April summary

I used to have individual blog posts that followed a theme or a specific activity. Now, more often than not, the title is something along the lines of "Fill-in-the-month activities." I guess that's what 4 kids and my preference to spend whatever free time I do have reading rather than blogging will do. But hey, at least I am still blogging. I count this as journal writing and family history, which makes me feel a little better when I remember how little I get around to doing either of those activities.

Anyway, April has passed us by, filled with sickness, silliness, and stuff.

Annie came home from preschool one day with a ladybug crown/hat thing she had made. It inspired her. She told me when she grows up she is going to be a fashion hat designer, then set to work putting together some prototypes with construction paper she tore into strips and stapled together.

We had probably close to 10 of these hats of various styles and color floating around the house for a while.

Megan has begun pulling up on everything and is cruising a little, but not much.

She loves climbing the stairs most of all and occasionally gets lucky when someone leaves the gate open and she rushes to get as high up the stairs as she can. Today I found her 4 stairs from the top. She's actually really good on the stairs. The problem comes when she decides to sit down and forgets that the floor isn't all there. So far we've been lucky that when she's on the stairs alone her main goal is to get to the top before someone catches her, so she doesn't pause to have a seat. We've had a talk about the gate at the bottom of the stairs, so hopefully we don't have any falling baby stories any time soon.

Megan looks so much like Ryan. Except with piggie tails.

Ryan at the same age:

Rachel and Annie got hit with the same bug within a day of each other a few weeks ago. It totally wiped them out and for one entire day they hardly moved from the couch, even when the TV was off. Ryan got a different bug the day before, so he was still recovering, so there were 3 kids with no appetites and no energy. That they were sick was a bummer, but it sure made for easy housework: no toys to pick up, food to cook, dishes to wash. The only downside was some extra laundry, but even that wasn't as bad as it could have been. Here's Annie on day 2--finally with an appetite, but still no energy to sit up at the table, so I made a makeshift TV tray for her to eat on.

The next day everyone was better, so we went to the park. Apparently 2 days of hardly eating drains the energy out of you. After 5 minutes playing on the playground we went to walk a little way to the swings and Annie and Rachel were dragging their feet from lack of energy. They didn't even argue when I suggested we head home after we had been at the park for less than a half hour. Another day or so and they were back to their normal energy levels again.

Here's the promised picture of Annie's bangs/hair to compare with Willy Wonka:

Megan loves her swing. Since we usually just take down one of the kids' swings to hang her baby swing on the swingset, and vice versa, her swing was sitting on the ground one day when she found it and was so excited to climb into it. I don't think she even minded that it didn't move. She played in it for a good 5-10 minutes.

Ryan still loves playing with the camera whenever he finds it. One day he got it all set up and told me to sit down and we'd "do cheese" with the camera. When the light didn't turn on I showed him how to turn on the timer so we could get this fabulous self portrait of the two of us on the kitchen floor.

We've been trying to invite the kids' cousins over for movie night for a while now, but something has always come up: sickness, March Madness, etc. But last week we finally made it work, even though Justin ditched us so he could stay home and watch the playoffs.

The kids all had fun together. Megan wouldn't leave Rachel alone. I think she wanted her popcorn. But when I offered her tiny baby-safe sized pieces she wasn't interested. She only wanted them out of Rachel's bag. Rachel put up with her for a little while before asking us to take Megan away.

Speaking of Megan and eating...

She will not eat baby food and hasn't for a couple of months. She loves real people food, and now has 4 teeth which help a bit with all but the real hard stuff that you really need molars to chew. She's not picky, but has definite preferences that she will make known if she sees someone eating something she wants.

April had beautiful weather. The highs were in the 70s and 80s most of the month. We spent a lot of time enjoying the weather. Looking for shapes in the clouds:

Now that May is here our outdoor time will slowly be cut back to only early mornings, or whenever there is water to play with. Welcome summer, I guess.