Sleepy Bookworms

It's not unusual for Tessa and Annie to be carrying books with them wherever they go these days!  They schlep them in their little backpacks, they bring them in the car, they carry teetering piles from room to  room,  they stack them on their respective nightstands, and they "read" them constantly.  Where are my books?? is often an ugent question around here.  I think the books have replaced cartoon watching for them since we ditched weekday TV.  Instead of waking up to watch a show while they're still a little groggy, they now wake up, immediately gather all of their books from the top of their nightstands, and sleepily stumble downstairs.  Then they proceed to read as much as they can between yawns and maybe a little snack.

It's a rough life.

A constant supply of new library books feeds this obsession.  And our new focus on letters and their sounds leaves them now asking me what the words are on their pages. If I had to guess, I'd say they will both be reading sooner than the older girls did.  Especially if I put just a little effort into it ;) 

They find most books (even those with the most mundane plots) absolutely hi-larious!  They start laughing and then they can't stop.  I am definitely the third wheel trying to read to them when they are acting so silly.

The twins definitely share their love of books with Megan and Bridget, and we love to read to all of the girls together, especially books that were written just for us with our five girls, I think :).  There are two in particular that are (my!) favorites here.  The first is All-of-a-Kind Family, written in the 50's but set in the early 1900's.  It's a good, old-fashioned story of five sisters growing up in New York City.  I love reading this one to the girls, and it's a refreshing departure from the usual Berenstain Bears or My Little Pony stories.  They love that there are five girls, and they remember the little adventures even weeks after we finish a chapter.  Truthfully, we don't read a chapter as often as I would like because of the logistics of bedtime for all five (and competing stories from Daddy who tells the best stories that he effortlessly makes up each night!), so we're slowly making our way through the book.  Luckily, there are plenty of adventures, and even a few more books in the series.

How cute is this cover?  Are there other books with five sisters as the main characters?  I may be missing some gems out there! (Pride and Prejudice is the obvious one, but I'll save that one for when they're a tad older!)

The other book that was written just for us, obviously, is Duck Dunks.  It's an adorable picture book about five little ducks going to the beach.  The watercolor illustrations are so, so cute, and each of our girls has an alter ego little duck in this book!  I think it's so perfect for them because I always call them my little ducks :)  There are a few more books in this series, too.

And...now Tessa and Annie are calling me to read them a book.  And Mary just woke up from her morning nap.  This should be interesting :)

What's Happenin'

It's the everyday stuff I want to remember when I'm looking back on this blog years from now.  Even though we haven't done anything newsworthy the last few days, I of course still took pictures.

This is a typical scene around here.  The twins are getting into puzzles lately, which is so cute to watch!  In this sitting, they completed their Three Little Pigs puzzle three times in a row, handing each other pieces and chatting the entire time.  As a puzzle lover myself, I love that they each have a puzzle buddy perfectly suited for them.  It's one of many, many things that are awesome about being a twin!  Puzzles are more fun with your twin ;)

Meanwhile, poor little Mary is excluded, down on the ground with her foot dangling out of her pajamas, drinking her milk.  Poor, poor neglected baby.

"Hi, Mommy and Daddy.  Thanks for my new baby gate!"

"Oh, I'm sorry.  Were you expecting it to keep me safe?  Ha ha ha. What's your plan to keep me from toppling off this first step? You can start by not ever leaving my side.  Good luck getting anything done around here!"

Another typical scene: someone is always playing with little dolls or dollhouses in this house.  In this case, it's Annie, and she didn't even notice I was there when I snapped the picture, so lost she was in her little doll play.

Our piano also sees a lot of playtime:

Mary is realizing she can stand, and will actually do it for up to maybe 30 seconds.  Still not walking, but getting there.

Besides, aren't other people supposed to carry you or push you everywhere you need to go, anyway?

It's exhausting learning new things.

And, soccer started!  Both girls' practices and all games take place one block from our house, which means stroller time for Mary and bike-riding for the twins.  Score!

Big M

Sometimes I can't believe we have a 6-year-old!  Six seems so old!! If the next six years pass as quickly as the last six have, we'll have all five girls in school, with a 7th grader in the mix, before we know it!  Yikes.  Every night I kiss Megan goodnight, and I'm always reminded of my little tiny baby Megan, or my 3-year-old, or even 4-year-old Megan.  Her little face is the same, just a bit bigger.  She has a way of continuing to grow while I way have a way of willing her not to.  Why do kids have to grow?

