DJ, 1st grade

I have been quite entertained cleaning out DJ's school folder lately. I honestly look forward to it--and I can only imagine all of what his teacher reads in a day!

I know it's spring when "baseball season begins."

Two words that have multiple meanings: Date (notice the kissy lips) and Sink

These are my favorite. 

Problem: "Tomy's stomach hert." Solution: "He went to the bathroom." "I feal better," says Tomy.

Problem: "The dog had a stienky barth [breath]." Solution: "The dog will use his breth to knok gys out."

Spring break 2019

I've been writing about the littles lately, so it's time to give some attention to the big kids as we close out our spring break!

We spent two nights at Gull Lake and two nights at a hotel in Ionia that graciously allows us to put seven people in one room. We booked the "honeymoon suite," which had a balcony overlooking the pool area and fit all of us (i.e., Mary slept between Kevin and me in the king-sized bed, one kid slept on the sleeper sofa, and the rest of the kids were in sleeping bags on the floor.) We visited Impression 5 and had fun with cousins and Grandma Linda, but otherwise, we were mostly in our yard enjoying the warmer weather.

I will never get enough of this view

Or this one! The "kids table" is the whole dining room table so the adults were relegated to the couches for Aunt Pam's famous Irish boiled dinner. 

Trying to coax Mary into the pool

Eddie loves swimming!

We tried out the Mooville ice cream shop in Ionia.

This was Tuesday, after all the swimming and playing.

Okay, now about those big kids:

DJ lost a front tooth and is at his most adorable (don't tell him I said that). He says his "Rs" clearly now, which makes him seem extremely grown up. He loves sports. He wants a March Madness themed birthday party next year (in December), though he didn't actually watch most of the games because he just plays with our adapted hoop.

Annie is still a fabulous helper around the house and especially loves baking and cooking. She's adapted well to her new school, making new friends but enjoying opportunities to spend time with LCS friends, too. She's working on a big biography project on Laura Ingalls Wilder, and is (blessedly) growing more and more responsible for all her own school business.

Nellie reads and reads. I think she read nine books over the break. That's not new--what's new is that she and Annie have started riding their bikes to the library, which I'm a little nervous about but Kevin assures me is FINE, he's been doing it since he was in the THIRD GRADE. Last night, we dropped off the girls at the Sun Theater to watch Captain Marvel by themselves. Growing up is so exciting! And scary (to me)!

Contrary Mary, Part 2

Here are a few more zingers just from today.

• Mary Cate singing the BINGO song: "B-I-N-G-O and Bingo was NOT his name-o." Me: "Mary, are you saying the doggie's name is NOT Bingo?" Mary: "No. And he's not a doggie, he's a duck."

• Me: "Okay, Mary. We're going to go brush teeth and go potty." Mary: "That is NOT the plan."

• Mary was riding her tricycle for the first time (very happily) and started to ride off the sidewalk. It scared her and she got mad at me. "Mommy, WATCH WHERE I'M GOING!"

• Me: "Mary, let's put a ponytail in your hair." Mary: "No. I can do this," modeling for me how she will just brush her hair out of her eyes like it's the best idea ever.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary

We didn't name Mary Cate after a nursery rhyme, but we could have. Here's a fun sampling.

• Singing along with the song Dynamite (the Kidz Bop version, of course): The words are, "And it goes on, and on, and on, yeah," Mary sings, "And it goes OFF, and OFF, and OFF, NO."

• Mary doesn't want to go to bed, ever, especially after daylight savings started. Every night, she tells me she's not going to bed because "the sky isn't nighttime yet!"

• We were getting ready for bed the other night and Mary was deep into acting out her own Dora-esque story line. I told her, "It's time to settle down now. We're going to stop pretending and get ready for bed." She responded, "I'm NOT pretending. I'm for real-ing."

This little video that Google Photos kindly made us without asking is perfect. It's 99% amazing, sweet, adorable. Then at the end there's a shot of Mary throwing a fit about something. Kevin used the classic parenting strategy of taking a picture to show her how silly she looked. Enjoy!

Eddie, 4-and-a-half

Eddie's conversation with mom:

Eddie: I can count to two hundred by two hundreds. Two hundred. Done! Now I'm going to count backward from infinity. Infinity minus one, infinity minus two...

I had to break it to him that he could count like that forever, and he'd still be at infinity. He was pretty disappointed.

Eddie's conversation with dad:

[Watching ESPN] Kevin: Hey Eddie, do you know what sport that is? Where they skate around on the ice?

Eddie: Hockeyball.