Dream Shard Blog: The Scintillating Adventures of Our Household

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Sun
12
Jun '11

She Can Crawl

Today I saw Carissa crawl for the first time. As soon as I saw it I ran to find the video camera. And then followed many minutes of persuasion to try to get her to do it again. This is a short crawl, shorter than when I first saw her do it, but it’s on video at least. She turns 10 months this week on Wednesday.

Wesley, by the way, started crawling at 11 1/2 months. So they’re not all that far off from each other.

I found that I have a video of Wes from 9-5-10 when he was a week away from turning one, just after he started crawling.

Fri
10
Jun '11

Balloon Fest

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Sibling Stuff

Wes is 3 1/2 (quickly approaching 4), and Carissa is almost 10 months. She has two bottom front teeth and is getting a new tooth on top in front.

Wes likes to help Carissa play–mostly by dumping as many toys in her lap as he can find.

Carissa takes it in stride.

Carissa isn’t crawling yet but getting close. She likes to stand. If your fingers are within reach she’ll grab on and pull herself up. Today we found her standing up in her crib for the first time, clinging to the side.

The Parade of Homes is happening, which is a great excuse to walk through multi-million-dollar homes, admire the finery, and think about how much work it’d be to keep it clean. I start looking forward to Parade of Homes every year in January, so not much can keep me away. But it is a lot more effort to go with two little kids.

This year Wes gets to wear the blue booties.

Thu
9
Jun '11

Donations Please…Ian Needs a Family

Want to do something small that makes a BIG difference? This week Heather Fillmore is raising $1000 to contribute to the adoption fund for Ian, a boy in Eastern Europe with Down syndrome (like my Wes!). Please click on this link here and donate.

Heather’s family just adopted a little girl from Russia named Anya who is not much older than Wesley.

Where Ian and Anya live, kids with DS are undesirable and live their lives in institutions without family. It’s mind-boggling to me. But it’s reality for them.

This is the blog address for Ian’s potential family: http://bring-hope-home.blogspot.com.

And by clicking here you can learn more about Reese’s Rainbow, the organization that helps get homes for children with Down syndrome and other special needs. I cannot look at the pictures of all those beautiful children and not wish I could do something for them. This at least is one small thing I can do to help.

Please help his family bring Ian home to a better life!

What if it were Wes over there??

Sun
5
Jun '11

Catch Up

One of Wesley’s new favorite pastimes is playing in the sink. I’ve been trying to get him to understand that he actually needs to ask me for permission to play in the sink before dragging over a chair and pulling an apron off the hook. But, alas. That will take some time.

I pull Carissa into the kitchen sometimes so she can watch him play. It’s surprisingly entertaining to her. She also likes to sit inside the back door and watch him play in his sandbox.

But after a few minutes I realized she was a little close to the utensils drawer.

Wes is finding his independence. For better or worse. He wakes up (too) early, usually around 6 or sometimes 5:30. I am really the type of person that sees no good reason to get out of bed before 7 am. But now that Wes is in a big boy bed once he’s awake he can tromp around as he chooses. He will often come into my room to get me. I’ll follow him back into his room with my pillows and lie on the bed that’s next to his. He’ll sometimes fall asleep again for a few minutes, or even half an hour. But sometimes he just fidgets noisily and crawls around the floor of his room while I try to ignore him and get more sleep, or until I give up and we both go downstairs groggily (I’m the groggy one, obviously, not him).

Today he woke up around 6 and I heard him go downstairs. I thought briefly, “I wonder what kind of things he’ll find to do to entertain himself” before realizing I didn’t care and fell back asleep.

About 15 minutes later Wes came into my room and I went downstairs with him. The fridge was wide open and the floor looked like this:

He had helped himself to breakfast.

Wes is frequently doing things that, even though I think I’m watching him, I still miss. Tonight I was looking all over for his PJ bottoms, which I had brought down from upstairs to put on him for bedtime. Couldn’t find them. I left him in his church pants and put him to bed. Later I looked down from the upstairs balcony and found his bottoms on top of the very tall entertainment system. He had tossed them up there when I wasn’t looking.

A few days ago I saw him pulling the bookmark out of my library book, a murder mystery. I was nearing the end of the book, almost to the whodunnit part. But my hands were busy so I let it go and figured I’d put the bookmark back later.

And then…my book disappeared. For three days I looked everywhere obvious and then everywhere unobvious. I could not find it anywhere. At times like these I wish I could ask Wes, “Where did you put my green book?” and that he could tell me. But I was on my own.

(Tonight John joined in the search for the book and found it on the floor under our bed. Apparently it had been pushed down between the wall and the mattress at the top of the bed.)

The book I was (and now am) reading is a mystery with recipes throughout. It’s a fun read. When I came across the recipe for Mock Apple Pie I decided to try it. I remember in one of the Little House on the Prairie books that Ma made a pie once out of something that was unexpected because they didn’t have much food on hand to choose from. Her family was all fooled into thinking it was the real-deal pie.

So here is my Mock Apple Pie.

It was super duper easy to make and turned out tasty, similar to apple pie but still different. It would be something to make if you were in a pinch and needed to produce a pie fast. And also if you don’t mind eating something that has even less nutritional value than regular apple pie. Yes, instead of apples you use crackers.

I won’t copy the recipe here but there are many to choose from online. Most call for Ritz crackers, but the book used saltines.

And on one more baking note, here is Wes “helping” finish up a batch of brownies tonight. So helpful. And Carissa looking on.