to be up there. They kept their eyes glued to the sunroof for most of the ride home. It was a momentous occasion, to say the least.

Farewell, pine-scented candle!

Turkey for all

By no small miracle, our own sweet Nana managed to coordinate having her entire family (18 of us in all) sit down in one place at one time for Thanksgiving this year. Keeping up with three kids around four generations, three sets of in-laws and two great-grandmothers (to name a few) made for one tired mommy.

Without further delay, here's your Thanksgiving highlight reel:

We baked.

We visited.

We snacked.

We dined.

We played.

And one of us tried to pet a deer.

It was a very good day. We were truly blessed and very thankful to be able to share the holiday with our kids and all sides of their extended family.

A right jolly old elf

We parents spend a great deal of time warning our kids against straying from our sides and telling them to steer clear of strangers.

So it should come as no surprise that once a year, when we drag them to the mall and shove them onto the lap of an unfamiliar and quite comically dressed stranger, they would hate it.

Abby has never been scared of Santa. She's never been all that impressed with him either. She's just kind of intrigued by the whole ordeal. Santa's not a big deal at our house, and going to visit him is less about making a list and more about taking a picture. She knows this, and she endures it to get the candy cane at the end.

Caleb, in his three years of sitting with Santa, has never once liked it. The first year, he was just shy of his first birthday and terrified of the beard and the fur-lined suit. The second year, he managed to hold it together just long enough to take the picture, but only when we gave him candy and let him sit as far from Santa as the big chair would allow. This year, he was terrified from the moment Santa smiled at him. He sat shaking through the whole ordeal, clutching his shark to his chest with tears streaming down his face as he waited for us to tell him he could get down.

And Jacob, who loves all strangers everywhere, used every ounce of strength he had to alternately shriek in terror and lunge forward to try to escape Santa's clutches.

To make it up to them, we took them out for cake pops when we were done. I think Caleb in particular is a much bigger fan of the Santa that comes down the chimney when no one is looking than this guy at the mall.

Driving in circles

We spent almost two hours driving back and forth between the car wash and the gas station.

Because when Caleb has me all to himself, he has two simple requests. And they never change.

"Will you play trucks with me, Mommy?" he asks.

"And will you build Mega Bloks with me, Mommy?" he adds, before I have time to answer the first question.

I do a quick mental check. The baby's asleep. Abby's upstairs playing dolls, and has left us instructions not to interrupt her.

"I sure can," I tell him. And my heart swells a little when I see the smile on his face that means he knows he has my undivided attention.

So we built a car wash, complete with drive-under sprayers. And we built a gas station, with four different sized pumps to accommodate everything from Matchbox cars to his tractor trailor truck.

And we drove in circles, taking turns lining the cars and trucks up and pushing them through the car wash then back to the gas station for a fill-up. We were interrupted only once, by an F-22 flyover, when Caleb noticed his fighter jet was stuck under the couch and went to rescue it.

This beats doing laundry and dishes any day.

Man with a plan

I'm pretty sure I have, at various times, claimed every baby stage to be my favorite. The newborn stage was my favorite, the three-year-old stage was my favorite, the early twos were my favorite.

I was wrong every time. I'd forgotten how much I loved the just-turned-one stage. This is my favorite.

Jacob is into everything. He wants to know, he wants to explore, he wants to touch and learn and do. This is making my job increasingly difficult, particularly when he wants to know what's on the third bookshelf, or wants to explore my tupperware cabinet, or wants to touch those long blonde curls sprouting from his sister's head.

He could walk if he wanted to. He really could. He just hasn't really seen the need yet. So he'll stand up and sling his big walker in one direction or another before slamming it down and cruising around behind it for a few laps through the kitchen. He'll stand to drink his sippy cup without realizing what he's doing, until he gets to those last few sips that require him to tip the cup upside down, causing him to lean too far back and tip over.

He loves to push his sister's doll stroller through the upstairs bedrooms, but he prefers to push it backwards for better leverage. This drives Abby, my little control freak, absolutely insane. There is a right and a wrong way to push a stroller, and she cannot fathom why anyone would ever turn the thing around and do it wrong on purpose.

"He's just a baby," she reminds me. "Maybe he doesn't know any better."

Seeing that we have far too many trucks in our living room, Jacob has assigned himself a daily mission of choosing one at a time from the truck box, driving it to the stairs, then hauling it upstairs where he drives it down the hallway and hides it in his room. Ascending the steps one-handed is no easy feat, and in the time it takes him to get all the way up and then for me to bring him back down, Caleb has usually retrieved most of the hidden trucks and put them back in their proper place downstairs. This creates a loop that can often last most of the morning.

But one of my one-year-old's favorite activities is playing with blocks. He seems to have figured out that if he destroys whatever they're constructing, Abby and Caleb will make him his own pile of blocks somewhere out of the way. With these blocks all to himself, he's perfectly happy to sit and stack and unstack and knock over and rebuild again and again.

