Fall Stuff

I thought this chalk drawing Arabelle did on the flagstones in our yard was quite beautiful.


And here's Charlotte's:

I don't do much decorating for Halloween, but I love my crows:

Arabelle and Charlotte wanted pictures taken too:

Arabelle continues to be very interested in Baby Rowan.  He has definitely replaced Elsie in her affections:

Rowan at 7 months

 At 7 months, Rowan continues to be the smiliest of all my babies.  However, if he isn't receiving attention, or, for example, is left to play by himself on the carpet, he is usually screaming within minutes.  It really does seem like he is either smiling or crying.  Whenever I am carrying him  and there are people behind him, he starts smiling at them and I always hear the people remarking how cute he is and what a big smile he has.  

He has been through quite a lot in his short life:  I have lost count of how many hearing tests he has been subjected to, and he has been under general anesthesia twice:  once at 5 months for the hypospadias correction, and once a few weeks ago to get tubes in his ears.  We were hoping the tubes would help his hearing but that didn't turn out to be the case.

He has 4 teeth--two on the bottom and two on the top, and they are very sharp, beaver style.  I have bite marks on both hands and on my left shoulder and arm. I will be holding him, and without warning, he will suddenly sink his sharp little teeth into my arm.

He still wakes up at least every hour at night, so there will probably have to be a time of reckoning where I make him cry it out, but how can I do that to this little face?

We like the nickname Mommy Nick coined for him, "Fat Little Smiler":

As you can see, he is sitting up, and he is crawling army style.  He continues to scream whenever he is in his car seat, for as long as he is in his car seat (the car certainly does not make him fall asleep as it has my other kids), so I limit my outings to doctor's visits.  I have been enjoying getting all my groceries and supplies via the internet.

Charlotte Soccer

Even though I was dreading having 3 kids in soccer at the same time, I decided to have Charlotte start Little Strikers because it's such a fun program.  It is just once a week for an hour, and they have fun drills and games just to get the kids used to handling the ball and not using their hands.  It is just for 3-4 year olds, and all of my kids have done it and loved it.  It is also fun because it feels like half the town is there at the practices and the older kids can come and play with the other kids that are around.  It in fact reminds me of the ball field of my youth, where I remember going and spending entire days, without actually watching any ballgames--there were piles of sand, there were rocks, there was walking back and forth between the boys' and girls' fields, there were concession treats---

Anyway, the point of this post is mainly to record Charlotte's epic experience at Little Strikers.  The last day of the program, they had a "scrimmage" game, where they divided up the kids into 2 teams, putting giant yellow jerseys to distinguish them.  

Here's what happened:

The ball was on the other teams side of the field.  It was in fact so far actually right beside the line at that end of the field, inches from being "out".  Charlotte was in a mob of tiny children, somehow she managed to get herself behind the ball, she saved it from going out.  Then she proceeded to carefully dribble the ball, weaving among the throng of players.  They were all small, but she was certainly one of the tiniest.  The mob continued down the field, with Charlotte in the center, carefully commanding the ball.  They approached her team's goal.  I almost looked away because I figured there was zero chance that Charlotte could actually make a goal with all those kids in her way.  But then...I saw it...she positioned herself, she kicked, and the ball went in!  Charlotte turned and raised both her hands in the air.  We hear her piping voice exclaim, "I scorwed!"  And the crowd claps and laughs at how cute she is.  

In several seasons of soccer, she is my only child to yet score a goal, and it was epic.

Arabelle Soccer

Arabelle had a pretty good soccer year.  She is the opposite of Jeffrey and enjoys the practices but not the games.  John tried to get some action shots of her, but this is pretty representative of what happens in the games:

She's playing "defense"

And then this happened (and John captured it very well on film):

Arabelle finally tried to got after the ball, but the other defense player got in front of her.

As I found out later, Arabelle got very upset that the other teammate was "doing all the work".

It turned into quite the melt down, and I told her if she didn't stop crying we were going to have to leave and she wouldn't get the snack (distributed after each game).  I told her it was her job to go after the ball, and finally she chose to calm down and get back in the game.  It turned into a great life lesson because it turned out to be her best game ever.  Unfortunately we didn't get any additional pictures, but she went after the ball and was a valuable, contributing player.  The coach even told her it was the best he had seen her play!

Jeffrey Soccer

Jeffrey has improved a lot in soccer this year.  He enjoys the games but complains every time he has to go to practice, so I'm not sure how many more seasons I'll make him continue at it.  Of course he is a very homebody kid, and would probably never choose to actually leave the house if it were up to him.

He didn't make any goals this year, but he had some assists that led to a goal for the team.  Here is some evidence that he got some good ball action in this year:

Daily Life

 I'm afraid that Charlotte is already quite the awkward picture taker:

Me:  Time to go to the bathroom.
Charlotte: I already did!
Me:  Well, you still need to go just one more time because we're about to leave and go somewhere.
Charlotte:  I already did go just one more time!
(I physically pick Charlotte up and carry her to the bathroom)
Charlotte (wailing): But I'll die if I go potty!

Arabelle loves teaching school to Charlotte and was excited that an additional 3-year old pupil randomly wandered into the house:

 And Arabelle and Charlotte played some more Chopped--  (I tried to get them to make something they would actually eat--basket items were apple slices, cinnamon, and sugar)  This is what they came up with:

September

Charlotte is off to church!

Turning the play room into a bedroom was really quite a big remodel.  I imagined how big it would be--how much work, how long it would take which is why I had been putting John off the idea for years (he suggested doing this a couple years ago when we first began running out of bedroom space).  Alas, even knowing how hard it would be, not physically being able to get a bed and dresser into the rooms upstairs for each kid, I knew it needed to be done.  John was willing to do the work as it would buy us a couple more years in this house, because I had been threatening to move summer of 2016 and he doesn't want to leave his shop, understandably.

We removed the gigantic hearth and the ancient, messy, and completely broken gas fireplace/stove.

John insisted on removing old boards and splicing in new ones so that our beautiful new floors wouldn't have an obviously patched look:

We also had to make way for a large armoire/closet here, so we had to rip out the built in shelving unit.  It was really hard for me to make that call because it was a nice shelving unit, and it would require additional patching of the floor.  If this didn't happen however, I knew we would have to keep hanging up the kids clothes upstairs in the one closet that is up there, and I felt there was no point in making this happen unless I could create a sufficiently practical bedroom space.  Behind the built-in shelves the previous remodelers had not bothered putting sheetrock, so we had to rip out this paneling and John had to patch with sheetrock.

And Rowan is 6 months old!

He has the best smile of any of my babies;

Arabelle really enjoys doing chores the first time in her life that she has ever done them.  Sadly after the first time she is bored of them and nothing can entice/threaten her into doing it again.

Jeffrey has been getting into earning/saving money lately.  He lost his 8th tooth and tried to negotiate for $15 from the tooth fairy.

Arabelle called this a "talking dog", strange thing is I an kind of see it:

Charlotte's creation is on the left: