Merry Christmas!

So for those of you who didn't know (which is probably pretty much everyone!), we drove down to Utah on Saturday for the holidays. The girls did great on the drive, and we actually only had the DVD player on for about 2 hours.

We had a fantastic Christmas! I forgot to pack the cable to hook the camera up to the computer, so I'll have to post pictures (and there are a lot of them!) once we get home, but Santa was definitely good to the girls this year. The highlight of the day for Vicki and Lexi was the American Girl dolls that they've been dreaming of for almost a year now, and Ellie was thrilled with her Dora the Explorer backpack and her Little People airplane, but most of all the candy in her stocking. The best part, by far, is being able to spend so much time with people we love. We're so blessed to have such wonderful family, and the girls are being spoiled rotten by all the attention! I'm so grateful that we were able to come down here to share this time with them.

I hope everyone else had a great Christmas, too!

Santa!!!

I took the girls to see Santa and got this incredibly overpriced picture. They just look so darn cute in their Christmas dresses, and I'll never, EVER, get a decent shot of all three of them if I just try to pose them by the tree, not even if I offer all the chocolate in the world, so to me it was worth it!

Obsessed? No....

Seems we're on a Harry Potter kick around here these days. Here's another Harry Potter-related quiz I took, thanks again to Carrie (where do you find these things, anyway?)

The sorting hat says that I belong in Hufflepuff!

Said Hufflepuff, "I'll teach the lot, and treat them just the same."

Hufflepuff students are friendly, fair-minded, modest, and hard-working. A well-known member was Cedric Diggory, who represented Hogwarts in the most recent Triwizard Tournament.

Take the most scientific Harry Potter
Quiz ever created.

Get Sorted Now!

Apparently I really do belong in Hufflepuff: the results were 93% Hufflepuff, 72% Ravenclaw, 66% Gryffindor, and 40% Slytherin. While I will admit to being slightly disappointed that I'm not in Gryffindor (after all, isn't Lupin a Griffindor?), Hufflepuff's not that bad. At least it's not Slytherin. And Carrie's here to keep me company!

Can you tell Chris is out of town again? :)

Purple?

Chris on the phone from California, talking to Ellie:

C: Ellie, where's Daddy?
E: At the airport.
C: No, Daddy's in California.
E: Oh. That's pretty! And purple.

Quarantine update

It seems like everyone's better now. I hope I'm not jinxing things by announcing that on the internet. Everyone was back at school today, and I got loads done around the house to make up for Monday, when I didn't do anything.

The downside to this is that we apparently didn't quarantine ourselves soon enough. I started a new babysitting job last week, watching the baby of Vicki's K/1st grade teacher. I had her here all day Thursday, when Ellie first came down with the fever. Now baby Violet has a fever. I feel terrible, even though I know it's not really our fault. Whatever the girls had, I'm sure they picked up at school, and since Violet's mom teaches at the same school, she may have gotten it from her and not from us, but still...

On the upside, though, that meant no extra kids today and only one extra kid tomorrow, so I can finish my Christmas shopping and maybe even get some things wrapped and under the tree!

We're in quarantine (or possibly should be)

Yesterday all three girls had fevers. This is something entirely new - they've never all been sick at once. Lately it's just been one at a time with a few days in between, or maybe two at once, but all three? We're in uncharted territory here. So no one went to school today. We're hanging out and watching movies all day long. Actually, everyone seems fine today, which is okay with me, but I'm just waiting for the grumpies to set in, as they inevitably will. Wish me luck.

As long as they get it all over with before Christmas I'm happy. Last year everyone was throwing up at Christmas, so anything's better than that!

Harry Potter quiz part 2

Vicki may quite possibly be the biggest Harry Potter fan on the planet. Or if not that, at least the biggest 7-year-old Harry Potter fan. So when she saw my results, she of course wanted to know who she was. I let her take the quiz, even though I explained to her that it's really not geared towards accuracy for kids. I was expecting some weird, crazy results that wouldn't fit her personality at all. Who did she end up as?


Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.

Perfect.

Chris took it, too, and he's Albus Dumbledore. Dumbledore and Lupin. I guess it's no surprise that we work so well together. Not like Voldy and Molly Weasley...hee hee :)

I've never been comfortable with full moons

Harry Potter Personality Quiz by Pirate Monkeys Inc.

