Reading Books

When I was pregnant with Ellie, Daniel would tell me how excited he was to read to his baby. He just knew that he would be able to connect with his children through books. When Ellie was born, he did what he said he would and read to her a lot. It is nice to see that as we now have 3 children, he still loves to read the kids books. They love it too.
Last weekend we switched the kids rooms around and moved the bookshelf that was in Owen's room into Maggie's room. Ellie and Owen have always loved escaping into the bedroom to read books together and now Maggie joins in on the fun.

These days, Owen is most obsessed with books. Whenever we go anywhere in the car, he runs out to the garage with a book or two tucked under his arm.

Ellie's favorite thing is to "read" to her brother and sister. Her words are usually better than when mom or dad reads them. Elise is really into girly books (along with the other girlie stuff she loves) like Angelina Ballerina or other princess type books.

Maggie just thinks opening the books is pretty cool.

New Sleeping Arrangements

Without ever meaning to, I ended up doing sort of an attachment style of parenting. My children find comfort mainly from me. All three of them need to feel my skin in order to feel comfort (I know, it's weird). Elise is partial to having her fingers on my elbow pits, Owen needs to feel the backside of my arm and Magdalyn needs to grab fist-fulls of my arm, pinching me in the process. They even fight over my arms. I am aware that this is strange.

Maggie has been the worst. I think this is because she is on the tail end of 3 babies pretty close together. At night, we always did the easiest thing in order to get a few extra minutes of precious sleep. We've really paid for it and you'd think we would have learned our lesson by the third, but we haven't. Anyway, Maggie would start in her bed (most nights) and then end up in our bed every night by midnight. Plus, she was waking up a lot and feeling like her mom should be nursing her ALL THE TIME. This weekend we decided we needed to start teaching her how to soothe herself. So, for the first time, we let a child cry it out at night.

We moved Elise into Owen's bedroom (which they LOVE) and now Maggie is all on her own. We've let her cry for quite awhile and I have not been going into soothe her at all. After awhile, Daniel goes in and loves on her a bit and puts his hand on her back and she goes back to sleep. It makes my stomach hurt just thinking about her crying in there, but I got some ear plugs and I have been trying to be strong. I get so paranoid that something is going to happen. I just say a prayer every night that she will be ok and I know it will be ok. I mean, at least ONE of our children needs to sleep through the night. I mean, Ellie is almost there, but she is about to turn 4---it's about time.

This is how naps have been going. She used to always nap on our bed, but then as she got more mobile, I got scared so she napped on our pillows instead. I know, it's ridiculous (at least she wasn't needing to be held anymore), which is why we are going to be strong and get this girl sleeping through the night! I'll update later.

Backyard Water Fun

Since it has been in the 90s the last couple of days, I've been making sure the kids have been enjoying the outdoors.  We went to the park, on walks, but the favorite thing is playing outside in the water.  We don't have a pool or anything (though that is changing today) so I gave them a bunch of bins to fill up and sit in.  Pretty trashy, but you make do with what you have.  Anyway, here are a ton of pictures of our backyard fun.  We invited a friend over, so that is the other little boy you might see in some of the pictures.

Ellie was in control of the hose most of the time and the boys didn't mind... they had a nice little game going where she chased them around trying to spray them.  She was pretty serious about it.

Here is Owen (left) and his friend, Spencer.  They are in the same preschool class and I usually pick the kids up and I look pretty crazy with four kids because it looks like Owen and Spencer are twins since they have the blond hair, plus they have the same backpack.

Mags was enjoying the outdoors as well.  She had a blast since she is usually just pressed up against the glass door watching Ellie and Owen while they play outdoors.

The kids don't eat Popsicles very often and you can see why... they get pretty messy, but outdoors is a great place to let them at 'em!

Mags playing with one of Owen's cars.  She is pretty cute because she loves playing with Ellie's babies with her but she also really loves to play cars with Owen.  She really does love her big brother and sister.  She especially likes to pester Owen.  Maggie is a pretty funny kid.

