drastic measures for sleep

Ok, so a while ago I wrote about how Rachel needed to start sleeping through the night. Well, she had three nights where she did 9 hours, then 11 the next night, then 9 the next. But then, we took a 4 day trip to Minnesota AND she got a cold so she completely forgot about how nice it is to sleep for more than 4 hours at a time. We tolerated it until she was not quite so sniffly, but then she had figured out that if she screamed long enough that we would come rescue her (originally for fear that she was too sick to sleep). This turned into a really piercing scream along with desparate clinging almost every time we put her in bed which was more than we could handle. We made sure that she was well fed, had some ibuprofen in her (on the slight chance that she was teething), had a clean diaper (even sprung for the dispoable) and then we put her in a room with a door, four walls and a ceiling all connected to each other. This may sound rather odd to the many who haven't visited us, but we are renting a loft (which we love!). This means that we live in an old warehouse buildling and the wood rafters and brick walls are exposed (along with electrical conduit and HVAC ducts and sprinkler pipes -- don't worry, it looks just fine -- I'll post pictures one of these days). But, along with the 13+ foot ceilings, come only 8 foot interior walls for the bedrooms and closets. Thus the only enclosed rooms are the bathrooms. Well, the noise from a crying child is rather loud when closing the door to her room doesn't do any good since the wall of her room doesn't meet the ceiling. So, on Tuesday night we pulled out the pack-n-play, and crammed it in one of the bathrooms (the door now opens only about 8 inches) and it is the most wonderful thing ever! She cried for 14 minutes the first night, has actually slept 9 hours in a row now (2 and a half at naps, up from 1 and a half) and she doesn't cry and cling every single time I put her to bed. Ahhhhh. Now we are considering temporarily removing the sink from the bathroom so that the bed can be in there and the door can open a bit farther :) You have no idea how wonderful it is to not have to listen to a screaming child. And she seems so much happier during the day, too! Not only is she well-rested, but she also knows that there are expectations for her and I'm sure that it is easier for her to know that when she goes to bed, she is going to stay there. I cried when I put her in there the first time because it seemed so cold-hearted to shut her in the bathroom :), but she survived just fine and I will be a happier person for it.

She is a smart little cookie and growing up fast -- it's hard to believe that she is 16 months old now! She still doesn't talk at all (who needs to!?!?) but she communicates things just fine. When she wants to sit on your lap to get her socks and shoes on, she toddles into the room, holds them up, walks over to you, and then turns around so that you can pick her up and she can sit on your lap. She does the same sort of thing if she wants you to come play with a toy on the floor -- walk over, turn you around from washing the dishes, show you the toy, make some noises, then sit on the floor with the expectation that you will join her (which of course you do:). She likes going down stairs and if nobody is there to help her, she doesn't go down backwards even though she knows how. She just puts her feet down one step and then slides her butt down, too.

Mariah is still a chatterbox. Today we were working on a homework assignment and we had to go count and count all of the buildings on our block. We first had to decide what our block was, then how to handle townhomes (are they all one building?? or is each unit considered a separate building). After we had started walking, we went by a parking garage with a ramp going down. She exclaimed "that's a ramp,...a simple machine! We're learning about simple machines at school" (today they built a roller coaster at school! and they've started riding their bikes, too, to learn about wheels). So, for the rest of the walk around the blog, she spied all of the simple machines that she could (two more parking ramps, screws holding in plates on the wall, lots of wheels, pulleys on flagpoles or fence gates, etc.). Oh, and we counted buildlings :) I was impressed that I was having a conversation about simple machines with a kindergartener:)

Allison is still having fun at home and we enjoyed a trip to the park today since it was 60 and sunny. She was very exicted this week because we finally got out her "new" clothes (mariah's old winter clothes). She loves having a new selection, but doesn't always match the best (stripes on the shirt with flowers on the pants) but that is the least of my worries:) As of about10 mintues ago, she was still awake even after having been in bed for almost 2 hours! She'll fall asleep the instant Mike and I go to bed, but her ability to keep herself awake is absolutely amazing. Mariah taught her to play chess today. It was amusing.

one more post for the day

Can I just share that I cleaned the bathroom yesterday for the 7th time in 7 weeks! Big progress for this recovering discouraged perfectionist:)


I've had a bit of a rollercoaster week in some ways....emotionally high being in Minnesota for 4 days and seeing lots of friends....then a bit of a low being back home with the kids all day long and dealing with sniffly noses and soaking diapers again. After realizing that I needed an attitude adjustment, though (aka the kids are not out to make me miserable with their messes and questions and climbing onto furniture and dipping things in toilets:) I am feeling a bit better even though Mike is still painting at someone's house (at 10pm). When else do I get to post 3 times on the blog in one day? :) God is good and at least he is the same all the time even when I feel crabby....

