Annie came home yesterday from school and declared that I need hearing aides. Apparently, I ask her to repeat what she and her sister are saying too much and must have a hearing problem requiring medical assistance. She’s probably right to an extent because I do find myself having a hard time understanding what people are saying to me most of the time, but I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say I need hearing aides. Later in the car ride home from the eye doctor to pick up my glasses (I guess I’m just a mess) Mimi was asking me something from the way back of the van and while music was playing, I might add. Of course, I couldn’t hear her, and I said so. Annie then interjected and uttered to Mimi but audible enough for me to hear, “Remember, you need to talk loud because Mama doesn’t hear so well.” There you have it. Now I’m off to make the ear doctor appointment.

After coming to terms with my deafness I decided I’d try again to feed Violet her rice cereal. I mentioned in my comments on the previous post that I attempted to use formula in the cereal, and Violet would have nothing to do with it. Someone said it would be sufficient to use water, so I decided to go that route. I’m pretty sure that’s all I did with Annie and Mimi, but I couldn’t remember seeing as it was so many years ago. Apparently, Violet has had a change of heart because this feeding session was no more successful than the attempt with formula. See for yourself.

“What are you doing with that thing.”

“You think you’re going to put that in my mouth.”

“Get that away from me.”

“Blech.”

“I can’t believe you actually tried to get me to eat that vile, detestable substance.”

Annie, being the budding photographer that she is, asked if she could take over the camera after she saw me snapping pictures of the cereal session with Violet. I agreed to her request.

She wanted to first document my other disability, that being my blindness. I’ve worn contacts for many years but have been an eyeglass wearer on-and-off (mostly off) since grade school because the glasses usually give me headaches. At Mike’s insistence I decided to go to the eye doctor after not going for about 8-10 years to acquire a new pair of spectacles.

Then a picture of Mimi with dinner still on her face.

This horse is on loan from a lady from church that Mimi and I visited earlier that day. She lives way out in the country out by a lot of horse farms. Mimi and I got into a conversation about she really wants a pet horse. We ended the talk with agreeing that she could get a horse for herself when she’s a grown-up. The lady we visited got wind of this and revealed to us quite a collection of horse figurines that her son used to collect as a child. Mimi chose this one, and Annie was there to document it.

And we’ll end with a picture of the little photographer.

Violet is growing up way too fast. Therefore, I’ve been trying to put off starting her on solids as much as possible. However, the hourly wake-up calls with 30-minute feedings from Violet on Monday night made me realize that it’s probably time to get her going with the rice cereal. Sniff, sniff. Last night was her first night to try it out, and I must say Violet seemed quite pleased with the new stuff being introduced to her. She was even reaching for the spoon and putting it into her mouth each time. I pumped some milk to use as the liquid for the cereal, but it kind of threw off my body for the next feeding. This morning I thought using formula might be an easier way to juice it up. Boy, was I wrong! Violet wouldn’t have anything to do with it. She prefers Mama’s sweet stuff.

Do you think he’ll get the hint?

As you well know, Mike is not able to stay inactive. He’s always thinking of new ways to keep himself busy. Sometimes these things are impossible for my head to wrap around, but it doesn’t stop him from doing it. Periodically, he likes to take old shotgun shells and reload them to be able to use in a shotgun again. There are several steps to the process which require equipment, so I won’t even try to explain it. However, Mike does like other people to try their hand at it, so he had Annie assist him during his latest reloading session. Annie was in charge of handing Daddy shells and wads. In the end, they reloaded 75 shotgun shells.

In an effort to get the girls more motivated about their jobs around the house I decided to implement a new system. I saw this reward board posted on a blog recently and immediately knew this would be perfect for my short-termed memory girls. I thought they’d be more excited about the new routine if they got to help make the reward board, so we started the project on this Monday’s family home evening. The process involves lots of Mod Podge for the patterned paper on the frame and sheet metal, and I thought they could handle that step. They did pretty good and also handed me magnets to glue to the back of the tin, circle boxes. There were several more steps, and I have been doing those periodically throughout the week with the girls anxiously waiting for the final product. At last, I completed the final steps today which included inserting chores and the rewards for those chores. The original design called for just putting the chores on folded pieces of paper inside the boxes, but I figured it would be easier to control what chores get done and when. We may not need or have time to have the floors vacuumed and what not.

