The Mathis Family Scrapbook

Mine!

mathis4 — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:54:41 +0000

This video was taken in late spring or early summer, when I first introduced the kids to ice cream cones. Alex was very open to sharing, but Zoe was a bit more stingy. Not that I wanted to take away her cone, but as you can see she doesn’t lick it fast enough to keep it from melting all over the place. She also liked biting the bottom of the cone. It was a mess either way. Switching to plain cones worked better. Chocolate dipped cones on a stick even better!

Life in Rio Oso

mathis4 — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 15:30:04 +0000

In April some of us got together and hired some photographers from SF to come out and photograph my parents out on the farm. Not just for portraits (which is something we should have done a few years ago for their 50th anniversary), but to capture something about their personalities.

Back in the 80s my mom used to do a lot of canning. She would can over a hundred jars at a time. Here she is with her remaining apple sauce and pickles.

Dad in his shop

Dad cracking walnuts

Dad in the walnut orchard.

Mom and Dad: 55 years!

Catching Up ~ February 2008

mathis4 — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 01:07:22 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. Everything was going great after our move. Alex was taking an interest in using the potty, and then he developed a little cough. That cough was the beginning of the worst couple of weeks we’ve had in a long time. Zoe got a nasty case of croup. Alex developed bronchiolitis, and then he got pneumonia. In one week, both kids made late night trips to Emergency and visited the doctor. And we had to manage recurring bouts of Zoe’s croup with Alex’s albuterol treatments at home. Turned out we had all caught the RSV virus, my parents included. (My dad came down with pneumonia a week later.)

Here is a short video of Alex in his hospital crib. This was the first time he smiled in several days. He liked being able to see himself on the video camera screen. I was so happy to find something that made him happy —and then a few seconds later the battery died.

The following day, after Kyle took over at the hospital, I made some hummingbird cupcakes again, since Alex hardly ate anything but grapes for a week. Like usual, the hummingbird cake worked like a charm!

New Year, New Home

mathis4 — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 22:14:16 +0000

2008 has arrived, and we have made a few changes. Kyle got a new job at a small animal clinic in Granite Bay. So he is no longer having to work with cows, in the cold, rain and mud. And no more on call work during the weekends and holidays. (Hurray!) And we moved to the farm, right next to my mom and dad. It’s been great! The house is a bit smaller, but we’ve pretty much managed to make things fit.

Here is some new video of the kids from January 18th. It was right at Zoe’s bed time and she was acting a little loopy.

Christmas Eve 2007

mathis4 — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 01:37:02 +0000

I’ve pretty much got the new video camera figured out. It’s one of the new hard drive high def cameras. It took a little figuring out since it records in a different compressed format than what I’ve ever seen. But I downloaded a trial of the updated Sony Vegas and all is well. Though uploading on youtube messed with the quality quite a bit. But here it is: my kids at grandma and grandpas house on Christmas Eve. My brother Edwin is behind the camera in the first half.

Video from June 2007

mathis4 — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 21:02:15 +0000

I haven’t figured out how to download video from my new video camera. So, until I get around to reading the manual, here is a video clip from this summer.

We had been asking Alex to imitate different animals. Periodically he would put his finger to his chin, roll his eyes up, and say “Uhm.” It took me a while before I realize he was imitating me. Between animals, I would pause and say “uhm” before I’d think of the next animal. So this is Alex imitating one of my odd mannerisms.

More Photos -these are from October 2007

mathis4 — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 00:51:10 +0000

In October, we had our family photos done by Angelica Goulding. These were taken at McKinley Park in Sacramento. It was a really beautiful fall setting. I wish I had taken my camera and photographed Angie at work. Her sister Laura was there to assist her with the lighting. When she was taking these photos of Zoe, Angie actually got down in the dirt (with her clean white shirt) just to get a good angle! I just got the enlargements in the mail today, and they look stunning.

Our Camera is Broken

mathis4 — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 22:57:06 +0000

Our camera is still sitting on a shelf with it’s lense bent out of shape. We haven’t been able to take any new photos of the kids for almost a month, so I thought I’d post a few photos from the past year.

Alex ate 6 cheese sticks yesterday!

mathis4 — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:57:40 +0000

I know, that doesn’t sound like a very big deal. But Alex just recently got over a stomach bug, and had consumed nothing but watered down grape juice for about 6 days. We finally took him to the doctor, and just like what ALWAYS happens he started showing signs of improvement immediately after visiting the doctor. But for the first couple days of recovery, he looked like he had spent his life in a concentration camp. Unfortunately, our camera is broken, otherwise I would have taken some photos to share.

It’s funny how different children are. Zoe had this same illness just the week before Alex, and I never had the same worries with her. She was a good eater before getting sick, and even in the middle of her diarrhea and throwing she was so pleasant and easy going that we were sure she must have some sort of food intolerance. On the doctor’s recommendation, we started her on rice and apple sauce. She ate it with gusto, and she was finally pooping normally again.

Alex on the other hand was a picky eater before getting sick, and would go for weeks nibbling on bits of this or that. And getting him to eat protein foods has always been a particular challenge. To make things even worse he caught a really bad cold just a couple days before getting diarrhea. So unlike Zoe who started off her stomach bug by playing and eating like usual, Alex was wiped out from the get go and spent a good part of the week doing nothing but sitting on the couch and wanting to be held a lot.

I sometimes think that I worry about the strangest things. Because my son is a picky eater, I’m a little compulsive about keeping mental tabs on what he’s eating throughout the day. The conventional wisdom says not to worry, that children won’t starve themselves. Yet, after a full week of Alex not eating, I told Kyle that I always suspected that Alex might be an exception, that maybe he really could starve himself. But yesterday conventional wisdom stood it’s ground and put my worries to shame when Alex ate his 6th cheese stick. That represents 36 grams of protein (probably more protein than he’s eaten in the last month), 120% of his calcium needs, and 24 grams of fat! I won’t be worrying about his protein intake for another week!

I wanted to add, too, that to help get his calories back up, I made some hummingbird muffins, which is just hummingbird cake baked in cupcake form –and with just a fraction of the sugar and no frosting. I got this recipe years ago from Oprah.com. It’s the best cake recipe ever!

Halloween 2007

mathis4 — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 04:56:31 +0000

Zoe got to be a skunk this year. Last year I bought this Tom Arma skunk costume for Alex. And fortunately it fit Zoe this year. She just had her 1 year appointment, and the doctor said she was on the tall side.

Alex was a fireman this year. We thought a fireman would be perfect for him since he has such a fascination with trucks, especially fire trucks.

And since we’re on the subject of Halloween, I may as well show off our 2006 skunk. Alex was exactly one and a half years old in this photo. Zoe was just a newborn (born 10.20.06).