Hey cous-

After much anticipation, the newest addition to the Holman clan joined us on March 3rd. The children met and were very cordial, and I think that baby DJ (short for David James, both family names) did not want to go back home. Just a hunch.

This is a favorite picture of mine already. The baby is so darn cute, and my baby looks really big.

Emma was on cloud nine from the moment of his arrival. She was a big help to Aunt 'K K', and was actually pretty good at it. (Right 'K K'?) She perched on the counter during bath time, and couldn't really be bothered to look at me for a good pose.

Now, don't get me wrong, little dude enjoyed having some company as well. He said, "It's a baby!" and then tried to poke him with a toy he was carrying around. Ok, he wasn't as good at helping, but he was interested. Ok, he was a little jealous, but he was good natured about it. He did pretty well at not sitting on the baby, and began to understand that the littlest addition won't be romping around him anytime soon. But in the next few years, these guys will be buddies for sure.

Emma was taking her job (one of her favorites) very seriously.

This is the blanket that I made for DJ. Thanks to some wonderful help to a wonderful far away friend, I think it turned out ok.

ABC

A couple of weeks ago, we finally put up a For Sale sign on our yard rock. Doing so was good advice given to us by a man who has sold many things successfully. Thank you!

There were a couple of interested people, and a few skeptics too. One guy walked by and sarcastically asked if we delivered. Well, it was good fortune that a guy who owned or had access to this amazing thing-a-ma-jig wanted our rock, and came and picked it up three days after we put the sign on it. And, I will admit, it made me snicker a little because all those people who laughed at us walked by the next day and saw a clean yard with no dumb big rock in the middle. Not that the rock wasn't great, I am sure it looks fantastic in Mr. Tractor's yard. But, now we don't have to worry about our kids running into it and getting a concussion.



The guy drove the forklift thing from town somewhere. He just swung in our yard, scooped it up, strapped it down, and off he drove with it.


Having this guy drive up made me feel a little "country", but that isn't all bad. :) This would not have happened in our last location!

Good-bye yard rock. We made sure that you went to a good home, or at least another home. May the moss grow on you, and your surface be warm for many more years.


Last week we were out for the morning and found this little guy by the gutter. I will admit, with a bit of shame, that I did make some sort of little girl squawk when we saw it for the first time. But, redemption was mine as I borrowed my son's stick and picked it up for my kids to see.

Emma thought it was really neat, and Owen wanted to pick it up. We admired the way it stuck it's tongue out, how it slides to move, and how it was getting really mad at me for poking it and picking it up. It was really fun.

When I was younger, my mother found a snake in our basement. She thought it was a toy, but then it began to slither, so she yelled and ran across the basement of the old farmhouse. After waiting for a few minutes, she realized that rescued, she would not be. So, she put on her Miss. Resourceful hat and got to work.

Grabbing an ice cream bucket in one hand, and some sort of tool in the other, she got this thing contained and brought it upstairs. I was enthralled and insisted that we let it go outside. I was a bit of an animal guru at that time. (I had numerous pets through the years, including several rodent pets and an iguana.)

Some days later, with great sadness, the poor snake was found dead in the horse pen, with a telling hoof print across its body. Obviously the old Appolusa had not shared in our interest of the snake and taken care of business.

The next step, obviously, was to bag the dead thing and haul it away to church, where we were great friends with a dear man named Mr. Baker. (I once got to help Mr. Baker stuff a dead gopher that I took home in a paper towel tube, marked with an arrow so the fur-ball did not get taken out in the wrong direction, lest his coat get mashed up.)

Mr. Baker looked at the snake and was in great awe (really, he was) because the particular snake in front of us was a blue racer. They are very fast snakes, thus the name racer. He was impressed that my mother caught the thing, and determined that he must have been really cold and had not been able to move at full speed. I don't recall what happened to the snake after that, but it was the end of our family adventure. So, it would be a great disappointment to Mr. B to learn that I was so girly when I found our snake last week. Between you and me, the head of the thing is about the size of my pinky finger knuckle.

