Monkey on the fridge and storms...outside and within

Papaya is driving me nuts!!!!

I finally put her on top of the fridge, hoping to give myself two minutes together without a new mess to clean up.  Then, she found the old peanuts up there that I had forgotten about from last Christmas.  AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

She is drenched from her time at the sink, has been running around screaming all morning, and I am NOT IN THE MOOD TO NURTURE RIGHT NOW.

Sigh.

Lek offered to help, so I said, "Could you play with Papaya?"

He turned to her and said, "Hey, (Papaya), do you want to play a game where I tie you up in a chair, close the door to the room, and you try to get out of the ropes by yourself?"

Nice...the solution coming from a 14 year old big brother :).  Wisely, Papaya answered, "No."

Liliputian just said, "I bet you are lucky with all these kids. Heavenly Father has blessed you to have so many kids."  Sigh again.  You're right, Liliputian.

Just let my inner storm calm down a bit, and then I'll feel safer interacting with Papaya.  Spooner is teething and sick right now, so last night was not the most restful.  He is in the other room crying.  Sigh yet again.  The snow that we have been getting for the past four days has now turned into a steady downpour of rain.

I used to think that people were crazy who said they didn't like the rain.  I mean, how couldn't they love its beauty, its smell and the life that it gives to the world around us?!

Now I am beginning to catch a glimpse. :)  The storm without surely matches the storm within!

Time to go back and LOOK FOR JOY!!

Avot camp and Lek's lesson on forgiveness

I found this post in my "draft section" from last summer.  Here's a post for Avot and Lek's memories:
 
Avot headed out to YW Girl's camp this week.  I love having someone who takes care of themselves so well.  She took care of everything,...the packing, getting bread ready before she went, her own lunch, secret sister gifts...while I just kept plugging along keeping life as usual going.  I was able to help with a few things, but she is so evidently self-assured and content doing it.

Another example of her maturity, she did all the work, research, and studying to go and take her Learner's Permit test.  She is super excited to be able to get as many hours as she can in before we go to Hungary.  Sigh.  My little girl is growing up :).

Lek had a hard time with one of his friends with a misunderstanding they had over "chat" on email.  It hurt Lek, for his friend didn't seem to want to see his side of the story and Lek wanted to smooth things over.  However, his friend felt like Lek had been dishonest and was mad.

Lek was incredible.  We talked about the relationship he has with this friend, how Lek felt, whether or not Lek wanted to keep this relationship going, and what it would take if he did want to keep it going. Lek was frustrated, and even a little angry, at some of the unkind things his friend said to him.  However, as we talked about it, he decided that he wanted the friendship, and that he was willing to make things good, with integrity to who he was.

Lek wrote an email back, saying that he was sorry for any misunderstanding, that wasn't his intention to hurt his friend and that he didn't feel that he was doing what his friend accused him of.  However, Lek went on to say, if his friend felt that it was important for Lek to change something (speaking cryptically), then Lek would do it, because their friendship was more important than the issue at hand.

I thought it was really mature of him, and I could see the peace in his heart after he sent it.  His friend ended up sending something back that showed they were still friends, but the important thing, I thought, was the peace Lek was able to feel in doing the right thing at the right time.  He forgave the hurt, sought to reconcile with his friend, and chose not to be angry and dwell on it. 

Kid's blogs

Per my mom's request, Avot figured out a way to get to my kid's "invitation only" blogs.  If you want an invitation, just let me know, and I can get you one.  We just didn't want anyone who wanted to randomly surf around the net to find their sites.

Just look at the tab above, under Kid's blogs, and you should be able to follow the links if you are signed into blogger under your email account.  I don't know everything about these types of things, so let me know if there is a glitch and I will try to help you.

Enjoy :).

Never a dull moment.

Here I sit, with my colander helmet on my head.  Lek says I look like a soldier...Papaya, the one who put it there, insists I am a princess.

I'll take princess.  Or maybe I should be a soldier, as I have something to report.  Destruction on the homefront.

Apparently, our neighbor back in Kaysville hired someone to cut down the trees in between our houses and one landed on our house.  Hmmm...That was all the details we got, along with an urgent message from our tenants to call us.  "Things are just crazy here!"

That's it.  No more info.

Q-dawg called just in case they were actually awake at almost 1 in the morning, but no one answered so it looks like we will just have to wait.

Never a dull moment.

