My Little Artist

Notice on her All About Me poster, her outfit matches the one she is wearing.

Josie is an artist.

I realize that doesn't necessarily mean she will grow up to be an artist by trade.  In fact, she has told me emphatically, "When I grow up, I want to be a scientist, and I'm not changing my mind!"

Whether it's bugs or berries, Josie likes to study it.  The picture on the left shows her watching her ant named Elevator.

I think the exclamation mark that definitely accompanied that statement was used in response to how many times people have told her she could be an artist someday.

I don't know, or care, if she will grow up and make a career out of her talent.  (Maybe she'll be a stay at home mom who illustrates books...maybe one of those books will be written by me...)  I'm not the sort of mom that imagines my child's whole life out before they start kindergarten.  (...Won't we have fun when Disney makes the book into a movie, and we get to spend time together in California?...)  Those types of parents shouldn't let their imaginations run wild.  They need to let their kids live their own lives.  (...I'll watch the twins, Tracy and Stacy, while she helps the Disney artists capture the feel of the characters.)  Seriously though, I hope she knows that I don't care what she does as long as she's happy.

Art makes her happy.  I think even if she becomes a scientist, she won't desert her art completely.  Once when she was four she came to me practically in tears.  When I asked her what was wrong she cried, "I haven't painted anything today!"

This was one of those small moments when you learn a lot about your child.  I saw in her eyes that not only does she love to paint, she feels she needs to paint.

October 2009

September 2010

It's not only painting.  She also loves to draw, color, sculpt and, simply, create.

April 2009

July 2011--I was cleaning out the garage when I noticed Josie had brought her drawing outside.  She was drawing the tree across the street.

September 2011

The way she puts colors together has fascinated me for years.  One calm afternoon while the boys were at school, we lay on the floor coloring side by side.  I was planning a beautiful monochromatic My Little Pony in which I would use all the different purples in our 64-count crayon box.  I was combining darks and lights and telling her the names of all the purples because, of course, she can see that they are all different and must know what they are called.  I was enjoying the unusual quiet when Josie leaned over and said, "Mom, aren't you going to put more color in your picture?  Here try some yellow with that."  She was right.  One strand of pony hair colored yellow made all the purples pop.

 

We recently invited family members over for her first Art Show.  We covered the walls of our home with some of her masterpieces and Josie got to discuss her art.  We ate BBQ and talked about the pictures of family, flowers, and animals covering the walls.  She gave a small art talk/tour which ended at the wall by the bathroom.

Her most popular works were her abstracts.  Like I said, that girl knows how to put colors together.

My favorite story happened last year when she returned to preschool after recovering from her broken leg.  It seems, in her absence, the boys and girls had paired off into preschool versions of girlfriends and boyfriends.  (To protect the innocent I have refrained from using full names.)  She came home from school one day and said, "D--- and J--- are together.  A---- and DJ---- are together.  They want me to go with B---, but, Mom, I just can't be with someone who scribbles!"

I'm glad my girl has standards.

I'm glad that she has found something she loves so much.

I'm glad that even though she doesn't look like this anymore...

January 2008

 She is still my little artist.

Oddly Grateful

June 2003

Mat and I went on a date to the movies last night.  Walking in, we began laughing at the time we went to see X-Men United (or X2) and I kept getting up and going to the bathroom.  Although I was very pregnant with my third child and Mat knew all about how the baby rests on the bladder, he finally leaned over and asked me what was up.  I responded that I felt like I was going into labor and was feeling restless.  Later that day, I felt slightly annoyed that I had missed so much of the movie when all the contractions went away and I was still uncomfortably pregnant.  After all, I had two other children.  I knew what actual labor felt like, and I was not one to mistake the signs.  If anything, I was the mom who liked to hang out at home as long as I possibly could before sounding the alarm that the baby was coming.  This cycle of experiencing more than the normal Braxton Hicks contractions and being convinced I was in labor repeated itself a few other times as the due date neared and passed.  My third child, it seemed to me, could not make up his mind.

As Mat paid for our movie tickets, yesterday, I started thinking about the fact that had I actually gone into labor that day, Isaac would have been born premature.  This may have contributed to him experiencing more health complications than he experienced by being born with Down syndrome which caused plenty of issues to present themselves.

