Invisible enemies

I tried sharing this video on Charlie's birthday, but I don't' think it worked. This is a little clip of what was a good 20-minute long fight between Charlie and his 2 invisible friends: Invisible Brad and Monkey-stash. Invisible Brad is a character from a TV show. Monkey-stash appears to be a name he came up with all on his own.

Lesson learned

If you are going to do a trust fall with a 4-year-old - which I don't recommend in the first place - don't neglect to tell him to wait until you tell him you're ready before he falls. Sam was cleaning the library which somehow turned into doing trust falls with Frankie and Charlie while I was making supper in the kitchen.

Not aware of what I was interrupting, I asked Sam a question about his upcoming science fair. He then left the library to come talk to me. Suddenly we heard a huge crash followed by a cry. Not noticing that Sam had left, Frankie climbed up onto the desk and went through with the trust fall with no one there to catch him. Fortunately he was more scared than hurt and got over it pretty quickly.

We also had an interesting time playing Sorry! with Frankie for the first time. It start off a bit rough, of course, because it was taking awhile for him to get a 1 or a 2 to get started. He got a couple of Sorry! cards, though, so he was able to get out that way. Pretty soon he hid under a blanket and said he didn't want to play anymore. He seemed a little upset and we were encouraging him to keep playing. It finally came out that he thought he was getting in trouble every time he got a Sorry! card because we were telling him to "say sorry."

And here's a video of Frankie eating spaghetti through a straw. He did successfully get a few through, surprisingly.

Influenza strikes

Elena came down with influenza on the first day of Catholic Schools week (as did many other students at school). She missed the entire week of school, and was still quarantined the weekend afterwards.

Although we did our best to keep the germs at bay, Charlie came down with it on Saturday. He had friends over and they came down to tell me they couldn't find Charlie. We found him asleep in his bed with a fever. He also missed an entire week of school.

Not surprisingly, Olivia came down with it on Monday. I was happy at least that she and Charlie were nice enough to get sick at the same time. If we had continued to tag team, this thing could have drawn out for 7 weeks. We got Olivia on Tamiflu, which helped tremendously. She was pretty much back to normal by Friday other than a runny nose. Her fever also never went much above 102, while Elena's neared 104.

The two girls in their new matching outfits...one day before the flu hit.

After a full weekend of no one being sick, we thought we might finally be on the mend. But then Sam threw up at school this morning and came home with a stomach bug so we might just be starting all over.
Seth and I so far have managed to get by with sore throats. I felt tired and icky for one day, but fortunately/unfortunately it was a rare free day with nothing going on. Fortunate because we didn't have to cancel or change any plans - unfortunate because we were finally planning to catch up around the house.

Speaking of the house. Holy buckets have I realized how much I depend on Elena to help with Olivia! Having her out of commission for a week and not able to touch Olivia at all set me WAY behind on pretty much everything. It didn't help that any free moments were consumed with nursing the sick and washing anything that was potentially infected. Too bad I couldn't really wash the air which is how influenza travels...
Sam stepped up to help as much as he could, but between sports and cousins right next door he just isn't around as much.

We frequently comment on how patient Olivia is, which is very nice for a 5th child. During her week out, she continued to live up to her reputation. As long as I was holding her, she just laid in my arms and dealt with the sickness. She rarely complained the whole time. Although, I thought I was behind before she got sick! Add to that 4 full days of doing almost nothing other than holding and soothing a baby and yikes! It's a good thing we have developed a high tolerance for destruction and chaos around here.

Still as we watched friends of ours end up in the PICU with their little guy whose influenza turned into pneumonia (he's home today!), all of this really amounts to nothing worth complaining about.

Feeling better! (Photo courtesy of Sam)

Quotable moments

1. Frankie: (playing out some sort of battle with his toys) You're gonna get dead by death!!!

2. For those who haven't spent much time around Minneota, it is extremely flat. Seth's nickname at his job in the cities was "Flatlander." This became quite obvious when I realized how small of a dip in the road we need to make Frankie notice. Driving home from daycare, Frankie sometimes will get excited as we approach "the mountain." "Ooooh! This is going to be fun! Here it comes. WEEEEEE!!"
If you want to see the it, you can find it by clicking here. Just trust me that the "mountain" looks way bigger in person. And by "way bigger" I mean that you can see a barely discernible shift in elevation if you have a 4-year old in the back seat who points it out to you.

3. I overheard Frankie making rhymes the other day. Dig and big. Box and fox. Stuff like that. So I asked him if he could think of a word to rhyme with Boy. I was expecting Toy or Joy. I was not expecting La Croix, which is what he said.

4. This isn't really a quote, but Charlie brought home a card for me today from school. On the inside was a cute picture of me holding Olivia and a child (presumably Charlie) standing next to me. On the front, it said, "Congratulations MOM! You had Olivia. From: Charlie."
I guess they were making cards for expectant mothers today at school and since he couldn't think of anyone, he decided to make one for me.

