Opal at 13 Months

Two days after Opal's First Birthday, she came down with a six day stomach bug.  It was heartbreaking, and scary too.  She had no fever, and so we didn't know if it was something she ate at first, or what, but a few days later when Emma came down with it, we had our answer.  There was lots of crying, holding, carrying, showering and cleaning for Opal and I and I was so very glad when she was feeling better.

Will continues to be Opal's favorite person, although she did prefer only me when she was puking.  Hence all of the showers for her and I.  When Will walks in from work she will start freaking out if he doesn't immediately take her.  After she is safe in Will's arms, she pushes me away and says, "Bye Mom!"

 This little cutie is such a ham, and loves making us laugh with peek-a-boo.  She loves books and says "book" and takes us by the hand to the bookcase so that she can pick out the book for us to read to her.  She has several favorites, and goes to them again and again and even knows what to look for in each book.  One of my favorites is when she meows at cats and barks at dogs in books while pointing at them.  She also remembers that once I put her bare baby foot next to a picture of a bare baby foot in one of her books and now she does that each time we turn to that page.  She also will say "Draw" which means she wants paper and something to write with, just like her big sisters do.

 She is always saying "Bite" which means food and this little gal is such a snacker!  She is always saying "bite" and we will use snacks to get her peacefully through a car trip and a shopping trip too.  I had forgotten that when each of my kids were this age that they needed to eat way more often, and by the time they told you they were hungry, there was no patience for you to prepare food of any kind.  So, I end up feeding her bites as I prepare food in the kitchen and she sits at my heels.

The kids still love playing with Opal, but Opal has developed a mind of her own.  Her high pitched screaming is the result of big sisters not listening to her demands.  The phrase in our house whenever we hear Opal screaming is, "Leave her alone!"

This little lady thinks it is her public service to the world to ensure not only her socks are off at all times, but everyone else's are too.  You could be sitting on the couch and she will crawl up to you and start yanking your socks saying "off".  And then she gets really frustrated if you don't help make that happen.  She also believes strongly in all doors being closed and will crawl to any open door and say "bye" while shutting the door.  No matter if it leaves her stranded on the other side.

Opal will be the one financing my hearing aids in a few years, with all of her screams of frustration. Will's goal is to get Opal in voice lessons as soon as she is old enough, as clearly she has some power in her lungs that needs to be harnessed for good.  Opal, we love you, our sweet and sassy girl!

March 2019

March saw all kinds of weather, and at one point the kids were floating toy sail boats in a tiny river between snow banks in our driveway.  

Spring is slowly making it's way here, and we saw the first signs of it when we found frogs in the drainage hole in our yard.

Another sure sign of spring, despite the still frigid temperatures, was the overwintered butterfly cocoon in a cage in our basement finally hatched.  We released it with many prayers that it would find enough food this early in the season.

We locked Charlie in the garage before we released the butterfly - we didn't want a cat adding to the butterfly's already long list of challenges ahead of it.  We were also so excited to see the crocus sprout in our yard, and even more excited when we saw our honey bees on them!  If I had any doubt before that planting crocus helps bees, I had no doubt now.  These little flowers were my bees first food for the season.

This is the first year that my bees have lived through the winter since I started bee keeping.  What a feeling of relief and happiness, to know that they were able to stay alive despite the extra deep freeze we had in January and February.

We had the pleasure of hiking the same trail several times this past month, all in the hopes of being at the right place at the right time when the spring peepers started up their chorus in the pond on this trail.  Several years ago we happened accidentally upon this amazing event, and have been trying to catch it again ever since.  While we did find frogs and hear some spring peeping, nothing has yet to match the sheer volume and mass of frogs we experienced the very first time we witnessed this.

But, an unexpected bonus to our spring peeper quest was to watch spring unfold a little more each time we hiked this trail.  Someday I may make it a goal to try and hike the same trail once a week for an entire year, just to see the subtle changes in nature that each week brings.

