Isn’t she cute!
Eve is pretty cute too
:)
We love Molly
Reply
I just a boy
Lex has hit this fun stage where you can’t call
him anything or use any adjectives with him. If you do, he’ll
correct you by saying “No, I just a boy.” Alan called him a
crazy monkey, “I just a boy,” he replied. Tell him he’s sweet
and lovable, he’ll reply, “I just a boy.” :)
Today he is SO HIGH ON THE SUGAR!! Amanda and Andrea came
over for the first of our many holiday celebrations and we
decorated gingerbread cookies and ate too much. After breakfast
this morning Lex decorated a gingerbread bear that he made the
other day and once it was done he promptly said, “now we eat
it!” I made him wait until after his nap :) Needless to say,
one decorated gingerbread bear and Hershey kiss/brownie
concoction (sooo good!) later he is revved!
Go Joyce!!
Congratulations to Joyce!
She graduated from Clemson University today with a degree in
Travel & Tourism. Welcome to the real world now! We love
you!
Meant to be
I’ve been kind of bummed this week because there
is so much going on, but I’m kind of trapped in the house.
Right now my entire family is on the way to SC to see Joyce
graduate from Clemson tomorrow (go Joyce!!), but I couldn’t
figure out a way to get down their myself. And Jim & Julie
had little Molly the other day and I just want to jump in the
car and go visit them, but I can’t do that either. My practical
husband says they need some time to settle in to their new life
anyway, but I say bah! And my two year old girl didn’t work
out, so it’s just my kids and our new 3mo old friend this week.
The babies are happy enough, but Lex is bored, bored, bored.
We’ve been doing a lot of baking this week, because that’s the
only project he seems to enjoy. Baking and block building. And
reading, reading, reading.
Anyway, the point of my subject line is that
sometimes I think plans were meant to be for whatever reason.
The day after I really wanted to go visit baby Molly, Lex woke
up with a very runny nose. And today, when I really wanted to
be driving to SC with the family, I ended up taking Eve to the
doctor for an ear infection diagnosis. The poor girl is none
too pleased with things today. Thanks goodness for Infants’
Tylenol! She’s actually
on the floor behind me right now, fussing, and (first time!!)
pulling herself up on the futon! In both cases I
think it was good that I was where I was and not where I wanted
to be.
So life goes on and we’ll get
through. We’ll see our lovely Clemson alumna (?) next week and
baby Molly soon enough. And we’ll figure out our days so Lex
doesn’t drive me too crazy with his boredom. Hopefully we can
get another toddler or two soon. Hopefully Eve’s ear infection
passes quickly so she can return to her usual happy, mellow
self. And on that note, I’m going to go snuggle and get
settled, ’cause I think her and I are in for a long
night.
Welcome Molly!
Send your love and well wishes to Molly
Elizabeth Kirkwood, born last night. Julie says all went well.
I can’t wait to meet her! I was tempted to throw the kids in
the car and cruise on down today, but these days I have more
kids than car seats, so that was a no-go. Oh well. We’ll see
her soon enough and Jim & Julie will probably be posting
pictures soon on their blog.
Bibs be gone!
I thought it worth mentioning that Eve is
basically done with bibs!! Yay! Well, we do use them for
eating, of course, but she has such great control over the
spit-up these days that I don’t both with bibs any more. Yay!!
And the rare occasion she does spit up, she usually just
whipped her head around or something, and would have completely
missed a bib anyway :)
“So sad”
As many of you know, we use “so sad” as a
Love & Logic term with the kids. In the past few days Lex
has decided to be helpful and “so sad” Eve :) I’m not sure if
we should encourage this behavior (who wants their big brother
disciplining them?), but the funny part is he has been correct
in each case. He even says it with empathy and gives her a big
hug afterwards. For example, tonight she got Alan’s slipper and
started to chew on it, so Lex walked over, said “So sad Eve”
and took the slipper away. He put it back with the other one
and then went over and gave Eve a big hug. So cute!!
And speaking of Eve, she seems to have
discovered just yesterday that she can get farther by crawling
instead of pulling herself along with her hands. She’s been
doing a little crawling and a lot of GI Joe moves, but that’s
just a lot of work! Suddenly she realized that crawling can be
faster. Go Eve!
Lots of other stuff
going on these days, but it’s 10:30 and I’m tired. I did sign
up another kid today, a two year old girl. Lex will be
surrounded by girls :) She’s coming for a few hours next week,
then starting full-time in January. Should be fun!
Baking bonanza!
We had a bake-a-rific weekend! Saturday was our
annual cookie party. We had two other families join us to bake
lots and lots of cookies. My little house had 5 adults and 5
kids running around. We made gingerbread men (and women and
children) and the toddlers painted them (with some help from
the grown-ups). We made fudge and Rudolph cookies and
cranberry-white-chocolate-chip-oatmeal cookies and all sort of
yummy things :) Sadly Jim & Julie were unable to attend
this year, but with little Tinkerbell almost done baking,
everyone was pretty understanding.
Eve and I went to visit my friend Jen today to
make a gingerbread house! My first! She is a professional baker
and offered to teach me. So we had a fun, relaxed day of
baking, cutting, framing, and decorating with breaks here and
there for lunch and tending to little ones. It was cool. Lex
and Alan got a boys day together and both were duly impressed
when I brought home my creation. 
Sleeping baby
It’s day three of our at-home morning nap
attempts and he fell asleep!! Quietly, all by himself, and in
just 15 minutes! Yay! Very convenient too because I have A LOT
to do before our cookie party tomorrow. Now if Eve will also
fall asleep…
More than happy
Eve was more than happy tonight. She was
bouncing, laughing, clapping and just thrilled to be alive! It
was hysterical. She is also super mobile now, between rolling,
crawling a few feet at a time, and perfecting her GI Joe crawl.
I put a plate of pistachios on the floor last night (just
putting it down for a second) and she did a snazzy launch move
that landed her about 2ft from where she started… right on my
plate!! And she laughs and laughs. She can also get up on her
knees to reach things, so we regularly find her kneeling in
front of the hearth playing with the toys up there. I think she
had a growth spurt in the past few days, both in size and
development and skills. I had my first full day with my daycare
baby today and she’s TINY compared to Eve. I caught myself
almost putting Eve on the floor with Lex and telling them both
to follow me into the kitchen while I carried the baby. She’s
mobile, but not that mobile… yet! Actually, she could make it
into the kitchen pretty easily, I’m just not sure she’d stay
focused that long. Probably get sidetracked a few dozen times
along the way. She’s such a joy. Then, after being more than
happy for awhile tonight, we gave her the pacifier and put her
in bed and she went right to sleep. How did we get so lucky
with her?? :)