Just a Kane family update...

>> August 30, 2007

Molly is 3 months old today. Here is a picture...


Merritt finally lost his tooth! Here is a picture...


I think it looks worse now that it is out. I hope it heals quickly.

We have had a very busy week that started last Friday when we made a whirlwind trip to my sister's to get a bed that she gave us. (Thank you again Erin and Onne!) Before we got home, the truck Bruce was driving had a nice mishap with the wall on the exterior of Erin and Onne's garage - when it left its nicely parked position (of its own accord) and rolled down the alley way, until it was stopped by the wall. (I didn't take any pictures of the damage to the wall. The truck was fine.) Then, on the way home, it got a flat tire just on the north side of the grapevine, which took until shortly after midnight to get fixed. We drove down in our van and borrowed the truck from Bruce's brother Brad's company when we got there. So Bruce drove the truck home by himself and I drove the van home with the kids. Thank God that they didn't have to sit there waiting for the truck to be fixed. I left Bruce at about 10pm with the guy from the towing company, who was fixing the wheel.

Needless to say, we were pretty tired on Sunday morning and are still catching up. Nevertheless the week has been very productive. We signed all of the final docs for our house on Tuesday, had our final walkthrough on Wednesday, our loan funded today and we close escrow tomorrow. We should have our keys by 1pm. Yay!!!! We also managed to puchase a refrigerator and several other items that we still needed to get (like the rest of the paint for the living room), and we will start the real work tomorrow. Today I got the rest of the material to make the bedding for Molly's crib and I hope to start sewing it tomorrow - after my friend Jen takes Molly's 3 month old pictures.

Here is one more picture. This is my sister with Molly and my 13 month old neice, Janina.


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First day of 2nd grade

>> August 24, 2007



Merritt started 2nd grade last Wednesday. And the praise report is that he LOVES his new school and new teacher. Last year wasn't the most positive experience for him and on last Monday, when I tried to get him excited about school starting, he said, "I hate school. I wish summer was longer." By Wednesday morning, he was anxious to try out the new setting and came home talking our ears off about his day. The biggest part of the praise is that when I picked him up Thursday and told him that he was going to miss Friday (because Bruce and I had to go out of town and so he had to go with us), he was extremely disappointed and begged me to let him go to school. Is this my kid? So we compromised. He went to school for 1/2 of the day and we left town a few hours late. The picture above is of him in his classroom at his new desk, before school on Wednesday.

Here is one more of him in front of his classroom door.



Oh... and can I say "Snaggletooth?" You can see it in the top picture. His front tooth has been loose since the end of the last school year and now, 2 months later, the new tooth is almost in, with the old one still there - sticking out because there is no room for it in his mouth.

Here is a better picture of it...

My poor kid is destined to need braces. Wiggle that tooth out Merritt!

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Feeling stupid? Time for a nap!

>> August 20, 2007

I got a gift subscription to a new magazine for parents called WonderTime. I love this magazine!!! But I'm not writing this to tell you about the magazine. I am writing it to tell you about an article in the magazine called "The Twilight Zone: Why do those sleepless nights with a newborn feel like torture? Because they are." by Pete Nelson. If you want to read the whole article (especially you new moms-to-be) go to: http://wondertime.go.com/learning/article/new-parent-sleep-deprivation.html

The author talks about sleep deprivation for new parents, but basically states that anyone experiencing less than 8 hours of sleep a night is sleep deprived. Here are some quotes from the article...

