Skinny Mini

Abby had her 12 month check up today. She is a petite thing. She weighed in at 16 pounds 14 ounces (1st percentile) and is 28 inches long (12th percentile). Just for fun, we looked at our other kids’ growth charts to see how they compared. Here’s what we found:

Elise – 17 pounds 14 ounces, 29 inches long

Emily – 19 pounds 5 ounces, 29 ¾ inches long

Ben – 24 pounds 4 ounces, 31 inches long

We have certainly moved from one extreme to the other. Ben weighed as much at 3 months old as Abby does at one year.

Abby's Birthday

Abby turned one year old today. It is amazing how fast that year has gone. She is such a sweet, fun girl. We feel very blessed to have her as part of our family. Today she was a little less sweet and fun since she is teething and has a cold. She didn’t seem to care too much about the whole birthday scene, but our other kids were sure excited about it. Her favorite part of the day was having everyone sing Happy Birthday to her . . . she especially loved Ben’s cha-cha-chas.

Ready for church in her new birthday dress. We’re hoping that she grows some hair soon since she won’t leave any of her cute headbands on her head.

Abby’s favorite present was the cool ball that Nate got for her.

Abby has fast hands. We tried taking a picture of her with her rainbow cake right in front of her. With a quick swipe, she got a hand full of frosting (hence the fingerprints on the top of the cake). If we were cool parents, we would have just let her have at it. We didn't. We washed her hand and tried again at a safer distance.

Easter

The kids had a fun Easter. We had a fairly low-effort weekend. We did all of the standard Easter activities . . . coloring eggs, new church clothes, finding their baskets, and a quality Easter egg hunt in the back yard. They loved it.

Cute kids

Apparently the first row didn't realize we were done with the "pull a silly face" picture

Unfortunately, this Easter was also marked by tragedy. Aaron called as we were getting home from church to tell us that Heidi’s nephew had accidentally been backed over and killed. It was a horrible thing. Aaron brought the boys here so that he and Heidi could go and be with her family. We loved having the boys spend the day with us, but obviously wished it could have been under any other circumstances. It was a really sad day for everyone involved. It certainly made us appreciate how blessed we are to have four, happy, healthy kids.

Zack and Austin looked so handsome in their cute Easter outfits

Rodeo

Holly gave us some free tickets for a rodeo, so we thought we would make it our family activity for the week. The kids had mixed reactions. They loved the calf roping (when the cowboy didn’t miss) and the bull riding and bareback riding (when they stayed on for all 8 seconds). They didn’t have much patience for the misses or the 2 second rides. We decided to go home about half way through since it was getting late. They probably asked 28 times when we were going to leave, but when we got in the car they all said that they had loved it. Kids are funny. Abby really seemed to love it. She would clap and bounce whenever she heard clapping and was happy and smiling the whole time.

The best part of the outing was the conversation on the way home. The kids (mostly Ben) said lots of funny, random things (like "when it is night here, it is sunny in Africa" and "Qui-Gon Jinn is a Jedi Master, but Obi-Wan is just a Jedi Knight").

Double the Fun

I got to babysit Zack and Austin for a couple of hours today while Heidi got her hair done. It was great to have three babies in the house at once. It is fun to see how twins interact. They would just crawl over each other, or sit on each other, or lay on each other and they were just completely cool with it. Abby freaked out a little when they would do the same to her. I guess when you share a womb/crib, you get more used to such physical closeness. The girls were so excited to have them here. When I got out of bed at 7:30, they had already made three piles of baby toys on the family room floor . . . "one for Abby, one for Zack, and one for Austin."

Three little monkeys pounding on the door

Austin kept trying to put the Lego bucket on his head like a hat

Zack giving Share Bear a puppy dog shake

We appreciated the sipper cup peer pressure . . . Abby wasn’t such a fan until she saw that "everyone else was doing it"

Poor Zack . . . there was a bit of green cup envy going on

A fun, full house

My Hero

Nate put a new motor in our dryer today. Living without a working dryer for three days was enough to make us really appreciate the convenience of having one. My favorite memory from the ordeal (second only to seeing Nate perched on top of the dryer with his head behind it and his bum up in the air) was when he said, in his best Red Green voice, "If the women don’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy." I am grateful for my handsome, handy husband.