Right now the kids are running around as "ick-a-key-bas" (they put on hoodies with their legs through the arms, heads in the hoodies, and run around like little two-legged mutants. I'll try and get a picture later.  Lek is reading science, having already done "Grammar Boot Camp," made some chocolate/white chocolate cookie dough ("happiness cookies," as we like to call them), and wrestled with his siblings.  Avot is right on target with her studies amidst distraction, having done seminary, indexing, translation of Hungarian, scripture reading, math with me, our weekly "WAM" (weekly accountability meeting), exercise, prepared devotional with Hava, and getting a "bookmark" ready for the book "Archimedes and the Door of Science" that we are studying this week for Vanguard.

Chugger-dude has been slowly and not surely working through his "extra jobs" and "basics" and "jobs" list all morning.  It seems like all the kids go through this phase of dragging jobs out as long as possible...as if they will go away.  I don't think so.  That's not life! :)  They learn; some faster than others, but it is always painful for me to endure, whether the kids believe it or not :).  It is so much easier to just do it, but then I end up doing it always. Sigh.

The little girls and I spent time reviewing Hungarian words together--nothing like gummy bears to stimulate excitement with boring rote-memorization of Hungarian terms :).  They are all pretty good, but Hava is quite the genius with memorizing them.  Pipalicious is a good sport, and will even sit there and quiz Hava to get ready to earn more gummy bears when I do it, but Hava.  Wow.  "Shoot a nap!" "Vilagit a hold!" "Forog a fold!" "ég a tuz!"...crazy-sag. (Our Hungarian/American slang for "craziness.")  Then they had their "exercise," when all the younger kids, from Liliputian on down, danced and wiggled and moved around behind a closed door to Disney songs for 20 minutes.  Watch out, Richard Simmons!  Our exercise program is going to catch on :)...

Papaya has been sweetly doing her thing: microwaving her half-eaten apple, snitching gummy bears, biting Chugger-dude when he "played the mom" (as we put it) and tried taking them away from her.  He is still applying a cool washcloth, since it was a pretty deep bite, poor guy!

I just saw the Goob and Pipalicious "running" in their "ick-a-key-ba" costumes across the backyard.  I can only imagine what our neighbors think of the antics of us crazy Americans.  Liliputian is in the kitchen making lunch, I'm nursing Spooner, and Q-dawg is finishing up his appraisals and then doing science with the older kids.

At one point in the craziness, I turned to Avot and said, "No one would believe that any learning actually happens in this house if they were to watch us!"  I love that this crazy thing called "school" actually produces Avots and Leks :)!

All in a morning's work.

Other than the glitch of a tree possibly having fallen into our house...life is pretty good :)!

Babysitting

(Hi! This is Avot :))

This is the easiest babysitting job ever--sickies (sad, but easy :S):

There was another job a month or so ago that was MUCH, MUCH harder (and it wasn't even a job :))
Here is a video of me describing it.
 

Booby-trapped bed!

Avot's life is never dull.  One night, she laid down on the seemingly inches of bed-space saved for her for the night.

See?  Nothing to worry about, right?

OUCH!!! 

Surprise!

 It's kind of like "The Princess and the Pea"...and Avot qualified as a princess :).

All better now :)!

Part of the excitement of her life happened last night, when she and Lek went to the first-ever Young Men/Young Women combined activity in the Buda ward.  First ever.  Crazy!  They had a great time, with pizza, games, and the Wii.  Maybe they had enough fun that they will do it again sometime?  We hope so!  It has been nice that they can go to the youth activities held in the Pest and Buda wards since it is just Avot, Lek, and one other young woman in Erd.  Avot and Lek are getting good at navigating Budapest and ordering tickets in Hungarian, too. :)

Tired...did we have a week :)?

Spooner is teething, which leads to being up more at night.  I pretty have much gotten over any sense of "entitlement" to sleep, but it does make my brain fuzzy when I don't get it! :)

SO, when I sat down to type up something about this week, I drew a blank....a big fat blank.  Did this week even happen :)?

Let's see,...the wheels of the brain are grinding to produce some random memories...