We still had a lot of indoor play this past month as spring came slowly to our part of the world.  In the pictures below in clockwise order from top left: the girls playing together with their newest toy obsession, Violet showing me how she and the baby toy next to her are both spinning on their bottoms (Violet in a spinning, rounded seat called a bilibo and a toy Big Bird that weebles and wobbles but won't fall down), the girls playing baby dolls together, inspired by Opal's new baby doll that she got for her birthday, and finally, all three girls making friendship bracelets with the embroidery floss from my childhood days of making friendship bracelets.  If younger Liz had only known, I would have hardly believed it!

It seems like our laundry has more than doubled with the addition of a fourth daughter, and it's almost at the point where we need to do laundry every day to stay on top of things.  Lately, in an attempt to get the clean baskets of clothes in the hallway from piling up too deep, I've started holding Laundry Parties with the kids.  One kid watches Opal nearby, while the rest of us fold laundry as we all sing loudly to songs playing on my old clock radio.  In clockwise order from top left below: Lucy and Violet at a Laundry Party, a stuffed animal Peep from my cousin that Will made a name tag for which says, "Hi, My Name is Tom".  It took me a while to get this, but once I did, I made him take the name tag off! Violet building a pattern with math manipulatives which is one of her favorite things to do with me when her and I have time together uninterrupted by sisters, Will snuggling Violet and Opal, a fun splurge the girls and I did one night when Will was working late, and finally, playing a vintage game from my youth with Emma.

We took the girls to see a children's play about Jane Goodall this past month, and also noticed that the long awaited bookstore set to open near our house was now just days out from opening.

You better believe we were there to check it out on opening day!  I treated the girls to a new book each, and for a mom that is always telling them no, and if they want something to spend their own money, it was like they hit the jackpot.  In retrospect, I should have bought something for myself too!

We participated in our church's volunteer day this past month, and the girls spent most of their time making bracelets for care packages put together for kids living in poverty.

My sister Cate is one of my kids favorite people, and they love it when she comes over and braids their hair (as their own mom is not skilled in this area) and plays soccer with them (again, not my skill set).  Here they are below with Auntie Cate.  

We also spent time with my cousin and her family this past month and loved seeing our girls all play together like we used to play when we were kids.  So amazing that there are six girls between us now!

I am gearing up for the busy season of my honey business, and besides classes and maintaining the hives that have made it through the winter, I am working towards a new business name and phasing myself out of honey, now that I am allergic to honey bees.  My love for bees is still strong though, and I'm excited that my new business will continue this passion.  The photos below show the girls helping me package up some new items that I will be selling soon.  They were so excited when I offered them the job and told them that I would pay them.  They collated 500 sets of 5 postcards a set and even packaged them into bags for me.  I was impressed that they saw the project from start to finish and kept their excited mood the entire time.

We are at the point in the year where we are counting down the weeks of school.  As I type this we have seven left.  While it is true that we are very established in our routines for the year which adds a level of ease, it is also true that we are getting tired of it and we long for something new and exciting.  Seven more weeks, seven more weeks, seven more weeks.  Here the girls are below in clockwise order from top left: Violet's dance class, Lucy and Violet organizing their schoolwork and art projects for me, art and school projects the kids took pictures of for me, and finally, Lucy and Emma's dance class.

Here are my four girls below.  Opal may not know it yet, but matching your sisters is a very fun thing to do.

Lately, life has been very overwhelming for me.  It is hard to be the leader of this crew, and I feel inadequate when they each need me at the same time and I am barely getting by.  Even just two different girls talking to me at the same time can raise my blood pressure as I try to be fair and ensure they both feel heard while teaching them to take turns and not interrupt.  If I give one girl snuggles, it can be exhausting when someone else gets jealous and feels left out from the snuggles.  And don't even get me started on the short order cook that I am at each meal to ensure all dietary and taste preferences are met and each child has had enough protein, fruit and veggies to calm my worries about low-blood sugar meltdowns or vitamin deficiencies.  But, to see them play together, to share inside jokes with them, to all sing along to our favorite songs - well, this makes it all doable.  I love my pack of girls and I really wouldn't want it any other way.

