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!

Put Your Swimsoups On!

Last Wednesday the 500 Babies drove out the to the hill country, donned their "swimsoups" (according to Mikea), and visited a splash park with their big cousins.  The conditions were perfect - the weather was hot but overcast and only a few other children were there because school's in session.  Plus, you get all the water fun you want without the worry and hassle of a swimming pool.

Baby A. kept toddling back and forth over to the water and got caught by surprise a time or two when water suddenly sprayed him.  It was great fun and we can wait to go back!

Random Rambling

That's probably the worst blog post title ever in the history of blogdom.  But it's the best I can do at present.  You see, I wish I would have listened to the voice of reason in my head last night that said not to drink that cup of coffee so late.  Because then I was up half the night.  And now I feel like half of my brain is missing.  And my body is begging for rest.  But there are children to feed, diapers to change, dishes to wash, and laundry to fold.  Ok, ok we all know the dishes and laundry will wait.  But I really feel badly that my kids are getting a mom who's only 50% with-it today, if that.

And I also feel badly at being so random, but there's simply no avoiding it now and I have to share this picture because it just makes me so, so very happy:

This was taken a couple of weeks ago when the kids turned in their summer reading logs at the library.  Each one got to pick out their very own book.  Afterwards we went to the dollar store and gave each one $1.00 to spend however they chose.  (This was intended to be another reward for the potty-training success when I was gone.)  Dan picked a ball, Joe chose a car, and Mikea selected a little tea set.  They loved it!  (Now we just hope they don't expect to buy something every time we go to the store!)

True Love

I was out of town for much of last week.  This meant that my dear husband was sole caretaker of the 500 Babies for 3 1/2 days.  I didn't care what happened to the house; all I asked was that he sweep the kitchen floor at least once a day. But when I returned, not only had he kept the house tidy, he also got caught up on the laundry.  I'm talking washing, drying, folding, AND putting it away.  He also managed to take all four kids to Home Depot by himself.  I can only imagine what that must have looked like! Oh, I almost forgot - there is one more thing Billy happened to do while I was away... 

HE POTTY-TRAINED THE WONDER TWINS!  Sorry for yelling.  But holy smokes, people - do you get this??  My husband single-handedly potty-trained two toddlers.  We've both made attempts to train them over the past several months, but this time he really got serious.  And it worked.

How'd he do it?  Well, I think the main thing is he gave Daniel and Mikea lots of praise when they had successes and stayed positive even when they had the inevitable accidents.  The first couple of days he gave them lots of water and made them go to the potty every 15 minutes.  Joe helped by being in charge of the timer and helping Daniel in the upstairs bathroom if Mikea was using the one downstairs.  We had been giving the kids candy sprinkles as rewards, but Billy nixed that and reverted back to sticker charts.  But the genious part, at least to me, is that he didn't bother using a chart with days of the week and boxes.  He just stuck paper on the wall and let the kids pick their own stickers - 1 sticker for wee-wee and 2 stickers for you-know-what.  When the charts were filled up they celebrated by going out for ice cream.  Yum!

He also played "The Potty Dance" for them over and over and over. Another gimmick Billy used was to hang up their underwear on the clipboards in the kids' bedrooms.  He did this during naptimes.  I think it was just another way to get them excited about wearing underwear.  Of course the underwear had to be clean and dry for to this happen.

Today, both Daniel and Mikea are initiating going to the bathroom on their own and most days are completely accident-free.  We're going to keep practicing and practicing and I'm thinking that very soon we will be ready to ditch the diapers for good! 

Another outcome of Billy's time alone with the kids was a better understanding of what I go through on a daily basis.  He's always been supportive and appreciative of me for staying home with them.  But now that he's experienced it first-hand he knows exactly what I mean when I say there are days when I want to just go into the laundry room and shut the door to get away from the madness.  But I also know that he bonded even more with the kids during my days away.  Billy told me his favorite moment was one evening when Joe walked over to him, plunked himself on the floor and said, "You're my best buddy, Daddy."  Amen, Joe!  He's my best buddy, too.

Beach Day in Pictures

Joe Turns Four!

Joe's been looking forward to today for several weeks!  I think this is the first year he really understood what birthdays are all about and we did our best to make the day special for him.  He picked out our dinner menu (pizza) and requested a train cake.  Specifically, he asked for a red train and clever me thought I could add red food coloring to pink strawberry frosting to make red.  But instead it made dark pink.  Duh.  When Joe saw the frosting he brought me a jar of red paint and said he wanted "this red".  I assured him I'd do my best and as you can see I used red candy to try to disguise the pink.  Special thanks again to the Baker's Cut-Up Cake Party Book (copyright 1973) for providing inspiration for the cake.  The majority of train cakes online required either outrageously expensive pans or were three-dimensional and would have taken a minimum of 5 hours to decorate.

As I was wrapping Joe's presents Billy said, "You know what would be fun?  You should hide the biggest present and make picture clues for him to find it."  My response, "What a great idea!  Why don't you get started on that?"  He did, it was a hit, and we plan on doing it again for all of the children.

So our oldest is now four.  We're asked a lot if we're sending him to preschool this year.  The shortest answer and explanation I can give is no, because even though he is four Joe has only been in our lives for 2 years and 9 months, and I'm not ready to send him out into the world just yet! 

500 Babies Visit Lake Erie

One of our last outings in Michigan was a drive over to Lake Erie.  It's where I got some of my favorite photos of the trip:

Grandpa and a few of his grandchildren.

Me and my Daniel.

Kiki and Grandpa enjoying a stroll down the pier.

Joe enjoying the swings.

 Joe being comforted by his father after I pushed him too hard on the swing, causing him to catapault out and land face-first on the ground.  (I panicked when it happened because only minutes before, a young man horsing around on the pier had fallen and knocked his teeth out!)

Serious Mikea.

Winsome Dan.

Pensive Dan.

Now see if you can identify the common denominator in the following pictures:

                         

                         

                         

                         

                         

If you noticed that in every one Daniel is catching a free ride while Joe and Mikea do all the work pushing, you are correct.  I call it "Free-loading Dan".