Standing in the movie line, I suddenly felt grateful that Isaac's legs had been tangled in the umbilical cord, stopping labor from progressing that day, and beyond, allowing him extra time in utero to develop and grow.  Even after his due date passed and they induced me, my labor would not progress past what could be forced by the drugs they gave me because he was held firmly in place and could not drop into the birth canal.  He eventually had to be taken by emergency C-section.  It felt like a very odd thing to be grateful for.

That night, as I mulled over those thoughts, I realized that my new insightful gratitude could partly be attributed to the book that I just finished reading.  365 Thank Yous by John Kralik was a great book about a man who, when he hit a low point in his life, got it into his head to write 365 thank-you notes in one year.  As the project progressed, his circumstances and attitude about life improved tremendously.  It is a true story and a great one.  It is one of those books that I would recommend to anyone. 

I love this quote from it:

"Whether or not my life had changed, my experience of it, moment by moment, had been transformed.  When bad things happened, they might slow me, but they no longer unraveled me."

My experience also brought to mind another one of those books, The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom.  In it Corrie and her sister Betsie are prisoners in a concentration camp when Betsie states that she can find things to be grateful for even in their pitiable situation.  When her list of things she is grateful for ends with "fleas,"  Corrie feels her sister has gone too far.  However, later she discovered that it was the fleas that infested their barracks that kept the guards out and allowed them more freedom within those walls than anywhere else in the camp.  This book is also an account written about true events.  

When I remembered that story, I no longer felt strange in my gratitude.  I suddenly found it odd that it had taken me so long to feel grateful for the tangle of legs and cord that extended Isaac's time in the womb, giving him those precious extra weeks to prepare to take on the world.

It All Started with Donner...

This Valentine card to Isaac features the name he now likes to be called:  Isaac-Rudolph-Viking-Smallish Bear.

It is getting cumbersome, but it started out innocently enough.  He wanted to be called Rudolph, which made sense because he'd been calling his dad "Donner" for weeks.  (Just in case, some of you aren't aware, Donner is Rudolph's father in the classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer movie that they've shown on TV every year since I can remember.)

He began referring to Mat as Donner shortly after Christmas.  I could tell it was different than his run of the mill pretending game because he called him "Donner" at all times and when I'd call him "Dad" he would swiftly correct me.  Always.

I waited for Isaac to get bored of it, but instead he began calling himself "Rudolph" and me "Dancer."  Then, Josie was labeled "Prancer", Kimball "Comet" and Evan, much to his chagrin, was dubbed "Santa Claus."

He refers to us using these new names often, but he sticks to none as staunchly as "Donner."  I'm truly beginning to wonder if Mat will ever get to be called "Dad" by him again.

During this renaming period, I visited Isaac's classroom at school to talk to them about what Down syndrome is and what it is not.  Ever since Kimball was in first grade, I've visited the boys' classrooms at school and read the book We'll Paint the Octopus Red and answered questions about Isaac and Down syndrome.

This year, it got kind of rowdy because Isaac was insisting I call him Rudolph and when I told his classmates that he has been renaming everyone in the family, they all wanted reindeer names too.  Luckily, he is a connoisseur of reindeer books so we had more to chose from than just the Night Before Christmas variety.

Soon after this, we put his How to Train a Dragon comforter on his bed and he began playing with those toys and calling himself a Rudolph-Viking.  I was dubbed "Viking Princess" for reasons I'm unaware of, other than the fact that I do help layout the plans of where we will hide and where we will attack when the Monstrous Nightmare dragons come.  Oddly, Wilma, our miniature dachshund, is the only other family member involved in this batch of names.  She is, of course, a dragon.

The "Smallish Bear" part of his name he has taken from Disney's Brother Bear.  This older movie revived in our house when Mat and I went on a date a few weeks ago and left Kimball and Evan in charge.  (Can I just say that having a kid of legal babysitting age in the house is the coolest thing ever?  Although what "Donner" says is true--now that he can babysit, it seems that he's gone more than he is home.)

If you have persevered through this rambling blog I'd like to give you a reward:  Come to our house on any given Saturday morning and you will see Isaac tip-toeing around warning you not to wake up Donner.  You'll then know that Mat is trying to catch some sleep, and you can reply, "O.K., Isaac-Rudolph-Viking-Smallish Bear."

For your trouble, you will receive a wondrous gift:  a brilliant smile from a seven-year-old boy and a brand new friend.

