Crazy Busy! (or, Our Life in 2010 Words or Less)

It's been a while so we'll have a brief recap.

First...me. I did something to my right back rib area in early December, of which I still haven't a clue how it happened. I've been through a couple physical therapists, a chiropractor and a massage therapist. I'm still working on it though I'm much better than I was. It's just been a really slow road. Sitting at my computer isn't very comfortable so I haven't been blogging much as my faithful readers can see. Sorry! But I'm improving every day and I HOPE it's only a few more weeks until I'm back to 100%. I'd put myself at about 75% now.

Secondly, I guess I can spill the beans now. Hubby got a new job! :) :) :) We're thrilled!! It's a great opportunity and he will be working out of the house. So hello to an extra $250/month in gas alone! And I'm glad we'll be doing our part towards helping the environment a little too. :) He starts next week. I'm a little concerned about the noise level that we get to some days but we'll all have adjustments and thankfully, spring *should* be just around the corner so we can do lots more outside.

Now to the kids...
Almost 3yr old Jade does still have hair left, thank goodness! Her foray into the world of 'beautician with no training' was short lived and no more hair has been sacrificed. Her baby sister sighed a large breath of relief. ;) She's getting her last set of molars and has been a bit crabbier than usual but she's still my happiest kid all around. She is her big sister's shadow, sometimes to Rose's dismay. Rose wants to do whatever Matthew is doing and Jade wants to do whatever Rose is doing. Matthew doesn't mind the attention at all but Rose doesn't always like the tag-along. The day is coming soon when they will need to share a room though so I hope it's a phase. Jade has had some issues with speech - she's just been slow to get understandable. But within the last month, she's gotten so much clearer! She's also sporting a new pink potty too (and I have to say, I've been though *many* different potty 'contraptions'. This one is **totally** awesome!). My third baby is growing up...sniff..sniff..

Almost 11 month old Linnae has sprouted 4 teeth. Aside from a week of restless sleep, she's doing well. She also FINALLY decided to eat food in January, at 9 months old. She's sitting up and rolls from one side of the room to the other. I doubt she will ever crawl because she's such an efficient roller. And rolling fits her name better, I believe...
I have to pause to write about something that gave me a huge vindicating guffaw regarding her. I use my kids middle names on the blog (and their first names, with the exception of the baby, are very normal common names as opposed to some of their second names. lol). The baby is Rhonan Linnae. I have already posted her name back when she was born so the info is already out here. However, when I was pregnant (and yes, by the time you're pg with your 4th kid, it's "I am pregnant", not "we"), we decided that we really liked the name Ronan. It goes back to my Irish heritage and sounded good with the last name and we were looking for an R name (Hubby and I have a naming scheme based on our initials). We got the name from a character on one of our favorite shows, Stargate Atlantis. Not that we would name our kid "after" that character but that we liked the name. But we never came up with a good R girl name. Some of the top ones were Regan and Reese but we weren't totally convinced. I thought that maybe I needed to see her to decide her name. When she was born, we didn't name her right away like the other kids. On the second day, Hubby said teasingly, "It's a shame she wasn't a boy because we had that name picked out!" I said, "Why can't we still use it? Ronan means 'little seal' - that sounds like a girl name to me!" I decided to put an H in the name to make it look more girly and thus she was named Rhonan Linnae. It suits her very well and the kids call her "Rho-Rho" for a nickname. So, as with all unusual names, no one ever gets it right. And we spend a lot of time telling people what her name means. Most people either immediately love it or look at me like I'm nuts. I don't care. Like I said, it suits her.
A few episodes ago on Stargate Atlantis, Teyla told Ronan that she was pregnant. A while later in a sweet moment, he said to his friend, "And hey, boy or girl, Ronan is a good name". Hubby and I sat and stared at each other in total disbelief for a while. I think this was the first time in history when I was actually speechless. ;)
So, I have a 'little seal' who is rolling, not crawling. It fits. ;)

Rose...ahhh Rose. Rose had her 5th birthday this weekend. She is an animal lover, through and through. She asked for the hard Schleich animals you see at Target and Michaels and she asked for Littlest Pet Shop toys. And that's exactly what she got...gobs of them. She's in 7th heaven. The funny thing is that I've caught Jade quietly playing with them many times. In a family with 3 other siblings, it's rare to enjoy a toy completely by yourself and she's been sneaking off into Rose's room whenever she can. :) Rose is reading quite well for someone who just turned 5. She's taking a bit longer than Matthew did (he was reading very proficiently by 5) but her writing is coming along much faster than his ever did. And probably better than he is even today. She loves drawing and writing. She sounds out words and writes them down. They're phonetic spellings but I know the rest will come in time as she reads more. A friend gave her a diary on Sunday and she's already written several pages in it.