-I went "super shopping" with a friend to the Tesco and got all stocked up with groceries, just in case I was visiting my mom and dad in Germany this weekend.
-Decided to go to Germany on Sunday, but, when we went to buy the train tickets we found out they were not actually available, even though they pull up as available online before the purchasing screen...huge disappointment!  Now we have tickets bought for April.
-Enjoyed Vanguard this week with Lek and Avot, especially the book discussion from 7 Habits and all the laughing we do during Vanguard.
-Ate lots of cookie dough.  Both Lek and Liliputian wanted to make some this week, and I think some of it got cooked.  Hava was a little frustrated that we didn't cook up any of Lek's batch.  Poor girl!  Maybe she will insist on cooking all the dough at her house when she grows up since we all deprived her of cooked cookies "so much"...isn't that what we grown children do :)?
-Oh.  Don't forget the "oops" on Sunday, and the double gigantic batch of brownie batter Avot made after accidentally doubling the water.  We snacked on that too, before making the rest up to take with us to an Easter activity on Friday night. :)  Hey!  By the time you split any batch up 10 ways you don't really get all that much :).
-Enjoyed some sun and rain,...and lots and lots of wind!  It was the kind of wind that bites through you...and actually makes the Goob and Liliputian put on enough warm clothes and coats to satisfy any néni :).

I guess we did do a few things :).  Here are some more...
-Picked up Spooner's passport.  Funny, eh?  Thinking of a baby needing a passport?  I'll try and post his picture...it's...interesting? :)
-The Goob is doing a fantastic job on his stewardship over breakfast.  He gets up early, only made porridge twice (the first week it was 3 times, but he did it!), and still got his other "basics" done.
-Chugger-dude gave me a bunch of hugs, kisses, and glares- depending upon his mood :).  He and the Goob made comics usings Legos as models, ate cookies, and started their rock collections.
-The Goob made an incredible powerpoint about war, using information off of Wikipedia and the graphics available on the powerpoint program.  I thought I came up with some cool things, but The Goob...wow.  That's all I can say is, "Wow!"  He has planes zooming across the screen bombing other planes, and boats that go down, and all sorts of cool graphics like that.  He showed it to us on Thursday night and it took about an hour to get through all the info and graphics.  He loves it!  He has been practicing programming on Khan Academy and loves that, too.  I enjoy this aspect of homeschooling--the ability of a child to pursue what they are passionate about.
-I remember spending one evening chasing around Papaya from one disaster to another, while something was burning, and I wasn't ready for one class or another...
-The toilet was cleaned!!!  I was heading out to pick up the passport and threw out, partly in jest, "...and if anyone wants to clean the bathroom while I am gone, it is nasty!  I just..." and proceeded to tell them how to do it,  then left.  Guess who had cleaned it before I got back...and started cooking dinner?  Lek.  Wow.  Youth of the year award :).
-Avot is up to 4,000 names on indexing, I think, and done with the first part of editting/abridging a play of "Hamlet."  She says these tragedies are not nearly as fun.  Imagine that :).  She also really loved the scripture chase/Pictionary --Scriptionary-- game Q-dawg put together for our "combined" mutual activity Tuesday night.  The person drawing on each team has a scripture reference, someone says "go," they look it up, figure out what it is talking about, draw it for their team-mate who guesses the scripture and then finds the reference on their own.  It was really fun!  The eight or so that Q-dawg had prepared weren't enough, and Avot was ready to do more, even though it was late.  Most nights, she crashes during Q-dawg's reading of "White Fang" (aka "Bethany"), because she gets up so early.
-Liliputian has been doing the lion's share of holding Spooner this week.  He is teething, like I mentioned, and sometimes I just need to lay him down.  She is great to hold him for a while, and then will bring him to me to hold him.  Unfortunately, one time I was frustrated when she brought him to me at dinner and said, sternly, "Liliputian!  He doesn't need to be held all the time!  Sometimes it is just good for a baby to fuss!"  Boy, parents can sure say some strange things!  The kids all just silently looked at me and then kept going with their own conversations.  Mom's crazy, I know.  Liliputian is so sweet and gentle, and cannot bear to see things or people suffer.