So Many Books. So Little Time.

I wrote this in 2009 when we had planned on our Family Stories topic being about hobbies.  We ended up writing about childhood games that year, but I still had this saved in the Family Stories file on the computer.  When I realized I hadn't written a single thing in my blog this month, I thought of this and decided I'd add it in with my other ramblings about life.

Books have meant a great deal to me since I was very young. I remember longing to learn how to read and following my mother around, toting a book, hoping to convince her to read it just one more time.  I spent much of the money I earned in my youth on books and a good deal of my free time reading them.  I not only love to read books, but I love how books smell and feel. I love how they look organized on shelves and desktops or in bins and baskets.

The first long conversation Mat and I shared was about books.  We have read many books together and to our kids. When we were dating, we read parts of The Book of Mormon together as he investigated the church.  When we were engaged, we read The Tao of Pooh snuggled up together between our college classes.  During one of those first lean years of marriage, Mat splurged and picked up a hardcover copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for a surprise family Christmas present, and we read it aloud together.  What warm feelings that memory brings!  Now, we have books in every room in our home.

When I was pregnant with Kimball, I excitedly signed up for The Children’s Book of the Month Club. I slowly began to build our library of children’s books before I even picked out a crib set.  Some of the first books I ordered were four Little Critter board books.  Whenever I see them, I think of Kimball pulling all the books down from the shelf in our living room in Aggie Village.  He would sit among them and “read.”  Each child, in turn, has pulled out whole bookshelves and explored the magic contained inside all different kinds of books.  Only Evan has pulled an actual bookshelf down on himself!

I have learned through the years that what I read has a strong impact on the way I feel and how I look at life.  I have learned to be wise about what I read, and I try to encourage the kids to choose good books.  I try to help them to find favorite authors and explore new genres.  We strive to read out of the scriptures as a family each day so we can bring the Spirit into our home.

I’m excited to see the growth our children make as they come to love different books, subjects, and authors.  And, I hope our family will continue to experience joy as we share our love of books.

Sweet Success

 Who says fine motor therapy can't be fun?

Ahhh, the sweet taste of success! 

Isaac Speaks: Update

Picture taken in Utah at the Inn on the Hill

Sept. 22, 2010:   I had a great day with Isaac today.

I found an unfamiliar bag next to the pile of backpacks in the foyer. I picked it up to find a letter in it saying my child was to present to the class about themselves using this half piece of poster board and this questionnaire. It was due any day this week. It being Wednesday already, I couldn't believe I had missed this assignment coming home. Oh well, I thought, Isaac is not one to tell me about extra stuff he gets assigned.

After all the regular reading homework had been done, I sat down on the couch with Isaac to fill out the questionnaire. It was wonderful. I asked him the questions. He answered them. And I understood him! Many of the answers I never knew, like the fact that his favorite candy is orange Starburst. Like the fact that when he grows up he wants to be Robin (from Teen Titans) because Robin is awesome. His favorite sport is football. And his favorite animal is a mammoth (I would have guessed elephant, so I was close). His favorite ice cream is "chocolate cookie dough." It went on and on, front and back. What fun we had!

Many times throughout the past few years I have been brought to tears by frustration and sadness because I couldn't REALLY talk to Isaac. My sign language wasn't good enough, and therefore neither was his, to give him a range of conversation much beyond the labeling of things. And although he could label a great many things, it just wasn't enough. Then, when he started to talk, there were so many times that I didn't know what he was trying to say. My head would hurt with the effort of trying to understand, but still, it was not enough. I knew I was standing on a beach looking out over the ocean, unable to see the vastness that lay beneath the waves. It hurt.

These past few months, we have started being able to really speak to one another and today was a shining example of all that is left to be explored with him.

I spent a good part of the evening working on the poster board for his presentation. Isaac is still at the scribble phase in his fine motor, but that fact didn't bother me as I looked at his answers and filled the space with his favorite things. I had a great time using my scrapbooking supplies and stickers. At one point, Evan came in and commented that he had the same assignment but it wasn't due this week. He spoke of his plans for the poster board and the bag he needed to fill with things he wanted to share. Huh, I thought, the second and third grade teachers must have come up with the idea together.

