Halloween

I got a minor scolding for my lack of posts. Life has just been busy and kind of un-post-worthy. Well, I guess there have been things worth posting, but I haven't had time! Nap times aren't reliable anymore (and usually, once I finish putting Levi, then Lucy down for naps and read a book/play cards/or do a puzzle with Nate, Levi is already awake again), and that's often my blog posting time.

Today is Halloween. This is the first year Nate has been really aware of Halloween, especially because his school seemed to spend the entire month of October talking about it. Jon and I have been talking with Nate about which holidays honor God and which don't honor God and/or "glorify people," so that seems to be sinking in. Nate dressed as a pirate--a hand-me-down costume--for the school parade. Although I've never sat down and thought out what my parenting tactic will be regarding Halloween, at this point we're purposely not mentioning it or talking much about it at home (to show it isn't a big deal or something worth spending a lot of time on), and when Nate brings up something about it they've been talking about at school, we acknowledge whatever cool thing he's mentioning and then sometimes use that to discuss the things we as a family want to celebrate. (Wow, long sentence--all to say that we are making Halloween a "not a big deal" thing in our house.)

Vivi Reborn guest giveaway

Pretty necklaces on this giveaway today... Hope I win! :) Vivi Reborn GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

On the potty train

Lucy is officially potty trained, and it was way easier than I had anticipated. I thought her feisty/spunky/opinionated personality would clash with the fact that this was something I wanted her to do. But we started training on Thursday with basically no accidents. We had a couple of accidents on Sunday (including a bad one in the mall food court), but that's it.

For the record, I tried potty training her about 5 to 6 weeks ago, but after half a day that included 6-7 accidents and no successes, I stopped. Then, in the last 2 weeks, I noticed she was waking up dry from her long afternoon nap. That, apparently, was the breakthrough her body needed, because this time was a cinch.

The title of this post is from what Lucy said to Jon's sister on the phone: "Auntie Jenn, I go on the potty train!"

I was going to post a picture of her, but the latest one I have is a close-up of her underwear, taken from behind. The one I have before that is this:

Another comfy dress

Finished this dress last night. It was made mostly from some of my old (stained) maternity shirts--I love how thrifty that is!

Kid pics

Nate with a new chicken nugget he can eat!



Lucy showing her new skill: looking cute with big-girl underwear (second day--so far so good).



Levi. What, you think it's too small to be a playpen?

Levi update (11 months)

I wanted to get a quick post on here to update on Levi. He's sleeping better than he was back during the reflux-vs.-teething debacle. I have since decided that was teething and not the prevacid; this was confirmed to me this week when Levi slept terribly for several nights again, and he has a couple new teeth coming in. Anyway, in general his sleep is a little bit better. He's still feeding once at night, but he's often sleeping all the way until that feeding instead of waking multiple times before then.

He is an eating machine. He never did like pureed baby foods, so I kept nursing him and giving him bits of table food, and now he is eating 3 large meals a day, exclusively table foods. (He's also still nursing a few times a day.) Yesterday's foods included pancake, banana, meatloaf, diced peach, and kidney beans. Although it was annoying at 6-8 months when he was still almost exclusively nursing, it's so nice now that I never had to buy or deal with baby foods.

He started pulling up to standing this past week. It's funny that he doesn't know any way to get back down except to just let himself go, no matter what might be on the ground behind him. (Ouch!)

Go Levi!

Inspiration of a sewing sort

I haven't felt inspired to write on the blog too much the past couple of weeks--sorry! The inspiration I have been feeling is more toward the sewing machine than the computer. Here's something I finished today:



It's from a pattern I bought on Etsy, and I'm now stockpiling tons of old t-shirts to make lots more dresses.

I also finished the quilt top for the quilt for our bedroom. Yep--a queen-size quilt for my first attempt! I really love it. I ordered some batting and am waiting for a sale/coupon to buy the fabric for the quilt back.

Casey and I also bought all the fabric we need for me to make 5 "travel quilts" (one for each of our kids). The idea is that, whenever you go on a family trip, buy a patch in the souvenir shop at your destination, and then stitch it onto the travel quilt. It'll be a fun keepsake for the kids when they're older and can see all of the places they've visited.

Time for the kids' dinner, so I'm off!

P.S. I should explain that the Clippers are (is?) Jon's favorite basketball team. That's why I made this dress for Lucy.

Top teeth!

Art

Nannie requested a post. (I don't blame you, Nannie: I hate visiting a blog and seeing the same post day after day.) So here are some pictures of Nate's recent artwork.


I give the one above the title, "Boy with mohawk points with a thousand fingers to UFO"



I couldn't find any good pictures of his handwriting, but he has just started doing lowercase letters in addition to his usual uppercase.