And just a little more to finish us off for the week...
-I told everyone I just wanted to curl up in a corner and cry and read the day I found out I couldn't go to Germany this week. Lek said, "Why don't you?" My response? "Because it is more important to have a clean kitchen right now." :)  Did I mention I am crazy :)?
-Q-dawg has gotten into a great routine of exercise.  This week he went with the Goob, too, which really made the Goob's day.  His appraisals are coming in regularly, but he does get tired of the data entry.  I am so grateful for the sacrifice he has made in altering his profession for the time being to do what Heavenly Father wants us to do.  He is almost done with taxes, sold the last house he had on the market in the US, and is getting ready to get his tickets to Norway arranged.  Woohoo!
-We bought "The Hobbit" on iTunes for our laptop, and I have almost made it through it :).  It has taken me two tries so far, but maybe one more time will get me the rest of the way through it.  I just keep falling asleep :).  I am on the part where Gollum comes into the picture, so that means I just have about an hour left, right :)?  I am not the best movie watcher.  I am starting to remind myself of my friend Angie :)!
-Despite inner grumblings, I went to a Stake Relief Society program this morning...probably only because my friend Rachel offered to come and pick me up.  She also grabbed the Goob to help watch her kids at the church while we were there.  I was able to play the piano for it, it was peaceful, I understood some of it :), and the women were wonderful.  I sat by Orsi, a lovely lady from our branch in Erd, who helped hold Spooner while I played.  She is not married and has no children of her own, so I like to share Spooner when I can with her.  She translates things for me and keeps me posted with announcements, which is nice.  I came back to a peaceful, clean, fed household who were watching Studio C on youtube.  Germany will be no problem! :)

Final note: we went to the Easter program for our branch last night, and one gentleman graciously offered to bring sausages for everyone: "normal," liver sausages, and blood sausages.  Yep, blood sausages.  (It's no wonder so many Hungarians are vegetarian.)

These are the more "normal" sausages...normal to me anyway :)!

The blood ones are on the bottom...liver ones at the top.

Someone served one up to Chugger-dude before I could get there.  I poked it gently with my fork, and it gave, like a waterballoon filled with jello.  Nasty-sag.  I smuggled it out in a napkin, but came back later to find that Papaya had grabbed one for her plate.  And then, the nice gentleman sent us home with a plate full of blood sausages and liver sausages.  Hmmm....Anyone want me to ship some to the US for them?  Q-dawg insists we all have to try at least a bite to ensure we are have had a true hungarian experience.  I am not so sure...

Hava's cake, complete with a screwdriver and chisel as candles

These two are great buddies!

The Goob loves Lord of the Rings, The Art of War, and is just starting Eragon

I added these pictures just for me...I love the kid's art, even if no one else can see it very well or appreciate it the same :)!

Hava's drawing of our family...as elephants.

Look!  He's glowing!

She just looks calm and peaceful in pictures...see that mad glint in her eye?  Something's about to happen!

Gotta run!  Papaya just had some time to herself after her movie and the kitchen table, floor and Chugger-dude's cub scout hat are all covered with sugar.  Nice.

Brainy

Pipalicious just showed me one of the rocks from her rock collection that she calls "Brainy." It is the skeleton of a brain, apparently.  Her rock collection has become one of the treasures that the kids love to choose for blanket time.  I love when Pipalicious sidles up to me and whispers breathlessly in my ear, "I love you as much as a Pipalicious can love..."

She is always quick to help other people with their jobs, or say, "It's alright" when someone is mean to her.  She has the sweetest prayers right now, filled with meaning and love for the world. Sigh.  She is growing up too soon!  Her pants are all too short for her, now, but she just puts on long socks or wears dresses. 

Deadly Geography?

Anyone who has been in class with Avot before knows how much she loves Geography.  One of the up sides of only having three people in a class is that she can make her powerpoints as long as she wants to for that class...

...and then we have a game where we quiz each other on facts from those presentations.

Avot is famous for beating everyone and knowing the answers to all of the questions.  We have different teams each month, and each month, Avot's team wins.  Well, normally we couldn't even finish asking the question before someone answered it.  To change it up a little, a couple people felt that it would be better to make it so we  finished asking the question, and then lifted a piece of paper off of the item we grab (kind of like hitting a bell, but grabbing something instead).  That gives everyone time to hear the question and then think of an answer before they have to grab the item.

As you can see, it got pretty brutal.  The picture below is of poor Q-dawg who had some of the flesh of his hand ripped off by one of Avot's fingernails.

Important note: Q-dawg and Lek won.  They not only won, they skunked Avot, the Goob, and I.  I think they like this new method :).

Hungarian Folk Dance Night

Tonight we went to the stake center to enjoy a Hungarian Folk Dance night, and, even though it was a crazy day, it was worth going.  Q-dawg and I were running a little late to start with, having gone into Budapest to see the movie "Les Miserables" earlier that day. We were still on the bus on the way home, when we called home and had the older kids hurry and get the little ones ready to walk the little over a mile route to the train and meet us there.

