Hello 2010!

I made it a year! I admit my last several posts of 2009 are still in the draft mode but I will finish them here soon. It is great to look back over my posts from last year and see how the kids have grown.

This year will be exciting, well that is what I keep telling myself. For the first time, Brian won't be staying at home with the kids full time. He will doing his student teaching semester that he put off doing a year ago due our finances. Thankfully, my mom will be watching the kids during this short time frame since it would near impossible to find a day care to only take them for that time or someone to watch them during that time. We are so thankful for her doing this already and it hasn't even started yet.

Grace is still loving school. She was really excited school started back up this week. Brian has started to work on some crafts with her (a snake and a mask) and she loves them. She does get very upset if Sophie "breaks" her crafts though!

Sophie is flirting with wanting to potty train but isn't committed to the cause yet. She is a full blown two year old with the attitude and tantrums to go with it. Some days we want to send her back and get our 1 year old back. Sophie loves Matthew and is a really good big sister to him when she shoves his pacifier back into his mouth!=P

Matthew is a growing boy. He is 5 and half months and is fitting in his 12 month clothes perfectly. I have learned that when this happens he has a few more weeks left in them. It is a good thing I have a stash of 18 month clothes already. He is doing good with his eating oatmeal. That is he is doing good if Brian feeds him. He still won't eat much of it for me which is expected. Brian told me the other day that Matthew will eat us out of house and home if he keeps up his levels of eating.

A family moment: The girls, Brian, and I had a game time for the first time the other day. We played Hi Ho! Cherry-o. Sophie didn't fully get it but enjoyed it. Grace will run around asking to play the "cherry game". We are looking for to more family game nights as they get older!

An Angel, A Baby, and A Two Year Old

A red angel - Grace had her Christmas play at preschool recently. I missed it due to my pesky gallbladder but Brian was able to record it. Of course in typical Grace fashion, she refused to put on her costume. She was to be an angel and wear a white robe. I guess I told her too much before they left how pretty her red dress was that she was wearing. She didn't want to cover up her dress with the costume so Grace was the red angel in the middle of the pack of angels. That's my Grace! (At least, she wasn't the one who shouted out they needed to go potty in the middle of the play! Take what you can get, right?=P)

A baby moment - With three kids, we had to hit the odds, right? Matthew has become our pacifier baby. This is probably good for his sake as he was really hurting his hand by sucking on it. At first, I only found pink and purple pacifiers but I did scrounge up a green one finally! He is happy sucking it but gets upset when he spits it out. I am not liking this spit it out, get upset game much. The girls are thumb suckers and the ONLY good thing about that is they don't lose their thumb. I am hoping this is a short lived habit for him but I guess time will tell.

Two at last - Sophie turned 2 on December 11th. At times, it was hard for us to remember she wasn't even two yet. She did so much so early because of her big sister leading the way for her. Sophie can run really fast. She completely runs like a girl but that is OK because she is a girl!;) She talks in complete sentences. She eats just about thing you give her. She listens really well and tries her best to help when you ask her to do something like throw something away or get a tissue. At the same time, we now have another two year old. No matter how far along she is in everything else, she is two and it is starting to show! Happy Birthday, my Sophie!