Ahoy Matey!

"Hula Anna' absolutely loved dressing up in this fun skirt! She would be so busy looking down at it, she forgot where she was going. This afternoon we had a play date with friends we haven't seen in nearly 18 mos. They were living/working in East Africa and we were neighbors there (way back when! =)), and now they've settled in this area. Small world. We had such a wonderful time playing together with all their dress-up clothes!

Gma and Gpa bought James and Joel some pirate 'items' as James calls them, and they gave them as a surprise gift this morning at breakfast. So we've been 'the good kind of pirates' all day long with the occasional 'ahoy!' and 'you'll walk the plank!' thrown in here and there. This fit perfectly with our friends' dress-up clothes (which included two full pirate outfits and a cowboy - close enough). Here the boys impatiently await the signal on the stairs to run and find the hidden treasure! We stumbled upon a new version of the same old game. We hid their plastic coins in the dining room furniture and they had to find it. It's essentially an easter egg hunt over and over again...


Us Mums noted as they left that the boys really hate saying goodbyes. In a mobile life like ours there are lots of goodbyes and some kids cope with that better than others. It's never easy. But today getting together with a foreign-born playmate from our 'other life' in Africa was their first reunion. The boys hit it off immediately and had a wonderful time. It's true that our kids won't have deep roots in one community, but maybe just the intermittent rich relationship?

ER

Saturday we planned to drive north to Seattle.
Our allergist told me that a grass pollen count of 30 parts per cubic meter is relatively high in other areas. She told me that in the lovely Willamette Valley in June ('grass seed capitol of the world'!), the counts are easily in the hundreds. I checked the official counts on the aaaai website for last week and grass was at 871 parts per cubic meter!!! No wonder I can't walk out to the car without having the sniffles for a few minutes afterwards! Both James and I are allergic to grass.

So he's been fairly sniffly and just this week coughing a lot. I was a bit discouraged to think he may be asthmatic like his Mom and brother. Anyway, the cough was getting worse and worse and by the time we needed to leave town it became clear to me that he was not up to the journey. We talked with the triage nurse who ordered us straight to Urgent Care. We quickly called our insurance, which shall remain nameless, for where to go in Corvallis. Apparently, they have no agreements in Corvallis and suggested an hour's drive north or south. The urgency of his wheezing and coughing continued to increase, and they permitted us to go straight to Corvallis' ER.

So up we drive to the ER with a screaming, wheezing, hysterical 5-yr-old. A few minutes on the nebulizer and a chest X-ray later we find out James has pneumonia in his right lung! His younger siblings sat wide-eyed and motionless watching the blur of nurses and doctors.

After two days of antibiotics James is still hacking and not eating much, but playing and running again. He ended up sleeping much of the trip north and arriving late at night to sleep again. I keep running through my mind why things happened as they did. Why I did not see his illness sooner? Praise God for ERs. We have had one or two medical crises in places that do not have them, so I am thankful. Maybe it was better for us to have no insurable place to go for urgent care. We ended up having an X-ray and reading it 5 minutes later!

And just as the nurse suggested, James can now tell his big story of his trip to the Emergency Room! =)

Oh to be Griet!

For quite a while now I've been wanting to reference a blog that was influential in my mommy life. People with 3 small children have unusually busy lives for a season. For us, we are throwing a nomadic and inter-cultural lifestyle full of packing and moving on top. I found that reading military wives blogs have some major things in common with my life. So a month or so ago I stumbled across this blog:
http://gypsy.chattablogs.com/

(just scroll down to 'Don't even sink about it' and look for the picture of Griet)

The hyperbole of Griet startled me with a laugh to my own unrealistic expectations. I'm not trying to keep up with the Joneses, I'm trying to keep up with Griet (though I still don't know how to correctly pronounce her name!) =) She's the supermodel who sews handwoven cloth into clothes for her perfectly calm little angels frolicking in the flowers she planted. Ha. No matter how hard we work, none of us is ever really Griet. It's a very good thing I don't set the standard for life! Once again I praise God for sending his Son who could meet the standard perfectly so WE DON"T HAVE TO!

Can you tell I'm procrastinating from unpacking? =)

Moving on

FYI, we are moving out this week, so our lives are in boxes and we're not going to post pictures. I promise to catch up when life slows down a minute!

We'll be in Corvallis a few days then off to visit the grandparents in Seattle June 15-23. Hope to see you there! (unless you're one of our friends living overseas - no visits for you just yet...)

I will add quickly that it's been fun having Anna talking these days. She'll come around a corner to surprise you and say "An-na!!" really loudly. We used to call her 'Hurricane Anna' because she left a path of destruction through her brothers' railroad tracks, but I think the 'Anna monster' might be her new personality. She does it with a cute smile of course.

'NO!' is also a big hit and easily applied to every situation. She's learned to say her friend's name: "Kate". Yesterday she was playing with a large bottle of shampoo, laid it down, gave it a little pat and said "Ni-Night". I'm not sure why the soap needed sleep, but she's carrying around her baby doll more and more giving 'hugs' and 'bottoe' or 'dink'. So fun.

More later!

It's no skin off my nose!

The big events of last week in our family:

James' tooth died.
A couple weeks back he was pushing a cart/trolley of sorts, but when it stopped suddenly at the wall, he did not. His gums bled and were sore a day, and I thought that was the end of it... until I saw his front tooth turn gray. Thankfully, it is a baby tooth that would fall out in a year or so anyway (and thankfully - we had family pictures taken LAST month! =)). The dentist took X-rays on Tues. and said the roots still look alive and well, it just looks dead on the outside. James is not bothered by it in the least. Turns out Joel's 2-yr molar has a piece chipped off one corner!