I ordered the tickets (in Hungarian...tokjo!--awesome--) and must have been pathetic enough, because the ticket lady had mercy on me and gave me the large family discount,...without me even asking!  While I did that, Q-dawg ran back to meet up with the kids and help any stragglers. Miraculously, they all made it to the train station in time.  At the top, they were so warm, most of them took their coats off to cool off.

Side note: I'll be expecting several more bags of warm clothes to be dropped off at our door in the next week...the other day, a lady up the street recognized Q-dawg as the father of "all those kids that run around in shorts."  Tokjo again.  We've had at least three bags now that I can remember being dropped off, "because we saw your kids didn't have any coats."

We got on the train, and headed into Budapest.

Here's Papaya enjoying her seat...kind of.  Note the boots.  They are Liliputian's but they were the closest and quickest to get on, so that is what she tramped around in...sockless, too.  Don't let any sweet little hungarian nenis see!

Pipalicious sporting Q-dawg's flat cap.

The next leg was on the metro, which was unremarkable from the usual craziness that surrounds us, other than the following situation.  Lek was watching Chugger-dude and Papaya do acrobatics on the seat across from him.  They were in between Q-dawg and an elderly gentleman who got on the Metro with a scowl...and it just deepened the more he watched our kids.  He kept inching further and further away.  Lek couldn't handle it anymore and said, "Chugger-dude! Stop doing that with Papaya.  It's not nice to do that in public."

I responded, "Lek, Dad is there.  Let him take care of it.

Lek pleaded in exasperation, "But he's not taking care of it!  He doesn't even care!"

True.  Touché.

We got to the dance an hour late, but apparently just in time for the family fun.  They had great crafts for the little ones going the whole time in the back, a snack-ish dinner around 6 pm, and then a couple came to teach us Hungarian folk dancing.  It was so fun!  I felt like I was one of the BYU Young Ambassadors...almost :).  It was wonderful to be in a room full of people enjoying something that had been passed down for hundreds of years, a shared culture that brought them together and defined them.  It was beautiful.

Dances are hard to catch on camera, but here are a couple shots...

 

They would teach us the steps in a big circle and then have us pair up and do those same steps in the actual dance to the Hungarian folk music.  I loved it!

One of the more amusing songs that they had us sing was "Down on the street, down, down, down. Need palinka (hard Hungarian liquor), Need! Need! Need!"

More than one person in that room thought it ironically amusing that a group of LDS people would be singing that song :).  The people leading the dance were not LDS, but they were so wonderful and fun.  What a great night.

Fun ending notes:
-Our Hungarian friend and tutor, Noémi, offered to take Avot and the three youngest girls home, which made for a nicer trip home.  Woohoo!
-The dance music after the Hungarian section was more modern...and very American :).  I thought it was great to do the line dance to "Cotton-Eye Joe" with a bunch of Hungarians. They really got into it!
-I keep forgetting to post how I love how Hungarians tend to say, "Hello!" to everyone when they come into a store, doctor's office, or room, and then a general "Goodbye!" when they leave.  It is a warm, inclusive custom that I think would be fun to start in the US :).  Let's do it!

Lunch buddies

Meet my lunch buddies...jealous :)?

I was sitting directly across from them.  We exchanged all kinds of food back and forth: half-eaten bits of cheese, squished wads of bread,...you name it :).  They were just being so cute together!  At one point, Papaya had her little hand on Hava's arm and they were talking and singing together.  Sigh.  I love these stages.  Do you think my grandkids will share partially eaten food with me, too? :)

You can see the remnants of Papaya's self-face-painting job.  Q-dawg and I had just come back home from a date that fell through (we were going to go to Budapest to see Les Mis in the big screen, but our bus never showed up after 20 minutes of waiting past its scheduled arrival), and I walked into our bedroom to find Papaya sitting on our blankets with the sackful of "taboo," top of the shelf permanent and dry-erase markers spread out at her feet.  At least she decided to decorate her face and not the blankets! She quickly started singing, "clean up, clean up" and picking up the markers. 

Q-dawg got a better picture of her but I accidentally erased it. It's truly a miracle that anything gets on this blog :).

Dinner with the Missionaries

We had the missionaries over this past Monday.  It is fun to have company, and the missionaries seem happy to be there too.  One of them, in particular, seems to like it...I think it is because he is having such a hard time speaking Hungarian, and it is nice to speak in English for a while.  I know how he feels :).

Lek always works hard to make a nice dinner for them. This time he spent about two hours before making tortillas.

Here's where he starts...making them nice and round using one of our plates as a "cutter"

Here is the army of tortilla shells...well, a lot of them.  He still had about 20 to go at this point.

Then he cooks them up in a relatively dry skillet...not much oil.

And, presto!  Here they are!

Isn't he awesome? :)

Here is Pipalicious, suiting up during the missionaries "armor of God" lesson.

(Don't forget to notice the feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace...Santa style.) It's amazing what missionaries can find left in their apartment :)!

School schedule...adapted :)

Alright.

After one month of our crazy school schedule I had to take another "look see" and figure out what could give :).  I was in a continual sense of panic of "not being ready" for one class or another for the kids, but what to do?

I prayed about it...good answer, I know.  I felt like all the things were actually still supposed to be there, but got some great answers about how to "tweak" them a little.

Avot has since taken charge of the "Little Kid History" we have on Thursdays...our Time Machine.  She gets to teach something out of the chapters we are studying for "Big Kid History" (Avot and Lek and I), and make it fun, usually with a power point.  The kids love it and she enjoys it.  With her level of scholarship, she is at the stage where she needs to be teaching to learn more and more, so she has taken this class on, helps Hava with her devotional on Monday mornings, and also volunteered to mentor a "Scripture Class" for the Goob and Liliputian, who both wanted a class like Seminary for themselves.  Awesome!

Lek loves science, so he has taken on teaching the kids science on Tuesday, which has been wonderful.  He gets to do some experiments with them and then teach them a few basics out of the chapter that he and Avot are studying with Q-dawg each Tuesday.

The Goob, as Den leader for the Cub Scouts for Chugger-dude, has taken on the whole thing, with mentoring by me.  I have never really liked the "requirements" for passing off at the Wolf level, although I understand that they need to be simple for a reason.  So, I told the Goob I wanted him to think of things that he feels are important for Chugger-dude to learn, we still review the oath, etc., pledge, prayer, and I do something from the Faith in God program; but then, the Goob does something with Chugger-dude like "boot camp," or a building project, or something else, and it has worked well so far.

I am recommitting to not take up the whole afternoon with history, just because I can. :S  More is not always better, but there are so many awesome things to talk about!  However, I felt drained after my class yesterday, that went for two hours, so I feel that something needs to be tweaked.  We just cover three short chapters, and it doesn't feel like a good amount of time. That should help :).

Authors in the Attic and the Spelling Bee have been relegated to once a month, and I tend to do my art projects (when I do them :)...) in girl's group, in Young Womens, or in preschool.  Fridays are definitely the time to recover and be a little less structured!

We are starting the "blanket training" method I found in the book by the Duggars, and it is working sooooo well with my little ones...and even with the "middles": Pipalicious, Chugger-dude, and even Liliputian.  They seem to enjoy being calm, and it took very little "training," especially with bigger kids there to model the ideal behavior and with positive verbal and physical reinforcements.  It has been fun the last couple mornings to sit in the middle of a room with blankets spread out all over, and five kids sitting quietly on their blankets playing with their one toy or book.  In fact, this morning, I said, "Okay, blanket time is over!" and they all protested. 

Is this a bad thing? I wondered, and let them still do it, as long as they agreed to let me know when they were done and fold up their blankets afterward.  Even Papaya did it!  I'll help her be calmer yet :).

Sweet baby!

As I was working on the computer this morning, I heard Spooner laughing in his sleep.  Ahhhhh....sweet baby!  He is still in bed with us; I have gone from avid "no child in the bed" policy to gradually longer and longer in the bed.  Since he's our last, he might stay a while...

...just kidding, Q-dawg :).  But Spooner is a cute snuggler!

He is getting more fun every day!  I miss the little, mindless baby wiggles, but his smile lights up his whole face when he sees his daddy...and even Papaya :).  She must not be doing too much damage :).  She is actually fabulous with him, and still wants to hold him, even if he is getting almost as big as she is, it seems, when she is sitting down and he is in her lap.

I told Avot and Lek that I hope they let the kids hold their kids when they come along...although I definitely give them 5 or 10 years for that, as they choose :).  Just because I had a baby when I was five years older than Avot.... :)  No pressure!

Mice, Girl's room clean-up, and Teeth Ritual

Hava and Papaya were eating on the chair in the girls' bedroom (naughty! naughty!).

Avot asked them if they liked to have mice in their house eating their food, because mice like to come into houses where there is food on the ground.

Hava looked confidently at her and said, "But mice are only in books and movies!"

Avot replied, "Mice are real, too."

