January 15

January 15, 2008
Ella is 14 months old now! She's starting to explode her language. I can't even think of all the words she can say, because she can at least monkey just about anything we say, but here are some of the words she uses regularly: da (daddy), mama, guh-gah (good girl - more about that in a second), poo (said while pointing to her diaper to let us know), cup, dink (drink), up. I'm sure there are lots more I'm not remembering right now, but those are probably the biggies. She also sometimes says Na for Natalie, Eee for Ethan, and Eh-ah, for, Ella of course! (She says that while pointing to herself.) The signs she uses regularly are smart, cute, and more. And pointing to her diaper, along with the word "poo". She loves to wave at people right now, and sometimes will even wave at a poster of a person, like when we're at a store and there's a big poster ad.

She started saying "good girl" the other day as she was "helping" me unload the clothes dryer. She was pulling items out of the dryer (or, just as often, out of the clothes basket of already folded clothes. I love that one...) and then handing me the item. Every time she gave me something, she said "guh-gah!" and had a very pleased look on her face. Since then, this has been one of her favorite things to say.

I'm not fully ready to declare victory with Ethan's potty training, but I am VERY close. He hasn't had an accident - day or night - since Friday afternoon. And it's amazing how long he can hold his pee. The boy has got a bladder of steel, which is surprising to me because of all the huge diapers he had just a week ago still. He hasn't wanted to wear a pull up any night, so we've been expecting a wake-up in the middle of the night to either take him potty or change his sheets, but it hasn't happened yet. And we were gone all Sunday morning for church, then lunch, and he never went potty once. Part of it is probably still his fear of going potty anywhere but home, using his comfy potty seat insert, but hey, whatever. If he can hold it that long, I don't care so much about putting off this step until he's ready. He's been doing GREAT with letting us know when he has to go. I told him today that when he's ready, he can have daddy teach him to pee standing up, too. He looked very incredulous about that prospect, and asked me, with awe in his voice, "how??" I told him I didn't know; that would be something he'd have to ask daddy about. I just don't really want to go there.

We're so proud of him!

January 12, 2008
I needed to get back here for an update! Ella has been working hard for the last few weeks trying to get her molars out, and as of this week, she has a nice set of four. You would think, this being my third round of it, that I would remember how hard it is to get those molars out, but I seem to have a selective memory. Either that, or a brain that wants to forget after it's all over. Going through this again, I've remembered the time that Natalie got her four molars. (Of course they all have to come in together, don't they?) We were driving with the whole family in Brett's van, to head up to Cleveland for my sister's grad school graduation ceremony. Natalie wailed most the way up to Cleveland and most of the way back. The next day, I saw four new white teeth in her mouth. It was an ah-ha moment -- my kid really hasn't become a cranky pants; she was just in pain the whole day! Of course, with Ella, I'm sorry little darling, but I really have no idea exactly what day your teeth popped through. I just don't have the ability to go on Tooth Watch like I did when I only had one kid to take care of. I do know that it WAS this week (sometime) and she was cranky most of the week. She has wanted to be held almost constantly, which is very hard when I get the crazy notion to do anything like, oh, take a shower, do dishes, get lunch or dinner together -- you know, selfish things like that. Now that her teeth are through (seemingly successfully), she needs to get out of this habit of being constantly in arms. It's okay for a baby to want to be in arms when they weigh about ten pounds and you can sling them and get on with your day, but Ella's making my arms and back hurt. As much as I love to hold her, it does get tiresome after awhile!

Adding to the challenges of this past week has been trying to get Natalie back in a learning groove for homeschool. We only took a little over a week and a half off for the holidays -- and I only have one kid to try to get refocused! It's hard to imagine how difficult it is to get a whole classroom full of kids who have been out of routine for two or more weeks. There were several times, at the start of our days, that Natalie would say matter of factly, "I don't want to do homeschool today." To which I'd answer matter of factly - "I don't CARE. We are going to anyway." By the end of the week she was back into it better (it helps that Fridays are science experiment days, which she loves and looks forward to), but it was definitely a struggle to get her to stay focused through the week. Ethan has also discovered for himself that he can get away with a lot more when I'm focused on teaching. We'll be down in the basement reading something, and I hear a scrape-scrape-scrape across the kitchen floor, as Ethan is dragging the chair over to the panty to fetch himself whatever snack he thinks he needs. The boy is able to find any sweet treat that we happen to have mistakenly left lying around somewhere, and with Christmas just being past, we had a lot of little candies and chocolates out where they could be reached. Several mornings lately, we've found Ethan with a stash of empty foil wrappers. One afternoon, I thought I'd check on him upstairs because things were a little too quiet -- usually a bad sign -- and I opened his door to find that he had dumped my entire Sam's Club size container of roasted almonds out all over her floor and was munching them as fast as he could.

