When I look back at the pictures from January, it seems impossible that all this was part of the same month. It's even more impossible to believe that it was the month right before this one. So much of it seems like such a long time ago. January was a tough month around here. Sickness ruled our world, including my own. I can't believe that other things actually happened, and I even occasionally took pictures. Without this picture proof, I wouldn't remember a bit of this.
We had a little one celebrate his 3rd birthday. I can't show a picture of the front of the cake because it would reveal his real name (that's fortunate for me because the front of the cake is U--G--L---Y! I am way out of practice!!). He's our resident Pokey Little Puppy. He's the quietest of the whole group, but don't let that fool you. He can be a little sneaky and defiant in his own special ways. He likes nothing more than to sit on a lap with a book, so he has the right mom right now. Iron Man is "his" superhero, and yellow is "his" color. Tattling is his favorite way to interact with adults, and I sometimes wonder how he would converse if he couldn't tattle. I know he has a lot inside him that is waiting to come out at a time when he feels truly safe and secure. He is the favorite of some of our caregivers because he is the least likely to get in trouble.
This one is my girly-girl in a sea of boys. She adores princesses, but I have a hard time encouraging the princess thing. I'm working on it for her sake. For now she is adding her own princess touches to the masculine world in which she resides. Basia and I lean to the tomboy side of things, so she is truly alone in this.
The picture above is the most beautiful thing about the month of January. It is a picture of our new dining room table. We took some Christmas money and had it commissioned by a local family that does woodworking. It seats our entire family! That is big, and I am amazed at the difference it has made in our family. We have eaten every single meal and snack at that table since it was delivered. We used to be separated for meals. The younger kids sat at the kitchen table. The biggest two ate at the bar, and Jon and I usually ate in the living room. The kids would always get wild. We would always have to intervene and clean up big messes. There was always a division between the "foster" kids and the two oldest. This table has been a big shift in bringing us all together. All my kids eat at the same table-there is no longer a division between them. Jon and I almost always eat with them. That has cut down on the rowdiness at meal time. It has cut down on the messes. It has created tons of learning moments, where the kids are learning about family-style dining, setting the table, passing the peas, waiting to eat until everyone is served, what is appropriate dinnertime conversation, and many more little nuggets of wisdom and etiquette. I feel so utterly blessed every single time I look around the table at my whole family together. It just does not get old. At all. Even the tiny one is often in my arms during meal time so he can be a part of the family. I am truly madly in love with this table and the togetherness it has created. Love. Love. Love.
Rosca de Reyes. We got a fancy Rosca this year. It was so pretty and so delicious. I think about 5 of the kids found a baby Jesus in their piece of bread. They are the ones responsible for the meal one of these days, as a result. Basia is in charge of the tamale making!
Nostalgia! I remember my dad getting on the floor with us to play with Lincoln Logs. I do the same with my kids, but they tend to take over anything I am building. Brishen went a little crazy the last time we filled the floor with Lincoln Logs. He had to wait until the little ones went to bed in order to confiscate all of their buildings to add to his own. The finished product was about 6'8" and stood firm until morning when I made him take it apart before a toddler pulled it over on himself or his brother.
This is my mealtime view!
Brishen went to taekwondo practice one night and returned with his black belt! He had done the majority of his test in December but had not received official word that he passed the test. I wasn't there for the beautiful moment when all his years' of hard work came together for this honor, but I'm a proud mama just the same. He was proud enough to post about it on facebook. That's big for him, since he's maybe posted something twice in his two years' on the site.
These two pictures are a little disturbing to me. They show that our home economics lessons have been lax at the Moore Manor Academy Homeschool. These clothes are considered "folded" by Basia. She spent a whole evening in my room, with a show on my computer, "folding" these clothes. I just assumed that I would find them somewhat folded in the end. Um, no. I really cannot fathom what she was doing and how she thought for a second that these would count for folded clothes. She truly believes that she helped and that these are folded. The next morning I asked her to put these folded clothes in the appropriate baskets, and I found that they were not even sorted for the various owners. I'm still scratching my head.
The sickness that reared its ugly head over and over during the month of January really struck good by the end of the month. I took the tiniest one to the doctor one afternoon and did not get to come home for five full days, as he was hospitalized. He was diagnosed with one of those highly contagious diseases that warrants a call or two or three by the health department (no, not to the health department--they called me!). It could have been so much more serious in one so little, so we are pleased that he is recovering. It was hard to learn, though, that those of us who have been sick probably have two more months of sickness left. We are getting a crash course in pulse-oximeters, giant oxygen tanks in the living room, piercingly loud apnea monitors in the middle of the night, and figuring out the difference between false alarms and the real ones. It's a lot to handle sometimes, but we see the light at the end of this tunnel--somewhere in the month of March, I think.
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