It now hangs on our computer armoire’s door via a 3M hook that I colored brown with a Sharpie marker.

A closer look. As you can see the “rewards” are things such as coins, stickers, candy, and erasers. The stickers go with the more desirable chores such as brushing Sadie or writing Grandma/Grandpa a letter. Whereas the candy and eraser will require a little more elbow grease to acquire such as washing floors, vacuuming, and helping to fold laundry. The harder/more time consuming chores also result in a few more (or higher valued) coins. It may take a few times to see what chores are most popular and easiest for them to really see what rewards fit best.

In case you’re wondering what that thing is in the middle. It’s a large, flat marble that has “Hawley Helpers” magnified through (I know, it’s super cheesy). I only had 24 tin boxes and had a big gap in the middle. This idea came to me because I have too many of those dang marbles and magnets to last a lifetime. I had to use 4 magnets though to get the marble to be similar in height to the boxes.

In other news, Violet gets really lonely during our dinnertime each night. In order to include her, I put her in her bumbo on top of the dinner table. She loves it!

However, this sometimes proves to be a bit too exhausting for her.

Lastly, the girls got have their faces painted again by Cuddles the Clown again the other night. We didn’t get done with swimming until around 6:00 p.m., and Mike wasn’t going to have time to eat with us due to a scout meeting. I remembered that Culver’s has their kids’ night on Tuesday nights and thought it’d be a fun treat for the girls. We were surprised though to see that Cuddles and Billy were there because they don’t do all the kids’ nights. Mimi was so prissy about her new look. When were walking out of the restaurant to go home she put her hand on hip and shook her bum violently back and forth all the way to the door. It caused a lot of people to giggle.

Can you imagine a person assigning a profile picture
to his/her vet for his/her phone? Imagine that this
person went through the trouble to pose not real
animals but stuffed animals to photograph purely
for the intent of this profile picture. How pathetic
this person must be. How sad this person must be.
How lonely this person must be. As if the vet’s office
is calling this heartbreaking human being regularly
enough to justify a profile picture for his/her phone.

Wait a minute, this person would be me. Yes, I did
all of the above which means I must surely be all of
the above.

Below is the picture that will be displayed should the
vet’s office ever feel compelled to call me.

In my defense, the stuffed animals were already sitting
there posed while I was making an appointment for Sadie
to get her kitten check-up when the idea sprung to mind.
It’s inexcusable though, and I hold my head in shame.

To make myself feel better, I will also post pictures of a live being. One of my favorites at that. A smiling baby can cure anything.

I know, bad title. However, that’s what we’ll have going on around here for the next few days, weeks, years…. I’m doing my best to keep my cool while Lily and Sadie get to know each other because I know that Lily has a hard time with social situations. When we brought Harvey home as a kitten years ago we tried to force the love between Harvey and Lily. Lily got so freaked out that we didn’t see her for what seemed like months, and it took even longer before Lily finally warmed up to Harvey. Even then the “adoration” between Lily and Harvey was mostly one-sided coming from Harvey’s end. Adoration in the form of belly-flopping from the top of a bookshelf onto an unsuspecting Lily who was sprawled out on her back on the floor. Or adoration in the form of a 2:00 a.m. wake-up call under our bed that caused a raucous that sounded like to 2 cats were being tortured. Or adoration in the form of little scabs all over Lily’s skin seemingly from either Harvey’s claws or teeth.

So now we’ve got a sweeter and female kitten who just wants Lily’s love in any form. It was very evident last night when Sadie perched a couple of feet away from Lily and kind of cowered to her with a few, soft mews escaping her lips. (The use of the term lips for cats is debatable because I actually don’t believe cats have lips. Mike differs in opinion. What do you think?) Lily responded with “hiss, growl, hiss, hiss, growl, hiss, long growl (lasting a minute or 2), and one final hiss”, but I think there was actual progress. Mike can’t seem to understand why Lily doesn’t just say to herself, “Oh, look! A baby kitten that’s so cute and cuddly. I’m going to love her and snuggle with her right now.” I had to explain to him about cat dynamics, and that Lily looks at Sadie as an evil foe who is impeding on her territory no matter how cute and small Sadie is. Lily also needs to establish herself as the alpha cat (if that’s possible with females). Plus, Lily isn’t like any normal cat. She’s very shy and nervous even after living with us for over 11 years.

