Proud Moments of Parenthod

Dallas has a great history of performing with the other 3 year olds in his class at preschool.

He had his first appearance in the Fall program they put on back in October. Dave was out of town for interviews at the time but I managed to meet my dad there a little late as Lexi was just 3 days old. It was well worth the effort it took getting my postpartum body and baby out of the house. The kid is just plain loud and top that off with the fact that he struggles with pronouncing certain sounds and it ends up being downright hilarious to listen to him.

Dave made it to the Christmas program in December, but all he got to witness there was

1. Dallas acting like a clown by turning his little sheep hat backwards so it covered his face

2. Dallas and the kid next to him fighting until they actually started hitting each other. The kid next to Dallas eventually being removed from the stage by the teachers as they were being that disruptive to the performance.

3. Dallas literally rolling around on the floor of the stage unable to control his apparent ADHD until he finally got off the stage all by himself .

Well, Dave finally got a taste of how entertaining it can be as Dallas had his final performance last week, My mom, Dave, and I were just cracking up the entire time and you'll see why as you watch their final song being peformed: The video quality is poor, but you should have no problem hearing Dallas, slighty out of tune, off on his timing and super loud . .good thing his teacher encouraged them to sing louder for the second round!

Mom Quiz

I had to do it too Jillian . One of those quizes where you ask the kids questions and record their responses. I asked Dallas all the questions and then asked Trenton the same ones once he got home from school and their answers are:

1. What is something mom always says to you?
D: Go to time out
T: Stop doing that
(Don't I feel like a good mom)

2. What makes mom happy?
D: Do good stuff
T: Being nice
(Okay, so do it already!)

3. What makes mom sad?
D: Do bad stuff
T: Not being very good
(No wonder I'm so sad all the time . . okay just sometimes)

4. How does your mom make you laugh?
D: Do funny fings
T: By saying silly things

5. What was your mom like as a child?
D: You were a child of God
T: little
(I like to think I still am a Child of God . .but maybe he's onto something here)

6. How old is your mom?
D: that a hard one . . .20
T: Ummm . . . . . . .26
(That a boy Trenton!)

7. How tall is your mom?
D: 13
T: 25
(No suprise here as they think they get on the scale to see how old they are)

8. What is her favorite thing to do?
D: Cook
T: feed Lexi

9. What does your mom do when you're not around?
D: Do other stuff, cook, and watch grown up movies
T: Wash the dishes
(What an exciting life I have . . .grown up movies huh?)

10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for?
D: Umm . . . .cooking
T: Food

11. What is your mom really good at?
D: Ummm . . .cooking
T:Running
(sure, they go hand in hand right . .eat food and then run it off?)

12. What is your mom not very good at?
D: Monsters
T: Climbing

13. What does your mom do for a job?
D: Cook and make sure the babies don't get hurt
T: Go to the gym

14. What is your mom's favorite food?
D: Peas, I mean carrots
T: Ice cream

15. What makes you proud of your mom?
D: Do nice stuff
T: Playing with me

16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be?
D: Mommy
T: Bakugan

17. What do you and your mom do together?
D: cook, play monsters
T: Play uno

18. How are you and your mom the same?
D: WE do the samey stuff and we bof have 2 eyes
T: Umm. . .we both have hair

19. How are you and your mom different?
D: We not wearing the same shirt
T: We don't have boobs
(Someone's growing up . . .I had to work so hard not to bust up when he said this and now I'll have to work even harder to be a little more discreet when nursing in his presence)

20. How do you know your mom loves you?
D: I do Yoga with her
T: Because she likes me

21. What does your mom like most about your dad?
D: He hugs her
T: That's a hard one . . . .ummm to kiss him
(and here I thought we weren't all that affectionate anymore, at least enough that the kids pick up on it I guess)

22. Where is your mom's favorite place to go?
D: To the store
T:gym
(I'd enjoy going to the store a whole lot more if it weren't with 1, 2, 3 or 4 kids!)

