He is Risen!

He is risen indeed!

Happy Easter everyone! As I posted last year, Easter is one of my favorite holidays. It's a day to remember our Savior's death on the cross, the work he accomplished there for us, and a time to rejoice with others that he was victorious over death. When Christ died on the cross, he took God's wrath for our sins upon his own head. He paid for them once and for all so we can be close to God. All we have to do to accept this free gift of salvation is put our trust in Him. Doesn't that sound like a good deal? It's a way better deal than we could have ever thought possible or deserve. Turn your heart towards him today!



We attended the Good Friday service with friends from grad school we hadn't seen in 6 years! It was a treat to spend the evening with Lane, Carolyn, and their daughter, Maddie. After hearing the scripture account of Christ's death and singing some songs (including my Easter favorite, Were you there? Thanks, Amanda, for including it!), we went home with heavy hearts to contemplate the pain and suffering that Christ underwent to pay for OUR sins.



All week we'd been talking about how on Sunday morning, we'll get to race to church to beat the sun so we can greet one another with Joy as the sun rises that "He is risen! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!". Frankie loves the sunrise service as much as I do, and even woke in the middle of the night (2:30am) to ask me if it was 5, and shouldn't she get up now. We raced to church and sang songs of loud praise and triumph to Him whom death could not hold.


We ate some yummy breakfast after the sunrise service

















Happy Easter!

Potty Trained!

It's been 10 days, and the last 2 have been accident free! He's gotten it in what feels like a hurry, which is a huge relief. We did relent and go back to night time diapers, because it just seemed like he wasn't ready physically for that. He's been asking to go, and is generally now willing to go. He got his new Thomas Train after 2.5 days, and still gets chips when he goes at home, but has been willing to go outside the home, even new places.

The best advice came from Mimi (Chris's mom), who said I should let him run naked. We cranked the heat (to 70!!!) and let him run free and breazy whenever we were home. I do think it really helped him to understand when he needed to go - I found that he would not have an accident when he was naked, but sometimes would if he had underpants on. After a few days he seemed to get it, and now we're having to fight him to get his pants on - the boy loves being naked!

He loves his big boy underwear, and is so stinking proud of himself. I am so stinking happy to be done with diapers. And very proud of my boy.


Showing off the pants for the camera. Super Grover with his Superman t-shirt.

The Potty Training Begins

We've thrown down the potty training gauntlet. It's time. Cold turkey, no diapers style, because that's how it's gotta be with Dex.

Dex can be very extremely stubborn. Especially when it comes to transitions, or doing something new that wasn't his idea. Curious: he's my adventurous eater - he's not necessarily afraid to try new things, but they certainly need to be on his terms.

And the truth is, diapers are convenient for him. He can go to the bathroom whenever he pleases, where ever he pleases, and I'm sure it feels like a giant you want me to do what?! to him to have to learn to use the potty.

We've been reading books about the potty. Once Upon a Potty was his favorite when we checked it out from the library a few weeks ago. We talk about using the potty all the time. We like to make lists of who uses the potty and who doesn't.

I've been itching to get this child out of diapers, but at the same time, wanted to wait until he was ready, mainly because I know how hard he is to change direction. We tried for almost a day a few months ago, and he clearly wasn't ready. He couldn't hold it, would pee a little bit every 5-10 minutes, and there were a lot of panicky tears on his part.

But recently he's gotten in to the habit of taking off his pants and his diaper at nap time and sometimes at night time. He wakes up dry when this happens. Aha! So he can hold it now.

I told him the last time this happened that he needed to keep his diaper on, unless of course he was all done with diapers, and ready to go in the potty like a big boy, which is what his choices were showing me. And that if he did it again, we would have to say goodbye to diapers and learn to use the potty.

This happened again yesterday at nap time - I woke him up after a 3-hour nap and he was naked as the day he was born, and yet dry. We had a Cheerful yet Firm conversation about how he was a big boy now and that we were all done using diapers. Frankie got really excited for him, and helped him pick out some undies.

We have a multi-tiered plan:

1. No diapers. Not at night time, or nap time. Because Dex is the kind of kid who needs an all or nothing plan - if he seems some wiggle room in the plan he will extort that loophole (I'm guessing he would learn to hold it all day until naptime and bedtime and then let it rip - not really the toilet training we had in mind).

2. One chocolate chip if he sits on the potty - this is already becoming unnecessary, but was Very Necessary the first few hours.

