Baby B at One Month

Baby B helping me with some laundry

Baby B, you are one month old! When your foster brothers were babies, I would write updates about them to help myself remember how they changed. Babyhood goes by quickly, and if I don't write things out, they'll be gone from my memory forever. We don't know how long you'll be with us. We think you'll be with us for at least another seven more months, but only God knows the plans he has for you. So just in case you end up sticking around for the next eighteen years, I'm going to do monthly updates on your babyhood. If not, then we'll be able to look back have lots of great things to remember about your time with us.


For the first few weeks you were home with us, we were a bit worried about your weight. This was new territory for me because your foster brothers were always high on the growth charts. When we brought you home at two days old, you were a little peanut at barely 7 lbs, and you were slow to regain your birthweight of 7 lbs, 14 oz. You finally creeped up to 8 pounds just after your two-week checkup. I found myself rejoicing when you finally outgrew your newborn-sized baby clothes at three weeks old. Definitely new territory.


You were very sleepy for the first two and a half weeks of your life. You would usually fall right back to sleep after feedings. You could fall asleep anywhere and anytime, even in the middle of a diaper change. Then around the time you turned three weeks, you started being able to stay awake for up to an hour after your feeding. You love to ride in the Moby wrap. Now that you are awake more, you're very alert and curious when you're in it. You look all around and even lean your head way out to see all around you. I have to keep holding your head in so you don't hurt yourself (and so I don't accidentally bonk your head on something). 


You have sneezing fits at least once a day. You sneeze and then have a little baby sigh, then sneeze again. I'm not sure there's anything cuter than a little baby sneezing five times in a row. 


You are generally mellow and happy. You're slightly fussy in the evening. If we're out of the house in the evening, you're even more fussy. You seem to like being snuggled up in your crib when it's bedtime, instead of being somewhere else. I don't blame you.


Which reminds me...you just recently transitioned to your crib full-time. When you first came home, you were in a bassinet in our room at the foot of our bed. You grunt loudly in your sleep and I was always popping awake thinking you were waking up to eat, only to find that you were just moving around. After a few days, we moved the bassinet into your room across the hall from us and we keep the doors open so we could hear you wake up at night. A few days ago, I tried napping you in your crib to see how you'd take to it. I put a blanket over the side of the crib to hide the bars so it resembled the closed coziness of the bassinet. You took to it! You've been sleeping exclusively in your crib for a few days now. (One less thing we need to wean you off of later!)


You like being swaddled. You're good about putting yourself to sleep. I just wrap you up and lay you down in your crib, and you usually go to sleep with just a minute or two of fussing. Once in a while I'll have to do relays of pacifier replacement, but it's rare. 


You've made a predictable routine for yourself: You wake up around 7:30am and eat/nap every two and a half hours after that until noontime. That's when you eat a bunch and then a nice long nap (which also happens to be the same time your foster brothers take their nap). Then you eat about every three hours the rest of the day. Your last feeding is around 9:30pm. For the past three weeks you've been waking up twice at night to eat, around 1am and 4am. But for the past week you've been waking up just once a night to eat, around 3:00am, and last night you woke up just once at 5:00am. I'm hoping this is a trend that continues! 


One thing you should know, Baby B: you are loved by so many. Your foster dad and I love you like you are our own. Your foster brothers adore you and always want to hold you and play with you. I pray constantly for you, that wisdom would be given to those in charge of making decisions about your future, and that God would protect you and keep you always.

Preschool

I stopped doing my preschool updates here quite a while ago. The holidays came around and we took a break from doing structured things. I love routine, so towards the end of the holiday season I was really craving our routine again. Then we got a string of foster babies, and we had to tweak things a bit with each new arrival and departure. I changed our routine it a bit and now our days look slightly different than they did in the beginning of the year. Now that we have some stability with Baby B, we've hit on a new routine that is working really well.

