My Baby is Six Months

Logan sits perched on the rocking chair that was his Great Grandmother's as a child. James and I get a kick out of the way he spreads his fingers apart. Is he saying "Live Long and Prosper" or "nanoo-nanoo"?

Playing Scramble

Maybe we are an oddity as a homeschooling family in that we did not own a Scrabble game until last week. The kids and I bought the game for James for his birthday. Evan came up with the idea, remembering that his dad had mentioned quite awhile ago that we should get that game sometime.

We enjoyed playing the game tonight. Sophie was initially going to be on the "girls' team" with me, but then decided to keep score. She did a great job of adding up everyone's points as we played. Logan, getting to be quite the big boy, sat with us. He gets steadier with sitting up every day. Matthew had a hand ready behind him, though, because Logan leaned back when smiling at me for this picture:


Click on the picture for a closer view.

He didn't fall over!

Evan was quite happy that he could use a Latin "derivative" in the course of the game:

As we neared the end of the game, a player accidently bumped the board while playing with Logan, knocking all the words askew. It was a good point at which to stop for bedtime.

Works for Me Wednesday: Healthy Recipes

(To my dad: Sorry, this is a recipe post. Come back later. )

This is my first post participating in the WFMW carnival hosted by Rocks in My Dryer. The theme for this WFMW is "healthy recipes", and while I personally think that diets and too many low-fat recipes usually lead to weight gain, I am into "healthy."

I've been contemplating sharing some recipes that I came across while browsing the Rachel Ray cooking site recently. I think that Mu Shu Chicken fits the healthy criteria and is even low-fat. I substituted ground turkey for the ground chicken, and my whole family declared the recipe a keeper.

Another Rachel Ray recipe that would fit the healthy bill, though probably not low-fat, is Chicken Tortilla Pie. I've made this twice in the past two weeks, again winning the approval of my family. The recipe calls for ground chicken again, but I just used chicken leftover from a roasted chicken. I also think that ground beef would work. The tang of the tomatillas in the casserole makes it stand out from other Mexican casserole recipes. (We had never had tomatillas before ~ yum!) Don't fall for the "30 Minute Recipe" label, though. I bet that only a chef with assistants could accomplish it in 30 minutes!

When we replaced our dinosaur of a computer with a laptop almost two years ago, I never imagined a computer would come in so handy in the kitchen. I often park it on a kitchen counter to refer to recipes that I've posted on my blog, or in Word files, or that I've found on allrecipes.com or other recipe sites. Of course, I have to be careful to keep it clean, but it stays open and propped up better than a cookbook and is easier to read than a recipe card!

Kodak Moment

It is moments like these that make up for the other times. The other times that make Mommy feel like she is losing her mind. The moments where darling baby cannot be content and must fuss during the cello practice or right when the dryer buzzer goes off, the phone rings, and the other children are still quietly waiting to have their questions answered.

A Homeschool Success *Updated*

He learned a new skill this week! Sometimes it seemed like he never would learn. I really had to struggle not to push him and wait until he was developmentally ready. It was quite the temptation not to compare him with the other kids who had already mastered this step and moved on. I had to remind myself that he is an individual with his own timetable for learning and not pressure him to fit into a one-size-fits-all box. Better late is a good philosophy, right?

Well, it was worth the wait...

Logan can finally blow raspberries!

What a delightful way for a baby to entertain himself! I thought I'd post a video of his charming new skill on You Tube, but whenever I whip out the camera, Logan goes all google-eyed and slacked jawed, ceasing all activity to seriously observe the fascinating technology with the flashing light. Ah well.

Now for training in how to be quiet during church...

**Updating in response to my mom's question in the comments: **

Apparently blowing raspberries is a bona fide developmentally important skill for babies. Who knew?

You can read here everything that you really didn't want to know about blowing a raspberry. (Or you could not read it and stay contentedly naive!)

And by the way, the first paragraph above was tongue-in-cheek, just so you know.

Another Reason to Celebrate

Matthew turned nine years old in the wake of Christmas, spreading the cheer a little further. He requested that we celebrate his birthday by eating out at an Ethiopian restaurant. Three years ago, we ate in an Ethiopian restaurant when visiting San Francisco. Matthew did not say so at the time, but lately when I asked him to name his favorite kind of food, he named Ethiopian. Driving slow and steady, we braved the snowy roads to a hole-in-the-wall establishment yesterday in Denver. We ordered mild for the sake of young palates and enjoyed dipping the tangy enjera (sourdough flatbread) to eat lamb, chicken, potatoes, carrots, cabbage and yellow split peas with our fingers.

I've been wanting to put together a slide show of pictures of Matthew on the occasion of his birthday like I did for Sophie. The process is proving to be more involved, because his pictures have deteriorated over the years. The pictures are in supposedly acid-free albums, but they are looking grainy and dust has left little white specks on the prints. When I look at the pictures in the albums, I don't notice the damage, but scanning magnifies the flaws. I've been using photo software to despeckle the pictures and remove the dust scratches. The process makes me grateful for new digital technology! I now have the slideshow in progress but don't have the time to finish it all at once. Matthew and I have enjoyed looking back through his pictures all the same.

And now I know why I keep calling Logan "Matthew"! Logan bears a striking resemblance to some of Matthew's baby pictures. It is fun to notice how Logan looks like both of the older boys, though I've never thought that Evan and Matthew looked much alike.