Lilly's Birthday Month

Lilly is officially four years old, and boy did we celebrate. A few weeks before her birthday we had a family birthday party with all the cousins. This birthday party set the tone for celebrating over the next few weeks. After the first party Lilly was telling anyone she could find to listen that she is now four. I would correct her and tell her she was not four yet, but she insisted. Finally her real birthday rolled around. Brock and Ian were staying at our house, and we spent the whole day doing "Lilly things". We played in the morning, then went to McDonald's for lunch. At home we ate hot dogs for dinner and roasted marshmallows outside. To make it more of a party Grandpa and Cody came over. We finished the evening off with way too many presents. But this was not the end of Lilly's birthday celebration. A few days later we had Lilly's first ever "friend" birthday party. Lilly chose a water party theme, so we just told everyone to wear their swimming suits and sent them out to play with the hose and sprinklers. Then we decorated cupcakes and did presents. All three parties were a success. Lilly deserved to have a big deal made over her. Now that Lilly is four there are two responsibilities that she must take on. The first is to stop sucking her thumb. The second is to cut her own pancakes. Anytime either of these subjects come up, Lilly goes into denial mode. She claims "But I'm not four yet!" After three birthday parties and a month of celebrating, I don't think there is a more legitimate four-year-old out there.

I woke Carson up from his nap the other day. He opened his eyes, looked up at me, and honked my nose. Carson in perpetually teasing people, and it is darn cute. One of his favorite "jokes" is to pretend to put his pants on his head. He also likes to pretend to be what I assume is a monster and chase the girls around the house while he roars. The girls love this as well. He has also started saying the blessing at meal times frequently. He mostly just repeats the last thing we say. The blessing is very important to Carson. We always say one at dinner, but frequently I forget at breakfast and lunch. Carson NEVER forgets. He always says "Mom!" until I pay attention, and then folds his arms to remind me. In fact when we have pancakes, he likes to say the blessing every time he gets a new one. I forgot how much I love a two-year-old. Everything he does cracks me up. Except when he tells me "no" which is of course his favorite new word.

Around midnight the other day, Carson woke up and decided to play. He went downstairs to enlist his sisters in his playtime. They brought him upstairs to us, and after about 20 minutes of fighting with him, we assumed he had given in and gone back to sleep. At about 2am he came into my room and took me downstairs so I could turn the TV on for him. Lilly was up as well. Apparently the two of them had been playing together for a couple of hours. Inside I thought it was cute, but I put an immediate stop to it. Both of them were a mess the next day for lack of sleep.

While I was cleaning out the office the other day, I found a rough looking framed picture of Jesus that had seen much better days. I was going to put it in the DI bag, but Rachel gave me a lecture about throwing out pictures of Jesus. She was shocked. "You can't throw away pictures of Jesus, Mom! He made this world for us and he saved the day!" This was not the end of her lecturing. Over the next few hours she kept telling me about the picture and what she was going to do with it, then she would end by saying "You can't throw away pictures of Jesus." Then when Shelby came home she told on me! "Mom was going to throw away a picture of Jesus!" I have learned my lesson, and Rachel is going to hold on to the picture for safe-keeping.