We've now gotten smarter and have gone through and re-stashed any and all candy and chocolates on top of the fridge. After discovering that he'd snuck candy for the second time in the day (the day after eating through ALL of Natalie's stocking candy) we gave him a two-week punishment of no candy at all. But he still seems to be scavenging for whatever he can. I put together a basket of washed, approved fruit for the kids and left it on the table for them to get a snack when they felt hungry, but I've had to explain to Ethan that it doesn't mean that they are free to eat it all the time, constantly. One time last week he ate two apples, two clusters of grapes, and two bananas. And then the kid had a ton of poop that afternoon - who would have guessed? Which, actually led to a GOOD thing:

That day was Thursday, and his bottom hurt really badly from all the diaper activity. As I was changing him, yet again, I reiterated, yet again, that his bottom wouldn't hurt if he would go in the potty like he was supposed to. On Thursday night, Phil and I decided it was time to force the issue. He's been in pull-ups now for about a month, and he did great with it for a couple weeks, but then he lost all interest and seemed happy just to use the pull-ups. They were Cars pull-ups, after all. Thursday night we went to Target and got a few more packages of underwear -- Cars, Thomas the Train, and Diego. We told him, the next day he'd be using underwear.

Well, Friday morning, I changed him into his first underwear, and he had pretty good success with going, as long as I asked him (or told him it was time to go) about every 20 minutes or so. If I didn't ask him, he had an accident. We went though six pairs of underwear on Friday. (Fortunately every accident was just pee...) Friday night we put him back into a pull-up for bed. He woke up dry this morning, and first thing this morning he went potty. I put him into his underwear, and the boy stayed dry ALL DAY today! I still asked him often if he had to go, but most of the time he was really good at deciding for himself that he needed to go. He did GREAT today. Even when we went out for dinner tonight, he told me he DID NOT want to put on a pull-up, and he went potty right before we left and then again when we got home. No accidents.

I'm not ready to claim success yet, I know these things don't always go so well, but today was definitely a good day, and encouraged me that we were right in that he IS ready -- he knows how to listen to his body to know when he needs to go -- the boy just needed us to tell him that he didn't have an option any more.

And he LOVES the idea that he's in Big Boy underwear. Today he discovered that I was right when I've said they would be a lot more comfy than diapers. He told me he didn't want pull-ups anymore because they "are scratchy". Woohoo!

January 2, 2008
Here we are, a new year already! 2007 was the best year we've had, and even better than the first year we were married. It definitely had its challenges, too, so I'll start with the bad and finish with what made it so good.

The year started off very difficult, as I was dealing with postpartum depression. Though I think I struggled with some amount of depression ever since 2002, I never was hit with it so bad as it was last December and January. There were times that I just wanted to lay on the couch and sleep all day. And that was when I even wanted to get out of bed in the first place. I couldn't get anything done and the idea of just figuring out what to make for dinner drove me to tears every night. My poor kids hardly ever went out anymore, and Ella never got used to being a "go-places" kid, like the other two were even at just a few weeks old. Then, one afternoon I had gotten the energy to go out for the afternoon, to go to the fish store because Natalie really wanted to get a new fish with our Fish of the Month club card, and after getting Ella (in her baby seat) out to the car and the other kids out in the car, I went back to shut the garage door, turned around, and then fell down the garage stairs. My ankle swelled up to look like I had shoved a goose egg under my ankle bone, and though the ER said it was a sprain, when it was still swollen a few months later I discovered that it was actually broken. Surgery was in June, and I spent the rest of the summer and early fall fairly (or, early on, completely) immobile. I was really thankful for a fenced in backyard, so that at least the kids could go outside and play! The result of this year was that Ella is a pretty inside kind of girl, at least so far.

