May!

A lot has happened in the past month.  It's FINALLY spring, after having our last snow on May 2, 3, and 4. Emily keeps asking me when summer will get here and I've had to tell her that spring has to come first!!

So, the biggest thing was that our house was broken in to again.  When Travis was in Luxembourg for a week, and i had the stomach flu, I decided that I'd take the kids to Target to pick up a few things.  It was incredibly bad timing, because as I was leaving, I saw a group of 6 black teenagers across the street, complete with baggy pants and hooded sweatshirts.  I told myself not to be prejudiced, they're just bored kids, and went to the store.  Meanwhile, they came into the backyard, noticed the back door was unlocked, and helped themselves to my brand new iphone that i had left charging on the counter, and my laptop, digital cameras, and Emily's backpack to carry it all in.  Plus some oatmeal cream pies and granola bars.  They did not take a bag of change (what kind of dumb burglar doesn't take a bag of money?!), and they weren't able to find anything stashed under my mattress upstairs (who does that, really?).  The cops saw these kids shortly afterwards, but they had stashed all the stuff in a neighbor's garbage bin, and so without having anything on their persons, they couldn't hold them.  They did bring them in for interviews later, and two of the kids admitted to it, and said they came back for the things in the trash bins later, so it's long gone.  So that was totally sucky.  I am writing this post from our old laptop, which we had upgraded from back in November, and I am reminded of why we replaced it, because it's hot, noisy, heavy, and hard to type on.

Clara has changed tremendously in the past month.  She understands more and more of the things we talk to her about, and she is a really, really good eater!  I generally make three plates of food with equal amounts on it, and Clara eats almost as much as Emily but definitely more than Audrey.  It's amazing!  we're down to one nursing a day, at nighttime, since she refused her morning and then her afternoon nursing sessions, just didn't care to dive in.  I'm so sad my last little baby is almost done!  I am trying to hold back from calling her Baby so much... but I love calling her that.  Such mixed emotions!  She is also getting pretty good at standing up on her own, balancing for quite a while, especially if she is engrossed in what she's holding, not thinking about how hard it is to stand up.  She's very vocal and increasingly opinionated, especially when her sisters are assaulting her with love.  And she is very much attached to me!  What a mama's girl!!  She likes her dad just fine, but she has strong opinions about where I should be... how dare I run downstairs to grab something from the freezer!! Or shut the bathroom door for a minute!!  She scolds me pretty good, and I just laugh at her. :)

Emily is almost done with preschool!  Her class invited all the moms in for a mother's day "tea" on thursday this week, and it was so very, very fun.  Emily was so excited, and acted so grown up.  she offered me the chair at the table, and then offered to pour me some lemonade.  We frosted cookies together, admired the lovely "vase" that she had decorated (a water bottle with bits of colored scrap bits glued to it :) ).  Then we held hands walking to the car and drove home together.  It was lovely!  Then when we got home, Audrey had a surprise for me too.  Amanda had spent the week working on a project for mother's day with the girls!  It's a canvas totebag that she helped them decorate with puffy paint - their handprints in a flower on one side, and the girls decorating a letter of MOM on the other side.  It was so cool!  I know mother's day isn't even until tomorrow, but I'm already content, I'd say!  Back to Emily... she and I have been reading more chapter books recently, including Little House on the Prairie (again) and Betsy-Tacy.  It's crazy to think she's old enough for this stuff yet, but she really enjoys it!  It won't be long before she dives right into them herself, I think.  she's pretty excited for Kindergarten.  She participated in their "visit" day, which was really just a way to get the kids into the building and entertain them for a few minutes while they told the parents some information about what to expect.

Audrey sounded out the word "tree" yesterday.  And she's been listening to her Wee Sing cassette tapes in the basement, seriously studying the songs and memorizing them.  It's crazy how many songs she and emily know the words to now, although their interpretations of the words are funny. "Goom-bye-yarn, my love, Goom-bye-yarn,  Oh Loh, Goom-bye-yarn."  that's gotta be my favorite, but there are lots more.  They can sing Shenandoah all the way through... these are not easy songs!  So fun.

I should go get in the shower now while I have the chance.  I doubt Clara will be napping in the morning much longer, as she has started experimenting with fighting it off once in a while.  I'll admit, it will be a relief in some ways, that we can go out and do stuff in the mornings and not be so tied to the house, and then have maybe a longer respite in the afternoon.  She only naps 45 min in the morning and 90 minutes in the afternoon if I'm extremely lucky.  She's sleeping through the night well now, though, thanks to her piggy nature at suppertime.  So, no complaints there!!