Wal-Mart Woes

A couple of weeks ago I had reaffirmed to me why I don't like shopping at Super Wal-Mart stores... (Although I don't mind the Neighborhood Wal-Mart that is down the street from me.) I didn't have a lot to buy there and all of the checkout lines with cashiers at them were pretty long with people buying lots of things so I decided to go to the self-checkout line which was much shorter. I waited for a few minutes for one of the stands to free up and then I went up there with my cart. Once I had scanned everything and then paid with credit card, no receipt printed out. I told the clerk that was overseeing the checkout stands and so she came over and tried to do a reprint of the receipt and still nothing happened. That meant one of two things - either the machine was out of paper or the paper was jammed. The clerk said that we would have to wait for a Customer Service Manager (CSM) to come over and unlock the machine because they are the only ones with a key - and that day there was only one CSM at the whole store. So she called the CSM over but she was busy with several other things/people and told us that we would have to wait for a few minutes. It was at least 5 minutes before she came back to help and once she unjammed the paper and then tried to print the last receipt and nothing printed out. Apparently the clerk who tried printing me a receipt before did something wrong and so there was no way to print me out a new receipt. The CSM handed me the crumpled up receipt that had been jammed in the machine and said, "Here this is the only thing I can give you. My name is ____ if you have any problems. That's Wal-Mart for you." Gee thanks...

Lucky Blondie

Back at the end of January we got a call from the school while the kids were off-track telling us that Blondie's name had been drawn for a free bike! The school has a reading program where the kids are able to put their name in a drawing for every so many minutes that they read and then they draw four names throughout the school year and the kids get a voucher for a free bike from Wal-Mart. The weather has finally started to warm up and now that the kids are off-track again I finally had some time to take Blondie to Wal-Mart to pick out a bike. The voucher was for a bike up to $60 and then we could pay any difference if she wanted one that cost more money than that. There were just two bikes to choose from for her size and with tax we had to pay an extra $4. Blondie was super excited to bring her new bike home and try it out and she has been riding it just about everyday since then!

8 months old!

Sometimes MJ looks way too little to me to be standing already. She immediately went from crawling to pulling herself up to things.She had a little bit of a rough week last week cutting her first tooth. She's been biting things even more then usual and not sleeping great. Her tooth finally broke through a couple of days ago so she is finally sleeping a little better at night now. She is finally staring to cuddle a little bit abd it's fun to see her reach for her dad and snuggle up to him for a minute.

Check out this healthy looking baby:
Up to no good...She has two favorite places to go in the family room. The first place is up to the T.V. stand where the Nintendo Wii is plugged in and also the DVD player that she likes to play with. Her second favorite place is under the computer desk where I have a bunch of piano music stacked for right now.

Kitty loses her first tooth

Kitty finally pulled her tooth out yesterday evening. It has been really loose for several days but she was hesitant to let her dad or anyone else help her pull it out. Yesterday she was just wiggling it a little after dinner and pulled it right out. She was very excited to show it to her dad when he got home later.

Kay talk

Today I was at the grocery store and saw a sale on pineapples so I decided to buy one since we haven't had fresh pineapple in a while. I picked one out and put it in the back of the cart where Kay was sitting and she said, "Apple pie! I love apple pie!"

Little things

* M&M making a birthday cake for me (and letting Kay help her).

* Luke making no-bake cookies for the family Tuesday evening.

* Family coming over to help celebrate my birthday.

* The kids having fun playing with and entertaining their 14 month old cousin.

* Blondie & Kitty making me birthday cards.

Kay talk

This morning Kay woke up, wandered around the house for a couple of minutes and then came to me in the kitchen and asked, "Where are all my friends?"

Me: "What friends?"

Kay: "My friends."

Me: "Who are you looking for?"

Kay: "M&M, Kitty, Luke & Blondie"

Then I had to tell her that they were all at school except for Kitty who was taking a bath.

Kay talk

"Can you take my teeth out?" I'm not sure where this question came from, but Kay asked me this while sitting on my lap the other day. It may have something to do with Kitty having a loose tooth and MJ's first tooth that is coming in.

We were outside the other day working in the yard for a few minutes when Kay starting picking some of the crocuses that were blooming. DH and I both kept telling her to stop pulling them out and then Kitty went over and was looking at the flowers and said to Kay, "Look at this flower!" Kay responded: "Kitty don't touch the flower! Just leave it there!"

We were sitting down to eat dinner and I had dished some food up for Kay. The rice was hot so we told her to blow on it before she ate it. So she blew once or twice and then got frustrated and said, "Ohhh, it's not going to work!"

