Easter

On Friday night Shelby took the girls to see Gnomeo and Juliet. The girls were so excited to go because Rachel wants to "see every movie in the whole world!" And she wants to see them all at the "movie feater". Before they left she came up in quite a stylish outfit that was meant to make her look like a rock star. I did her hair in a high pony-tail to the side to match her rock star outfit. When they got home, she ran ahead of Shelby and Lilly through the door and down the stairs and gave me the following breathless account "Mom! That was not the movie I always wanted to see! And I got a huge ice cream cone! And I have to go to the bathroom!" and then she was off. I was not even able to get a word in.

We had the annual Easter egg hunt at Gigi's house on Saturday. Lilly gets her names mixed up at times, and confuses Gigi and Daidree. She refers to Gigi as her old dance teacher. She is thinking of 3 days last summer when Daidree taught a dance camp for the little kids. It must have made an impression. Every time she hears Gigi's name she says "hey, like my old dance teacher!" Anyway, the Easter egg hunt is the highlight of the year at our house. The kids just love it. Carson was not at all concerned about the quantity of eggs he got, rather he was concerned about the quality. He would focus on one egg in the distance, and walk on or over 3 eggs to get to that one. Lilly was happy regardless of the quantity and was ready to be done so she could see what she got. When all the eggs were found, Rachel wanted to continue looking, just in case. To her it was all about the hunt. We ended up taking a lot of candy home. Easter morning, they got a lot of candy from the Easter Bunny (much more than the Easter Bunny had intended). We were also "egged" Easter morning. Someone put plastic eggs filled with candy in our front yard. The result of these three events is candy-mania at our house. They got a better take at Easter than they did at Halloween!  All three children are obsessed. From the time the wake up in the morning until the time they go to bed at night all I hear is "Mom, can I have candy?" Or in Carson's case "Mom! Uhh?" And watch out if the answer is no. All hell breaks loose. I think we may be donating a big portion of the candy to CCS. 

Rachel insisted on wearing her princess dress underneath her Gi to karate yesterday, as well as a scarf around her head because "that's how ninjas do." She was so darn cute I couldn't say no.  That girl has some ideas about how things should be in her world.

Lilly's Pets

Lilly has a fascination recently with any creepy crawly thing. Her very favorite right now are worms. She spends much of her outside time digging for them in the garden in the attempt to gather a little worm farm. While I was planting beets on Saturday she kept putting something in my hair. I was otherwise distracted so I did not take the time to wonder what it was. Then she told me "I am putting worms in your hair." I didn't take this news well, and Lilly seemed surprise by my disgust. She just shrugged and said "What? It tickles." She also loves ants. On Sunday I gave her a brownie, which she took down to the stair landing (ant heaven at our house) and fed it to them. When I swept up the crumbs along with the ants she had attracted she was besied herself. I felt bad, but I couldn't just leave them there. The one exception to her love of bugs are spiders. She wants nothing to do with those. The other night she was crying because there was a spider in her room. She led me to her room to show me. What she thought was a spider turned out to be a plastic little hair comb. Her hysteric tears turned immediately into hysteric laughter as she told me "Hey, that's not a spider!" Lilly is our future animal biologist.

Although it has not been particularly warm so far this spring, we have had moments of real sunshine. Nearly every day after breakfast Rachel asks me if she can go outside. My answer is always "Yes! Please go outside!" She would spend every moment outside if she could keep Lilly and Carson there as her entertainment. Shelby has become Rachel's best friend. Anytime he is outside doing yard work, Rachel is out there too, doing what she can. She is our future plant biologist.

Another Rachel thing, we registered her for kindergarten last week. I cannot believe my baby is old enough! I asked her on the way to registration if she is excited, and she told me she is actually a little scared. This surprised me since kindergarten is all she has been talking about since Brady started kindergarten two years ago.  I asked her why she is scared and she told me "because I am afraid I won't know enough." I assured her she does, and whatever she does not know, they will teach her. But to ease her fears, we have been spending our car rides going over numbers and letters. She is one smart kid.

Carson says a pretty decent "please" when we ask him to. He also uses "yeah" as an appropriate answer to questions. He uses "no" but a little less appropriately. He says "mom" a lot, but when he says it, it sounds like the urgent howl of a wild dog: "Mooommmm!" What he means is "pay attention to me!" Car rides are the worst because every two seconds he is distracted by something he wants me to see. It is a constant stream of "Mooommm!" "What Carson." "uhh (as he points to something)." Outside of the demanding way he says my name, Carson is delightful. He is amused by absolutely everything. And he still loves to cuddle. His favorite mommy and me time is when I am at the computer. He climbs into my lap and points to the screen, which by the way means he wants me to put some music on. Then he leans back and watches me do whatever. Occasionally he points at the screen and says "uhh" I think to show me that he is paying attention.

"Do You Speak Spanish?"