Now, here's the kicker: If your brain is working at a quicker pace then mine was, you've probably figured it out already...At 11:00pm Mat came to bed and I woke up to move Josie into her own bed. As I lay down after a few hours of sleep and thought back over the evening, I realized that the letter inside the bag had no defining characteristics like a teacher's name or grade on it and that the bag I had found was Evan's all along! How's that for communication?

I couldn't stop laughing. After I woke Mat up with my "quiet" giggling, I decided I'd get up and write it all out in my blog.

UPDATE:

For those of you wondering what happened with Isaac's project, here it is...

 His teacher, Mrs. Pfohl, was nice enough to give him some time to present it to the class.  He dressed up in his Robin costume, used his musical Kung Fu Panda birthday card for an attention getter, and told the class about himself (with a little help from Mom).

He concluded with a video of his favorite dance from So You Think You Can Dance.  It's called Yellow.  Check it out--  http://youtu.be/rrxOBxlQmho    It is amazing!!!

20 Kisses

Anyone who has ever tried to teach a child to count has probably been frustrated with "The Teens."  My kids always sound something like this....10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 18, 19, 20.  They are fine after that.  The teens are always learned last.

They also need to be taught how to read and write these mysterious numbers!  Grrr...and understand that you say the second number first...9...teen, but write it last.  Why is it so confusing?

Josie and Isaac are in this stage together right now.  Because Isaac is older he's been working on it longer.  Because he has Down syndrome, Josie is pulling ahead.  But, I had to laugh as we put our Halloween decorations up last month because they were trying to help each other count the ghost lights we were assembling in the front yard.  They were proud because they were doing it repeatedly without my help and always coming up with the same answer:  23.  I was amazed at their consistent results!

I was amazed because there are only 12 ghost lights.  They must have been skipping around a lot.

That is when I thought to myself---These kids need more kisses.  One of my favorite strategies to teach counting is a daily dose of 20 kisses.  They help me count (when they aren't giggling).  They get repetition and I get to kiss their faces off.  It's a win-win.

It doesn't help with the reading and writing part, but it's really fun.

Colorful

Honeymoon-- January 1997

Sometimes laundry, endless mess,
and the continuous needs of my family
seem to turn my "happily ever after"
to a monotonous gray.

But, if I can get a little rest and look
at life from a different perspective,
I see that my family is what makes my life
COLORFUL.

Isaac 2006

Kimball and Evan 2005

Evan 2006

Isaac and Josie 2006

Evan and Josie 2006

Kimball 1998

Kimball 2006

Isaac and Mat 2006

Josie 2008

Evan 2009

Ambra and Mat 2010

Fall = Football

In our house, fall equals football.

It has taken me years to get used to this concept as I tried to fit football into the schedule as if it were a regular activity instead of
THE ACTIVITY.

This year, with both Kimball and Evan playing (and Isaac helping them practice), we have football everyday except on Sunday.

Football practice always runs from 5pm to 7pm. "But, that's dinner time!" you cry? Yes, it is. The past few years I've wrestled with football practice and lost. I tried getting dinner on the table early. I tried eating dinner together after practice. I tried everyone attending practice and enjoying the fresh air. I tried everything I could think of not to miss out on the family time.

This year, Mat informed me that Kimball had practice Mon, Wed, Fri and Evan was on Tues/Thurs. I forfeited the match. Football wins again. But, this time without the struggle. Guess what? It worked!

I don't attend practices. I make dinner and we eat at the regular time. Whoever is at football eats when they get home and everyone is happy. Mat and I split up on Saturday to watch games which are often scheduled at the same time. I found out I like watching football a lot more without hearing Mat's knowledgeable comments and analysis. I like to be blissfully watching my boys and telling myself how well they are doing. I sometimes even cheer for both teams (if the other team is losing badly and I feel sorry for them). These things I can never get away with when Mat is close by.

The top picture in the collage is my favorite. It is Kimball and Mat running the chains for Evan's game. It is my reminder that, maybe, we're not missing out on family time after all.

Now, if only I could get used to March Madness...

Homeschooling Josie

(My genius friend, Angie, had an adorable slide show on her blog which

lead me to discover a website called Picnik. I LOVE it! Making collages
is so much fun.)

My sister, Cama, always teases me that I like to play "The Glad Game." For those of you who have never seen the movie Pollyanna, I'll explain. All you need to do to play The Glad Game is look on the bright side of EVERYTHING. Pollyanna says there usually is a bright side no matter how bad things get.

