Recently in the East

Sparrow informed me she wants to marry Zeke (Mahnken) and live next door to Golden when she grows up (after I explained to her that she can't, in fact, marry Golden. Or Silas. Or Daddy.) O.o.

The girls started swimming lessons at the YMCA (one of their Christmas presents) and they are both loving it! They are in separate classes due to different ages, but the time coincides, so they are usually in adjoining lanes! LOL. I even managed to work out during their 2nd week, for like a whole 20 minutes, in the GYM! I don't remember the last time I was in a gym. Probably when I was pregnant with Sparrow. Or before I was married. It was short-lived, however. That evening I slipped on our den stairs, and broke my coccyx! OW! ...OK, it's not really broken. I was trying to quote Napoleon Dynamite. Anyways, my tailbone hit the other stair right on the corner. I lay there and wailed like a bebe. And then I just lay there some more. I had spilled a cup of milk all over and Sparrow had to run and get a cloth to get it off the carpet. And go find the arnica gel. She was very worried about me, and Silas cried to see that happen to his mama! Cried! Then I got a bit grumpy, I hate to admit, and made them clean the floor since I couldn't move (awful, but the mess was adding to my stress.) Finally Thomas arrived home from work and life went on. Slowly. Golden had fallen asleep on the couch after swimming and had missed the whole thing and my husband was so helpful, even washing the food processor of his own initiative! Now there is a good man for you! It was painful even sleeping that night, but several days and several prayers later, it is feeling soooooooooo much better.

This morning, in fact, based on what we "caught" at church last night from Kevin Dedmon, the girls both laid hands on me and said the sweetest prayers! Sparrow prayed for no more pain and for the presence of God to come--such sincere, big words, and Golden prayed in the Holy name of Jesus, it made me so glad. And I DID feel a little better, I told them I felt about 20% better, and Sparrow was SO excited, she cheered! Now THAT is the kind of enthusiasm we need for healing!

Silas knows all his colors (or almost all)--finally! He may have known them for a long time, but the gift of language is finally coming to him, so now we know it. =) He says "uhp-ul." for "purple. So cute. He still usually leaves out the beginning consonants and puts glottal stops in between syllables, but we can understand him, and it's adorable! It's finally taking off. He is at this point like the girls were around 18 months. Every day I catch him saying something new. He says "Addy" and "Ammy" without the middle stop, as well as "Angy," which, as everyone knows, means "daddy," "mommy," and "monkey." =) He LOVES books and I enjoy my special time with him before his nap every day, when we read some "boy" books together.

Pippa sprouted her first tooth on New Years' Day, after I'd been singing this to her over and over the day before:

On the last day of the year you were born
On the last day of the year you were born
Are you gonna get a tooth?
Are you gonna get a tooth,
On the last day of the year you were born?

The 2nd tooth also quickly followed. WOW. 9 months. AND with it came more of an interest in eating. No baby food for this one, though, she prefers cheese sandwiches! Loves 'em. Can't stand baby cereal. Though she does appreciate butternut squash, avocado, banana. Round about the 9th of January she also learned to clap her hands! I absolutely LOVE this baby stage. Every time she hears anyone say "Yay!" she claps her hands! Toothy, clappy, and chappy-cheeky.

Golden can write her own name! It seemed s huge different after just a few weeks! Now she knows all the letters and is even doing them curly-style, like her sister. O.o. She signed her name in all the Christmas thank-you cards! I guess my work here is done. =)


On the evening of the coccyx event, it snowed. Our first East Coast Snow!!! Of course, the children missed it cause they were sleeping in bed, and I missed it cause I was staring at a computer screen doing work for my contractor job with MDB Media--which I love. Nonetheless, the way we find out things in our own backyards nowadays is via the internet (alas, modern world!) and I realized it had snowed when I read someone's post on Facebook that night! Doh!!! I looked out the window, and sure enough! Hahahahahaha! I had a magical window moment all by myself at about 12:30 a.m. There were about 2 inches of snow on the grass. The snow was heavily preceded by rain (days worth) and also followed by rain, so the girls informed me the next day that it was "crunchy," but hey. It was SNOW! And their excitement the next morning was beautiful. "I KNEW it would snow!" Sparrow gushed. She said she had kept trying to wake Golden to tell her in the morning, but Golden kept mumbling that it was only "jackfrost," and didn't want to get up. Finally she was convinced to look, and then you can bet she was WIDE awake! I love those little snow fairies. Now let's have a foot or so! I want to see it come down and I want to say, as in "Despicable Me," *IT'S SO FLUFFY!* ...Though in that movie, she was referring to a unicorn. =) My magic will be snow.

November and December Quotes

 Sp: "If someone tried to buy God, He'd cost more than the highest number anyone could count to!" -Nov. 14

G: "Mom, Jesus died on a tree. But not the kind with leaves." -Nov. 15

Sp: "It would be horrible to not be alive. You can't even think when you're dead. The only thing I would know is that I was not alive." -Nov. 17

Sp: "Mom, I know the devil's not my dad, but if he were somebody's dad, he would be the most horrible dad ever, to his child." -Nov. 17

me: "Goodnight, Silas."
Silas: "'Ight, Mom."
me: "I love you."
Silas: "No." -Nov. 17
(I thought this was soooooo funny, because he barely talks at all. His dry "no." I wonder what he really meant. LOL.)


