A Few Firsts/New Accomplishments

A. conquered the monkey bars a week ago. All the way across all by herself - several times. They were some pretty hard ones, too! They were set up in a curve so some were farther apart than others. She was SO excited :) She then got to experience the beginnings of monkey bar blisters!

B. read a book all by herself!! She needed a bit of help on some of the sight words - but that's because the English language is totally dumb and almost none of the words follow the rules. They are all 'funny' or 'silly' words, as our reading book calls them. She was so excited to read that princesses love singing...she loves singing, too! (She sings almost non-stop).

Lil Jo's firsts have all been vocabulary expansions lately. She said her first 4 word sentence ('Mama, kiss you me.') and she has been stringing together more and more sentences since. I think there was even a 5 word-er, but I can't recall what it was.

The girls also got to play Mario Cart for the first time on Saturday. We were babysitting some for some friends at their house and they have the four player game. It was VERY entertaining watching two 5-year olds, a 6-year old, and a 3-year old race :) Daddy had a hard time watching instead of 'helping.'

We had our first Easter egg hunt at our new church. 20,000 eggs....needless to say all the kids filled their baskets with lots left over. Daddy said he saw A. going slowly through the field, picking up an egg in each hand, weighing the two against each other, then tossing the lighter egg over her shoulder. Fortunetly for me (and unfortunetly for Daddy and Jo) most of the eggs seem to have been filled with mini-pb cups, yum!

Of course, I forgot my camera for Easter/ Egg Hunt/Trip to the Beach, but we are very lucky to have friends who remember cameras and offer to take family pictures of us:Can you tell we don't take family pictures often? :)

Waiting.

That's what I feel like I am doing right now.

The girls start kindergarten in 5 months......

I can't even fathom what our lives will be like.

They didn't do mom's-day-out or preschool. Our longest recurrent separation was Sunday mornings for church.

We've never had much of a set schedule. Naptimes, yes, but we wake up when they're ready and have breakfast when we're all awake enough to eat it. Lunch is at noon....ish. Supper when Daddy gets home which can be anytime from 5:30 to 7:00.

I'm not really worrying. I just feel like I can't commit to anything until I know how this new 'lifestyle' will affect us.

I feel like I need to hang on to every second...but they are SO ready to go.

Why all this melancholy out of the blue?? This morning a friend whose first born is also entering kindergarten next year informed me that there is early registration happening the first week of April. In three weeks my babies could be in the school's system....

What am I going to do all day at home with just ONE lil girl???

On a more upbeat note - here are the girls and Daddy planting our garden -yay!:

'Girls'

*Taking a moment to blog while my hideously bright pink nail polish dries :) *

We have recently confirmed that Lil Jo does, in fact, think her sister A's name is 'Girls'. This may be because both sisters have similar sounding names to her, because I refer to the twins as the 'girls' and she transferred that to just A., or because whenever I holler 'GIRLS' only A. comes running. It may be a combination of all of those. Regardless, she is adamant that A's name is 'Girls' and will not even attempt to pronounce A's real name. Weird, mostly funny, but starting to be a bit frustrating. I guess it's not hurting anything. I had to wonder today how long this idea has been in her brain. I've tested her a lot to see if she can tell the girls apart. She has said 'Girls' to A for quite awhile, but I assumed she was just telling me that A was one of the girls. It never occurred to me that she would get their names confused like this :)

This past weekend I went to our church's women's retreat (great as always :) All the girls went to stay with my dad and step-mom. My husband and I had Saturday and Sunday evening alone to celebrate our anniversary - it was very nice :) But, the girls came home Monday morning and started asking lots of hard questions (I'm not sure if it was out of the blue or if I'm just paying more attention after some of the topics discussed at the retreat). We have discussed: fat vs skinny, why a boy with autism acts differently than other kids, the devil (as they saw him on some friend's animated bible story dvd), what will happen if they can't have a baby, how babies come out of mamas' tummies, why grown-up ladies wear bras, what those diaper things for grown-up ladies in wal-mart are for (Mom, do you peepee in them??) etc, etc. My brain is tired!

One other development that has me really feeling the transformation of my babies into big girls - we have officially graduated from toddler clothing. 5T is just too small. The move across the isle in wal-mart is a sad one (and expensive!).

