Y'all, JP is ALL boy. He is sooo different from the girls and he's just naturally that way! One of the things he really likes to do is run back and forth. Generally between the back door and the front door. Tonight he started running and Paul and I were shocked at how he started his run. Paul decided to take advantage of the moment and start introducing some football plays.
Ellie has been taking golf lessons since the fall. She goes on Saturday mornings and has really enjoyed it! Her teacher is fabulous and Ellie has learned sooo much since she started and we're so proud of her hard work. It helps a lot that there are only 3 or 4 kids in the class so there are some weeks when Ellie is the only one. Lots of one on one time!
I took her to her lesson today and got some video of her driving. She has a funny little swing when she starts out but she's starting to hit the ball further and even gets it up in the air sometimes. She's pretty good at putting and chipping and I've been so proud of her for not getting discouraged because driving doesn't come easy to her. I wish I had video from the beginning because she has come so far!
JP doesn't have too long of an attention span when it comes to reading books but he is definitely interested in them. Today he picked up a book and read it for himself. It was pretty adorable and apparently he REALLY likes the book!
Helping JP hide at the doctor's office. He had to get shots!
There is a fair amount of arguing and fighting around our house. Usually between Ellie and Ruthie and occasionally between Ruthie and JP. Sometimes they split up and play in twos. Usually when they play like that its Ruthie and Ellie together and Emmie and JP together. Sometimes Ruthie, Ellie, and JP will play together and Emmie will come hang out with me. I do love those moments with Emmie. She's always eager to help me with whatever I'm working on and I love having the extra help and some one on one time with my oldest! Often JP hangs out with me and the girls play together.
My favorite times though are when all four of them play together...happily. It brings me so much joy to see their relationship with each other grow and change and I hope they always love each other the way they do now!
Ruthie got tubes in her ears on January 5th and we are so happy! She had never had an ear infection, that we know of, until last January (I suspect that she had them all along she just never complained or ran a fever.). Last January she had walking pneumonia and an ear infection. She lost 4lb (20% of her body weight) with that illness. It was awful. She had ear infections until July. Her ear infections were mostly clearing up we think. With the one in May we went back for a recheck to make sure the infection was gone and it was. We were back the next week with a new ear infection. We went to the ENT in early July and he didn't want to put in tubes then and have them come out during the winter, when she needed them the most. He said to call and set up surgery if she had two ear infections before Halloween. The cool weather started in October and she immediately got an ear infection. It cleared up. Then in November we had the horribleness. She got a blister on her eardrum. Apparently this is excruciatingly painful. I knew something was wrong when Ruthie was super grouchy (a sure sign of an ear infection) and she wouldn't let me look in her ears (normally she tells me her ear hurts but this time she didn't). This little girl is tiny but she is TOUGH. It made me so sad that she just suffered in silence. It makes me wonder how much she must hurt/ be uncomfortable between her eczema and these ear infections. I saw the ENT at work and told him about it and he said we definitely needed tubes.
Pillowblanket (its all one word now in our house) got to go back to the OR with her. Hopefully nobody looked too closely at her NASTY pillowcase. I made her a new one for Christmas but she still prefers the old, gross one.
We waited until January to do the tubes so we could hit our deductible at the beginning of the year. Especially important since we know she has to have her peanut labs redrawn this year. In between the blister and the tubes we had 2-3 more ear infections. The last was the WEEK BEFORE tubes. Ugh! I was so sure we would make it to our tubes without a last one. I was glad that I took her in for her ears because it turned out that she had strep too!
Ready to go!
So the day of tubes finally arrived. My mom came and got everyone else off to school so that Paul and I could go with Ruthie. She had her tubes put in at the surgery center and they were great with Emmie a few years ago and once again we had a great experience with Ruthie's tubes. Emmie had walked Ruthie through every step of the surgery so she was well prepared.
She was a little nervous before surgery.
I was worried about how she would do when they took her from us and she looked a little unsure but she did great! Everyone told us how she entertained them in the back. Then she pretty much stole everyone's hearts in recovery with her cuteness. She's a mess our little Ruthie!
She kept showing everyone in recovery her red tongue.
