Just the facts...

Because I'm bored and nothing noteworthy has happened in the last few days, I pulled up some old pictures of the girls: newborn pictures to be exact. Since Eric seems to have trouble remembering the girl's "birth facts," I was wondering if anyone else remembers the "details"

See if you can tell which picture goes with which girl.





Think you got it? How about this one:

Which one has which birthday

A. March 1st, 6:06 AM
B. July 6th, 7:08 PM
C. May 8th, 8:45 PM
D. June 3rd, 12:50 PM

And last:

What was their birthweight?

A. 8 lbs. 1 oz.
B. 8 lbs. 6 oz.
C. 9 lbs. 2 oz.
D. 8 lbs. 1 oz.

I'll post the answers in a couple of days

They're so cute when they're asleep...

I love pictures of sleeping babies. They're so sweet. Here's Chloe at nap time today:

So cute. I had to zoom in a little closer...
What the heck is that bright light and those strange clicking sounds? I'm trying to sleep here. -Chloe
What's wrong with you? You're disturbing a perfectly good nap! -Chloe
Haven't you read the words on the front of my jammies? It says "don't wake the princess"! Well, you just did. Suffer the consequences... -Chloe

Note to all: I would not have done this if we weren't getting ready to leave, and I needed to wake her up anyway. Sleeping babies are cute. Crabby babies, not so much. Don't wake the princess indeed.

Easter

We had a fun Easter today, even though it was cold and snowy! We slept in this morning since several of the ways we could go to church were flooded. Yes, there was one way to get there, but it was way out of the way, and we decided to be lazy. So the kids had a great time with their Easter baskets, and then we got dressed up and headed to my parents' house. We had lunch with most of my extended family. Then the kids had an indoor egg hunt and got more Easter baskets. They were tired when we got home and very happily went to bed. And that's always a nice thing :-) Here's a few pics:

My Peeps Sunflower cake

Chloe loved her Easter bucket. She played with all of her toys and really got into the Easter grass. She was very upset when we took it away after she started eating it.

Elise and her bubbles. She got this excited about each thing she took out of her basket.

Claire and Emilie checking out the stash.

The girls all dressed up.

Water, water everywhere...

Here's a few pics of the Meramec I took today. Its actually down quite a bit from yesterday. Please excuse the fact that you can see the side of the road in a few of them. We were driving, and they weren't allowing anyone to pull over to take pictures in hopes of preventing accidents. So these were the best I got.

I have a recurring dream about getting stuck in a car in the water (usually with the kids in there too) either by having a car accident and falling off a bridge or by being unable to stop at the end of a flooded road. So this sort of thing kind of freaks me out. A few years ago I even had Eric buy me one of those tools that breaks car glass on one side and cuts seat belts on the other. I know, I'm weird. Its a good thing we don't live too close to any of the flooding. Anyway, I'm glad the water is going down now, and people can hopefully start repairing their homes and businesses soon.

Purina Farms

My mom and I took the kids to Purina Farms today to see the "Easter Village" exhibit. They have all kinds of baby animals that the kids can see and some they can touch. You can also see the grown up animals down in the barn. We've gone every year since Claire was 2, and the kids really enjoy it.

Even though it was cold today, we had a great time and the animals were really friendly. I guess since there weren't too many people there, the animals weren't as tired out. They were coming right up to us and letting us pet them. Elise (our future Veterinarian) was especially thrilled and kept trying to hug all the animals. We kept trying to tell her that most of them really don't like hugs.

The only bad thing that happened was that Elise decided to wet her pants. Then she had to walk all the way back to the car in the cold wind with her wet pants on (I had a spare outfit in the car, thank goodness!). I'm sure that wasn't very comfortable, and she wasn't a happy camper. But I guess that should help her remember to tell us next time that she needs to go.

Still, it was much better than last year when Elise decided to throw a world-class tantrum that lasted most of the time we were there. So I had to carry her thrashing, screaming body around with my 8 months pregnant belly (Eric wasn't with me). Gotta love 2 year olds.

