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| Last Friday the boys all had school off...so we went to the indoor tropical gardens at the Como Zoo in St.Paul. Mmmm...and though I would go much slower through these gardens...and sit for awhile and look longer and breathe a little deeper, I was very thankful to be there with my four children...and let them wear short sleeves and no coats and pretend that summer had come. |
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| This morning Dietrich, Lincoln and Thea Belle spent much time taking care of babies. Thea Belle has her "little baby" and the two boys adopted enthusiastically the "big baby". She ate lunch between the two of them. Part way through lunch she finished her bottle of milk and lunch of plastic peas and was getting rather fussy. Dietrich cleared away her food and found her a toy of plastic keys. I asked them which of them were the daddy and he said that neither of them were. That actually, the baby's parents had both died. And that her grandpa was 50 years old. And her grandma was 57. Therefore, they were much, much too old to take care of a baby. In fact, the grandparents lived in a house where nurses take care of very old people. But that once a week Dietrich and Lincoln take the baby to visit her grandparents. Lincoln also added that the baby knows how to count to 13 and knows that another name for the Ten Commandments is The Decalogue. Oh, and he added excitedly, she also knows that the three offices of Christ are Prophet, Priest and King (can you tell what part of the Westminster Catechism we are working on?) |
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| I love you, Aaron...I will always wish we lived near each other. I am thankful to have grown up with you. |
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| And this is what happens when three momma friends force two-year olds to have a group shot at the end of a playdate (where the pictured two-year-olds actually mostly played by themselves and ate muffins...still...). |
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| p.s. my daughter looks like a midget...even though these three are all pretty much the same age... |
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| p.s. William Golliher (and Maxiel Joslin) have pretty much the best guy hair ever... |
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| And Rose Miller is almost as sassy-awesome as her mother... |
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| And Atticus designed (on paper), chose the fabric, and sewed half (I finished it up) of Thea Belle's skirt...cute, right? Heart pockets!! |
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| (Photo by Leah!) |
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| This what Thea Belle wore most of this morning... |
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| And this is her wearing the costume my mom made her for her first Halloween...2 months old... |
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| And this is what the boys came in as while I forced Thea Belle to have her picture taken... |
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| So the boys had a puppet show: 5 cents per ticket. |
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| And Lincoln's only role was to hit the characters with a frying pan... |
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| over.... |
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| and over... |
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| For our second winter in a row, we signed the three boys up for 10 weeks of swim lessons at Foss Swim School in St. Louis Park. Now, I know, I know, expensive!!! but hear me out: This place has fine-tuned their lessons down to a science. I mean, they are here to teach your kid to swim, period. The instructors are high-energy, on-task, non-nonsense, really like and understand kids, and are so well-trained and professional. We have tried the Y lessons and I seriously think one half-hour Foss lesson is like 6+ (45 minute) Y lessons. Part of it is that they never have more than 3 kids in a group lesson. Last winter the three boys were an entire class. This year we had to separate them because of Atticus' school schedule and because I signed them up too late. We have two weeks left and so far the younger boys have passed 3 levels!!! Yay! They can swim forward, turn and float on their back, turn again and swim forward. They also know how to jump in, turn around and swim back to the edge. (Brad takes Atticus to lessons on Tuesday evenings so I don't know where he is at though I know he can swim on his own and gaining strength and confidence.) I thought long about how to go about gettting the kids' swimming skills and it has been difficult to have four closely-spaced kids...expensive and hard to have enough grown-ups to help so the way these lessons are set up has worked for us. Our first "rule" has been to only start lessons at age 3 since it seems like that's the age where their motor skills start really kicking in (good bicycle age, good hopping on one foot age, etc.) and we would get more out of the lessons. Only driving twice a week (next year I will sign up earlier and get them all in at the same time) and having the lessons at half an hour is do-able with Thea Belle waiting on the sidelines. |
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| Thea Belle just got a new swimsuit -- I learned the hard way last year that you get swimsuits in the winter when they first come out and sales are on. She wanted so badly to try it out that we came 10 minutes early and the Foss staff let her sit with her feet in the water...and then at the end of their lesson, they let her jump in. (-: I would have gotten a photo of their teacher but this week (the week I finally remembered to take a picture) she was gone on her honeymoon (-:. |
