big girrl

Emora has her 4 month doctor appointment tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how big she is. We just switched her over to 6-9 month clothes! The others looked like they were getting a bit tight and she looks great in her new duds. I could hardly believe it. Ivan and Dominique always wore the same sized clothes as their age. Emora may be our third, but it seems that she is intent to outdo the others.

Nana was able to come this weekend and celebrate Brian's first house sale with us so that was plenty fun.

Dominique seems determined to keep up with her brother. She wanted to read his words, so I gave her this easy one. She took it to Nana and told her it said "a- t"! I couldn't believe it! I'm not sure she understood that "at" is a word. But she did sound it out. Ivan's definitely eons better and is actually recognizing and figuring out the words, but it surprised me that she did that well. Likewise, I told him that if he wants to go to school some day, that he has to master using the bathroom and wiping all on his own (he still needs help wiping). Dominique overheard and has now decided she wants to do it all by herself too. Every once and a while she can do it all on her own now, but getting those underwear right can be something else. It's pretty funny sometimes to see how she comes out after trying to get them on.






It appears that it's time to update around here. I just hate how electronics don't last. We had to replace the dishwasher last month, and now the printer. We are looking at getting a new digital camera, since ours seems to be working most the time, but not all the time and this morning the phone went out!! Thankfully, since this happens every couple of years or so, Brian had the wisdom of keeping an back up unit on hand. It has a cord (remember those) and the kids think it's quite the marvel. We even have to teach them how to keep it hung up.

I'll try to post tomorrow or at least soon to tell you how the appointment went. In the meantime, enjoy this video.

Emora pulls her toy.

If you have kids, were they smaller, bigger or average for their age??

Congrats!!!

Brian sold his first house flip today! It was pretty exciting and everything went so wonderfully well. We are so thankful. We were hoping to go up to Canada in June among other things and will get to go now ;) It will be nice to go up in the summer. The last couple of times we have been were in winter. Ivan has been telling everyone we are going to Canada, but that there is no snow there right now.











Emora has quickly learned to use and hold a bottle. I never did bottles with the older two, but since we've had to give Emora apple juice (for constipation) and I also give her rice cereal in breastmilk or juice before bed in a bottle, she has mastered the art. She isn't wanting to take it from a spoon at night since I give it to her right before bedtime and she is too tired to go through the process of spoon feeding. I may start her on the cereal in the day with a spoon, but so far the night time feeding is helping her sleep between 6 and 9 hours. So that is awesome!




Emora's first food

Firsts and Spring

We had a really full day and I got a ton of cute pictures. Isaiah came over and we spent nearly the entire morning outside. Right now is the nice time to be in Texas. Here are a couple of shots of our sunflowers. Brian planted a whole field of them it seems. Not many have heads on them yet, but it will really be something once they are all in bloom.

We ate our first garden produce the other night. It was this squash that grew from a volunteer plant. Now that is what I like- plants that come up by themselves, require little help and feed my family ;)

The first bird to hatch in our hanging basket. So far two have hatched and are already quite a bit bigger and with more bird like details than this first pic taken a week ago. They are growing little feathers, bigger beaks, heads... It's fun to watch and we have front row seats!




Emora's big smile

Emora laughs

We are all quite enthused by Emora's development and accomplishments, but Saba is not so easily impressed. She doesn't care so much about such frivolous events like smiling and laughing. She wants to see some action and persistently brings her ball to even the youngest of babies and barks at them to throw it for her. I'm sure Saba is quite proud of herself when the baby finally throws that first ball. It takes a couple of years, but she does not give up, until they figure it out.

What signs of spring are coming up where you live?

video catch up time

Here are a couple of games that were played last month while the Wallaces were here.

eye to the tire tag game

ring around the rosie with Imogen

I'm going to go play a game with Ivan now. He is trying to wean me off of daily naps. GRRRRR Plus Emora does not tolerate me having real coffee DOUBLE GRRRRRR. So I am now going to go drink my decaf and try to keep my eyes open.

At least the house is clean, so that makes me feel good. I had it clean 2 days ago, but it rained and so we got mud slimed. I vaccumed and sort of mopped. I also did my spring cleaning- I bought carpet freshner and sprinkled it before the vacumming and put a deoderizer spray in the bathroom and a tablet in the toilet. Now I'll call it quits until next year ;)

have a good long weekend

Here's one to make you laugh. I told Ivan not to sit in the bouncy seat. As you can see, he is "obeying".
Here are some more pics from one of our activity days with our friends Olivia, Tighe and their children. Dominique was having a hard time carrying all the balloons she found in the house. The theme was colors, so this is the snack Olivia had prepared. We all really loved the blueberries- ummm yummy.

