List of updates

I have allotted 5 minutes for a blog post. No pictures right now, just updates:

Ty's bottom two teeth have poked through the gums... finally. His buddy Wyatt (one week older) has 8 teeth.

Ty's crawling all over the place (he's fast). Still not walking, but he prefers to move around as a biped, so he has learned to balance from one object to another. He's also good at "riding" Lauren Clay's first Radio Flyer. It's nice because it's about his size and it steadies him to walk. Unlike most walkers, it doesn't roll out from under him.

Ty will eat just about anything, and loves the little pacifier-type food holder. It's a great way to keep him occupied, especially to give him something to do while he waits for us to prepare food. When it comes to food, he's quite impatient. At O'Charleys this week, he repeatedly screamed at Poppy Joe to give him more baked potato. We're trying to teach him the sign for "more." He's done it twice (the first time was that same lunch at O'Charley's), but he prefers to scream for more.

-He does do the sign for "light" now. I think it was last Sunday that we taught it to him by turning off the dining room light, then turning it on while doing the sign. Within a few minutes he was doing it with us. Now he does it whenever he sees a light. Precious.

-Lauren Clay's doing well. Still using that imagination. We watched Pete's Dragon this week as I was organizing cabinets in the back room. She now talks about Elliot, her dragon. She now attends the 3-year old class at church (the one that meets with the older kids.) She comes away singing songs and saying scripture. They're studying Genesis, and the scriptures have been: Week 1= "It is good!"; Week 2= "It is VERY good!"; This week: "God made everything."

-Lauren Clay is doing better with sleeping. She sometimes still puts up a fight, but she does well as long as she doesn't get overtired. I have found a wonderful book for our nap/bedtime routine. It was a gift to Ty, actually, and we picked it up off his shelf only recently to read: All the Places to Love, by Patricia MacLachlan. Of the many times I've read it to Lauren Clay, I think she's made it to the end only once. It's a precious story, very soothing and tender. The first time I read it, I got teary. I think she knows I'm pulling out the big guns when I pick it up because she starts doing all she can to stay awake (wiggling, twitching, humming...) She sometimes even protests it, but she knows that if she gets to pick a book, so do I. Within the first few pages, she's typically quiet, then taking heavy breaths by book's end. It's one of my favorite books now, on multiple levels.

-I've signed up for e-mealz, and we're heading into our second week. I love having menus planned and the kitchen stocked. I had gotten pretty good at planning and buying food for the week, but e-mealz has taken care of the planning, the grocery list, and has expanded our menu.
After just a week of dinners, John has a new favorite meal.

-I'm also on an organizing kick after last week's trip to IKEA. I like to be organized but it doesn't really come naturally. We've had to do waves of organizing around here: I moved into John's house when we got married, so we had to make his small bedroom closet become ours. That was okay when I could spill into the guest room closet... but when we had Lauren Clay, we had to reorganize to make that one closet contain both wardrobes. I've always said that living in a house with small closets forces us to go through things often, but I still find ways to stuff stuff-- stuff I don't need-- into small spaces. Anyway, with the addition of another child, we've had to make Lauren Clay's closet the kids' closet (I did that before Ty was born.) The current challenge is fitting various shapes and sizes of plates, bottles, sippy cups, lids, snack containers and baby/toddler foods into our limited cabinet space in the kitchen. We've come to a point of overflow, and the realization that our space is organized for a family of 3. With the trip to IKEA (and viewing sample 500-square ft. model homes), I've been doing some hearty organizing to make things work for our family of 4. We have abundant space, we just need to make it work for us. The kitchen cabinets feel so much better now, thanks to John's ideas on how to organize them (he's very good figuring out how to manage the space well.) Incidentally (not to mention ironically), as I was clearing out the cabinets in our back room, I ran across a tape (yes, a cassette tape) called, "How to Organize your Life and Get Rid of Clutter." I think it was wedged in between a Jenga box and a bottle of craft glue. I'm happy to report that we've created more effective use of that space as well.

Ty's up from his nap and the rain has cleared, so the kids and I are heading out to the swingset to enjoy the afternoon outside.

I'll try to pull in some video later.