Each morning generally looks the same: The boys wake up around 7:30am and eat breakfast. After eating, they get themselves ready for the day and tidy up their room and beds. Baby B also wakes up and eats at 7:30. By the time breakfast is over and the boys are ready for the day, it's time for B to take a nap around 8:30am. The boys and I settle on the couch for 'Bible time': singing hymns, memorizing a new catechism question, and Bible reading. Then it's time to read our chapter book, and the boys play quietly on the floor with Legos while I read. We're currently reading Farmer Boy, and for some reason it feels to me like it's taking us forever to get through it. Probably because I'm not reading as consistently as I'd like to think I am. :)

At some point during all this, Tommy will have his reading lesson; he finished all the books in the Bob Books series so now he is reading from a Bible reader I made. I copied and pasted sections from the New International Reader's Version Bible into a Word document, and divided the text into bite-size chunks for him, so he doesn't get overwhelmed. He's been doing this for a few weeks now and he's already read through the first chapter of Genesis. I got the idea to do this from another home schooling mom and I love it because he's reading something real and important. Early reader books are functional for new readers, but the text is boring and pointless. I love that Tommy is reading something rich and true instead of Dumpy to the Rescue!. And yes, that's a real book.

One thing I've added to our days is learning about art and music. We started off with some of my favorite people: Vincent Van Gogh and Aaron Copland. We talk about the paintings during meal times, we've read some books about Van Gogh and his paintings, and we've tried to copy the paintings. In case you're wondering, a Van Gogh reproduction by a four year old ends up looking more like a Picasso. We listen to Copland's music a few times a week in the house (also during meal times, when they're relatively still and calm!) and in the car. So proud that my boys can identify a Copland piece within the first few seconds of the music.  

After 'school time', it's time for Baby B's next feeding. After her feeding we'll go out of the house, either for an errand, a play date, or just for a walk down the street. After this it's time for lunch, then naps for all - Baby B even naps at the same time the big boys have their quiet time. I'm really pleased with the rhythm of our day. I know that one of these days B will change and we'll have to tweak things a bit, but for now I'm really enjoying this sweet spot! 

Enjoying some creek splashing with friends.

Picnic lunch and books. A new tradition we've come up with is to have a lunch of peanut butter and honey sandwiches, apple slices, and popcorn, and eat it leisurely on the grass while I read books to them. 

Foster Sister

We found out this week that we will most likely have Baby B for at least six more months, starting in April (so a total of seven to eight months). The likelihood of our adopting her has gone up a little, but there are still a lot of complicating factors. For now, we are excited that we will get to see many of her firsts - rolling over, sitting up, first foods, maybe even crawling and teeth. 


And since we will be seeing many of her firsts, we've started putting together a life book for her. This is an album-like book where we make notes about her personality, quirks, likes and dislikes, eating and sleeping habits, record milestones, and keep photos. The purpose of the book is so that when she moves on to her permanent home (whether it's an adoptive home or back with her birth-mom), she will be able to have a full picture of her first months while in foster care.


Please keep us in prayer over these next months. We are attaching to Baby B as if she was our own, which means lots of kisses, baby babbling (on our parts), holding, and snuggling. But it is always in the back of our heads that she will most likely move on to another home someday and we will have to say goodbye to her. Pray that our hearts would be full of love for her, but also guarded against any feelings of claim on her. 

Baby Three

There's a new baby in the house!

Baby P left our home just over three weeks ago. We are supposed to call the assessment center (the facility that processes new children who come in the system and finds them foster parents) to let them know when a child has left our home, so they know that we're "open for placement" and can call us for new children. We didn't know we were supposed to do this. So for two weeks our home was very quiet, and frankly, pretty boring. Once I realized my oversight, I called the assessment center right away to let them know we were open for more kids. A few hours later, bam! New baby. We've had her for nine days now, and she's eleven days old.

She's been a happy, healthy little newborn so far. I'm thankful for so many things with her: she only wakes up twice (sometimes once!) at night; she eats well and goes straight back to sleep during those night feedings. She likes being held and looking around. She lets me know when she's ready for a nap by sucking her hand, rubbing her eyes, and giving small cries of complaint, and then she naps willingly in her bassinet during the day. She doesn't protest her carseat too much, and usually sleeps once she's installed. That's more than I can say for either of my boys as newborns! Or maybe I'm finally getting the hang of this baby thing.

People often ask me how the boys are liking the baby. I reflexively say, "Oh, they love her!" Which is true. But closer to the truth is that they barely notice when we have a baby, particularly a newborn. She sleeps most of the day. They give her gentle little hugs and kisses when it's her (or their) nap time. Truth be told, their life hasn't changed very much in the day-to-day things. We still do school time in the morning, we still have play dates and go for walks at the bike trail and to the park. There's been a few times when they want to do something with me and I have to say "We can do that a little bit later, right now I have to feed (or fill in the blank) Baby B". 

