Pretty Good Week

This week had a lot of fun things happen.  First, on Sunday I was straightening my hair and Ava saw me.  She wanted her hair straitened and it looked so nice!  She used to hate having me touch her hair, but now she wants me to do things to it all the time.  She still doesn't like things in her hair, but she loves having it curled or straitened or putting product in.  

Cute little face!

Second, it snowed!  My kids love the snow and have spent almost every morning before school out playing in it.  Asher even made Ava this cute little snowman.  They also play with the little girls next door and they will all be out there for hours playing. 

 Third, there was a development with Asher's sleeping.  I want to say first that I tried so so so hard to make sure there wasn't a mental, emotional, or physical problem that was preventing Asher from sleeping.  I tried so hard to take care of his needs!  But after getting so frustrated (an tired) I decided to use the fail-safe parent fallback: bribery.  And do you know what?  It worked so good!  He's slept through the night 4 times in the last week!  The first bribe....I mean reward...was if he could stay in his room for 1 night, I would get him ice cream.  That took 2 days.  His next reward (bribe) was if he could stay in his bed for 3 nights, I would buy him something at the store valued up to $5.  That took 5 days.  So my plan is to keep this going until he forgets about the reward and just stays in his own room every night.  I'm actually a little annoyed that it's working so well.  I'm getting almost twice as much sleep now!  It's so much easier to do projects and I don't feel like I need a hundred naps!  So yay I guess...

Last, I wanted to share an Ava story (which are always the best kinds of stories).  I was asking the kids what they wanted for Christmas.  Not because I'll buy everything on their list, but mainly so I can make sure I'm on the right path for what I was going to buy them.  Here's how the conversation went:

"Mia, what do you want for Christmas?"

"Polly Pocket!" (already bought it, so good!)  She also added various other girly toys like Barbie's.

"Asher, what do you want for Christmas?"

"Video games." Big surprise.  That's always what he asks for.

"Ava, what do you want for Christmas?" Now, I always get a little excited when I ask Ava preference questions.  And since last year the thing she wanted for Christmas was a cow (a live one, not a toy), I was curious to see what she'd say.  Almost every time I ask these questions, the answer she gives wouldn't have been in my top 20 guesses of what her answer would be.  And I was not disappointed.

"I want a rainbow cup!" (She later added she wanted a rainbow plate to match)  I didn't want her to feel disappointed that Mia got a Polly Pocket and she got a cup, so I asked her:

"What else do you want?"

"Um....a rhombus pop-it." 

"Uh....ok...." I really don't know where that came from.  And feeling like I still don't have a good idea of the kinds of things she wants I ask:

"What else do you want?"

"A big book!"

"Like what kind of book?"

"A Bible!"

So for Christmas, Ava wants a rainbow cup and plate, a rhombus pop-it, and a Bible.  😆

Halloween

I've been trying to write a post every Friday just to recap the week.  That seems like the most manageable amount of time for me.  But last week we were doing all sorts of Halloween stuff that I just ran out of time.  So here we go!  

Another reason I didn't get around to posting last week was because I've been taking a lot more naps during the day.  I actually really hate feeling like I need to take a nap so it's not been my favorite.  But Asher has still been having a lot of trouble sleeping at night.  I'm really running out of things to try.  He has no trouble falling asleep.  He's usually out in a few minutes.  But he's been waking up 3 times a night and that means neither of us get a lot of quality sleep.  Some more things I've tried include: prescription medication from a doctor, meditation, magnesium (supposedly it's supposed to help with sleep), more exercise, less screen time, big dinners, small dinners, keeping his room cool, keeping his room warm, etc.  He is getting better at falling back asleep on his own.  He doesn't need someone in there to help him fall asleep, but he feels like if he wakes up he has to come get me.  Most of the time all I do is send him right back to bed and he falls asleep.  I'm actually surprised he doesn't get more tired during the day.  He never acts like he's tired or that it's taking any kind of toll on him.  He's always been the kid that didn't want to sleep so this doesn't surprise me.  I've actually thought maybe putting back his bedtime might help.  Of course, Daylight Savings is coming and that will mess everyone's sleep schedule up anyways so I'll wait until after that.  And I have been thinking about going back to the doctor to maybe try a different medication.  All that to say, I've been much more tired lately and taking many more naps.  Which Millie loves because she's a spoiled dog and sleeps on the bed with me.

Moving on to more fun things!  Asher had been begging me for awhile to buy the things we needed to make fluffy slime.  It's actually really easy and they spent so much time playing with it!

https://www.thebestideasforkids.com/fluffy-slime-recipe/

 

Fluffy Slime!  I don't know why my girls have such a hard time smiling in pictures...

We got a bunch of pumpkins from my sisters kids and so we painted them!  I don't love carving pumpkins because Asher would always just watch and not want to actually help at all.  Maybe next years we'll actually carve some... but my kids always have a lot of fun painting them!  I wanted to try glow-in-the-dark paint.  I've never done it before and we probably won't again, but I'm glad we tried.  A couple tips if you do want to try it: do a base coat first!  It will be easier to paint how you want if you have a base coat.  Also, put it on very thick.  The day after I did a second coat on what the kids had done because you could hardly tell what it was.  Our door is covered so the pumpkins never got direct sunlight, but at night you could see them glowing a little!  

They always do a big and little pumpkin.  Asher and Mia do faces on both and say they're the Mommy and Baby pumpkin and Ava just likes putting paint on the pumpkin so hers is a little more abstract.

I was given so many apples this year!  It was great!  I dehydrated a lot and made fruit leather for the first time.  It was a multi-day project and I didn't even get through them all before some started to go bad.

Halloween time!  I am all for making Halloween the last Saturday in October and it seems like a lot of other people are too.  Even though Halloween was on a Monday this year, my kids had their Halloween parties at school the Friday before.  They didn't really care because it just meant the fun was spread out even more!  Although that meant that Asher pretty much wore the same clothes 4 days in a row... Saturday we went to a couple trunk-or-treats at businesses and that was when our ward had their trunk-or-treat.  Sunday we went to Grandma's house and had a get-together there and Monday we went trick-or-treating!  I was actually surprised my kids even wanted to go because of how much we had already done.  They each ended up with 2 gallon sized ziploc bags worth of Candy.  Mia is definitely going through hers the fastest, Asher is slowly making his way through, and I'm going to have to start giving Ava's away because she hardly touches it.  I've asked them many times and they said they had a great Halloween weekend!

Mia wanted pictures outside...in the 20 degree weather before school.  So we did!  Also, I used to delete pictures where she was making this face, but this is how most of my pictures of her look so this is more accurate than ones where she's actually look at the camera and smiling!

A couple of butterflies!

Ash Ketchum!  His costume was the hardest because I had to find random pieces of clothing to make it work.  He got the hat for Christmas last year, pants and shoes are his regular clothes, I bought the green shirt from Walmart, the jacket was actually a white shirt and blue jacket I found at DI and pieced them together, and the gloves came from the dollar store and I cut the fingers off.  He looked pretty good and we saw about 4 other kids dressed up as Ash Ketchum too!

Look at those cute smiles!

We did a horse-drawn carriage ride at Reed's Dairy.  The kids loved riding in the cart!  But they had moved all the cows to another farm this past summer so we drove through a lot of empty stalls which was a little dissapointing.

It was fun nonetheless!

Annual Mitchell Family Halloween get together!  You can't see Milan, but he made a great Darth Vader and all the little kids were a little nervous about Nathan's Slenderman outfit.  They love comparing costumes and I think all the kids had fun!