She asked me for a stroller for her drink the other day (she meant straw).

Confusing

Some early reader books might be easy to read, but they can also be confusing by making things too simple. Example:

"What is hot? I am hot." (page turn) "Mom is hot. Pop is hot." (page turn) "This is not! Yummy!" (picture of girl eating an ice cream cone)

When Kitty got done reading this book she asked, "This not yummy?!? Why not?"

Little things

* Finally having everyone healthy!

* Watching MegaMind as a family (loved the movie - definitely my kind of humor).

* Helping Kitty learn to read.

* The weather being warm enough to go for a walk with the kids Sunday evening.

* MJ almost has her first tooth.

* Kitty has almost lost her first tooth.

* M&M helping me make dinner for the last two weeks (one of her requirements for YW). I think it's been an eye opener for her to see how much work is involved in feeding a family.

* M&M learning to play The Pink Panther on the piano (mostly on her own).

* Kay actually allowing me to put jeans on her one day last week.

* Blondie reading books to her sisters at night.

* Kay becoming an expert at twirling the hair in her ponytail. She'll suck on her thumb on one hand and use the other hand to twirl her hair.

In the eyes of a kid...

When I first bought some mousetraps, DH wanted to show the kids how they worked so that they wouldn't try to play with them. So he set one of the traps and then took a ballpoint pen and used it trip the trap. It worked with such force that it ended up breaking the pen. To this day Kay still talks about Daddy "cracking the pen".

When we found the first dead mouse, all of the kids were interested in looking at it, even Kay. After that she kept mentioning to random people that we had a mouse and that it was dead. It was a small mouse and so all of the kids were calling it a baby one (even though I don't think it was). Kay kept saying things like, "The baby mouse, it died, huh?" and "The baby mouse is dead." Then first fast Sunday after the incident, two Deacons had come to our house after church to collect fast offerings and Kay mentioned to them that we had a dead mouse. Then when we had the workers come to install our wood floor, Kay tried telling them about the dead mouse as well. Luckily for us, I don't think any of these people had any idea that she was talking to them or what she was trying to say.

Another funny thing that Kay did happened shortly after finding the first mouse. She was looking through a board book that had pictures of animals in it that were divided up by different colors. The last page had the color gray and one of the animals on the page was a mouse. Kay was going through the book and naming the different animals in it and when she got to the last page, she pointed at the mouse and said, "dead mouse."

Then there is Kitty who to this day still refuses to use the downstairs bathroom because that is where we found the first mouse...

Life with Kay & MJ

Kay says, "Mom, she's squishing me!!", as MJ tries to crawl over her sister to get to all of the fun stuff kept under the computer desk.

A Tale of Two Movies

Last Friday, DH and I had the same great idea: rent a movie for the family from RedBox. Unfortunately we also both ended up getting the same movie (and it wasn't the first pick for either one of us). Luckily the rental fee is only $1.07/night (and I had a free coupon for mine). When DH came home with his and we realized what had happened, we both just had to chuckle!

And in case you were wondering, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole was a pretty good movie that the family all enjoyed. DH, M&M, Luke and I had all read the first book that this movie is based on and they could have made it much more gruesome from the details in the book - which they for the most part wisely chose to leave out. The movie is based on the first three books in a series by Kathryn Lasky.

Spring fever!

The weather is starting to turn nice and this morning while I was taking the trash cans out to the curb I noticed this:

and this:poking out amongst all the dead leaves and plants from the winter time! I have bulbs coming up all over the place and I didn't even notice until today!

Kay talk

I had to wash Kitty's pillow pet the other day and it was on top of the drying rack downstairs. Kay saw it there and pointed it out to me so I asked her if she could get it down and give it to Kitty. This was her response: "Okay. I will get it down. Don't worry!"

Kay to MJ: "Awww! You're such a cute little fella!"

It was really windy this morning when we went to the store. On our way back out to the car I opened the automatic sliding door and after the kids climbed in, an empty plastic bag that was in the car blew out of the car and away from us, too fast for me to get. Kay said, "Oh, no! The plastic bag blew away! We're never going to get it back now!"

Sleeping dilemma

We have recently had to make a temporary change to the sleeping arrangements in our household. Ever since we moved MJ into the crib we have had problems with her and Kay waking each other up at night. About half the time when MJ would wake up, Kay would also and she would then proceed to follow me around the house wherever I took MJ to feed her. On other occasions, Kay would wake up on her own for some reason and come into my room to crawl into bed with me. Sometimes I don't mind it, but sometimes I do. She tends to move around a lot when trying to get to sleep and quite often will end up keeping me and DH awake. But, whenever I would try and take her back to her bed she would start screaming and would then wake up MJ.

