Fair Warning...

"Hi Anna.  I wanted you to know that we are going to sell you tomorrow.  So be aware of Mom and Dad bringing you outside ad putting up a sign that says 'Sisters for sale.  Sisters for sale 0$ cents per sister.'  From Ben."

First Lost Tooth!!!!

Benjamin has had a wobbly tooth for several weeks now.  And today it finally popped on out!! At nearly 7 we were quite excited for this milestone.  Benjamin has Constitutional Growth Delay.  Which is basically just a benign form of growth delay that means he is quite small for his age and that his growth is roughly two years behind.  He should catch up by the time he hits adulthood...just hitting growth spurts late....and that includes losing teeth!  I must say his little gap there is adorable!  Can't wait to see what the Tooth Fairy brings tonight!!

A Message For Santa...

Today Ben wants to be sure that Santa should leave something for his doll in a stocking he has hanging on a small Christmas tree in his room. 

WORST St. Lucy Day EVER....Or, Better Late Then Never??

St. Lucy Day was last Saturday and is a much beloved feastday here.  And now that we have our very own Lucy it is all the more important.

We decided to give St Lucy her due we would move our celebration to Monday because the kids would be out all day Saturday with their dad.  And then Sunday we had Mass, Ben's recital, and then out to dinner with Grandma and Grandpa....

By Monday I got socked by a nasty sinus infection and by the time I ran a few errands and waited in line at urgent care I was literally sent to bed by Claudio.

But Anna couldn't bare to put it off another day and Daddy acquiesced.  He cooked up a tube of cinnamon buns amidst a house in absolute horrendous disorder and full of toddler meltdowns.  He got it done though LOL..oy vey.

Thankfully mommy is feeling much better......just in time for the kids to be hit by another cold.  Tis the season!

From Ben To Ilaria.....

For the uninitiated.  "Lolipop" is his cousin.

Ben's First Piano Recital

Benjamin has been playing the piano for several months now and had his first recital today.  He was first up on the program (his teacher admitted to me later that she chose him to go first because she felt his cuteness factor would get the recital off to a good start LOL...you can hear people giggling and "awwww"ing even as he climbs up onto the bench!)

Just a note about his performance.  My silly boy.  The first piece he had prepared to play by memory.  The second piece was not prepared to be played by memory.  I had put the sheet music for the second piece inside his book.  In typical Ben fashion he didn't realize I did that and didn't think to ask OR to worry about it.  He just went ahead and played that by memory as well.  He did a great job, but that was why it was a little choppy.  I realized what he had done as he started to play with no music in front of him.  Typical Ben sort of thing to do.....and good for him!

Toy Organization and New Policies

As Christmas approaches each year I start to panic about the influx of new toys.  Even with regularly going through and weeding out broken and unused or unwanted toys I feel like, with 4 little kids, the amount of toys and therefore the potential for enormous messes is out of control!

To be fair to my kids, part of the problem is they are GREAT players.  They play with everything and they play together without adult input for most of the day...everyday.  They have great imaginations and great creativity and they are busy busy busy.  So it is hard to say before you take out the lego please clean up the playmobil.....because they are using the lego to build a castle for their playmobil.  And up until now they had access to all of the toys at all of the time.

This house is full of closets.  Plenty of closets and storage everywhere.  But the couple that owned the house before us (the original owners..they built the house) had a thing for jackets and coats it seems.  Every one of the closets in every room of the house had coats in it.  It was comical to us as we toured the house before buying it.  So, none of the closets had shelving for storage...just a bar to hang hangers of coats!

We finally got around to adding shelves to this dining room/toy area closet.  So that many of the messy toys are out of sight, and not accessible without help from me.  In fact I even had Claudio put a lock on the door for me.  So, puzzles, blocks, marble runs, playmobil, lego, action figure dolls, board games, dress up, stuffed animals are all in this closet and I can control the coming and going of toys and better deal with the clean up of one before the check-out of another. 

I am in love with this closet!!!

my beautiful lock!!!

And my beautiful keys for my beautiful lock!!

St. Nicholas Day

St Luy, St. Beatrice, St. Anne, St. Benedict

Saturday we celebrated St. Nicholas Day.  The shoes were placed out by the door to be filled with some goodies.

Each year Daddy paints a peg saint dolls for the kids.  This year he did their name saint for each.

Wisemen ADVENTures - A Swinging Good Time

These Wisemen are nuts!!! 

Special Cocoa Time!

There is still time to make some special St. Nicholas Cocoa to help celebrate tomorrow's feastday!  Find the recipe here.