She has been telling everyone that she got tubes so NO MORE HURTING EARS! We are SO, SO excited about this! We saw the pediatrician in late December for Emmie and JP's well visits and I told the doctor we were getting tubes in January and we wouldn't be seeing her till March for Ruthie's well visit. I sure hope this is true! (On a side note, 2 days later was when Ruthie had the double ear infection and strep...but we went to after hours. This Mama was NOT sitting in the doctor's office for an hour with 4 kids in tow for a second day that week!) Ruthie did pretty well after surgery. She went though a few hours where she would randomly scream and cry like she was really mad but once she ate a HUGE lunch she was fine!
Being silly before surgery.
I'm hoping that now that we have tubes and her eczema is VERY well controlled (thanks to some wet wraps and Aveeno Baby Nighttime Balm) we can start putting some meat on her bones. It took us a few months to gain back the four pounds she lost last January and then we just got stuck at 24lb. In the last few months she's managed to put on 2 more pounds bringing my tiny little 3 year old to a whopping 26lb but boy am I excited about those 26lb...we worked hard for them and her face has finally filled out some and she doesn't have the dark circles she had for awhile! So here's to a healthy 2017 for Ruthie! (And feel free to go ahead and pray about her peanut labs in March. We're hoping for a downward trend with her numbers!)
Emmie and Ellie's school had skate night tonight and so I took all the girls. It was a bit of a rough start with three kiddos that didn't know how to skate. I got one of the walker things and started Ellie on that while I held Ruthie and Emmie's hands. Ellie started out ok and then fell twice and decided she was done. She went and played on the playground the rest of the time. (She didn't really want to go to begin with.) Emmie then took over the walker. It was slow going at first and she pretty much looked like a baby giraffe but she finally got the hang of skating with the walker and had a great time the rest of the night! Ruthie did awesome! She was using the little skates that you wear your shoes with. She kept wanting to hold my hand but I finally convinced her that she could do it by herself. She was so proud that she was the only one of the sisters that could skate all by herself!
All of the girls had a great time and said that they want to go back...yay!
Olaf made it to skate night too!
(I didn't get many pictures because the kids were all going in different directions and we were all on skates..lol!)
We were at Moe's a month or two ago and JP saw me dipping my chips in salsa and he wanted to try as well. We're not a tomato eating family plus he doesn't like ANY vegetable (and yes I'm aware a tomato is a fruit not a veggie but still...kind of falls in the vegetable category in my mind) so I was pretty sure he wouldn't like the salsa. Boy was I wrong! His life totally changed from the moment he discovered salsa. He LOVED it! He would dip his chip in the salsa, lick all the salsa off and then go back for more salsa. He would do this until his chip got soggy and he had to eat it and then he'd start over with a new chip. It was great.
The next time we were at Moe's he remembered the salsa and wanted it immediately. After dipping his chip in it for a bit he decided it would be easier just to drink it. Hilarious!
We had the BEST Christmas break EVER. Usually we only have a few days off of school before Christmas but this year we had a whole week and that made such a difference. The kids slept in most days, most days we had a fun activity planned and we still had lots of time to just hang around the house and relax.
We had a pajama party with some besties and decorated cookies.
Emmie, Ellie, and Ruthie went to My Gym camp. This was Ruthie's first time getting to go and she had the BEST time and felt like such a big girl!
We saw the Christmas lights at the zoo.
We went to hi-wire. The kids had been BEGGING to go and I had promised them we would go during Christmas break. We met some friends from church there and everyone had a great time!
We had visits from friends from far away.
A few days before Christmas Emmie told me she wanted to take toys to kids who didn't have any for Christmas. So I asked around and found that Family Shelter had some needs. Emmie and I went to the store and picked out some toys and delivered them. We had so much fun helping others together and I love Emmie's tender heart and her willingness to give to others. Ellie also wanted to help other children. She took money out of her piggybank and left it out on Christmas Eve for Santa so that he could use it to buy more toys next year for children who didn't have many.
We went to some wonderful church services including the children's Christmas Eve service, the 9 Lessons and Carols service, and earlier in December the first half of the Messiah!
We made gingerbread houses.
We had a playdate with one of Ellie's friends from school. She has been begging for this playdate and she was so excited that we were able to make it happen!
