Let's Draw :)

So as promised, without further ado... Abby's artwork...

(I believe this is a drawing of me, she commented that I have really long hair)

(This is one of her "story" drawings, where she starts with one thing and tells a story as she draws. I tried to outline things a little closer so that you could see what the characters are. Note Rapunzel's very long hair (and crown...) They are in the tower, interesting perspective on the drawing. I enjoy Pascal myself...)

(Pizza... yes it is pink)

(This is one of her 'Full body" drawings ((Sorry no idea what the yellow thing is, that was an addition tonight)) Note that the drawing has eyes, nose, mouth, hair, arms, sleeves for the dress, legs and fingers and toes. Sorry I love child development and from what little I know this is a little beyond what kids her age typically are drawing. Would be curious to see what others think. I of course am a little biased and think it is awesome if not a little creepy :o)

Here is the scoring for the "Draw a Person Test" A real developmental Test for children:

One Point Assigned per Feature:
Head present	Fingers present
Neck present	Correct number of fingers shown
Neck, two dimensions	Opposition of thumb shown
Eyes present	(must include fingers)
Eye detail: Brows or lashes	Hands present
Nose present	Arms present
Nose, two dimensions	Arms at side or engaged in activity
(not round ball)	Feet: any indication
Mouth present	Attachment of arms to legs I
Lips, two dimensions	(to trunk or anywhere)
Both nose and lips in two	Attachment of arms and legs II
dimensions	(at correct point on trunk)
Both chin and forehead shown	Trunk present
Bridge of nose (straight to eyes;	Trunk in proportion, 2 dimensions
narrower than base)	(if greater than breadth)
Hair I (any scribble)	Clothing I (anything)
Hair II (more detail)	Clothing II (two articles of clothing)
Ears present
Mental Age (yr)	Points Scored by Boys	Points Scored by Girls
3	4	5
4	7	7
5	11	11
6	13	14
7	16	17
8	18	20

Where do you think she scores?

I'll let you know what I come up with later ;)

It's just that kind of night

Just finished getting the girls down to bed. Phew they wore me out tonight. I knew we were in for trouble when Tom picked me up at work and they were all asleep in the car. One thing you should know about my girls; as hard as they are to get asleep... is as hard as it is to get them awake after they have gone to sleep. I remember once I had Abby standing straight up and she was still sleeping.

There just isn't much you can do to get them to stay awake. Their eyes roll back in their head and they are OUT.

So we did bedtime a little later tonight. When we made it home the girls were all crying and weepy. Nothing I did seemed to help. I was stressed out, needed to use the bathroom and they were all hanging on me. So I tactfully shut and locked the door... and then stayed in there. They were all crying by the door, little fingers peeking under the doorframe. I told them I wasn't coming out until they all stopped crying.

It actually worked.

So then we had supper, watched a cartoon, I gave them baths and we colored. I forced... yes forced Kara and Kiley to read a book. Not sure who was more upset by the time we finished that. I miss having a kid that actually WANTED to sit and read a book. Abby continued to color. Wow she has really gotten better. I'll take a few pictures of her drawings in the next post where I can feature her artwork. :o)

Baby is giving me crazy heartburn lately with his head pressed so hard against my stomach. Time to get some sleep!

Nesting

Last Night:

"My three little wild children were running around the house, I asked Abby why they all had their clothes off... she looked at me very seriously and said "We're scavengers!" Would love to know where she got that..."



Super Bowl Sunday; Tom made me laugh this morning when he told me that if my water broke before the game was over I would "have to hold it"

Haha, good luck with that. Don't worry Tom, I think baby boy is staying put a little longer!

Sposies vs Cloth?

To Cloth or not to Cloth... perhaps taking the plunge down the dark and dirty road of diapers once again. Diapering two twin princesses for the last two years and seeing the sheer awesomeness of multiple bags of diapers has made me realize how much I hate them. Especially now that we are PAYING someone to take the dirty diapers away, and then burning the rest of our trash at my parent's place... seems silly.

So my top reasons for attempting:
1) Disposable Diapers (Sposies) take like 500 years to break down... that means a lot of diapers sitting around. They don't burn, I could probably build a fire proof wall with them... seriously....
2) Kids in cloth potty train faster because they can FEEL when they are wet, yes you change them more but isn't that the point? To change them when they are dirty?
3) These aren't your Mom's cloth diapers... they have really caught up to modern technology...
4) I'm pretty sure that if I don't go overboard on buying fashionable prints, I can save a lot of money.

So what does a cloth diaper look like these days? Feast your eyes on this:

These are what are called "Pocket Diapers"  The ones I want actually have a snap system so there is more security... but they make many many varieties of the above diaper. I've been doing my research, checking into brands and talking with other moms. Once baby boy is here I will probably wait a few weeks before even trying cloth diapers, try to get past the newborn stage of diapers which = 100's of diapers.

I probably will use Sposies at night, unless he is like the rest of my girls and is up every hour. Then I suppose it doesn't matter.

