Ready or Not!!

Ready...

or....

not....

the tooth...

is....

LOST!!!!!

I was so not ready for this one. She has been waiting for almost two years.

I cried. She giggled herself silly.

I begged her to stop wiggling it.  She grabbed a carrot from the fridge and chanted, "Tap, tap, tap a little; crunch, crunch, crunch a little; tap, tap, tap a little; crunch, crunch, crunch a little", until she had blood dripping down her pretty little lips.

In one evening, from 7 p.m. when Sunny realized her first tooth was a little loose, until 8:25 when we heard a ruckus in the bedroom, Sunny managed to extract that tooth. She ripped it out herself in bed. I think she waited until it was dark so that Miss Mouse would stop pleading with her to leave the poor tooth alone. After we got the bleeding under control, which didn't take nearly as long as I remember it taking with Miss Mouse, she proudly told her Daddy that, "I'm working my way to being a bunny!!!"  By that she means that she is so very excited to have her top middle two permanent teeth fully in and to be missing the ones on either side of the top middles. When Miss Mouse had that arrangement, I teased that she looked like an adorable little bunny (it happened to be over Halloween, and I begged her to be a bunny). Miss Mouse was never amused with my antics, so I didn't push them. But Sunny decided then and there that she DESPERATELY WANTED to be a "bunny". Tonight, her journey began.

And I still feel like crying. My baby girl is growing so, so fast. I'm so thankful for all my children's growth and stages and development. But it's fast. So very fast.

God, the Great and Powerful

 VBS last week had the theme of "God, the Great and Powerful".  I have many thoughts to process about it, all positive, but for now, I mostly just have time to share some photos. Enjoy!

Even the Tin Man needs to have supper!

Starting him young. The girls said they could hear Mighty Mouse pounding with "Daddy's ax" while they were travelling between stations. He's a strong little guy!

It made my night that I had my camera along and a friend available to watch my stroller-full-of-boys so that I could get this photo!  Find Mike in his Tin Man glory; then look to his left (the right of the photo). He had seen Sunny looking very serious as he was walking up on stage, so he asked her if she'd like to go with him or stay with her class. She didn't even hesitate to say she wanted to go up on stage.

Showing off their moves.

Daddy/Daughter high-fives.

The girls with the Scarecrow. Pastor Kevan as the Scarecrow needing a brain had the focus the first night of VBS. His video segment was so well done with Kevan looking so incredibly forlorn and sad that I was a little afraid the girls were going to burst into tears. They did great, though. Apparently nothing is now scary after their nasty mother forced them to watch the actual movie version of The Wizard of Oz. I guess that's a good thing.....

Girls with Tin Man Daddy.

They were asked who their favorite character was, with the caveat that they had to think of all the characters and not just pick the Tin Man because he was their daddy, and they answered unwaveringly "the Tin Man". I don't think they were alone in this favoritism because Mike had to turn away several art projects (they were suncatcher hearts.....for the Tin Man....get it? They made heart suncatchers in honor of the Tin Man finding his ability to care about and for others on Tuesday night) from little girls who thought they should give him their hearts. One little girl was particularly determined, so we have her suncatcher hanging with our girls' in the window. "Olivia loves the Tin Man" is written several times on it, and no way, no how would she allow Mike to give it back to her. I've never seen so many young women throwing themselves at my husband! If any of them had been over 12, I think I might have gotten a bit jealous! Honestly, I was just really proud to be married to the Tin Man. I always did have a crush on the Tin Man in the movie.

The girls with Dorothy. "Dorothy" is actually on sabbatical this summer and just came out of hiding for VBS. She did a great job, and it was fun to get to visit at least a little bit since visiting time with this friend is pretty limited (our families consist together of three full-time pastors and six children.....time for getting together doesn't happen often at this point!). One evening last week, though, as she and Mike and I were sitting together while Mighty ate his supper/snack, I did point out that our theological discussion was sort of an interesting one that I never thought I'd be having with the Tin Man and Dorothy.

This was the last night. The whole front of the sanctuary was really, in Kevan's words, "transformed into Oz".

They even brought out the confetti cannon. Mighty kept signing and saying "more, more, more!". 

Last, but not least, the girls needed their picture with the Lion. Mighty was quite sure Paul was a "kitty" and said, "meow! meow!". He was one big kitty! The Lion was perfectly cast as when he found his courage (by finding in the Bible that we are encouraged to "be strong and courageous"), he climbed a platform high above the stage and did a little dance to the instrumental beginning of "Eye of the Tiger". The pastors were perfectly - perfectly - cast into their characters.