I'm okay with this. It fits, I think. And we can't all be You Know Who.

Tagged...

Okay, so I’ve been tagged by two different people and haven’t responded to either of them yet. Danielle, your tag was too open-ended (list 5 things about myself? With no helping questions? I can’t think like that!), so I’m just responding to Carrie’s. At least there’s a little direction to this one!

What was I doing 10 years ago?
Hmmm…I have 3 kids…I can’t think back that far! Okay, 10 years ago I had graduated from Ricks and was spending the year living with my parents and working at Rite Aid. Ah, Rite Aid. At Christmastime. I think that was the year the registers all quit working. On Christmas Eve. In Park City, the craziest, busiest winter resort town in Utah. We had to ring EVERYTHING up by hand. Fun times.

What was I doing 5 years ago?
Working as a recess teacher (a term I prefer to “duty”) at Challenger School. And living in what we fondly refer to as “the 70’s apartment”. You know, the one with the brown and orange linoleum, brown shag carpet, and harvest gold appliances.

What was I doing 1 year ago?
The same thing I’m doing today, apparently: enjoying the beautiful Oregon winter weather (and if you’ve ever been to Oregon in the winter, you’ll catch the sarcasm there). Keeping busy with a 1st grader, a preschooler, and a 1-year-old. Probably just starting my Christmas shopping.

What was I doing yesterday?
Hanging out on Webkinz.com with Vicki. It’s where her pet Chihuahua Rosey lives, and she was showing me around. And baking cookies. And reading stories. It was a good day.

5 snacks I enjoy
Anything chocolate, cookies, cheese, fruit, more chocolate

5 things I would do if I had a million dollars
Sign my kids up for all the sports/dance/gymnastics/preschool/piano lessons that we can’t afford to sign them up for right now, buy a piano (which would be useful when we sign the kids up for piano lessons, buy a bigger car, build the cabin that Chris designed, and buy you a green dress, but not a real green dress…that’s cruel. Oh, yeah, and save save save!

5 places I would run away to
England, the rest of Europe, the Carribean (‘cause I’ve never been there but would love to), Utah (not exactly exciting, but that’s where family is), and…I can’t think of a 5th place.

5 T.V. shows I like
House. So You Think You Can Dance (NOT Dancing With the Stars). Ummm…I don’t really watch T.V.

5 things I hate doing
Laundry. Looking at my kids’ closet. Laundry. Mopping. Laundry.

5 biggest joys of the moment
Vicki, Lexi, Ellie, Chris, imagining the girls’ faces Christmas morning

And now I tag…Danielle and Nicola…and anyone else who’s reading this and has a blog and hasn’t already been tagged with this one or tagged me with it. Ha!

IKEA, YouKEA, we all KEA for IKEA!

The first sign that you've been spending too much time in a particular store is when your 2-year-old can recognize the store from any angle.

IKEA opened up here this summer and we've become junkies. We love it. It's cheap, the stuff looks good, and it's reasonable well-made and long lasting. So I've been there several times, and since the easiest time to shop is when the older two are in school, Ellie gets to go with me. Somehow she thinks that when I'm saying IKEA, what I mean is MyKEA. So we drove by this morning, on the complete opposite side of the store from where you enter the parking lot, on our way to drop Chris off at the airport and she yelled, "Look Mommy, there's your KEA!"

Getting in the Christmas spirit

We've carried on a tradition from Chris's family that each person gets a new ornament every year. When Vicki was three we were so poor that we couldn't afford to buy new ornaments (at least not the ones I thought were cute), so we made our own snowflakes out of popsicle sticks, white paint, and glitter. The next year we made snowmen out of pompoms and pipe cleaners. And so began a new tradition...now I have to come up with a cute and creative homemade ornament for us each year. This year we bought wooden shapes at the craft store and let everyone paint their own. It was a lot of fun, and luckily our table cleans up easily.

Vicki worked very painstakingly at her angel, trying to get it just right:

Lexi's snowman started out yellow and went through several color transformations:

Ellie just loved to glop on as much paint as she possibly could, and kept saying, "I'm painting! Look Daddy! Me! Painting!"

Note the very femenine lips:

Lexi's turned out pretty psychedelic:
For all the layers of paint she put on it, I'm impressed that Ellie's bear turned out anything but brown:

Aaaaaand...the 2007 Ebert family Christmas ornaments:

Now all we need is the tree!