Sorry Mr. Baker.

I almost gave up on blogging. Half the time I think there is nothing new to talk about, the other half I just can't bear the guilt of sitting down to write when my list is waiting. But, here I am.

The spring is off to a wonderful start. It is so much easier than last year. Emma is so independent, and really does her own thing really well. She also listens really well. Last week I left her in the front, at her request, while I ran inside. The window was open so we could still talk, and of course I kept an eye on her. I don't think I'll do that all the time, but it is nice to know that we are in a different stage. She can be trusted a little more, and can make more of her own decisions all the time.

Owen is a mover and a shaker. He loves it outside. He tries to open the door while we are inside, and carries his shoes around, saying "shoes, shoes". He likes to be on the go out there. He cries when it is time to come inside. He can run and walk so well, and has become a master of stairs, so it is easy with him too. We all go out, and just hang out. It is much easier than trying to keep him from crawling off the deck (we fixed it so it is completely impossible for a child to fall off of it now) and helping them both up and down. I can even work on a simple project while we are all outside. Whoa. That is different.

I am really getting into garden mode. I have some seeds started inside, and our really amazing neighbor is tilling the ground for me. He is really kind. So, I am going to get some peas in and get to work. It must be in the blood, because I really like it.

Yesterday I grabbed the kids and marched outside with the kite. The wind was really going, so it was a great night to fly it. Owen wasn't all that into it, but he was better than the first time. Emma enjoyed it a little more though. We got it really high, and she got to hold onto the string. She did a really good job. She used two hands and we both had this really great bonding experience that she'll remember for the rest of her life. It was so great.

Until she let go. In her defense, I don't think it was really her fault. She happened to be looking at the ground, and the wind came up and ripped it out of her hands. The same thing happened to me just a few minutes before. The difference was when Emma was holding it, it was as high as it had ever been, and the wind was really strong. So, of course, it flew away, into the neighbors tree. Not the tilling neighbor, the other one. So, I didn't want to leave this plastic kite in their tree all summer, it would look pretty crappy. I walked over and opened the back gate, and worked to get it out of the high maple. It came down. Wonderful! There was so much string though, and the wind so high, that I couldn't wind it up in time, so I had a mess of string, and the kite flew into the next tree. Emma was really excited, she wanted to come into their yard too. I was not as gooey as I was trying to explain that she couldn't come in, it wasn't our yard, and trying to get this dumb kite down. But, I did. It broke a little, but it is an easy fix, so we'll no doubt try again. It was a fun adventure for me, which is really important to me for some reason. It somehow resets my clock, as if I go from one adventure to the next. And, this one only cost less than three dollars.

My previous adventure dealt with a stack of wood being picked up and stacked from across the street, and the city thanking me for my efforts by throwing it onto their truck that was being used to haul all the dead wood out of various public access points . Never mind that me and my precious children had worked for a long time, well, half and hour, to drag it close to our mailbox so we could burn it in our fire pit. Thanks city. But, we won't go into that now.

So, spring has sprung, we're all happy and healthy, and life is still good.

Emma-isms

Two for today-

1. Emma, and Owen, got to watch Barney today. This does not always fit into our schedule, so when it does, she thinks it is a real treat. She doesn't watch a lot of TV, so she gets pretty excited when she gets to watch her show. I don't know where she got confused, but sometime along the way, she got the words to the opening song mixed up.

Rather than, "Barney is a dinosaur from our imagination", Emma sings, "Barney is a dinosaur from our abomination." She is very sincere as she sings this, and it's darn cute.

2. Emma and I are settling her in for a nap. As usual, she wants to read a book, which we always do. But today I was hungry, and didn't really feel like it. Yeah right. Try to convince a three year-old to switch up the routine on a whim. I know, I know, I am laughing at my own foolishness too. So, she fought back. She didn't yell, she didn't scream or cry.

Matter of factly, she begins to point towards her fan and says, "Ok, I want the fan off, no music, and the door open." :) This girl. Of course, (need I explain?) we always have the fan on, turn on the music, and close the door.

