Easter

A couple weeks before Easter our family enjoyed an egg hunt at our friend's, the Maneys, house.  It was perfect because our ward does a spiritual activity instead of a candy egg hunt (the kids go from room to room and learn about the last week of Christ's life and his Resurrection).  Between the church activity and the Maney's I feel like my girls got the best of both worlds (and I got a delicious brunch at each venue). 

Andrew's sister, Carrie, and her family were in town for Easter (only our second time sharing the holiday with family since we've had kids).  It was a lot of fun.  Carrie brought our girls some cute new baskets (made by her).  The girls really liked them, though there was some struggle over who got the green basket since Ellie and Lizzie both wanted it.

Andrew and I have different ideas about what are appropriate Easter basket fillers.  Basically he thinks some candy-filled eggs are sufficient whereas I like to add a small toy or two and some other seasonal items that I feel I might have to purchase anyway such as swimsuits, pajamas, shoes, hair bows, and such.  Andrew keeps reminding me that they are "not Christmas baskets."

Lizzie's loot: geyser tube (tube and mentos to drop in soda), small Lego set, p.j. bottoms, skirt, t-shirt, chocolate duck, egg with $5 inside.

Lainey's loot: frilly skirt (technically from Nana several months ago, but I hid it and re-gifted it), chocolate lamb, flip flops, pair of panties, nesting doll, egg with 5 Chuck E. Cheese tokens inside.

Ellie's loot: summer shorts, chocolate chicken, bug house (a leftover party favor from Lainey's 4th birthday party--pretty much just a space filler that she broke that morning), chocolate chicken, pair of panties, nesting doll, egg with 5 Chuck E. Cheese tokens inside, and another egg with three dimes.

I still think those are pretty reasonable baskets.  Of course I think that I kept the Christmas loot pretty reasonable and Drew thinks the kids got too much.

The night before Ellie agreed to use the yellow basket, but Easter morning she cried and screamed and carried on and tried to yank the green one away from Liz.

Eventually we were able to distract Ellie with her nesting doll.  She became completely absorbed with it and refused to look through the rest of her basket or search for eggs (indecently the only other time we have put on our own egg hunt for our kids was when we did Easter with Drew's brother, Dan).

Carrie, has a great system of designating an egg color for each kid for the egg hunt so that there are no worries about whether or not everyone is getting a fair amount of eggs.  I loved it and plan to do it every year.  Our only problem this year was that with eight kids it was hard to get enough colors.  We ended up with three shades of green.  Oh, and also, Liz felt that Aunt Carrie filled her kid's eggs with better candy than I did.

The other kids found Ellie's eggs for her, but she was too consumed with her nesting doll to be bothered with candy so her sisters and I ate about half of hers.

During Andrew's pancake breakfast the kids had "Egg Wars" with the hard boiled eggs Aunt Carrie helped them dye the day before (something else Andrew and I aren't good about doing on an annual basis).  For the war they tapped the ends of their eggs together.  Whichever egg cracked first was the loser.  Liz did pretty well.  She reasoned that her eggs were stronger because she left them in the dye longer.

 And while everyone ate, Gabrielle still played with her beloved dolls .  .  .

After breakfast we took Carrie's family downtown to visit some of monuments, then on to church where Andrew was able to bless a baby in Russian for one of the families he home teaches.  In all a pretty cool day.

Pictures from Carrie & Wayne:

 

 

Baby #5

Last week I laid down to take a 10 minute nap.  It was literally only 10 minutes long since I used an alarm.  This is what happened while I was asleep: 

 

Lainey said she remembered that I let Lizzie draw on Ellie before so she figured she could too.  Then she did her own face because she wanted "to look like a character."  I can only imagine how much crazier things will get with another kid in the mix.

When Drew saw the girls, he sighed, shook is head and said,  

"We just have such different parenting styles."

Anyway, pregnancy-wise things seem to be going well.  My first trimester nausea, migraines, and exhaustion are mostly gone, thank goodness.  And I hit my 22 week mark last Monday so I'm on the downhill slope! Hooray!

