Had a nice evening together with my parents. I made Latkes, proved myself wrong when I said this morning, I can’t hold a baby and fry things at the same time (safely).

Here’s where Ewan was while I cooked. The foreground is my shoulder. I took this picture.

And if you could be so kind as to merge the next two photos in your head since I’m not quite talented to do it on screen, you’ll get a picture with everyone looking! Because that was the only photo that had Ewan looking at the camera.

I made out like a bandit with a new lens! A nifty fifty that opens all the way to 1.4!

The girls had a great time playing driedel, opening their gifts and eating fried foods. Celia trounced us in a game of Sequence for kids. Gotta get Josie to slow down and actually play Blokus with me sometime by the rules. And I got them all shirts with their names embroidered on it, for fun, and to help my grandmother  with Alzheimers maybe remember who is who.

Now that Josie can read she’s starting to enjoy word searches, and playing a cooperative game of boggle.

Is it odd that we make paper turkeys for thanksgiving even though we’re vegetarian? It’s such a tradition. We’ve made placements with leaves for feathers this year and sun-catchers as seen below.

Getting out the door takes a while these days now. Here’s us on an attempt to go to Quebrada last weekend. We haven’t felt well enough to go this weekend yet. Still not eating regularly, Celia is barely eating at all. Lots of soup and crackers for us and plain food.

Now that the leaves are gone, and the sun is low, but not too low yet, the cats are having daily fights in the living room. What over? the sun spot on the rug. It moves but man is it coveted. They fight several times each morning over who gets the one on the rug. Even though it’s big enough for two generally, and there are other spots, just on the hard wood floor.

No one wins, because they fight by kicking each other in the face while grabbing their opponents bellies, or biting their necks. That isn’t cool and we stop it and they run away.

Here’s three of my babies too. They need their own toys!

Fred in the castle, made out of a washing machine box my neighbor conveniently had delivered.

Mio under the baby gym which is on top of the castle.

And George, sleeping on the Boppy which is a nursing pillow for those who aren’t familiar. We use it to give Ewan the support to prop himself up just enough to sit up alone.

And as I’m done writing this, Fred has joined Mio at the gym, but while he might need it, doesn’t look like he’s working out. Ezzy also likes to play with the gym too on the floor batting at the toys.

All is well today at Ewan’s 4 month checkup. He weighed in at 13 lbs 11 oz! Gaining almost 3 lbs in the last two months and 1.5 inches in length to be 25.5 inches long now!

Josie: “This is her throwing up bag”

Celia: “No this is hers, she already threw up in it.”

Josie: “Ok now we can put it in the trash and put her over here.”

Boo stomach bugs. This one is short lived at least.

We keep spinning around that sun and lately it seems like it’s going faster and faster. Josie is now five and a half, it even took me a few days to remind her of it. That half is really important to kids this age, even the quarters. Her biggest change since being 5.25 has been starting Kindergarten. She generally likes to go  to school and only occasionally wants to stay home. I do think she’d prefer it didn’t start so early in the morning though. She’s always got some plans for what she’d like to be doing other than getting dressed or eating breakfast before walking to school.

Her favorite things about school are choice time and playing with her friends. Choice time is a free play time when she gets to pick what she does, puzzles, games and art projects. They generally have some every day, but sometimes it’s shorter or longer depending on how well they’ve gotten the rest of their work done. She’s not overly fond of gym or music, but she likes art and library special classes. She does a lot of writing each day in class, usually ‘facts’ as presented by the teacher. Right now they’re reading a book that takes place in Eygpt (the Magic Tree House Series) so they’ve made props and learned about the times of ancient Eygpt. The teacher reads the books to them, but Josie can read the books herself now too at almost full speed out loud. Her reading is just amazing and keeps getting better and better.

At home Josie is a big fan of playing pretend and bossing her sister around for real in that pretend game. We have to work on a lot of negotiation skills for everyone. She loves to coo at Ewan and sing to him still. He absolutely lights up with joy when she pays attention to him. He makes lots of noises to get her attention.

We’ve just started up gymnastics again after a break to let her adjust to school and she’s enjoying that. Had a bit of a back slide in progress from not doing it for a few months but she’s picking it up again quickly.

She regularly picks up the books around and reads and enjoys us reading to her as well. Her favorite is reading things we write on the white board, or signs around town, things that she wouldn’t have been able to pick up before. She also loves to paint at home and make up her own projects. We’ve been very limited in time for that as she’s been in school and it’s hard to make a big mess and still keep Ewan entertained, but she loves to paint each week and does lots of coloring and drawing.

One thing they work on in school is dramatizing stories. They started with fairy tales and now have moved onto the Magic Tree House series. Josie loves to bring the stories home and act them out again with us. We built sets and props out of dolls and magnatiles and acted out the stories with the puppets she made at school.

She is struggling right now with remaining calm and cool when things aren’t going her way. Her patience and self control seem to be used up at school. So we keep trying to help her with that and not get our heads bit off. I love how busy she is now a days though, always has ideas for what to do, even if they perhaps need to be thought through a bit more still. Like today she wanted to make a wallet out of paper for Celia and she asks for tape to ‘make a wallet’ showing me a square on a piece of paper. She struggled to explain her whole idea to me, as I don’t think she had planned beyond the initial cut.

She is still a generous soul at heart, some days she just is in dire need of a nap she won’t take to find that part of herself again. She gives lots of hugs and tugs but is starting to grow up from the idea of sitting in our laps so much or cuddling at bed. So I grab them when I can.

• Size/weight: 6 and 7′s, 50 lbs, 46.25″ tall
• Favorite foods: cheese, pasta, dessert
• Favorite toy: dress up and dolls
• Favorite book: Magic tree house stories
• Favorite activity: playing pretend
• Sleeping: bedtime ~7:40; gets up about 6:30
• New skill: going to school!
• Teeth: holding steady with all 20, new ones causing grief
• Literacy: reading over our shoulders and on signs, can read the magic tree house books – chapter books herself