The Phantom Tollbooth

We just finished reading The Phantom Tollbooth as a family and I wanted to share a few quotes.

"You must never feel badly about making mistakes as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons." - Reason

"...it's not just learning things that's important. It's learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things at all that matters." - Rhyme

"...but whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way." - Reason

"...what you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do." - Reason

"...as you've discovered, so many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible." - The Mathemagician and King Azaz

"He waited impatiently for the end of class, and when the time finally came, his feet raced his thoughts all the way back to the house" said of Milo

The last thought reminds me of all the times I was in a hurry to get home from school so I could start learning. Our children frequently make comments that suggests they feel the same way.

Mommy's helpers

Here are some cute pictures taken during the week after Christmas of the big siblings.

Who's the big sister nah-owwahh??

My little brother...don't mess with him.

The big brother.

Goofy girls

Some cute pictures of the girls entertaining Jillian and Quinton.

Pay attention to me-eeeeee! (Disclaimer - not a candid, she held the pose until we took a picture)

Chayce, attempting to be goofy, but really showing of f the missing tooth

Did I do that???

Dual goofies

And the tooth cometh out

Chayce finally, finally, lost a tooth. She has been convinced the one next to the one that came out was loose since she turned five. She is almost six and a half. Never give up, sister, never give up.

The tooth came out while we were medicating Jillian's cabin fever (by shopping at the after Christmas sales) and Chayce went to the restroom and stayed for a long time (Jillian was in another part of the store with the two youngest). I started asking women going in and out of the restroom if there was a little girl in there. Each said "yes, she is just drying her hands." I started to get suspicious after 10 minutes of "drying hands." Finally she came running out exclaiming "it came out!!!" She proceeded to tell every adult in the store on our way to find Jillian, and held us up at the check out line as she spun the epic tale separately to the cashier and the bag boy.

Wiggle fest in the mirror

It is finally out!

Irish Football

I had a shirt on yesterday that said Irish Football to wear during the ND/FSU bowl game. Chayce looks up and reads it:

"Irish Football?? Is that when you play football and do Irish dance at the same time?" She and Zachary recently took an Irish dance class from a very young but competent instructor (the girl doing the talking in the video below):

ND vs. FSU

Notre Dame's Smallest Fan

In celebration of the ND/FSU Champs Bolwl game yesterday. Too bad ND lost...if they would just reduce the game to three quarters, ND would be undefeated.

Touchdown! 

Quinton Jacob Tueller - 21Dec2011

Please welcome our newest arrival, Quinton. He came out 7 lbs 4 ozs, 20 inches, and cute. Jillian says I biased, but that's ok with me - being a biased estimator is good when the variance is minimized, right? Jillian and Quinton are both doing great, and the other three children love helping take care of the baby (even if we can't convince Payge Victoria to use male pronouns when referring to her him). Here are some pictures:

Bath time

Tongue skills demonstration

Leaving the hospital

The contemplative look

Jill survived (thanks to the NICU nurse* who insisted on taking this one for us)

The older siblings Chayce, Payge, and Zachary (thanks aunt Rinny for coming to rescue them)

* The hospital uses a NICU nurse to attend the newborn at every delivery since the NICU was on the same floor of the hospital while  labor and delivery recovery was on a different floor. Quinton is healthy and had no problems.

My mid-term assessment of school

We decided to give Jillian a sabbatical from home school and put Zachary and Chayce in a charter school that was using the same curriculum and instructional techniques we had used in home school the last three years. The teachers have been fantastic, they adjusted to the group based instructional environment relatively quickly, and they are excelling by public school standards. On the down side, they spend much less time reading and much less time socializing with friends. I'm concerned about the reading since they used to spend several hours each day reading on their own, but are now essentially disinterested in reading. The children are quite vocal in missing time with friends - they only get 30 minutes during the recesses. This is a problem Zachary's teacher has even picked up on as she noticed he gets along with everyone but is attached to no one. When homeschooling he'd typically have more time in one day with friends than the combined time with other children at school in a full week. These are the primary downsides, though we've found a plethora of other minor disappointments group-based schooling (I'm sure our experience would have been the same whether public or private school).

In summary, the experience has been good, but we're still not a fan of group-based education. We're on the fence whether to let them go back in January, and are definitely not returning next fall (Jillian has already started on their Fall 2012 curriculum).

