F-I-V-E

Cole is five? Five.  F-I-V-E.  Really.  It's true.  I am the proud mama of this guy.  

He is kind.

He tells jokes now, or at least tries. 

He loves to be around other kids his age. 

He is very into numbers.

He is my thinker.

He is proud of how tall he is.

He is competitive.

He can talk your ear off.  

 There is something special about my Cole.  I know it.

We are so happy we get to raise you on this earth.  

Happy 5th Birthday Cole!

We love you more than you will ever know.

This Moment.

We are alive.  Loving, laughing, and trying to maintain our sanity. :)  

Fuzzy 100

Last Thursday Cole had his 100th day of school.  To celebrate all of the kids were to bring in 100 of a certain item, (goldfish, coins, stickers, etc).  

Fuzzies aka pom poms, you know those small fuzzy balls used for art projects and such, anyway we call them fuzzies, and they play a part of a reward system in our house for acts of kindness, showing love, things like that.  Needless to say they are cheap and we have a lot of them.  So Cole and I counted out 100 for him to take to school.

The night before the big day Cole and I made him a t-shirt for his 100th day of school. 

Cole insisted on adding the cotton balls, and painting them to complete the look.  We are so creative don't you think?  Not really, but we had fun, and Cole was so proud of his shirt.

So proud.

December...Memory Lane

Merry Christmas one month too late.

December brought holiday cheer, cookie baking, and time with almost all of our family.  We are truly blessed.

Here we are a few days before Christmas.

And here are the kids Christmas day sporting some of their Christmas gifts.

I think we are up to date on blog posts, or as up to date as we are going to get.  Thank you for sticking with us during our sporadic, inconsistent blogging.

Happy New Year!!

November...Memory Lane

My JuJu bean turned 2 this month.  And she is a chatty, passionate, expressive little thing.  Have you ever heard of the Five Love Languages?  Julia is hands down our touch baby.  She is the one I pick up from school, and right when she sees me she yells, "MOMMY!" and comes barreling to me for the biggest of hugs.  When she loves she loves, with everything she is made of.

For her birthday, in our attempt to get back to eating right (lets just say Florida was about a hundred and two steps backwards in our grain-free, refined sugar free lifestyle) we made a Vanilla Bean Cake.    When Derek swung home from lunch the day of Julia's birthday, I had beans cooking on the stove.  A little insight into our conversation.

Me: "Did I tell you I am making Jewels birthday cake from beans?"

Derek looks skeptically into the pot cooking the white northern beans for her cake.

Derek: "Do I need to pick up a real birthday cake on the way home?"

Me: "What do you mean?  This is going to be a real birthday cake, just made of beans."

Derek is looking at me like my head is detached, and I can see him churning his wording around in his head as to what to say without offending me.

Derek:"Yes, but it's her birthday.  Don't we need her to have a real cake to put candles into?"

Me: "It is a real cake, just made of beans.  Do you want me to show you a picture?"

Derek: "yeah."

I show him the picture, and he starts laughing.

Derek: "Oh I see.  I thought you were just going to spread beans on a plate, layer it with cheese and sour cream and put candles in it."

It did look like a real cake, tasted like a real cake, and was devoured by all of us like a real cake.  The frosting was a mess, but it tasted great.

Julia even helped me make her cake.

At the end of the month, at Thanksgiving we attempted to get a cousin shot.  With seven kids ranging from 11 months to 8 years, it is near impossible.  But we gave it a go.  This is the best I got, not sure about the others :)

Cracks me up Julia is talking on a phone.  Cole's eye is a little puffy, because there was a little cousin rough housing, and Cole got an elbow, knee, or head bump to his eye.  We just called him Spot for the next couple of days.

One more month, and then we enter the New Year!  Whoop Whoop!

September/October...Memory Lane

Where were we??  Ahh yes, school pictures.  Would you believe it has taken me this whole time to find them, and that is the reason for the delay? Well either way I am really going to make an effort to keep this up.  2013 here we come!

September came with a Labor Day Parade, and more time together outside.

We ended September by road tripping down to Florida for a week.  It was awesome.  Relaxing.  Perfect.

Here is our week in a few snapshots...

To end October we took the kids trick-or-treating in Derek's old neighborhood, covering the same ground he did as a kid.  

Derek as Shaggy, Cole as Scooby Doo (yes this is the third year Cole has sported this dog costume) and Julia as the cutest little nose picking ladybug I have ever seen!

Memory Lane...August

In August the summering continued.  The kids ran free.  I went grain and refined sugar free and was doing really well until our Florida vacation in October.  Websites like  Wellness Mama and Spunky Coconut (she has a cookbook I am longing for) are great places for some great easy recipes. The Spunky Coconut site has some great cookie, donut (I love these), and treat type food that satisfies the desire for the sweet tooth I try so valiantly to ignore. I was pretty strict the whole month of August, and when I had sugar after that it made me feel sick...what does that prove?  Now we don't even have white sugar in the house.  I find the kids, and Derek and I's moods and behavior are so much more even, and nice without sugar and processed food.   

But anywho,  August....

The month I forgot I was the owner of a camera apparently.

A cousin got married, which gave us an excuse to dress up, and dance.  The reception was a fun outside event, with an area for the kids to play.  How great is that? 

Julia will be remembered on that day as having a really bad hair day...

(excuse the baldie in the back, I couldn't crop him out with out lobbing off part of our heads.)

Nick and his girlfriend Susie flew home from California for the wedding.  It was so nice to see both of my brothers in less than three weeks. 

Sibling love. 

We should have known trying to get a picture of Julia with a plate food in front of her was going to result in just that, a picture of Julia eating, and Aunt Lolo cheesing.

