What everyone is doing...

I've been trying to be consistent about posting an equal number of posts about each child...but I'm consistently inconsistent at that!

So here's a post about each child:

Here's Lukas painting his mission for class, La Purisima Concepcion.  This is Tom's favorite mission (he has visited quite a few of them), so since Tom is teaching Lukas history, Tom picked the mission Lukas would study.  Some time ago I mentioned that I started giving Natalie children's chewable Omega-3 and it seemed to help with her focus.  The other week I thought, "I'm always trying to get Lukas to focus on schoolwork, why don't I give him Omega-3?"  Actually, I had given them to Lukas a year ago, but he didn't like the taste, so I didn't insist.  This time, I decided he would take them and we'll see if they help.  And they help!  The Omega-3 helps with the distracted-looking-around-the-room stuff that I have had problems channeling.  Now Lukas can focus on his work and finish in a timely manner.  And he likes the taste of them now!

We are still pursuing potty training with Natalie.  This means she wears underwear during the day, except when we go to church or for a long outing where using the toilet might be challenging and an accident would be a major inconvenience.  It's still rare for her to do #2 on the toilet, and she only does #1 if we take her to the bathroom.  This past week there seemed to be a slide backwards in skill, but she's doing well again this week.  Natalie's teacher thought the backward slide might be related to her increased seizure activity while she had a cold and ear infection...I don't know.  Absence seizures in Natalie are not always obvious.  The medicine seems to be reducing the number of seizures, but just yesterday she had one that lasted, according to the teacher, almost a full minute.  We are still so unsure of where the seizure thing is going.  But Natalie's teacher says she loves Mondays because Natalie sings all the church hymns to her.  I really need to hear more good things like this from school...it's so hard because we're trying to get the seizures under control and make progress with the potty.  Natalie is still learning and growing in other ways!  Videos to come soon...I need to make time!

Konrad's latest question is "what is on my hands?"  He always asks this in response to me telling him to wash his hands with soap when he comes in, or before a meal.  I respond "germs that you cannot see."  So now when I tell him to wash his hands, he says, "What is on my hands? Something I can't see?"  I can remember being three years old and having no concept of germs in similar situations...if you can't see dirt, it isn't dirty, right?

We realized that Dominik wasn't getting enough milk from me a few weeks ago, so I'm finally supplementing with formula.  And he really likes it warm.  A few days later, his appetite decreased significantly and his diapers were runny, so at first I thought it was a reaction to the formula.  But now he's fine:  his appetite is definitely back and everything seems normal again.  Although nursing is so convenient (nothing to wash, always available), it is nice to have him also using a bottle so I can feed him in more public environments.  I tried to get him to use a sippy cup and just by-pass the bottle, but he just chews on the spout (even the infant sippy cup), so that will be another training step.


That's today's update...more news tomorrow!