We're only a few weeks into the school year with our first grader, but already she's showing more maturity. She has homework a whopping four days a week, but she's given the whole packet at the beginning of the week.  I think it's a good sign that she asks if she can do the whole packet on the first day ;)  I love over-achieving first-graders.  Another responsibility every night is reading to us for twenty minutes.  There's something about the fact that she has to do this that makes me set aside other duties to listen to her plow through an I Can Read book.  Dishes can wait while we listen to her little voice and her laughter as she cracks up as she's reading a new story.  The twins have been steadily supplying her with library books every week too, which keeps her from memorizing anything we have around the house.

Megan's taken on the responsibility of guiding Bridget at school, too.  I think some kids might want to distance themselves from siblings while they're at school, especially siblings so close in age.  This is so not the case with these two, and I couldn't be more proud.  I love hearing about the occasional recess they share, if the schedule works out, when Megan actively seeks Bridget out (among those lowly kindergartners) and then invites her to play with the 1st grade crowd.  Thankfully, Bridget doesn't seem to be having trouble making new friends in her own class, but I'm sure her blossoming confidence has a lot to do with a certain someone making the transition as smooth as possible.  Just hearing about them waving to each other in the hallway, or playing tag at recess together makes me so happy!

Because Megan is so cute, and is so helpful and sweet (almost) all of the time, here she is doing one of her favorite things...playing Legos.  These used to be pretty foreign objects in this house, but they're making up for lost time and quickly multiplying around here.  In her elusive downtime, Megan loves to carefully build something from one of her little sets...and then build it again and again.

She's wearing her favorite get-up, too.  She loves to come home from school and change out of her uniform and into something comfy. I would say that clothing issues are the one thing that she still gets upset about, or melts down about every now and then.  If I someone tries to get her to wear something that she doesn't like, she just doesn't feel comfortable and can't get past it.  She loves her little uniform at school, thank God, but she loves her little uniform at home just as much, and it's usually leggings and a t-shirt.  Sometimes a little skirt thrown on top of her leggings, but it needs to be a short skirt.  God help you if you try to get her to wear a long skirt.

Other than that, she's just an easy girl these days, and generally a joy to be around.  I love this little baby, I mean big girl!

Labor Day Park Day

There's nothing like an extra day in the weekend to squeeze in some bonus fun!  This was definitely the case for us over Labor Day weekend.  We wanted to head to the sun for a total change of scenery, and ended up at San Bruno City Park, otherwise known as "Charlie's Park" by the girls, since cousin Charlie had his birthday party there.  Charlie's Park is not to be confused with Joey's Park.  Different cousins, different parks :)  Anyway, when we went to Charlie's Park, I forgot my real camera, so these fuzzy iPhone pictures are the best I have.  But, we had so much fun I had to include them.

The girls scaled some rocks - even Mary :)

played baseball and climbed a pretty cool tree!

        And, Megan and Bridget perfected some monkey bar skills.  After all of that hard work, it was Otter Pops all around , and then 3-hour naps for everyone!!

Wouldn't it be nice if every weekend was three days?

Our One Year Old!

Oh my gosh! Where does time go?? Mary is now 13 months old, and becoming a little toddler before our eyes. It's surreal to remember this time last year. Squishy little newborn Mary was carted all over the place last fall while we shuttled the girls to school. Things are different this year with a wiggly, and much chunkier! one-year-old in tow. She's being schlepped in her stroller now, which she loves. She props her feet up like she's our little princess.

I mean..she is, but she doesn't need to be so cocky about it.


In other transportation news, she's got a few other modes. She loves the little scooter Grandma and Grandpa gave her for her birthday, and especially loves being pushed by a big sister.  She's also mastered the stairs, which is a frequent source of frustration.  A baby gate for the bottom of the stairs goes up tomorrow, thankfully!

Another favorite is our trusty little pink car in the backyard.  When she's very lucky, we set her loose out there.  You can tell from expression that she thinks she's getting away with something! Of course she loves being pushed by a big sister in there, too!

She also has a new (and very retro) toy on loan from our neighbors.  It's arrival elicited a lot of excitement from Mary, and she got right to work playing peek-a-boo with it, and pushing it.

She can now stand for a second or two at a time, and I think walking will happen within the next couple of weeks.  I'm afraid she's been hindered a little in this department because she gets carried and strolled around so much!  But, each of the girls walked between 12 and 13 months, so she's not too far off the Stecher curve :)  She still manages to get around wherever she wants to go.  Here she is in a rare caged moment in her crib, which seems to be the only place she can be contained!  Toddler beds, bunk bed ladders, kitchen chairs and coffee tables are all fair game otherwise!

