Things have been busy here.  To share with you all on what has been going on, I’ll share what each family member has been doing lately.

John-What has John been up to?  Well, work of course!  Last week John was home 4 days due to strep throat.  He is feeling well now, though dutifully finishing up his antibiotics.  As you can imagine he has plenty of work to catch up on.  Not only has he been busy at work, but he has taken on several projects on the side, which means he hasn’t had a whole lot of time off lately.  We are looking forward to his brother Mark coming next week.  John plans on taking a day off to go to Branson with the family and share some time with his brother before he goes off to Iraq.

Miriam (me)-I have been busy with Mothering Matters decision making and general miscellanious leadership in that area.  Housework is still escaping my grasp, and was overwhelming me this week, but I have tried to relax about it and amazingly that actually worked to get more of it done!  John’s sister Megan is getting married next month and I am sewing Elise’s flower girl dress and my bridesmaid dress, so those are a couple projects that will keep me busy over the next few weeks.  Of course, I have been caring for Will and Elise.  Elise and I took a week off school last week in order to clean the house.  I didn’t get very far on cleaning, but every day I was busy with meetings having to do with Mothering Matters or other things.  As a mom sometimes things get overwhelming and I wish I could just sign off the job for an afternoon.  John gave me that afternoon on Sunday.  I had Will with me, but Elise spent the afternoon at Nana’s and then John took her to AWANA and picked her up and put her to bed.  I spent the day at my parents, playing games, talking, watching a movie with my mom, and just general relaxation.  It felt good.  I feel bad when I am so frustrated with Elise when she isn’t even being difficult.  It is just my own selfishness, stress, and lack of concentration that causes her to grate on my nerves.  Since my break, things have gone a bit better in that area.  I did have a rough day Monday feeling overwhelmed with everything, but I have been spending time in prayer today, trying to rest in God, and use his strength for the day.  I am feeling much more together now.

Elise-Elise’s days don’t have a lot of variety.  She has been busy with playing make-believe, doing her school work, making misc drawings and crafts, play-dates and sometimes helping with housework.  She finished two workbooks in school this week.  A number one and a capital letter one.  She is excited to start the next books: counting 1-120, and lowercase letters.  We’ve been working on reading and have not got very far yet.  But yesterday went a little better after I introduced Elise to her “magic finger.”  She gets distracted and doesn’t keep her eyes on the word, so we pretended her finger was magic and that when it touched a letter it made the letter sound.  This helped her concentrate on putting the sounds in the right order and using all the letter sounds, rather than picking one sound from the word and guessing from that.   Thank you Gail Stice for helping me recognize what to do to help Elise in this area.

Will-Well, let’s see.  Will’s days have even less variety than Elise’s.  He sleeps, eats, and smiles.  He has learned some new skills though.  He makes a larger variety of noises and enjoys carrying on a “conversation.”  He is gaining more control over his hands and can grasp them in front, pick up soft things, such as blankets if his hand touches it, and reach for and bat at his toys.  He also spends lots of time licking and sucking on his fingers.  He does not like tummy time much unless it is on my stomach.  When he is on my stomach he will hold himself up and look around and at my face.  He has a strong back as well, so when he sits in my lap, he needs my help just for balancing, but not for holding him up.  In fact I sat him on the couch today with pillows and he sat there a little before the lure of his feet caused him to fall face forward in slow motion.  He is sleeping wonderfully at night.  The last four nights he has not awaken to eat.  He sleeps from 8:30pm to 7am.  His naps are still short and usually in the swing rather than the cradle, but we will work on those soon now that his night schedule seems to be so consistent.  Oh, and his spit up problem has subsided significantly.  I think as he went longer at night, he and I had to adjust in the change in milk supply and that caused the couple of days with more coming back up.  He seems back to normal now.