Unfortunately, I did not get a photo of the girls with "Oz" himself. He had a spectacular costume the last night, too.

It took the entire weekend for the girls to settle down from the exhilarating "high" they were on from VBS. I'm so thankful for so many things in regard to this, but perhaps mostly that they were both, by the end of the week, jumping up and down with excitement about Jesus. Who would think any children of mine would feel free enough to do that???!! The greatest thing, too, is that they weren't bouncing with excitement because they HAD to or were required to or pressured to or anything like that. They were just feeding off the joy shown by the volunteers, their leaders, their pastors. Mike told me it took 200 volunteers/staff members to make the week work as smoothly as it did, which was very smoothly. Those 200 people came from all walks and stages of life; when I glanced around observing the leaders during opening worship each night, it was interesting to see the range of people. Miss Mouse's leader was a 16-year-old young man; Sunny's was a woman a bit older than I; there were grandpas, dads, moms, grandmas, teenagers, there was not an age group that wasn't represented.

And now, I have a fussy baby to attend. More on this and more photos from summertime fun to come another day!

Repeat

After six weeks of waiting and wondering, we found out last week that Miss Mouse repeated her win in the PBS Kids Young Writers and Illustrators Contest!!!!  She was chosen as a Red Ribbon Favorite again this year!  I can't tell her enough how proud we are of her and her hard work; she re-did her illustrations this year no fewer than three times a piece (and there are five required illustrations - do the math; that's a lot of illustrating for this Mouse). She initially wrote an incredible story. Her descriptive words were impressive; I was pumped for her. Then....I read the rules and realized she had a 200 word limit. Yes, I should have read the rules before allowing my verbose little Mouse to put in all that work, but we all have our Achilles heel, and mine is reading instructions and rules. So, at that point, we had to cut out around 200 words from her story. Yeah, we had to chop it in half. I say "we" not because I wrote any of it, but because I did help her figure out how she could shorten the thing. We talked about parts of the story that were absolutely necessary for it to make sense and parts of it that were just fun to have in there to make it a more interesting story. All of those extra "fun" things got chopped out. Poor critter. Because of how hard she'd worked on the initial version, I told her I'd write it out on here just to have a copy of it somewhere. Unfortunately, we won't have a hard copy of the final, winning draft because after having gone to the grocery store to get her package weighed, writing out a self-addressed manila envelope, and delivering it to PBS downtown (all of this done with three kiddos in tow at nine months pregnant)
, I realized the next day that I'd forgotten to actually put the postage on the self-addressed envelope. In my defense, the "next day" was the day Manly Mouse arrived, so I'm chalking my brain lapse about postage up to the fact that I was going to have a baby the next day.  Anyway, her story and illustrations will be found online at www.pbskidsgo.org at some point this spring (I haven't yet checked to see if they've updated our local station winners), but the original version is as follows (oh, in the final draft, the ladybug got cut out....we decided she'd have to cut out one animal, and as much as she loved Spotty the Ladybug, Spotty was chosen to be hacked out....I think Miss Mouse is still a bit bitter about that, and she did defiantly say, "Well, I can STILL put her in a picture because there could just happen to be a ladybug in the woods, and then she'd not completely be cut out!"). Here it is:

A turtle, butterfly, and ladybug lived in the woods. The butterfly's name was Fluttery. The turtle's name was Slowy, amd the ladybug's name was Spotty. They were all friends.

One day they went to a meadow. The meadow had tall, brown, wheat-like plants.  They met a nice red truck. The animals said, "Hi," to the truck. They asked, "What is your name?"

The truck said, "Zoomy." The truck asked, "What are your names?"

The turtle replied, "Slowy."

The butterfly next replied, "Fluttery."

The ladybug last replied, "Spotty."

The truck said, "Oh, nice names!"

The animals said, "Do you want to come to our house in the woods?"

Zoomy said, "Oh, yay! I've always wanted to live in the woods!"

The animals said, "Okay! Come follow us!"

Zoomy hopped on his wheels. Spotty flew and flew in zigzag patterns. Slowy ran as fast as he could, but it was not very fast. Fluttery rode on the top of Zoomy. They finally reached the woods.  Zoomy stopped bouncing. Spotty stopped zigzagging in fancy patterns. Slowy stopped running.