Much like Abby and her books or Caleb and his trucks when they were his age, this seems to be Jacob's go-to activity. When we go out, I make sure to pack a few blocks in my purse to keep him occupied. The area around his carseat is littered with discarded blocks that he managed to sneak into the car right under my nose.

Between the intense focus, the penchant for building things, and the lack of communication, I think I might have a budding engineer on my hands.

For the record...

It is nearly impossible to get a one-year-old to spread his fingers out and stamp his handprint on a shirt in any sort of orderly fashion. He'll be angry, and paint will go everywhere. It's okay. We're making memories here, and memories make messes.

It's nearly impossible to get a four-year-old girl to stamp her handprint on a shirt when (a) the paint is not glittery and (b) the turkey feathers you're trying to make are not pink. Some tears may be shed. It's okay. When she sees the matching tutu I'm making to go with the turkey shirt, I'm pretty sure the lack of glitter and pink will be forgotten.

It is extremely simple to get an easygoing two-year-old to smear paint all over his hands and make turkey feathers out of them. And when he's as agreeable as my two-year-old, he happily spreads his fingers and presses his hands down exactly where I tell him. I think Caleb was so thrilled to be getting the one-on-one attention from mom that this type of crazy craft requires, he was willing to do whatever I said.

When they wear these cute little shirts on Thanksgiving (the one and only time my kids will ever be dressed alike), I'll remember that Jacob wanted nothing to do with it, Abby wanted sparkles, and Caleb just wanted to spend time with me.

It's okay. We're making memories here.

Stick a fork in it

The kids wanted lollipops for lunch, and they weren't backing down.

So I stuck a fork in their fruit.

Mom wins again.

Punk princess

If Abby ever wants to start a grunge band in our garage, I'm going to tell her yes, and I'm going to give her one rule.

When they make it big, I want to see this picture on her first album cover.

She'll thank me one day.

Big kid now

He wants to do everything his big brother and sister do.

So when it came to his first hot chocolate, a sippy cup just wasn't going to cut it. He insisted on one of those Starbucks' kids cups (the ones I talked the kid in the drive through into giving me bunches of for just such an occasion).

And afterward, when the cup was empty and there were no drips to clean up, I started to wonder. Perhaps the secret to limiting our food- and drink-related messes around here is to give the kids something so delicious that they finish it too quickly to spill.

I might be on to something here. Brownies for dinner anyone?

A proper celebration

When your best friend (or your best friend's sister, in Caleb's case) is having a birthday 600 miles a way, you have to get a little creative with how to help her celebrate.

So after chatting with the birthday girl and her little brother over breakfast, Abby talked Caleb into following her upstairs. She had a plan, and she needed his help to pull it off.

(Shortly after turning four herself, Abby became deeply concerned by the fact that her best friend was still three. She has prayed nightly for Abby Mae to turn four, and, I think, feels that she may be partly responsible for the occasion of her friend's fourth birthday.)

The would-be party goers returned a while later and headed out the door for what will henceforth be known as The First Annual Abby Mae's Birthday Cowboy Parade.

We marched up and down the street, and Abby informed everyone we met (all two of them, and their dogs) that it was her best friend's birthday.

If Abby Jean had had her way, we would have continued to march all the way to Abby Mae's front door. We had to settle for singing to her via Skype.

Never has a birthday been so fully celebrated from such a great distance. Happy fourth birthday Abby Mae!

Happy Birthday, Jacob!

For the third time, I have blinked and found one of my babies celebrating a first birthday. I am fairly certain that I was handed a tiny newborn Jacob just yesterday. But the cake and balloons would seem to indicate otherwise.

Jacob must be one now, because...

