Christmas08

UPDATED 1/10/09

Love to all from THE TESKE5!

Biggest news this year? Baby Gabriella Grace. Now ten months old, Gabriella is very mobile, pulls herself up on about anything she can reach, is working on her 6th or 7th tooth and adores her brothers. She uses a couple of verbal words, one that sounds like "Dah! Dah! Dah! Dah!" and functions like aloha or meow, sometimes indicating Daddy, in another moment she's apparently using it to indicate "bye bye" (accompanied by the recently acquired bye bye pageant wave). Her other word-ish verbalization is "Dhiss!" (aka. this), which is accompanied by the deliberate and often emphatic finger point. Some baby signs are starting to show up on a regular basis, including the aforementioned FINGER POINT, hand wave, the (traditional?) hand-squeeze for MILK, and sometimes MORE and (quite often) ALL DONE. All Done is interesting in that she uses it to indicate that she's done playing, done sitting in her car seat, done being on the floor, or that she's all done eating (often accompanied by her quick little hand batting away a spoonful of whatever food she's decided that she's done with). Gabriella is delightful: she's almost always in a good mood, loves people, will let other people hold her, gives great hugs that often include her sweet little hand patting us on the shoulder, sleeps well. We sure love our little punkin'!

Click! -> First pictures of the kids and family with Gabriella.

Josiah enjoys preschool twice a week. It's been fun seeing the difference a year makes in terms of confidence and he still enjoys the creativity, outdoor play, stories and his teachers.

Ben is in 2nd grade now and his reading skills have really blossomed this fall. We really enjoy it when he reads a book to Josiah or sits down to share stories with Gabriella. He's also in his 3rd year of Upward Basketball and off to great start this season. Drawing continues to be his passion, and his style and subject matter are broad and varied, though cars make very regular appearances in the stories he tells through his pencil drawings and comic-panel style illustrations.

Lisa joined a fitness program and her favorite part is the kick-boxing workouts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. (yikes!) She continues to do an awesome job encouraging the boys' creativity, and on Tuesday she "home schools" Josiah. The "home school" mornings may involve a craft (one of many that Josiah seems to come up with each week), some educational TV and some work on letters or numbers. She's also teaching two days this year to accommodate the additional classes at her school.

Kevin is still plugging along on staff at the ISU research center where he works in IT support. He serves on the Tech Team at church as a sound tech and enjoys those opportunities. This Christmas season his skills were stretched and honed during our church's original musical production.

This fall we had some work done on our basement that should keep the water at bay come wet spring or rainy summers. It has left the basement in some disarray and us with a handful of finishing projects to complete so that we can regain full use of the basement space.

Click! -> Christmas Photo Session 1

Click! -> Christmas Photo Session 2

Q&A - Josiah style

During bedtime last night, when the boys were all settled into their beds, songs had been sung, and the Advent devotion had been read, Josiah asked me, "Dad, what's Government?" "Is Government good?" I responded along the lines of, God tells us that we need to follow the government's authority, and that the government is there to protect the people in our country.

Then he asked if "Satan is part of our Government... And wouldn't it be good if he was?"* (hoo boy!) I told him that Satan's involvement wasn't ideal, that he has a way of mucking things up and is just interested in causing misery and distracting us from loving God.

"Is our Church the government?" No, I replied.

"It's God's house, isn't it? Why do we call God's house Church?" I told him that that was a good question.

"Why do you say that all the time, Dad? Good question?" And my response: I'm not certain about the answer Josiah, but you're asking a thoughtful question. (I need to look up the actual definitions of church** so I can share them with him concisely)

This morning Josiah was wondering if spies were good or bad... I changed the subject.

*Background: Ben and Josiah both think it would be really cool if Satan would decide to love God again and he could go back to live in heaven...
** From: Wiktionary.org, dictionary sister site to Wikipedia.org:
church (plural churches)

• A Christian house of worship; a building where religious services take place.
  There is a lovely little church in the valley.
• A Christian religious organization, local or general.
  The Church of England separated from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534.
  The church across the street has a service at 10 am.
• A group of people who follow the same Christian religious beliefs, local or general.
  These worshippers comprise the Church of Christ.
  Be shepherds of the church of God (Acts 20:28).
• A time of public worship; a worship service.
  I'll be there after church.

Flowing kettles...

Stories abound about kids (and adults) misunderstanding the words or lyrics in songs. On Thursday, Grandma Teske had a doozy of a time figuring out that Josiah was hearing "the cattle are lowing" as "the kettles are flowing."