Thanksgiving fun!

We had our very first Thanksgiving with just our little family this year. The first year we were in Oregon we got together with a bunch of people from the ward, and last year all the Eberts came up and we spent Thanksgiving in a condo in Newport. This year no one came to visit (sniff) and we didn't know of anyone at church that needed someone to spend Thanksgiving with, so we decided to just make the most of it and go all out, even though it was just the five of us. We got out our wedding china, that we've only used once before, 7 1/2 years ago, and cooked all the necessary yummies. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, Great Grandma E.'s yams & apples, green bean casserole (which Vicki made all by herself), and rolls. Oh, and of course pumpkin pie. We still have sooooo much food leftover it's not even funny, but we had a great meal. Then we went bowling. It was a riot. The girls had a blast, and we didn't dent any holes in the bowling alley floor, although not for lack of trying.

Vicki tried really hard to bowl like you're supposed to, but the ball was still heavy and she's not that coordinated.

Lexi went for the granny bowl approach but just sort of flung the ball (you can see in the picture that it's actually in the air).

Ellie would push the ball down with the help of one of us, and then she'd lay on the floor waiting for the ball to make its slow way down the lane.

After bowling we rented Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, which Chris and I hadn't seen in ages, and the girls absolutely loved it! Even Ellie keeps asking if we can watch "shrunk kids" again. We had a great holiday and we hope everyone else's was great too!

All by my se-e-elf...don't wanna be all by myself anymore...

Chris went to Disneyland yesterday. Okay, so not actually Disneyland, but right across the street. He's doing Construction Administration on a project called Walnut Village, which is located pretty much in Disneyland's backyard. He goes down there overnight every other week. I had all these grand plans for my night alone. We always have a girls' movie night when Dad's gone - movies that Dad is happy to miss. So I was going to start the movie early, get the kids in bed as soon as it was over (I was optimistically shooting for 7pm here, but would've been happy with 7:30 or honestly even 8:00), clean up the kitchen, and then fold some laundry while I watched The Office. Then I was going to curl up with a bowl of ice cream and hot fudge sauce, watch whatever else was on TV or else just read a book without any interruptions, and then go to bed early myself.

I got half of all of those things done.

Except the movie. We did make it right to the end credits of Charlotte's Web before Ellie threw up spectacularly all over our new living room floor. How do single parents do it? You need one person to hold the sick child and keep them from contaminating the rest of the house and household and another person to clean it all up. There was just me, and Vicki and Lexi huddling in the farthest corner the could possibly get to, in record time, I might add. They helpfully told me, "Ellie has some in her hair!" and "I think it's in your shoe, Mom" as Ellie, confused about what on earth had just happened to her, tried to climb into my lap, stinky jammies and all. I stripped her and hauled her up to the bathtub, where she gleefully played for half an hour while I mopped up the floor and covered the house with a fine mist of Lysol. Then I had to rinse her off, drain the tub (you know why), fill it back up, and wash her. Throughout all this she was playing and singing - "Charlotte's Pig, la la, Charlotte's Pig" - and showed no signs whatsoever that she had just tossed her cookies. And meanwhile I had to convince Lexi and Vicki that yes, they really did need to go to bed, and no, I couldn't tuck them in or get their flouride pills or get them drinks of water, or, for that matter, touch them, really. I miss my other half.

Thankfully, the upside to this is that Ellie is totally fine today. She never threw up again, although she did wake up twice in the night to go potty. But it was a quarter to nine before I got her washed, dried off, and in bed, and then we had to make one more potty run (of course). So I watched half of The Office while I folded one load of laundry. Then I did the bare minimum in the kitchen and took a shower because I just felt contagious. I didn't get to bed until almost 11:00 and I didn't get my ice cream. I don't know how single parents do it. I do not ever want to find out. I have incredible respect for anyone raising children alone and remaining sane (at least as sane as I am, which isn't necessarily saying much, but still...) And I don't want Chris here just so I have someone else to clean up vomit. I missed having someone to hug me and tell me that it's going to be okay, and even if I end up being up all night long cleaning, bathing, and calming a sick child, the sun will come out tomorrow. I can tell myself that, but he does it so much better. It's the moral support, the companionship, and someone to laugh with about the older girls' reaction to Ellie's explosion.

