Clara's Catechism

Clara as a pirate captain

Clara has been memorizing from the OPC children's shorter catechism for about a year now. Her answers have gone through various iterations at times; for instance, she insisted for a while that Adam and Even ate the "CA-bidden" fruit, not "forbidden" fruit. Lately this question-and-response made me smile:

Q: What does every sin deserve?

Clara's answer: "The wraf and cursive of God." (Actually, it's "the wrath and curse of God," but hearing about her older sisters handwriting and their anticipation of starting cursive makes the first a little more understandable.)

Bridget at Seven Months

At seven months, Bridget is a chubby, smiley, growly, grabby, sometimes crabby, clingy, drooly, babbling, drooling baby who is the love of all our lives! She took off crawling during the last week in August, and now she can really get where she wants to go. Recently she's also started a funny half-crawl, half-sit kind of scoot. And as if crawling wasn't enough of a change, she also began pulling up on everything and cruising. The poor girl has a few bruises on her face from pulling a chair over on top of her, falling face-first into the piano bench leg, losing her grip when standing at the couch, etc.

 

Bridget weighed in at 18 lbs 4.2 oz at her six-month check-up in July. Like her siblings, she started small but has quickly gained in height and weight. Those Neuman genes ensure all my children will far surpass me in height, I think!

While Bridget loves to see and interact with her siblings, she definitely prefers to be held by Mama or Daddy. When I bring her out into the living room after a nap, she cranes her neck or tries to flip her body around to face the sibling ruckus and enjoys the attention they lavish on her. But if I place her in a sister or brother's lap, she squirms and looks at me plaintively and starts crying. Unless she is in a particularly good mood, she does her best to avoid being stuck with a sibling. However, since she's now mobile and can get herself into a sitting position from crawling, she is more content to be on the floor with siblings there to entertain or interact with her--just so long as they don't try to confine her to their laps!

 

Up until recently--and still if she's getting tired or I'm the only person around--when I set her down on the floor with toys, she immediately pats my leg or arm, sometimes also twisting around to get more of her body in my lap to make sure I'm not planning to leave her on the floor alone. She certainly likes to be with me.

She's interested in toys now (especially the big kids' toys that are typically off-limits for Bridget), but of course, everything goes in the mouth. She's gaining dexterity and fine motor skills, so she's started picking up small bits of paper to taste if she comes across them. Just a few weeks ago, it would take one of the kids distracting her with various toys (often hit obnoxiously together) so I could slip away without her crying. In this way I sometimes could use the bathroom, jot down a note, chop up an onion, do a few dishes, etc. Her clinginess is subsiding some with her ability to get places, though, and she can always crawl into the kitchen to claw and mouth my legs if she misses me too much. 

Homeschooling has necessarily changed along with Bridget's development. Now she's more often content and occupied for a time with toys on the living room floor, whereas just a few weeks ago (back in the army-crawling dark ages) she hated being left on her own on the rug in the living room when the rest of us were at the dining room table. These days she'll come join us and gnaw on people's feet or get stuck under a chair if we're not vigilant. But if she's on my lap with all of us, she tries to grab and hit at every book, folder, sheet of paper, etc. She's strong and squirmy. I'm working to get her used to being in her high chair with some toys for a bit of time each day, working up to longer-lasting happy containment. She's funny and a lot of fun, of course, so the big kids love to have her around when we're trying to do school. She's also quite loud now! She likes to babble, squeal, grunt, growl, yell--not to mention cry--and it makes recitation or reading aloud a little tougher when she's there. 

Bridget started truly babbling in August sometime--we hear lots and lots of "dadadada" and just some "bababa" or "mamama" or "nananana." If I ask her to say "Mama," she'll often respond, "Dadada." She likes to whisper "dadada" (so cute!) and will reply with it if someone says it to her. She also makes little questioning or attention-getting conversational noises that are just the cutest and sweetest. She loves to be noticed by the family (and others, on the rarer occasions we're around non-family members!).