We went to the zoo twice.
Ruthie is definitely her mother's child. She kept wanting to know if the snake was going to bite and she was very careful not to get too close!
And then we headed back to school and our regular routine. This week was definitely a hard transition getting back into the swing of things...here's hoping next week is easier!
My friend Amy from college married a French guy, Jean, and they live in France and have 3 children. (Laura is 5, Leonie is 3, and Louis is 10 months) They were over here for Christmas and I was so excited that it worked out for us to get together. Amy and I have been friends since the beginning of our Freshman year of college and it was so much fun to catch up!
When we started out planning our get together we were just going to meet up for a few hours. Well, as time went on and plans got rearranged it morphed into Amy and Jean and their kids coming to spend 2 nights with us. To break that down for you that's 4 adults and 7 kids under 7 (5 girls and 2 boys) in our house. It was wild and SO, SO fun! Our kids all got along great from the moment they walked in the door and the adults all had a great time together.
LeLe and Roo were instant friends. The curly headed babies have to stick together!
They arrived December 26th in the afternoon and so we just let the kids play and then had dinner. The kids were sad to have to go to bed and it was definitely later than normal. I'm just glad they were on separate sides of the house or I'm pretty sure they would have been up all night! When the kids were in the bed the adults stayed up WAY too late talking but it was so fun! It has been 2 years since we've seen them so we had lots of catching up to do.
Storytime before bed.
Tuesday was Ruthie's birthday so we got up and headed to the zoo. We were supposed to meet up with another college friend, Marie, and her family but her daughter came down with a stomach virus. We were disappointed not to get to catch up with them. Paul took the day off of work to hang out with us...such a special treat! So apparently they have very few squirrels in France and the ones they do have are red so the best part of the zoo trip was definitely how excited Laura got over seeing a squirrel running around the zoo! We spent a few hours at the zoo and when the kids were dragging we headed home for lunch.
Leone and Laura were both REALLY brave when it came to feeding the animals! I was quite impressed!
We were fortunate that the day was LOVELY and so while the little ones napped the older kids headed outside to play all afternoon. They had the BEST time.
The boys have to stick together!
In our house, when it's your birthday you get to pick where we eat dinner and Ruthie picked Moe's. We lucked out that Tuesday is kid's night so they had a guy making balloon animals while we were there. The kids LOVED it!
The Rudolph hats ad a blinking light in the nose...super cute!
Ellie's panda
After dinner we came back home and had ice cream sundaes and sang Happy Birthday to Ruthie.
Ruthie had opened up her present from the Pasquet crew earlier in the day (a really cute book...we LOVE books at our house!) and Paul had given her a pineapple flower which she immediately ate and so with her dessert she opened up her cards from family and her present from Abby's family. She loved all her presents and cards and was so animated looking at each one!
$3 from GiGi and PaPa for turning 3! Ruthie gets VERY excited about money.
Stickers from Gran and Grandaddy
Her card from Uncle Ben and Aunt Ruth. They always make the kids a card and the girls just love that.
A Barbie from Abby, Ben, Elizabeth, and Caroline. This was Ruthie's first Barbie that is HERS and she was so excited!
Ruthie had a great birthday and loved having extra people at our house to celebrate with her. It was definitely a special day!
The kids were all pretty worn out by bedtime (as were the adults!) and we all went to bed earlier Tuesday night than we did Monday night!
Wednesday morning Emmie and JP had well visits so Amy and Jean and the kids headed out at the same time we did. We were SO sad to see them go. I really hope next time they come it works out for them to stay with us again!
When they left, Emmie told me she knew something different that French people eat. I was quite interested in hearing her answer because the adults had this same conversation the first night. Emmie's answer based on observation: toast with butter and honey!
Each morning Jean and Amy and their kids had toast and then after it toasted added butter and honey. Paul will occasionally put butter on his toast but he does it before he toasts it so you don't see it once it's cooked. I thought her answer was pretty funny!
Another fun thing we just started doing on birthdays is letting the birthday child stay up later and hang out with Paul and me. Ruthie chose to play Minnie Mouse Candy Land while she was hanging out with us and she was so cute and had lots of fun! I've really enjoyed the nights of having one on one time with the kids!