All in all, it's amazing how perceptive they are. . .hopefully they'll enjoy reading this someday.

Happy Valentine's Day

Now Trenton makes me laugh too

Trenton didn't have school today. I'm explaining to him that I'm going to let them watch a movie from the library that is more for little kids like Dallas and Brooklyn and that he probably already knows everything it's about.

Me: "It's about the five senses, you know what those are right?"
Trenton: "Yah, like 5 centses makes a dollar."
Me: giggle giggle
Trenton: "Wait I forgot."

And he's supposed to be our smart kid. Love it!

Winter Catch Up

We celebrated Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday by making a really ugly diversity cake . . .

Dave got creative and entertained the kids with a piece of cardboard that came inside the Xbox packaging he got from his parents: Meet Daddy Robot. He also combined internet surfing with finding a new way to put Lexi to sleep.

It looks like Brooklyn has makeup on in this first shot but neither Dave nor I have any recollection of even taking this picture. Auntie?? Grandma? Someone want to fess up to starting our little girl way too young on makeup? After all Margaret, you did shave my legs for me when I was in third grade . .I think I still have the scars to prove it. The second picture: unlike Dallas, Brooklyn actually shows some sort of remorse when making an unecessary mess and being told that it's not okay to do so.

Given our kids track record we're going old school and using more VHS movies as they don't scratch nearly as easily as DVDs. They also make really cool train tracks and bases for building towers out of dice.

Our visit to the Festival of the Nativities. Notice how Dallas is about to drop Baby Jesus on his head. No, we do not let him hold Lexi.

Lastly, why we love Lexi. I finally get around to picking her up off our bed as she's been sort of whining for a few minutes lying face down. I turn her over to find that she is just rolling around in her own spit up but still smiling. How nasty? How sweet? You decide.

Snowed In

An earlier blog stated the beginning of our adventures with snow back before Christmas and now I'd like to wrap the story up. The snow was fun for the first few days, but when it kept coming and then staying it led to some mad cabin fever for the kids and me. The kids ended up not having school for the entire week before their scheduled Christmas break . .unfortunately Dave still did-so the kids and I went crazy all couped up with no place to go. Documented by picture it went something like this .All of the beautiful snow outside of our home . . . . .
Self portraits of the progression of my feelings day by day: No picture of the first day as we actually just played in the snow as seen in a previous post.

Day 2. Okay -----------Day 3. Sad ----------Day 4.Disgusted

Dave: Shocked after spending a few very long days indoors with the kids

We did end up putting chains on the car and once Dave was on his break from school we made it out to Burger King so the kids could have a little more space to play. The boys also enjoyed our neighbors igloo and snow cave.

Prettige Kerstdaggen

We had to visit Sinter Klaas at the Dutch Store while we were here for our last Christmas in Portland. We got all 4 kids there and Brooklyn had the classic screaming photo followed by all smiles in the car once she had her bag of goodies and wasn't sitting on some strange man's lap

Neglect of the Fourth Child

Lexi is now 3 months old and we've only posted a few pictures of her on here -hence the title of this post. She has outgrown her acne and thanks to the day I went razor happy is still almost completely bald. She weighed 12 lbs and ? oz .(neglect again I know as I can't remember her exact weight) from her 2 month check up. Here is the gist from her visit to the doctor earlier this month:

Length- shorter than average

Weight- about the 75th percentile- remaining the smallest of our babies

Head- still larger than average (85th percentile or so)

She takes a pacifier better than any of our other kids, usually sleeps for at least a 7 hour stretch at night, will coo and smile for us, has gorgeous eyelashes and we all love her. The scrath between her eyes is compliments of Brooklyn, although Brooklyn is usually pretty good with her-grabbing burp rags when she spits up, shoving any binki she finds into her mouth
(even if she is asleep), making sure she always has her blanky, etc. The boys are still begging me to let her sleep in their room and I'm still not letting her as I don't trust them.