Anyway, here's a few pictures from our day:

With the Easter Bunny

Elise and a sheep. This sheep actually bleated like crazy when we left, and the people working there said she really wanted us to come back and give her more attention.

Claire with the momma and baby goat.

Emilie and the piglets.

A belgian draft horse who also came right up and let everyone pet her.

Our day

We had a busy day today. We started with an Easter egg hunt at our church. The kids had fun finding eggs and making Easter crafts, but I unfortunately forgot my camera so no pictures of that one. We then hit the mall to go see the Easter bunny. No one cried this year which was an unexpected thing. Elise even gave the Easter bunny a hug good-bye. (Last year she cried until I joined her in the picture. The year before that, Emilie got hysterical and had to go wait with my mom while we got a picture with Claire, baby Elise, and the "evil" bunny.)

Next we dyed Easter eggs at home. We made tie-dye eggs and polka-dot eggs. The girls are always up for anything having to do with arts and crafts so this was a big hit.

We then rounded out the day with a visit from Maw-Maw Becky and Paw-Paw Wayne (Eric's parents) which ended up with a bit of silliness involving the entire contents of the girls' dress-up trunk and Eric's newest hobby: banjo music (but that's a whole new post...)

Another school project

Claire's class is doing "egg"speriments this week at school. They had to bring in 2 hard-boiled eggs. One was to be left plain to perform various science experiments upon and the other one was to be decorated. But not in the traditional dyed-egg sense. They are having an egg fashion show. You had to make your egg into someone/something- preferably with a play upon the word egg involved. We came up with a space "egg"splorer. We also got the egg carton in on the act because what kind of "egg"sploring can you do in space without a space ship. So here's a picture of our little egg. Claire said when her teacher saw it her comment was "Wow". We hope that means she liked it...


Oh, and we also found out that spray paint reacts with styrofoam. It literally starts to eat right through it. So we had to do some creative decorating with aluminum foil to cover up the damage.

Diaper Duty

So I made the comment to Eric the other night that by the time Chloe is potty trained, I'll have been changing diapers for almost 10 years. He decided it would be fun to do the math, so here goes:

We decided to use 8 diapers a day figuring that a newborn typically goes through about a dozen a day, while an older baby seems to use around 6.

8 times 365 is 2920 diapers per year.

Claire was in diapers for 2.92 years, Emilie for 2.67, Elise for 2.5, and Chloe for .83 (obviously just to the present). Soo...

Claire- 8526
Emilie- 7796
Elise- 7300
Chloe- 2424

That's a total of 26046 (approximately).

That's one heck of a lot of diapers. And I still have about 1 1/2 to 2 years to go. Makes me wish I'd considered cloth diapers way back when Claire was a baby to lessen the environmental impact! I guess that's also a good reason to try to potty train Chloe as soon as possible. As if I'd need another reason!

Emilie and her tonsils...

Well, I've made the appointment. Emilie will have her tonsils out on Mon. April 14th. Here's the background: Emilie has always had a huge set of tonsils. Even when she was just 1 year old, she snored like crazy and woke up because of it at night. Aside from not getting a good nights sleep, she has also had problems with swallowing because of them. When she was 2 we did a sleep study- where they hook your child up to a bunch of wires, electrodes, and monitors to see how often they snore, if they are getting enough oxygen, how their heart rate is, etc. Not anything terrible, but not a fun night. And its especially not fun with a 2 year old who doesn't totally understand why there's tape and wires all over her. It definetely made me appreciate having healthy kids! I couldn't imagine having to deal with tests and hospitals for any of my kids on a regular basis.

Anyway, that test showed that while she snores, she breathes ok- i.e. no sleep apnea. So the decision was made to watch and wait for a while and see if she grew into her tonsils. Now 2 1/2 years later, she still has very large tonsils, snores, chokes- in other words, nothing has changed. We just had our 2nd opinion appointment today; and everyone agrees, the tonsils and adenoids need to go. The doctors think she'll be much more comfortable without the huge things blocking up her throat. I agree too, but I still hate the thought of my baby having surgery and a 2 week recovery. She will miss 1-2 weeks of preschool and have one heck of a sore throat, but it is supposedly easier on kids at this age than if we wait until she's older. Plus with school starting, I want to make sure she's sleeping well and not going to choke at school. So wish me, uh I mean her, luck. I'll update more about this when it gets closer.