Sleep deprivation is often said to be like torture. Sleep deprivation is not like torture. It literally is torture, employed historically to inflict psychological pain and/or extract confessions. Babies probably don't mean to torture us (and couldn't be held accountable if they did since few, if any, are signatories to the Geneva Conventions). The key word is "deprivation." Unlike insomnia, where you're too wired or stressed to fall or stay asleep, deprivation is a bit like the oft-repeated experiment in which rats are placed on an overturned flowerpot in the middle of a bucket of water. They can balance on the pot, even doze lightly, but as soon as they enter REM (rapid eye movement) sleep and go limp, they fall off the pot and into the water, thus losing sleep's restorative powers. Within days, formerly docile lab animals morph into hyperaggressive psychotic rat-maniacs that fight with each other and bite the kindly lab workers. Humans suffering from sleep deprivation don't do much better than rats. When the USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese torpedo during WWII, nearly 900 men spent up to five sleepless days in the water. Because their life jackets didn't support their heads, they nodded face-first into the water when they hit REM. Within 48 hours, survivors were hallucinating, dreaming while wide awake, fighting viciously for a place in the life rafts, and attacking each other with knives. Most new parents stop short of actual knife attacks, but the marital strain is nevertheless significant...
Sleep deprivation makes you stupid, and once you're stupid, it's harder to tell just how stupid you are, as suggested by an experiment done at the University of Pennsylvania's sleep lab. In tests over a 14-day period, researchers asked four groups of volunteers to observe a computer screen and match certain numbers to symbols as quickly as possible. One group slept eight hours a night, one six, the third four, and a fourth group experienced three nights of acute sleep deprivation. Subjects sleeping four hours performed worse than those sleeping six, and both performed worse than those sleeping eight. Surprisingly, though, the four-hour and six-hour groups performed almost as poorly as the acutely deprived group, with slower reaction times and complete lapses of attention. And here's the scary part: When volunteers rated their own levels of fatigue and performance, the deprived groups said they felt lousy but failed to notice just how far down the mental drain they were...
That's what we all say(I'm fine, just a little sleepy), and we're all mostly wrong, because the first thing that goes is our judgment. Sleeping gives the brain downtime to encode and shift information to more efficient long-term storage areas, effectively clearing the loading dock for tomorrow's shipment of fresh data. Sleep restriction inhibits those functions and makes it hard to integrate facts or solve complex problems. We make errors of both commission and omission. We have slower response times, attention lapses, give up on tasks prematurely, or foolishly persist even though we know we're going to fail. We make bad decisions, including that we can get by on six hours of sleep a night. We minimize the costs and write them off as minor mistakes. Minor mistakes, however, can have major consequences. Experts believe the disasters involving the Challenger, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and the gas leak at Bhopal were all partly attributable to sleep-deprived workers. You could argue that raising a child isn't as important as running a nuclear power plant; just don't try arguing that with a parent, because you'll lose.

I don't think we realize just how important 8 hours of sleep is. I think I would be a better mom, better wife, better at just about everything if I wasn't sleep deprived. Here is the good news...

Fortunately even a 20-minute nap can recover lost IQ points for a while, and the technology exists to more permanently correct the problem. This device can, after about two or three weeks of regular use, for about eight hours a day, restore us to our former optimal cognitive functioning. You probably already have one in your own home. It's called a bed.

At least sleep deprivation doesn't cause permanent damage. I think the hispanic culture got it right with Siesta time. So the next time you lose something or forget to do something you were supposed to do, you have a clinically proven reason instead of an excuse - you need more sleep!

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Family Camp

>> August 19, 2007

Last week was a pretty crazy week - getting ready for Epic's all-church campout (shopping for 50 people), still working on home stuff, getting ready for the first day of school (coming this Wednesday) at a new school.

Camp was sooooo much fun. We camped at Pismo Beach in Oceano Loop. The last time we camped in a tent, Merritt was 2. Needless to say, our tent accomodations were a bit tighter this time around, but we were plenty comfortable.

Merritt had a blast. He got to ride the dunes in a Rhino, which was an experience in itself. He also went boogie boarding for the first time.



Mason thought camping was the best. He cried when it was time to pack up and asked me this morning to go back. He would be happy if we lived at the campground.



Molly did great! She even slept through the night every night we were there.


We left camp last night at 10:30 pm so we could be home for church this morning. Now I am just tired, and it is obvious from their behavior that the rest of my family is too. So we will all be going to bed early tonight. It's time to start getting Merritt in the school bedtime routine anyways.

Here are a few more pictures from camp...

Mason was singing "Wipeout" while pretending he was surfing.



Mmmmm. S'mores



It was really cold at night, but Molly stayed nice and toasty with our friend Chris. It was good practice for Chris too who is currently expecting his first child.