We've been so blessed by the generosity of friends throughout our short foster care experience: 

- a meal dropped off on the day of our first placement of newborn Baby A

- the many friends and family who have been willing to watch the boys anytime while I take care of errands related to foster care - whether it's visiting a baby in the hospital, taking a baby for a visitation, or picking up a new baby at the hospital. Foster care would be very difficult without this support.

- the new Moby Wrap that a friend from my moms group gave me (for free!). It is seriously the comfiest baby carrier I've ever worn and I regret not getting one for my boy babes. It would have made life so much easier. 

- Baby girl clothes we've been given by friends - pink outfits were certainly something lacking in my stockpile of clothing.

We've been asked how long we'll have Baby B. We know we'll definitely have her for two more weeks. At the end of March there is a court date that will decide how her situation will change: she may go back to her mom, she may stay with us for at least six more months, or there may be a search for an adoptive family (if this happens, we most likely won't be able to adopt her, for complex reasons I can't get into here).

For now, I'm so enjoying snuggling this fuzzy newborn head. 

New Artist in the Family

Lately Ben has started doing more drawing. This is one of his recent creations: a family portrait of the Knapps next-door. His style of drawing people makes me laugh every time I see it. I like to think that I keep my laughter to myself, but I have to admit that sometime they're so funny that I can't help but crack up at his drawing.

Description of this picture:
"This is a crocodile. [Pointing at squiggles to the left] These are his things that squish up his food. ('His intestines?') Yeah, those."
A few minutes later: "Actually, it’s a toy crocodile. He has a flashlight in his mouth."
More minutes later: "Actually, no, it’s a real crocodile. His friend bit his leg and tore it off. ('Wow, that’s not a very nice friend, is it?') No. And then he got a cast from the animal doctor. Then the friend went to the animal jail. And he’s not strong enough to get out."


It's fascinating to watch Ben draw a picture. He'll draw a little bit and then make up a story to go along with what he's drawn. Usually the pictures involve people fighting. Then he'll draw some more and change the story as he goes. Sometimes his pictures and accompanying story get very complex. By the time he's done with the scene, it'll be a mess of lines and squiggles and strange-looking people which tells the story of an epic battle between good and evil.

Ben said this was a chicken. It looks like one crazy chicken to me.

Some day soon I'm going to make one of these books for each of the kids' artwork. I've been taking photos of their artwork ever since their first scribble. I don't like saving the actual papers because we don't the space (and, let's face it, I can't stand clutter). But how cool would it be to have a nice, compact book that contained hundreds of their paintings, drawings, and other creations? Very cool indeed.

Six Days

Baby P napping through a (rather loud) baby shower

Our latest foster care experience lasted six days. We got "Baby P" on Thursday afternoon and she returned to her mom the following Tuesday afternoon. 

We are getting a lot of short-term, short-notice, newborns since we are an Emergency Shelter Home. When a child is taken from the birth parents, it is usually a sudden, unplanned event. The children we get, as an ESH, have little warning, and often are far more likely to leave our care in a matter of days once the situation is figured out by the social worker. If the child ends up staying in foster care and/or adoption, we would be high on the list so the kid does not have to move again. 

Anyways, this is a random list of things I've learned from our latest three placements.

1. It has been so important to have a clear idea of why we are doing foster care, and set it in the forefront of our minds. Our main intention for doing foster care has been to bring children into our home to show them love and care for however long they need. Adoption is secondary. There came a time last week when we had to make a very quick, and very difficult decision. Because we knew that our objective basically boiled down to helping kids now, we were able to make a good decision. 

If our objective was to find a child to keep, it would affect so many of our decisions. Do we take a placement we know would be very temporary? Do we do our best to accommodate birth parents and push for reunification? Do we bond and love a child whose future with us is likely short-lived, and will never remember us?  Those are critical questions that have different answers depending on your motives. You can't hide your true motives when the hard and painful choices come.

2. The first few days of bringing a baby home (even a healthy, happy baby) will be very difficult. The baby is in a foreign environment with new smells, sounds, and sights and they plain just miss their mama. With our last placement, the baby was fussy, didn't like to be put down, didn't sleep during the day, and woke up four times a night - for the first two days. On the third day, she was like a brand-new kid! She smiled when I picked her up and talked to her, she started sleeping through the night for 7-hour stretches and started napping during the day like a normal three-month old. 

