The Monkeys Make Monkey Bread

Chris is totally the funnest dad. Tonight after James went to bed, he organized a monkey bread making assembly line and he and the underpants brigade made two loaves of ooey gooey fabulous monkey bread.

This morning, an unprecedented event occurred. The kids let us sleep in until 10:30! Chris was late for work. James had woken up at his usual time of 5:45, but I snuggled him and fell asleep and then Laine must have come in and taken him away to play with their castle or something. This has never happened before! We usually don't set alarms because we've always been able to count on them to get us up at an unreasonable hour. It felt soooooo good to sleep in.

We spent the afternoon playing pretending game after pretending game. The games included "Toad Family, Toad Friends," "Dr. Laine Gets an Owie," and "The Royal Puppy Meets Princesses." They can be so silly. Oh, yesterday Laine was really fussy and was yelling for like 45 minutes. While I was trying to work with Laine, Eve went and got the phone and called Chris to gleefully tattle on Laine. This made Laine furious and she swiped the phone from Eve and called Chris back to tattle on Eve for being a tattle tale. Then Eve was in hysterics because she thought Chris would side with Laine and give her a spanking. Then everyone was having a fit except for James. We have our good days and bad days around here.

You're so vain, you probably think this sign is about you

So the other day, we went to check out some stuff at IKEA and came home with this chalkboard that you put on the wall where you can stash your mail and write reminders on the board and stuff. After the kids went to bed, we hung it up and Chris wrote a little note for me that said "I love you Beauty." The next morning, the girls woke up and crawled into bed with us and said, "Um, so we saw the sign that Dad wrote, but he accidentally forgot that he has three beauties not just one, plus he has a beautiful boy. But you don't have to worry because we fixed his sign."
As promised, when I went downstairs, the sign had been fixed with an additional "s" and some chalk scribbles. What a hoot. This weekend, we did some fun things. We went to Chris's company picnic and had some food and fun. Eve zonked out on the way there.

Here's James rocking out on the swing. He's my happy little love. He was the center of attention at the picnic. This boy can win over anybody's heart.

After the picnic, I took the girls on a little mommy daughter outing. We had some ice cream and then stopped at the carnival going on at the local high school.

The kids really liked going on the speedboat ride.

There's not a whole lot else to report. I can't remember if I mentioned earlier that Laine lost her other front bottom tooth, so now she has a gaping hole in her mouth and a slight lisp. She thinks it's great that she can drink through a straw with her teeth shut. Eve's reading away as always and Laine's actually been making more frequent attempts to read, which is great. James is a snuggly bundle of love who likes to give kisses.

James is Getting Smarter

For a while, we were worried that James would never talk or communicate in ways other than smiling and grunting. However, in the last month or so he's really made significant progress in his communication skills. We've just figured that boys are a bit slower than girls in this area, but we're thrilled that he's learning to talk and that he's such a cute wonderful, loving boy. Lately, when asked to identify his body parts, he's gotten his hair, head, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, fingers, belly button and toes correct about 80% of the time. More importantly, he is almost always able to correctly answer the important question I ask him in this video.Here's a picture of James getting mad at Laine for trying to take away his book. He's learning to fight back. Not sure if that's a good thing.

And here, our little boy enjoys a scalp massage from Eve. His listening comprehension skills have really gotten better. It's so cute, every time I say I'm going to take a shower, he grins, claps his hands, and runs to the bathtub and climbs in. When I say, "James, you need to take your clothes off first," he looks at me sort of curiously and then starts tugging at his clothes. Also, if you say "James, did you do a poo-poo?" He peers down the front of his pants, gives you a satisfied grin, and confirms, "Po popo po" while patting his little bum. How could you not love this little guy?

Laine's Poetry Corner

She's been reading some Shel Silverstein lately, she remembers most of the words to several of them.

I think the correct wording was "Where the heck's the toilet plunger gone?" but I like Laine's version better.

In other news, the girls have decided that Eve is the baby princess, Laine is the big sister princess, and James is the Royal Puppy. He does a pretty good job of saying "oof, oof" on command now, I just hope they don't start tossing him dog biscuits when he rolls over.

Cousins playing dress up

I just had to post this picture because it's so stinkin' cute and funny! Mel just sent it to me. She took it when we were up in Rochester with them for Thanksgiving last fall. The cousins decided to have a little dress up party. The lamb costume that Eve is in is THE famous lamb costume that Sam loves to pair with his frog rain boots.

Fireflies

Fireflies might be one of the most magical things in the world. I had never encountered them until this summer after we moved to Virginia. Tonight was the girls' first time seeing them. Our backyard woods were just lit up with the little sparkling bugs and we spent a good hour watching them in awe.

I think in this clip you can actually see some of them. They're sort of hard to capture on film. We feel so lucky to have a backyard forest full of frogs and fireflies and other ingredients to childhood magic.

Swing

So we put in a swing today. It's great. Laine is a swinging champ. Eve is a grump. Watch the videos, I think it's all in there.

Also, our woods are full of fireflies, which is at least 12 kinds of awesome.

It's Out

A couple of weeks back, Laine discovered to her delight that one of her teeth had turned wiggly on her. Pretty much every day since she's been asking if her tooth was ready to come out yet and regaling us with stories of how fun it will be to have her shiny new big-girl teeth. So on Monday we noticed it was just about ready to pop out, and I offered to give it a yank with a pair of pliers. Laine was sure that would hurt a lot, so she didn't go for it. Didn't go for Mom's offer to snag it with a loop of string either. Just as well, if she'd gone for it we wouldn't have been able to get any good pictures featuring the floppy front tooth.



Laine just loves the extreme close-ups.

So here's the little guy the next day, out all by itself with no help. I thought the tooth fairy should bring a quarter, Christine thought she should bring a billion dollars plus the contents of a toy store and the cosmetics counter at the the department store. We settled on a buck.

And here's our little buddy, a buck richer and a whole lot sillier looking.

The other kids are still cute too, we didn't forget them in all the toothy excitement.

James has magic powers to know when the camera is about to shoot, and cleverly turns his head almost every time. Here's one of the few where you can actually see part of his face.