This and That

The past week has been a little crazy here at the Litwiller homestead and my time on the computer has been limited until today. Rob had his big paper to work on and submitted it last night at 11:30, one half-hour prior to the deadline. I don't like tiptoeing around his books and things to get to the computer, so I pretty much avoid the whole area. I took the kids to a variety of places and we did all kinds of window shopping, pricing, playing games at the library, and even took a driving trip to the McDonald's drive-thru in a neighboring town. I'm very thankful he's finished and we get Daddy for the rest of the holidays. Well, that is unless he's reading for classes....

Rob has this week off work so we have some family things planned. As I'm typing, the boys are having their first Litwiller Men Sleepover. Mommy and Anna have been banished from the living room and the guys are doing manly things like playing in the snow after dark, boxing on the Wii, eating cheese curds at Culver's, working in the woodshop, eating homemade Chex Mix, eating popcorn (catch the theme here?), and will end their evening by sleeping in sleeping bags in the living room. Rob thought about sneaking upstairs and sleeping in his bed, but I told him that was cheating :)

To avoid all of the manly events, Anna and I went out for supper at Upper Krust where I had a chicken salad sandwich and she snubbed applesauce. (We're still working on the solids. She WILL feed herself now and did eat carrots.) We then went to Wal-Mart and purchased a few Christmas decorations for our new tree. She was a good baby and even went to bed early. I'll spend the rest of my evening working on Christmas cards in the study.

Tomorrow we are spending the day together, just the five of us. I was going to make the 60-minute Thanksgiving meal featured in Rachael Ray's magazine but we're going to amend the turkey and the dessert. Her turkey calls for just breast and leg, which costs about the same as a whole turkey, so Rob will cook the bird. He loves it and always has done a great job. The dessert was a Pumpkin Mousse Trifle which looked pretty nasty to us, so we're opting for a Sara Lee pumpkin pie. The side dishes will remain the same: Apple-Date stuffing, Mashed Potatoes with Yukon golds and sweet potatoes, and a Green Bean casserole with REAL mushroom sauce and fresh beans. We're all excited around here. Oh, and I'm adding homemade rolls to the deal. Just can't have a big dinner without the rolls!

We're planning to decorate for Christmas in the evening. We have two trees to put up this year, the big one Rob's parents got us last year and our Charlie Brownish tree that will be the kids tree and will sit on our landing. I love decorating for Christmas and can't wait to use ornaments that have remained boxed up for years. I couldn't use them b/c they would make our old tree fall over.....so sad and pathetic!!

Not much too new with the kids. Anna is still cute, Ben is still practicing going potty, and Matthew still chatters like a monkey to everyone he sees. His new thing is asking people if they have a big, fat, plump turkey defrosting in their fridge. He keeps saying ours looks yummy but I can't say as I'm too excited about raw turkey :)

That's all for now! Have a very Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Kid funnies

Today I was working on my Christmas cards, coloring away, and Matthew was asking a zillion questions regarding my activity. (He stalks me when the other two are napping.) I explained that I was coloring my card, following the sample card I had already finished. He became very indignant and said, "Mommy! You shouldn't be following that card! You should follow God!"

We have stepped up our efforts to potty train Ben and have started putting him in Pull-Ups. Matthew and I explained to him that he had to keep them dry so that the cars wouldn't disappear. He repeated the instructions and seemed very intent upon that task. About five minutes later, he looked at me with a panicked expression and said, "Mommy! I need a diaper!" I told him that he didn't b/c he had a Pull-Up on. He said, "No, Mommy! I don't want to get the cars wet!" Poor guy had to go....should have explained further on how to keep the cars dry. Right now he knows when he has to go, sits on the potty for a long time, then goes in the Pull-Up a few minutes later. He's practicing going potty b/c that is what Ben has done for everything he's ever learned since rolling over. I expected this to happen so I will be patient with him and trust that he'll be potty trained soon.

Anna popped out four teeth on Monday. No joke, that baby had nothing on her upper gums on Saturday and when Rob was playing with her on Monday, he found three teeth had popped through with one more about ready to come. That brings her total teeth count up to six. She has started eating applesauce and loves sucking on extra garlic dill pickles, but that's as far as the solids have come. She's also a full-fledged cruiser now, so we keep our couches pushed together so she has lots of cruising space.

He finished!!!

Rob finished both papers and got them in on time!!! The first paper was an ex-a-jet-i-cal paper on a passage in Hebrews that he's been working on forever. He finished it at 5am today. The other one was a counseling paper where he had to come up with how he would counsel a couple that was thinking about divorce. He started that one at 5:05am and finished it at 11:15 am, with a "break" to go take a test at 7am and a short nap upon returning. He's at work right now and pretty tired but he will get to sleep tonight (and then get up and be at work by 6am tomorrow...)

His next big paper is another exie thingy and is due the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Mixed blessing: the Custom Shoppe is closing that entire week (but still giving the guys pay for Thanksgiving and the day after) so he will have Monday completely free to finish the paper.