I'm glad he's coming home tonight. :)

Happy Birthday Vicki!!!

Vicki turned 7 yesterday! She had a fantastic day. She is always so cheerful and enthusiastic about everything, and she was practically bouncing off the walls with excitement for her birthday. It so happened that we had a Brownie meeting yesterday after school, so she got to celebrate with her class, with the Brownies, and then again with our family after dinner. Not bad... :) And as if it couldn't get any better, we took the Brownies on a field trip to the roller skating rink, so she got to have a skating party AND she gets to have a party at home with her friends in a couple of weeks!

She loves projects and putting things together, so we got her a sew your own doll kit and a set of "Knifty Knitter" (cheesy name, I know) looms so she can create to her heart's content.












By the way, Carrie, if having a 2-year-old makes me old, what does it make me when my oldest child is 7?

Halloween

Yes, I know it's three days late, but here's a picture of the cuties in their costumes. Vicki was a fairy, Lexi was a "1950's girl" (what do you call someone in a poodle skirt, anyway?), and Ellie was a kitty. We had fun trick-or-treating our little neighborhood and, because there's not a lot of kids, the girls got tons of candy. Full-size candy bars at more than one house, and our next-door neighbors make up little bags with five or six of the small candy bars inside. The dentist will love us for sure!

Pumpkins!

Last night was the annual Family Home Evening pumpkin carving marathon at our house. This year we had 4 jack-o-lantern wannabes, so it was kind of a late night, but we had fun! Vicki and Lexi each designed the faces for their pumpkins, which they had lovingly selected at the pumpin patch. Chris designed the faces for the other two. He's our master carver, and it's my job to scoop out the guts. This year Vicki wanted to help me, with amusing results. Lexi gave Chris the inspiration for the face on the big one ("Make it angry like this, Daddy. Grrrrrr..."). Ellie just ate the guts.

Home Improvement

Last January we came back from a trip to Utah to discover that a pipe in our master bathroom had leaked. Not just a little leak, either. Our bathroom cabinets and floor were ruined, the carpet in the bedroom and out into the hall was soaked, and it had leaked through the floor into the living room ceiling and had ruined the carpet down there, too, plus part of the wall and the closet door. Fun times. We decided to look at it as a blessing in disguise and consider it a chance to increase the value of our house. And we decided to do the work ourselves and save some money, giving us a chance to upgrade rather than replace. So now we have tile in the downstairs and master bathrooms, happy pale yellow walls instead of dreary gray ones, and, most exciting, wood floors downstairs! Being married to a guy who works in design and has construction in his blood definitely has its benefits! We got our new bathroom cabinets yesterday, so all we have left now is restretching the upstairs carpet, putting in the baseboards, and painting up the stairs and down the hall. Here’s some pics of our progress:

The hole in the ceiling:

Old, ugly paint (gray) vs. new, pretty paint (yellow):

Old kitchen and living room floors:

New floors:

My favorite picture from this whole process:

That "magical" age

A couple of nights ago Ellie woke up at 3am and for some reason didn’t fall back asleep until nearly 5:00. This hasn’t happened in a long time. She needed to go potty, but then she was wide awake and not all that interested in being left a) in her crib and b) alone. I, on the other hand, really wanted to go back to bed. I took her potty, got her a drink of water, gave her kisses, took her potty again, said prayers, petted her kitty, covered her again, got her more water, took her potty again…you get the idea. Between all of this, during those times when I thought she had gone back to sleep and I was, thanks so much, too awake to sleep, I got to thinking about all those times when the girls were babies and I was just waiting (and sometimes praying) for that magical age, whatever it might be, when they would just sleep through the night…play by themselves…walk…express themselves in a way other than crying…stop dropping food on the floor (still waiting on that one…).

I think it’s like this for most mothers, but the more I thought about it the worse I felt that I spent so much of their baby time not really enjoying the moment because I was so looking forward to the next moment. This isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy them as babies, because I did, but at the same time I couldn’t wait for those magical moments when life would suddenly get so much better. It makes me sad that I spent so long waiting for “everything to be better” when it was already so good.

So the conclusion I came to, around 4:30 in the morning when Ellie put her arms around me and said, "I yuv you, Mommy," is that there’s no such thing as the magical age when everything becomes better. Because they’re all magical.

Happy Birthday Ellie!!!