3. We should trust very little that we are told about the case we're dealing with, even from authoritative sources, like the case worker. We've realized that there are so many people involved in the process of removing a child from its parents and placing it in a foster care home. Each person sees a different slice of the picture and relays only that information to us. Often, the information is incomplete or incorrect. Core facts in the story are constantly changing as more is revealed, investigated and clarified over time. Which leads to....

4. Learning to be flexible. This concept is still being pounded into us, and we're slowly getting better at it. We are planners by nature. We are not obsessive, but we take comfort in organization.  And now, so many decisions are made by other people which have a great impact on our lives and schedule. To some degree, in becoming a foster parent you agree to hand over control of some of your life to government workers. We have been eating out a LOT lately, out of necessity.  
- What, there's another visitation tomorrow that you JUST told me about, and it's during my kids' nap time? 
- Oh, now instead of just a visitation, the baby is actually being returned to her mom in an hour? Gather her things and say goodbye quickly!
- You paid a non-refundable fee in advance for a Women's Retreat? Sorry, you have a new placement to pick up a few days before and won't be able to go.
- You gave your Women's Retreat ticket away, thinking you were not going? Well, the child is not coming home, so you can go again, and you need to buy another ticket because you just gave the other one away. (Actually it all worked out in the end and we didn't have to buy an extra ticket, but it was close!)
- We just showed up at 3 PM to pick up a new placement, but we need to wait at the assessment center, with our kids, for 2 hours since the doctor ordered some last minute tests just as we were about to walk out the door. No time to make dinner. Time to eat out again. 

5. I need to start letting go of the idea of having a clean house. It is really difficult to get anything done with a baby in the house, beyond keeping us all fed and in clean clothes (and barely even then). However, I am also seeing that having a solid routine helps tremendously when adding another child to the mix. Baby P fit right into our schedule, after some tweaking.

6. Try not to cancel any plans. We tried to keep life as normal as possible, even if that meant that things got a little crazy for a few days. We can't continually make plans and cancel them whenever we get a new placement. During the few days we had Baby P, I had a few play-dates with friends, ran my usual errands with three kids in tow, had friends over for dinner, helped throw a baby shower, and helped set up for my mom's group. Which goes back to #4: learning to be flexible (and relaxed)!


Now we're back on the call list at the children's shelter, so we could get another placement any day. Luckily I got a full night's rest and managed to pick up the shambles that was my house before we get any more calls!

Happy 4th Birthday, Ben!

You turned four last week. Since you're the youngest child, your turning four hasn't really been too emotional for me. In many ways, you seem like such a big kid that it feels like you should have been four a few months ago. (Also, you've been telling people that you're four for the past half-year, so I feel like you should be five already!) You can do so much for yourself now: get your own snacks, clean up your messes without being asked, dress yourself, and help with your laundry. 

You're very physical. You're great at playing catch, you're a fast runner, and an amazing climber. Your dad and I are thinking we're going to have to put you in sports someday. In the photo above you were having the greatest time doing flips on my bed. You have a competitive nature. You turn everything into a race- eating breakfast, running out to the car, getting dressed in the morning- and you hate to be last.

You are a kind brother. You share willingly with Tommy, and you even gave him one of your gifts to open on your birthday. You love people and you talk to strangers as if they're already a friend. You give everyone hugs, and you'd give them kisses too if I didn't curb that practice! 


I looked back at this post from when you were 3½ to see how you've changed in the last six months. You still complain about doing work around the house, but not as much as you used to. Sometimes you'll even ask me if there's anything you can do to help around the house. You no longer look at books upside down- for a while we were a little worried that you had some learning issues because of your preference to look at books backwards, read things backwards, and write backwards and upside down. Now that you're reading and writing more, I can see that was just a short-lived phase.


Benji, I'm looking forward to watching you grow into a kind, friendly, outgoing boy. I can't wait to see what God has in store for you this upcoming year.

Click here to see photos from Ben's birthday and his party.

Our Newest Charge

We've been the foster parents of this baby girl for two weeks now. Well, we're technically her foster parents, but we haven't actually brought her home yet because she's been in the NICU. I can't say very much about her here, but I can say that she's really cute. And she's very awake and aware of her surroundings, alarmingly so for a such a young baby.