5. A discussion arose with our kids clarifying the fact that not all people who are Islamic belong to ISIS. We ended up showing the older ones this little clip. Sam thought it was so funny that he showed Charlie. Half-way through, Charlie said (with some difficulty because he was laughing so hard), "I don't even get it, but it's so funny!!!"

Charlie, not wanting to have to take a bath alone, kept trying to talk Frankie joining him. He tried all sorts of persuasion and begging, hyping up the awesome bath toys, etc.

Frankie stubbornly refused again and again.

Meanwhile, Elena kept trying to help by trying to force Charlie to go take a bath alone.

I finally got the chance to intervene and, pulling Charlie aside, I briefly explained reverse psychology to him.

He walked to the bathroom saying in an excited voice, "Frankie! I'm going to take a bath with No One!!"

The effect was immediate.  Frankie dropped what he was doing and ran after Charlie saying,  "I want to come, too!!!"

I just hope Charlie remembers this next time he really does want a bath alone. It's harder to switch Frankie's mind in the opposite direction.

Jumpy Baby!

Happy 7th Birthday, Charlie!

Charlie's birthday landed during a blizzard this year (same as last year, I believe) and also over MLK Jr. Day, so we got a nice 4-day weekend to celebrate (and recuperate). We threw together a last minute party with some of the neighborhood boys and cousins, which was good because we needed help eating his huge cake.

He decided he wanted the castle cake that Elena had for her 9th birthday. I didn't have the exact right size pans so we had to improvise and it turned out a little lopsided, but he had fun decorating it and everyone enjoyed eating it so it was a success. The main drawback was that between cooling and layering and needing to run to the store for a missing ingredient and the baby and Frank....it took a total of 9 hours from start to finish to make.

Here's a picture of his cake. We had made it the day before and gravity was starting to work a number on the turrets ;)

Myhre Christmas Highlights!

The crew at the DeCock side Xmas. Yes, we all fit and yes, there was enough food. This is around 80 people.

Playing pepper with Daddy

Great Grandma & Grandpa DeCock with all the great-grandkids present (and 1 great-great)

Hayride around the farm pictures!

Seth and siblings with Mom and Dad

Our clan

Papi and the male grandkids

Grandma and the female grandkids

Livi's first Christmas!!

Our Xmas card this year

And the poems the grandkids memorized as Grandma Langer's Christmas gift. Sorry a few are hard to hear:

Quotes and Cuteness

Me: Oh, Frankie! Don't....shoot.
Elena: What?
Me: Frankie just stuck the spoon he was using in the sugar bowl.
Frankie: Don't worry, Mom. I will lick it off....see?

Charlie: Are we going to light the Christmas Loaf?

At bedtime saying prayers...
Seth: And who do you want to pray for Frankie?
Frankie: Mommy and Olivia and....Mommy and Olivia and Daddy and Charlie and Elena.
Seth: And Sammy.
Frankie: No, not Sammy.
Seth: We need to pray for Sam, too!
Frankie: (starting to cry) No, I don't want to pray for Sam....Can we get rid of him?
It seems Sam had been taking his brotherly duty to pick on and irritate his siblings a bit too seriously, and Frankie was ready to be done. Fortunately, Sam was good-natured enough to just laugh and not take it personally. Unfortunately, this means he continues to pick on Frankie just as much as before.

Now for the cuteness:

Tantrum Time

As long as I'm on the kick of catching up, I started this post a year ago.  I have always said 3 is the toughest age. Mainly because they want to do everything they can't do and at the same time they absolutely don't want to do anything they should do. Frankie was the last to potty train, sleep through the night (we're still not there), wean, etc. So it should come as no surprise that he's the last to exit the tantrum phase. The tantrums are still happening, but they are less frequent and over more reasonable issues so less entertaining. Anyway, this is as far as I got last year. I am sure I had great intentions of coming back to share more examples...

Frankie and I have entered into that stage where we have a daily battle of wills. And it looks like I have really met my match with this one. Here are a few recent episodes:

I wouldn't let him have ice cream for breakfast.  I made the mistake of letting him see me go into the freezer for some chicken, and he decided he wanted ice cream. After he quite screaming (for a good 45 minutes), he switched to arguing for awhile, and I felt like Sam-I-Am from Green Eggs and Ham.  To everything I offered, he said, "No, I won't eat cheese on it. No, I won't eat a banana on it. No, I won't eat peanut butter on it. No, I won't eat oatmeal on it." I have no idea why he kept saying "on it" by the way - he must have thought I was suggesting these things in addition to his coveted ice cream. In the end, he refused to eat anything all morning. It was after noon before he finally calmed down and accepted some yogurt and raspberries for lunch.

I wouldn't let him drive the car. (5 minutes)

Daddy drove the car instead of Mom. (The entire car ride)