Rapunzel

One last post for the day and then I'm done, for another month or so :), I promise! lol! Charity LOVES Rapunzel. She makes up stories about her and talk about her a lot and it's really cute, except for when she starts telling me that I'm not her Mommy, Rapunzel is... But so anyway, Charity went to a birthday party this week that had a Rapunzel theme and at the party they painted, since Rapunzel loves to paint. Her friends' Mom told me that Charity kept telling them she was an artist. As for just about any 5 years old drawing, an explanation is a helpful thing. For those of who have seen the movie, you'll love it; for those of you who haven't, I'll explain in a minute. So, here is the picture she painted:

That's Rapunzel standing with her flower, and the Orange thing is the door to the lights. (Why did she think she needed a door? I don't know) And all the white things are the lights! And she came up with this idea all on her own! I am so impressed!

Now for those who haven't seen the movie, Rapunzel is a princess that was kidnapped by an evil witch when she was a baby for her magic hair. Every year on her birthday the kingdom she was kidnapped from releases lanterns thousands of paper lanterns up into the sky. And Rapunzel grew up seeing the lanterns every year on her birthday and dreamed of getting to see the "lights" one day close up. Which is why she ends up leaving her tower and .... yeah, you'll have to watch the movie for more but the lights play a key role.

Anyway, I'm impressed with my little artist :)

A Little Update on Us

It seems I haven't been very good at blogging lately, of course, it's hard to type while holding a baby! Though I have so many pictures from the last few months that I haven't gotten a chance to post. Perhaps I should make it my goal for July to get caught up with blogging? LOL. We'll see how that goes!

We're all very excited around here because Laura and her kids are coming to visit and they'll be here tomorrow!!! Yay!!! Charity keeps asking when Aurora is going to get here and she's been counting down the days.

Other than that, we've been working on getting the side of our house ready to put in a fence, though now it looks like that may not happen until next year because the neighbors want to postpone it. We needed to move our stone path over a bit so all of those are pulled up and it's just dirt now so I need to get that done. We also have some bushes in the front yard that need pulled up and replaced cuz they died (I didn't like those ones anyway), and a lot of weeding needs to be done in the next few weeks! It's such a busy time of year now that it's started to warm up and isn't raining constantly. Yeah, who knew April's showers would come the end of May and in June? lol! It's been nice to delay the heat for a while though, but hopefully it sticks around for a while. The garden needs it!

That's right, I also started a garden! It's not very big just 4x8 feet but it's a start and we'll see how it goes. The lettuce needs to start being picked and replanted and then there are some pea pods on our pea plants already! Yay!!! My melons finally sprouted (I planted some watermelon and some cantaloupe, we'll see if they eventually take over, but I worried for quite a while they weren't going to make it. My carrots are growing like weeds, but my corn hasn't done so well, I only had 3 sprout, 1 died almost immediately and a second one seems to have died as well, then the neighbors cat dug up the 3rd! But I've replanted him so we'll see if he makes it but even then, we won't have any corn with only 1 stalk.

That cat LOVES to use my garden as a litter box and it's driving me crazy! The carrots I planted in 3 nice rows and he's messed in that side so much that they are all over the place! Some lettuce came up in between the beans and I've got a melon in the midst of the lettuce! Grrrr!

In other news we ended up moving the bedrooms around a bit. We set the loft bed back up, but we put it in Rebecca's room with the queen bed and then moved the crib in the girls' room with one twin bed so now Charity is in that room and the pink and purple room is Danielle's and Rebecca's. They actually go to bed a lot better when they are in separate rooms.

Hmmm, what else has happened? Oh, I finally got our family pictures hung up on the wall over the stairs in the Kitchen!!! Yay! Ok, I mean I got Dennis to do it :) He doesn't like holes in the wall, so I make him put them there... ha ha ha ha! I'll try to take pictures and post, I'm so excited about it! But I do need to get some pictures in the frames still.

Well, the kids are fighting and driving me nuts so I guess I'd better go wrangle them and make them behave. I have so much stuff I need to get done around the house to get ready for visitors!

9 Months!

Rebecca is now 9 months old! Where has the time gone!?! They fly by so quickly when they are this little. And I can't believe how big she has gotten. She has her 9 month well child check-up on Friday so I'll be able to post her stats after that.

