We Have a Lot to Work On...

Caroline had a huge break through this week.  She has finally mastered the sippy cup with a stopper in it.  I actually thought she'd never master it and we'd just move onto regular cups with her.  She liked her baby sippy cups with the very soft mouthpieces (that had all been chewed through since they've gone through all the kids).  She didn't "get" the ones with the hard mouthpieces, until this week.  Then, the next day she figured out how to drink from straws as she successfully drank both her brothers' drinks (fortunately it was water).  She now insists on picking out which sippy cup from which she would like to drink each day.  Mostly it is a gender neutral ABC123 cup or an animals cup, but if she spies the Lightning McQueen cups in the back she'll ask for that one.

She has enjoyed doing the name puzzles and can actually get a few pieces in the "Josiah" puzzle.  Although she needs help with the "Henry" & "Caroline" puzzles.  She is also putting more words together.  This evening Josiah went to the restroom and Caroline followed after him saying, " 'Siah, Whereareyou?"  She is definitely saying, "Where are you?" but it comes out as one word, and yet it is still distinctly "where are you?"  I think she's heard enough games of hide-and-seek to pick up on this phrase.  We play a lot of hide and seek around here.  I thought it would help the boys learn to count better as I make them count to 20 each time.  Josiah has a strong dislike for the number 15 as well as all the 30s.  He goes from twenty-nine to twenty-ten (I correct him and say "thirty") to forty.  Sigh.  At least we are aware of what we need to work on here.

Josiah started the week with an experiment.  He wanted to freeze a bowl of Cheerios and milk and then observe it throughout the week.  So we did.  He took it out on Day 2 and observed it was frozen.  Day 3 it was frozen and Day 5 it was frozen.  Clearly he has a future in cryogenics.  That reminds me to take it out of the freezer now so that we can get our bowl back.

Josiah finally lost his front tooth.  I think Todd and I are happier that he lost it than he was.  We are thrilled to know that his fingers will no longer be in his mouth constantly wiggling the loose tooth.  We don't do the tooth fairy, but we do have an owl that has a note inside that says, "Whoooooo lost a tooth?  Here's a gift."  with a few coins inside.  He was quite worried that I wouldn't find it because it was still packed up.  Fortunately it was in a box that was from my early packing days which was labeled with a fair amount of detail.  (Towards the end of packing I would just write "garage" on most boxes and I told Todd when we got here that we really needed to open the "garage" boxes because they have a lot of random things in them.)

At CC this week the kids were allowed to dress up like Pilgrims or any historical figure.  Josiah, of course, wanted to participate.  Henry, not so much, despite Josiah's encouragement.  We spent the afternoon before figuring out what he could wear and we went from a Pilgrim to George Washington.  It's sort of the best we could do and he was happy.  Then he "wrote" a George Washington poem and rolled it up like a scroll and put it in his jacket.  He stood up like he was giving a presentation and "read" his poem to us.  After his presentation was over, Caroline got up, stood where he was standing, and proceeded to lift her shirt over her head and smack her belly.  She has become quite proficient at pulling her shirt over her head.  This only started to become a frequent thing with the introduction of long sleeved shirts.  I have no idea why.

This would be the dress rehearsal when he was still happy

Sweet baby Caroline...

Friday morning, Josiah wakes up and wants to dress up immediately.  At 8:30 we are getting ready to go and I notice Caroline had been very quiet all morning.  She is standing next to me in the bathroom as I brush my teeth and I hear a "splash" on the ground.  Up came her breakfast of avocado.  Still in the nice diced cubes.  So there went CC for the day.  Josiah was less than empathetic towards her, yelling at her for messing up his day as she is throwing up for the second and third time.  Again, at least we are aware of what we need to work on around here...  I have to say, I was sort of disappointed that we didn't go either because Josiah and I had practiced his presentation a lot this week.  He was bringing in a lego creation and we had gone through the five things he was going to say about it (without elaborating or going off on tangents).  He had it down.  I'm just hoping he wants to do the same presentation when we meet again.

She was sick all weekend - first it went out one end, then the other.  I fed her lots of rice, rice Chex, fake Cheerios, applesauce, and liquids today.  We're really hoping she didn't share it with the rest of us.

Henry has made a friend at CC.  We had a family join us around week 5 and they have 3 kids (5, 3, & 1 like us).  Their Liam is in the nursery with Henry and they seem to have hit it off.  Today Henry asked if we could call Liam because he wanted to talk to his friend.  He then rattled off his phone number which was about 22 digits long.  I'm glad he has a friend (and from what the nursery workers said, it seems mutual).

This evening Henry drew a picture of our family.  He included George Washington as well.  George has made quite a come back this week.

J, George, H, T, E, & C

Saturday, we went to a real Stride Rite store to finally purchase winter shoes (e.g. not sandals) for Josiah & Caroline.  I had real sticker shock as we always went to a Stride Rite Outlet store before.  The price of their shoes is outrageous!  But all the kids have wide feet so we can't just get any brand of shoes.  Even tiny Josiah, in "less than the 5% for everything" has wide feet.  He got shoes with laces so he can learn how to tie them.  Caroline hopped and ran all over the (very small) store with her new shoes on.  She loves them.  Josiah says he can run faster as well.

I tried to get a picture of J & C with their new shoes when some kid from Siberia snuck in.  Here's hoping Caroline doesn't get her fashion sense from her brothers (as much as she clearly admires them).  

Finally, it is the week before Thanksgiving and we took a walk in nice 80 degree weather today.  As much as we miss Virginia, I'll admit that was pretty nice.

We hope everyone has a nice Thanksgiving next week.