Opal's First Birthday!

Opal may have been due on Luke's planned birthday (he had a scheduled c-section because of his birth defects), but she came on her own terms.  Here we are a year later, and I'm so glad that her birthday is so close to her brother's in heaven.  Each of my girls have been the rainbow after the storm, and Opal is no exception!  Will is still her favorite person...

 ...and she continues to love me when it's time to eat.

 

When Will's at work, she does allow some snuggles from me too.  Laid back would not be in the top 100 words I would use to describe her, and she is quite vocal when her sisters are keeping her from living her best life.  I am nicely and constructively implying that she screams like a banshee or a teradactyl and causes so much tension in my neck each time she yelps.  She's lucky she's cute.

Opal loves books, and says "Ba" when she wants to read a book.  In the top, left-hand picture below, we turned to the page pictured, and Opal immediately sneezed!  My girl's a reader!

Opal still loves making us laugh with peek-a-boo, and unless she likes the menu, she prefers to be silly rather than eat something she doesn't like.  Her list of preferred foods is growing, fortunately, and right now includes in priority order: graham crackers, pretzels, taco meat, sloppy Joe meat, waffles, crackers, blueberries, mango, cucumber, pear, apple, steamed carrots, green beans and peas, veggie or chicken soup, and plain pasta.  Sometimes she will eat oatmeal if it is congealed and she can feed it to herself.

Opal now says "Bye" whenever she sees us go out the door, even if it is just to take the trash out.  She says "Hot" when she sees steam coming off of stuff cooking in the kitchen or off the food on the table.  She says "Ssssss" when she's yanking off her socks and then trying to put them back on by herself, and also "Sssss" when she wants to go on her swing outside.  To me, the funniest thing she says is "Hi?" when she is about to do something that she believes is either not allowed, or dangerous. It's like she is saying, "Hello, is anyone watching me?  Please stop me as I can't control my impulses!"

Opal doesn't sleep very well, and because we've had three other children who have worn us down and frankly, broken our will to find a sleep solution, we get her to sleep in any way we can, while ignoring any bad habits it may be forming.  Fortunately we now know that she will outgrow it, just like her sisters did.  Sadly, this probably won't be until age 3 at least.  Until then, it is survival!

The day before Opal's first birthday we celebrated with both sets of Grandparents, and an aunt and an uncle who live close by.  We had a busy day, with a volunteer session at our church and so we did a lot of food prep the day before.  Everything was running right on schedule until Opal fell asleep minutes before we were supposed to leave the volunteer outing and head home.  She of course woke up as soon as we put her in her carseat, and so had a 5 minute nap the entire day.  When we got home, we had a few hours to finish getting the food ready for her party.  I had made one and a half cakes for her, so that the following day we could eat the smaller cake on her actual birthday.  Our kitchen is small, and with all of the food prep going on, I iced the cakes on top of our ceramic cook top stove.  Little did we know that Will had accidentally turned the wrong burner on the stove and as I moved the smaller cake to the granite counter top to clear up the stove, the glass pan exploded into thousands of pieces.  Glass confetti was everywhere - and worst of all, it sprinkled the larger cake like sugar crystals.  All of the cake was garbage.  I had tiny flecks of glass in my hands and arms and was lucky it wasn't worse.  To literally ice this cake of a day, while Will and I were busy cleaning up the mess in the kitchen, one of our children had a bathroom problem, and decided to clean it up themselves.  This is when it literally hit the fan.  With our guests due any minute now, I called my parents and they picked up an apple pie on the way to our house so that we could put a candle in something for Opal.  I did take a picture of the iced cake before it blew up, so at least we have that for the memory book.  Sadly, Opal did not like the apple pie, but seemed content to eat graham crackers, her favorite food anyways.  

