If you want to know how things are going, Patrick snuck $10 of his allowance money to school for a heart challenge fundraiser and I had no idea until Mr. Baldwin, the P.E. teacher, let me know that he was impressed by Patrick's donation as I was picking the kids up at the end of the day in car line. I had zero idea what he was talking about at first because I hadn't even heard of this fundraiser (there's always one going on at the school). Patrick was very proud of his sneaky powers, even after I gave him a talk about how it's nice to donate money but don't just do it for the little junky items they hand out, I can take you to the dollar store and you can buy your own junky key chain if that's what you are going for. It didn't help that his friend Cael has been offering him $10 to buy the keychain off him because Cael loves ninjas.
Patrick also brought a dollar to school every day for a couple of weeks because he was going to trade dollars with another kid. Just $1 for $1, I didn't understand it but I didn't have any fight left in me so I let him go ahead and bring his money in. The other kid never brought his dollar, Patrick was rather disgusted by this and finally put his dollar away at home.
I also got an email that Patrick was somehow still spending money at lunch despite lunch being free right now. He was in tears when I told him no more spending money because chocolate milk isn't included in the free items and he needs chocolate milk, it's so delicious. He isn't wrong about it being delicious so I said go ahead and get it. Oh well.
My mom gave us some mug cookies so we tested them out. Full stars! Aunt Anna had a school assignment which somehow involved calling Patrick and asking him about kindergarten thoughts on friendship and she got an earful about Mabel and how Patrick was in love and going to be married to her someday. I'd really like to see what Anna ended up turning in after this discussion.
Looking at each other through a cup. Sweet kiddos.
We had another good snow so the girls played with it in the bathroom again. But then they requested spoons and I think they mostly just sat there and ate snow together.
It was quite a cold snow, I think it was in the teens. I still sent the boys outside for a bit. They immediately stopped running around like maniacs once they got outside and just wandered around calmly. Sighhhh.
We had a cozy afternoon watching a movie. Poor Meg is a little sad that I always have a Juliet buddy during the day and she'll often come by and try to figure out if there isn't some way she could fit into my lap.
She should visit Patrick, he's all about the kitties these days.
Play dates have been trickier in the cold weather but we fit in some friend time. Bradley and Luca had a blast playing football in the snow.
And I thought Eleanor and Sully would love playing in the snow but they mostly wandered around and chatted and then told me how cold they were and wanted hot cocoa.
Inside time with some tablet time was a popular choice after this.
Juliet found our doctor kit and has been quite insistent on checking people's ears. Grandpa was the lucky recipient of her exam when he stopped by.
Juliet loves sunglasses.
We think she could do well on Broadway.
Bradley read to all the kids one night. So sweet!
More reading!
We've been playing new games with Juliet with moderate levels of success. She's very proud of her games though and yells at the other kids if they dare to touch a piece.
Park outing. We've snuck in a fair amount of these this winter, it's been very nice.
More walking backwards skills.
Although Juliet's social skills may take a little work, at least she screams a little less when other kids show up and dare to swing on her swing or play on her playground. She's coming around.
She loves it when I play with her though. As long as I don't try to help her too much.
Playtime at the park with a sweetie.
Coming home for Daddy time and cuddles.
Our wonderful neighbor Addison got the kids Christmas presents and shocker, Juliet was given something Yoda themed. She is a big fan.
She's also a big fan of stickers and the kids are happy to help her out putting them all over herself. She often decides they need stickers on them too, this they are less enthused about.
Nathan has been doing some evening exercises here and there and he always has a cheer squad when he does.
So cute!
More park time. The best!
I don't ever remember climbing a slide when I was a kid. All of my children do.
She's climbing everything now, park time is getting more and more fun for Juliet.
Every time there has been a nice day we have been pretty serious about getting in some outside time. Right now as I write this it is -6 degrees outside so I feel rather validated in my devotion to the ideal of getting the kids outside whenever possible.
Patrick: I told you I was more monkey-like than person.
More tree climbing. Juliet is so eager to join in.
We went to the Museum of Prairie Fire, which is a tougher sell these days now that Juliet knows about Wonderscope. I'll say we're going to the museum and she'll say, "Water? Caroline?" and I have to say, "No, different museum and your friend isn't coming with us." Poor Juliet. We still have a pretty good time at any museum we go to.
Here is amazing photographic proof of Juliet's love of salads. She actually like to eat the chicken and craisins from salads because they are yummier with a little salad dressing on them. She chewed on a bunch of the greens from the salad but ultimately spit them out. Ah well. Still pretty impressive! She'll start demanding salad on the car ride home from morning outings, it's rather funny.