3. One more chocolate chip if he does anything in the potty - even a few drops.

4. A sticker if he does anything on the potty, and once he gets 15, he gets a new Thomas Train (which was what he thought he'd like).

5. No punishment for accidents, but an encouraging "That's okay! Let's go try on the potty!"

6. Time outs for refusal to try and sit on the potty, and if he can't calm down while on the potty. He usually needs to sit on the potty for 2 minutes, calmly. Because really, he's not going to go if he's hysteric. I see this as willfull disobedience, which is actually separate from potty training. I know many experts say you should make the potty training experience nothing but positive, but this worked with Frankie, after months of the positive only method failing. Note there's no punishment for accidents, or not going on the toilet, just not being willing to sit on the toilet.

We're 24 hours in, and he proved he could hold it yet again - holding his pee at least 5 and then again 7 hours at a time. And the time he did go last night, he snuck off downstairs for a few minutes while Chris and I weren't looking. Because with Dex, he's stubborn like a fox, and he figured if he could just hold it, he wouldn't have to pee on the toilet at all.

He'd had 6 accidents and no actual pee in the potty after 23 hours, and I was starting to get really despondent when he had his first bladder-emptying pee in the toilet right before his afternoon nap! Wohoo! I actually cried tears of joy I was so happy. He can do it! My little boy will learn to use the potty!

Please pray for us, for me, that I will not falter in my plan, and that he will chose to use the potty cheerfully. Because that part I know from experience I can't make him do. He's got to chose to go on his own. I can put him on the potty, I can make sticker charts and Frankie can cheer lead until we're blue in the face, but he has to chose to go. There are so many parallels to salvation here, and it's clear to me how much we need the Holy Spirit on this one. Come, Lord Jesus, Come.

Frankie's Art These Days

Frankie's art has evolved, again. She's been drawing more and more people, in more elaborate ways. This has been so fun! My favorite thing about this new phase, however, is that most of this is self-initiated. I don't usually take the time to set up crafts for her (although when I do she loves them!). I just leave paper, scissors, tape, glue, markers and pencils where she can get them, and she helps herself to them.

She decided to make a person on a paper bag tonight while I was making dinner:



After she showed me this, I suggested that maybe she could make hand-puppets with some brown paper lunch bags. Yes! She snatched the bags from me after I showed her how she could put them on her hand and make them "talk" and then pretty soon she was asking me how to spell the various members of our family (Rebecca and MacGyver, you guys made the cut).

Here's Dex - he's got a crazy red beard and he's wearing his dinosaur shirt (who he insists is an alligator, see "Not Percy"). Frankie informed me that in this puppet version, the dinosaur is dead.



This was another one she did tonight while I was making dinner. The mini boden catalog came, and while I love their clothes we rarely order anything from them. She likes to cut them up instead. Tonight I suggested she paste them onto a paper and draw in a girl wearing the clothes she picked out. This is what she came up with:


It's fall (those are leaves falling), and this girl is wearing both a short-sleeved t-shirt and a hoodie. And she's holding a bag - a girl's gotta think about her accessories!

This is a snowman wearing a hat with a pom-pom and a scarf. It's snowing, and that's a tree next to the snowman.


This one was done at school, when the lady from Historic New England came to visit. They'd just read The Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown. I was the parent teacher that day, and it was really fun to watch the girls at her table feed off each other to make their pictures more and more elaborate.

On the right there is a scarecrow, with eggs on his head.  On the right there is a sun, some eggs.

When you open the barn doors you can see a cow at the bottom lying on some hay, the egg-laying chicken towards the top left, and a cat drinking some milk on the top left.

One of the small groups at preschool she often chooses is journaling - the kids write letters in this group. This is a letter she wrote to Dex:

This is what was inside:

It's a roller coaster, which is really sweet because one of Dexter's favorite library books right now is called Harriet and the Roller Coaster. I really love that she thought about him in this way while she was away from him at school.

The other thing she does a lot is write letters. I love this stage, because she'll write random letters down and then ask me what it says. Usually in the letters you can pick out "Frankie", "Mom", and "Dex". She's preferring to write Frankie these days (instead of Frances - it was Frances for a long time), and it usually comes out "Franike". Really close!


She's also adding stories to her pictures. We bought her some nice pencils at the art supply store in Central Square after church on Sunday, and this is one of her drawings. The "story" (that she had me write on the back) is below the picture.


