We as a family enjoyed a full day visit to the California Academy of Sciences, which was completely renovated two years ago.  It was amazing.  From a lush rainforest ecosystem in a glass dome to a fully stocked aquarium, all of us were wowed by the beautiful and well-organized exhibits showing off many of the wonders of God’s creation (though, as one might expect, credit was not given where credit was due).

Here are a few photo highlights of our visit, including a photo of a rare albino American alligator and an up-close photo of a butterfly taken in the multi-level rainforest dome exhibit.

After my harrowing experience late last week, you might think I’m more cautious about getting hair cuts.

Actually, since it turned out well, I’m now happy to go there.

And today, we decided to have our sons join in on the action and get their first ever salon haircuts.

From the same artist who repaired my nasty cut.

Here are some photos journaling the milestone.

First is a photo of the boys from this morning with their standard look they’ve worn for some time, albeit overgrown.

Last is a photo of the three Ding men posing at a mirror at a Target store this evening to capture our three new hair-dos.

In between are photos I shot during both of their cuts.

Every summer the eligible children participate in Barnes and Noble summer reading program where you get a free book when you read eight books.  Today we went to the store to redeem the boys’ books.

Boys with their free books:

Then they started making faces, which is a natural progression for every picture taking  in our household:

Upon returning home, these two boys cracked open their books and read and read.  I love my two little bookworms!

My oldest decided to be creative one morning with his pancakes.  He cut the pancakes in pieces and put them together in Chinese characters that he’s been learning in our homeschool.

Brownie points to those who can decipher these Chinese characters!

Fact:  Red crayon marks on the couch:

Question:  Who did it?

Interrogation:  Everyone denied it.

Now begins the detective work which involves deductive reasoning as well as process of elimination.  The oldest three didn’t do it because by now they value their lives more than anything.  Now we’re left with the younger two; the four-year-old and the 20-month-old.  During the interrogation the four-year-old was insistent that she didn’t do it and readily incriminated the one-year-old.  Hmmmm. . . . the case gets a bit complicated because I can’t exactly interrogate the 20-month-old who isn’t verbal yet.  So, back to the evidence.  I observed the markings and the pattern.  It looked like the work of the 20-month-old because most of the markings are linear which is consistent with her developmental ability.  If it was the four-year-old, it’d involve concentric circles, hearts, and happy faces.

Case solved!

The culprit?  The adorable 20-month-old.

Punishment:  Sit on the bed of evidence as pictured.

I suppose punishment by photography is quite appealing for the culprit’s sisters that they too, want in on it.  So, I obliged.

Then the culprit felt left out so she climbed on to get in on the hall-of-shame.

Apparently, the brothers felt excluded as well, so they jumped on the opportunity to be photographed.

As you can see, life with so many little ones is never boring.

You may wonder why I didn’t completely freak out by the crayon marks on the couch and there’s a secret!  The secret is that all the covers on this couch are removable and washable.  Now, isn’t that a wonderful news for a family with small kids who enjoy practicing their artistic talents on furniture?

When my oldest was 15 months old, I began training him to sit still.  When we had our second child, we kept up with the training, and as we added more children to the brood, the little ones followed their older siblings’ examples.  We’ve come to a point where it’s given that our children are expected to sit and participate during Sunday service.  This is such a blessing and I really take delight in having my children with us on Sundays.  Our youngest is 20 months old now and she does not sit well on Sundays.  Once again, we’re revisiting our training session.

I took the time to train our toddler while the older children were at a basketball camp last week.  I started with holding Bethany on my lap and not allowing her to come down, and when she wiggled in an effort to come down, I told her ‘no’ and told her to sit on my lap.  We did this for about 10 minutes while playing a sermon on the background.  Our first session was a real struggle for Bethany and she did not like it a bit!  When it was all over, she was relieved to get out of my lap.

We repeated the process the following day and this time she was content and not crying.  I had her sit on a stool and she was quiet and obeyed the entire 10 minutes.  The following day I had to mop our filthy floor, but Bethany kept getting in the way.  Instead of sending her away, I had her sit on a stool while I mopped.  She sat and watched me mop the floor for about 20 minutes.  Even though she struggled a bit 10 minutes in, she did great on the whole.

There are so many benefits to training children to sit still while they’re young and one of which is learning to have self-control.  For those who are interested in training their children to sit still, here are some tips I’ve learned along the way:

• Start training the children at home first.  When they cry and want to get out of their chair, you don’t have the whole public giving you the evil eye.
• Start out small.  You need to see your child’s abilities and see how many minutes to start out with.  If your child really struggles, you can start with 3 or 5 minutes.  Once they can sit for that long, increase the time to 7-10 minutes and so on.  In the past we worked up to one whole hour with our oldest while listening to a sermon.
• You may want to start the training by having your child sit on your lap or be buckled down in a high chair.  Once the child knows he must sit and not cry, you can transition him to a regular chair or couch.
• During the training session I don’t give the child any toys, papers, pencils, crayons, etc.  I have done so in the past and that proved to be counter productive.  All those items became a distraction and we ended up not having a successful training session.
• When it’s time to sit in the public, e.g., at church, I have the child on my lap and have her sit for as long as she can handle it.  Once she becomes a distraction, I take her out.  We keep repeating this process until she’s able to sit through the entire service.
• Some kids are harder to train than the others so even though it may take several training sessions for some children to get the idea, it may take lot more sessions for the others.  In addition, don’t think that once you’ve got your children to sit beautifully for a period of time that this habit will continue without any more efforts on your part.  Once in a while the already trained children fall apart, but don’t give up, just go back to the basics.  As long as you’re consistent and persevere, it will become a habit for them.
• Don’t give up!  It’s rather tempting to call the session off when the child is crying, but keep it up until the timer goes off.  Children are fast learners and they catch on fast though some take longer.

Here is Bethany sitting on a stool while I mopped the floor:

And the saga continues. . . . .

The original patch I made was not snug enough so I made another one out of soft fleece.  It covers his eye better and to make it more fun for him, I had him pick a special button as a decoration.  He chose a rainbow button and here’s my boy with his new and improved eye patch.

Because his face is so small, his glasses keep slipping from his nose.  No matter how we tweak the legs of the glasses or the nose pad, they just slip.  So!  Off to the internet I went to do some research.  After visiting several websites, I came up with my own version of a head strap that goes around the back of his head so to hold his glasses in place.  I’m just so happy that his glasses no longer slip and that they stay on his face.

Whooo hooo!  Mission accomplished.  I hope the saga ends here.