Bridget's first bottom incisor came through in early August. Now the second one has cut through, and I can feel the other little sharpie when I rub her gum with my finger. Her bites carry more bite these days! She loves gnawing on carrots or celery or apple, but I know I need to be especially vigilant about her choking on a chunk as the teeth come in. We introduced Bridget to a variety of foods between five and seven months, but I wasn't as dedicated to feeding her as I was with the other kids. Just in the last couple weeks, she's taken off with eating regularly (daily mealtimes). Life always gets a bit more complicated when the baby needs to eat real food--not just nurse! So far she gags and makes awful faces at avocado and a puree of veggies (bell pepper, zucchini, cuc, carrot, chickpeas--I mean, I wouldn't really love to slurp it down, either). She loves oatmeal (run through the blender to make it a more palatable texture for her), mashed banana, watermelon, and carrots to suck/gnaw on. She tolerated a puree of carrots and chickpeas. She watches us like a hawk when we eat and don't offer her anything!

Having big-kid helpers is awesome!

She gets excited about eating and kicks her little feet out, shakes the chair, and hits the tray. We've practiced "no hands" in regards to grabbing the spoon as we feed her, and she's learned this rule pretty well. She certainly doesn't try to grab it often! When she's done, though, she's really done. She'll purse her lips, blow raspberries, pull away from the spoon, slap the tray, yell, etc. I'm trying to do at least a few baby signs and hope the "all done" and "more" signs stick sometime soonish.

Bridget has truly been such a joy to us--and what better time to have a baby than during pandemic quarantine! (I mean, I'm glad I had her before the pandemic, and we'd be thrilled with her all the same, pandemic or no. But the coronavirus pandemic has canceled so much that we've gotten to thoroughly enjoy her babyhood and allow her a consistent nap schedule).

Baby laughter is the best, and Bridget finds lots of things her siblings do so funny. She laughs and laughs at Clara's funny faces, Abby's peek-a-boo, Lydia's repeated crescendo of random phrases, and Josiah's tickling her toes. 

Camping in Flagstaff

We spent a wonderful long weekend spanning the last couple days of July and the first couple days of August camping near Lake Mary in Flagstaff. Even though it was hot for Northern Arizona (high 80s, low 90s), we were so thankful to escape the Phoenix temperatures that reached 116-117 the weekend we were gone!

Dortha helped us find a dry camping spot (national forest) and hauled bikes and water for us in their truck on Thursday when we drove up. She and Scott returned on Friday to spend the rest of the weekend camping with us. The kids were over the moon to have Pa and Grandma with us for a few days, and it was so nice to spend time with them, be outside all day each day, chat around the campfire at night, and generally get a dose of fun and normal human interaction. 

We had spectacular sunsets a couple nights. One evening we drove to a spot on the shore of upper Lake Mary where we could get Scott and Dortha's rowboat into the water. The big kids loved pretending it was a pirate ship in a gale--it was pretty blustery at first and poor Scott had to row against the wind! But the wind blew itself out and the lake was quite a bit calmer by the time Jeremy took over rowing. Clara got herself all wet so undressed and curled up in Grandma's blanket while the older three attempted to fish while Jeremy rowed. Bridget was overtired and cranky, so I stayed on shore and bounced her in the ergo.

Abby on the left, Clara wrapped up with Grandma on the right 

Thar she blows!

At and around the campsite, the kids loved tearing around on the bikes Grandma and Pa brought for them, or riding nearby trails with the grandparents. They explored and played spy games using walkie-talkies (using code names, of course, but very muffled, since they don't know how to keep their mouths a proper distance from the mic). They started a fort in a stand of trees nearby, dragging limbs and stones over to it. Jeremy taught them how to start a campfire (very thrilling to his pyromaniac proteges). They played some baseball, read Calvin and Hobbes and Redwall, roasted marshmallows, sang campfire songs (Michael Row the Boat Ashore was a favorite), and all in all loved their time being in the forest, "wild and free" (Lydia's words).