Video proof
Basketball has started to click for Bradley and while I'm happy to see him doing well, I miss our cuddles sessions during halftime. Now he practices with his team during that time instead! Upsetting!
Fortunately he's still willing to come over and give his mom a nice hug. I'll take it!
Bradley is quite good at defense and running plays and he was very proud to be his team's MVP one game.
Huddle time!
I got to go to a Patrick basketball game and the kid made five baskets. I didn't even bother taking videos of all of them and I've stopped recording all of his game highlights because it's a lot. We were so much more casual with Bradley sports, it's weird to have a kid be the stud of his kindergarten team.
Here's Patrick's first ever basket. I got a high-five.
Second basket and another high-five. At this point I had to tell him he wasn't supposed to high-five his mom after every basket.
I don't even know what basket this one is. Kindergarten sports are my favorite to watch, they're pretty adorable out there.
The Chiefs made the playoffs and then the Super Bowl this year so we got a couple cookie cakes in order to be properly festive. Eleanor was rather pleased about this.
And she's going through this phase where she hates competitive games but she has been kind enough to at least try out new games with me. It's annoying, because she's really good at the games so she should enjoy playing them ... at least she's willing to try some out here and there and by any kind of normal standards she probably plays a ton of games, but we're not normal around here. She's playing Fairy Trails with me in the picture below.
And she loves Zombie Teenz Evolution. All the kids do, including Juliet it seems.
More Zombie Teenz. It took a while to complete all the missions, we loved playing this together.
Opening a new envelope - the most exciting aspect of the game!
Completing our final mission. We were so excited! We still play it now and then, Bradley and Eleanor have been getting it out and playing together during quiet time. I love a good game!
Football time. Patrick is such a sweetie but he's making us all a little crazy with him being stuck inside the house during the winter. I've told my parents that I think Patrick was born about 100 years too late and he would have been an amazing farm kid, so I'm trying to replicate that experience as much as possible for him by sending him outside at every possible opportunity so he can do whatever he wants and not get in trouble.
Someone had to open the dryer to get out some pants one evening and Sookie was deeply grateful for this decision. She now tries to hop in the dryer as I'm taking clothes out, we're going to have to work on training her to at least wait for the clothes to make it to the bed.
Juliet had a Yoda and Elmo themed birthday celebration and in preparation we got some Yoda decals to put up in her honor. Apparently this was very wrong and Juliet had to go yell at the beautiful stickers and say "on me!" a bunch. Stickers are supposed to go on Juliet, I can't believe I didn't anticipate this reaction.
Like her big sister, she is very handy and was a great help to Nathan as he put new batteries in our little toy lego keyboard.
Sometimes I get Juliet hugs and they are about the best thing in the whole entire world.
Juliet has started to count down when she wants someone to do something. Occasionally we still have to count down for Patrick to go to his room when he's angsty and it seems little Juliet has been paying attention. So she'll say "Bayee, come pway! 1, 8, 7, 9 ..." It works, Bradley comes in a timely fashion whenever she does this. Bradley sometimes gets dragged over to Juliet's kitchen area underneath the basketball pop a shot area in the playroom. Juliet loves are never a mellow kind of thing.
Bradley does a lot of Juliet's bidding and they both love it quite a bit.
Juliet loves rough housing with Nathan right before her afternoon nap. She likes to yell "sneak!" at him and then we run around and hide from Nathan or try to catch him and it's followed by some rough housing. So adorable.
Nathan has discovered she doesn't like being tossed in the air, she likes to hold on securely and be bounced around a bit.
More games! Bradley and Eleanor enjoyed some Princess Cupcake game time as well as 5-Minute Dungeon. Maybe Eleanor does play a fair amount of games ...
The coolest kid helps me pick up the big kids from school every day.
Talking Juliet into diaper changes remains a fun pastime. I'm probably supposed to potty train her because she knows what's going on and absolutely could if I put a little effort into it ... but I don't want to. Potty training remains my least favorite thing.
Snow play time! Eleanor cracks me up here.
Juliet loving on a lucky Layla!
Group hug time! She's our first child to be into group hugs and it's a big hit whenever she demands one.
Back to the museum. I love dressing up little girls.
This is what morning cuddles look like in our bed. Also, please note the fancy nightstands that Nathan put together from Ikea! They are technically bathroom vanity counters but regular night stands are not big enough for all the stuff we put on them so we went with the jumbo option for our bedroom. Fancy!
So - Juliet gets to sleep with siblings sometimes now. This was met with great excitement from all parties.
Older siblings begged for their opportunity to sleep next to the adorable toddler.
And it was wonderful ... at least some of the time.
