Kai Now Waves Good-Bye

That's it. No pictures or other detail. Just proud of our handsome little man. =)

Life

So life is good, as usual. My mom was here last week and it's always such a treat to have her here because the kids adore her and because I get time to rest (and because I love her)! =) Audrey is becoming quite the little chatterbox. Today, the girls and I had a picnic lunch on our front steps while Kai was sleeping. We let Rica come out with us and after a few minutes, she wandered to the neighbor's yard (though you should understand that that is only about 20 feet away from us). We went after her which led to a crazy 7 or 8 minutes of chasing her back and forth between the yards, under the decks, over fences, through gates and back again. Tonight at dinner, Audrey gave Iain a play-by-play account of the entire thing. When Avery tried to add some detail, Audrey put her hand up and said, "Avery, I'm still speaking." Two nights ago, Audrey, unforced, came down the stairs and asked, "Do you know my memory verse? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Psalm 121:2." Beautiful. Last week, her swim teacher told me that Audrey is so advanced for her class and she's trying her best to challenge her. This is the same girl, who 9 months ago, would not put her face under the water at swim class. Now her favorite thing to do is sit on the bottom of the pool while she waits for her class to finish whatever they're working on. Amazing. Avery is so sweet and funny. She routinely says please and thank you and cheers for Audrey when her sister has done something really well. Today, I called her to look out the front door at the hail that was coming down (it was an insane amount of hail ... both our front and back porches were completely covered in ice balls). As we were standing there, a huge lightning bolt hit in front of us and I said, "whoa, we should close the door." She asked why and I was about to tell her that I didn't want to be too close to the lightning, but I only got out, "well, I don't want to ...", and she jumped right in and said "DIE?". Um, yes, exactly. I don't want to die. =) Her favorite thing these days is tape. She tapes everything. I mean everything. Have a toy? She'll wrap it and tape it. Shoelaces come untied? She'll tape them together. Cut her own hair off? Tape it back on. Kai is a smiling machine. Last week, he had a double-ear infection and an eye infection. Yet he still managed to smile about 23 hours of the day. He is starting to cruise around the furniture and two weeks ago, Audrey alerted me to the fact that Kai was on about the 5th stair up from the basement. He loves to play the piano and if you sing "If you're happy & you know it" he will alternate between waving his arms around and clapping his hands. He hates taking medicine, but the way he starts sputtering his mouth like a volcano before the syringe gets close to his mouth (see eye & ear infection, above) makes even this challenge adorable! Since today he went to the dr and has another week's worth of medicine, I'm going to try to get this on video..

A few more pix

Somehow these didn't make it into the last post. In a couple, you can see Audrey taking Rica for a walk. Yes, our cat likes to take walks. Audrey thinks this is exceptionally awesome!

April and May

Here are a few pix from the last couple of weeks. The highschool that is one block from our house did "Beauty and the Beast" for their spring play and before the Saturday matinee, they had a tea party. A couple pix are of the girls with their prince. =)

Scissors / Boys & Girls / New Additions

Yesterday, I was cleaning up the sunroom and found some long strips of very blonde hair. Avery-colored hair. "Avery, did you cut your hair?" Unflinching from the other room, "yes." "Avery can you come here please?" She came immediately. "Why did you cut your hair." "I just wanted to." Well, I guess if you ask the question, you get the answer. Ok, so now everyone is aware that we don't use scissors on our own hair or the hair of others with an adult's permission and supervision. Over the past several months, many people have asked me whether there is a big difference in raising boys and girls. I've always said that, at least so far, no. One morning this week, Iain had already left for work, the girls were still sleeping, I was in the shower, and Kai was crawling around the bathroom waiting for me to get out. After a couple of minutes, I peeked out at him to make sure he was okay. Um, yeah. He was okay. If you call swirling the toilet water with your hand okay. Well, not actually swirling it, just dipping his hand in and out. I said, "Kai, NO." He took his hand out. Looked back at me, put his hand back in. "Kai, NO!". He took his hand out, looked at me, put his hand back in. Can you see a pattern here? A few more iterations of this and then he moved on. But let me just confirm that I never had to ask the girls to get their hands out of the toilet. I think we might have a boy on our hands .... Today, we adopted a 4-year old calico cat named Rica (REE-ka). She is sweet and declawed and lets the girls carry her around everywhere (there were 2 minor biting incidents, one in the car and one on the way home, but we are chalking those up to stress and will give her a 24-hour settling period. Hopefully she gets her act together!