I don’t always understand what’s going on

Sim:  Where’s the rubber cement, Mama?

Me:  We don’t have any rubber cement.  [And if we did, I would not hand it over to my three-year-old son, either, but I didn’t feel it was necessary to explain that.]

Sim:  Hmm.  I guess I don’t need a wig.

Me:  ?

Warming the cockles of our hearts

Hannah:  Naomi, what’s your favorite thing in the whole world?

Naomi:  [pauses for a moment]  God.

Even-handed baby

How often does someone describe a baby as even-handed?  Well, Tess figured it out:  she signed “Daddy” first, but is saying “Mama” first!  She started signing “Daddy” over the weekend, and started saying “Mama” yesterday while we were on a walk.  And really, both are totally cute. 

One more reason to be glad we’re teaching her sign language. 

Wepping

This morning, Simeon asked me, “Mom, what’s wepping?”

I was completely in the dark.  I don’t know what wepping is.

Hannah, though, figured it out.  I had just sung a song that had the line, “We lay down and wept,” in it.  So Sim figured that the present tense of “wept” was “wep,” and wanted to know what wepping was. 

Hear this!

Simeon likes to have people listen to him – well, most people do, of course – and his way of ensuring that you’re listening is pretty cute.  Instead of saying, “Listen to me!” or, “Listen to this!”  He says:  “Hear this, Mama, hear this!”

Tess

Time flies, and I’ve found that it flies faster with Baby #4 than it did with the others.  So I’m overdue on catching everyone up on Tessie and her accomplishments.

While we were in Baltimore, Tess learned to wave.  This was pretty funny, because her first wave was to complete strangers in a restaurant.  Michael and I were out to eat with my sister and brother-in-law, and we had only Tess along (the other kids were with a sitter at home).  Tess was sitting in a high chair, working the crowd.  I looked over at her and she was smiling and waving across the room – her very first wave!  I looked to see who was the wave recipient, and it was a whole table full of adults, all goofily smiling and waving at Tess.  She’s just that cute!  Now she will wave at strangers, but not at her family.  Not sure why.

Tess also learned to clap.  Once her older siblings learned to clap, they suddenly realized that they could do other planned motions with their hands, too, and began signing.  Tess is no different – she’s started signing now.  It’s very exciting.  She will often sign something once or twice and then not sign it for a week or two, then start up again.  And sometimes her signs look quite a bit like clapping, but you can tell she’s signing something else that you were just talking about.  So we’ve seen her sign “potty,” “dada,” “Jesus,” “book,” “bunny,” “car,” and “nurse.”  There are more, too, but I can’t remember all of them.  I’m having to remember signs for babies and remember to do them for her. 

She’s also gotten into her pincer grip, which is so useful for so many things, like playing with toys, eating food, eating little pieces of lint off the carpet, and pinching tiny little pieces of her mother’s skin. 

She LOVES her family.  When I bring her downstairs in the morning or after a nap, her sunniest smiles are for her siblings.  She has started reaching out to Michael and Hannah to pick her up – even sometimes when Mama is holding her, which is new – before she would tolerate others, even have fun with them, but she never reached for anyone but Mama.  Hannah was thrilled the first time it happened.

Sim loves to play with Tess.  (Okay, all the kids do, but I’m going to talk about Sim right now.)  He loves to do peek-a-boo games with her, and her baby laughs are just darling.

She’s a sweet little baby, for sure!

New Phrases

Simeon learned the phrase “in the soup,” meaning in trouble, from a book we got at the library.  He has spent about 1/2 hour of playing with Naomi making all of his characters talk about being in the soup up to their eyeballs.  Not sure exactly why, but that doesn’t seem to be important. 

More on strawberries

We went picking again Wednesday – a good first day of summer outing.  I got 7 1/2, Hannah got 8 1/2, Naomi got 2, and Sim got 1/2 pound.  (Sim’s measure doesn’t reflect the ones he ate.)

Naomi’s berries from last time, frozen.  May I add that Naomi washed and hulled them herself?

Mmmm.

Mmmmmmmm.

Jam in the making.  After last week’s picking, we made 5 recipes – Hannah made Strawberry Butter and Strawberry Syrup.

Cute baby.  She can’t eat strawberries yet.

But she’s still REALLY REALLY cute.

Hannah loves making stuff – crafts, food, gardens, you name it!

Here we are on the way to our second day of picking.  I brought the camera along.  These shots are from when we were sitting at a red light.

Pictures of the baby, sitting backwards right behind the driver’s seat, don’t come out very well when it’s the driver who’s trying to take the pictures.

Sim fell asleep on the way there.

And once we got there, I got some good pictures of the baby.

But that was it.  I didn’t take any while we were picking.  Perhaps because I had the baby on my back?  At any rate, it was a gorgeous day, about 72 degrees, light breeze, blue sky.  You can picture it to yourself, right?

Maybe we’ll have to go again next week to get some more berries.  And some pictures. 

A box came in the mail!

Thanks, Grandma Ellie & Grandpa Larry!

Warning:  FAR more pictures of the baby than of any other child.  But none of the others tried to eat the contents of the package, so I’ll use that as my excuse.  Plus, they all had tons of pictures taken of them when they were tiny, too. 

Having distracted Tess with a turtle, I was able to get some pictures of her with the headband on.  Not for long, but long enough!

The wedding dresses are a big hit!

Sim can’t wait for Dad to get home to help him with the airplane.

Hannah’s verdict:  Lacy, beautiful, and when she wears it, she looks like a dream.

Strawberry time!

22 1/2 pounds picked today, 8 1/2 picked by Hannah and some by Naomi (hers weren’t separated, so we don’t know an exact amount).  Sim picked many, but ate all of his before weighing (which is fine with the farmers – and with Sim).  Tess picked some leaves from her pack on my back – have you ever tried to get a leaf away from a baby in an Ergo on your back?  Not easy, but I didn’t really want her eating strawberry leaves.  No pictures from picking, but we’ll probably have some from processing them soon!

Baby

The first set of pictures is from the Weaponry and Armaments for Baby™ new line of toys.  Okay, not really, but somehow Tess got her hands on Simeon’s knight sword. 

And now, for a more appropriate-for-baby toy series:

I love the look of concentration!