Domestic Life

Update from the domestic side of Ray Family Life:
Wake up, eat breakfast, do dishes. Play, eat lunch, do dishes, take naps. Make dinner, eat dinner, do dishes (or not), get ready for bed. The end, see you next week.


Just kidding...kind of. The boring truth is that we haven't been up to much lately. We had a couple "nice" days (low 60s, which really was nice for us), but now we're back to cold rain again. Hannah was inside all day yesterday, so I set up her tent (from Nana - similar to this one, but in pink camouflage) in the living room. She loved it and she and Elizabeth spent quite a while playing and going in and out. She ate a "picnic" lunch in there and of course wanted to sleep in it for her nap. Luckily it fit in our bedroom and her mattress fit inside as well (more on why she's sleeping in our room in a minute). She conked right out and took a 2+ hour nap - and I had to wake her up! Then her friend Allie came over and the two girls had a blast coloring and "hiding" from Bethie in the tent. A success! And she slept in it last night and did great, except for waking up once, flailing against the sides, scared. I got her calmed down and she was fine.

Hannah's on Easter break this week from school, so we don't even have that to distract us. since there's not much else to do, I'm letting her watch a little more TV - currently Bob the Builder. Later we'll probably play Candy Land - Dora, natch. (Side note: when we first got this game and I began teaching it to Hannah, I realized why it has been such an enduring classic for 60-ish years. I probably could have said nothing and turned her loose and she would have figured it out. It is such an intuitive process and she just "got it." She's really cute - a game just isn't complete if she doesn't get a "pink card," one of the various pieces of candy that sends you forward or backward. She doesn't care which direction she goes, she just wants the pink card. She's just barely starting to get the concept of winning and losing...darn. I liked it much better when she had no concept at all - games were much more fun.)

Bethie is still Bethie. We can't believe we're less than 3 weeks from her first birthday! How did that happen? She still just scootches around on her tummmy - no crawling, no pulling up, she can't even sit her own self up from a prone position. When we pull her up though and help her "walk," she screeches and wiggles and takes off - usually after Hannah. When you try to sit her back down she stiffens up her whole body so you can't sit her down. She would probably "walk" around the house all day if our backs could handle it. She's a very sensitive soul. She often cries because her feelings have been hurt. Her face just collapses and if she's laying on her tummy, she puts her head down on her hands and sobs. If she remembers to put her thumb in her mouth or has a parent nearby to comfort her, she calms down pretty quickly. (One of the worst offenders? Leaving her in a room and shutting the door behind you. We've asked Hannah not to do this because Elizabeth just wails - it's pure torture.)

Bethie says "baby" and "uh-oh" and can make the sounds for mama, daddy, apple, and several others (she just doesn't match the meanings yet). We're finding that she's quite the mimicker. She repeats many many sounds she hears - anything from letter sounds to tone of voice. She signs "more" and "all done" and is starting to sign "please." She now copies us and folds her hands when it's time to pray before meals. When we ask her to give us something she complies. And since she eats absolutely everything she finds on the floor, she knows that when she hears, "Now what are you eating, child?" she pulls the offending object out of her mouth and hands it to me (unless it's especially tasty, like dried orange Play-Doh, in which case she cries as if you ran over her puppy).

Ever since we got back from California, she had been waking up earlier and earlier. When it was 4:10 a.m. and nothing worked until I nursed her, we decided something had to be done. So we moved Hannah on her mattress into our room, intending to soothe Bethie upon her early-morning wake up, but not take her out of bed and make her figure out that she needed to go back to sleep. That first day, she only got one (long) nap and went to bed at 6:45 p.m. She slept until 5:45, I nursed her on the couch (instead of our bed) and put her back in her own bed. She went right back to sleep until 8:00! It's been pretty much the same since last Thursday night. This morning I didn't nurse her until 6:45 - 12 hours of sleep! So Hannah will probably move back into their room tonight and we'll pray that Bethie keeps sleeping well. We'll see!

I'll leave you with a few recent Hannah-isms. Thanks for reading!

(On the plane to California…)
H: Mommy, did you remember to pack my vitamins?
M: Yes, they’re in your shoe (meaning, in her shoe in her suitcase).
H: (totally confused and looking at her feet) I didn’t feel them.

H: Mommy, tomorrow can you play Dress-up with me?
M: Sure babe.
H: I mean Snake. (Then she lays on the floor and wriggles like a snake to demonstrate - don't we all get Dress-up and Snake confused?)

I was explaining to Don why Hannah had a grilled cheese with mayonnaise for lunch and she interjects, “I don’t want to discuss it.”

In Hannah-land, Spaghetti = Stabecki.

We were trying to explain the time change and Daylight Savings Time and she said, “So that’s why last night it was still morning?”

Bethie was saying the sound “ah, ah” and Hannah exclaimed “Mommy, Sissy’s trying to say ottoman!”

Hannah’s friend Anna explained to me that her mommy and daddy like it when she drinks beer because it’s healthy for her.

We were listening to a Superchick song called "So Bright", and when they repeat “So bright, so bright, so bright, so bright…” she asked, “Are they saying ‘pretzel?’”

(Here you can tell she still has a few, uh, minor gender identification issues to work out…)
H: I’m the Princess of Jazz.
M: Can you scat?
H: Yeah. (She skips across the kitchen.) That’s my scatting…Have you met my wife? He’s nice.
M: What’s his name?
H: Jasmine. He likes people.

(Finally, a stewardship interaction to warm the hearts of both her earthly daddy and her heavenly Daddy.)
“Especially coins are really important for God because they’re silver. I’m going to give this big big big one to Jesus (a quarter) because it has a bird on it."