Miciah's Birthday!

Miciah is now a very adult 6 years old. Awesome.

Birthday at Parkey's Farm

We spread out her celebrations. Not on purpose, really, but that's how it ended up happening. The Saturday before Rob took Miciah up to C's house to practice some songs they're singing for a fireside, and while the cousins were all together, they did a little birthday celebration. Then on Monday we did a celebration with another family at a local farm that does Halloween Nights. It's a non-scary family-oriented night. They have a hay maze and a hay ride and there was a magic show and other stuff. They loved it. Well, everyone but Elijah loved it. Elijah had been cranky earlier in the day, but during the magic show he started complaining about his head and throat and I noticed his forehead was hot. I took him out, got him a drink of water, carried him around, and by the time the others were out of the magic show, he was asleep. I made Rob carry him, and for the next hour he just slept in Rob's arms. Poor kid. But it was still a good time.

At one point, during the hay maze, which the kids loved, I thought I had lost A, Elijah's friend that we brought with us. I was standing by one of the maze exits, as a sentinel, but the other exit wasn't being watched too closely. So suddenly I was seeing Elijah running around crazy and no A! I asked Rob if he saw him. Nope. No one else did, either. I'm looking around the maze, he's not there. I'm looking nearby at places he could be just running around. No A. Then a lady standing at another side of the maze goes, "Are you looking for a little boy?" Yes, in fact I was. "He's sitting in this corner hiding." Breathe again. He wouldn't get up for anyone, so I walked back through the maze with Elijah and convinced him to get up so we could move to something else. It ended up being funny, but for a minute there I was wondering how I would tell one of my best friends that I had lost her son. :)

October 16th

The next morning Elijah was fine, but Miciah had the fever. (Teancom had a fever Sunday night.) I called and talked to her teacher about something else and mentioned to her that Miciah had a fever and I was ordered (sort of) to not send her to school. Bummer for Miciah, since it was her birthday. So she stayed home, but was fine by mid-afternoon. She kept asking what her friends at school would be doing now. Told me about the fun things they'd be doing in class that she was missing. :) So I told her that she was lucky because she got THREE birthday celebrations. One on Monday, one on Tuesday (with the family), and then one on Wednesday when she got back to school! She thought for a minute and then said, "Then I should be 9!" ...

We let her pick her birthday dinner. She chose beef Ramen and Ritz crackers. Joy! Rob actually loves Ramen (why, again, do I try to make good meals when he's just as happy with Ramen?) so he was in heaven. Then we had her cake. She's always wanted an Ariel cake (just like last year. She's obsessed with Ariel and mermaids), but last minute she decides it should be a castle, too. So I cut notches off the top layer so it would look remotely castle-ish. I thought for a last-minute solution it wasn't half bad. She was happy with it anyway, and that's what matters.

The gift we got her was a $20 gift card to ToysRus. She was thrilled to pick out her own gift. She chose an Ariel building block set and a mermaid pool toy thing. :) It's funny to me how much a gift card can be exciting. Easier for us, fun for her. If she doesn't like her gifts, it's her fault because she chose them. How can you go wrong?

While I took her to ToysRus Rob was busy building her a bed tent. Elijah's been asking us to put blankets up so that his bottom bunk is a "tent". Miciah's been trying to get us to build her a tent, too, but she's on the top bunk. So we'd been thinking of a plan and Rob finally came up with lashings. Yea for Boy Scout training. So he lashed up some thick cardboard rolls and secured bed sheets to them and when we came home I told her to go look in her room for the surprise. She was so excited. Man, sometimes it's the easy things in life, eh? Didn't cost us anything--the supplies we already had. Just a little bit of time and effort and she's happy. Life is good.

Back to School

And Wednesday she was able to go back to school and share treats with the class, so she was happy. I was scheduled to be in helping the teacher as a Parent Helper, so I was able to share the moment with her, which was fun. She loved having me in helping, though I didn't help her specificially. I think she just liked being able to share with me what her day is like and what her class is like.

So that was Miciah's 6th birthday. Yea for kids getting older and yea for simple birthdays and family time!

Other family stuff.

Miciah is Reading

Miciah is now reading. It hadn't occured to me that there was never a day when your kid would just BAM! be reading. When people say that kids read, they say, "You were reading at 5" or "She was reading at 3 1/2", like it was a single event. Miciah has been in some stage of being able to read for over a year. Now she is reading almost any word she wants and needs minimal help, so I think that constitutes Reading. When she can sit in the back of the car and drive you crazy reading and asking questions about signs she's reading, that's official. :)

Elijah

Elijah is not driving us crazy as badly as he used to be. We re-evaluated how we were parenting him and realized we needed to just chill out a little. We've never been hyper parents, but in his transition from quiet, happy, sweet, cuddly toddler to FULL ENERGY IN-YOUR-FACE little boy, we'd been knocked off-balance. So we took some deep breaths, put some calm back in our voices and souls, and he's been reacting MUCH better to that. Elijah feeds off any anger or loudness sent his way, so really, the problem was in large part us. But we're OK with this full energy kid, we just needed to realize this is who he is now and he's not "broken" in the sense of "what's wrong with you? You weren't like this before!". So life is MUCH better.

Teancom

Teancom is still the quiet, happy, sweet, cuddly one, so he has now eclipsed my other kids as the current favorite. Mothers should not have favorites. But at times when everything is chaotic, including my older 2 kids, I can sit on the couch and gush my sweet baby and that's awesome. Soon he too will be the full energy in-your-face little boy, so he can keep favorite status for a while. :)

No real news with Rob or me, as usual. If there is, I'll make some bold headline like "ROB PUBLISHED HIS FIRST PAPER". You will know when there is real news here, not just non-news.

Nintendo Wii

Rob and I did play the Nintendo Wii for the first time last night. We made our little miis. I told Rob, "Your mii looks a lot like you, spelled u-i-i." It was fun to play. I thought my mii looked quite like me while Rob's (with the beard) looked like Kenny Loggins. But I have now been a Simpsons avatar and a little mii. My life feels complete.

We love you all!

Rob, Tamra, Miciah, Elijah, and Teancom