Of the Struggle of Art & the Egg Beater School of Dishwashing

Best sibling picture so far (no one crying or complaining!)




The older 3 had a lot of fun painting a picture. A picture. I spent the whole time laughing and taking pictures. (And yes, Jenny fixed her own hair) Here is a sampling.

 The best moments were when one of them was reaching for the paint...

Now I'm either going to sell it for millions ("the individual & community----the struggle to express autonomy realized in the clashing colored lines...), or just give it to an appreciative aunt.

The kids enjoyed their reading time. They were reading books by their great-uncle, "Hamster Holmes" a series about a detective Hamster and his firefly sidekick "Dr. Watt" who speaks via morse code. Isaiah got very excited and quoted bits of it over and over.

The others shared in his joy. Isaiah's meltdowns kind of dampen the whole mood in the house, but the flip side is his fits of joy can be quite contagious.

I wish I could credit my great homeschooling plans and tell you he was actually reading it to them, but he's not reading yet, just drawing on his very impressive memory.

Isaiah's quotes:
After watching a huge crane move a house's airconditioner up over the house and onto the truck, he decided it needed to reverse the process, "He wants to put the box back! He wants to put the box back!"
As we dragged him into the house, he collapsed onto the carport floor.
"Isaiah, get off the carport floor" Grandma said.
In all seriousness, he answered "I can't, I'm dead"

Later, on grabbing his beloved blaster from Kuzzles and shoving a girly toy at her as a replacement (Kuzzles wasn't buying it) "She wants the pink toy!!" he insisted, holding onto the blaster.

Isaiah doesn't need as much sleep as the girls do anymore, and now gets to go to the "brothers room" as he calls it. One of his favorite Bible videos is about Joseph, which he calls "Joseph AND HIS BROTHERS" when referring to it. He is very excited about a room belonging to "the brothers", except he hasn't got a brother yet. Once he was pretending to be Joseph, wrestling against imaginary adversaries pulling off his coat "And they took off Joseph's coat!" when Jenny came up to me, and said reassuringly "We don't have other brothers." So Isaiah isn't going to be tossed down a well anytime soon.

Now he gets to stay up later and ostensibly sleep in "the brothers room" which is just the play room with a bed in it. (A bed which, alas, he keeps pulling the slats up from so that the mattress will sag like a slide, wherein he reenacts Agent Kallus being pulled toward the vacuum to space that the Ghost blasts out of the Star Destroyer. Agent Kallus lives. Isaiah gets disciplined. The ikea bed has so far, survived without major damage....)
He mostly wants to sit in Josh's lap, and give him directions how to play Star Wars Battlefront II.

"Now I want to be the green stormtrooper!" (color coded clone troopers).

 Our evenings are more exciting now, punctuated with exclamations of joy such as "we kill the evil robots!"

Isaiah was very excited to help with the dishes. Evidently you can clean almost anything with soapy water and an egg beater. He spent 10 minutes beating the soapy water with the egg beater while proclaiming "Isaiah is helping Mommy with the dishes!" He was very pleased.

He loves play acting bits of movies, often quoting 10 minutes worth of dialogue. He is excellent at mimicking intonation, and memorizing words he does not know the meanings of.
Nothing thrills him more than when you join in. The other day, he pointed his little toy blaster at me, and pretended to be Agent Kallus confronting Ezra "Its over for you Jedi. A master and an apprentice. Such a rare find these days." I said "I don't know where you get your ideas, Buckethead, I work alone." He smiled encouragingly at me, and corrected "delusions."



Jenny told me last week "Mommy, when you grow up, you will be a Grandmommy." Because of her little "Baby Isaiah" stuffed hippo, she calls herself the "Mommy Hippopotamus", so I get to be the "Grandmommy Hippopotamus" a term she bestows on me as a sign of affection and good will.

When we went to church, a woman told her she was beautiful. "Yes" she answered....

Jenny and Isaiah "doing the laundry" (they were putting clothespins on the line)

We've been working on gentleness and not hurting other people and sin and all that. (prayers appreciated!). I tried to explain to her that it makes God sad when we hurt littler & weaker people. Then I told her it makes God happy when we be kind to littler & weaker people.
Jenny gently stroked Mariam's head, and then exuberantly rocketed down the hall, proclaiming "GOD IS HAPPY!!"

Kuzzles quotes of the week
"no no no no no!"
...in response to anything.

Also, "Daddy--daddy-dadddy" in a mournful tone, pushing up a chair and climbing it to look out at the driveway where he was last seen, leaving for work. Throughout the day, she will sometimes shout "Daddy" towards the driveway, in faith that he is hiding just out of site. Then when he returns from work, its  "DADDY-DADDY-DADDY!" running into his arms.

Isaiah was make-believing with Jenny. They were pretending the rocks were food in their little flower pot. They kept bringing rocks over to me to have me pretend to eat, and comment on how tasty they were.

A thoughtful baby....

A typical scene from our lives. Josh is home from work, trying to read "Fox in Socks" to an appreciative but somewhat active audience. Just imagine all of them trying to climb onto his back and those are the pictures I missed, because Josh found out I was taking pictures, making true family moments artificial, etc, etc.

Mariam...

...is ridiculously cute.