G: "Mom, there's more than one dad in the world."
me: "Oh yeah?"
Sp: "Yeah--there's more than 100!"
G: "Even there's one hundred and 99." -November 19

Sp: "Ugh, I feel car sick and I don't want to go over the really bumpely part."
me: "Well, it's only really bumpely if Dad's not looking at the road."
G: "Dad, please don't look at the road." -Nov. 23

G: "Daddy a little bit doesn't fit in the car with his hat on." -Nov. 25

G: "Not the food kind of chicken. The animal kind." -Nov. 27

S: "Mom, are the cells in my body waterproof?" -Nov. 27

me: "...So 'green' is just a way to say 'good for the earth.'"
Sp: "Worms are definitely very green." -Nov. 27

Sp, pretending to be reading a newspaper: "Golden! This is so sad! It says here that a police officer was killing a caterpillar, just because he was fuzzy. Says here, in this section. That's the caterpillar. Going to heaven." -Nov. 27

G: "She's being in the hidey-est place she can find, Mom!" -Nov. 28

G: "I can't walk over there, cause my feet might get pikely."(she meat "poked by pine needles." LOL!) -Nov. 29

G: "Mom, I want a pegasus named Vanilla." -Nov. 29

G: "I want that dress, remember?"
me: "What dress?"
G: " Remember? It was ugly, but I didn't think so, but you put it on me." -Nov. 29

Sp: "Mom, there have been *some* moments when I've forgotten all about my troubles. Until I remember that I've forgotten about them." -December 1

me: "Pippa is so cute! We are so lucky to have more babies than you can shake a stick at."
Sp: "Mom, if we had a MILLION twins at the same time, I would shake a rattle at one of them, and they would ALL try to attack me." -Dec. 2

Golden's poem, early December:
I will as I won't
I will as I will
I will as I won't as I will

"Mom, my favorite present in all the world, would be a dog and a cat. with mothers and brothers and sisters and babies." O.o. -Golden, Dec. 22

Sp: "When I was little I used to think that hell was like a gray room in a basement, and you went down the hall and then turned left and then went straight and turned right and turned left and turned right and went through a door, and there was the devil, sitting on a pile of trash." -Dec. 22

Sp: "My favorite present in all the world would be to be healthy."
me: "You ARE healthy. Let's praise God for your health. Thank you Lord that this girl is healthy!"
Sp: "I'm glad that's an early Christmas present." -Dec. 22

Sp: "Mom, winter is the time when things cost the most money, because the store workers need to buy presents, so they need high prices. –Dec. 23

G: "Daddy, when you grow up, are you going to be a great artist?" -Dec. 26

(I was sick and Silas was grumpy.)

Sp: "Mom, this life wasn't supposed to turn out like this, with our mama sick and our little brother screaming." -Nov. 26

"G: "Mom, I'm gonna tell everyone in the whole world what an idiot is. I mean, not everyone, but all our friends who don't know what idiots are." -Dec. 28

Sp: “Isn’t it amazing that there are millions of tiny cells in my body? And God is so big, his cells are THIS BIG." (holds up fingers to indicate the size of an olive) –Dec. 29

 

 

Silas: Silas is almost 2 1/2 and doesn't seem to feel the need to speak very much. His mind is mystifying me, cause he normally pronounces the ends of words instead of the beginnings. He is a cuddle BUG and usually wakes up with a huge smile, and comes in trailing his blankie in the morning. He loves to eat carbs and to follow his sisters around in their games. He loves reading, pointing out and saying the names of colors (the ends of them, anyways), and gets excited about all kinds of machines and trucks, of course. He is very conscientious about cleaning messes, always running for a towel when he spills something. He even empties his own potty and rinses it out!!! When we finally get him to go #2 in it, we'll have to discourage that, I suppose! Here he is on New Years' Eve, enjoying his bubble water.

Pippa: Pippa is 9 months old and just got her 1st tooth. She is a superfast crawler, sometimes stands up without holding on to anything, and has learned about CLIFFS of the stairs and beds variety--what a relief! Now she just perches patiently on the landing, if she's crawled up the 3 stairs in our living room--I don't have to emergency-dash to catch her so much anymore! She is a good sleeper and takes several long naps per day. Her cheeks are very round and rosy (or irritated, but it makes them red!) and we are all forever kissing her. She does some pretty good imitations already and loves to play  "flip" on our bed. It's fun to see her sense of humor come out. She definitely has her "mama" word down but also says "dada" and "baba" (for pippa). She frequently eats paper, and I have to do the heimlich on her like twice a day, man! Here she is eating my dress, trying to get me to stop making snowflakes of a Sunday morning.