We also made bracelets with the kids' names on them. Emora's was very little. Her name and a few more beads was all her's took.

Emora slept 9 hours last night and I got 8 hours! Felt so great. I'm giving her some rice cereal before bed time. If she sleeps through the night tonight, that will have been 3 in a row and I will move her to her own room ;) Yeah. Now I may even be able to survive my days without a nap, which means that I may be able to get some things done, or just one on one time with Ivan. He's waiting for me to play settlers of Catan with him as I type, so I better get off this thing. It's a grown up game, but we've found that a lot of games can be played with them if we just simplify it and do a few shortcuts. I think all these games really help him with organization and abstract thought, math, planning... He can already do simple adding, like 2+3. He amazes me all the time!

From the video archives! Imogen and Dominique swinging...

What do you like to do when you get a long weekend?

How wonderful!

Yesterday we went to a special program at the library. When we were checking new books out, one of them didn't work right, so the librarian fixed it. Ivan exclaimed: "How wonderful!" The librarian laughed and laughed, saying that was the best thing she'd heard all year. It was really cute since it sounded so grown up coming from a four year old.

We have baby birds hatching in our flower hanging basket as we speak. There were 4 eggs. I went to show the neighborhood kids the eggs yesterday and one had hatched. The baby birds are so small and cute in an ugly sort of way. It is incredible to watch and neat to think of all the animals around the world having babies in spring.

This was the picture that was on my mother's day card from Brian. He took the picture on the sly without me knowing about it, so it was a great surprise, along with my gifts.

A week or so ago, it was Lily's birthday. Tighe had thought of getting 4 friends to bake a cake and write her name on it, but I figured that would just not do. I'm not all into decorating like some who take classes and use fondant, but I do like to play around in decorating for my kid's cakes, so I volunteered to make her's. It was so fun and not hard at all. It's so amazing to think that Lily is already a year old or that it's been a year with all the sickness that her brother Isaiah has fought and overcome. Someone at the party asked if I was Tighe's sister. We have that quite often. In many ways we are.


Here is one happy customer. I started her on rice cereal last week. It's messed with her system some, but I hope she can get back on a more regular ummmm- shall we say disposal system. I am excited though in that it definitely curbed her from wanting to eat non stop from her little growth spurt and she even slept 9 hours last night!!! It was incredible. Of course I didn't get 9 hours since my body is not adjusted to it yet, but if she can keep it up somewhat, my body will adjust and we'll get to move her into her own room, which would be awesome. With Ivan and Dominique, I sucked it up and would trudge down the hallway to feed them in the middle of the night, but I'm just not sure I can handle it again, or maybe I'm just not wanting to.

sniffer

I have a couple of awesome friends who also have kids Dominique's age and younger. We like to get together, but a play date with more than 2 kids quickly becomes mayhem if there is not a structured activity. I can't remember how exactly it came about, but we have created a fabulous system. We try to get together once a week. We rotate houses. Whoever's house it is at plans some kind of activity or craft. The kids have a total blast and so do we- plus they get to see each other, learn something, create and we all had a memory making activity of value that didn't cost us anything! It is so fabulous. The kids have created clay pieces, painted, made masks, gone on scavenger hunts... It's both fun to be the hostess and plan up fun. It's equally nice to just show up the other weeks and know that something meaningful and exciting is about to happen. It's awesome. I also like it that my kids get to experience learning from someone else than me.




Here's a funny Dominique thing. She likes to smell everything. I had always read that it's good to try to expose babies to all the senses: taste, smell, touch, sight, sound, but Dominique takes smelling to the extreme. For example, the other day she smelled some packing tape. I'm glad that she usually asks me if she can smell something. I've had to say "no" to things like the bug spray poison or markers. I just thinks it's so strange to see her pick up any old object, look at it then smell. And this is her own unique humor: she will often say: "Does it smell poopy?" When I ask if she farted, she laughs and says yes.

Which sense do you tend to favor after sight?

FOOD!

Ivan with his first real letter written to him. Grandpa Ian wrote in easy words with big bold letters so that Ivan could read it better. He was so excited about it.



The kids and I flipped this house. It used to be a one room, closed in, dreary place. After extensive renovations, we added a kitchen area (with fridge, cupboards, microwave, stove top, window and sink, a computer, table, front door, mailbox, fashionable wall decor and exterior design. The space is available for play dates and now if mommy gets really fed up with the duo, instead of sending them to their own room, I can send them to their own house! Ha, ha. We've had a lot of fun creating it and playing in it.