After "turning in" his paper (they e-mail them to the profs...saving on staples, perhaps?) we went to Schlotzsky's deli, his favorite sandwich place, to celebrate. Yipee!!!!! He'll be starting in on that next paper on Saturday. I'm trying to pick his passage for him (something in the Timothys or Titus) but he never takes my suggestions :)

My Matthew

Okay, so I've had my "maternal rush of love" for Matthew recently and I can now post a gooshy blog about him. Oh my, have he and I had our run-arounds! We have pretty much the same tempermant so you can imagine how often we butt heads around here. I never realized I was such a difficult child to raise :)

However, he is my little sweetheart and often challenges me spiritually. I love the questions he comes up with about spiritual matters that can send Rob and I diving into the Scriptures for answers. He's very insightful and it's been such a blessing to disciple him now that he has made a profession of faith. I love praying with him, especially when we've had a bad day together. Just tonight we prayed that we'd stop being angry with each other. It's sweet that he's my brother in Christ as well as my son.

Rob and I discuss many issues as they arise with him. Yesterday Matthew and I were cutting out pictures in magazines for his Junior church project and I came across a very questionable picture of a woman. I ripped it out before he could see it, but he did ask me why I ripped it out. I told him that it wasn't a very nice picture of a woman. He said, "Mommy, women are very precious and there shouldn't be pictures of them in magazines like that. That's not right." I asked Rob later about that and he said he had a conversation with Matthew awhile back about that very topic. I love how Matthew keeps that information stored away and brings it back up at the appropriate times :)

He is quite the little jokester and entertainer around here. He loves to make Anna laugh although he does think that she's too drooly. He had taken two couch cushions off, one for Anna and one for himself. When she moved to his he told her, "Anna! This is not your cushion to drool on! Go back to yours!" Mommy "helped" her move back to the drooly cushion. :)

Oh, he's just a sweet little boy. It's a joy to raise him, but of course it's not without it's share of challenges. He tries my patience often but I know that God is going to do amazing things with Matthew and I look forward to what is in store in his future.

Oh, the Irony

Today in the mail I received some coupons for McDonald's. They are only good at the Watertown location and expire in early December. As you recall, McDonald's was destroyed in a fire a couple of weeks ago. Brother.

In other news, this is a very challenging week for Rob. He has two tests tomorrow, one on Thursday, and two papers due Thursday. He has another huge paper due right before Thanksgiving, so if you could pray for him when you think about it, we'd appreciate it.

We received a nice, large financial gift last week. Someone rang our doorbell and left some money on the door. We were rather surprised but very thankful for God's gift.

Matthew is doing well with his schooling but I think the reading lessons are starting to bore him again. He is doing well with it so I hate to change things around on him. He just finished lesson 41 and has just a few to go before he earns his trip. Good Matthew funny: We were reading a simple book called "Baby Goes Shopping" where it asked what the baby wanted and then had pictures of 8-10 things the baby wanted to buy. Matthew finished it and said, "My, that baby is selfish! He wants everything!"

Benjamin has finished the first lesson in the reading book as well. I think he's craving the attention from Mommy more than the ability to read, but he actually understood it all so we'll work on it whenever he wants to. He is the proud owner of Superman footie pajamas, complete with cape, and I'm hoping to get them off his body and into the wash sometime in the near future.

Anna has her first tooth coming in and she's an angel about it. I'm kind of wondering what is going to make this baby fussy, if anything. She still won't eat solid food but she will suck on a Mum-Mum cracker. She is now using crawling as a means to get somewhere in order to pull up on furniture. She doens't quite cruise yet, but she tries a little. Rob told her to slow down yesterday and she laughed at him. She also says "Da-da" now and burped it out at him on Saturday, complete with a "blow" so he got a good whiff of formula in the mix. That's my girl!

As for me, I'm starting to feel better. I started on Vita-Lea, a vitamin from Shaklee, and I can already tell an improvement in my energy levels. I'm also using their Basic H cleaner and I love it. It's the first time I can clean my house without a gas mask or coughing to death.

That's us for now!

Miss Anna

Okay, I just need to be a proud mommy right now and talk about my little Anna. She is such an adorable baby girl!! We are having so much fun with her as a family. She's a terrific third baby because she is very low maintainence. She only cries when she's hungry or hurt, she can play by herself for long periods of time, and she sleeps very well for naps and at night. In many ways, she's like the best of the boys wrapped up in one chubby package :)

Miss Anna's accomplishments at seven and a half months old include crawling (slow but steady), pulling up on things (but not the most stable objects), clapping her hands in excitement, laughing at her brothers' antics, and being adorable.

Anna has managed to outdo her brothers in every single milestone, save two: she has no teeth yet and both boys had about four by six months old. She also will not eat solid food. She spits out almost everything we give her. She has sucked on shortbread cookies but spits out the pieces if they break off in her mouth. The only food she has eagerly opened her mouth for is Chocolate Ready Whip and since that's not exactly on the "what to feed baby" charts, she's not getting any more :) Just yesterday we tried to feed her pears and she spit them out. We tried letting her hold the spoon herself and she whacked off the pears and sucked on the spoon. We'll just keep trying with the food every now and then. I'm not too worried about it b/c she doesn't even eat at the minimum for formula at her weight and formula fed babies don't really need solids until they are eating over 40 oz a day. She's at about 33 oz a day. And that's another weird thing: you'd think that a baby as chubby as she is (19 lbs) would be eating more. She's a snacker and really spreads those meals out but eats small amounts. I think she's just proof that some people are genetically predisposed to being chubby.

That's my Anna-nana. She's just a cutie. I'll blog about the boys individually when next the maternal rush of love hits me for each of them.