You gotta try these...

Claire and I spent some time yesterday making Peanut butter cups. I found this recipe in a "Taste of Home" magazine, and they are awesome! They only took us about 15 minutes to make and then a couple of hours in the fridge.

Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

Taste of Home

* LaVonne Hegland St. Michael, Minnesota Make a lasting impression on Valentine’s Day with this luscious candy featuring a dark chocolate shell and a gooey peanut butter center. Your sweetie will appreciate the colorful sprinkles on top, too.

SERVINGS: 36

CATEGORY: Lower Fat

METHOD: Microwave

TIME: Prep: 20 min. + chilling

Ingredients:

• 1 cup creamy peanut butter, divided
• 4-1/2 teaspoons butter, softened
• 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups (12 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
• 4 milk chocolate candy bars (1.55 ounces each), coarsely chopped
• Colored sprinkles, optional

Directions:

In a small bowl, combine 1/2 cup peanut butter, butter, confectioners' sugar and salt until smooth; set aside.
In a small microwave-safe bowl, melt the chocolate chips, candy bars and remaining peanut butter; stir until smooth.
Drop teaspoonfuls of chocolate mixture into paper-lined miniature muffin cups. Top each with a scant teaspoonful of peanut butter mixture; top with another teaspoonful of chocolate mixture. Decorate with sprinkles if desired. Refrigerate until set. Store in an airtight container. Yield: 3 dozen.

Snow Days

As many of you know, we got an incredible amount of snow yesterday. We spent a fun afternoon getting my minivan stuck in the snow on my way to preschool (I miss 4 wheel drive!) and needing 4 people to help dig me out (and I was still on the road!). Not fun when you have kids in the car and more kids waiting for you at preschool. Eric had to make the now 2 hour commute from work to pick the kiddos up. He then spent a couple of hours helping other people dig their cars out of the same place my car got stuck earlier.

Still, after all that excitement, we had a great time playing outside. The kids had never seen snow that deep and had a blast playing in it. Its a good thing we got out yesterday, since the snow is rapidly melting today! Here's some pics:

Piano lessons

So Claire started piano lessons the beginning of February. To be more specific, she started taking a class. She and 4 other kids are in a group piano class at Webster University's Symphony Music School. The class is called Music Makers at the Keyboard. Its part of the Musik Garten series for young children. Its a 4 semester series (we jumped in at semester 2, since I just found out about it.) The classes are really neat. They spend the first year learning to play by ear, sort of like Suzuki violin classes. Then over the next year they add in written notation. During their classes, they listen to songs played on the piano, sing with solfege (do, re, mi) and words and use movement to help them learn the song for the week. They use rhythm instruments and practice saying the counts. They will also learn some melodic and rhythmic dictation (writing down/recognizing what they hear). They then have a listening CD for at home and they have a song to practice for that week, as well as the scale for that song and some simple chords. I could go on, but I'm sure I'm boring most of you :-)

Anyway, I really think this is a great way to introduce the piano. I learned the traditional way where you play middle C whole notes for weeks. Claire started playing a song the first week. She loves it and is doing really well! It really teaches the kids to feel the music and not just play exactly what's on the page. Then when she's done with the series at the end of next year, she'll have a solid beginning to take with her to regular one-on-one piano lessons. I think I'm as excited about this class as she is. We really enjoy our practice time together.

Elise's Birthday Party

We had a small party for Elise on Saturday. She had a great time at her Tinkerbell party. Here's a few pictures:

This is actually after the party in her new night gown from MawMaw and PawPaw

Hooray, she's 3!

The Tinkerbell birthday cake

Chloe and her friend Adam

Ready to blow out candles.

Mmm, cake.