I had put so much love and care into that made from scratch banana cake for my baby's first birthday, that it was really hard for me to get over putting it in the trash.  I finally had Will do it, several days later.   There was a silver lining though.  A few days prior to Opal's party, Will had cleaned off Luke's grave from the Christmas and birthday decorations.  It was all still in his trunk.  We had planned on going to the party store to let Opal pick out a birthday balloon for her party, but ran out of time with all of the clean up.  That's when Will remembered Luke's birthday balloon, and would you believe it still floated, almost a month later?  

I think Opal thoroughly enjoyed her party, and she did an amazing job, considering she only took a 5 minute nap that day.

The following day, we had a nice, quiet day at home with her.  

 A one year old doesn't need much, and so I encouraged the girls to make her gifts or regift her some of the toys they may have outgrown.  Emma made her a pillow case with a little help from me for her first, big girl pillow.  Emma also made her a piece of decorated paper, covered in packaging tape which turned out to be one of her favorite gifts, as Opal loves chewing on paper and this paper couldn't be choked on!

 Lucy gave Opal a backpack that she had outgrown, and Violet made Opal a set of birthday crowns, as well as gave her one of her favorite baby dolls named Bonnie the Bee.  I just loved seeing their generosity and creativity straight from their hearts for their beloved baby sister.  I made Opal a book about the day she was born (I made each of the girls this for their first birthday), and Will cut her name out of wood and painted it (which he did for each of the girls first birthday as well) to hang in her room.  Finally, she got a few books, some Duplos, and a baby doll that I found on eBay to match the baby doll that each of her sisters got on their first birthdays.  Since the doll came from eBay, it had no clothes, and of course I didn't remember this until two nights before her birthday.  I ended up using one of Opal's newborn sleepers, and cut it down to size and sewed it up and it fit like a charm!  In fact, I may do this for each of the girls' baby dolls!

 We made her a little batch of arrowroot cookies for her birthday, since I wanted her to have something a bit more special than graham crackers and I was all out of ripe bananas.  She liked the cookie, and got a kick out of us all singing to her and blowing out her candle as she repeated "hot", "hot".

This little lady is so very loved.  Here she is below, being supported with the arms of her family all around her, getting measured for the first time on our family growth chart.  I think this picture sums up our little lady in our family so well.

Happy first birthday Opal!  You have brought so much to our family, and we love you so very much!

February 2019

February was cold and involved a lot of hibernating.  On top of the bleak weather, February is the month where my heart is the most heavy missing Luke.  Looking at the below pictures though, I can see how with each other, we got through a tough month.  Here are the kids below in clockwise order from top left: Emma, decoding Leonardo Da Vinci's secret code writing, the girls enjoying homemade waffles and home school, Emma and Lucy holding up their art work from their latest art class at the local art center by our house, and finally, Violet reading to me from one of her favorite books - The Lady with the Alligator Purse.

 Lots of fun was had indoors because of the weather.  In clockwise order from top left: Violet hiding under the piano bench, Emma and Violet with their Baby Sister Playpen that they invented to keep Opal out of what they were playing with, playing with Duplos, playing with packaging materials, and Violet's hands after working on an art project.

The girls love spending time with Will, and because he is gone for work a lot of the time, he becomes even more special to them when he is home.  Will also cracked the code of the Rubix cube (with some help from YouTube) that he got Emma for Christmas.  Or did he get it for himself?  It took about two weeks to solve it, and then about twenty seconds with Opal to scramble it up again.

One morning I opened up the curtains and saw a mama deer and her two babies in the wildflower garden beds in our yard.  Our bees are all still alive, despite the harsh winter we have been having and one day this past month when we had a temporary warm up, we found a honey bee on our drive way that was struggling to make it's way home.  Will got it onto a stick and helped it back.