Well, I found the bright side to Josie's broken leg. I get to homeschool her this year. And, we are having so much fun.

She was all set to attend Bright Beginnings Preschool with Miss Karen like she did last year, but her trampoline accident and immediate surgery squashed those plans. She has a metal plate and five screws in her left tibia(shin bone), and just a good old fashion break in her fibula(the little bone next to the tibia). So, she has been through three casts these past 6 weeks and has more to come as the year marches on.

It's nice to have her home with me. I homeschooled Kimball for preschool and kindergarten until we moved to Loveland in March of 2004. But, both Evan and Isaac attended preschool. Evan, who's currently in third grade, still talks about the "glory days" of preschool.

"That was the best! You worked a little and then played. You sang and then played some more," he reminisces.

I put her in preschool because she wants so much to be big and go to school like her brothers. I also thought she might find some little girls to play with, but the two children she chose as her best friends were both boys. Oh well, I can't deny that boys are fun. I had considered keeping her home this year to spend more time with her, but I didn't want to disappoint her. So, I guess the broken leg wasn't the worst thing that could have happened. Let's just all pray it heals as completely as the doctor assures me it will.

Until then, I'll try to soak up the extra time with her and enjoy it. The pictures above show a few things we've done. We have played games and learned to say "Good game" to each other whether we win or lose. We learned all about mixing colors to make new ones. We built a cardboard doll house that she is still coloring on. And, I made two charts to remind us both to keep track of all she's learning. She earns stickers for a Treasure Box prize for doing her handwriting and math work. She gets to put an "X" in a box on her Book Count for each book we read. When the Book Count chart is full, she gets to pick out a book at Barnes and Noble. Also, I get to use the calendar and weather chart I made when Kimball was little.

How can I not be enjoying this opportunity that life handed me to homeschool Josie?

Isaac Speaks

Picture taken in Utah at the Inn on the Hill

I had a great day with Isaac today.

I found an unfamiliar bag next to the pile of backpacks in the foyer. I picked it up to find a letter in it saying my child was to present to the class about themselves using this half piece of poster board and this questionnaire. It was due any day this week. It being Wednesday already, I couldn't believe I had missed this assignment coming home. Oh well, I thought, Isaac is not one to tell me about extra stuff he gets assigned.

After all the regular reading homework had been done, I sat down on the couch with Isaac to fill out the questionnaire. It was wonderful. I asked him the questions. He answered them. And I understood him! Many of the answers I never knew, like the fact that his favorite candy is orange Starburst. Like the fact that when he grows up he wants to be Robin (from Teen Titans) because Robin is awesome. His favorite sport is football. And his favorite animal is a mammoth (I would have guessed elephant, so I was close). His favorite ice cream is "chocolate cookie dough." It went on and on, front and back. What fun we had!

Many times throughout the past few years I have been brought to tears by frustration and sadness because I couldn't REALLY talk to Isaac. My sign language wasn't good enough, and therefore neither was his, to give him a range of conversation much beyond the labeling of things. And although he could label a great many things, it just wasn't enough. Then, when he started to talk, there were so many times that I didn't know what he was trying to say. My head would hurt with the effort of trying to understand, but still, it was not enough. I knew I was standing on a beach looking out over the ocean, unable to see the vastness that lay beneath the waves. It hurt.

These past few months, we have started being able to really speak to one another and today was a shining example of all that is left to be explored with him.

I spent a good part of the evening working on the poster board for his presentation. Isaac is still at the scribble phase in his fine motor, but that fact didn't bother me as I looked at his answers and filled the space with his favorite things. I had a great time using my scrapbooking supplies and stickers. At one point, Evan came in and commented that he had the same assignment but it wasn't due this week. He spoke of his plans for the poster board and the bag he needed to fill with things he wanted to share. Huh, I thought, the second and third grade teachers must have come up with the idea together.

Now, here's the kicker: If your brain is working at a quicker pace then mine was, you've probably figured it out already...At 11:00pm Mat came to bed and I woke up to move Josie into her own bed. As I lay down after a few hours of sleep and thought back over the evening, I realized that the letter inside the bag had no defining characteristics like a teacher's name or grade on it and that the bag I had found was Evan's all along! How's that for communication?

I couldn't stop laughing. After I woke Mat up with my "quiet" giggling, I decided I'd get up and write it all out in my blog.