We've gotten a lot more experience navigating the world of foster care. We have learned to be very loose and laid back about our plans. We are normally such planners that we like to prepare as much as we can when we know something is going to happen. Well, when you do that with foster care, it often backfires because things can change so quickly. With this little one, we thought she was going to come home the next day after getting the call for her. So we made plans and preparations for a newborn to come home within 24 hours. We cancelled some things and shifted other things. I cleaned a lot of things (what is it about babies that makes women want to clean things?). Then plans changed and then we thought she'd come home the next day. Then plans changed yet again, and we found out we weren't going to get her for at least another two weeks. Lesson learned: Don't make plans, because they'll most likely change anyway.


We've been doing our best to visit this little one while she's in the NICU. She's in a hospital forty minutes away, which makes visiting difficult, especially with kids and a working husband. But we're doing the best we can, thanks to generous family and friends who have offered to watch our boys while we (and sometimes just I) make the trek up to the hospital. We're all looking forward to her coming to live with us soon.

Birthday Interview with Ben - Age 4

I have to say that Ben wasn't terribly interested in doing this interview, so the answers should be taken with a grain of salt. I conducted it during breakfast, because mealtimes are pretty much the only times he's sitting still enough to carry on a conversation. It was a little difficult getting him to answer me, like he couldn't be bothered to give 'ol mom an interview while munching on his english muffin. The answers are funny anyway. 


So how do you think it'll feel to be four?

I wish we could go to LegoLand when I’m four.

What kinds of things can you do now that you’re almost four that you couldn’t do when you were littler?

I can spin the tire swing when I’m in the middle without anyone helping.

What is your favorite color?

Green

What is your favorite food?  

Strawberries

What is your least favorite food?  

Egg sandwiches - those things you make us when we go to Mothering by Heart.

What is your favorite book?

Daddy’s Star Wars pop-up book

What is your favorite toy?

My police car

Do you have any friends? Who are they?

Kirsten. (Any others?) Maffew.

What is your favorite thing to do with mom?

Have ice cream.

What is your favorite thing to do with dad?

Play on the bed.

What is your favorite thing about yourself?

I don’t want to do this one.

What is your favorite thing to do outside?

Play jump ball. 

Where is your favorite place to go?

Pump it Up, Gilroy Gardens, and LegoLand.

What do you want to do for a job when you grow up? 

Read the Star Wars pop-up book to our foster child. (No, I mean for a job, when you’re a grown up. Like, how Daddy works on the computer.) Oh. Policeman.

Where do you want to live when you grow up?  

Near Diana Park. I would go there every day after naps.

Do you think you’ll get married when you grow up? Who do you think you’ll marry?

Kirsten. (Actually, you can’t marry your cousin. Anyone else you'd like to marry?) But I want to! (more explanation about marriage rules...) Ok, then. Essie.

How old will you be when you get married?

Thirteen.

Where do babies come from?

Tummies.

Is there anything you’re afraid of?

Monsters. And lions, ‘cuz they are gonna eat me.

Food Artist

The other day at the library we found a new series of books by Saxton Freymann. We all got really excited about these books because the pictures are just so cool. They use scenes made out of food to tell a story. I got almost all Freymann books the library owned, five in all, but I left a few so as not to be a hoarding library patron. Tommy pored over these books as soon as we got home from the library. Then he decided to make some of his own food creations. He got to work cutting up all the veggies and experimenting with how they fit together. Below is a sampling of some of his creations. He constructed these completely on his own. 

 His first creation: Cucumber Car

Carrot Jet

His pièce de résistance. I have no idea what this is, but I do know he was working on it diligently for over an hour. It started out just being a carrot car with turnip umbrellas (if you look closely through the gobs of grapes, you might be able to find it). Then he kept adding grapes and more grapes, until, he decided he was finished.

It was fun to see him get excited about something new and take initiative to figure things out for himself. He now says that he wants to be a food artist when he grows up and he's going to open up a restaurant that only serves fruit and vegetables. He's going to call his restaurant "Tom's". Stay tuned, because this is one vegetarian restaurant you're going to want to try when it opens!