I've often had people who understand rough-and-tumble boys ask me, "You've had these boys for 4 years without even ONE trip to the emergency room?!" Apparently, we've avoided the difficult breaking of bones that require casts, in lieu of the breaking of bones in their mouths!

Then Anna fell.
She took a chunk of skin off the front of her nose. It should be noted that Mom was not present. She walked off someone's patio steps and did a face plant right before dinner time. Mom walked in to see Anna happily eating with a huge DORA band-aid across her face. It was a bit traumatic, but I'm getting over it. It's healed pretty well now, so I'll spare you the picture. Contrary to all my worst fears, she will not be doomed to a pig-nose for the rest of her life. So I guess it's really no skin off my nose! =)

And we were offered a place to live about an hour from here - yay! Our summer is looking good, and the packing is underway! ..... I hate moving.

Pigtails and puppydog tails

PEEKABOO!

Actually, Anna doesn't say that, sorry to disappoint you. She does have a sort of word-phrase of her own though: 'they-ah-iz'. She's managed to condense 'there it is' into one long slurred syllable whenever she finds the person or object she was looking for. =)

Taking pictures of one child alone is becoming increasingly difficult at our house, as the others know they are missing out on a potential moment of stardom. So after about 2 pictures of Anna, along comes James with a couple cheesy faces,
and soon enough Joel makes an appearance with the ultimate 'silly face'. =)
Of course, what older brother can resist taking the attention off a younger sibling?

Or was it just being part of someone else's photo shoot? Isn't this essentially the same thing that all those obnoxious people (often boys!) are always doing behind live news reports on TV?! Joel is such a sweet, helpful 'little' guy though.

Today I got out their summer clothes (really our clothes for years to come - in the tropics) and had to pack/give away piles of cute 3-4T little boy clothes and face the fact that my boys aren't so little anymore. They tell elaborate stories of slaying lions to save their classmates, or go on pirate treasure hunts, or ride their bikes over to our neighbor's horse for a ride. There are bigger and better, more exciting things to discover now and it promises to be wonderful and fun - just in different ways. Bring on the snails and puppydog tails! Let the season of toddler end and boyness begin!

(If you look carefully enough, you'll find Kent working away from the couch/office just under an old map of Africa)... And I thought I was just taking pictures of Anna's pigtails!

Baby babble, or is it?

Anna is becoming quite the talker (now nearly 16 mos.). She has quite the little lexicon:

monae! = good morning!
nai-nai = goodnight
eat = I would like something to eat or drink now
bott = bottle
pash = pacifier, the bedtime friend we need to ditch soon
bath/bash = I want a bath now (her favorite thing next to eating)
ish = any of her 3 pairs of shoes, or could you put my shoes on now?
iss = yes, head nodding is in the experimental stage
non = all gone, or no with definite shaking of the head
kak-kak = what a duck says
uff-uff = man's best friend

There's a lot of Mom, Dad, Jess (James), up! or uppa uppa!, and uh-oh! every time something falls down/over, but mostly we hear nonsense rambling. Last year I watched a video of Joel at about this age and I thought he was just babbling away about his toys. In retrospect it was perfectly clear that he was yelling for a cracker! I just hadn't learned his sounds yet. Poor guy. Standing there trying with all his might to communicate a simple question of survival while Mom chatters away about Bob the Builder with a camera in his face!

Hopefully we'll learn to understand Anna a bit better before we plunge her into a trilingual world. She'll likely retreat for a while and then one day emerge with all three perfectly sorted out. So there's a look at what we're hearing around our house (other than her 'pirate' brothers talking about their treasure).

Jello?

As many of you know, our kids have had lots of extraordinary discoveries to make living in the Western world this year. From reclining chairs to carseats to socks and shoes, they have learned and tried many new things. Last week their favorite babysitter
(who rocks the world btw), Kaitlyn, made them strawberry jello for a treat.
Suddenly I realized they had never really eaten jello.
It's not like I have anything against jello. I think I've seen one imported package once in Africa for a high price, but the appeal is lost on me. I'd so much rather indulge in good cheese or ice cream, all of which are luxuries, for our budget anyway.So here's how the discovery went: James gave it two thumbs down (not totally surprising)
Here he shows off his sly skeptic face, leaving his leftover jello for a less discerning sibling.

Joel gave it two thumbs up (also not totally surprising).
Here he shows off his bright red tongue and can't wait to finish the bowl off himself.

And Anna cried when it was finished and begged for more! Such a sweet tooth!
I can't think of where she got that from...

And for those who know Sage household tradition... yesterday she finished her dinner, said 'up!', walked across the room and opened the pantry looking for a cracker! =)

Girly Curly Q

Anna is miss 'Curly Q' these days.

Her hair seems to curl according to the humidity in the air. Once we put her down for a nap with straight hair, turned on the humidifier for her stuffy nose, and woke her up to frizz/curls! Here she is munching on a graham cracker in the 'frizz'.

She's also showing signs of girliness previously unrecognized in our household. Shoes are very important to her, and she immediately notices if one is falling off. Also note her bracelet as she walks her pink poodle around the house. =)

My Mom used to say that having me in some ways brought her healing during my first year, and I think I can say the same thing about Anna - God's precious gift of her in my life has brought me a certain measure of healing. After two boys, she sure is a different 'cup of tea'! Once in a while I think she must belong to someone else's family, but don't get me wrong - I'm cherishing every minute of her girly, curly self!