And a dairy free version I came up with a few years ago here.

Wisemen ADVENTures - Looking for Lodging...

Repelling - Wisemen ADVENTures

Now They're Just Being Silly!

Wise Men ADVENTures....

The Wise Men realize this is going to be a LONG trip.......they are going to need some major caffeine!

The Wise Men

 

They got a little hungry on their way to seeing the Baby Jesus......

Advent

It is a new liturgical year!! A time of hopeful waiting before Christmas and the birth of Christ. This is our favorite time of year. So many fun traditions. So many small celebrations on the way to Christmas day.

Despite still having lots of sickies and therefore sleepless nights here we managed to get the house all ready for Advent.

That is, except the Jesse Tree.  No one wanted to venture out to find the perfect branch considering we are still pretty well covered in snow.  So we may be a few days late on starting that this year.

The wreath is ready for lighting.

The mantle is mostly cleared except the Advent calendar and treats that my stepmother sets up for the kids each year.

Our Fontinini nativity set.  Nothing too exciting this year.

The Christmas books taken out

The Holztiger nativity for the littler ones (baby Jesus DOES have a little manger, but I forgot to put it away last year after Christmas.  So I put it someplace for safe keeping until Advent came again, but now I can't remember where that is *sigh*

Playmobil for the bigger ones to play with...and they were quite busy with it as you can see it has been hit by a nerf rocket and looks pretty decimated...perhaps more like modern day Bethlehem?

There is everyone....and then some...I see a few St. Nicholas's in there

And what is a blog post without a baby shot??  She just had a VERY happy first Thanksgivig!

A Great Snowy Day Project. It's Not Too Late!

As soon as you clear on area of the driveway the first area is covered in snow again...

The trees looked beautiful heavily laden with wet snow

We are having our first major snow even of the season.  I love living in a world that has major snow before Thanksgiving!!  Love snow!!!  So after a quick run about outside to play and shovel this morning we have hunkered down inside with the woodstove roaring.  It is 3:30 now and the snow is still coming down steady.

It turned out to be a perfect day to participate in the Pondered In My Heart ATC All Saints Swap.  If you follow that link you can get all of the information needed to join in as well.  ATC stands for Artist Trading Card.  So the swap involves each child drawing five ATC saint pictures.  Then you mail them to Pondered In My Heart and in return you will get 5 new cards colored by other children. 

A great pre-holiday, snowy day project, a great way to learn about some new saints, to practice our drawing skills, and to get mail for kids is always very exciting!!  The ATC cards need to be postmarked by Saturday the 29th so there is still time to whip up some artwork and get them into the mail!

Busy at work

Our finished cards....they have been wrapped off and sent off.  Or at least they are in the mailbox in the hopes that we have mail today!

Compare and Contrast

That is Lucy on the top today.......She is 10M old today.  That is little Annabella at 15M on the bottom just before her surgery and this post.

 

And a spare Lucy just for good measure.

The Most Distracted Poetry Recitation EVER

So, the kids have colds, we are trying to finish up the work we missed last week due to sickness so we can have the rest of Thanksgiving week off as promised. The baby is up from her nap early, Beatrice is in rare form, the camera sound seems to be broken and so after 5 trials and errors we finally figured out the best way to record direct to the computer/youtube.....all of this lead to what is the most ridiculous and distracted poetry recitations ever. After Beatrice was so annoying during Ben's recording you can actually hear her screaming in the background from where she was banished in the basement. Fun times!!!

The Outakes of Life

We have been quite busy with illness around here.  First Buggy had a mild chest cold.  A bit of a cough, but otherwise fine.   About a week and a half ago the cough started to sound different and then she woke from her nap with bright rosy cheeks and acting quite droopy.  She had a fever.  By dinner time she was wheezing and her respiration picked up.  We took her to the doctor the next morning first thing and sure enough she had pneumonia.  It was remarkable how fast it happened because she had pneumonia on both sides when the morning before she was fine!

The pediatrician prescribed some meds and told me that I would be her ICU nurse for the next 72 hours so we can keep her out of the hospital.  He gave me detailed directions on what to do and we got to work.  When we returned in 72hrs she was well on her way to recovery.  Lungs clear and breathing much improved. Deo Gratias. 

Then by midweek Ben started coughing.....that hacking, non stop, asthma cough which is the first sign that he is getting a cold.  So this week was full of treating Ben's reactive airway disorder/cough variant asthma and of course by the end of the week everyone had his cold!

Hopefully everyone wil be well by Thanksgiving.  And really hope this is the only illness excitement we have for the winter!  Get it over with early.