She fought me with logic today. Whoa. I relented, because she made sense, and there is nothing wrong with reading a book for naptime, geesh mom!

Baby in bed

I sat in Emma's room, patiently waiting for her to come in and read a book before she got into bed. She finally came in, carrying her carseat, and her "baby". She had been getting the baby ready for bed. She began to put the baby in its own bed, and it was then that I saw the baby that she was so tenderly caring for. I took her "lentil" baby away today, but she obviously isn't terribly distraught. She has imagination. My personal favorite detail is how her baby must be placed "upside down".

Three year-olds rule.
:)

My peanut is three.

Emma had a birthday! It is actually on Tuesday, but we celebrated over the weekend.

I made a cake for her, which was pretty fun. It took a lot longer than I had expected it to, but all in all I think it went ok. We put up a little banner, and a little decoration over her door. She really knew her birthday was coming, and all week she was excited. It is so much fun to celebrate with children. Their joy is fun to watch and participate in. My own joy for my own birthday seems to be dwindling, but I suppose that is expected.

Emma had several of her little friends over, so we had a full house of little girls. Owen was the only boy, but I think he enjoyed himself despite the excess level of estrogen. The little girls all had fun too. Emma was very good, and welcomed her guests just as we had practiced all week. "Welcome to my house, let's go play!" At the end of the party, she did a very nice job of thanking them, and helping them pick out a balloon to take home with them.

I have a hard time believing that she is 3! It goes really fast. I know I know, we hear that all the time. But I think over the last three years of my own life, and it just seems really long ago that I didn't have a little Emma, but it also seems like just yesterday. So much changes in a little person in that time period. She is no longer a baby. I am going to look back on these years and just miss the tar out of them. I am going to gaze into the air and try to remember what she was like when she was just a three year old. She seems so old to me now, but obviously, she is just a little peanut. It is like savoring something that you know you can't save forever. You have to eat the cake, or it is going to rot. I know that these are amazing years, and I need to focus on enjoying them as much as I possibly can, rather than fret about missing them tomorrow. Stopping time isn't an option.

Emma says to me the other day, "Mom, you're big, you're not a peanut. I'm small, I'm the peanut!" So she is.

A few Emma facts:

She will only wear short sleeve shirts. No bribes, treats, begging, convincing or sternness will change this. She only wears short sleeves.

She dresses herself by herself everyday. I don't help her pick out her clothes or take off or put anything on. She gets everything right. This makes her very happy.

She likes to eat her breakfast out of the red bowl with the red spoon. Every morning, she breezes into the kitchen, fully dressed, and asks on her way to the table, "Mom, is the red bowl and the red spoon clean?"

She has two babies that she is in love with, that no one is really allowed to touch or mess with. One is a bag of lentils that gets replaced every so often, when I have to cook it, and the other is a little eye pillow. Both of her babies are much more special to her than the "real" babies she owns.

She loves real babies, like the human kind. She loves to hold them, look at them, and talk to them. Her own babies, like the lentils, are named after the babies that she knows. She takes very good care of them.

If you are related to Emma, she knows where you live. We have a little state book, and she knows, South Dakota, Washington, Nebraska, and Iowa. Our state is green. ;)

She still enjoys music a lot, and likes to sing.

She is a sweet little thing, and most of the time, we have very good days, and a lot of fun.



Emma saw G'ma and G'pa on her birthday. She got a little tea cart that she is in love with. This has been added to the "no touch" category of toys. Little Owen knows this, and proceeds with caution. But, he is a boy, and boys are daring, so he has taken it for a spin a time or two.


Emma opened some gifts at her party. She was happy, can you tell?


Mmm..blue frosting. Thankfully, none of this beautiful blue frosting made its way to our beautiful white chair or ivory furniture. All of the children did have blue tongues and lips though.


All the party goers enjoying cake.


The birthday song. She loved it. Too bad birthdays are only once a year. I think I enjoyed myself as much as she did.

b-day

An actual cake, with actual candles and actual fire.



We were preparing to place the candles into cake.

"Where do we put the candles children?"