Have a look at the progress for yourself. Sorry for the poor quality as these pictures were taken with my phone.

Last winter we had some major issues with keeping our house warm and the electric/gas bill low. The house was still new to us with numerous other projects to do, so we let the winterizing go by the wayside. Mike and I decided we would really focus on winterizing our house this winter, and I must say we’ve made quite a difference. Shrink-wrapping the windows, adding a new storm door to the front door, making sure all windows were properly shut and locked, adding more insulation to crawl spaces and around the basement, and adding light switch/outlet cover insulation have really been noticeable by our bodies and our wallets. We do still like to warm up by a wood-burning fire occasionally. As you can see, so does Lucy.

Going through pictures I realized I missed posting this picture of Violet wearing another Christmas dress she received as a gift. She wore it the same New Year’s Sunday that the girls wore their Christmas dresses. Can you tell we like to dress up around here?

Sorry about the test posts earlier (and then deleting, in case you missed them), but my sister-in-law alerted me to the fact that my blog feeds had not been updated since around Christmas (to those who have no idea what I’m talking about, then this probably doesn’t affect you…LOL). I had upgraded to the latest version of WordPress (the blogging format I use here) around that time, and it apparently screwed something up. I was able to switch my feeds to feedburner and went through some blogs that I know link and here and saw that all is fine now. I hope I can rest easy now.

Having the kids home for a snow day was one thing. However, add illness and another day home from school and the whole weekend to the mix, and it’s just glorious. The constant chorus of coughing, sneezing, sniffling, and fussy baby would be music to anyone’s ears, huh?. The girls weren’t too disappointed though because they had this to do each day (look below). As you can see, Sadie does get a bit annoyed with the ever presence of the girls in her face, but most of the time she truly enjoys their company. Sadie is really making herself at home here with lots of hyper playtime and perchtime on the shoulder of the couch. We couldn’t have asked for a better kitten for our family.

Violet, on the other hand, hasn’t been having as great of a time. She’s been feeling pretty rotten with a constant fever requiring round the clock doses of Tylenol. Today she is finally feeling like herself again but can’t seem to figure out why the same cute voice isn’t coming from her lips anymore.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQWlSYk2Jt8

Annie asked if she could start her own blog. Instead of that scary idea, I told her she could make a post on our family blog. This satisfied her. The following was typed up by Annie all by herself with only a couple of spelling/grammar helps from me. Sniff, sniff; she’s not my little girl anymore.

I got a cat and she is so good and well I named her Sadie. We love her but I got a American girl doll. Happy 2010. I lost a tooth my 2nd . Vivi is sick. I am home from school because of snow. Bye bye.

Annie wanted to have pictures to post, too, so she was given permission to take the camera on her own to snap a couple of pictures of Sadie.

What she says is all true. All kids are home today. Thank goodness we have the kitten to take up much of that time and outside playing in the snow more time. Violet was up much of the night last night with a fever and coughing/sniffling/sneezing. Poor bebe:( Once the Tylenol sets in though she’s just fine. Annie did lose her 2nd tooth yesterday. However, the tooth fairy wasn’t able to make it through all the snow to trade Annie’s tooth for some money. We are going to send her a snippy email reminding her that little girls get their hearts broken when the tooth fairy doesn’t come. (Yes, we forgot. We are bad bad bad bad parents. In our defense, the tooth was overshadowed by a sick kid and new kitty.)

I’ll leave you with some random pictures, too. The girls have been dying to wear their Christmas dresses to church but our trip to NC forced us to miss the previous 2 Sundays. They wore them for New Year’s Sunday instead. Mimi picked out her own tights and shoes. Both girls adore those coats that Grandpa Indiana got for them a couple of years ago, and they constantly wear them around the house, too. Daddy accidentally broke off Annie’s fur collar on her dress, so Annie improvised with her white, furry scarf. And the story behind Mimi’s furry hat is that Mike purchased it for me because he wanted me to have a real fur, Russian hat. It was too small for my head, so Mimi is very reluctantly wearing it.

Lastly, Lucy looks so forlorn.