3rd week of January

Monday was Martin Luther King Jr day so the kids and Dode were home. We asked the kids what they wanted to do as a family activity and they chose swimming. I looked at the Lynwood pool and the Snohomish pool which both have water slides and a play area for the little ones. Both places only had swimming available during nap time. We decided to go the YMCA.  There are no waterslides but there is a nice play area for the twins and a lazy river for the bigger kids. We swam for almost 2 hours, which I thought was plenty of time but the kids thought was too short.  When I got our membership last year, I bought the cheaper family package that only included one adult membership because I knew Dode wouldn't be working out.  He can come as our guest three times in a calendar year.  I figured that would give us three family swimming trips.  He came once last year with us, that's how much we dread and put off taking the family swimming.  It's such a hassle to get dressed and undressed, it's always a bit cold, it's pretty boring for us old folks.  When I joined the Y, I'd told myself I'd take the kids swimming once a month.  We went swimming in January, February and March.  In April we went to Ocean Shores during spring break so I decided that counted as our monthly swimming and with that I broke the cycle and I never took the twins swimming again!  Twice a week when we visit the Y for my workouts, we walk right next to the pool with it's big windows and I told myself that if I took them once, they'd want to swim every time.  It was pretty easy to talk myself out of it.  Well, it's a new year with new goals.  We went swimming on MLK day and I already promised the twins we'd go swimming the day after their birthday.  Twice in January!

On Wednesday, we met my mom at the Everett Children's Museum in the morning. Thankfully Elizabeth came because my mom had Finnley and I had the twins and they had very different interests. Although they were all at the museum at the same time, they spent most of their time playing in different areas. For Luke, his favorite area was the trains, both an extensive Thomas the Tank Engine set and a model electric train. Leah loved playing inside the kid sized airplane. Finnley enjoyed playing with the air filled tubes that will lift a ball up into a maze of tubes in the ceiling before dropping them back down to play with again.  They all spent some part of their time in the water play area.  After playing, we had a delicious teriyaki lunch.

In the fall I sent a DNA sample off to Ancestry.com which allows you to find relatives through DNA. Well, a few weeks ago, I received a message from my dad's first cousin that neither one of us have ever met. She's 76 years old and lives about an hour south of the Canadian border in New York State.  When we were emailing back to forth, it was in the 50's here and raining while it was minus 32 where she lived with 8" of snow on the ground.  I have been thrilled with the results of my DNA test verifying on several sides of my family that I have built an accurate family tree. My dad's cousin wasn't able to give me any additional information about their shared grandparents who immigrated from Czechoslovakia but she is sending me some photos of them. I'm so excited!  Another exciting thing she shared is that her mother lived to 102 and her uncle into his 90's.  My grandfather on my dad's side died in his early 60's, I thought I was short lived genes.  Maybe there's hope!

I usually hand toys on when the older kids had outgrown them (we thought we were done with kids) but there are three things I've saved over the years, the play kitchen, Thomas the Tank Engine set and the dollhouse equipment.  We first got the dollhouse when Elizabeth was little, and we've added on to it with both Miriam and Leah.  The big dollhouse is still stored out in the barn (you'll see Luke's fire station "dollhouse" in the photo above) but I brought in a small tub of the furniture as well as a mom, dad, sister and three babies this week and the twins have been really enjoying setting up little scenarios and acting out parts of life. Their favorite thing to do is make the dolls and babies use the toilet.

Toileting is a big part of their life.  Leah is fully potty trained and runs to the toilet multiple times a day.  Luke is a more reluctant potty trainer.  If I have him in underwear or a swimming diaper, he will pee in the toilet on his own volition 80% of the time.  If he is in a diaper or pull up, he never decides to use the toilet.  As to pooping, we have a zero success rate.  I've tried everything with him.  He uses a stool softener every day to keep things moving.  He gets a lollipop if he uses the toilet but that didn't seem to be motivating him to use the toilet for #2.  I bought matchbox cars for him to receive if he poops in the toilet.  He knows what they're for and he knows he can't have them until he poops.  He will sometimes take them out of the cupboard and look at them in their package but he still won't poop in the toilet. 

On the health front: Dode broke a tooth this week.  He was just sitting at dinner eating ham tetrazini when he pulled a piece of his tooth out of his mouth.  When he'd felt it in his mouth, he first thought it was a piece of gristle, nope, it was a piece of him!  He doesn't have any pain, just a jagged tooth.

Luke had his yearly IEP meeting for speech this week.  After attending preschool twice a week with 20 minutes of speech therapy a week, he hasn't made much progress.  The speech teacher wants him to receive speech services twice a week, once for 20 minutes with another student, the other for 30 minutes of one on one time.  She also wants me to make a photo book with pictures of his family and things that are important to him that he can keep in his backpack.  When he's trying to talk with his teachers, if they don't understand what he's trying to tell them, he can use a photo to help.

On Saturday, Miriam and Dode had a Miriam/dad day.  It was really hard to come up with something for them to do in the winter.  While it seems on the surface that Miriam is up for anything, when you think through the things you could do, a lot of them don't seem practical.  They ended up going to the Museum of Flight in Seattle.  The kids have free memberships through an educational program that allows them to bring a parent with them for free.  Although we've had the free memberships for several years, this is the first time we've taken advantage of them.  We've taken little people to the museum so many times and it's really not a relaxing time.  We've kind of given up on it!  Dode was worried that Miriam would spend a few minutes at the museum, flying through the museum, and be bored.  They spent hours there and she really seemed to enjoy it.  After the museum, they went out to pizza before coming home.  Miriam is in a stage of life, middle school angst, where she just can't seem to fill her reservoir of meaningful parent interaction.  Each night when we head to bed, she wants to lay in bed with us and cuddle and talk.  Unfortunately for her, the twins are always there too, interrupting her, bumping into her as they climb around the bed, taking all the fun out of it for her.  We need to be more proactive about getting her some parent time.