Merry Christmas!

Did I really have to say that?

Michael:  HEY!  Get your fork out of your eye!

Sorry for the long absence

Nothing’s been happening, so no posts.  HAH!  Just kidding.  We’re busy, so no posts.  Maybe soon I’ll write some stories about our family, but for now, pictures will have to do:

Borrowing lines doesn’t always work

Tonight I used (again) a line that my mom used on us when we would say, “Why not?” to ridiculous things, like, “Don’t read a book at the dinner table with your family.”

I said, as my mom used to say to me, “Because I’m a mean old lady and I never want you to have any fun.”

Sim:  You’re not old.

Naomi:  You’re not a lady.

Haha!  Notice that nobody said, “You’re not mean.”  It wasn’t even that rough a day…

Naomi did add,  “Hahahah!  You’re a GENTLEMAN!”  So I’m hoping she was kidding about the part about me not being a lady.

****

And in other amusing dialogue today:

Hannah:  Sim, you’re being very contrary today.

Sim: I AM NOT!

Sim participates

in Movember: 

Special thanks to hot cocoa for making Sim’s participation in Movember possible.

Pictures!

I’ve been light on posting lately, so I’m going to put up some pictures for you.

Someone is quite pleased with the Halloween cowboy boots.

So sweet.

Naomi is always convinced that, when the baby cries, she’s crying for her big sister Naomi.  “It’s okay, sweetie, Naomi’s here!”

THIS is what my living room looks like when the kids play “camping.”

Yeah.

It’s…lovely.

But they did clean it up at the end of the day.  Not spontaneously, of course, but without too much whining.  So I let them do it again.  With very similar results.

Let’s play

Sim has discovered the beauty of playing the things he’s seen or read.  I already told you about Kermit, but now he’s also been Bill from Cheaper by the Dozen (Tess gets to be the baby, Bob, when we play that game.  It was interesting to have Sim call Tess “Bob” for a few days.), and then he decided to be the kid who took the crybaby’s gingerbread in Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.  Happily, he didn’t run around snatching things from others, since his sisters weren’t very interested in that game.  Who can blame them?  They would have been assigned either the character who has to cry constantly or the character who has to deal with the character who cries constantly.

Today, he’s Peter in Peter and the Wolf.  Although Sim likes to assign roles to everyone -- Hannah’s the bird, Naomi’s the bird’s cousin, Tess is the duck (since she doesn’t object to being the one eaten in the story, and the other siblings do), and Dada, when he gets home, will be the grandfather – I don’t have a part in this game.  I am not allowed to be the cat – I’m too big. I’m not supposed to be the grandfather – I’m not a boy.  I am not allowed to be the wolf or the hunters – I don’t really know why.  Thus, I’m at liberty to tell others about this game.

The best way to play this game is to start AS SOON AS THE BOOK OR MOVIE ENDS!  And then to play it for a while.  Sometimes for days. 

**Update!  Hannah is now the wolf.  And the rope keeps pulling her tail all the way off.  Whoops!

Not getting results

I started exercising again.  Last week, I started doing one 10-minute segment of a pilates workout each morning.  The video is called Weight Loss Pilates, and I am doing it more for a workout than for weight loss (breastfeeding has always eventually gotten the weight off for me, so I am not obsessing about that).  The third day, I did the third segment, and the video ended.  I had completed 3 days of 10-minute workouts.  Hannah, who had, of course, been observing my workout, said, “That’s the end?”  I told her it was. 

“I don’t think you lost much weight.”

A few quick notes

Tess is laughing!  As of today!

Halloween was great.  We had a cowboy, princess fairy, and book.  We have pictures, but they’re on Michael’s camera, so he’ll have to upload those for you.

Here’s what we do when Tess is napping:  look at pictures of Tess.  Okay, not the whole time, but the kids all love standing at the computer and ooo-ing and aaahh-ing over Tess. 

Posts have been light because life has been busy.  It’s sunny today, so we’re going to try to get out there, because there are probably not that many more sunny days this year!

Naomi lost her first tooth!

She’s very excited.  And the tooth fairy remembered to come!

Tess smiles!

Teresa is getting more and more interactive.  When my parents were here, she’d look at you and occasionally smile.  When Michael’s parents were here, she had increased the amount of smiling she did.  Now, she’s started cooing and smiling a lot, and it’s all kinds of fun.

Family Movie Night

We’ve been having family movie night on Friday nights for several weeks now.  The kids really enjoy it, and it’s a great incentive for cleaning the house and getting showers done.  It’s a pleasantly relaxing way to end a hectic week, too. 

Except when it becomes family suspense/horror movie night. 

In my defense, I think that Naomi could turn almost any movie into a suspense/horror flick.  This time, though, I picked The Muppet Movie, and it appears to be singularly suspenseful.  I’m not sure what she thinks is going to happen, but she freaks out about Doc Hopper, even when he’s not around.  When the muppets are at the fair, enjoying themselves and watching Miss Piggy win the beauty pageant, Naomi is convinced that something terrible is going to happen, “I’m worried.  What’s going to happen?  Are they going to get Kermit?”  Again, this would be appropriate for a scary movie, but Naomi is not familiar with movie genres, so assuring her that it’s a comedy goes nowhere. 

Then there’s Hannah, who has turned it into a tear-jerker.  “Mama, I don’t think you should have shown me this movie.  I’m too sad for the monster who wanted to go to Hollywood and got left behind.”

Simeon, on the other hand, is Kermit the Frog.  He spent the few minutes between the end of our movie time (we didn’t watch the whole thing, just 45 minutes) and lights out reminding us, “I’m not Sim, I’m Kermit.” 

“Okay, Kermit, get in here and brush your teeth.”

At least he likes the movie.

Math

tends to be Hannah’s least favorite subject.  This is too bad, because she’s really good at it.  One of her math problems yesterday was to divide a rectangle in half two different ways and find the perimeters of the halves.  She did this in her head, even though it involved adding fractions, and she got the right answer for both of the perimeters.  In about 30-60 seconds for each of the problems. 

Hannah likes to deny that any math that she likes doing is actually math.  Geometry, graphs, word problems (!), and money all fall into this category.  “Well, that’s not really math.”  I sometimes have the feeling that she uses the term “math” to mean, “schoolwork I don’t like to do.”

Whoa!

I’m not mentioning any names, but someone doesn’t look like a newborn any more. 

Tess is cute

…in case you needed reassurance.  And here’s proof: