Happiness is found in books!

Hannah has been stalking the mail and deliveries lately waiting for these Fairy books by Andrew Lang.  If you are not familiar with them, there are a ton of them and they are filled with old fairy tales from all over.  The girls love them.  We just had two, and Hannah has been begging for them for months now.  Since I can barely go to the library often enough to keep up with her reading habit, I relented and got some really good deals on Amazon for them as it turned out.  Hopefully, this will keep her busy for a while.  When I brought the box in she was bouncing around waiting for me to open it.  When I did and took this picture, she quickly took the stack to her room to read for several hours.  Gotta love that!

Genna's Morse Code

Genna has developed her own way of communicating with Tad.  She uses her fingers and taps out a coded message to the baby on my tummy.  So adorable!  I love it, and it makes me laugh every time!

I usually don't get informed what the special messages mean.

So this pregnancy is flying by.  I have my big ultrasound on Wednesday if you can believe it!  If it weren't for my painful varicosities in my left leg, I would be really upset that it is going so fast because I love being pregnant for the most part.  I have felt this baby move so much earlier (at 15 weeks) than any other pregnancy, but it is just occasionally that I notice it so far.  One reason it is going so fast is that if my leg isn't hurting, I forget I am even pregnant.  My belly is certainly growing, but it is still small enough that I am not bumping into things and needing a crane to turn over in the middle of the night.  Somehow Tad is the size of an onion and my belly is the size of a small watermelon.  It's a mystery.

I have been craving all things lemon (mostly lemonade and lemon Italian ices,) oranges, jalapenos, and other spicy stuff.  I made a big thing of spicy chex mix and most days for lunch I eat it with a fruit and a wrap with meat, cheese, celery, relish, and carrots, smothered in Frank's Buffalo Hot Wing sauce.  I get a lemonade everywhere we go, and I eat an Italian ice every night when the kids are in bed.  I have eaten literally bags of oranges since getting pregnant since Brian bought my 5 bags of Cara Cara oranges when I sent him to get me "a lot of oranges."  :)  At least I seem to be craving healthy-ish foods.  The problem is I am drinking too much sugar with all the lemonade.

Long Overdue Blanket Time

Last week I finally got my act together and started Drew on "Blanket Time."  I guess because he is number four, I feel like he gets way more leeway than the rest did at this age.  So I anticipated him being difficult with this, but he wasn't.  We started with 5 minutes and he only got off twice.  When he did, I told him, "No, get back on the blanket" and he immediately turned around and obeyed me.  So I upped it to 10 minutes the next time since 5 minutes seemed to be too easy for him and he was almost disappointed when I put the toys and blanket away in the bucket for the next time.  He didn't get off one time during the 10 minutes.

The keys to the success of this, in my opinion are a timer so they know when they can get off and special toys that they don't play with everyday.  Keep the toys up and away so they are "new" to the child.  The benefits are discipline practice, learning to have a longer attention span, learning to play alone, and it gives mom time to get things accomplished.

Trust Fall Boo Boo

So Brian showed me this video on Youtube, and I couldn't stop laughing.  Go watch it!  It's hilarious.  Brian insisted this would be Genevieve for sure!  He decided to test it out (without me much to my disappointment!) and set it up just like in this video, where he stood behind Genna and told her he would catch her if she closed her eyes and fell.  She totally fell forwards onto the floor.  What a nut!

The Supposed Snowmageddon

This was all on Wednesday, but I seem to be dropping the ball on posting lately.  As you can see, the 6-10 inches of snow that was supposed to hit the DC area didn't quite accumulate since the temperature was hovering 2 degrees above freezing.  But Daddy got to stay home from work and the kids got to play and have fun in the snow, so that is all that matters.

We did the bulk of our lessons in the morning early so we could get outside and play.

This is before he took quite the fall in the mud and hit his face (right above his eye, near his nose) on the edge of the bricks around the tree (pictured in background.)  It didn't look so bad at first, but it left a bad mark.  Poor guy!  He even cried for a second, so you know it hurt.  :)  My tough guy was done with the snow at that point, but had a blast while we visited the neighbors for the rest of the morning.

Here's an "after the fall" picture.  I guess it wasn't that bad after all, but a couple of centimeters to the right or left and it could have been much worse.

Our Newest Addition

 Bye bye, keyboard!  Hello, piano!

Our newest addition is an upright piano! 

Isaac can't wait to start learning to play too.

It took some serious measuring to find the perfect spot for it, but it was given to us.  We only had to pay for it to be moved.  Brian didn't want it to crowd our main living areas since our house is kind of broken up and not a wide open space.  I was afraid of crowding us in the school room, but in the end I think it does fit best down in the school room.  I just had to shift a few things around.

A Fun Punishment

Isaac is always telling me I have the worst punishments ever, as if they are supposed to be wonderful.  Finally, he got one he liked.  Daddy came up with this idea, and I implemented it one evening while cooking dinner and getting fed up with the mutual pestering.

It may be hard to tell, but they are both inside one of daddy's shirts.

This is similar to the old "tummy touch" punishment I used on the girls in the past, but Hannah seemed to enjoy this one so much more.  It worked like a charm.  No more pestering the rest of the day.  I'll be bringing this out again for sure.