Well, I think the polish is set- should be able to blind many tonight at small group :)

Butterflies

Disclaimer: This may not be interesting to anyone else but me.

Yesterday the girls were given the task of making b-day cards. A. decided to draw a butterfly (so B, of course, followed suit). As she finished drawing the outline, I noticed that she had not really put a space for the body and was curious to see how she'd proceed (we rarely draw so I'm always interested to see how their skills have progressed). It was only when she started drawing what I thought was a second butterfly that I realized that she had actually been drawing each individual wing. Then after the wings were completed she added the body in the space between. Now, as a very poor artist who never aspires beyond basic doodles, I was very impressed by the detail in her butterfly. The body actually looked a bit like the worms/caterpillars from 'Herbie and Friends'. It was such a cute little butterfly with personality and detail so beyond what I have EVER come up with on my butterflies! I do enjoy doodling butterflies so I have attempted quite a few - but mine never have more than a playdough snake like body with antennae and maybe a smiley face if I'm feeling creative.

B started her butterfly a bit later (I was distracted from helping her write the b-day message by an annoying phone call from the insurance adjuster). Again I was perplexed by her picture. She only drew one butterfly wing and a body. I was thinking that surely she, at five, wouldn't think to draw a side view of the butterfly. But, turns out that's exactly what she was doing. The creativity in my five-years olds amazes me! I understand that they are probably totally normal in this area...but I have always been very unimaginative in my art -so seeing them draw from different angles etc just delights me :) I love watching their minds working.

Later, when I was describing to my husband how the girls had both created such different butterflies, B even informed me that she could have made another line on top of the wing so you could see the other wing behind it!! (She was also quite upset that she had forgotten to give her butterfly eyes) I do find it interesting, as well, that while they had butterflies from different angles and with different colors, they both put one spot on the top half and one on the bottom half of each wing. Is that the accepted butterfly wing design for most kids??

I'll close with some pictures from the last few weeks - most of them are from the indoor activities we've been forced to - because even here in the south, it's been cold and icky out. Then there are a few from our new church building (yay!). Our grand opening was two weeks ago and it has been great!

This is our front entryway:

Luckily she didn't try to stand up:

There is actually order to this chaos:

Part of Church Children's Hallway:
My husband built the stage and the puppet theatre:

Mama loves it when they get along:):

Just a lil cold

We've all been sniffly this week. The girls have a bit of a cough going, too. Nothing serious. But, I've found it interesting watching Lil Jo-its her first cold since she was about 10 months old: she is not lethargic, she is not sleeping longer (like I would like to do), no...instead she acts CAFFEINATED! She's goes through spurts of zinging through the house laughing and being goofy. You would never guess she's sick...until you notice the green goo oozing out of her lil nose. Or hear the raspy sound of her voice. The only behavioral indication of sickness is grumpiness. She isn't into tv so my usual set-em-in-front-of-the-tv-to-keep-them-still-so-their-bodies-can-rest remedy doesn't work. How do you speed the healing process in a little girly who is too young to be medicated and won't rest??

A lot of our friends have had kids with much more serious winter-time illnesses, though, so I'm feeling pretty ok with the colds! Do other kids become hyperactive when they get sick??

Here's my wild child at her recent b-day party:

A Minute of Peace

The girls are playing nicely together (!) in their room so I thought I'd do a quick post before I start the Monday clean-up (blah).

We have established our family motto. Last night in the car Daughter B. was gearing up for a full fledged fit when Daughter A. hollered out "B. DON'T FREAK OUT." Hilarious...but also almost exactly what I was going to say. See, our family is pretty much a freakin' out sort of family. Mama with her high-anxiety is constantly 'freaking out' about something and generally uses those words several times when describing her day to Daddy. Daughters A and B are also very prone to 'freaking out' because all issues from teeny tiny to giant require loud vocals, stomping, writhing on the floor etc etc. Lil Jo and Daddy are probably the least likely to freak out so they will be the designated keepers of the family motto who will be frequently called upon to shout above the din 'DON'T FREAK OUT'. And perhaps this established motto will help lighten the mood during the 'freak outs'...it's hard not to laugh when little girls holler and stick out their 'stop hands' :) And really one of our main goals since becoming parents of high drama (since birth) girlies has been to teach them how to resist the urge to freak.