24 Hours of Foster Care

The last 24 hours have been a crazy whirlwind of activity. In that time, we got our first foster child and then saw her reunited with her mother. We've heard the advice from veteran foster parents that we need to be flexible and open to sudden change of plans. Now we definitely see what they mean. Here's a timeline of the past day:

Thursday morning:

10:00am: I get a call (while I'm in the middle of baking cookies with my boys) about a two day old baby girl, about to be discharged from the hospital, who needs a foster home. Amidst a flurry of phone calls, I make all the arrangements to pick her up. At this point, we know very little about the baby's situation, but we do get the idea that this will be a short-term stay. We figure sometime later next week she might be reunited with her mom.

2:00pm: I head to Target to pick up last-minute things I'll need for a baby girl. Important things like pink pajamas. And some diapers, bottles and formula.

4:00pm: We pick her up at the hospital.

5:00pm: Baby comes home. The boys are totally in love with her. Tommy, in particular, keeps trying to find ways to help out with the baby by bringing me her little hat, a stuffed animal, and asking to hold her. For the next several hours, she eats, sleeps, and poops. She repeats the cycle several times. She has a normal newborn night, waking up a few times and pooping a few times.

Friday 9:30am: I follow foster parent protocol by scheduling a doctor appointment for baby and contacting her social worker.

10:30am: I get a phone call from baby's social worker that she is going to be reunited with her mom later in the day, and could I perhaps bring her to the social services building right after her doctor appointment? I say "Of course", but my mind is totally reeling from the sudden change of plans. After another flurry of phone calls, a load of laundry, and some frantic running around the house to gather baby items, baby is packed up and ready to go.

2:30pm: Baby has her doctor appointment.

4:00pm: Baby is reunited with her mama. I drive home in the pouring rain and traffic trying to gather my wits about me and come to terms with the newest change of plans.

I'm sad that this experience is over so quickly. It was fun to take care of a newborn baby girl, despite the several wake-ups at night. But ultimately, I'm happy that the baby was reunited with her mom. 

I wasn't prepared for the complex emotions of it all. When we picked up the baby at the hospital, I was near tears most of the time. Driving up to the hospital all I thought about was the fun and excitement of caring for a brand new baby girl. But when I got there it really hit me that there was another mother on the other side things who was going home without her baby girl. I could imagine the pain she must have.

Foster care is not about finding ourselves a baby to keep; it is about helping children and their parents become well enough to stay together. 

We are so thankful for all the support and love from the people who read our blog and facebook. However, something that caught us by surprise was the comments of hopefulness that we will keep our new foster child, or comments of sadness when the child was reunited.  

It is easy to understand these reactions, since most people know of our history with miscarriage and infertility. We know that our friends are hoping for the best for us. However, that is not what this is about. We are not doing foster care to facilitate a longed-for adoption. We are open to adoption. If it happens, that would be great. But that is not the purpose we are working towards. 

When a child is reunited with his family, that is the best outcome that can happen. A broken family is made whole. The loss we feel when we let the child go is temporary. The purpose of foster care is to serve, not to keep.

Someday we may care for a child who ends up staying with us forever. But when that happens, it will be bittersweet because it means that another family failed to stay together.

Tommy multitasking: feeding the baby and doing his reading lesson. He was begging to hold her practically the whole time she was with us. It was really sweet to see him act so lovingly. 

A New Reader

For the past two years, Tommy's reading has been at about the same level. He could sound out words (very short ones in the beginning, then longer ones as time went on), and he could even string them together to read a short sentence. But the process was drudgery and he didn't like to do it for longer than five minutes at a time.

But something clicked with him in the past month. Now reading is more fluent and almost effortless for him. Just after Christmas he became interested in reading his Bob books, and he breezed through three sets of them. Now he's working through easy readers from the library and mastering them quickly.

I've always heard that one shouldn't push a child to learn to read. I'm glad I didn't push Tommy even though he seemed interested in reading. It really is true that they'll pick up reading quickly when they're ready for it. Watching him zip through books and improve so rapidly has been like seeing a miracle take place before my eyes.

Mother of Invention

It's been said that necessity is the mother of invention. In my case, lately it's been growth spurts that is the mother of invention. These boys are eating almost constantly, despite having full and well-balanced meals three times a day. Yogurt has always been one of my go-to snacks for them during growth spurts. It's healthy, full of protein and calcium, and when I buy it by the single-serving cup, they can get it themselves. For the longest time, I would buy the large quart-size container of yogurt and then mix in jam and granola on an as-needed basis. But that became time consuming and made me not even want to do it.