At Target the other day, our checker was a very dark skinned man, something my kids don't often see. While he was checking us out, Rachel asked me if he speaks Spanish. I told her I didn't know, and maybe she should ask him. She asked me if I could ask him, so I did. He said he speaks a little Spanish, but he does speak French. Then he asked her if she speaks Spanish. The extent of Rachel's Spanish comes from what she learned on Dora the Explorer, so she told him "no". I thought it was neat that she was so curious and upfront about seeing someone so different, as opposed to being afraid or upset. I told Shelby about it that night on our date. When we got home I told her how proud Shelby and I were about that conversation. She looked shocked and said "you talked about that?" I said "yes, dad and I talk about you all the time." She looked incredibly flattered. Then she said, "but you don't talk about Lilly."

That same night, we had a couple of baby-sitters, Kayleen Perrin and Ashley O'Brien. When I was taking them home, I asked how the kids were and they both cracked up. Ashley said "they taught us some things about our bodies." I nervously awaited the rest of the story. Apparently Lilly told Ashley that she has "Mommy boobies." They also talked a little about bums and other things. Luckily neither girl seemed too traumatized by any of this.

Last night Lilly got in trouble for something. I put her in time out, told her why she was there and that I wanted her to think about it. She was sobbing, and told me "I'm not going to think about it! I am going to think about princesses!" Lilly has a collection of "swear words" that she uses to show us how mad she is. Among them are, "poop" or "poopy" (her very favorite), stupid (which she always claims she is aiming at inanimate objects like "no, no, I was calling the chair stupid!"), and the insult of all insults "I don't like you!" It is pretty hard to take any of these too seriously.

Carson the Two-Year-Old

So I forgot about the terrible twos! Up until now, we have been extremely lucky with Carson, who had not had real moments of two-ness. He is over it now, and making up for lost time. He had his first mega fit a few days ago when I put something away before he had the chance to. He threw himself on the bedroom floor in a screaming tantrum that did not end for a good 20 minutes. It all came back to me pretty quick, and I successfully ignored him. He had a hard time figuring out how I could care so little and be so unaffected when he was obviously really suffering! Since then we have had a good half-dozen such fits every day. This is not my first time around with these fits, and after three kids I am now better equipped to handle them. They are annoying, sure, but they don't stress me out like they used to.

Shelby took the girls to see Tangled on Saturday. Wanting to see that movie is all Rachel has talked about for weeks. Every day it was "is it we can see the movie with the girl and the hair today?" When she asked on Saturday, there was  no reason not to take them, so off they went while Carson and I had a little date together. Everything is all about Tangled ever since. On Sunday, Shelby played "Tangled" with them, where they acted out the plot of the movie. So cute!

Rachel fell down and skinned her knee the other day. She was devistated. I think she mistakened a skinned knee for cancer, because she thought for sure she was going to die. Shelby was the one who brought her in and cleaned her up. He was sympathetic to a point, but once Rachel crossed the line into unreasonably upset, he stopped being quite so understanding. Lilly being her typical self was very concerned for Rachel. She came in the kitchen on the verge of tears and asked if I could cuddle Rachel instead of Daddy. I guess Shelby was not being as sympathetic as Lilly wanted.

Skinny Carson

At Carson's 18 month check-up he was in the 5th percentile for weight. We couldn't get his pants to stay up. Watching him take a bath was almost painful, he was so skinny.With intense efforts on our side to lace all of his food with butter and force in as many calories as we could, he made it to 15th percentile by his two-year check-up (insert sigh of relief). He even had a handful of pants that we could keep on his little bottom! Last weekend Carson got mega stomach flu. It lasted five days, and in those five days all of our effort were undone. His pants are once again falling down, and bathtime has turned into a game of rib-counting. Back to adding butter to everything!

I don't mean to sound cold about the stomach flu thing. It was really heart-breaking. Shelby and I spent last weekend away while Grandma took care of the kids. That means she dealt with the first two days (and probably the worst two days) of Carson's flu. I felt guilty that she had to handle all the bodily fluids, but also glad she was the one who had him. Nobody loves a sick baby as much as a mom and dad, but a grandma is a close second. Once Monday rolled around and I was in charge of the poop and vomit I felt even more guilty. You forget how all consuming of a job taking care of a sick kid is. Carson was such a trooper. He hardly complained, even when he would throw up.

Rachel and Lilly love their grandma. She was the only topic of conversation around our house before she came, and the only topic of conversation around our house for a couple of days after she left. I got after Lilly for something and she broke down in tears. Between sobs she cried "Grandma, Grandma...I want grandma!"

I asked the girls what we should name the new baby. Lilly suggested Helly. Rachel changed Helly slightly and came up with Holly. I told them I liked the name Amelia, and neither of them were impressed. Lilly tried to make me feel better with "it's OK mom, you can name the baby whatever you want because it is in your tummy!" And she is right!

Nonna took Rachel on a date and bought her a killer outfit. It was a cute summer dress with a white sweater and gold shoes. Complete with a necklace to accessorize. This was one of the times Rachel is perfectly happy to be a girl. She insisted on wearing the outfit to the park yesterday, even though it is not at all park friendly. Once she was all decked out, she said to me "Mom, I just love being fancy!" One other Rachel note. After the park Rachel ran ahead of me to the car. When I got there she was sitting Indian-style on the hood of the car in meditation pose, with her hands out and fingers pinched together. I laughed right out loud. She tells me she learned how to meditate on The Lion King. I get that.