For those who happen to visit our home, this should explain the origami pot and spoon that were added to his Playmobil creche :)

G at Nine Months

Wow! 9 months approached and then passed us right by. Watch this space for specifics about Gabriella at nine months of age:

[Jump To Gabriella, 9 mos. entry]

All I want for Christmas is my two front (bottom) teeth!

Josiah lost his second tooth yesterday while eating an apple. He was VERY excited and I think part of that excitement was that it came out on it's own instead of being pulled out. Not certain whether his inclination was to avoid the pain, or because he thought it would be really neat for the tooth to come out in an apple... Josiah does have strong and specific vision about how he wants things to be.

(I wonder if he'll be a movie director some day?)

T.F. visited last night and he excitedly included Ben in the discovery. He even showed the note to Gabriella and asked Lisa to read it to her so she could share in the fun.

FANTASY CAN BE FUN!

DaVinci the diver, Mona Lisa, and other chuckles (updated 12/3)

At some point on Sunday Josiah informed me that he is an artist and he lives in a fish tank in his room. I asked him if he was an artistic fish, but he told me that he was just a person artist and when he's in his fish tank he does this [picture Josiah's cheeks puffed out as he holds his breath]. He elaborated later in the day, letting me know that there are clear windows in the tank so that we can visit him without getting wet.

This morning Josiah marched in while I was showering and announced that his name is Josiah da Vinci and that he is an artist, like Leonardo da Vinci. His "wife" is Mona Lisa (my Lisa!). There's a story behind this: Yesterday on the drive to school, Josiah asked Lisa if she would like to be in his game. She said yes, and he told her that she could be the fish tank cleaner. (Mona) Lisa does enough housework in real life, so she declined, declaring that she, too, would be an artist. :) Josiah decided that Gabriella needed a name in the game too, so she was Mary Cassatt, who loved to paint portraits of women and children together.

A bit later, as he sat at the table eating his breakfast (his much-loved banana smoothy and a bowl of cereal--or oatmeal?), Josiah looked up and asked what time school started today, or so I thought. I told him that it was Tuesday and he didn't have school and he re-iterated, "No. HOME SCHOOL!" Ah - that's up to mommy...

Lisa told me about their home school activities during a phone call later in the morning: During ART Josiah painted a picture that he liked from a Skippyjon Jones book, including a sphinx, SJ and a red car he dreamed about earlier in the week. Then they went upstairs and jumped on the beds with a silly game Josiah created to include Gabriella--he would yell some word and they would all fall down. Gabriella thought it was a hoot (gut laughter). They called this their recess break.

After recess, they worked on letter combinations using resources from Starfall.com. At 10:30, it was time for media-based learning with Word World! on PBS. After a late morning craft, they sat down to lunch and looked up the work of DaVinci and Cassatt on the computer and read more about the artists' lives. Josiah said he looked funny as an old man (looking at Davinci's self-portrait) and said he was a very clever inventor. He also thought it was sad that Gabriella (Cassatt) couldn't be a painter and a mom, but was glad that (Mona) Lisa could be one.

* Late in the summer Josiah indicated that he would like to learn things like Benjamin does because at his preschool all they do is play! Lisa told him that they could work on letters and numbers and things at home and he exclaimed in delight, "You mean I can be home schooled?!" So now, once or twice a week, Josiah and Lisa spend "home school" time on anything from art (drawing, building sculptures, etc) to working on some basic language arts skills (alphabet, letters, letter blends), to watching Word World.

More Snow...

The short-lived nature of our last snow was a bit upsetting to Josiah, which led to my reassurance that we'd have much more snow this winter. In fact, I told him, God had blessed us with a little taste of winter before it was really time for snow to fall. He bought it, and that placated him for the time being. On Sunday, with over an inch of new snowfall on the ground, we headed out to Veenker (Veekner?) to sled. Josiah excitedly informed Ben that this was just another taste (with that oh-so-delightful enthusiasm in his voice)... which led to an argument. Ah kids.

We spent about an hour sliding down and walking up this perfect sledding hill. When we arrived, Ben eagerly ran for the hill, calling back over his shoulder that he'd be riding his sled. Josiah was a bit more tentative, but by the end of the hour we had progressed from walking around and pushing him in the sled down at the bottom of the mountain, to riding down together, to riding down the fast hill together, to accidentally letting him slide down on his own, to Josiah willingly sledding solo in races against Ben.

When we got home, Lisa had steaming cups of peppermint hot chocolate all ready for us (thanks for introducing us to this tasty treat Aunt S!).

----Check back later for a picture of Daddy and the boys with their sleds.