Halloween and High Speed

Wow! High speed internet finally came to our neck of the pasture and WE HAVE IT!! No more waiting 10 minutes for an image to upload only to come up with an error message and have to start all over again. Posting pics will be so much easier now. Here are some images from the Halloween party last weekend.

The party setup in the barn this year. Thanks to Dad for all the hard work!

The "Haunted Castle" bounce house Mom and Dad rented for the party.

Part of the setup for the mad scientist's lab, which was much scarier in the dark, with the black and purple lights ...

Frankenstein lying in the camper waiting to be brought to life by the mad scientist (Scott). After the hunt some of the kids wanted to go back into the camper to see if he was alive "yet." I had to say, "Uh, no, sorry." Guess this one was a dud. That does give me a good idea for next year though!

Six ghosts were dancing around a tree by the pond (and still are, except that one has tipped over backward with a snapped neck). Thanks to Mom for this neat decoration.

Dan entertaining Max by the bounce house early in the party.

The alien who crashed his ship on the roof. (His buddy was crushed underneath it.)

Reading clues with the kids on the Cookie Witch hunt.

On the way back from the Cookie Witch's house on the hayride, it started to get dark.

When the hayride went into the woods behind our house, the monsters popped out here and there to amuse the kids. Dan descibes this as an experience of running through the woods, half blind in the mask, crashing into everything with no idea where he was going.

Poem About Our Family

This is a very current, very accurate, irreverent, silly poem about our family:

Daddy'd like to sit at home

And for just awhile be left alone

Driving to Rice is very far

He spends his whole life in the car

And being pestered by his job

And his family too, when he gets off.

Mom spends all week in the house

Dreaming of getting to go out

She likes to take Daddy and the boys

To do fun things they don't enjoy

And when they start to cry and moan

She wishes she'd left them at home.

Toys are what Gabe's living for

He's always needing just one more

For "buy it now"s he always looks

He wants to punch his homeschool books

He waits all day for UPS

And says, "Soccer's kind of fun, I guess."

Max likes to be walked around

He doesn't care much for lying down

He likes to watch and bite and touch

Luckily he doesn't cry very much

He loves to give the cutest smile

Then rip your hair out, baby-style.

The Raccoon in the Chicken Coop

All is well here in the Starr family household ... no complaints at the moment! Gabe is doing fine in his homeschool program. With a little coaching he has made 100s on his last spelling test and math test! I do get a little irritated sometimes following someone else's curriculum because I'm not sure it matters whether he knows what a linking verb is, or a helping verb or an addend. It also bothers me when I judge that the 100s he made don't mean that he is retaining the material. He's a smart kid and completely ABLE to play the school game, like I was (though of course, much less WILLING)! But succeeding at the game doesn't mean he's getting any more from it than the smiley face at the top of the page. Philosophically I tend to agree more with the un-schooling approach, although I fear deviating from the mainstream to that extreme. Besides that, I'm afraid that left to pursue only his own interests he might sink so deeply into comic book and superhero mythology that he would never learn anything real, or true.

Little Max is thriving. He is a big smiler! I think I mentioned in a post a long time ago that he didn't seem to smile as much as Gabe did at that point in development. Well, I take it back now. He is a big smiler! Being smiled back at is important to him. If he reads unhappiness in my face, he becomes unhappy too. Max is five months old now. He loves to interact with all the adults out here. He watches Gabe with fascination but backs away from him a little since Gabe is too boisterous and tends to get in his face. Interestingly, my dad theorizes that Max is left-handed. I'm not convinced. Time will tell.

Gabe and Joe are now on a soccer team together! They have had one practice, and the first game was supposed to be today but was rained out. It will be interesting to see how that goes, since Gabe does not have a competitive team spirit and doesn't seem to get it when it comes to sports. If he tries, I know he can be good at it!

I guess the only big story for the last couple of weeks is the raccoon that got into the chicken coop. Last Saturday morning Mom and Dad discovered the remains of 3 (or 2 1/2, as Dan put it, since one was apparently not complete) dead chickens in our coop. A fourth was missing. A predator had obviously broken into the coop, although we weren't sure what kind of animal it was. We had suspicions that it might be a raccoon since there were raccoon tracks all around the pond, easily visible in the mud since the pond was neither all the way full or all the way empty. I had shown Gabe the tracks and explained how raccoon tracks are common around water since they like to wash all their food.