St. Patrick's Day

We had a fun St. Patrick’s day. Ben insisted that I make green eggs for breakfast. He seems to think it is a rule. He gobbled them up, but the girls wouldn’t touch them. They were happy with green milk and a few green rings in their Apple Jacks.

A leprechaun visited our house and left clues for the kids to find a pot of gold. It was half fun and half traumatic. Elise got really frustrated because Ben would read the clue, Emily would figure it out and they would take off running. She just couldn’t seem to keep up. Then she fell down the back stairs onto the patio while she was trying to run after them. The drama! But the non-tragic moments were great. It was fun to see them working together and running all over the house and yard to find their next clue. They were super excited to get their pot of gold candy.

Those are some seriously green eggs. Who knew that five drops of food coloring in two eggs would be overkill?

Clue #1

After the "stair incident"

A moment of teamwork

Our goofy kids with their pot of gold

Princesses on Ice

I took Emily and Elise to Disney on Ice today. We got the tickets several weeks ago, and they have been counting the days until it was finally time to go. They were so excited. The theme this year was "Princess Wishes" . . . which made Ben very sure that he did not want to go. The girls dressed up – Emily as Ariel and Elise as Cinderella. We went with Aunt Jody, Aunt Holly, Taylor, Rachel and Bryton. The girls loved it. When I asked them what their favorite part was, they both said "all of it."

Nate and Ben had a special boys’ night (with Abby in tow). The highlight of their night was watching The Phantom Menace. Ben thought that he couldn’t watch it until he was 10, so he was super surprised and excited about seeing it. Nate said that Ben was giving all kinds of details about the characters, droids, weapons, planets, etc. all through the movie. He knows a little bit too much about Star Wars from reading every book he can find on the subject. Our goal is that someday he will know as much about this universe as he does about that one.

We stopped at Wingers for lunch on the way down. The girls were pretty cute admiring themselves in the mirror.

Emily and Elise hanging out during intermission.

Climbing

Abby has become a bit of an explorer. She just figured out how to climb, so lots of things that have been out of reach are suddenly accessible. She is great with climbing up, but still not sure about how to get down. Her current technique is to scream really loudly until her mom rescues her.

Abby’s other favorite trick is to squirm out of her highchair and stand up. She is a little Houdini. No matter how much we tighten up her seatbelt, she manages to wriggle out of it. She is always very pleased with herself when she makes it out. Today she combined her two talents and stood up in her highchair and then climbed onto the tray. It didn’t look safe enough to try to get a picture. We’re going to have to keep a close eye on this stinker!

Sunday Dinner

Aaron and Heidi and their boys came over for Sunday dinner yesterday. It was fun to have three babies in the house at one time. It is amazing how much personality kids that age already have. They certainly kept us entertained. Dinnertime was especially amusing. Abby decided to eat her food with a spatula and Zack made a game of throwing his food at Aaron (he had surprisingly good aim). It was lots of fun.

Maximum inflatable tent occupancy = 5 kids

Friday Night Movie

Some days it seems like our kids can’t go seven minutes without someone bugging someone else. "He’s touching me," "she’s in my way," "I was sitting there," etc. That makes this picture special. Last night we decided to watch a fun family movie. Nate got the kids all settled into the love sac with their pillows and blankets and they stayed there, without one fight, for the next hour and a half. It was cute and sweet and pretty much miraculous.

Look, No Hands!

Abby learned how to stand up on her own this weekend. When our other kids first learned to stand up, they were as shocked as anyone at the advancement and very hesitant to repeat it. Not Abby. She did it once and has been practicing ever since. She’ll push up off my leg, stand up, and just grin like she is saying "look at me." She seems very pleased to show off her new talent.




Her other new hobby is pushing the laundry basket around the floor. Who needs a fancy walker? We’ve never had a kid that walked before one year, but she just might do it. Nate thinks it is because she is a skinny mini so it is easier for her to balance her weight. I think she is just anxious to be more mobile so she can run around with the rest of the hooligans in this house.