She's always a fan of meal times, and she continues to eat nearly anything we put in front of her.  Favorites include bananas, strawberries, mac and cheese, anything with hamburger in it, all kinds of rice, and now milk in a sippy cup!  Luckily, she never experienced a bottle and took right to the sippy cup for both water and milk.  Now we just need to keep her from throwing it on the floor!  The girls argue constantly about who gets to sit next to her, or who sat next to her last time.  I hate that they argue about this, but I love that they adore her so much.  This is one popular baby, holding court in her high chair!

She also tried real oatmeal (not the baby variety) for the first time, and she loved it!  This is a first for our kids, so maybe the other girls will want to be like Mary and follow suit now.  This oatmeal loving mommy sure hopes so!  And look at those teeth!  She has now has four on top, two on the bottom in the middle, one molar on the bottom left and the right molar making it's way in.  Not that we'd ever know.  Besides the fact that she still wakes up in the middle of the night to nurse once, she doesn't act like she's in any kind of teething pain.  Fifth babies must be hardwired to be easy :)

Hey, cute little Mary!  You sure bring us lots of giggles and fun.  Don't grow up too fast, though, okay?  Thanks!

The Biking Bug

I have to admit something dreadful.  Our 6-year-old and our 5-year-old both still ride their bikes with training wheels.  There.  I'm hanging my head in shame, but I swear they'll excel in something else to make up for this.  I only say this to qualify any pictures in this post.  You'll see many with very big girls with training wheels on their bikes.  In my defense, though, apparently Suri Cruise still has training wheels, too.  She's Megan's celebrity baby, in that they were born within a few weeks of each other :)  And...I'm pretty sure that's all they have in common.  But, if Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes deem 6 years old to be an acceptable age to still have those wheels, who are we to argue?

Truthfully, they may keep those training wheels for some time.  The necessary ingredients for teaching this skill (patience, arms, time and safe biking area) are all in short supply around here!  Even when we have three of those four things, we usually have a needy baby to hold or keep safe. And, most often, we don't have wide open spaces to practice pedaling and balancing and all of that good stuff that goes into learning this life skill.  We can just add it to the list of things to feel guilty about!  The list would be entitled, "If we didn't have five kids, we could...(fill in the blank)."  Hopefully, having training wheels a little longer than their buddies will be the worst of the tragedies on this list, and the longer list will include all of the reasons it's pretty awesome to have four sisters!

Anyway, we practice this bike thing when we can!  When we were in Tahoe this summer, we took advantage of the flat, newly paved street in front of our cabin, and only had to deal with an occasional car.  Thanks to Mop and Pop, and the addition of some new little Minnie Mouse bikes for Tessa and Annie, everyone now has bikes and helmets of their own.  The girls loved riding bikes up there, and wanted to be out on their bikes non-stop!  It was also a huge help to have a few extra adults to corral the little bikers.

Megan and Bridget both tried riding without their training wheels, but never got comfortable enough to keep them off. They spent a lot of time at "Daddy's bike shop," with Matt and his little tool box at the end of the driveway, taking off training wheels and then replacing them.  Meanwhile, Tessa and Annie both really learned how to pedal their "big girl" bikes like pros!

Mary is loving her stroller, too!  We dug our single stroller out from under the house where it's been in retirement since Megan was a baby.  We'd been in double stroller mode for so long that I nearly forgot we owned a single stroller!  Mary makes herself very comfortable in there, and the girls get a huge kick out of pushing her.  It's just their size, and it gives us a break :)

Hey, look at us!  Maybe we could be a biking family after all :)

Of course, now that we're home from Tahoe, biking has became a challenge once again.  But, with a little work, we can make it happen.  Er, Daddy can make it happen!  How lucky are these girls to have such a doting dad?  Last weekend he loaded all five of them up, along with their bikes and a picnic lunch that he packed, and headed to a bike trail about 15 minutes away.  There, they rode to their hearts' content!  And they didn't return for a few hours.  It turns out that bike riding is good for loooong naps, too.

If you're a man reading this (I realize this is a big "if"), raise your hand if you think you would be brave/crazy/cool enough to take five little kids on this kind of adventure by yourself.  And, if by chance, you are Matt reading this, then you can give yourself a big pat on the back! ;)  

We're slowly getting these girls ready for the Tour d' San Francisco!  I think it won't be too much longer before we lose a few training wheels, but until then, what's cuter than a pack of little girls riding bikes?  Maybe a pack of little girls on bikes plus one in a stroller!