Cole getting in some quality Papa time.  

 

Cole showing us his moves like Jagger.

And Julia following suit.

At the end of the month rolled around school began.  I know I took pictures of them on their first day of school, but can not seem to find them.  Hmmm.  

to be continued....

Air Zoo

Last week my kids, plus two of my friends kids ventured to Kalamazoo to visit my sister, and the Air Zoo.

This was the cutest place, and ages four and under were free.  My kind of place.  

First we entered the clouded walkway,

then looked at a few  dozen planes,

stopped by the hands on toddler section,

rode on the hot air balloon ride,  warning if spinning in  fast circles over and over again isn't your thing, avoid this ride.

Then rode on the planes,  

next up was the ferris wheel,

Stopped for a quick picture while Mara and Alana rode a ride, and looking oh so thrilled about it,

a quick one of Julia with Aunt Lolo,

the space center was next, 

Cole and Mara our future astronants.

Then we watched a really cute 3D movie, featuring three flies who go to the moon.  After all of that we repeated the process.  The kids could ride the rides as many times as they wanted.  We stayed until closing, stopping for a picture on the way out.

We will definitely go back someday before Cole turns five :)

Summersaulting

Cole took gymnastics last month, and learned how to do a proper somersault. 

And what makes doing them more fun than a hilly back yard? 









For a four year old, not much.

Inflatable Pool Please

Derek swam in high school.  His memories growing up include loving the water.  Cole is Derek son through and through, except for his love of swimming pools.  Not that Cole doesn't like water.  He loves the beach, and walks right into the ocean.  But put him in a pool where he loses the sense of any ground beneath his feet, and we enter panic town.


He does loves the little inflatable pool in the backyard.  And God bless this little boy, he puts on his life vest.  Safety first.  





He is as happy as a lark in it.  





See?





Happiness is in the little things.

Doing Things the Natural Way

Or at least trying.  I think it all started with the birth of Cole.  One of the things I really wanted to do was nurse him.  At the time my goal was three months.  Then he was born.  I had him, nursed him throughout my hospital stay, and then was sent home.  He was a feisty little guy, all eleven plus pounds of him.  

(Cole a few days old)

Those early weeks when I was getting up in the middle of the night, having trouble getting him latched were tiresome.  But I plowed forward, and we were successful.  Until he was around 3 1/2 weeks.  After another surgery for me, and an extended hospital stay I was forced to stop, and was too tired to pump and dump.  I accepted our fate, focused on healing with the help of family, and that was the end of it.  Or so I thought.

(Cole visiting me in the hospital.  God bless my mother-in-law, she brought me a pillow from her house, and it had the smurfs on it.  I am sure it was Derek's when he was a kid, haha.)

Once I got home, started to feel like my old self again, completed my antibiotics, I realized I missed it.  I missed being able to nurse my child.  So, I decided I would try to get my supply back.  Derek was a champ through all of this getting up in the middle of the night to feed Cole, so I could rest and heal.  Once I decided to get my supply back, I started pumping when he was fed.  I met with a lactation consultant, and with the help of my mom, Cole being an awesome nurser, a ton of water, and supplements to increase my supply, I was nursing him again.  He was being exclusively breastfed by the time I returned to work, and I new at that point I would try to make it six months.  After I met that goal, I was determined to make it a full year.  And we did.  

(Cole 3 months old)

But anyway, back to doing things the natural way.  Breastfeeding led to making my own baby food.  Baby food making, turned into cloth diapering.  Cloth diapering lead to drinking organic milk.  And so on.  


Now I make our own laundry soap.  Clean with natural products.  Use chemical free soaps for the kids.  And use cloth napkins.  


Currently I am working towards improving:

1.  Eliminating all plastic kitchen items, and using all glass.   
2.  Using my own shopping bags, really trying to do this 100 %.
3.  Switching to chemical free soaps, toothpastes, etc.  We are replacing things as they run   out.
4. Buying organic food.

I just shopped for the first time today at Vitacost.  It was super easy, and I found the prices, on most items, were less than what I have paid for in stores.  Especially the organic unsweetened coconut.  

By clicking this link, you can save ten dollars on your next order.  I used a link from my sister-in-law and the redemption code was in my inbox within a minute or so.  I already used it :)

I think the next time I need to make laundry soap I will buy the castile soap from here.  

That is how we are doing things in the Dreher household.  Still lots of ways to improve, but we will take it day by day.

Randomness

We are back to wearing coats, and hats.  Not quite our winter coats, but still.  

Julia is looking super cute in one of the hats I made her back when she was just a wee little one in my belly.  At the time I thought it looked so big.  Now it is just right.

We played outside for a bit today, but the wind was too strong for Julia.  So we headed inside.

When Derek got home I went for a run.  At times it felt like I was just running in place.  The wind was that strong.  

I recently read Sarah's Key.  It was eye opening.  So good. Humbling.  Warning:  Do not read when around others.  You will cry, maybe even blubber.  Just saying.

We are going to Chattanooga this summer.

Julia is the messiest eater ever.

Do not say the word "butt" around Cole.  He will correct you, like he did my mom tonight.  "Don't say that word Nana, it is a bottom."  She apologized.  Funny how kids make you follow your own rules.

Julia loves the word "cow."

We went to the library today.  Then to Lowe's.  We left with mulch, and lost a pacifier.

Nana made the kids blueberry pancakes for dinner.  She rocks.  My kids love her.  Just ask Cole.  

Cole:  Mom?

Me: Yeah?

Cole: I love Nana.

Me: That is great.

I love that my children love.