Eliza 6 months

 Eliza is now half a year! And I think that is the fastest six months that I have experienced with a new baby. I am guessing it is because I am older, but also because Eliza is doing everything early. She is crawling now. She does not speed across the floor but she crawls normally on hands and knees from one toy to the next and eventually makes it across the floor. She is also eating solid food. I would have postponed it longer, but Eliza was desperate to eat, so I started letting her taste things about a month ago and now she has some things that she eats regularly. Her belly is off the floor, so according to the baby food companies she is ready. But it really was the fact that she just wanted to eat that got me to feed her. I have always done baby led feeding rather than someone else's feeding schedule and that has worked well. 

Eliza Stands for the First Time

 This is Eliza standing up because she pulled herself up to standing for the first time. She stands everywhere now. She loves to be standing. She was about 5 and a half months old at the end of January. She is a very capable little baby girl.

A Visitor

 This beautiful bird came to visit our tiny and mostly empty duck pond. The kids scared it away the first time, but the second time, we all stayed inside and took some pictures. The ducks, chicken, and geese all hid under the deck. 

A little North Carolina Winter

   

So we had some winter weather, last weekend, which rarely happens here. It was over 60 degrees on Wednesday, and ice and snow on Friday and Saturday.

Sam and Gideon were up at midnight Friday night stepping on and off the front porch yelling about snow and ice and more excited than they were for Christmas. They were adorable. When Gideon first went out in the snow on Sunday morning, he came back in immediately crying. I don't think he expected the cold. But later he went out and stayed out a long time enjoying the winter weather. 

The city closed the highway Friday evening after several car accidents including one car sliding over a guard rail and landing in the water (no one was injured or died but still terrifying).

I don't drive in the snow or ice at all here, even though I learned to drive in snow out of necessity from living in Maine. But many people here don't comprehend that you slow day and stay back when there's ice on the road. Someone even made a comment on the local news facebook page that no one anywhere knows how to drive on ice-- granted it is always dangerous-- but there are parts of the world that would shut down for 3 months a year if there was no possible way to drive in this weather. So in North Carolina, if we get winter weather, I take a vacation and drive no where.

Our North Carolina chickens like to sleep outside and did not go in last night and woke up with a sheet of ice on their backs. The ducks and geese had more sense. They're still inside.
The two little boys were more excited at the prospect of snow last night then they ever were for Christmas. And the middle boys were up early and outside.

Sometimes, I think it would be nice if we could do a house exchange for a month. I'll trade with someone in Maine. They can take our house for January and enjoy the warmer weather and my kids can experience a Maine winter. But jobs and schools don't really allow that.

Three Year Old Gideon

 

The threes have begun. I put this on facebook, a couple of days ago:

Today in homeschool the 6 oldest homeschool kids had to define mischief. None of them could come up with a definition off their heads. I suggested that 3 yr old Gideon is a good definition. They laughed and then Gideon spent the rest of the school day making mischief. First he pooped his pants, took off his underwear in the back bathroom and then went and sat on Arwen's bed. When that was all cleaned up and we were back to lessons, he stole Susan's backpack, went into her room, pulled out all of her flash cards, mixed them all up, ripped their boxes to shreds and peed on her bed, then he knowing that he would be in trouble, he hid on Joseph's bed (top bunk) and ate two packs of Joshua's gum-- up on the bed to hide from Gideon. We noticed that Gideon was missing when we could not find Susan's backpack which had been set next to my feet. I cleaned up the backpack and pee mess while everyone else hunted for Gideon. He had to sit on the couch in time out until the end of the school day, expect that he kept getting up to tease the baby. At the end of the day, when we let him free, he climbed up onto the table and danced all over the 1,000 piece puzzle that the kids have been putting together. Now everyone knows how to define mischief.

And then today Gideon brought me an easy reader national geographic book about rocks and minerals. I read the first two or three sentences when he said, "no, no," flipped the book over, pointed to the books advertised on the back and named them, "Snakes, Penguins," and he also pointed to the sharks book, but did not know the name of that one. Then he turned the book around, pointed at the large purple geode on the cover and said, "It's a monster." I looked a little closer and thought that it could look like a mouth with a whole bunch of teeth. Anyway, he clearly did not want to read about rocks, he wanted monsters or other dangerous animals. 

Random Photos in January 2022