Last Saturday night, despite my somewhat half-hearted protest, Dad set traps around the chicken pen, and Sunday morning snagged a raccoon. He shot it, and before they could bury it a huddle of giant buzzards came and picked the carcass dry. I felt sad for the raccoon -- the life of a mammal seems more important than that of a chicken. But at the same time I didn't want to lose any more of them. I guess these are the harsh realities of life out in the country. I feel new to this! (Maybe we all are, since it apparently took Dad 15 shots before he was satisfied that he had killed the raccoon.)

It's hard to tell whether we have any more raccoons. In the past week the pond has filled up with rain, so there is no more mud surrounding it to evidence any tracks. I guess the traces of our raccoon have washed away.

The last two pictures posted here are of the boys riding around in the little carts Dad picked up ... They also have one more playmate this week since Clari's sister Elizabeth, her husband Christian and son Ian are staying next door for awhile!

Gabe's Halloween and Other Pictures

The mummy in the tent.

A jack-o-lantern.

Squidward, from SpongeBob.

This is a cute one of Buddy driving the tractor.

The Cookie Witch and Mr. Skele-Bones riding on a broom, about to crash into the alien's spaceship (part of the Halloween plot).

Four Arms from Ben Ten.

This is Big Chill from Ben Ten.

This is the werewolf, trying to eat a chicken, and Gabe trying to stop him (this is part of the Halloween script and has nothing to do with our recent chicken predator).

A Visit From the Police

Well, the police visit was the most interesting thing that's happened these last couple of weeks, anyway! Apparently Clari was trying to get Joe to do something he didn't want to do (eat his dinner or do his homework? Not sure which ...) He told her that if she didn't leave him alone about it he was going to call the police. And sure enough, he dialed 911!

Apparently 911 called back to verify the call, at which point Clari realized what had happened. Although there was no real emergency, a couple of officers still visited us at the Compound. Gabe was so excited about it! He loves to strike up a conversation with any adult that comes around (including the UPS and Fed-Ex men -- he always has a story for them)! He was following the officers around saying, "I was the one who told my cousin about 911, but I didn't think he'd really call!"

Another cute story from next door: Clari was walking around in the grocery store with Maya, and they came upon an obese woman. Maya proclaimed loudly, "Look, Mama, that lady is FAT!" Clari was embarrassed and explained to Maya that we must not call people fat because it hurts their feelings. So the next time they passed the same woman in the store, Maya tried to make amends. She made sure the woman could hear her when she happily announced, "Look, Mama, that lady is NOT FAT!"

All is fine here ... Gabe had a barium swallow a week ago to check for acid reflux, but the test was negative. Max is still teething and just started biting me while breastfeeding ... pleasant! Everyone is healthy and happy for the most part. Gabe seems to get mild to moderate enjoyment from attending his new school, and he's actually becoming more cooperative in doing the work at home. His rotten baby tooth still lingers ...

I am planning for Halloween like mad ... a lot of planning but not a lot of doing. It will all come together before party time, though, one month from today!

Dan got news that his next conference will be in San Diego this March, and suddenly I have a new obsession: going to San Diego! They always put him up in the fanciest hotel/conference center and pay for his meals. I want to bring the fam and tag along! San Diego has definitely been on my list -- home of Legoland, the San Diego Zoo, Sea World, beaches, and an hour or two from Disneyland. I already have this year's official San Diego tour guide, acquired during a recent stint of ordering every free tour guide I could get my hands on. You can tell it's been a year since our last vacation. I've been doing a lot of sitting around at home, and I am not a good sit-around-at-home person!

Another new development is that we've enrolled Gabe in soccer! Since his Lighthouse classes conflict with homeschool PE at the Y, he's been missing a physical outlet. Soccer is the only sport he has ever really enjoyed, so we're going to try it out! Joe has also signed up, and I've requested that they be on the same team. They'll have games on Saturdays starting in the beginning of October.

That's all I have time to write at the moment! All is well in our corner of the world. I will add pics to this post later.

Feels like fall

I've been working on so many other projects that it's been hard to find time to blog lately! Although fall hasn't officially started yet, I'm already in the Halloween mood, and things are changing!