About two weeks ago I told DH that we had to come up with some new solution, at least temporarily, until we get them both sleeping better through the night. So we posed two possible solutions to the kids and let them pick the one they wanted to try. Option one was to have Kitty and Kay switch beds temporarily. That would put MJ and Kitty together with Kitty back in the toddler bed and then Kay would sleep on the bottom bunk in the room with Blondie. Option two was to move the toddler bed into the room with Blondie and Kitty and have the three girls in one room and then MJ in a room by herself - again just temporarily.

Of course they chose option two, so that evening I moved some of the toys and shelves around and made room for Kay's bed in the room with Blondie and Kitty. The only problem with this arrangement is that now the kids think it is playtime when they should be trying to go to sleep. Also most of the toys are now in the room that MJ sleeps in, so I have to be very diligent about trying to keep Kay out of there when MJ is sleeping.

Aside from those two issues, I am finally getting some more sleep and MJ and Kay are both sleeping better at night. The couple of times that Kay has woken up at night I have been able to get her back into her own bed without the screaming.

Little things

* Watching Secretariat with the family - great movie!

* Finally putting together a dinner menu for the month and sticking to it for the first week.

* Seeing MJ light up whenever she sees one of her siblings.

* Having MJ hold out her hands for her dad when I am holding her.

* Kay coming up to MJ and saying, "MJ's so adorable!"

* Finding some cute, cheap fabric to make myself a skirt (less than $2/yard).

* Watching home videos with the family!

* While cleaning up the family room the other night, Kay took Luke's shoes immediately after he took them off of his feet and put them in his room.

New blog

I have decided to start a new blog entitled Words of Wisdom by Steph where I will be sharing advice and observations that I have made as a mother of 6. I will be keeping this blog (Steph's Stories) current with family happenings and my new blog will just be for fun, impersonal blog posts. My new blog will be under construction for a few days while I play around with the settings, but I already have two week's worth of blog posts scheduled. I'd love to have you join me at my new blog:
www.wordsofwisdom-steph.blogspot.com

Words of Wisdom

I want to start periodically posting things that I have learned over the years of being a mother. Here is my first piece of advice:

**It is generally not a good idea to wear a solid black shirt when your baby has a runny and/or stuffy nose.**

Sick Kay

Kay has been sick since about Saturday and I stayed home from church with her and MJ on Sunday (MJ just started getting sick yesterday). I ended up taking the girls for Sacrament Meeting though because DH was speaking (only his second time in this ward). These pictures were taken on Tuesday. Kay fell asleep on one of our beanbag cushions in the middle of the afternoon. I like the second picture with her hair wrapped around her finger (she loves to twirl her hair when she is falling asleep).Kay had a fever for a couple of days and wasn't sleeping well. Now she is mostly suffering from a cough. Unfortunately the cough has caused her to throw up a couple of times and now the sickness is spreading through the family. Blondie and Kitty have runny/stuffy noses and sore throats and MJ has a bad cough now. DH also started feeling a little sick yesterday...

The month of church talks!

January was our family's month for church talks for some reason! Luke gave a talk in Primary the second Sunday of the month, Kitty took a turn the third Sunday of the month, and M&M was asked to speak for the first time in Sacrament Meeting on the last Sunday of January. (And if you remember, Kitty just gave a talk in Primary back in November...)

Luke's and Kitty's talks were pretty straight forward talking about service. The only difficulty was that we were also fighting a few sicknesses throughout the month so DH and I weren't able to hear both of the talks. (I think we were both there for Kitty's, but not for Luke's.)

M&M was asked to speak on the topic of Music and Dance. We had her set a goal to have a rough draft of the goal done by the middle of the week so she wasn't waiting until the last minute to prepare something. She shared a couple of personal experiences with music and then we helped her find a few talks from General Authorities that she could pull some quotes from.

Unfortunately on the day of her talk Kay was sick and Blondie claimed that she wasn't feeling well also. So DH stayed home from church with those two and then ended up leaving them at home just for a few minutes while he came to Sacrament Meeting to hear M&M talk and then I was playing the flute with the ward choir for a musical number immediately following M&M's talk. (DH was going to bring the kids with him but Kay still hadn't woken up for the day and she was still asleep when he returned home. DH had given Blondie instructions to turn on a movie for Kay if she woke up and if she needed DH right away to call his cell phone. It is nice to live just a block from the ward meetinghouse.)