Ellie turned 2 on Saturday. She's definitely ready to get older. For weeks, whenever anyone asked her how old she was, she'd answer "Five!" But I think she's finally okay with two. We celebrated with caramel apple cake (which was supposed to have pretty swirls of caramel on the top and a big green 2, but due to an unfortunate incident with a pastry tube and really hot caramel sacue was instead covered with a large caramel blob which we then tried to make pretty by swirling the green through it. But Ellie's 2 and doesn't care what her cake looked like, so it's all good) and cookies and cream ice cream. As soon as we lit the candles she clapped her hands and said, "Now everyone will sing Happy Birthday to ME!" She even blew out the candles all on her own.


It was a great day and she had a blast. I just can't believe my baby is two years old!

The Mom Song

My friend Donna emailed me a link to The Mom Song on YouTube. And the best part is, you don't even have to be a mom to appreciate it! Anyone who's ever had a mom knows exactly what this woman is talking about!

Look at me! I'm a Domestic Hero!

Several years ago, when Chris's grandparents moved out of their house and into an assisted living center, a lot of their stuff was up for grabs. We got our kitchen table that way. We also got these awesome placemats that we've put to good use over the years:




But they're definitely from another generation and they're starting to fall apart. Those big white patches on the left side? Apparently paisley is the first thing to go. So Chris, ever overconfident in my sewing capabilities, said, "Why don't you make some new ones?" So in March I went to the fabric store, bought a bunch of red fabric, and then left it alone for a while. In April I cut it all out. In May I sewed the tops together. Then I left it all alone until last week when I couldn't take the not-so-subtle hints anymore (Vicki: "These placemats are starting to fall apart." Chris: "I know. Wouldn't it be nice if we had some new ones?") I finished them yesterday and I'm so proud of myself! I did it with no pattern, nothing to go by except the old ones, and I think I did a pretty dang good job! (Of course, I'm only posting a picture of the last one I sewed, when I finally figured out what I was doing!)

Mac-a-what?

I made macaroni and cheese for lunch today for Ellie and her friend. They were very excited about it and were jumping up and down and running circles shouting, "Macaroni and cheese!" Except that they're both 2 (or almost!) and can't really say "macaroni and cheese" all that well. Here are some of my favorite attempts:

-macamoni cheese
-maraconi cheese
-macacheese
-cheese cheese macamoni
-mocanooni cheese

and my personal favorite...

-mony-mony cheese

I don't do floors...

Yesterday I did something I don't do nearly as often as I should. I mopped the kitchen floor. I do a lot of spot-mopping with damp paper towels, but I don't actually get out the bucket and pine-sol and mop the floor that often. So I was feeling really good about my nice clean kitchen floor, and then the girls came home from school. Within the space of two hours, here's what happened to my spotless floor: wood chips and dirt were dumped out of tennis shoes all over it, a large bag of squishy grapes was spilled on it, four Otter Pops in various colors were carefully dripped all over it, and it was peed on. And yet Chris wonders why I don't mop the floor more often.

Primary Program

Sunday was the annual Primary Program at church (for those of you who have no clue what I'm talking about, Primary is sort of the children's Sunday school). These are always my favorite Sundays because I love the spirit that these kids bring to the meeting. This year, apart from the usual singing, they asked one child from each class to give a talk based on a part of the theme for this year, Faith in Jesus Christ. Lexi was asked to give the talk for her class. Her topic was: My Faith in Jesus Christ Brings Me Blessings. She was really excited to write the talk herself, with just a little guidance from Mom (since her #1 "blessing", in her opinion, is her favorite doll, Molly, and she wanted to go on at length about just how great a blessing that is). Here's her talk as she gave it:

"Heavenly Father has given me many blessings. I have a Mom and Dad who love me. I love my sisters, too. I have a home to live in and many food to eat. I have a doll. Heavenly Father blessed me with courage so I’m not afraid to try new things, like going to school. I’m thankful to Heavenly Father for my blessings. They make me happy. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

Vicki gave a talk last year, so this year she just got to relax and sing the songs, which she did with the greatest enthusiasm, even doing all the signs she could remember for "Love One Another". She sings her way through life, so in no way did she think she got the short end of the deal. It was a great program and I can't wait until next year's!

