Matthew's Baby Brother

Matthew has decided to be a great big brother and share his toys with his baby brother. He very gently holds Duplos up against my belly and tells me that it's "Bay-bee's turn!"

Progress on Our New Diet

We've been on the GAPS diet since July to heal our family's food intolerances. It hasn't been easy, but we are very excited to announce that Brendan is now healed of his dairy intolerance! He has had a glass of cow's milk at supper every night for the past week without any of his old symptoms. Luke is making excellent progress as well. He can have cow's yogurt regularly and a little cheese now and then without trouble. We haven't yet tested him on milk, but I don't think it will be too long before we're able to do that.
Nicklas has had much more trouble, but he is slowly progressing. We have finally managed to pinpoint the rest of his food intolerances on this diet and we're extremely happy about that. We always knew that there something else that he had trouble with, but we just couldn't figure out what it was. It turned out he has problems with onions, tomatoes, celery AND parsley - all things we ate on pretty much a daily basis which made diagnosing them virtually impossible.

Matthew and the New Baby

I've been talking to Matthew about the new baby quite a bit lately - how he's living and growing in Mama's tummy, how he'll be born after Christmas and such. The other day, he really got to feel the baby kick a lot and understood what it was. He was beyond thrilled! The pure joy in his eyes at feeling his baby brother kicking his hand almost made me cry. The rest of the day he was telling everyone that the baby kicked his hand, holding up his hand to show them. Also, he keeps pulling up my shirt and poking at my belly button, asking if the baby can come out yet. Yesterday, I told him that no, the baby still needs to get bigger. He looked at me very seriously, patted my belly, and said, "Baby big, Mama."

Nicklas' Writing Skills

Today during school, as Brendan was finishing his spelling, I gave Nicklas a warning that he would be starting his reading lesson in just a couple minutes. When it was time, I looked over at what he was doing (he had been drawing) and saw this written in his notebook:
"MAMAIDON
TNEEDtO
HAVAreeDiNg"
Translation:
Mama, I don't need to have a reading (I presume "lesson" was about to be written here).
I told him he did too need to have a reading lesson and sent him to the couch.
Then, I handed the notebook to Michael to read and ran off to the kitchen to laugh!
For a 3 1/2 year, he has amazing reading and writing skills and naughty though he was, it was still a pretty good attempt at getting out of a lesson.

Photo Albums

I've posted links to Picasa albums of the scrapbooks I've made for Nicklas and Matthew's first years. I'll add Brendan and Luke when I finish them.

The News from the Farm

Well, that last batch of kits didn't make it. Sad, but not too surprising. They were quite small and we knew there was a good chance of losing most, if not all, of them.
The boys are all doing well in school. Luke and Nicklas are progressing in their reading lessons and Brendan has finished his first math book and begun his second.
Matthew loves to talk about baby bunnies and "din-dins" (chickens).
Baby 5 is growing and wiggling lots.
Lucy is mostly housebroken now and will probably be moving outside soon. First we need to get some kennel panels though.

Surprise!

This morning Michael went out to check on the rabbits and discovered that there were a number of brand-new kits in Daisy's hutch. Linus was removed from her hutch exactly 31 days ago, the morning after the previous litter was born. I guess it's true that rabbits can get pregnant again within hours of giving birth!
I moved the new new kits into a nest box and placed it outside of the hutch; mother rabbits don't do anything with their kits during the day anyway. This afternoon, we set up another hutch and moved the older batch of kits to it. Ideally, they should still be with their mother for another week, but they know how to eat pellets and drink water, so they should be okay. And if we leave them in Daisy's hutch, the new kits will have no chance at all.
Matthew was thrilled to get to pet each of the kits as we moved them from one hutch to the other. He absolutely adores them; his favorite words lately seem to be "baby bunnies!" Usually said very loudly and with great enthusiasm.
Lucy is doing well. She still has a problem with biting in play when she gets too wound up, but it is slowly getting better. She's sleeping through the night more often now and having fewer accidents in the house. She's also learning to sit. As soon as she sees the bag of treats, she sits beautifully!

It's Been Awhile...

... but I'm gonna try doing this again.
We have several new additions to the house since my last post.
- Monica has given us four kittens: Tom, Honey, Peter Pan, and Katzie
- 2 Goats: Yukon and Xtra
- 3 Rabbits: Rex, Linus and Daisy. Linus and Daisy have given us 7 kits, now 3 1/2 weeks old
- 21 Chickens
- A 2 month old smooth collie puppy named Lucy
- And most importantly, our fifth SON is expected to arrive by mid-January

We've been rather busy here with endless animal chores, housebreaking a puppy, and of course, schoolwork! Brendan is beginning second grade, Luke is in Kindergarten, and Nicklas is doing preschool. Luke and Nicklas are both learning to read and both are doing a spectacular job!