First Day of School

Yesterday was a huge day for Joe (and his mama!)  He had his first day of Pre-K!

There wasn an enthusiastic send-off from Daniel and Mikea.

 He needed a little assistance with his "pack-pack" loaded down with supplies.

Lucky for Joe, Daddy will be right there at school with him every day.  (This makes Mom VERY happy as well.)

 Getting ready to go inside.

The long walk down the hall.  He looks a little anxious here, but I can tell you that Joe was beyond excited all week in anticipation of going to school.

We had a community of "spies" checking on him throughout the day and from all accounts Joe seemed to have a great first day.  We are truly blessed to have an abundance of caring friends at school who I know will always be looking out for Joe.

When Joe got home he informed me that kids who go to school have to do homework.  He practiced writing his name one time, decided he was finished, and then explained that kids who go to school have to "check the computer" when they get home.  Oh, ok Joe.  Whatever you say!

He also declared that, "Chocolate milk is my favorite!"

You may be wondering why we changed our minds and decided to send Joe to school when our plan up until now had been to keep him home until he's old enough for Kindergarten next year.  That's an excellent question...and I think we have a pretty good answer.  But it'll have to wait for now!

500 Babies Go to the County Fair

It's fair time again! 

This year our experience at the fair was dominated by: 1. Fried Foods; 2. Roaming packs of 12-14 year olds; and 3. Humidity.  Ugh.

 But there were also plenty of cute little farm friends for us to enjoy.

 I just love those alpacas.  If I ever start an alpaca farm I'll call it "500 Alpacas".

The oldest and youngest of the 500 Babies zonked out on the ride home.

See you next year!

Baby Asian

Baby Asian is how Mikea's pronounces Baby A.'s first name.  So that's what we call him sometimes.  It's been a while since I've posted on the status of his adoption so here goes:  we're still waiting.  (Insert big sigh here.)

We're getting really close, but we still have a few hoops to jump through.  We're trying to not get frustrated by the delays, but lately we've been asked to re-submit certain documents that we've already turned in and I just don't get excited by doing the same things over and over when I already did them once.  But we'll get there soon enough.

Speaking of the little whippersnapper, he's officially progressed to the stage of  "I will climb anything and everything I can, open every drawer I see and remove all contents, and dash to the bathroom to play in the toilet everytime someone leaves the door open."  Considering the primary users of the bathroom are ages 2, 3, and 4, the bathroom door is open quite a bit.  The other day one of Mikea's Barbie dolls was going for a swim in the toilet, courtesy of Baby A.

Here are his favorite things to climb:

He's also made it onto the kitchen table a time or two or three or four or five or six.  And after days of climbing onto and under the chairs that block the stairs, this morning he finally figured out how to get past the chairs to climb up the steps.  I was wondering how I survived this stage with the "twins" and then I remembered:  our house was half the size of the one we're in now and there just weren't as many opportunities for them to get into trouble. 

So for now I'm just trying to channel A.'s energy towards other activities, like mopping.

                               

This definitely looks like a win-win to me!

Daniel is Three!

Yesterday Daniel completed his third revolution around the sun!  Not that we saw the sun, of course, since Tropical Storm Hermine decided to pay a visit, knock out our power for six hours, and dump so much rain on us that we are in the process of ripping up carpet and replacing part of the pad in our living room.  But despite all that, I know Daniel had a "cool awesome" day, as he likes to say.  I had already baked and decorated his requested robot cake before the electricity went out and the rain stopped in time for us to cook hamburgers on the grill since we had no power.

When Daniel opened one of his presents he said, "Look, a fat guy!"  Well of course it wasn't a fat guy, it was a "Robo-Sapien" which is apparently a robot that looks a little more human than robotic. What is it with kids and robots, anyway?  The most requested song in our house these days is "I've Got a Robot". If you need a catchy tune to hum all day (what's that called - an earwig?  earbug?) check it out.

Now for the next six weeks (until Mikea's birthday) our children are ages 1, 2, 3, and 4.  Imagine that!