Mary at One and a Half

At 18 months, Mary is proving to be a table-climber...

...very possibly a lefty, like her big sister Tessa...

...and is now part of the back seat gang, often still in her pajamas for the girls' (way too) early morning drop-off.

She's too little to dislike that middle seat just yet, and the twins rotate around her, taking turns with the "pink seat."  Mary's oblivious to the intricacies of these back seat politics.  She just knows that she's got her buddies on either side of her now.  Little conversations float back and forth over her head, snacks and books are passed through her, and she can see Mommy and Daddy now.  What's better than that?

Well, sitting in that same seat on a sunny day is better!

Mary knows what "bath" means, and runs to the bathroom at the first mention of this delightful word.  Actually, she runs to the bathroom with no excuse at all these days, and loves to wreak havoc in there.  The girls know that the bathroom doors need to be closed at all times when Mary is loose!

Other words she's very fond of and responds to in an appropriate fashion are:  milk, eat, park, school, store, candy and hug.  She giggles loudly at mere mention of any of these words.  She also loves helping out, and has been throwing things away for us, throwing clothes over the stairs (our equivalent of a laundry chute) and even opening up her own snacks somehow.   She knows about 10 body parts, and her favorite book is Goodnight, Gorilla.  (She gets way more excited than she should when we read this book to her, and she carries it everywhere!)  She does not say anything besides "Mama" and maybe "Da."  I'm thinking an explosion is coming soon.  She was a late walker (16 months), and apparently a late talker too.  I fully expect complete sentences to start coming out of her mouth one of these days :)

She still thinks she's hilarious and the center of the party when she's in her high chair...

and she is!

Although, she is convinced she doesn't need her high chair, and just this week we dug out a booster seat for her.   What a big girl!  An added bonus is sisters feeding her.  Why didn't we think of this sooner?

Sometimes she gets herself into little pickles, or, in this case, a Notre Dame chip and dip bowl!  She slipped this on before any chips or dip were in there, and while Matt and I were out of the room for a minute.  She may not be so eager to follow in Daddy's footsteps with a scarring memory like this in her formative years.

After a rough morning of eating, playing, growing, and errand-running (she's graduated to the primo spot on my back in the Ergo carrier), Mary now goes down for one nap at the same time as Tessa and Annie.  Hallelujah!  It was a long time coming, and it's so nice to have a solid nap window with all three down!  They go to sleep at noon, and it's a heavenly two hours (at least!) with all three asleep until I have to rouse them to go pick up the girls at school.  If I'm lucky, and I am often, Matt can pick up the girls and the little ones can sleep a bit longer.  This is the scene when all three are asleep, and it is a crime to wake them up early!

When we do have to pick up the girls, though, Mary gets so excited.  She definitely understands what we're doing, and has taken to carrying a little purse with her whenever we go somewhere.  She very carefully places little toys and phones inside before we leave, and gingerly holds it in the car.  Before getting out of her seat, she makes sure the purse is zipped, too.  So cute!

This little girl means business.  She is there to collect some girls :)

Happy 18 months to a happy, happy girl!

Christmas Vacation Catch-Up

Megan and Bridget's Christmas vacation was a vacation for all of us from the daily grind of all that school entails.  And Matt was off too!  I wish I could say that we got something major accomplished, went somewhere very exotic, or scheduled fun each day.  Truthfully, the days passed very uneventfully (as uneventful as it can be with five little ones), and all too quickly!  I have very few photos from these two weeks, so I know we didn't do anything major.  Oh wait!  We did a massive garage clean-up!  Yup, we're exciting like that :)

When we weren't cleaning the garage, we did take the girls to the library to see Santa.  Mary is very much an active participant at story time now.  She knows when to stand up, when to sit down, and which shelves to wreak havoc on by "perusing" the books.  She's even part of the coloring crowd, too.

Bridget and Megan were on to this Santa, but they were intent on giving him messages to give to the real guy.

The week after Christmas was equally slothful.  The girls spent a lot of time coloring the cardboard house they received from Mop and Pop.  They love it, and it's still out as a fort/hiding spot, and will probably stay out a while longer since they love playing in it so much.

The girls managed to laze away most of their days off.  It must be an all girl thing, but they are so content to stay home and just hang out on days off.  While they love getting out to parks and riding bikes, they are just as happy playing inside.  I'm sure if we had five boys, it would be a different story!  I'm sure five boys would not want to play dress-up as much as these girls, for example.  They had fun wearing whatever they wanted over break, and even had a Spy day after watching Harriet the Spy.

Another highlight of our Christmas vacation was a night out for Matt and me!  For the first time, all five girls spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa's house.  They were pretty excited on the way there.  Well, everyone except Mary.  She was probably wondering exactly what the occasion was, and whether she should be concerned. She looks very worried here.

She didn't need to worry, though.  According to Grandma, they did well, besides some puking in the middle of the night from Bridget.  Grandma was so blase about it that we convinced ourselves it was just an isolated incident.  Ha!!  We were all sick within 24 hours, just in time to ring in the new year!  Thank goodness we had a night out before the sickness set in.  We had a yummy meal and a very funny comedy night with a big group of friends.  We go out so rarely that it really was a nice treat! 

Me and Matt, a rare shot!

Park Play

This post is brought to you by my iPhone 5, without which I would have no pictures of this impromptu after-school park visit.  I am so grateful for the technology that allows me to capture pictures at any time, whether or not I have my "big" camera along.  And the pictures are so clear!!  Before I upgraded my phone, the pictures from my old phone were bad.  These are great, and show just how excited the girls were to be surprised with a park trip.

At almost 18 months (eek!!), Mary is no longer content to just hang out in the stroller while the girls play.  She wants out, and furthermore, she doesn't want in to begin with.  She is so squirmy and demanding nowadays when confined to the stroller, and we didn't even use it for this park trip.  She was free as a bird, and loved every minute of it.  She now knows the word "park" and if we ask her if she wants to go to the park, she grunts, "Yuh!!"

Look, pretty darn happy to be set loose!  I love this picture!

Of course, we had clambered back into the van, mostly unwillingly, before I realized that I didn't get any cute pictures of Tessa.  That's what I get for trying to keep Mary alive, help with monkey bars and push girls on swings, all the while trying to take pictures.  One girl slipped through the cracks.  Here she is in her car seat saying "thank you" to me for taking her to the park.

Anytime, Tessa!