"It's snowing, and there is one drop of snow going in the chimney. The biggest one is Momma (because she's the oldest), the Daddy, then Frankie, and the smallest one is Dexter. Dexter is standing on a stool so he can see the rest of the family. At the bottom, there is grass, and at the top there is snow and a chimney. There are leaves on the side of the house." By Frankie, age 4.

Chasing the winter blues away

It's no secret: I'm ready for winter to be over. I heard a report that we had 70 inches of snow. That was back in January. It's been cold, it's been dark. I've taken to complaining.

But my cheerful children won't let me get away with it for long. Frankie seems genuinely confused when I mention that I'd really like all this snow to melt. "But Momma," she replies, "there are lots of things we can do in the winter that we can't do in the summer. Like ice skating, and sledding, and eating icicles."



We had a brief spell of warmer weather last week that did melt some of that snow, although I'm pretty sure the glacier outside my house on the street won't melt until the end of April.

So what have we been doing all these cold, cold wet days? Lots of playdough, reading, and laps around the first floor on the tricycle and "mine truck" (Dexter's ride-on Kettler toy). I have a "fast music" mix on Grooveshark that includes such favorites as I Want Candy (Bow wow wow), The Distance (CAKE), Jiggy With It (Will Smith) and Black Dog (Led Zepplin). I turn this on and the kids literally run laps around the downstairs of our house. Sometimes I join them - hey, it looks like good exercise!



Frankie has been doing a lot of interpretive dancing recently - this will require some video to fully appreciate, and I will post it once I get it off my phone. Dex plays trains. There's lots of couch gymnastics.





We do art.



They love to help me cook.



And play dress ups.


(Dexter is flying in this one)





And you know, it's not so bad. We make a point to get bundled and get outside at least once a day. I try and get us all outside for an hour a day. We visit friends, we go to school, we crunch crunch in the snow, we sled, and we drink hot tea. And these are not things we can do in the summer, and you know, Frankie's right - we really should enjoy them while they last.

Introducing: I had a lemon

I'm starting a separate blog of recipes and sundries at http://ihadalemon.blogspot.com. Check it out - as incentive, my first post is my vanilla and chocolate frosting cupcake recipe!

Love, Jenny

Frankie is 4!

Frankie turned 4 on Saturday - Happy Birthday to my baby girl! 4 seems so grown up to me, and so much fun! At 4, Frankie is rather independent - she can dress herself (when she wants to), get her own cereal in the morning, and go to the bathroom and wash her hands all by herself. She is helpful, a good conversationalist, and often happy to participate in what we're doing as a family. She loves to cook, read, and dance to ballet music.

Nonnie and Pawpaw came in on Thursday for the weekend, and I put them to work immediately helping me to make 88 cupcakes. We brought 26 in to her school on Friday for a party at school, and while some were um, "lost" before Saturday, we served the rest at her Rainbow party on Saturday. I will share the cupcake recipe, but in another post!







Frankie was greeted on her birthday morning with some presents from my parents - some vintage Polly Pockets that used to belong to my sister, Sarah. She LOVES them.



I can totally understand why - there's something really appealing about a whole little world in a miniature clamshell, right?


Sarah, thanks for taking such meticulously good care of them - we will try and do the same, and pass them down to your little girl if you have one!



The party - we served sandwiches (pb&j, tuna, turkey, brie, and apple), Parmesan Citrus salad (I substituted Quinoa for the Farro, and added craisins and watermelon radish slices), rainbow goldfish, and a rainbow fruit platter. Sorry I don't have more pictures of the food - my camera was acting funny until Janice fixed it for me half-way through the party. Thanks, Janice!



We sing Happy Birthday to Frankie in the following video.



Jennifer and George

Auntie Kiran!

Chris, Rahul, and Jeremy

The Bridesmaids

They were upstairs playing "wedding" for a really long time. The whole time was spent preparing for the wedding - apparently that's the really fun part. Charlie Klauder and Simeon John graciously took turns playing the groom


Micah was apparently preparing for a destination wedding in Thailand

Zippy, the bride

Cece prepared the music

Elsie wasn't quite sure what was going on...

Charlie giving the bride a gift. Apparently there was a lot of giving the bride gifts :)

Dex was downstairs "reading" most of the time

Pawpaw!

Chaeus loves his trains

Lap dog Maisy


After the party, we cleaned up, and put our feet up to watch Milo and Otis for family movie night. It was a hit! For the kids and us - it's totally campy, you need to check it out. If you saw it as a kid, you have no idea how crazy some of it is until you watch it as an adult.




Happy Birthday, Frankie!