Camera still broken, really low quality this week. But funny story to go with it at least!

Ewan has been working on using the potty these days when I’ll let him. Clear difference between child #1 and child #3, I was leaning on #1 to use the toilet, #3 has to yell at me to let him use the toilet because I’m sick of sitting in the bathroom waiting through it all 8 times a day. I’ve got stuff to do man! Here in this picture he’s decided that BeBe (he pronounces it bay-bay, meaning baby in spanish), his doll sitting naked on the couch is using the ‘toilet’. The ‘toilet’ being the globe. Then he tells us that his doll pooped, so we’re all giggling about how BeBe has pooped on the world.

Josie had been reading a Fancy Nancy book to Celia, Ewan had been carrying his baby in the baby carrier that is attached to his waist.

Again, big camera is broken. 🙁 Someone under 2 may have yanked it onto the floor and now the shutter and focus won’t work properly. But I caught a single shot of their team work striving to pop this old balloon. It didn’t end up working, but they had fun trying.

Getting ready for bed tonight, Josie using mouthwash, Mio seeking some attention, Celia and Ewan in the bath taking a short break to see what I’m doing. Somehow we all make it work in our tiny bathroom.

Now that Celia is 4.5 and showing signs of interest and readiness, I’ve started giving her reading lessons a few times a week. She was really fighting me on reviewing letter sounds, so I decided that she was just really bored with doing individual letters again and again because she already knew them, and so we skipped ahead to real words and she’s no longer disinterested. I keep it short, but this day, Josie decided she wanted to make up her own phrases for Celia to read for her using some of our words. Plus she likes to use the white board. Celia indeed could read it for her.

We’ve had a great spurt of gorgeous weather lately and have spent tons of time outside. Josie got her new bike for her birthday last week and so with the hand-me-downs everyone’s got their own new bike! We do a lot of biking around on the driveway (and the nicer driveway next door). It will be really nice to get the driveway fixed, hopefully later this year. Celia took less than a week to learn to transition from the balance bike to a full-on two wheeler. Josie picked up using her hand brake at the same time. Ewan has now moved on to sitting on the balance bike instead of just walking along with it in-between his legs, he’ll be off to the races pretty soon too! He is over the moon to ride along with the girls and even enjoyed a trip in the trailer (squished in with Celia) behind my bike over the weekend as well.

To celebrate Josie’s birthday she chose to send our family packing to the Cape codder resort as we have done every year since she was born. This time we took my parents along. I’ve got lots more pictures to share, but here’s the classic setup at the wave pool before swimming on Saturday morning.

On Sunday morning on the way to Quebrada for breakfast. No more winter coats yeah!

Monday morning we went with Jordi’s brother and his girlfriend Bruna to the Stone Zoo to enjoy some animal peeping! Celia’s favorite animals are always the river otters and that particular morning they were very active, wrestling, swimming and moving all around. My favorite part of the photo though is that Celia and Josie are holding hands, and Ewan’s got his stick. Mostly Ewan enjoyed playing with various sticks, having lots of room to run around, and identifying various animals as ‘cats’ or ‘dogs’. Josie and Celia watched the otters for a long time.

Celia has started to learn how to read as she knows most of her letter sounds now and she’s starting to be able to put it together with help. She also likes to hold her own storytime at home now for her captive audience (Ewan) who is very appreciative of anyone who reads ‘Birthday For Cow’. For now she’s memorized it, but she’s starting to show us signs that she’s understanding all the letters around her! Ewan wants this book read multiple times a day. The book tells the story of making a cake (without turnips) and so all I want at the end of the story is some cake. The moral of the story is to think about what the person really wants for their birthday though (turnips in this case), but I really just think we all want some cake.

Fridays at our local library we have storytime which we do attend once in a while. Ewan is finally old enough to sit and listen to a few stories, and Josie still loves to be read to and smartly answer all the librarian’s questions along with the craft. This weeks theme was wind and they made paper bag kites!

[photos taken with android phone]

This was on the way to the library, just a few moments before Ewan fell face first flat in the puddle. Note he’s wearing different pants in the above puddle because I had to buy him new ones at the thrift store as his other pants (and socks) were soaked.