I have so many little matters to tell you of, that I cannot wait any longer before I begin to put them down.
Sep 26th, 2014 by ECM
Since Derek hurt his back last Sunday while his students were over, I haven’t had anyone to help me carry the table back inside. At this point, students are coming back this Sunday, so we might as well leave it out. So we’re just eating on the floor of the kitchen or out on the back patio. At least it’s no longer in the 90s at lunchtime!
Sep 24th, 2014 by ECM
We just have a few weeks left on our Santa Barbara Natural History Museum membership, so we squeezed in a trip today with another homeschooling family. Janie has played around the back creek before, but today she was in her element, wading and splashing and playing in it for almost an hour. The other kids had fun, too, but Janie was the cutest.
Sep 22nd, 2014 by ECM
Janie turned 18 months on Saturday, but we had a bit of a crazy weekend, so I’m just now getting around to her update. We took her in for her 18 month well check today, and she’s growing well:
height: 32″ (57%)–Tommy was 37.25″, Elizabeth was 32.5″, Susanna was 32.75″
weight: 21 lb 6 oz (33%)–Tommy was 29 lbs 5 oz, Elizabeth was 25 lbs 9 oz, Susanna was 21 lb 11 oz
head: 18.5 in (70%)–Susanna was 18.25 in
Looking back over the big kids’ 18 month updates (Tommy, Elizabeth, Susie), I can say for sure that parenting a toddler is MUCH easier when not pregnant!
Janie is still very much a two-nap girl, largely because she’s sleeping so poorly at night from those darned molars. When she has to skip her morning nap (for CBS, church, or a field trip), she usually takes a catnap around lunch and then a second, longer nap mid-afternoon until dinner time. She needs her sleep. Once she’s sleeping through the night consistently, I can see her doing okay with one nap, but right now, it’s more convenient for school if she’s not climbing around, distracting everyone!
In the past couple of weeks, she’s become a pro at pointing to things to get her way. Since there are so many helpers around, ready to cater to almost every whim, she hasn’t been forced to actually SAY the word for what she wants. Today Dr Vallance gave the big kids a pep talk about helping Janie talk–they need to say the word that she’s trying to obtain, and then try to get her to say it back.
She still screams whenever we drop her off in the nursery, though she seems to calm down shortly after.
She loves shoes, cars, our pop-up tunnel, coloring with the big kids, and being at the big kid table with everyone else. Her hair is always in her eyes because she won’t keep anything in it very long, and bangs are such a burden that I’m trying to grow things out.
Sep 19th, 2014 by ECM
Yep.
And when you get tired of putting stickers on yourself, you can stick them on the glass door!
Sep 17th, 2014 by ECM
I managed to pull the camera out during Tommy’s game on Saturday!
Sep 15th, 2014 by ECM
It’s been a while since I’ve given a this-is-how-things-really-are post, since there’s not often much positive to discuss on the learning-to-love-living-in-SoCal-front. The friend situation hasn’t really changed much, except that one of the three families we actually hung out with has moved away. We just started back up with CBS, which is always fun, and lots of people talked about getting our kids together, but I’ve learned not to expect too much follow through.
But…maybe things are getting better. Some of you know we’ve visited 13 churches in our attempts to find a church home out here. It’s a horrible, exhausting process trying to figure out what is vital and what doesn’t matter in a church home. I’d given up on music–the SoCal standard is to turn off all the lights so that you’re standing in pitch black watching a gravelly-voiced group of hipsters with skinny jean shorts (on men!), handlebar mustaches, and heavily coiffed hair perform a concert of music only composed in the past 5 years, all to the soothing beat of a drum set and several base guitars so heavily amped that you can’t hear yourself think, let alone wonder why no one else is singing, either. Needless to say, this is not our preferred worship style.
We always sortof knew about Pacific Crossroads, and I really didn’t want to drive 45 minutes to church, but after a few tearful attempts at revisiting local churches we’d already tried, we made the drive. And it is worth the inconvenience. They’re our kind of people–from all over, not just “from here” with no understanding of life outside of SoCal. We have yet to see if the friendliness is more than the superficial SoCal friendliness where talking about getting together is just as good as actually doing it, but I have hope that people who have lived elsewhere in the world might actually mean it. The preaching is really solid. The kids still spend the whole service separated from us, which really bugs me, but at least they have a joint kids’ worship time where they are learning some of the modern standards (Your Love Makes Me Sing, etc), and they all seem to be learning and enjoying children’s church. We joined a small group–mostly lawyers, professors, businesspeople, with lots in common with Derek, and though I’m bummed that I’m the only sahm, they are all super friendly and welcoming and have kids our kids’ ages. And the music is good. It’s a contemporary band of less-obnoxious hipsters (yes, their last album was released on EP, but their jeans are not skin-tight), but they’re actually talented. And we sing everything, from the greatest old hymns (Oh Worship the King, which we’re learning as a family this month!) to new things they’re composing right now (I’m loving the songs on this album put out by the worship team). Recent offertories have included a Bach piano piece, a solo Chris Tomlin song, and a professional harpist playing “Be Thou My Vision” (my favorite hymn!). It’s the kind of true diversity in church music that we’ve rarely seen since our HTC days. In fact, this church reminds us a lot of HTC, just stick in hot Santa Monica for freezing Chicago.
So I guess we’re cautiously optimistic about church for the first time in a really long time.
Sep 12th, 2014 by ECM
Sep 10th, 2014 by ECM
Last week, the entire CCA student body spent an afternoon in Sumerian garb, making tin foil jewelry and cuneiform seals out of clay. I remember doing the same project at Morningstar Homeschool, 25 years ago!
Sep 9th, 2014 by ECM
A friend just told us that the LA Philharmonic rehearses for their concerts at the Hollywood Bowl the morning of the performance–and anyone can go in and listen for free! So we packed up a lunch and a bunch of snacks, grabbed some journals and colored pencils, and drove down to Hollywood this morning to hear The Planets. Despite the sun and heat (it was 96 by the time we left), an outdoor auditorium is the perfect place to introduce small children to real classical music. The big kids colored in their journals until our friends the Grovemans joined us, and even Janie kept relatively quiet because I kept giving her new, fun foods to play with. It was the girls’ first exposure to live orchestral music (though, as they told me on the way down, they know what it means to practice for a concert because they’ve heard Grandpa practicing his oboe). I took one picture of Susie entranced by the performers before a staff member came over and told me pictures are not allowed. So instead, here are the big kids at home, with their new journals about the rehearsal!
All in all, a great California field trip. We’ll definitely have to remember this for next season!
Sep 8th, 2014 by ECM
The Sunshine Lollipops had a great first game. Elizabeth got so excited that she screamed any time anything exciting was happening to the ball. She even got her foot on it a couple of times. It was pretty much the cutest thing ever. And what fun to have Coach Daddy alongside the whole time!