Gabe started school at The Lighthouse. So far so good, I guess. The teacher says he's doing fine academically and making friends ... she only occasionally has to remind him to pay attention in class. Somehow this report seems unrealistically rosy to me. I guess she has a lot of patience ... I'm sure it also helps that there are only four or five kids in her class!

It's still like pulling teeth to get Gabe to do homeschool for us. And speaking of pulling teeth, he also went to the dentist on Friday! They didn't pull any of his teeth, but they did recommend we get one of his baby teeth out. It's wiggly, and they had told me it was ready to come out the last time we were in the office 8 months ago! The enamel is partially worn off on the front of it. Oh, how I hate that tooth! I've been pressuring him to wiggle it and work with it often. He doesn't want anyone to pull it out for him.

Gabe's biggest hobbies are collecting toys and drawing. The former can get really expensive for us ... I encourage the latter whenever I can! He loves to sit down with adults, get them to draw pictures, and copy them. I wish I had more time to sit with him but seem to be carrying Max around all day all the time ...

Max is teething like crazy lately and whining about it most of the time. Poor Max! Also, poor everyone else! He's very adept at spitting out Tylenol, and he hates Orajel too. Other than the irritation caused by teething and some nasal stuffiness at night he is doing fine and keeping up with his milestones. I can't wait to see some actual teeth.

Since the swine flu is going around I am, of course, worried about that. I also question whether we all might have already had it, since we had some kind of virus sweep our compound last month. I hope so. Gabe is tired of my worrying about it. I continue to read the bulletins about it online, and Gabe has asked me to "please just stop reading about it!" I made a sentence out of his spelling words last week, and it went: The big, fat, sick pig ate cake in the rain for ten days. Gabe said that maybe the big, fat, sick pig had the swine flu.

I've started a major project in preparing for our yearly Halloween blowout. I have 11 monsters planned for the Cookie Witch hunt, and I also want to have a smaller, less scary Pumpkin Goblin hunt for the littler kids. I didn't realize how many crates full of Halloween stuff I had till Mom started pulling them down for me ... They are taking up a major part of storage. Dan pulled the dummies out of the attic for me too. He says he hopes that if the police ever search our house that they are the kind who ask questions first, since we keep bodies in the attic.

Gabe and Joe got GI Joe costumes. For once Joe is wearing black and Gabe is wearing white ... but it's because in this case, the good guy wears black and the bad guy wears white! Gabe's costume is Storm Shadow, and apparently he's a bad guy. I'll try to have some pics of them next week. Maya has a Snow White costume, and it's funny to see her walking around wearing it with a witch's hat on. She always want to play a game with Mom where Mom has to play the role of the "mean tiger."

We've started attending church lately, although we missed today ... It's a Baptist church called Life Bridge that's only a couple minutes' drive from our house.

Well, that's all for now!

Gabe's Art

Gabe's drawing of Luke Cage from the Marvel universe.
"Battle Damage" SpongeBob and Patrick.
This is Slimer from Ghostbusters.
Invisible Galaxy is a character from Gabe's nightmares.
Gabe has started drawing action pictures. I especially like this one of Humungousaur falling backwards!

Unfortunate Milestones

This past week Max had his first illness, a cold courtesy of Gabe from last week, I suppose. For the most part it was a relatively mild illness. Neither Max nor I got the high fevers that plagued Gabe for two days and Dan for four. Joe and Maya next door had the fever too, with Maya setting the record high at 104 degrees. Max's temp never got above 100.0, which is technically not even significant for an infant.

Max's main problem was the stuffy nose, which made it difficult for him to nurse back to sleep. Luckily, it would usually subside after he was upright. He and I were very tired and must have slept through a couple of night feeds, leading to our second unfortunate milestone: my first mastitis with him!

I wasn't prepared for mastitis yet! With Gabe it didn't happen till he was 9 months old and eating other foods sometimes, leading to a milk supply greater than demand. In fact, I had decided that when Max was about 6 months old I'd go ahead and buy a breast pump and try to learn how to use it ... for when this inevitably happened again. You'd think a veteran of mastitis like me would have seen this coming. But then you'd also think that a veteran breastfeeding mom like me might have been able to train her breasts to feed a pump ... Not so. It seems they are either not smart enough to understand the technology, or otherwise too smart to be fooled into thinking that gizmo is a baby. I've always had more luck with manual expression than pumps.