When I first walked into the chapel and saw M&M up on the stand she looked really pale to me, so DH and I were crossing our fingers that she didn't pass out during the talk... She did a really good job on her first speaking experience. She didn't appear to be nervous at all and she spoke loud and clear for everyone to hear. She also received many compliments from people afterwards on how well she did! I'm not sure if this is a churchwide policy or not, but the youth in our ward are supposed to be given the opportunity to speak once a year in Sacrament Meeting. In our ward with a huge youth group that means that we usually have 2 youth speakers each week. If we stay in the ward much longer, M&M will have spoken more times in our ward than either me or DH.

Pretty baby!

Love this little face!

M&M's new obsession

When M&M started playing the flute a couple of years ago we knew that she might want to switch instruments as she got farther along in school. The flute was nice for her to start on because we had one that she could use and I could help give her some pointers along the way. Plus the flute is a nice base instrument to start on - quite a few of the other woodwind instruments have the same or similar fingerings as the flute. At first M&M expressed interest in switching to the oboe and we discussed it a little with the band teacher at the middle school when we were signing her up for classes at the end of 6th grade. Then when M&M showed up for school at the beginning of the school year we found out that the band teacher that we had talked to had moved on to another school and they had a new teacher at her school this year. We talked with the new band teacher at back-to-school night and found out that he would LOVE to have her switch to oboe because it is not a common instrument for students to play and if she started in her 7th grade year then she would be in good shape to move up to the advanced band for her 8th and 9th grade years. Unfortunately though both of the school oboes had recently been checked out by a couple of flute players from the advanced band who were going to try it out. So we decided to wait a little bit and then look into renting an oboe from one of the local music stores - especially since M&M had placed second chair for the flutes in the intermediate band (mostly 8th graders).

Then M&M saw me play in a woodwind trio for the Sounds of the Season Christmas concert and she all of a sudden became interested in the bassoon. I have an older sister that played bassoon and recently one of my nieces (who is in the same grade as M&M) switched to bassoon. I told M&M that if she was interested in playing the bassoon to ask her band teacher if the school has one. Finally after a week or two of "forgetting" to ask him she finally did and found out that the school in fact has two bassoons - and the teacher sounded excited about having her switch. He told her to buy some bassoon reeds and then come and see him about taking one of the bassoons home. So the next time I went to the music store to pick up a flute that needed some work, I bought a couple of bassoon reeds for M&M to try (and they are not cheap).

M&M tried them out that evening and then asked her teacher the next day if she could take one of the bassoons home. Because of a limited amount of time during the school day he asked if she could come and pick it up after school and she said probably not because she rides the bus home and didn't want to miss it. So he said to ask him about it again on Tuesday (it was President's Day weekend) and he would get it for her. When M&M got home from school she told me that the teacher had wanted her to come after school to get the bassoon and I reminded her that on Fridays I take Blondie to tumbling class right across the street from her school so she could have just walked over there and gotten a ride home with me. Well, M&M was then kicking herself all weekend for not remembering that and moaning and complaining that she was going to have to wait the whole 3-day weekend before she could try it out.

So Tuesday comes around and the teacher doesn't have the bassoon ready for her to take that day and so I told her to just wait until Friday again so that she can go after school and have him show her how to put it together and how to take care of it and get some bassoon music and then she could walk across the street to ride home with me. She reluctantly decided to wait until Friday and then we brought it home and figured out how to put it together and put one of the reeds on and she was immediately able to make some sounds with it. On Fridays I am busy running kids around to tumbling and piano lessons (and Luke had a friend's birthday party to go to), but I was finally able to get on the computer and find a couple of fingering charts for her to use. The bassoon we have found out is not as intuitive as some of the other instruments on what the fingerings are for different notes. There are several keys that just the left thumb itself plays (7 I think). Since I printed out the fingering charts, M&M has been obsessed with playing the bassoon and trying to figure out the fingerings for different notes. She is also set on learning some of the bassoon parts for the music they are currently working on in band class. I finally was able to convince her to start out with a couple of scales first so that she can learn the notes with the different fingerings. This is something that is just so new and different that she is excited to learn it. Her arms were a bit sore the first few days that she was playing it, but I think she is starting to get used to it - and trying to figure out the best posture and position for her to sit in and finding the right spot for the seat strap (there is a strap that attaches to the bottom of the bassoon that you then sit on to help support the weight of the bassoon).

If she ends up deciding to stick with the bassoon I think we might have to look into finding a private teacher for her. When I bought the bassoon reeds at the music store, the clerk said to me that playing the bassoon is a great way to get college scholarships because it is an instrument that not too many people play and there is always a demand for good bassoon players.