Take Your Vitamins!

Elizabeth recently expressed interest in vitamins. She takes a multivitamin every morning, and I think the interest stemmed from this - thanks for pointing that out, Veronica! So I got online and found this site which offered a concise overview of the different vitamins. I got in my head that we should make a chart. It has four rows: the vitamin, fat or water soluble, what it does for us, foods that contain the vitamin. So we're taking a vitamin a day and learning about it. Here's what Elizabeth's chart looks like so far:

The process looks like this:

1. I read a little to Elizabeth about the day's vitamin.
2. Elizabeth has to write the vitamin letter.
3. She writes FAT or WATER to indicate whether it's fat or water soluble.
4. She draws pictures or write words to show how the vitamin helps our body.
5. We get online and she types vitamin 'x' foods into google and we choose a page to find foods with the vitamin.
6. She cuts pictures of the foods out of the weekly grocery flyers and glues them onto the chart.

This project ended up way cooler than I expected and Elizabeth's learning or practicing a bunch of skills.

1. writing
2. web searching
3. drawing
4. where foods are in the flyer and grocery store (eg. cheese and milk are dairy, fruits and veggies are produce)
   
5. cutting and pasting
6. how to read a chart

And best of all, she's maintaining interest and we're having a lot of fun!

Parents Read

Just a note to let you know that my friend started a new blog. Her goal is to create an online reading group/book club - since it's not always easy to get together to discuss a book, but it's good to have external motivation. If you're interested, right now we're reading Boundaries with Kids by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. I just started the book today, after requesting it from the library. Gosh, I do love the library. Let me know if you want to participate and I'll get you signed up!

Brian - 11 months

One more month and we'll be having a birthday party for this little boy!

Brian has been busy this month! He can walk all over the place with push-toy assistance and knows how to pull up on and sit back down from anything he chooses: learning table, couch, chairs, handle-less kitchen cupboards, Elizabeth, etc. He's got insatiable curiosity for just about anything he sees, but his primary interests are things with buttons, wheels, and any noise-making item. He's also gotten into climbing stairs on the playground equipment. This is going to be a very fun summer!

Going for the keyboard

He's doing this all the time
and driving us crazy!

Little porker continues to consume food at lightning speed and is joining us now for many of the things we eat at meals. He's only nursing 2x/day, and will be weaned on his first birthday. He seems to really enjoy cow's milk, so the weaning has been going quite smoothly.

Brian doing "cheese!"

His little lips
a common expression these days

"Ahhhhhh!"

On a final note, Brian's not afraid to share his opinion about something, whether he's clapping in glee or loudly protesting not being allowed to bang on the computer keyboard. He's a happy little fellow with a great laugh and some really funny noises. He's got several syllables in his repertoire and he loves to babble. There's a lot of personality in this funny little bundle. We're enjoying him immensely every day!

Here are recent videos showcasing some of his abilities:

Together!

"The Dance of Anger"

I'd like to offer my thoughts on the book The Dance of Anger: a woman's guide to changing the patterns of intimate relationships by Harriet Lerner. I've been thinking a little lately, about how easily I get angry and really want to make some changes so I'm not passing the pattern on in our family. Someone suggested this book a long time ago, but I'd never gotten to it. When I came to mind I picked it up at the library. I believe it was a good recommendation and has given me some great things to think about and ideas to implement. This book, however, does not address the issue of anger as sin, since it's not written by a Christian author. And really, that is the root of my/our problem and only God can change us from angry people to people of peace and calm responses. Nevertheless, I do love some of the points Lerner has to make and will share them here.

As the title indicates, this book deals with anger in our relationships. Here are points I loved and will incorporate more into my thinking:

1. Use your anger to help you learn more about yourself and move toward change. Anger usually indicates something much deeper than what's making us furious on the surface. Take time, when angry (or after you've cooled down!), to ask yourself some questions and really get at the root of the problem.
2. You can't change other people, so focus on observing your relationships and thinking through changes YOU need to make to change the "dance" you're in with people, to move away from angry patterns.
3. There are no quick fixes, we have to make decisions about how we will interact differently and stick with it when we're faced with "counter moves" from others. Change in relationships takes times. There's hope, but there's also work to be put in!
4. Observe, observe, observe how you and others act and react in relationships. Do you distance or pursue? Are you overfunctioning or underfunctioning? Are you blaming instead of taking responsibility for your part in the relationship? After this, you can think about changes you need to make moving forward.
5. Get to know your family history. She encourages us to have relationships with family members independent of others. And she suggests putting together a family tree that includes births, marriages, deaths, illnesses, divorces, education levels, etc. to see patterns and/or understand tense times in our history. This can be accomplished by asking questions of many different family members and learning about their lives, instead of just hearing the advice they have on how (they think) we should be living ours.

Overall, Lerner calls women to take responsibility for themselves and define who they are for themselves and in their relationships. It does have a bit of a women's lib. bent to it, that rubbed me the wrong way. But I would recommend the book, especially if you're stuck in angry patterns in some important relationships in your life.

The baby's awake, so this review is over and not proofread. I hope you find it helpful!

For Those Who Met Me After The Spring 2002

Colin found some old pictures recently and I wanted to share this one.

Yes friends, that is my face. That is what it looked like until shortly before we got married. The year Colin and I were engaged, I took Accutane. I can't remember how bad it was. In fact, until seeing this picture, I imagined that maybe Accutane was a little much. Um, no. I'm so grateful for that drug and the way that it changed my skin! It's been 7 years since I completed the treatment and I have no complaints.

(I do apologize for this terrible "after" picture;
I don't want to spend too much time looking for a good picture right now.)

Thank you creators of Accutane! The benefits (at least for me) greatly outweighed the side effects. The only major problem I had was dry, dry, dry skin....to the point my lips would peel and bleed. Nothing LOTS of chapstick and moisturizer didn't help me to manage!

Family Resemblance