On Friday afternoon I realized something was wrong with my right breast and immediately started trying to get him to nurse on that side more frequently. Even so, by Saturday morning, it had become large, swollen and painful. The edema got worse and worse during the day on Saturday until it finally completely prevented Max from being able to latch on at all! (At this point I felt the actual obstruction must be gone, and I was surprised since I had expected it to get better instead of worse!) Saturday night I was calling lactation consultants in a panic! I called four, and one returned the call. She referred me to kellymom.com, where I learned to do intermittent positive pressure softening, which involves basically manually pushing the edema back up into the breast so the baby's mouth can make contact with the milk sinuses. So after I molded this mass of inflamed tissue into something resembling a normal breast, he was able to use it again!

On Sunday morning I awoke with a clear blister on my nipple the size of a bb. After consulting my online resources, I decided to perform minor surgery on myself again. With mastitis with Gabe it was always a little white plug that I'd remove with a sterilized needle. I'd never seen a "bleb" before, but I lanced it anyway. I am still a bit sore, but getting back to normal!

Luckily Max has been willing to work with me through this. (Maybe it's because he has no choice, if he's hungry!) But I remember all the screaming when I had mastitis with Gabe. He would not take the right breast at all (yeah, it's always the right) until the swelling was gone, so that breast went from peak production to absolutely nothing, and I had to relactate on that side.

We have one more unfortunate milestone to add before we get to the fortunate ones: Max is starting to have some very painful teething. There are no observable teeth yet, but he is showing all the signs: drooling, gumming, etc. He is constantly sporting what my dad refers to as a "slobber goatee." At times he seems very uncomfortable. Poor Max!!

Despite all the discomfort, though, Max is still making progress and keeping up with his other milestones! He seems so eager to do things, and it feels like he is in a big hurry to grow up ... more so than Gabe was. Maybe he sees all the other kids around and senses competition! He is reaching for things, sometimes with success in grabbing them. If you hold him upright with his back against you he always tries to sit forward. He likes to practice standing and can "stand" upright for several seconds with minimal support. He is always active, observing, reaching, and wiggling. If someone engages him then turns away to speak to someone else, he makes a little noise to draw attention to himself so they will talk to him again!

I've been too preoccupied with illness lately to have many more stories to tell, although I realize I forgot to write about Gabe's first meeting with his new teacher at The Lighthouse. She is young, and I was afraid at first glance that she looked like a self-absorbed and snobby person. But I changed my mind immediately when she started to speak. She spoke animatedly and told Gabe how much fun second grade is! Her enthusiasm seemed genuine. The first thing Gabe said was, "Last year I quit going to school because I had a bad teacher." (No pressure or anything!) She asked him what he liked, and he told her, "Toys." She asked him if he was excited about starting school, and he didn't answer, because the answer would be no. Then he brightened and said that he was happy since it meant Christmas would be here sooner, and he was looking forward to getting toys on Christmas ... specifically a toy called "Sodom." Maybe not the best thing to tell your Christian school teacher! Dan tried to laugh that one off and explain that it was a video game character with an "unfortunate name." At the end she said she could tell it was going to be fun having Gabe in her class!

This week I finally got to use my "Space Bags," those big plastic bags that you put clothes/bedding in, seal, and vacuum out the air for storage. Fun! I put away some blankets, all my scrubs, skinniest skinny clothes, and Gabe's clothes arranged by size for Max.

Joe started school on Monday, but Gabe's little program doesn't start till next Tuesday. We'll see how that goes.

This week when I had a scratchy voice Maya said, "Amy, you sound like a witch ... Amy, are you human?" This is the same child who, on seeing my new haircut, told me, "Amy, your hair looks crazy!" Usually, though, Maya is full of compliments. I'll step outside in an ugly men's t-shirt, and she notices that it is "new" and tells me it is "beautiful!"

Well, yesterday Dad went to a dermatologist at the medical center, backed the volkswagen into an "abutment," and knocked out the windshield. He'd already had it repaired, though, by the time he got home.

I guess that's all for this week! After publishing this blog mid-sentence several times, I've finally finished it. (Now to add a few more pictures.)