Back-to-School Night

Last night was back-to-school night, a well-organized but still crazy event at our school. We got to see the girls’ classrooms, talk with the teachers – Chris got to meet them for the first time – and see some of the girls’ work so far.

Lexi’s teacher had them illustrate their hopes for kindergarten. Lexi hopes to learn how to read. She also had them draw a family portrait. Most kids drew their moms and dads and siblings. Lexi drew herself, Grandma, and a kitty. Neither we nor Grandma (either one) has a kitty. In Lexi’s class they use sign language rather than their voices to ask for a drink of water or to go to the bathroom. Lexi thinks this is the greatest thing in the world, and she’s so proud that, thanks to our Signing Time videos, she already knew all the signs, and she even knew one her teacher didn’t: “cookie”!

All the kids in Vicki’s class made a Mini-me. The teacher took a picture of each of them on the first day of school and then printed their heads and let them add clothes using an old wallpaper sample book. Vicki’s, of course, had on a long, flowing gown and was accessorized by pipe cleaner bows. Beautiful. In her class they do SRAs I did SRAs in second grade – remember those little color-coded folders with a story and a bunch of questions on them? I can’t believe they’re still around. SRA stands for “silent reading assessments”. I never knew that.

Looks like it’s shaping up to be another fabulous school year!

Potty Training 101

Lesson 1: Underpants…

...are not a hat.

Lesson 2: Potty seat…not a hat, either (despite the number of times she did this, I unfortunately didn’t get a picture). We spent the most time on this particular lesson because that potty seat just fit so dang nicely on her head!

Once we got those two things cleared up, potty training the third time around has actually been a breeze. When she noticed that two of her friends were potty trained, Ellie thought this was the coolest thing in the world. For days all she could talk about was, “Jenna goes potty. Anna goes potty.” She wanted to sit on the potty, too. So we would sit on the potty, with absolutely no results whatsoever, about 15 times a day. Every once in a while we got lucky, but more often than not she’d sit happily for a while and then announce, “I done!” Either that, or she’d sit so quietly that I’d forget she was there, only to come back five minutes later and find about 3 miles of toilet paper decorating the bathroom floor.

Then, about three weeks ago, she decided that she wasn’t going to wear diapers anymore. Nope, it had to be panties, just like her sisters, and just like Anna and Jenna. So I told her that was fine as long as she kept them dry. It took two days for it all to connect and now her mantra is “no peepees on floor” as she runs for the bathroom. No sticker charts, no M&M’s, no bribery whatsoever, just a very determined little munchkin who noticed that no one else around here wears diapers, so why should she?

We made it!

The first full week of school is over and we're all still in one piece. Vicki, of course, jumped right back into the swing of things and didn't really need any time to get used to things, but Lexi never went to preschool, so this is her first plunge into the life of a student, and going from no school whatsoever to all day long is a pretty big step. She did it, though, and appears to have loved every second of it. Every day after school she bounced over to me to drop off her backpack before running off to the playground to play before we headed home. And then she walked the half mile home without any complaints. There weren't even any of the major meltdowns I was expecting. She did lose it a bit at bedtime last night, but she crashed the minute her head hit the pillow and has been extremely cheerful all day today. So I think (hope, pray, knock on wood) that the worst is over and she'll just keep on having fun. Besides, it's kindergarten...what's not to love? :)

Independence Day

Our girls are all eager to be independent. Ellie's favorite phrase is, "No! I gonna!" Lexi likes to make her own breakfast. Vicki likes to do her own hair. She likes it so much that we had to come up with a compromise: she does her hair on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and I get the other days. That way she gets to practice, but she still looks, well, tidy - at least part of the week. Yesterday was Tuesday and she was feeling especially creative.

The thing is, no matter how...interesting...her hair looks, I still think she's beautiful.

Teeth

Ever since she turned 4, Vicki has been dying for loose teeth. She was so excited at the prospect of actually losing a tooth, and the whole tooth fairy business. Since then she’s only lost three teeth, and one of those was thanks to a faceplant on a tile floor when she was 4 ½. That permanent tooth hasn’t grown in yet, so she’s had a gap in front for almost two and a half years. Last November she finally got to experience loose teeth for real when the two bottom ones fell out within a couple of weeks of each other, both at school.