Hava's reply? "Yeah!  Mice are real in books and movies!" 

Come on, Avot. Get with the program. :)
*************************************
Job System:
The girls have a sweet routine every morning to clean up their room:
-Hava cleans up all the dirty socks.
-Pipalicious cleans up the papers and notebooks.
-Liliputian cleans up the books and blankets.
-Avot takes care of everything else.
-Everyone takes care of their clothes.
It works pretty well.  In other words, they are all happy and the room gets cleaned :).

Lek's comment?  "If everyone cleans up their clothes, what socks are there to clean up?" 

Smarty pants.
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Strange ritual:
Brushing teeth is important, but, somehow, kids can forget whether they did it or not.

Lazy me, I don't take the time to sit in the bathroom, watch, and make sure that everyone does it, but what to do?  I came up with a solution a while ago that involves the kids breathing on me.

Q-dawg thinks it's nasty, but it works pretty well.  There are definitely times that it turns my stomach, but, for the most part, I can detect mint, check teeth, and be assured that they must be brushing at least most of their teeth twice a day.

Papaya picks up on everything, so lately, she'll come running up to me, lean over, and do a quick "hah!" breath on me.  Unfortunately, she doesn't brush her teeth before she does it.  Cute!

Important clarification on trip to Budapest

Q-dawg showed me a map.

He was actually leading us just where we needed to go.

I had pulled up the wrong address for our doctor's office and we would never have made it to his office going where I was going.

Did I mention before that Q-dawg is never wrong :)?

Dissecting a moment

My friend Marni has said several times that she would like to sit and watch what goes on at my house and I always laughed at that thought...

Here, Marni, is a glimpse of a moment just for you, complete with running dialogue and reasoning of my brain :)...:

Lek is sitting at the table doing one-on-one "Grammar Boot Camp" with me.  (We use the Painless Grammar book I was blessed enough to find at Barnes and Noble...fabulous.)  I am standing up because I am trying to get Spooner to sleep by sleeping on my shoulder instead of nursing.*   Spooner is not quite buying it, so it is taking a little longer than usual. Lek is patient and we persevere.

Papaya comes in with her usual self-assured swagger, pauses, and then exclaims, "Potty!"  Dashing to the bathroom, she starts tearing off clothes, only to find there is already an occupant.

Grammar continues.

Occupant leaves, I hear various noises in the bathroom, and Hava, our resident busy-body announces that Papaya is done.

Done with what?  I don't even bother to find out.

The next five minutes are spent chasing Papaya around with a diaper, Spooner is finally asleep so he is laid down in Q-dawg's "office," Liliputian and Chugger-dude are earning consequence after consequence for not sticking with their jobs, and I am trying to keep some type of continuity going in Lek's "class."  Papaya is laid across the table (don't tell my germaphobe Chugger-dude!), diaper is restored, she is dressed,...

...and grammar continues.

It just goes to show that any learning or good that does happen at our house is simple a miracle :).

* I am trying the method a couple dear friends have used of feeding my baby when they wake up, letting them poop and play, and then putting them to sleep withouth nursing, and it has been working great with Spooner.

Avot, the blogger...

Avot has 5 different blogs going!  Holy cow!  She just started a personal journal blog as well, which is private, but she does have a public joyous praising blog that I put the link to on the side.  She has such great links and thoughts, and each blog has it's own personality and purpose.  I love to see her expressing herself so beautifully! 

Trip to Buda for appointments

Q-dawg and I got a fun day together last Friday!  Well, it was fun because we were together, but it was really just a bunch of errands.  It just takes longer when using public transportation and the Bomb hastily wrote down directions and routes in between stops and you get lost :).  Oh well.

We started off going the wrong direction on the villamos to drop of the Goob and Hava at their friend's house, so we ended up being late to order Spooner's passport at the US Embassy.  Sigh.  We got to go through security at the gate, which was pretty high-tech.  I though of the woman in the movie "The Saint" running up to the Russian embassy yelling "I'm an American!  I'm an American!" and getting in just before the "bad guys" (as we call them at our house) got her.

That would never have worked here :).  It was kind of cool having to go through all the heavy-duty security, although I think they checked me a lot less intensely than they would have most other people, with my baby paraphernalia, etc.  It was still about 10 minutes before I got through, so I was about 15 minutes late for the appointment.  Oh well!