Mompocolypse

Jillian is one week over due and had relatively consistent contractions from 11Dec to 18Dec. But yesterday (19Dec) contractions stopped and now she feels fantastic. Her OB wanted he in yesterday, but got the stomach flu and asked her to 'hold it.' Amongst this, my mom, who was planning on coming to stay with our older children, but she had to get her galbladder removed yesterday and is being shipped to Pocatello as I write to have the stones removed in a separate procedure. She is quite distraught that she is unable to help, but my Aunt Renee is on deck to take over. Family is great to have close, we can make it through anything.

Touché

Chayce and I were discussing Christmas music while folding laundry together. She asked if all christmas music was Jesus music. I said unfortunately no and that I didn't care much for non Christ centered holiday music. She asked about 'Rudolf, the Red Nosed Reindeer.' I said no, it wasn't about Christ. She pointed out that it discussed the consequences of making fun of people, and that was something Jesus taught (i.e., being kind, loving one's neighbor as one's self). Good point, young lady.

Being a...

So, this delivery is going--slowly.  It's OK, I usually take a week or so to have a baby, but three days for a 1/2 cm?!?!?  Geez.  Luckily, I'm pretty patient about it most of the time, and just go on with life.  I think by the end of the week, we might see a cute munchkin!

However, there have been a few moments when I wasn't so happy (like when I burned the soup...and then to top it off, my peanut brittle didn't work--I'm not used to my kitchen adventures not working!  I'm a friggin' goddess with a wooden spoon!).  On one of these such occasions, I lamented, "I don't want to be a human anymore!"  Within seconds, my darling 6 year old daughter pipes up with, "OK, Mom, but being a squirrel would really suck."  She caught me so off guard, I couldn't help but laugh.  Of course, that is why I love my kids, they keep things in perspective--even when I burn soup.

Proud Mama Moments

I have to brag about my children for a moment (I mean, really, it's MY blog). 

Sometimes as a mother you wonder if what you say day after day really sinks into their heads...if it really becomes a part of them.  I had two wonderful events occur this week that gave me a glimpse into the people my older children are becoming--and I'm so happy.

The first one was with Chayce.  She's been home recovering from a tonsillectomy, and so has missed quite a bit of school.  The teachers from her charter school have been wonderful in letting her "homeschool" with the supplies and assignments they would have given over the past two weeks.  One of her assignments was to write out her letter to Santa, color it, and bring it in so that the teachers could put all the children's wish lists on a bulletin board.  I'll be scanning hers once I get it back, as her wish list was simple and beautiful.

She wished that Santa would have a wonderful Christmas day, in celebration of baby Jesus's birthday.  She thanked him for making Jesus's special day so wonderful for so many people.  And then she asked for a Polly Pocket.  Of course, her wording and spelling were not as I've written it, which is why I can't wait to scan it.  However, her ability to take what would have been such a temporal assignment for Christmas and make it into what it should be about touched me.

The second event was with Zac.  He's a bit crazy, as many of you know, and will sing just about anything while just about anywhere.  I had taken him and some of his friends to WalMart to get supplies for a service project we were helping with.  They were giving him a hard time for singing.  No worries...he shrugged it off and kept singing (and while I love that he's confident enough to do so, that wasn't the highlight of my trip).  While walking through the store, the kids were being rowdy and goofy (boys...ages 8 &9, so I expected this).  One of them (the same one that had given Z a hard time earlier for being weird, and who has two siblings and his mother is trying to raise all three of them on her own) said, "I love coming here.  Everytime we come I bug my mom for something new, like toys and stuff."  The "Yeah, ha ha's" were echoed as the boys laughed at giving their mothers a hard time until they got what they wanted.  Zac was silent for a moment, looked right at the boy who had made the statement and said, "You give your MOTHER a hard time and ask her for stuff?"  The kid did the proud chest thing with his, "Yeah."  (Kind of a what-of-it? sort of moment).  Zac's simple, "Why?" silenced the group.  His face seriously staring the kid down.  "Why do you do that?" 

There wasn't much rowdiness after that, and I think Zac's point was driven home.  I was grateful to him because I wanted to lecture the boys on being nice to their mother given all she does for them...but I think that having it come from their peer made such a bigger impact.  I was also grateful that he is my son, and that if I was in that situation, I know that he would be supportive as a son and that he loves me as his mother enough to stand up for other mothers. 

Though I miss my children being tiny, I am overjoyed to watch them grow into amazing people with opinions and values--and the strength to state them.   I often wonder just what their adulthood will be like, but I must say that with what I've seen lately, I don't worry.