Juliet quickly learned to go to sleep without too much goofing off, that wasn't the problem. It was the middle of the night when she couldn't find a pacifier and she would scream until a parent found one of the four we had left in the bed next to her and gave one to her. Also, when she wakes up at 6AM she is often disoriented and screams that the child next to her must leave the bed. We came in to Bradley hiding under the covers one morning because if she could see him she screamed at him to get out.
So she's slightly less popular now. We're hoping she'll be trained up by the time we go down to the lake lot pretty much every weekend this summer.
I found out that the preschool I wanted to send Juliet to no longer allowed kids to sign up for just one day per week when they were two and I couldn't bring myself to sign Juliet up for that extra day per week, not to mention it's significantly more expensive to do so! So I'm making an effort to actually do some arts and crafts at home with the little girl. It has been a popular development.
Although the actual painting aspect of things is perhaps not as exciting as the paintbrushes.
Finger paint was fun as well. Although it was mostly an opportunity to mush the cute sponges in paint and when she started to demand to pour out the paint from giant containers on her own I had to put everything away.
Pictures of the boys with their pinewood derby cars! Sonic the Hedgehog.
And Charmander. Patrick has been bringing this car with him everywhere, it's a miracle it's still in one piece. Sleepovers at Grandma and Grandpa's, school playground play dates, where he goes the car goes.
The cats have been very grateful for Patrick cuddles this winter. He generally has a cat on him if he reads on our bed.
And here are the Juliet birthday pictures! We celebrated one day early because Eleanor wanted to help me make the cupcakes and we thought we could have more party time on a Sunday.
I've had this ferris wheel cupcake holder since Eleanor turned one. It's still pretty great!
Juliet with her fan club showing her how to say that she's two now.
Then they used the two's as bunny ears and it was a little upsetting for a birthday girl.
Yoda plates! I love a birthday party that covers multiple themes.
She was so excited when Grandma and Grandpa showed up and gave them lots of hugs.
Group shot! My mom embroidered the Elmo pocket on Juliet's dress. She loves it and shoves all sorts of things into it, including food which can be rather exciting to find later.
Singing happy birthday to the birthday girl! She got shy and had to hug Grandma and hide.
Happy birthday to you!
Opening presents! Juliet actually ended up getting quite a few presents despite being child #4. Only five were board games ... I may need an intervention.
Good thing Juliet got lots of good help opening gifts.
So much help.
Also, we had a fun girl scout event this day! They did "heart attacks" on each other's front doors. We decorated a door too, it was very cute and fun.
Cuddles and shows. They do this during the summer too.
The kids are such good helps with Juliet. Here is Bradley helping Juliet with her cupcake wrapper on her actual birthday.
Although we discovered she prefers gummy candies to cupcakes.
Grandpa came over by mistake because he thought we were doing a library game night but it was a few days later. So he tried to leave. Foolish Grandpa. I told the kids they needed to let go, that his pants would fall down and did they want to see Grandpa's underwear?? Bradley cheerily responded, "Well, there's a first time for everything!" Lots of laughter at this.
The boys got to play dress-up with Juliet before bed one night.
She got rather hyped up and hid behind a curtain.
And Eleanor and I had a lovely time at a MOPS painting night! I'm in charge of my MOPS group now so I decided that daughters could come too and it was my best decision for the group yet. Or at least for me. We had a lot of fun.
Meanwhile, the dudes had a cozy reading night.
I got a membership to the Wonderscope Children's Musume and it has been amazing.
Juliet has barely had any experiences around groups of kids, I'm so happy the museum is open so she gets to hang out with some kids who aren't her siblings or their friends.
Cute slide in the toddler section.
She loves this little stuffed dog and its doghouse and gets upset whenever she sees a kid carrying it around. One kid was carrying it down the slide one time and that was incredibly wrong, we couldn't believe it.
Toddler play kitchen. She loves this room.
She also loves the water area and is a big fan of feeding balls into the contraption that runs them over the top and back into the water.
Big kid grocery store area. This area is my nightmare. So much mess.
Art area! I can hardly wait to take the big kids here. They're going to go nuts.
Bradley friend Luca is one of Juliet's many admirers. It is a mutual admiration. She tries to steal Luca and his brother Koehn to come play with her whenever she can.
I think it was in the mid 50's this afternoon and everyone was outside and they all ended up at my house. Patrick was so happy.
Later that evening. Juliet naked bottom time has become an evening tradition and it's hilarious to see her chase around the boys who are afraid of a naked baby.
We had the library video game night and my dad had a fabulous time playing Carcassonne with a little help from his grandson, who made him win the game (seriously, he did) and with Juliet grabbing at his headphones and saying "Hi guys!" on repeat to the nice people on the Zoom call with Grandpa.