The unanimous decision, including Emma's say, was Cookie Monster's mouth.



Happy Birthday dear Emma.


Emma with her cake.


The cake.

My dear Emma-

Emma has a wonderful ability to stick to her guns. I am hopeful that this means that in later life, it will translate into standing up for what is right, and for being a protector of her siblings. Always the optimist, I am.

Right now, what she sticks to, are her own ideas. This particular day, she would not yield to my request, and chose to sit in time-out rather than to listen to her mommy. She was very sweet about sitting in time-out after a bit. I checked on her periodically, and asked, "Are you ready to listen to Mommy yet, or do you want to sit in time-out?" She replied, "Time-out." After an hour and a half, she fell asleep, and this is how I found her.

"Dear Emma,
You are very stubborn. I hope that you had a good nap.
Love,
Mom"

Emma wanted to share her snow suit with her baby. So, naked Emma puts baby in snow suit. :)

Some Owen love

My dear little boy loves to climb into things. We have a few baskets, and he delights in emptying them and climbing on in.



Laundry day is a favorite in our house. Owen loves the laundry baskets that are available for his pleasure, and Emma enjoys getting all of her clothes returned to her.

One of Owen's other favorite "toys" are bottles. He is consumed for many hours by the tops. He likes the screw-top kind, as well as the flip kind. So, in these pictures, he is very happy because he has an empty chocolate syrup bottle to play with.

I tell ya, this kid is wrapping himself around my heart more each day. I can't decide if he is my baby still or not, but it matters little, I think. He loves to look at books, and will try to say new words when he wants to make me happy. The other chunk of the day he points and whines, and at times grudgingly uses words.

I remember when I was pregnant with him, I worried, as I have heard other women do, that I could not possibly love him like I did my first baby. Of course, on the other side of it, we all know that is a silly worry. Somehow your heart opens and creates a little place for each new person you welcome into your life. They are so very different from each other, my two children, but they each have given me a mother's heart. I am almost surprised that I am so in love with them. I find myself gazing at them, in their good moments, and being so overwhelmed with thankfulness that I am able to spend so much time with them, and share the simple moments together that mean so much to each of us. In the moments that are not so gushy and gooey, I love them, but watch the clock until daddy comes home a little closer. :)

I hear ya-

Small victories.

1. Emma has, dare I say it, mastered the art of being a big girl, and using the bathroom accordingly. Read-doing all of her "duties" in the appropriate place. After a (very long) morning of a battle of wills a few weeks ago, she adjusted her attitude, and it has been getting easier each day. For a week or so, I had to remind her that she could choose the bathroom, or choose to sit in time-out. She tested us one time, and then began to choose the bathroom. Now, I don't have to say that anymore. I do tell her to go, and she toddles off and listens.

I must rip on the new trend of parenting for a moment. Everything that I read while searching for answers told me to wait until she's ready, one day she will just decide, and you can't make her. Just be patient, they all said, and take it in stride. Heck, you'll miss these days sometime in the future. Well, my patience ran out.

I admit that there is some truth in the advice. A year ago, I agreed. But, the girl is about to be 3. When you google our "problem", there are pages and pages of people complaining that they are cleaning underwear, and their little person just doesn't want to stop using underwear instead of the bathroom. Well, of course not!

What my little Emma needed was some old-fashioned, tried and true, hard nosed parenting. She fought. After an hour and a half of her crying in the bathroom I wondered if I had made a big mistake here, and wondered if getting into a battle of wills was really a good idea. Oh, how those internet doctors would shun me. But, we stuck it out, and we won. My tidbit that I want to pass on to you, is don't start a battle and not finish it.

2. After a round of antibiotics, my dear son is sleeping through the night, finally. No more 3 a.m. wakings. A night of solid sleep is doing wonders for all of us.

Growth Spurts

1. Emma has begun to call me "mom" on a regular basis. It took me a couple of days to realize it, but one day, I suddenly stopped and it registered in my brain. I think it is a different kind of mothering. "Mommy" vs. "Mom".