We are slowly checking off things from our baby "to do" list.  Over the weekend I started going through our baby gear and realized that I got rid of more than I should have when we moved, but with borrowing, freecycle, and the upcoming consignment sales we should be fine.

Last weekend we also did the kid's room realignment.  Now all three girls are in the same room.  Liz is not loving it, but we eased the blow by rearranging things so that she can at least have her own closet and dresser.  I also gave her first dibs on beds.  She picked the twin.  Lainey moved to the top bunk (and is very excited about her more grown-up space).  Ellie's transition to the bottom bunk has been pretty painless.  The week before we moved her she cried anywhere from half and hour to an hour when we put her in her crib (it also happened to be the week immediately following daylight savings and her first week of binky weaning, so it was bad all around).  Ellie would cry and periodically yell the following: please get me out of here, I don't like this bed, get this off of me (referring to her jammies), and I just want to be naked!  Now, aside from one night when was upset that her favorite crib sheet wouldn't fit on her new mattress, she's gone to bed just fine.

I think the main thing left on our list is picking a name.  My mom asked that we don't choose another name like Lainey and Ellie because she thinks they are too similar and she gets them mixed up.  Um, perhaps, but I pointed out that the names aren't as similar as the ones she gave my sister and I, Jill and Julie, which come from the same root word.

Anyway, I haven't perused any baby name books just yet (much to Andrew's relief), but I did go over the leftover names from the last two girl's lists to make an initial list for us.  Even before I showed the list to Drew I started culling.

Initial rejects: Ava, Charlotte, Greta, Gretchen, Gwyneth,  Isaura, Madeline, Malia, Malina, Rabiah, Sadira, Zahara

My maybes: Amara (Mari), Amelia, Laila, Larissa, Josephine (Josie), Margaret (Maggie), Roxanne (Roxi)
Of course I'm pretty sure that Andrew has vetoed all these "maybe" names when they were on Lainey and Ellie's list so I don't these will be options.

I still like: Emma (Emmaline, Emmalyn, Emmette), Katelyn/Caitlin (love the nickname Kate), Lydia, Megan, Camille/Kamilah

Updates and Such

The other day Lainey asked me to play Barbies with her.  As soon as I sat down, she handed me a little boy doll and said, in regard to her Barbie, "He really likes her because she's so pretty and has lots of cute clothes."  Hmmm.  On a more positive note, Ellie had a mommy and daddy Barbie couple.  She had them kiss then said, "Them like each other."  Then, her daddy doll came over to my little boy and was really sweet so Andrew, at least has managed to be a good example.

 

 I love seeing sweet sister moments.  This was during a walk around the lake in our neighborhood.  Ellie, incidently, was pretty upset that I put her in pink.  She cried and cried saying "This is not my favorite color" and "Lainey likes pink!" before becoming distracted.

We've finished up with pottery yesterday and Lizzie's after school art ends today.  It's just in time since soccer practices started this week (Drew is assistant coach again).  She has at least one thing every day after school so I'm glad stuff is ending.  We're going from:  Girl Scouts, Pottery, Art Class, Play practice, Activity Girls, and Piano to Girl Scouts, Play Practice, Activity Girls, Piano, and Soccer.  Girl Scouts and Activity Girls only meet twice a month each, but soccer and play practice are twice a week (not counting weekend soccer games) and while piano lessons are only once week, she's required to practice daily.  Whew.  Good thing the other girls are not involved in much.

  We finished up Lainey's ballet/tap class as well.  She seemed to really enjoy it, particularly the ballet part, so I signed her up for another session.  I also signed her up for soccer much to her dismay.  Alaina keeps insisting that ballet counts as a sport and thus fulfills our one sport, one art requirement.  I also finally signed poor Ellie up for a class (Zoom Around the Room) since much of her day is running errands and waiting around for her sisters' activities to end.