I imagine you will get to see a whole lot of backyard water fun this summer on our blog, just enjoy the pictures. :) 

Time for Kid Updates

It has been awhile since I actually WROTE a blog (not just posting a ton of pictures), so I thought I would write about what the kids have been up to the past little while.

Elise has been loving preschool. Everyday she asks if she can go to another one of her friends' houses. She recently got a report card which reported that she is doing well in almost every area. Ellie now knows how to spell a few names and is always putting her own name on papers along with her siblings' names and every name of every child in her preschool class. She is always quite helpful in making sure that Owen's name is ALWAYS on his coloring papers. Along with this she is starting to recognize familiar words, but mostly she sees letters and lists a bunch of words that can go along with the letters. Ellie is also anxiously awaiting next month as it will be her 4th birthday. She is excited to go to the beach to celebrate but mostly she is excited because as she says, "4 is almost 5 and when she is 5 she will go to elementary school". She also tells me almost daily that her grammy says that when she turns 8 she can sew on grammy's sewing machine. She is really eager for that apparently.

Owen is also enjoying preschool. He is the youngest in his class but also the biggest. Last week I was changing his diaper and I just said to myself, "this has got to stop, this boy is enormous, I can hardly lift his leg to change his diaper!". So, this past weekend we started potty training. I must say that it has really gone better than anticipated. I took a note from a friend and bought a bunch of matchbox cars and gave him a car after each success. Now he is AWESOME at going #1 in the potty. #2, ugh, still a work in progress. Owen is pretty obsessed with CARS and watches it a lot and is in love with anything with the CARS brand. Owen has started talking a lot more, but has gotten to be a lot more difficult at church. I think this is because I secretly thought to myself, "our kids are pretty dang good at church!". That is when it got bad.

Magdalyn is nearing the year mark and is clingier than ever. She is definitely a momma's girl. Even with intensified effort she is making it clear that she is not ready to stop nursing even though her mom is. She also is loving the comfort of mom and dad's bed... I often find her spooned up against Daniel in the middle of the night and I just have to laugh because it is usually me she is on. Maggie can stand on her own but doesn't care too very much and doesn't seem to be motivated to take steps. She basically has no interest and prefers to have her knees dirty from crawling. Finally, the girl has hair so we are rocking the bows as much as possible... cause every girl needs a bow. Maggie has a funny little personality and we are always saying that she is 50% cute and 50% goofy. Her smile is pretty contagious and she will flash one to anyone who gives her the time of day.

Easter 2009

We had a wonderful Easter weekend.  We had fun with eggs, bunnies, movies, potty training (yes, that's right) and just enjoying one another.  This is the best I could get of the Easter outfits.  Hopefully I can get some real pictures of them done soon.

This year, I only got them a couple packets of m&ms and that was about it for candy.  They eat too much of it already with all the egg hunts they went on this year.  So, they got things like slinkies, movies, bubbles, balls, pajamas and books.  In my opinion, they enjoyed that better than they would have candy.  The kids enjoyed hunting for eggs.  Thankfully, all eggs were accounted for.  Sorry for such close up pictures and crazy hair (this was about 6 am).

Here are a few pictures of our goofy Mags.  She really is a funny little baby and is quite the character.  (also, check out those teeth!)

Easter Egg Coloring

On Easter Eve, we dyed about 4 dozen eggs.  The kids really enjoyed it as always.  Ellie wanted to do it all herself and Owen basically threw the eggs into the dye cups.  Mags was looking on but pretty annoyed that she couldn't participate.

Saturday is also our pizza and a movie night.  I was going to save our ham for Easter, but decided to make it Friday night and we have been enjoying ham meals ever since.  We made Hawaiian pizza that night and watched "Ratatouille".  Since the basic Ham meal, we have had pizza with ham, potatoes and ham for breakfast, bean soup and we still have about half our ham left.  Ugh.  Looking for some yummy ham recipes if anyone has any, I've gotta use this ham up!