• He's eating everything in sight. This is a very, very big deal. After months of feeding trauma and drama, after finding out he actually had an allergy to breast milk proteins, after spending a small fortune on specialty formula, after a number of trips to GI specialists, after one very awful barium-choking x-ray incident, Jacob simply decided one day that he was over his reflux. He started eating everything in sight, and he hasn't stopped since. His favorite foods are pizza (with pepperoni, pineapple and olives), bananas, cheerios, and lemon cookies. He does not want his food cut up into tiny bite-sized pieces, but prefers to gnaw on large choke-hazard-sized chunks of food that more closely resemble what is on everyone else's plate. He still can't quite handle whole milk, but all other dairy seems to be okay with his once-sensitive tummy at this point.
• There are no more bottles in my sink. As has been the tradition for the family of fish, his last night time bottle was offered to him on the eve of his first birthday. The others have faded away over time and been replaced by sippy cups of formula at meal times that he can drink himself. I'll be honest...Jacob's been my cuddliest baby to date. I'm going to miss feeding him his bottle. But since for the most part feeding time was starting to resemble my trying wrangle a screaming hungry octopus, I have a feeling Jacob prefers the new setup.
• He has zero interest in walking. Ability and desire are two very different things. The former he has, the latter he lacks. He'll stand unattended for minutes at a time without realizing it. He'll push his walker around then pick it up and sling it into a new position when he hits a corner. He cruises along the edge of the furniture like a champ. But asking him to put one foot in front of the other unaided is like asking an elephant to grow wings. It's simply not going to happen. Not yet, at least. When he needs to go somewhere, the one-knee, one-foot gorilla crawl is his preferred method of transportation. And he's darn good at it.
• He has a future in mountain climbing. I'm know, because there's nothing in this house he hasn't ascended to the top of. Chairs, boxes, stairs (lots and lots of stairs), the fireplace, mountains of laundry, his sister...you name it, he's climbed on or over it. He doesn't like to visit the same place twice, so when he disappears, it's a family effort to find him. This might be the baby that makes me break down and buy a baby gate.
• He's not much of a talker. Why should he be, when he's got a brother and sister to make all his decisions for him? He says "mama," which sometimes means me, and sometimes means whatever he wants at the moment. He used to say "baba" for bottle, but when we stopped giving him bottles that word disappeared. He barks at the dogs next door, which is cute, but as Abby reminded me, "Woofing is not a word Mommy." Justin's tried his best to get him to say "Dada," but Jacob just smiles and grunts back at him, or points and says "Mama!" He understands plenty of what we say, like "No," "Don't touch the dishwasher," "Get your hands out of the potty," "Where are the puppies," and "It's time for dinner." That'll get him by for a while.
• He's still a fantastic sleeper, in spite of the total lack of peace and quiet that comes along with living in this house. He sleeps from about 7 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. each night, and naps twice a day from 9:30 - 11 and from 1 - 4:30. (That afternoon nap is critical. Three kids sleeping at once is essential to mom's health and well-being.)
• He fits right in. Abby and Caleb love him, each in their own way. Abby is determined to protect him from anything she deems dangerous. Toys with parts that he might swallow are quickly removed from his hands, and crawling too close to the stairs results in him being picked up like a cat and dragged to a new location by his sister. Caleb has put himself in charge of making sure his brother doesn't embarrass him by playing with anything pink or doll-related, and he enforces some sort of truck sharing time limit that only he understands. They're both learning to be kind and patient with their little brother, even when he pulls hair, even when he destroys towers, and even when he steals toys. "He's just a baby," Abby will remind Caleb, "and he doesn't know any better." But if Jacob's going to make it around here, he'll learn pretty quickly.
• He's mild-mannered, fun, and full of personality. He loves to laugh, wrestle and snuggle, and he's friends with anyone he meets. He can sleep anywhere, unless there's a lot going on, and then he will forego whatever rest he might need to be a part of the action. He loves to wave, stick out his tongue at people, and thinks it's hilarious when we imitate the things he does. He's got a great personality, and I can't wait to see what it looks like in a toddler.

We celebrated his birthday with family and pizza and cupcakes, and he loved all the attention. We spent his special day doing everything he loves--the Chick-fil-a play place, the playground, and chasing balloons around the house. We even stuck a candle in a lemon cookie for him, just for grins.

It's been a fantastic year with our little guy, and we're so blessed to call him ours. Happy birthday Jacob!

Dreams do come true

There are only a few things Abby truly loves--only a few things that can mesmerize her. Things that, if missed, can truly break her heart.

Frogs and mashed potatoes top the list.

Ferris wheels follow close behind.

She's only ridden one in her short life, and it was more than a year ago. But she's never forgotten the fun she had spinning high above the ground, Daddy at her side, waving frantically to the tiny people below. She's reconstructed the scene countless times with her blocks. She's drawn up plans for her very own ferris wheel, and is convinced that if she nags us enough we'll install one in the back yard. ("Wouldn't that be fun, Mommy? We could go all the time!")

So when I spotted the roadside carnival with its multicolored ferris wheel soaring high above the parking lot, I knew we'd do whatever it took to get back. (Ferris wheels are a two-parent ordeal. There's no way I'm wearing the baby and trying to keep both kids seated on that thing.)

So we surprised them with a trip to the ferris wheel after dinner tonight, and put a smile on our daughter's face that isn't likely to fade any time soon. Caleb was tall enough to ride this time, although he was a little wary of being able to look down on the buildings he's accustomed to merely driving past.

It was well worth the overpriced tickets and the cold weather. Some things are just too good to miss. Giving our kids something they only dream about is one of them.

A pack of wild animals

I've found a kindred spirit, another mom just as crazy as me to validate my insanity. I know, because she thought that two moms taking seven kids under the age of five to the zoo was a perfectly acceptable idea.

Turns out, she was right.

True to form, Abby tried her best to separate from the pack by running ahead, while Caleb unwittingly assisted by lagging behind, and Jacob slept soundly in the stroller for the majority of the trip.

To help control the chaos, we tried pairing my slowpoke with the speediest Wilson brother, but the boys refused to hold hands.

Abby, to my horror, was more than happy to hold hands with the eldest Wilson boy while they strolled through the zoo admiring the wildlife together. He's lucky he's only five years old. I'll be watching that kid very, very closely from now on.