Virus

I have been getting a lot of guff for missing a couple of weeks of blogging. I just want to explain myself. Our computer caught a cold and died on us (again. I blame the kids). Thanks to my awesome brother-in-law, we now are virus free. Now for catching up...

In my last blog I forgot to talk about Rachel's birthday party, and I think it is worth mentioning. First of all, I am no great birthday party planner. Lilly's birthday party was a giant, unorganized water balloon fight that turned into all of the kids chasing Cousin Isaac with water balloons. For Rachel's party the weather was lousy so we were limited to what we could do inside. To fit with her pirate/princess theme (pirates for the boys, princesses for the girls) we had a fort building contest. Then we played two rounds of sardines, and a couple of rounds of good old fashioned hide-and-seek. She had an awesome cake thanks to my friend Amber. The bottom tier was blue with a pirate ship molded out of tootsie rolls. The top tier was a princess theme with a cool princes crown made of white chocolate on top. Now here is the part worth mentioning. We invited Rachel's primary class, one girl from her school class and all of her cousins between the ages of 3 and 7. Twelve invitations were sent out, plus a couple of verbal invitations to neighbor kids. Every last invitee showed up and probably half of them brought younger siblings with them. We had a grand total of about 25 kids. It was madness. By the time the party was over my house nearly literally looked like a hurricane had passed through. A good time was had by all, so I consider it a success!

Rachel asked me a couple of weeks ago if she could start going to the "big dragons" karate class instead of the younger class she has been attending with Lilly. Last night was her second time trying out the big kid class. She did so well! Compared to the other kids in the class she is tiny. There are a couple her age, but some of them are as old as 10 or 11. Rachel really held her own. I asked her how she felt about it later and she said it was scary because the kids are so big. She loves it though, and wants to keep going. I was very proud of her.

I have been working with Carson on dressing himself. He is resistant at best.. The girls were able to sort of dress themselves by this age but I have not been as good at working with Carson on it. I think there are a few reasons for this. Because he doesn't talk as well I still think of him as younger than he is. Plus I have a lot of kids now and it is so much easier to dress him myself than to convince him to do it. Today I successfully bribed him with the promise of playing at a friend's house. He did great with the exception of putting his pants on backwards, but I will take it!

Emilia is unanimously the favorite family member among the kids. In fact she is the preferred form of entertainment at our house. This means that during her waking moments she has between one and three children constantly in her face. I have already mentioned that Carson's favorite way to talk to her is by growling at her (loudly). I worry that she is going to be overwhelmed by this, but she loves it. In fact she prefers it to solitude. If there is nobody up in her face she starts to complain. When the kids are in her personal space she has an amused look on her face. Not quite a smile, but close.

Lilly has a new friend. Her name is Elizabeth and she lives across the street. The two of them are quite the mischievous pair. All of the sudden Lilly has forgotten a few basic house rules. Specifically that cat food does not belong anywhere but the cat dish, we don't lock doors, and the exercise equipment is off-limits. I do not think it is Elizabeth's fault. The two of them just seem to like to get into trouble together. The other day Elizabeth was over and needed to use the restroom. Lilly showed her where it was, and a few moments later we heard way too much giggling in the bathroom. When we went to check it out, Lilly told us "we tried to go at the same time but it didn't work."