I went on Zoloft for my PPD in January, and I started feeling better almost immediately (after the first couple weeks adjustment). I just felt normal, like myself, again. A me I'd pretty much forgotten had existed for five years. There have been several times over this past year that I've considered trying to go off the medication, because I'm feeling so good these days, but to be honest I'm more than a little afraid to. My original prescription was for six months, and it's been extended now twice. (This last time it was prescribed until next year.) I so don't want to go back to feeling like I did before, and the couple times when I forgot to get it refilled and I missed a day, I could REALLY feel the difference by the middle of the day after I didn't take my pill. (I take it at bedtime every night so that the biggest concentration of the meds hits my system when Ella is least likely to be nursing.) So I don't have plans yet to go off of it right now.

Also in January of last year, Phil stepped down from ministry. Which in of itself was difficult. (We probably loved the idea of being pastoral staff more than we should have.) He had some personal issues to get worked out, and he couldn't be an effective pastor as long as he didn't feel like his head was screwed on right. After stepping down, Phil started going to counseling, and he worked through so many issues that went all the way back to before his mom died; things he never had dealt with. On top of the counseling, he also started spending a LOT more time in prayer and devotion every day. Instead of just reading his bible before bed and spending virtually no time in prayer every day (a sad state -- but very common, even for pastors) now he was devoting his lunch hour to reading and prayer, and every night after putting the kids to bed, he sits outside their doors and uses that time for prayer as well. I also start my days now by reading from a daily Bible (includes some Old Testament, some New Testament, a Psalm and Proverbs), while I eat breakfast, instead of reading magazines or gulping down breakfast in order to get on with my day. The kids have learned (though they of course need reminding several times a week) that they can't interrupt me during this time unless it's very important. Phil and I still have individual devotional time every night before bed. This is usually when I read a short random Bible passage, and both Phil and I have been reading devotional books by John Piper which have really helped us. The end result of all this focused time with God, and the counseling sessions for Phil, is that God has worked a lot of junk out of our lives. Phil and I feel closer to each other now than we ever have, and our marriage is the best it's ever been. Really. You would think that the best time would have been our first year, or Before Children (B.C.), but it's without a doubt now.

Things aren't all rosy, of course. Another "side effect" of spending more time with God, and not being in the thick of ministry, is that we're seeing things...well, more clearly. We feel like we've gone on a "churchy-stuff" fast over the last year. We're more and more saddened by the state of the church (not OUR church specifically, but the "Church", capitalized, in general. All of the Church world, at least in this country). We're no longer satisfied with the status quo, which seems all too content to stay happy and comfortable in our own chairs, soaking up more knowledge and time with God and not making a difference in the world. We're glad God is opening our eyes and changing us, but it's frustrating as well. We don't know at this point when and at what capacity we will be going back into the Ministry (capital M). We don't want to go back into it and be yet another contributor to the problem, so we're just waiting on God right now.

Along with this biggest change, I thought I'd write about the ornament that we got this year. As always, we've gotten an tree ornament that most signified to us the past year. I think I listed all of the previous ornaments last year, but for example, for 1997, it was a little engagement ring box, and the next year was "Our first Christmas", and for each of the kids' first Christmases, it was a baby's first Christmas ornament. This year, we considered trying to find one with a school theme, since this year was our first official year of homeschooling, but we ended up with an ornament that was even more appropriate for this year. It's a Bumble, which is the monster from the Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas special. The Bumble was mean and nasty, growling and just overall unpleasant, and no one really knew why. They just figured he was mean. Then the elf that didn't want to be an elf, but a dentist, pulled out a tooth, and he was a brand new Bumble. The poor thing wasn't mean -- he just had a nasty, painful tooth that needed to be removed. We aren't saying that Phil was a mean, nasty, grumbling monster, but there were things that made life fairly unpleasant that we didn't even know needed "pulling" from his life. The yucky stuff was pulled out early last year, and when it was out, we saw a brand new Bumble around here. I mean, a brand new Phil.

Welcome 2008! We're looking forward to this year for many reasons. Natalie is reading better every day, and it's amazing seeing her learning every day. I LOVE best about homeschooling, being the one to see all the "ah-ha" moments when something she's been struggling with suddenly becomes understood.

This year I also look forward to celebrating our TENTH year anniversary!