So now I am off to clean the house with out 'freaking out' at how impossible it is to keep it tidy with three little girls, their Daddy, and a piddly dog :)

This pic should be with my previous post under weird games my girls play:

Birthday Girl

My youngest is now two. Amazing how time flies with the 3rd (or 2nd depending on how you look at it) child. The first two years of her sisters' lives seem MUCH longer!

Sister A celebrated by decorating the Birthday Girl's face with a fun ink-pen mask complete with matching neck and hand decor. I would have had a picture of it if Sister A hadn't decided to actually obey and wash the pen off. I was impressed at her prompt response to my order until I realized that she was thoroughly enjoying holding her sister down so she could scrub her face :) This marks the 5th (or maybe 20th) time A. has been banned from pen/marker/crayon use.

Every day I marvel at how fast the girls are all growing. It seems impossible that they were once so tiny (4 lbs 12 and 5 lbs 6 to be exact on the tininess).

Yesterday, we went to the zoo. It was an amazing day for it. The weather was perfect. There were very few people there and those that were there were well behaved and/or kept to themselves. The animals were active and easy to view (the tiger was sitting RIGHT next to the window - so cool). We had nowhere to be so we just took our time -it was great.

I know I should have a plethora of fun quotes from the girls...but I haven't been keeping track of them very well. My Dad asked if I was getting bored with my blog...but it's more laziness then boredom. That and it's a lot easier to check facebook and read other blogs while holding a kid than it is to type a blog post while holding one. And 'Lil Miss Likes-to-be-held-all-the-time' makes sure I have a long list of things to do during her nap time!

So, here's to more posts! yay.

Oh and here's Lil Jo's b-day present from Col. and Sugar:

Earrings! (and the piercing to get them in there)

And how about, instead of fun quotes, we do fun pictures of the girls' weird games:

No idea what the ball game was about. I believe the barbies were all on the piano 'stage.' And the last pic's not really a weird game - they were just all 'journaling' together and I thought it was cute :)

Goals Update

Back at the beginning of August I posted a few goals I had set for myself. I accomplished my number one today so I thought I'd update.

Ever since I posted those goals I have been praying for a piano. I've been looking on craigslist and keeping my ears open for anyone wanting to get rid of one. At one point I had found one that I really, really liked that was in my price range. But, then it was the wrong time of the month and we just couldn't come up with the money in time, so the lady sold it to someone else. I was very sad. Then our heater had to be replaced so I figured the piano was something that would have to wait. (People post free pianos from time to time but it has been my experience that it's almost impossible to call before they are gone....I must not be the only one searching for a cheap one!).

Yesterday I found a free piano listed. It was in the same suburb; it was the right size. I emailed them right away ( they didn't list a phone number). I gave them my number and said I could show up right away to get it. When I didn't hear back from them by bedtime, I figured I had missed it. But there was no picture, so I didn't really know what I had missed and I accepted it as not meant to be.

After church I checked my phone and had a voice mail from an unfamiliar number, the lady said they had received several responses about the piano but wanted to let me have first shot at it(I didn't give them a sob story email or anything...so I was either first...or...who knows...). SO...my husband and a few of his big burly friends went and picked up my mystery piano. I've been piano shopping on craigslist for a long time so I didn't have high expectations for the piano's looks - I was just happy that it was supposedly functional (and since free pianos go like hotcakes on craigslist I could always just turn around and relist it).

Well, God's timing is obviously best! This piano is so much nicer than the one I was going to BUY. Yay!!!!!!

So here's a run-down on the goals list:

1)Find a piano - check! (whoohoo!!!)

2)Find/buy a sewing machine - almost check....we got a sewing machine - and Jer got it to work long enough to make a pillow case and a pair of pants for the girls -both out of some cast off army uniforms (amazing, I know) but then it broke beyond his ability to fix it...so not sure what comes next.

3)Find a productive hobby - check. Mom taught me basic crochet so I'm working away on a scarf and then the sky's the limit, right?

4)Start to learn Spanish - still working on it. bought a second hand text book - but it has no pronunciation guides...may have a chance to buy in with some friends who might be getting Rosetta stone

5)Find inexpensive ways to improve our house - still working on this one...home improvement is expensive.

6)Set a consistent schedule that allows for quiet times, exercise, quality time with each family member - I think I found bible study time ...next is the exercise...bleh.

7)Become reacquainted with my Horn and look into local groups that might need an extra. - not check...maybe later...