Lucy has been sewing up a storm this winter, and she was super excited to have her herbal eye masks  to sell at my latest bee event.  Between the event and posting them on social media, she sold out.  She is saving up to have her ears pierced, and now the only thing between her and pierced ears is us finding a place to have them done.

The bee event was a family affair, which is how I like it best. Will's flexibility and the kids' willingness to help really make for a lovely, although exhausting, family day for us.  I love how something that we enjoy is also teaching them so many life skills.

Besides the bee event, we didn't get out too much this past month.  We did go and visit one of our favorite Girl Scouts and support her the best we could via cookie purchases, and I also braved a big shopping trip at our local craft store with all four girls in tow.  They usually love going to the craft store, but by the end of this one, they were cranky and so was I.  In the check out line they spotted their favorite Big-Eyed stuffed animals, as they call them, and gave me their own Big-Eyes Begging.  Of course, I gave in, but they had to use their own money.  Life skills, baby!

 We enjoyed time outdoors when the weather was warm enough.  I took the kids to the local elementary school sledding hill...

 ...we went hiking, and I also tried out the ice on a pond near us.  The bottom, right hand picture below is of a sunset from our front porch that the girls took for me.

 Our own driveway had a huge patch of ice that the girls enjoyed playing on...

...and Charlie enjoyed snuggles from me as with gloves and a winter coat on, I am protected from cat-induced hives!  He's such a lover boy, and I wish every day that I wasn't so allergic to him.  And yes, in the bottom, left-hand picture I am singing to him.

 I tackled a fever and taxes all on the same day this past month, despite security issues where I ended up needing to use two computers and my phone to log in and do what I needed to do with various banks and accounting software.  Based on how complicated it is to log in to my own accounts, I have no idea how hackers have such an easy time with other people's accounts.

 One weekend, I decided to make a bunch of pies for the freezer.  Chicken pot pie and mixed berry pies for the win!  As I type this, they are all gone and I'm thinking another pie day is in order soon.

We celebrated Valentine's Day with fresh donuts from the local donut shop and homemade cards and store bought chocolates.

We also did our best to celebrate Luke's 11th birthday.  It is so hard to believe it has been over a decade since we saw his sweet face and held him for the first and last time in our arms.  While certain aspects of the missing get easier with time, it is still a day that for the most part is something that I dread.  We released one balloon this year, and I continue to be torn about the environmental impact of this tradition.  It means so much to my kids though, and for them, they believe that the balloon goes from their hands to the hands of Luke in heaven.  I wish that his birthday was during butterfly season and we could release butterflies to heaven, but alas, it is not.

The day of Luke's birthday was quiet, and I am sad to report that I had no signs from Luke.  I spent much of the day trying not to be cranky, and feeling a type of loneliness that is hard to describe.  The very next day though, when we went to the craft store and the kids each got to buy a stuffed animal, Lucy realized hers had the same birthday as Luke.  I think that was a sign, although it would have been nice on his birthday to feel his presence.

We ate all of the foods I craved while pregnant with him, and I made a yummy chocolate cake for dessert.  My sister sent us something called Wish Paper that you write a wish on and then hold over a candle.  As it burns, it causes the paper to float up into the air and all that remains is the wish you wrote on it.  I'm hoping that this can be our tradition in the future, and it meant a lot to me that my sister found this for us.

Eleven years have gone by, and we have celebrated Luke's birthday much the same way each year.  This year, I started feeling that I wanted to do something different.  My kids however love the routine and tradition.  Perhaps next year though, we will all find a solution that honors all of our needs.  Here is Luke's family below, hopefully creating a legacy of love on earth for him, so that when we are all together again, he will be so proud of all of us.

It's the simple truth when I say that I am always glad when February is over.  For me, Luke's birthday each year is the darkest day of the winter.  Once his birthday has passed, my soul is ready to shed the weight and darkness of sadness and embrace spring, weathered but lighter, and hopefully wiser and more at peace as well.