But all that was nothing compared to this most recent loose tooth, which she’s been working on for months, wiggling back and forth and encouraging anyone else she could get to stick their fingers in her mouth to help it along. She had it so loose last week that she could make it stick straight out when she smiled, which totally grossed me out! Someone at school on Friday suggested (jokingly) that she do the string and door trick. When she couldn’t talk me into doing it for her, she found a piece of yarn and tried it herself.


What do you know – it worked!

First day(s) of school!

This year we have a second grader and a kindergartner.

Whoa.

How on earth did that happen?

We went down to the school last week to meet their teachers and got the added treat of seeing Vicki’s teacher from last year (and the year before) there with her 7-week-old baby! The girls were excited to see their new classrooms and meet their teachers. Vicki is in a 2nd/3rd grade class this year, which is nothing new to us since she spent kindergarten in a K/1 class two years ago. Her teacher is Mr. G. and he seems like a lot of fun. Lexi’s teacher is Ms. P., and she seems like the perfect kindergarten teacher for Lexi – young and full of energy and new ideas. Our district switched to full-day kindergarten this year, so it will be interesting to see how our emotional roller coaster deals with that. Apparently they will have an afternoon rest time, which should hopefully keep the meltdowns to a minimum.

Vicki’s first day back was Tuesday, and she, of course, was excited and not one bit nervous (at least not that she would admit to!) After three months of not having to be on any sort of schedule, I completely forgot that we have to leave earlier if we’re walking than we do if we drive and I had everyone out the door and ready to go at 8:30, only to remember that school starts at 8:40 and it takes at least 15 minutes to walk there. So we hurried into the car and made it to school just before the bell rang. Vicki was the last one in line in her class, but she made it! We got to hear all the details at dinner that night, and apparently she’s already developed a teasing relationship with Mr. G., which comes as no surprise, really. She’s excited about the assignment to come up with a name for their class, since they can’t call it “second grade” or “third grade” and “second and third grade” is too much of a mouthful. Some of the ideas, apparently, were “twenty-third grade” or “thirty-second grade”. Vicki likes “two-thirds (as in 2/3) grade”. She’s also excited to have recess on the “big” playground now, along with all the rights and privileges that go along with that, like the opportunity to sign up to be a Garden Steward, which means helping to take care of the school garden during recess. She has always loved school and has pretty much fallen right back into the swing of things, although she says it’s still hard to remember that her class is on the other side of the hall now.

Lexi’s big day was Thursday, but she wasn’t excited or anything. She’s only been counting down for the last week now. Wednesday night she was up at 2:15, knocking on our door and wanting to know if it was time to get up and get ready for school yet. I managed to get her back to sleep (“Count to ten 20 times, and if you’re still awake when you’ve done that, then come and get me.” Works every time.) In the morning she was so excited she could hardly eat her breakfast. She bounced out the door (on time today!) wearing her new Hello Kitty backpack and carrying her purple camo lunchbox. When we got to school she waved goodbye to Vicki and lined up with the other kids in room 3. When she heard her friend Daniel’s dad tell him that everyone was probably a little nervous, she looked up at me, grinned impishly, and said, like she was sharing a secret, “I’m not nervous at all!” It helps, of course, that she’d already met the teacher three times and seen the classroom twice. Ellie and I went inside with her, where she hung her backpack on a hook, sat down at a table like she’d done it every day, introduced herself to another little girl, and chose a book to look at. Several of the kids were similarly confident, but one poor little boy was in hysterics and was making a few of the other kids nervous. On the walk home that afternoon (she only goes for a half-day today and tomorrow, and then starts full-time on Monday) she told me all about the day, including several things that I’m pretty sure didn’t actually happen anywhere but her imagination – apart from circle time, recess, and PE, they also apparently climbed a tree so high their heads poked out of the clouds, had 8 cookies each after recess, and climbed a ladder to the top of the rain shed (wherever that is) and then slid down on a super long slide their teacher put up just for them, bouncing from cloud to cloud along the way. What a day!

In the beginning...

After weeks of deliberation, I’ve finally decided to enter the world of blogging. Everyone else is doing it, right? My intention is that this blog will be pretty much an account of day-to-day life in our family, revolving mostly around our three girls (since mine and Chris’s lives are much less interesting if you take them out of the picture.) I know that means coming up with a new title if we ever decide to have another one, but since that’s not an issue at the moment, I won’t worry about it!

Enjoy this crazy thing we call life!