At one of our MOPS meetings in September, a little boy showed Matthew (currently 7.5yrs old) how to make a paper airplane. If only I knew how far he'd go with it! By the next day, I had a house FULL of airplanes. Grammy babysat that evening and another day passed and I had a house FULL of paper boats. That expanded to different kinds of planes (and discussions about aerodynamics) and I found gliders and dive bombers planes that did loop-de-loops. Then we had different kinds of boats. We compared and contrasted catamaran, typical sailing boats and canoes. We filled our sinks with water and saw which ones would actually float. When Grammy babysat, she told stories about how she would make paper boats and sail them down the creek behind her childhood home and her dog would chase after the boats and catch them. Then when the intrigue of paper planes and boats started to wean a bit, I checked out a book from the library on origami. His first few creations lacked the skill of neat folds and I found myself wondering if he was just too young yet to understand it. But he persevered and kept asking for more paper. By Christmas, he was making beautiful cranes with my Christmas dinner napkins. By New Years, he was making entire zoos. Animals, gift boxes, decorations, stars. He even made a reindeer for Rose's birthday. He can make a crane in any size you request. Even today, I find myself searching the library's website to see if they have advanced creation books. I really must post some pictures of them soon! The only real problem with this hobby is that he refuses to throw them away. Each creation is unique, even if it's his 1000th elephant. So we have origami pieces everywhere...and I do mean *everywhere*. But it'll be a neater party trick in college than belching his abc's. ;)

Matthew also recently dug out Hubby's old electronics kit from the basement. (Hubby is setting up his home office down there so I expect to see many old things being brought up in the next few months as the kids find new-to-them things to explore.) I got the set for Hubby off his Christmas list many years ago and Hubby never really found much time to play around with it. He told Matthew that he could play with it downstairs if he read the instruction book first. The book came up from the basement and Matthew went back to origami or chasing his sisters or Bionicle building or...something. About a week later, the kids and I were heading to MOPS and upon climbing out of the van at the church, Matthew said, "Mom, what would be a good grounding source in the basement? Could I use the door hinge?" Now I like to work with my hands (I built a rolling kitchen cart all by myself several years ago...hmmm...I should take a picture) and I'm no stranger to the concept of grounding but in the question coming from my 7 year old in the MOPS church parking lot really threw me. Sometimes it's scary how fast their minds absorb things. I suppose we'll have some electricity experiments in our near future.

We got it in our heads to study Chinese New Year this month. I make lots of Chinese food at home (just love the taste!) and we saw that it was coming up and it just stuck. The New Year started on Feb 7 and in China, they celebrate for 15 days, ending in a lantern ceremony on the evening of the 15th day. We've made lanterns and hung them all around our house. We made dragon puppets, almond cookies, we've read numerous books about China and learned a lot online as well. We're currently reading Grace Lin's book entitled, "The Year of the Rat". It's well written and the kids really seem to be enjoying it. We might even try our hand at making a compass and/or kites this week. This Friday will be the 15th day and the kids and Grammy and I are going our to our favorite Chinese restaurant to end the celebration with a bang. Hubby has a work party that evening in honor of his last day or he'd come along with us too.

I guess you're pretty much up to speed on our life. I hope to post some pictures soon! And if anyone has seen my point-and-shoot HP digital camera, please let me know where. ;) I have my dig SLR and all my memory cards but can't find that little camera. I guess that's why I don't like the little point-and-shoot ones - too easy to loose! At least my SLR is big and heavy and demands that you pay attention to where you're setting it down! ;) Last I saw the little one, it was at Grandma's house on Christmas Eve.

I'm adding something new to the blog on the sidebar. Those of you who use a feed reader might want to visit my blog and check it out (I'll let you know when it actually goes up). I'm going to try to keep a list of books we're reading and have read. I always like to see what friends are reading - especially the homeschooling kids. I might see if I can do something with LibraryThing (very neat site if you're a book buff!) that can track current reads and list older reads.

Oh and have you seen the ads for Prince Caspian?? We just can't wait to see it!