granolageekmom.com

There’s just something special about brothers and sisters. Even though E4 isn’t yet 4 months old, she is developing a special connection with each of her siblings, and they are all different. With E1, she is very soft and quiet, but will intently talk to her like she’s telling the secrets of the universe. With E2, she is very animated and excited, kicking and waving, and ready to run with him everywhere. And with E3, they laugh and play together, and E4 patiently puts up with E3’s mothering.  Seeing my kids together just makes my heart sing. I remember such good times with my brother and sister, and I am so excited for them to have the same kind of memories.

Tonight was a big night for E2! His new bed is a loft bed with a desk and shelves underneath. I think he’s really going to love having the extra space, especially to scatter all of his Legos.

I had been avoiding doing any sort of digital processing on my photos, but Wyowoman convinced me yesterday that processing is not necessarily bad. So I slightly adjusted the photo on January 7  for the white balance, and its success has prompted me to play with the processing a little more today. E1 graciously allowed me to take several pictures while she read, and the light background colors seemed to really work well converting it to black and white. Fun!

If you can’t read the title on her book, she is currently reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. She loves all things Harry Potter- she asked for and received the Harry Potter Scene It game for Christmas, and has soundly beaten us all a few times since then. She is a voracious reader, usually checking out 10 to 12 books from the library and reading them all in a week. She also is quite a storyteller (in a good way), she writes short stories and even has started writing a book!

She also is my right hand girl, and I don’t know what I would do without her.

As of January 7, we have had a total of 5.28 inches of rain for 2007. With the wind blowing and the rain coming down yet again, I really want homemade, fresh-from-the-oven cookies. I tell the kids, and they get really excited, so off to the kitchen we go. E2 runs to get his Kids Cooking cookbook, and finds the chocolate chip cookie recipe. I open the refrigerator- no eggs. Now imagine 3 kids upset. I’m sure the fourth would be too if she could understand what is going on. But, wait! I have the bucket of cookie dough I bought from my nephew for his school fundraiser. It’s not the same, but thankfully the kids are really excited again, and run to get spoons out of the drawer. Now imagine a ten year old, seven year old, and three year old, fighting over who gets to get his/her spoon out first, then fighting over who gets to scoop out the first ball of dough. But you know, they work it out. Youngest to oldest.  E1 has an incredibly generous soul. After about half an hour, the first pan is ready to go in the oven. E2 puts it in, I set the timer. Patiently we wait, until the timer goes off. Then all I hear for the next 5 minutes is, “Are they ready now, Mom?” I ask them to wait just till they are cool enough, since burning my mouth on a cookie doesn’t sound good to me, but they seem to be willing to take that risk.

And you know, those cookies really did taste good.

Family is very important to us, and we have felt blessed that we’ve lived close to my husband’s family for the last seven years. For almost the whole seven years, we’ve had a tradition to get together weekly. For a while it will be Saturdays, then Fridays, then back to Saturdays, depending on what’s going on in everybody’s schedules. Usually it’s at his parents’ house, but occasionally we go somewhere to eat or do some type of group activity. When we first started it was the 6 adults and 2 kids. Over the years the number of kids has grown, and now the adults are outnumbered, 7 to 6.

Today was one of those rare times when we went out- we went to a Chinese restaurant, which seemed to be a hit. We took our “training” chopsticks for all the kids to use, and I think they had fun trying to pick up the rice and chicken. E3 tried a little bit of everything, like she always does, and even E1 and E2 tried some different foods for them. E4 just hung out :), then eventually drifted off to sleep being held by her Uncle I.

The restaurant was located by the Lake at the Commons, and the kids went for a walk around the lake with a couple of the adults, while the moms finished our meals. We are always last. 🙂

I barely got this picture done; it was about 11:30 when it got taken. It had been a somewhat lazy day: I’m fighting off a virus and E4 may have a touch of it, she hasn’t been her normal, happy, laid back self, she wants to nurse often, too. So the kids have had the run of the house today. When I walked into the kitchen tonight, the LeapFrog globe was still sitting on the table where they had been playing with it- especially E2, he really loves looking at it and playing the locate games.  With the dark window behind it and the rain hitting the window, it looked like it was in space with the stars sparkling.  So I tried to capture that look, and somewhat succeeded. I’m hoping my photography skills will develop more over the year, I had to take several pictures to even come close. 🙂

 Two or three times a month or so, we all get in the car in the evening and ride around while my husband does sales for our business. He goes more often than this, that’s just how often we ride along. We usually get something to eat, then ride and listen to audiobooks or music cd’s, and sometimes play Gameboy. Sometimes if it’s been a good night, like tonight, we even stop for ice cream on the way home. We’ve done this since before E3 was born, and we’ve heard good and bad stories, fought over who gets to pick the next cd, taken turns answering knowledge questions or solving mental math problems, looked at Christmas lights during the holiday season, and cheered Daddy on.

We’ve really enjoyed hearing the Magic Tree House books by Mary Pope Osborne (we’re on number #17), Frindle by Andrew Clements, Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, and The City of Ember by Jeanne Duprau, just to name a few. But probably our most favorite so far is Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke. It is 15 CD’s long, read by Brendan Fraser, and he just makes the story come to life. We listened to it over a year ago, and they still talk about it: Firedrake and Ben, Sorrell and Twigleg.

It’s time for me to get another audiobook from the library, but I don’t have one in mind. I guess I’ll be spending some time searching on Amazon for some ideas.

 A message board that I like to read on, Woolywonder, has a mixer thread going to show a favorite project on the needles- so here’s mine. This is going to be a pair of longies (long pants/diaper cover) for E4, if I ever get it done. My knitting rate after E4 was born has dropped to about 25% of what it was, which wasn’t very fast anyway.

The yarn is worsted weight montana targhee yarn hand dyed by Morwenna at Mosaic Moon in her Rose Bouquet colorway. It is soooo soft and yummy! I’m using the Picky Pants pattern from Little Turtle Knits. This is the first time I’ve used this pattern, and so far I really like it. Of course I’ve really liked all the patterns I’ve got there.

Hopefully one of the daily pictures in the near future will be E4 wearing these!

This photo is almost self-explanitory. E4 was just sitting there being cute, and since the camera now just stays out all the time, I can just grab it and shoot.  She changes so much so often, I’m going to feel very bittersweet about pictures taken of her over the year. In 365 days she’ll be walking and talking, and it will go fast. I’m really glad I’m doing this project, maybe it’ll even help slow the time down. No, probably not.

The idea that finally motivated me to start my own blog was a tutorial on photojojo with a challenge to take a photo everyday for a year. So, since I started my blog on January 3, I have to post the first three pictures on today’s blog. Of course, since it’s 11:50 p.m., chances are they’ll show tomorrow’s date anyway. Oh, well.

 I took this picture as a sort of farewell to the holidays. We were starting to clean everything up, and I realized I hadn’t taken a single picture of the tree this year. This was the first year we had an artificial tree- I hope someday E1 will forgive us for it. 🙂

I will also be putting up a larger size of the photos on my imageevent album, maybe over the course of the year I’ll even be able to figure out how to link each picture to its corresponding photo there.