Baby Table

Well, here is the photo of Katharine that won my heart the most today - 

Isn't she just perfectly beautiful! That's a Gerber Baby contender right there if I ever saw one. 

Sleeping this morning, sigh! I kinda stared in awe at her most of the morning. 

She's just so stinkin' beautiful!!! 

The kids were playing Klask earlier this week, and it has stayed out as a little table for Katharine to practice sitting with, cause it's the perfect height for her to hold to stabilize herself. Oh that little face!!!

She's pretty much a pro at sitting now, on carpet atleast. I'm not putting her on hard floors, cause sometimes she gets excited going forward to grab something and will pull herself over and bonk her nose, and that would hurt on a hard floor. Anyway, so she likes this table and we've started to gather random household objects and kiddie toys for her to explore. 

She's getting busier and wants to play all day, but isn't too mobile yet. But it's coming! The 3-6 month old window of little-ness and chubby-ness is almost over, but each month and year from here through atelast 3 years is going to be fun, cause Peter is three and he still melts our hearts with his cute little voice and things he says. 

Peter still hasn't reached a nasty stage, but it could be coming? For most parents, it's usually it's terrible twos, but P never had those. He hasn't been a Threenager either, but we've had a few of our kids experience the "Feisty Fours" (Lily and Natalie) so we'll see if that happens sometime over the next year. Or maybe the nightmares that Peter has had practically every night for the past two years have been sufficient for us to paying our debt to parenting him. Sometimes Peter sleeps with Wesley and Wes takes my lickin' for me. Other times, Peter will come knock on my door at 1 or 2 am, cry for water, tell me to make his "blanket like a square" or stuff like that. I just asked Wesley: "Wes, what's it like when you sleep with Peter..." His reply: "Uh, horrible. He kicks me all the time, and when he's not kicking me he's either screaming or crying. And it's hot." Wesley's most recent strategy is to fall asleep with him (P) in his (Wesley's) bed, and then Wesley climbs out and sleeps in Peter's bed. Wes said that last night Peter woke up crying "Everybody! Everybody!" Peter did that to me the other night too (well, early Monday morning 10/31, when Wes was at 5 am ice hockey practice...) I texted this to Wes at 4:54 am:

Peter has the gift of being irresistibly adorable, so that helps. Once they're 5 and 6, much of the sweetness is gone and then it's all messes. Wesley let me know that Daniel drew on his walls sometime between last night and this morning.  

He was simply writing on the wall to help himself remember which bed Owen sleeps on and which bed Peter sleeps on. 

I could hear Daniel's thoughts... "Owen up, Peter down, and Daniel is... straight? Here? This level? Oh snap how to I draw a straight line pointing to me laying on my bed on a wall that is parallel to my bed? Let's try again on the other wall..." and then he did it again. 

So the good news is, that he did NOT do this labeling with the black and blue permanent markers that I found on the floor in the boys room. Yay! I didn't know that until we started wiping it off - I had Daniel do most of it - with a magic eraser in his hand and it came right off.

He cleaned it off very sweetly and it only took like 10 minutes, which was a great relief since I was remembering getting marker off the wall in this room in 2018 - that time it took me a few days of scrubbing. Good job, D, you're a good 6 year old. When you're done, let's go wash that marker off your face. Thanks for cleaning up your mess! We need kids to do a lot more of that around here. On date night last night at Blue Lemon, I shared my desire to not bring any more of anything into this house on Christmas until we can contain what is already here. As Corey told his mother, I'm ready to put on my Scrooge! We've got a lot of work to do, I hope it's not too late for me to teach these kids how to clean. I listened to a podcast this week that I loved - I hope to become a better parent and expect more from my children without them having an immediate reward. 

Go listen to episode 45 with Lili De Hoyos Andersen, especially part 2, start at about min 25:00. It is really really good. Or you can read some of it here (I'm hoping to update that soon, I'll try to bold and underline the parts I really liked!)