Mommy roles include cuddling, soothing, offering security. Mom seems to be more of get Owen out of the way, fixing annoyances, cleaning up spills and washing favorite clothes. Not that the roles are not interchangeable, they are. It just seems like our relationship is growing into something bigger.

2. Owen is changing all the time. He has decided that maybe baby sign language isn't so bad, and is beginning to talk more. The frustrating part, for me, is knowing that he is capable of saying words, he just isn't very interested. He would rather grunt, cry, point and lunge after what he wants. He communicates very effectively, but I get really exhausted after hearing him be so loud all day long. He really likes to look at books, watch the washing machine start (hey, I like that too0, play with things he shouldn't (that is how the dryer light bulb broke) and walk around when we shop for groceries, rather than sit in the cart. He is a baby at some moments, and fiercly independent and a toddler the next. *sigh* I miss my baby, but am enjoying the ease that comes as he can do more things for himself.

Little joys

I am now the proud owner of a pair of brand spanking new Gingher G-8 8 Inch Knife Edge Dressmaker's Shears.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B000UU6SR4/ref=dp_image_text_0?ie=UTF8&n=284507&s=kitchen
They are pretty amazing. They arrived in a very shiny metal case, with a "holster" for the blade. I was too excited not to try them out. I recruited my husband to help me trace onto fabric to cut, and then took them for a spin. I think that I instantly became a better seamstress. My old 8 dollar pair of Wal-Mart craft scissors were pretty pathetic, and when I used them, the edges of my fabric were embarrassingly jagged. No more. I decided that I like to sew enough to invest a little bit of green, so now I am ready for more projects.

Little lamentations

I realized how much we are paying a year for health insurance. For some reason, most likely denial, I never realized the yearly rate, just the monthly. When I realized the dollar amount, my body did an involuntary shudder and my intestines flipped over a few times. WHAT! THAT IS ABSURD!

The incident that steered me towards this unpleasant revelation began with Owen having an ear infection. The doctors usually, in the past, have urged me to make a follow-up appointment for 10 days after the initial appointment, to make sure the antibiotics have done their job. The kicker is that this requires another official office visit.

Read between the lines, $$$$.

I finally got bold enough to ask if we could just have his ears looked at, and of course, they basically laughed at me, and asked if I wanted to make an appointment. An office visit is at least $100. Checking a child's ears takes about 24 seconds. Now, understand, that I am not an economist, a nurse, a doctor, or an insurance agent. I am merely a mom. Little old me can't understand how anyone can be asked to give you 5 twenty dollar bills for less than 30 seconds of service. This, in my humble opinion, is a system that is really broken. The part that got me even more riled up is when we realized that not having insurance is just risky enough that we don't dare try it. But, what if we saved our monthly premiums in a savings account, and managed our own dumb health care. What if we paid for all medical costs out of pocket? We would save a ridiculous amount of cash, and have an account that should be sufficient for any medical costs in the future.

On the flip side, if God graces us with another child, or we have a serious but rare incident that requires any emergency service, we are in a lot of trouble. Being a home owner is scary in that sense, because if the deck becomes stacked against you, you lose your house. So, we pay thousands of dollars for assurance that a night in the hospital won't leave us homeless so we can then pay the equivalent of 360 dollars an hour to make sure that the last doctor visit, for which I spent 100 dollars, ten days ago, was effective.

Of course, I have little else to complain about. In the grand scheme, I have healthy kids and a wonderful life. That is why I titled this section "Little lamentations".

Big Hopes

Spring comes early.

Hey, big head...;)

This is proof that the kid does smile! It is on his terms though, no smiling for the camera just because I ask him nicely. He is an outdoor kind of guy, really enjoying our trips outside.

This has got to be one of my favorite pictures. The kids are buddies. I have watched Emma treat her brother very nicely. Of course, there are the moments when she gets frustrated with him too, but we've all been pushed around by our siblings, and survived.

Today I took Owen to the doctor. Among the other findings, we learned that he is in the 5th percentile for weight, and 70th percentile for his head size. In height, he is in the middle.