She is crawling now and honestly I expect her to start trying to walk in the next few weeks. She took her first assisted steps a little over a week ago and she's finally figuring out that she can go places if she wants to. Though Mommy is not too thrilled with that! Her favorite things to play with are the dirt in my potted plants and my dried flowers that I keep in a basket! Well, I taught the other girls to leave those things alone so I'm hoping I can do the same with Rebecca. But oh, it's going to be a wild ride! I'd forgotten how much fun they are when they start getting into everything!

Cleaning and Kids Responsibilities

I've found when it comes to cleaning around the house that when I have it in my head to get a specific chore done, I can't stand to let the girls help me. I just don't have the patience to deal with little kids' "help". Though, Charity LOVES to help around the house, she LOVES it. BUT it has to be something she wants to do

I came across this blog the other day called Mother of All Jobs that talked about a fun way to do chores and to get the whole family involved. I tried this out with the girls and they LOVE it! They actually ASK if they can play the cleaning game. Of course, now that pbskids.org is a reward for the cleaning game, I think they're really asking to play that and just have to wait until they draw it :) LOL, except that today in playing they didn't mention it once! Because the girls are younger, whenever one pulls a Reward, I let both do the reward, except for pbskids.org, only the one who pulled the reward gets to play while the other gets to watch and they each only get that one once. Today when Danielle pulled out Get a Treat, Charity had pulled out Do the Dishes. I let Charity choose if she wanted to get a treat or to do the dishes, and guess which one she chose? Do the dishes. Seriously! That's my little girl.

Here are some other links to Games you can do to help make Chores for your family fun:

The Chore Game

The Chore Board

Swab the Deck (or World of Housecraft)

The Endless Chore Game

Age Appropriate Chores

So many fun ways to get the entire family involved with doing chores! We also have a chore chart where they have chores they are responsible for every day such as make their beds and brush their teeth and help with dishes and once they earn enough stickers on that chart they get a reward. All in all, this system is seeming to work wonders for us! And I'm able to change my mindset and let them help!

Zumba Frustrations

Have you heard of Zumba? My local gym has classes and it's the one that I try not to miss because it is so much fun! I LOVE Zumba! However, I almost walked out 1/2 way through yesterday because I was frustrated so badly! Since school let out the Zumba class seems to have almost tripled in size and there is not a lot of room. Last week I was a little late to class because Becca had a blow out diaper on the way to the gym that I had to take care of once we got there and I jumped into a spot that looked plenty big enough but the girl behind me kept crowding up and making me feel like I'd imposed on her space and I felt bad! Then when my friend who had been behind this same girl was complaining about how cramped it was back there because this girl was constantly in front of her I wondered how that could be since she was constantly right behind me, or cramming up right next to me and I was sure there'd been enough space! So I was worried it was my fault and felt bad.

Yesterday confirmed that it was NOT my fault. I was to class early and I had stood in front of my friend and we were talking and just as class was about the begin this girl was standing right next to me, and I mean right next. Now for Zumba, you need a little bit of room for dancing because we kick and swing our arms and move around a bit. Well, through out the course of the next hour I came to realize that this girl must have no spatial awareness at all! Because she was all over the place, she'd be right next to me then in the row in front of her and just all over the place. It was so frustrating. There were times where at the beginning of a song I'd be standing in my spot and once again she would come and stand just in front and to the side of me, way too close. Agh! At one point, I even moved to the line in front of us because she was back and there was room up there to move and that didn't help either. If she was standing right near me (and I mean right near me, definitely inside my bubble) then she was standing halfway between the two lines and just all over the place. It was so frustrating. Next week, I'm moving somewhere else in the room and letting some one else deal with her.

ETA: Sorry if this post sounds a little bit harsh. It was just that frustrating that I almost left the class rather than deal with it and Zumba is the thing that I LOVE at the gym. It's my #1 reason for going.

Rebecca is crawling!

Rebecca is crawling! It's a cute little half army half real crawl thing but she is now mobile! I knew she was getting close, it was just a matter of her getting everything moving at the right time and with the right force but I don't know if I'm ready for this! Although, maybe she'll be happier with more mobility! As it is, she loves to be held constantly. Well, we'll see how it goes and see how long it takes for her to decide to walk!

Danielle crawled the earliest (a little before 7 months) but didn't walk until 10 1/2; where as Charity didn't crawl until around 8 1/2 and then she was walking at 9 1/2 so we'll see what Rebecca decides to do!