Slowy said, "Follow me. I will lead you into our house."  They all followed Slowy. When they reached their house, they told Zoomy, "You go in first because you are our new friend." But Zoomy did not fit through the door. Zoomy felt sad.

All the others wanted to try to make another house for them all to fit. They said, "Hey, Zoomy, we're going to make another house, but first, please help us gather a bunch of grass to make our new house."

Zoomy went and gathered some grass. He put it in his truck bed.Then he went off to the house again and said, "Okay, I got a bunch of grass."

The animals said, "Let's work together to build our new house!"  They built their new house. They told Zoomy to go in first again. Zoomy fit through the door, but the grass toppled all over him. The animals said, "Maybe we should just cut a bigger hole in our house to be your door!"

They enlarged their door, and Zoomy fit! They lived in that house forever and were all happy. The End.

Canola

The girls and I were reading a "Prairie ABC" book the other day. It's a great book we picked up in SD last summer. Each page has a sentence focusing on one letter of the alphabet, and then in the picture you can find lots of things that begin with that letter. I particularly love that on the "z" page, there is an envelope addressed to someone in Zap, ND. Plus, it's written by a Canadian, so there are some language differences that I get to explain to my "southern" children who are not growing up watching Canadian television. Anyway.

On the "c" page, Sunny got really excited about a field of canola. She and Miss Mouse played in one two summers ago with Grandpa Bob. He doesn't grow it, but there's a lot of it around. In fact, two summers ago when I made several trips home with the girls by myself, keeping our eyes open for canola fields passed just as much time in the van as the Barney dvds did! These girls love their canola.

So, of course, we had to discuss it because they thoroughly discuss e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. (this is why breakfast takes 45 minutes....we're working on that one). Deep down, I really do love their verbosity. They come by it naturally. Cough. Cough. I digress again. Sooooo....Miss Mouse stated her love for canola oil. Sunny countered that she dislikes "all kinds" of oil, but she really loves that canola out at Grandma Kathy's.

What?

Grandma Kathy grows some great plants, but I hadn't noticed any canola out there lately.

Upon further discussion, Sunny explained that this canola is served at breakfast, and she doesn't really know why Grandma calls it canola. Oh dear. I realized at that point she was talking about GRanola. My mind went racing as to how to save face for Sunny. So often she is corrected and sort of 'smacked down' by her elder sister's knowledge. I try to correct her when I need to, but sometimes, sometimes it just isn't needed. She'll figure out it's GRanola sooner than later without us embarrassing her during storytime; she'll figure it out and either laugh about it or just be very quiet and hope we've forgotten that she was mistaken. That's just how she rolls. During my thinking, Sunny was chattering on about how Grandma must think that this breakfast mixture looks like a canola crop, and I could suddenly see the lights come on in Miss Mouse's head.

So, we moved onto "D" really, really quickly, and I gave Miss Mouse the getting-to-be-quite-common look of "just let it go for now". Sunny's right, though. That breakfast stuff, canola or granola, is really good!

Veggietales

Our son eats his veggies. He also apparently eats VeggieTales. Mike was reading Mighty a VeggieTales book the other night, when Mighty started leaning toward the book with his mouth wide open, saying "Ooomph" and making a chomping motion. It only took us a couple times to figure out what he was doing. Mike asked him if he was eating the vegetables, and Mighty responded with a big grin and a head nod along with another "chomp". Larry the Cucumber, Bob the Tomato? Be afraid. Be very afraid. This boy will eat you for dinner!

Skunk

Yesterday, the older three were in the backyard themselves. Manly Mouse was wanting to be held for his nap, as seems to be his custom, so I sent Mighty out with his sisters to keep watch. When Mighty hears the words, "Do you want to go outside?" he shouts with glee, "Yaaayy!". I couldn't keep him in on such a beautiful day, so the girls just had to watch their brother and include him in their play.

They were being very sweet. So, when I saw Miss Mouse tip over in the grass and sort of roll on her back a bit and then look up at the sky, I wasn't surprised to see Mighty do the same thing and then be followed by similar behavior from Sunny. I figured they were playing Follow the Leader or something sweet like that, maybe looking at fluffy clouds and coming up with ideas on their shapes.

I stuck my head out the door and asked if that was what they were doing and offered encouragement on how sweet they were being. Miss Mouse propped herself up on her elbow; Mighty struck the same pose. Miss Mouse responded to my encouragement and question with, "What?! No, Mom. We're kittens, and we're rolling in skunk." Of course. Silly me, how could I not have known?

