I am at the start of an exciting long weekend. It's Wednesday which is the start of my weekend (meaning that I don't keep the extra boys for the next several days, in fact I won't have them Mon. due to labor day). Here is a pic. from when I was reading them stories some weeks ago. Tomorrow we find out if we are having a boy or girl at my 20th week doctor appointment, so we are super excited about that. Ivan has gone into super big brother mode. I've noticed him trying to defend Dominique on several occasions, shielding her from what he considered a little bit rough behavior and saying "that's my little sister" or "don't do that to my sister". Tonight, she refused to come out of a special shopping cart once I had loaded up the car, so I told her I was leaving and Ivan went into conniptions "you can't leave my sister!" She was undeterred. I kept watching her out of the corner of my eye of course and calling out "come on, we're leaving", but had to close doors and start the car before she came tearfully running to us. Ivan was beside himself "that was a bad decision mommy, she can't stay at the grocery store all night. I was trying to protect my little sister". So at bed time, I reassured him that I would never do anything to hurt her and that she needed to obey when I said to come.



Dominique has reached several milestones this week in preparation to be a big sister I'm sure. She is wearing underwear, although she hasn't perfected the art of going number 2 yet. She does number 1 consistently in the potty and says every morning when I put her underwear on and every time she goes to the potty "don't pee pee or poo poo in your underwear" all motherly like with her intonation. She also learned how to jump in the pool by herself. I took the foursome and she yelled out to me "look mommy" and jumped in! She came up with the biggest eyes, got out and did it over and over again. Micah (age 1) also decided that he didn't want my help anymore and walked off the side into the pool. Ivan (nearly 4) is another matter. He was getting a piggyback by a girl in the pool when Caleb had the bad idea of getting on as well. The girl pulled Ivan forward, to get Caleb off and Ivan's face went in. Was he ever upset! He won't jump in and continues to tell people not to splash him! Funny boy.

The other night we watched the movie cars together. A friend had lent it to us and I told the kids we'd have a family movie night. This is the first time we've done this and Ivan was so very excited. He kept saying "come on daddy, we're going to have a family" and "do you want to have a family?"

His other cute expression right now is: do you want to go bare footing?

Dominique's cute expression is how she has personalized colors. Apparently she has full ownership of pink. She'll name her colors: " blue, green, black, Dominique pink!" If there is no pink, she'll claim purple. Sometimes she gives other names like "Ivan green", but pink is never pink all by itself, it's always "Dominique pink".

I'll try to post again tomorrow and get the news out. All four of us are going to the sonogram so that we will all find out together. We are all excited. The kids are convinced this is a boy, so we'll see if they are right. This week I have been feeling much stronger movements and with knowing the gender, we'll be able to tackle the name decision some more and have even a clearer sense of soon having our third child! Soon as in next year- but time flies when you're having fun and/or parents of toddlers- ha,ha ;)