We got through security alright and then got to fight the battle of the passport photo "photo booth" (they totally have to get one of those for the post offices in America!):  $5 and you get four passport photos!  The only trick is getting a baby to look up and hold his head in position...and get the machine to take your money!  Oh well...a Hungarian giant of a man helped us, after getting after me for "pushing too many buttons too fast."  I could feel the "stupid American woman" impression under his tone, but he was kind enough to stick it out and help us :).

[Now, as soon as I get the passports back, we will be legitimate and I can go and visit my parents in Germany.  Woohoo!  (Q-dawg is taking his turn to Norway in June to visit his parents...so fun!)]

The rest of the day was more laid-back as we went first to the immigration office to pick up our residential visas for the kids and I, then had lunch on a lawn by a building off the busy street.  It had a sign with a picture of a dog crossed off on it, so I assumed it meant don't let your dog on the grass.  Q-dawg informed me as we stood up to leave, that it actually said, "this is private property and it is forbidden to get on the grass."  Oops. :S

We made our way north leisurely and found this great church:

It's interesting....the architecture is consistent, yet the building seems to have been made at two different stages, like one part was added on after the first part was built.  The welcome and info at the gate are entirely in English, too, so we thought that was peculiar.  I think it would be wonderful to go to a church like this every week!

Then we went straight up to Spooner's "2 month" doctor's appointment, done at my typical 3 month mark...I am not the best at getting them in on time :).  He is looking great, at around 27 inches and 14 pounds, and received two of his immunization boosters, the dtap and prevnar ones, I believe.  Two quick shots, one little outburst of "what in the world?!" from him, and then he was done.  5 seconds of protest...literally.  He "took it like a man," as Q-dawg put it, which is always nice! :)

We then headed out to my doctor's appointment, and here's where we really got lost.  Q-dawg had a general idea of where to go, and we had plenty of time to get there, but it sure took a while, with a lot of up and down and winding around through Budapest.  We eventually got there, though, and all is well.  Q-dawg reminded me along the way that there were plenty of cool things to look at and enjoy to take our minds off the frustration of being lost, like this wall:

Thanks, Spooner, for modeling for us!

While we were there, we got this shot of the church where the LDS people in Buda went when Q-dawg was a missionary here:

The graffiti wasn't here then :), nor was all the trash that you can kind of see piled in the entrance of the doors.  Crazy, eh?

We ended the day picking up the Goob and Hava and enjoying dinner with our friends, the Ferguson's, who live here in Buda.  Fortunately, those directions were straight-forward enough that we went right there :).  It was a wonderful end of our day, although I was quite tired from all the walking.

Babes and beauties

Liliputian and Pipalicious had a great time with the camera this week.  I think Liliputian's method of taking a self-photo...

...worked better than Pipalicious's for capturing their faces :).

We had some camera fun last week trying to capture our changing baby , Spooner :)...look at those fat folds!  Love it!

Contentment.

Liliputian wanted a close-up...worth it, through the blur!

So happy!

Papaya was standing near and wanted some spotlights, so here it is :)

So you can't see the fat so well in this one :).  This one looks a lot like Lek did when he was a baby.

That Liliputian with her baby brother.  Spooner and she are buddies all day long!

Crazy hair day!

My kids saw their cousins do this on their blog and didn't want to miss out on the fun. I figure, if I don't have to worry about it, they can do what they'd like if it doesn't destroy anything and doesn't make a mess, right?

Complete with spoons, apparently...and paper towels torn up and wadded into pieces.

My kids are definitely not camera-shy!

Pipalicious did this herself.  Nice :)!  Oh!  I stand corrected: apparently, Chugger-dude helped :).  What a nice brother!

Knights of Freedom for George Washington

We had a great time for our "academic" activity this month for Knights of Freedom for the Goob and Chugger-dude.  We are studying George Washington from the Childhood of Famous American series, and, in the book, it talks about George Washington making rafts and challenging the boys to contests on the water. 

So we decided to make our own rafts and race them!  Q-dawg was nice and accompanied us on our adventure down to the local "cric."

Here is Q-dawg helping Chugger-dude tie the lashings on his boat

Completed rafts, complete with plastic figures tied to them (so they don't get lost if they fall off the boat)

I don't know if you can see where the blood isn't circulating well, but this picture is for Aunt Shara :)...Here's thinking of you!

Ready, set...go!

Chugger-dude's

The Goob's

Mom in the background...holding the provisions (gummi bears)

Chugger-dude is lovin' it!

This book and the one about Martha Washington in the same series have become two of my personal mothering classics, with the emphasis on manners and respect, among other things :).