Overall, Bridget did better than I expected after a bad first night (she woke often, cried loudly, and didn't even want to settle down next to me after several episodes of waking-crying-nursing-crying). That first night was colder than we expected, and I think Bridget felt cold--but it was also awkward trying to warm her with me in my sleeping bag, and she didn't want to feel restricted. Thankfully she was warmer and more worn out the other nights!

Bridget can get what she wants with her long reach, determination, and army crawl. But she can't yet get places very quickly, which was a boon to us while camping. She did attempt to grab and eat dirt, pine needles, sticks, etc. every chance she got, but it usually took her long enough to get from the middle of a mat to an edge that someone stymied her most times.

Our campsite was an easy walk from lower Lake Mary, which was mostly a meadow of grasses with hordes of grasshoppers. The mountain bluebirds flew in little flocks and low sweeps, eating the grasshoppers. Clara and Josiah avidly caught many (the twins caught a few but weren't as interested; they played "wild horses" and "capture the elk" instead). Clara was especially thrilled with the grasshoppers and so cute and earnest in her exclamations over them and descriptions of her successful catching.

Abby

We found a game trail and a scattered, whitened elk skeleton in the nearby woods. The evening we drove back from upper Lake Mary, we saw an entire herd of elk come out of the woods and across the meadows to drink from the little water left in lower Lake Mary. On the opposite "shore" was a wide field of pretty yellow wildflowers. Their coloring reminded me of Black-eyed Susans, but they were much smaller.

Clara and her grasshoppers

Lydia

Josiah and Jeremy

Sunrays and clouds over lower Lake Mary

Pa and Lydia use their superior strength to push over a tree

With my boy at the campsite

Eating lunch

Poor Lydia, who already has a perpetual stomach ache, incurred several injuries on Friday that made her feel like the world was falling apart. First she was tumbled out of a hammock onto rocks and got a black eye and some scrapes on her face. Then she crashed on a bike and got a handlebar to the stomach. And then she tried to kick a stump over and instead got a gash on the leg. After many tears she did finally agree to take a bit of tylenol and ended up having a better evening. She was eager to show Grandma and Pa all her wounds when they arrived.

See the eye/face injury?

I bought a travel paint set that the twins enjoyed trying out one afternoon. Watercolors are still a lot harder for them to use than pencils, so they didn't produce much, but they enjoyed trying. I probably need to sit down and do a few tutorials with them.

Clara with the coveted walkie-talkie

Bridget headed to the edge of the mat, ignoring her toys for more interesting quarry

Grandma and Bridget

On Saturday Anna, Justin, Kez, and Willow came out to our campsite for a few hours. They brought their new dog, Gibson, to everyone's delight. We all enjoyed spending time with them. The next day we drove over to Babbitt Springs with them and hiked to the creek. It was considerably lower than when we hiked there in June, but the kids still had tons of fun wading, splashing, playing at being deer or elk, etc. Josiah even caught several crayfish, much to his delight! Clara and Josiah both liked trying to catch the water striders, too.

Bridget gets acquainted with Gibson

One of the crayfish Josiah caught!

Lydia started mourning the end of our camping trip the day before we headed home. Her ambition now is to own a horse and live out in the forest for weeks at a time. We did all immensely enjoy our time away, and we're looking forward to another camping trip next week! 

Quick Trip to Flagstaff

What a relief it was to finally make a two-day trip to Flagstaff back in early June! We'd been quarantining, Scott and Dortha had been quarantining, and so we figured we could do a visit.

The kids had been longing to see Pa and Grandma and loved our time with them. Lydia and Abby were particularly sad to leave (and shed many tears). While we were there, we went hiking near Lake Mary at a beautiful spot, as you can see from the pictures below. 

Isn't it just gorgeous?!

Abby and Bridget

Josiah and the drool queen :)

Abby

Clara

Twins with Grandma

Lydia and Grandma

Milkweed (I took a picture to be able to identify it later)