PS. Here are a couple of pictures from the day Molly turned 11 weeks old that I kept meaning to get posted, but alas had no time to sit at the computer. As you can see from one of these pictures and one of the pictures from camp, she is trying really hard to be a thumb sucker.


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>> August 9, 2007

Molly turned 10 weeks old yesterday!

Someone asked me how old she was on Sunday and I had trouble answering them. She is already plagued with the third child syndrome. With Merritt, I could practically tell you how many days old he was until he was 6 months old and then I could tell you his age by weeks until he was 2. With Mason, I could tell you how many weeks old he was until he was about 18 months old. Poor Molly, I had to think twice to tell how many months old she was. I think this is not only the result of already having 2 kids, but also the loss of brain cells that came with being pregnant the third time (not to mention everything else going on in our lives right now). Really, its not that the second or third children are any less important. The first one just had less to compete with. So I am going to do my best to not let Molly be the vicitim of "there are tons of pictures of my brothers, but none of me - especially by myself."

Here you are Molly on the day you turned 10 weeks old...

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A Boy's World

>> August 8, 2007

It struck me this morning, as I was watching and listening to my boys playing, how much I take their boyness (real word?) for granted. It is all I've ever known with them so it is normal in our house. But this morning I watched them play and loved the "all boy" in each of them. Here is a brief run down of the mornings events...

They made a fort which quickly became the Millenium Falcon (the blue disc on the top is where the lasers shoot from)...


Once they played there awhile they disappeared into their "secret hiding place" under the bed, behind the rolling drawers that are usually fully under the bed. They emerged from there to become swashbuckling pirates and after a few sword fights and a couple of "Aaaargh, me hearties" ("Aaargh me parties" as Mason puts it), decided to take a break for breakfast - over which they discussed who the best Power Ranger was and which ones they were going to be today, which goes like this...

Merritt: "1,2,3, red"
Mason, slightly delayed: "Red"
Merritt: "I said it first"
Mason, whining: "I want to be red"
Mom: "You can both be red"
Both boys at the same time: "But there's not two reds"
Mom: "You can pretend that there is and besides that, there is 2 reds. One of you can be the red SPD ranger and the other can be the red Dino thunder or Operation Overdrive Ranger."

Agreed! Mason is the SPD Ranger because he has the costume, which he immediately puts on. And Merritt is BOTH of the other red rangers. Before long, they are both in the Millenium Falcon with their light sabers (and both boys in their swim suits anticipating swim time this afternoon), fighting the Imperial Forces. While there, dad says it is time to clean up and get dressed because we have a meeting to go to. So the Millenium Falcon get blown up and explodes in several pieces (some of which become lightsabers themselves before making it into the bag to be put away)


And that was all before 9:00am. I love being the mom of boys! There's always an adventure involved. And how many moms of girls know the Power Rangers or could tell you which Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle is which? I look forward to seeing how Molly in the mix changes the dynamic in our day and especially our playtime. I have a feeling that Barbie is going to be good friends with the Red Ranger and the Ninja Turtles.

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Our new house...

>> August 1, 2007


If you read Bruce's blog, then you already know that we are buying a house. But if not... We are FINALLY buying a home. Yeahhh!!!! I am so excited to finally be moving into a home of our own. The backyard is smaller than we had dreamed of, but it is such a good house for us and in so many ways is such a gift from God. He obviously planned this home for us. If you want to know more details about what God did, read Bruce's blog (http://news.epichanford.org/), the post is on July 20. We are scheduled to close escrow on Sept 3, but the sellers have asked to have until Labor Day weekend, which we said sure to. We have some minor work to do before moving in, but we should be moving in by the end of September or the beginning of October. We are going to be able to spend the holiday season in our own house this year - Yeah!

So now I am about the task of cleaning out our stuff here at Bruce's dad's house, and going through our stuff in storage so we can have a garage sale. We have to buy quite a few things, because we sold much of our furniture and all of our appliances before we moved here (we couldn't afford to store it). We don't even have any towels, but I don't mind having to buy those. I love having new towels.

More to come regarding our move...

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