Emora is growing so much- that I've decided to outsource. The last couple of days she left her regular 3 hour feeding schedule and has wanted to eat twice as often, so although she is not quite 4 months, the kids and I made an urgent run to the store to purchase rice cereal. I gave her 4 little baby spoonfulls at lunch to see how she would do and she loved it! So I'm going to try some more before bed and see if I can get her to sleep a little longer. She has been sleeping good- about 5-6 hours for the first shift from about 9pm-3am, but one site said that they could sleep 8 to 10 hours a stretch by this age. I'm skeptical as it's never happened with my kids, but it is time to move her out of our room since she is getting so big and will start to warp the floor piece to her playpen bassinet, but I sure do not look forward to dragging myself to her room in the middle of the night for feedings. If she just slept until daytime-- well, I can't even imagine how incredible that would be!

Hawaiian trio

I had a wonderful mother's day. The kids have impeccable taste and gave me several well thought out gifts. And they are only 4, 2 and 3months old. They're amazing I tell you. I only had a bit of an idea what I might get. We had all gone to get groceries, which is a bit of a rare thing. Since we had a long list and had already been to a birthday party, we thought we'd divide and conquer. I ripped the list in half and the boys set off while us girls tackled the other half of the store. We were driving home when I remembered that I had forgotten to write photos on the list. I had ordered them online. We turn back and I tell Brian that I'll just run in and pick them up. The photo lady tells me my husband already got the picture. I said, "no, he didn't". She says "yeah, a 5x7". I say "maybe you've mistaken him with someone else". She replies "no, it was your husband and a 5x7 of three kids". I know this photo lab lady knows us from years of pictures and remembers when we've had a baby... then it dawns on me "I think you just told me what my mother's day gift was!". Her eyes grow large and she exclaimed with horror "oh no! Please look surprised". I laugh and she finds my other order of regular 4x6 pictures.

I kept our little secret until the next day, when I was really surprised. The picture was gorgeous, one I'd never seen (that would have been a feat since all the pics get stored on our computer) and it was just part of the card they made me, on top of all my gifts! So we had laughter, and joy that morning.

I think this picture is so hilarious. I had left the room and when I came back, I saw that Dominique had lined up pink baby and white baby with our little Emora, who looked like an oversized doll with them.

Emora is growing a lot and discovering new things- her hands, her feet, grasping anything and everything and stuffing it into her mouth. I think I'm going to go get some rice cereal. We started Ivan at 4 months and Dominique at 5 months. I think Ivan was a little too young, but when I put a spoon with water up to Emora's lips to see if she was interested, she was all too eager to stuff it in. She would be our earliest to start on solids, but considering she wanted to nurse multiple times in the night and basically all day long, it may be time to give her a more diversified food source. I see more daily wars arising from this though. Ivan and Dominique will be fighting to feed her. They love to mother their little sis.

baby giggles and toddler funnies

A conversation from our home this weekend:

Dominique "When I get grown up and get married, I'm going to have a baby in my tummy. I'm going to have a pink baby".
Ivan "I'm going to have a green baby"
Me "I'm going to have interesting grandchildren"

We had to get a new dishwasher this weekend, so the kids and I made a house out of it's box. It was so fun and looks really cool. I'll have to post pics when I've uploaded them.

Last night, Emora was dazing off into lala land, so I said "boo" to her and you should have heard her laugh! It was so delightfully delicious. The big kids thought it was great fun and we hid under a blanket repeatedly yelling out "boo" as we jumped up, laughing with Emora's exuberant giggles. Eventually Emora tired of it, but the big kids wanted to go on and on, so I had to explain to them that sometimes funny things are not so funny after you do it too many times. Hard concept for preschoolers.

Anything funny happened in your life lately?

Ivan's words

His first words to read were "on" and "off". He matter of factly mentioned to me that he could read them from a toy's switch. I wrote them on a paper and he immediately recognized them.





I wrote several similar words and he was very excited to see that he could sound them out. For over an hour, he kept asking me to write more and more words. We even progressed to words with the silent "e" at the end. He explained that the "e" was quiet because it had tape over it's mouth, but that it changed another letter in the word.




Then he decided that it was time for Emora to learn to read. He would put a word in her hand and sound it out for her! It was so cute. What an amazing adventure learning can be!

See if you can spot us in this short news clip. We went to a special program at the library and made it in the news!