Oh, I have to share this note that Mariah dictated to me for the husband of her kindergarten teacher....we've been to their house before and she has met their kids (Clarke, 8th grader, and Olivia, high school) multiple times...her classroom is called the Exploratorium. The section in ( ) she had me cross out and she had me add the part in [ ].


Dear Mr. Doig,
I just think Mrs. Doig is a great kindergarten teacher. It was very fun to play with your family at your house. It seems like it was so much fun to have you visit the Exploratorium for a little bit before you picked up Clarke. I hope you and your family come to visit us someday at our apartment. The Exploratorium seems so fantastic that I kind of thought that it would be a little silly if the whole Exploratorium was part of your family, all eleven kids in your house. If your family comes to our house I'd play with Olivia and Clarke and Mrs. Doig. Clarke put up his train set at Daystar School. Your family seems so fantastic (that I wished I could be part of your family, but my mom would miss me), but I kind of don't want to be your family. [Mrs. Doig wanted to be part of the Potoka family]. I'm already part of my family.

Love,
Mariah


That girl absolutely makes me smile (when I'm not annoyed by her chattering:)....woah be the world when she doesn't have to dictate any more:) And it's going to be so weird when she can read everything!

long overdue pictures from home....

I've posted lots of pictures of Mariah at school, but here are a few from our new place in Chicago....

Mariah pulling the girls around on the pad from the crib (it's like 12 feet long).

Squeaky clean from the tub.....snuggly under a blanket....

First try to capture Rachel's "boss face" as it got coined.....a sort of pout/pucker that appears now and then for no real reason, but it is rather amusing.

Second try for the boss face....

Allison and Rachel discovered a fun place to play....

Oh, the hours of fun to be had in a box....but of course they all needed one.

Rachel's tool for learning to walk.

school pictures and vacation fun

Here are a few pictures of Mariah at school. With a sidewalk chalk drawing.

Playing with cubes.

Mariah's favorite thing at school is Team Time. This is when the whole school gets together on Friday afternoons for various activities in small groups (bingo, uno, war, etc) or in one big group. On this particular day they played Shoe Salad with everyone together -- over 85 students in one room playing this game. Everyone took off a shoe and put it in the middle and then they would take turns trying to match the shoes. Apparently it was very noisy:)

We enjoyed a nice trip back to Minnesota last weekend since Mariah has this whole week off from school. It was so wonderful to back among familiar faces and places. The girls and I are still recovering from the trip and fighting sniffly noses, but Mike is back to work. I observed my 29th birthday yesterday.....I don't feel too old, though:) Rachel chose the day to be full of mischief -- rinsing rags in the toilet (imitating me rinsing diapers, probably:), climbing on the toilet, and once again, being absolutely crabby about diaper changes. She is definitely the most strong-willed and adventerous and mischevious of the three kids.

Yesterday Mariah and Allison enjoyed some time playing together -- something that they don't get to do every day. They were wonderfully creative and played "Boundary Waters" for hours. For anyone who doesn't know, in Northern Minnesota there is a large area with many lakes that is designated the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness -- it is on the border with Canada and you canoe on the lakes and portage (carry canoes and backpacks with gear) on the land to get from lake to lake. Mike took Mariah up there this past summer for 4 days/3 nights so she knows just what goes on. Anyway, the girls pretended all day that the couch cushions were their boats. They would rock on the waves, paddle with their feet (push themselves on the wood floor) and when they came to a carpet they would pick up their boats and put them on their heads and walk to the wood floor on the other side. And occassionally Allison would fall out of her boat and Mariah would rescue her:) They also set up camp under the dining room table with lots of pillows and blankets to lay on. They had great fun and it was neat to watch them play together.

a few funnies

Cracking an egg in class to help remember the letter E (a program called jolly phonics).

Mariah reflected in Cloud Gate (aka the bean) at Millenium Park

Life never gets dull when you have kids. They can frustrate you and make you angry but they can also make you laugh and be in awe of all that they are learning and doing and what amazing little creatures they are. Here are a few of my favorites from the last week or so.

Rachel -- now 15 months. She is getting opinionated! She knows what she wants and she is not quiet about it! The only words that she really says are mumumum and dadadada and bah (for boo) but other than that she communicates with pointing and exclamations. She doesn't like to hear 'no' and she'll pull a big pouty face and tears sometimes. Othertimes (when her sisters say no) she will attempt to bite them, but that doesn't work so well because they are bigger. It happened once that Allison pushed Rachel away from something, Rachel fell down, got up, was crabby about it, tried to hit Allison, but couldn't, walked over to Mariah and took a swipe at her, then walked to the toy cupboard and pulled out the toy hammer:) I don't think that she quite knew what she was doing with the hammer because she didn't go hit anything, but it was just a funny toy to grab. The days are pretty peaceful for the most part, but Rachel definitely tries to exercise her indepedence at times. Rachel loves to help unload the dishwasher. A few months ago it was grab all the silverware and throw it on the floor. Then, it thankfully progressed to handing the silverware to me so that I could put it in the drawer. A few days ago, though, she decided that she was not going to hand it to me, but instead she totters over to the drawer, holds onto the edge because she can't even see into it, and chucks with silverware in. I was impressed. I'll take it. Her other feat for the week is climbing onto the girl's 2 foot tall table. She loves to watch the trains go by and she recognizes the sound right away, but the windows are all about 4 feet off the floor. Usually I pick her up and let her look outside, but a few days ago she discovered that she can climb up onto the table and look by herself now. Now if only she would learn to climb down.... And last but not least, the ladder feat. In our new place, we turned the master bedroom into the girl's playroom and Mike built a 4ft tall platform in the walk-in closet of the bedroom to put our queen bed on (and there's still room for a desk!) We have a 4 foot stepladder that lives in the room so that we can climb into bed. Allison usually naps up there and so she was in bed and Rachel was just playing in the playroom. Well, it got pretty quiet so I just walked over to see what was going on and where is Rachel?? She had climbed up the ladder all by herself and was on the bed! I was astounded, but very thandful, too, that she hadn't fallen! Needless to say, we'll keep the door closed from now on!

As I've said before, I've been enjoying having only two girls at home. I feel like I get to know the younger two a bit better which helps me to love them more. As the author of The Shack noted, our ability to love somebody increases with knowledge of them (applicable to both God and people) and I have found this to be so true. I just marvel at what the girls know and what they can do. Allison loves to do puzzles -- she can do 100 piece puzzles by herself (I usually sort the pieces, but she can put them all in) and once she even did a 300 piece one after I sorted the pieces -- it took her over and hour, but I was impressed that she stuck with it! Her speech is very fun, too. See if you can figure these out: She likes to play "oh-no" (she doesn't care about winning, she just wants to have to draw cards when she can't match the color or number), "chest" (she knows that the pieces get moved around and that you can be in check, but she likes to have the pieces talk to each other:), she once liked to eat "cuzinni", but doesn't anymore, and she likes to have her hair in "tonypails" sometimes. She has lots of good questions, but this one was really good. They have this spinning toy (called a sit and spin, maybe?). It is a plastic disk about 18" wide with a handle in the middle that you pull yourself around to make the disk spin. The other day she asked -- "can you spin on the spinning toy on a merry go round?". Good question.

Mariah continues to enjoy school. Since I posted last she has gone to the Chicago cultural center and the Art institute on learning excursions! They have maybe a week off and then they get to ride the El train (the subway trains that are sometimes underground and sometimes on Elevated tracks above streets) and a city bus! Sounds like fun to me! Yesterday her class baked cookies because there was a parent event about school curriculum so they made refreshments for us (and even special gluten free ones for me!) She's been learning lots about letters and sounds and reading and on Wednesday she sounded out an unfamiliar word. We were driving and of all things, she found some graffiti to read:) It said something like Ramos Lives and she said "does that say liv?" I said yep! How did you figure that out? She said , "well, it looks like antie liz's name only with a v so that's how I knew what it said." Good strategies:) It is going to be really weird when she is fluent at reading and spelling! It will open up whole new worlds to her.

As for Mike and I, we are doing well for the most part. Sometimes it feels like two steps forward, one and a half steps back, especially when somebody in the house is sick. I unpacked the last box of dishes yesterday (hooray!) , but have a few boxes of toys and things left. My mom is coming to visit this weekend which will be very exciting! and we are planning to go back to Minnesota the weekend of the 18th/19th so it will be so nice to see some familiar faces. I miss home in Minnesota and I miss the familiarity and knowing where all the groceries in the store are and all of our friends and fellow-churchgoers. We do like it here and we'll get adapted and it will help to join a church and get involved with some activities so that we meet people, but it still feels weird that we are going to live here for a long time!