We've weaned Ellie of her binky.  Sort of.  We lost it for a few days and when we finally found it, we didn't tell her.  It's been over a week and she still cries for a binky sometimes, but we're determined to see it through this time.  For the first three binky-free days we let Elle sleep in our bed, but then we had to wean her of that as well (right during day-light savings) so we certainly regretted taking the easy way out in the beginning.  Notice in the picture below that at least one day I woke up with Ellie's feet kicking my head while she snuggled up to Drew's head.  Next on the agenda for her: toilet training and moving to a big girl bed (hopefully we'll get it all taken care of before the new baby arrives).

 

 More on Ellie: still patching her eye, still wearing her glasses.  She is also still enjoying her visits to the pediatric opthomologist and why not?  There are toys, the tests feel like games, they play cartoons, give her stickers and suckers, and she gets to sit in a special chair all by herself.

American Girl Store

A couple weeks ago I took Liz to spend her Christmas and Valentines money from Nana (still haven't done the same with Lainey).  We went with friends and had a lot of fun.  Liz enjoyed dining and shopping with a friend and I enjoyed having another grown-up to visit with while we waited (and waited).

 

 

Nordic Cool

I managed to get the girls to the Nordic Cool exhibit at the Kennedy Center before it closed last weekend.  We really enjoyed it.  Below is a installation of undulating plywood and a ship made from shirts.

Not sure what's up with Lainey's pose there.  She asked me to take her picture and then arranged her hands.

The girls liked the exhibits, especially the log maze.  Liz thought the waterfall room was pretty cool.  When she pulled out the pictures of each waterfall we heard what each one sounded like.  The little girls did not like it though and were actually a little scared by the sounds (see shot of Lainey below).

In almost all of the exhibit, Lainey wanted to know what everything was made of (and I mean EVERYTHING).  Ellie wanted to touch everything.  I was able to keep her from all of it, but the a pile of rocks with a sculpture in the center.  Ellie reached to touch the rocks and told her, no.  Don't touch those.  So she kicked them.  I said no again and she kicked them again.  I glanced around to see if there was a security guard nearby.  There was and he was laughing.

 For the girls, the highlight of the whole thing was the lego section.  We spent about two and half hours there (we were only able to last that long because we ran into some friends and had grown-ups to talk to).

 After some parallel play, the girls made a rainbow tower.  I loved seeing them work together.

I'd been there an hour before I realized that the nearby murals were made entirely of one-knub legos.  Pretty impressive.

After the rainbow tower, the girls did their own thing.  Lainey made lots of creations (such a mommy airplane and a bunch of baby airplanes) with the assistance of several of the young volunteers (high school students, I think). 

Ahhh, Ellie

Over the weekend Drew and I caught Ellie trying to filch Lizzie's American Girl guitar.  I told her that it belonged to Liz and that she had to ask her sister if she could use it.

Ellie immediately raced to the bathroom where Liz was getting ready and we heard her ask, "Lizzie, can I please use this?"

Lizzie's response was instant and firm.   "No absolutely not.  Put that back right now."

Ellie came running back to Andrew and I and happily declared, "Lizzie said yes!"

Hmmm.

The Gender

We found out what we are having Tuesday morning.  I asked Drew which he preferred and he insisted he'd be fine anyway.  I said that if I could pick, I'd probably pick a boy, but that I could see many advantages to having another girl.  I also said that if I was making a prediction as to what we're having I would guess a girl because 75% of the time that's what we've had.  Anyway  .  .  . 

It's a . . . 

GIRL!

Liz was disappointed.  She had wanted a brother for a couple reasons.  First of all, she wanted to see what a having a brother was like.  Second, she was pretty sure that a little brother would copy her less than a sister and would just generally be less annoying.  I assured that was not the case.  Also, Lizzie wanted to this hoped-for brother, after her first lost brother, Jacob.  Once she knew she was going to have a sister, she asked when we'd have a boy.  I said, never.  This is the last.

Lainey was pleased because she wanted a sister all along.  Earlier in the day when I asked her whether she wanted a brother or sister her immediate answer was, "a sister so Lizzie can have her own room," generous as always.  When I asked what she thought we should name a sister she suggested we name it Alaina Marie after her.

Ellie wants a brother and despite our frequent explanations that we are, in fact, having a girl, she keeps insisting that she is getting a brother.