Table for Six

A few pictures of our newly-expanded family.....

Such a proud, proud big sister - Sunny had started having a really hard time with the "waiting game" before little Manly Mouse was born; this smile is not just proud and loving, it is a smile of intense r.e.l.i.e.f.!!

 Miss Mouse is so excited to have another person to care for. I know one of her strongest love languages is "quality time", but "acts of service" has to be up there pretty high, too.

Mighty Mouse was very sweet to his tiny sibling.

So many kisses from such pretty girls

These two couldn't get enough of watching Manly Mouse in his carseat on homecoming day.

It must be an automatic human response to make goofy faces at a baby when he's awake!

Peaceful. 

Manly Mouse has the longest fingers of any of our children! Mighty Mouse has huge hands - huge - but Manly Mouse has fingers that just won't quit! I love how they are similar and how they are so different, too.

The two Easter bunnies who just can't stop kissing this new little brother.

 Mighty really does love his little brother. Often he will go get the blue pillow, put it on his lap, and pat it as an indication that I am to put Manly Mouse on his lap. I let him hold his little brother until he signs (and says) "all done", though I keep a good hold on Manly, too, of course.

 I was so excited to get a picture of Manly Mouse with his eyes open!

 We got this fruit bouquet from one of the groups that Mike leads; isn't it amazing???!!  I've seen these different places, but I never thought I'd actually have one of our own at our house for our very own sampling enjoyment! Serious yummyness.  Doesn't Manly look like he's going to take a bit of it? He was pretty impressed. For sure.

 Our Easter Bunnies.

Mighty really liked his ears. The girls did, too, and posed for pictures with "rabbit expressions" and "plain expressions". I just didn't include those photos. For some strange reason I thought this post might tend to be a little photo-heavy.....

 Our new neighbors invited us to an Easter egg hunt on Saturday. At the last minute, I decided to go along; my Mom volunteered right away to stay with Manly in the car so that I could go with my Dad to take the older three to hunt eggs. Mighty and I went with the 1-4 year olds; Grandpa Bob took the girls in the 5-8 year old category. I was a little bummed not to see the girls enjoy their first hunt, but I had so much fun watching Mighty get the hang of "see-the-egg-grab-the-egg"!

 Some people complain that there are not cute little boy clothes. I'm not sure there's much cuter than toddler Carharts, though. Well, maybe toddler neckties......or suspenders.....get the idea that I like little boy clothes? Or maybe I just like my little boy......it could be that, too....

 Sunny found a "prize egg" and won this mohawk wig. She thinks it is a cockatoo wig. I think she saw one once at the Minnesota Zoo.

Yes, actually Sunny won TWO cockatoo wigs. What could be better for a 1,000 sq. ft. house than one cockatoo wig? Two, of course.

Really, I loved it. The girls both got suckers from the Easter bunny and balloon bears from a clown and loved the egg hunting. Most of the candy was sent to my aunt and uncle's store because we really can't take much more around here, but still, the hunt itself was fun. The prizes were fun (Miss Mouse won a light-up thingy that I can't find words for right now), and the sampling of treats on Saturday afternoon was plenty - sort of a pre-Easter warm-up, you could say.

One of my favorite moments of the egg hunting morning was when the clown asked Miss Mouse what type of animal she wanted. It was loud in the room where we were, and she hadn't heard that the clown had asked Sunny whether she wanted a bear or a dog. Sunny had said "dog", though somehow she ended up with a bear. Well, Miss Mouse just heard "what type of animal do you want?", so she answered: "A penguin please". The look on that clown's face was priceless.

Easter pictures.

 He's not a crabby baby; he just looks that way when his Mama takes him out on a bright sunny day, even though she squirrels him away in the shade.

Oh well, Sunny told me tonight that when he has that "little puff" on his face when he frowns and then he puts his arms up to be "a strong little guy" that is her favorite way to see him. She really likes these pictures.

 I was decently happy with this Easter picture. It was the first I took and the best. 

Easter 2014 - Miss Mouse, 7; Mighty Mouse 19 months; Sunny Mouse, 5; Manly Mouse, 9 days.

And the best family picture we got.

Trust me, this is the best. No one is crying; no one is picking their nose; no one has their mouth wide open (though that particular picture is great fun); and no one is flailing their arms too terribly badly. Ah well. Maybe next year.