Juliet has discovered she is big enough to open doors and oh my is she please to have this power.
So much joy. Although it's a bit of an issue because she likes to have all the doors closed now and if we don't watch her she shuts the cats in the boys' room.
The most fun game of all is saying bye-bye and leaving a room and then triumphantly returning.
You can also hide your naughty choices if you can open and shut doors. Oh the power.
One can get a bit tuckered out with all this hard work. We have to wake her up by 2:30 from her afternoon nap otherwise falling asleep with a sibling is far too fun and lots of warnings are required to get her to calm down and go to sleep.
In other news, her hair is ridiculously long now. It isn't even, it isn't all like this. I probably should cut it so it's even but I can't bring myself to just yet.
Nathan watching a show with his cozy corner of boys and my kitty. So upsetting. She keeps having to cuddle with him because Juliet claims my lap anytime she can. I want my baby AND my kitty, is that so much to ask?
Watching the Super Bowl. This is what my lap usually looks like. Lucky Patrick!
Meanwhile, Nathan and his cozy crew.
Juliet smooches were a big part of the Super Bowl.
We figured out that if we told her we were asleep and she had to kiss us to make us wake up, she would do it. She won't kiss anyone otherwise.
We will do pretty much anything for one of these smooches.
Even Eleanor, who doesn't want anyone to kiss her, will sit nicely for a Juliet smooch.
Our Super Bowl half time show had a bit of nudity. Shocking!
Poor Layla has been struggling to make it through this long winter. At least she has her fur back!
Juliet might have enough personality for a few children. She bosses us all around, tries to climb trees or hit them with sticks (thanks, Patrick), and I think she might not actually care about hugging us, she just uses it as a tool to bend us to her will. I'd be terrified but I keep getting distracted by how cute she is.
More smoochy business for a beyond delighted Bradley.
I checked on Patrick after putting him to bed one night and it seemed he had a rather good time after I left. I don't think he had any stuffed toys near him when I left.
And a bunch of wild flamingos came by our house this past week. We got flocked! Actually, Bradley likes to play football with the PTO president's son and we were chatting recently about fundraiser ideas and I may have been too enthusiastic about the flamingo in the front yard idea so I was a sure thing for someone to try it out on. The kids loved it though!
They may have loved it too much though. Bradley didn't know why they ever had to leave and maybe we could keep just one?
Patrick was fine with them leaving if we sent them to Mabel's house next. That was the deal with the fundraiser. You don't have to pay when they show up in your yard but if you want to make a donation to the PTO then you get to pick the next house they go to. We chose the Monahans.
Juliet was a big flamingo fan as well.
It got really cold after this - reeeeeally cold. And during a pandemic Patrick was supposed to have an in-person cub scout event. They held in the garage of the den leader and just had a bunch of space heaters going. Which was good, because one of the kids there tested positive for COVID a few days later. Crazy times. The kid is okay, I'm surprised we haven't had more COVID scares with in-person schools and everything.
Meanwhile, Juliet brought her favorite stuffed toy kitty to show Sookie and tried to have them become friends.
And we finally discovered who Juliet's ideal sleeping buddy is. Patrick! He doesn't mind reading the same books as her before bedtime and he's happy to fall asleep at the same time as her. He also doesn't seem to even notice when she wakes up screaming about a lost pacifier. He's very proud to have a sleeping buddy and she has been insisting on taking her naps in Patrick's bed as well. So sweet.
Daddy tried to talk her into a nap on the living room floor the other day but she was on to his tricks! Actually he was just trying to score some more smooches. The only way we can get her to kiss us these days is by pretending to be asleep and telling her she'll wake us up by kissing us.
And like I said - Juliet is really lucky we all think she's cute. Bradley was trying to cuddle by Grandma and Juliet spotted this and started yelling "MY gamma!" and ran over and crawled over Bradley in order to claim Grandma for herself.
In all fairness, Grandma is rather delightful and worth fighting over. I dropped off Juliet with Grandma the other day when I had an appointment and Juliet got out little indoor drone devices and Juliet clung to Grandma and screamed with delight as they flew around. Pretty wonderful.
And in case you think parenting this bunch is all fun and games, here is a video of Juliet roaring at her siblings while getting ready for bed with a fun Patrick finale asking why I hate him more than Bradley. Sigh. They had a fight while getting ready for bed and I told Patrick to go get dressed in his room while Bradley brushed his teeth and apparently that was a hurtful thing. We've been focusing on more time with Patrick which is going medium well. This kid needs to go outside and run around, winter is the worst and there's something wrong with anyone who says it's their favorite season.
