Dolls and Kids

Can you tell which are dolls and which are real kids?

Painting Boxes

AJ and M&M were supposed to decorate boxes for AWANA this week.

AJ came up with this all on her own. I thought it turned out really cute.



M&M made hers very colorful, and had fun gluing beads and colored string on for decoration.



I offered Baby E a box to paint, but she prefered to paint on a flat surface:



Or a not-so-flat surface:





She was a little too proud of herself for that one.

In other news, we are getting ready for Thanskgiving. The kids and I are all coming down with colds, so I really hope we don't have to miss the family gathering. With my mom's kidney transplant she's not supposed to be around anyone who is sick. :(

I'm also working on weaning Baby E, slowly, starting with things like making her eat breakfast before she has milk in the morning. She's not liking this weaning idea one bit.

Crocheting and other crafty stuff

The girls and I visited a children's boutique in nearby PaperFactory Town today. They had lovely high-end clothing and accessories, but I noticed a distinct lack of crocheted or knitted items. So I asked the owner if she might be interested in seeing some of my crocheting to consider carrying in her store.

She said she would look at them! So I need to get busy and make some new things.

Here are some pictures of previous projects I've enjoyed doing . . . the rest of this post is very image-heavy. :)

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Baby and doll sweaters:























A shawl I made:


Another shawl:



Closeups of a few afghans (more afghan pics here, here and here):











Some baby booties:





A funny little bear:





A bigger bear:



It's not crocheting, but in looking for these pictures I came across a couple of photos of projects I woodburned:





I wonder what I should make next?

Finally finished

I'm packing this afghan up to send to Annika, with a little hood for Frankie too. Each piece represents many hours of prayer for Annika and the rest of the Tiede family.

I hope the girls will enjoy the afghan and hat.





Here's Kerri modeling the hood over her pilgrim bonnet. :)"



I'm doing ok, but too tired and busy to blog much lately.

DH just got back yesterday from his birthday trip; a worship leader's conference he got to attend with one of his best friends. They had a really great time. I'm glad he got to go.

6 going on 100 . . .

This morning AJ said, seemingly out of the blue, "Being happy makes people feel better. I think happiness is about half of what makes people better. All that stuff the doctors do is the rest, but happiness does half of it."

Quoted

Baby E just looked out the window and said, "Dook, Mommy! Duh phirrel does under duh cawr. It's under duh white cawr. It havs a hiding pwace. It's under duh cawr, wight dere!"

DH's birthday is this weekend, so I asked the girls what they wanted to get him as a gift.

AJ said, "A pan. We should get him a pan to cook with."

M&M said, "No, he really wants a doll. I know he does. Because he cuddles with us like we're dolls. We're like dolls to him. So he would like to have a doll."

I'm still feeling really sick. I don't know if I've caught some kind of intestinal virus or if something I've been eating just really doesn't agree with me. It's so hard to tell. Since it's fluctuating quite a bit (it was a lot better yesterday and worse today), it doesn't really seem like a virus. More like my normal issues just acting up worse than usual. Ugh. Hopefully I'll figure it out soon.

November

The year is going by so fast. I was going to sign up for NaBloPoMo-whatever-it-is, but obviously I've already blown it. Not even a week into November and I've already missed several days. Oh, well.

Baby E is still free of allergic-type reactions. One of DH's co-workers gave us tickets she won to Disney Princesses on ice, and we got to go to that. The girls were beside themselves with excitement. Even DH was impressed with the show. We went out to our old favorite restaurant afterwards and could hardly believe we were sitting there eating corn chips and salsa with Mexican food!

I've overdone it a bit on things like coffee and junk food the last several days and made myself sick, LOL. That's to be expected I guess. Baby E fussed and cried most of the day today and seems to be coming down with a cold or something. Hopefully the long nap she's taking right now will help. I'm hoping to go to bed early tonight but we'll see. :)

AJ, M&M and I are studying South Korea this week. That should be interesting. I found the cutest sets of dolls from around the world at T@rget, including dolls from many of the countries we're studying this year. So the girls are enjoying getting tiny little dolls to represent some of the nationalities we're learning about.

Speaking of dolls, last night I set up part of my Thanksgiving decorations. I got a chance to run out to the store and all the Halloween costumes were 75% off, so I had fun. :)

Still floating

Baby E is still doing fabulously after the in-office corn trial yesterday. Still no sign of any reaction more than 24 hours later.

She got to eat her snack in the room with all the other little kids at the homeschool co-op today.

For me, I stood there and stared at the food table with snacks for the moms and tried to get my head around the fact that I could eat anything I wanted without worrying about traces in my milk making Baby E sick. Then I did. I had coffee with non-dairy flavored creamer in it, some fruit, and instant oatmeal from a little package. LOL. The little joys of life.

On tonight's menu . . . popcorn!

It still all feels rather surreal to me. Surreal and wonderful.

26 SPAM comments in one day . . .

I've turned word verification back on, and am reporting the offending usernames to Blogger.

Miracles

Baby E had her in-office food challenge today.

They started out by taking her blood pressure and everything, then did a skin-prick test with the fresh-cooked corn we brought and smeared some corn flour mixed with water on one cheek. 15-20 minutes later, so far so good.

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Then they started feeding her corn. They started with half a kernel and gradually increased the amount, feeding her another dose every 20 minutes until finally they just gave her a little cup of corn and let her eat as much as she wanted. She liked it.

By the time all was said and done we had been at the allergist's office for over 4 and 1/2 hours, feeding her corn and watching her. She had no reaction whatsoever. None. Maybe a slight tummy-ache, which is fairly normal for her anyway. Nothing that looked like an allergy.

Sometime this afternoon DH said she had a soft BM that looked like it may have had some corn in it. But she does the same thing with other fruits and vegetables high in starch and/or sugar, so that's nothing unusual for her.

It's now been about 14 hours and still no sign of any kind of reaction. Not even a mood change, difficulty napping or red cheeks. Nothing.

We've been praying so much that she would grow out of her allergies. At this point it looks like she's gone from having a bunch of food allergies to having NONE. We still have to figure out the sugar issue, but Baby E has no food allergies.

Wow. Wow.

We are going to keep an eye on her over the next few days to see how she tolerates it over the long-term, but if that goes well we're going to buy a popcorn popper! And go out to dinner in a real restaurant! And basically eat whatever we want.

It hasn't even really sunk in yet, but wow.

We also got word yesterday that the 4-year-old in Malamute Rescue family had an amazing thing happen this week.

About a year ago he had to have a lump in his neck surgically removed, along with the salivary gland that was causing it.

This year he developed the same kind of problem in another gland, farther down in his neck. The location would be much more difficult and dangerous to operate on, so after verifying the issue the surgeon referred them to another more experienced expert. We all started praying.

About 3 or 4 days ago the Malamute Rescuers noticed that they could no longer see the lump in his neck. Yesterday he had his ultrasound.

There was nothing there. The lump was completely gone.

"I don't know what happened," the renowned surgeon said. "These things don't normally go away on their own. But there's nothing there. Nothing wrong in his neck at all."

We're all praising the Lord for answered prayers. It's almost beyond words at the moment.