I've always bought yogurt cups at Trader Joe's because they are the cheapest and least-processed ones I've found. But they are tiny cups, and not a match for my boys' appetite anymore. Especially at $4 for a pack of six cups. Once I got a big pack of Yoplait yogurt once because it was a bigger cup and cheaper than Trader Joe's but didn't realize until I got it home that it had 26 grams of sugar! That's 6.5 teaspoons in one little cup!


So I had the idea to make my own yogurt cups. I got a pack 8 oz. of canning jars at Target. Then I had the kids help me fill them up: 1 tbsp. jam on the bottom, then yogurt (enough to fill the jar 3/4 the way), and 1/4 cup granola on top. We've been having yogurt this way for a few weeks and it's been great. It saves a lot of money, and I'm happy knowing that my kids aren't getting any processed junk.

 Adding blueberry jam (Trader Joe's reduced sugar type) to the bottom...

 ...then comes yogurt...

 ...and finally granola.

I wrote R for raspberry jam and B for blueberry jam on top of the jars. Some people are very picky about the flavor of their yogurt.

2012 To Do List - And 2011 Report Card

I'm continuing my tradition of looking at the goals I set for myself over the past year and grading myself based on how well I stuck with them. I also came up with some new goals for this next year.

1. Lose weight. C 

I lost the 10 lbs that I'd been trying to lose for the last few years. My clothes felt looser, I felt fitter and had more energy. And then I gained 5 lbs back because I stopped being careful about my eating habits and slacked off with my running. Boo.

2. Decrease Internet time. B

My overall success with this was good. For the most part, I've been good about not mindlessly browsing the web when I should be doing other things (like losing weight). But there were a few weeks here and there that I wasted way too much time on the web.

3. Read the whole Bible again. B

I read the Bible just about every day, but didn't get through the whole thing again. I stopped doing my reading plan for a few months to try a few other methods of study. One method was to read the same portion of the Bible each day for a month. There are some great advantages to reading the Bible this way, but I really missed going through the whole story this year. 

4. Take part in a Photo-a-Day project. F

I dropped this back in January because it conflicted with goal #2.

5. Read more good books. A+

I was able to read lots and lots of good books over the past year. Some of my favorites are:

Raising Real Men, The Read-Aloud Handbook, Just Do Something, Adopted for Life, Think, How to Read a Book, Positive Discipline and Bossypants. Okay, so that last one wasn't really great literature, but it certainly was entertaining!

For 2012:

1. Run a 10K. I ran a 5K last July and am planning on running another one in March. If I do two more 5K races the few months after that, I think it's within the realm of possibilities to squeeze in a 10K by the end of this year. I've started doing training for 10K using an app on my phone, which will hopefully get me back in the groove of running and help me with my next 5K. I'm on Week 4 and it hasn't been too bad. It is longer than I'm used to because the run/walk cycles go for 50-70 minutes instead of 30-40 minutes that I was used to with the 5K training.

2. Spend at least 10 minutes one-on-one time with each of my kids every day. Something that I've been slacking off on the past half year is spending quality time with each of my kids. We have plenty of quality time all together, but not much with each of them personally. This is partly because we've been busy. But mostly it's because they love spending almost every minute of their day playing together, so there's hardly a time when I can get them alone. But since I've been thinking about this, I've noticed that there are actually small pockets of time when one boy is off doing something and the other one is still in the room with me. I want to be more purposeful about snatching up those moments and starting a conversation or do something fun with them. 

3. Commit to eating only real food. Using the 14-step plan from this website, I want to try to cut out all of the processed foods and extra junk from our diet. We generally eat healthy and we get most of our fruits and veggies from local organic farms. But there is still so much room for improvement. Some of the items on the 14-week plan will be easy (like giving up sugary juices - we only drink water and milk anyway), but some others will a lot harder, like Week 3: Eat Only Local Meat or Week 12 - No Extra Sweeteners: I wonder how my kids will eat their oatmeal when it's not drizzled with honey? Or how I'll eat my oatmeal without honey!

4. Read the whole Bible again. I plan to use my favorite reading plan, from Discipleship Journal and stick with it this time. :)