No idea if I should look into getting prefolds or fitted or... who knows what else. But I will check into a few, see if I can figure this out... see if I FEEL like doing it. Tom already agreed that it is worth a shot, the laundry isn't much more than what we are already doing and frankly... at least we wouldn't have to fold those (haha!)

Wish me luck! Would love to hear anyone else's thoughts on this.

Moo!

I love my little camera buddy... we were looking at Grandpa's cows.

"Mommy! Grandpa's cows! Hi cows!"

Countdown!

Here comes the countdown, we had a little trip into town and I picked up a few more things. I'm also working on going through the closet in what was Abbys room and will now be the nursery. I was quite thrilled with my purchases because I remembered at the last minute that I had a bunch of reward coupons so I managed to get everything 50% off. (hurray!)

Putting together a nursery however means.... sorting clothes... lots and lots of clothes. I sorted out a few things for baby boy that were either neutral or sports team apparel. Plus a few of the new outfits that I picked up.

Whew! Just one more tote to go through now! Hope there isn't another girl in our future or I've seriously downsized lol. All of the girls are napping and Tom is napping on their floor at the moment. I should get back to work but it's nice to have a coffee break.

I let the girls use their Christmas money from their Great Grandma today, here is a rundown of the purchase:

Abby: Two Barbies on sale (10 dollars each)
Kiley: One princess dress (19 dollars- she is obsessed)
Kara: One flashlight (2 dollars)

Kara has a green yucky nose so chances are... she just wasn't all that interested. She actually liked this goofy little fidget thing but they wanted 25 dollars for it and I didn't think it would survive for long. It sounds like tonight we will have company, it will be fun for the girls to see our friends again.

Single Parenting... sorta...

For the next two weeks Tom and I are trading off on single parenting. Interesting adventure and a little lonely at the same time. I work from 7, 7:30am-ish-5pm(ish)... then Tom brings up the kids and we switch. I take the kids home and he heads to work from 5:30pm-10:00pm. On the plus side, no childcare issues because we are able to trade off, down side... We really see very little of each other.

Thankfully it's just for a few more weeks.

I went in for an ultrasound on Monday and our newest little guy is measuring right around 4 pounds and is in the 30th percentile. I have one more ultrasound next week because I'm part of a research study with him (yay free ultrasound!)

(Awww!)

The sleeping is still quite frustrating, we are averaging 1.5-2.5 hours a night just sitting in their room and putting them to bed. I can hardly stand it sometimes because that eats up at least half of the night that I'm home. Not to mention it's still a lot of up down up down up down... and I'm already exhausted at that point. I wish we could eliminate naps but the girls have started falling asleep on the way home from work, so don't think thats an option (and it certainly doesn't help bedtime)

(Kara)

Guess we'll keep trying and I'll try to find more to do online when I have to sit in there. Hurray...

The girls are now all sleeping in the same room together. I wish that we could let them have their own rooms but we are officially out of space. Abby is sleeping on the top bunk and Kiley and Kara take turns sleeping either in her old bed or on the bottom bunk. They haven't decided which one they want to sleep in yet so seem to switch. And this of course means I've started (or Tom has) in preparing the nursery for when boy comes. I wanted a space that I could put him in the swing and have him be safe. I just didn't want to have to worry about the girls harassing him all the time. It is kinda fun to see the crib go up again... and exciting that it is getting closer.

Phew Abby is stinky (sorry for the side note!)

Miss Abby has been waking up every morning around 3 am SCREAMING. She seems to have nightmares about me being gone. She also tends to wake up at 6-6:30am and wake up the twins so that they watch cartoons together (which means they come to find us) Of course this is when I try to get ready for work... makes that a little hard!

Abby has a pajama party at preschool tomorrow... and they are going to wear pajamas and eat popcorn with their pillows. Tom and I met with her teacher the other day and it went really well. The teacher appreciated us filling her in about how to best help Abby and so far it is helping quite a bit. They are working on giving her more time to transition, working with her on over stimulating times and now are writing how her days go in her special notebook. This really helps us at home... because thats usually when we deal most with it. Glad we found a teacher that is so willing to step in and help Abby learn! She is really picking up things fast :o)

Looking forward to a quieter weekend coming up...

Tomato soup and an Octopus

Preschool Update  (wow that isn't a very interesting title is it)

Long overdue for an update on a few of the fun things Abby has been learning. She just finished up her 3rd week of 'school'  and looks to be loving it! I always knew she enjoyed learning and I hope that she continues to enjoy it.

My brave husband heads out into the cold every Tuesday and Thursday with three little girls in tow. Drops Abby off and then tries to entertain the other two for a few hours.

The first time we asked her what she did in school she stated "We eat snack, clean up and go home." Alright! I pay 100 dollars a month for snack time and for her to do something I've been wishing for since the early days of toddler hood... clean up... (just kidding) she does a lot more than that.

(By the way it is incredibly hard to write this article when I have six pairs of hands trying to point out the individual parts of Abby's artwork...)

Last night after I got home, Tom asked me to grab the papers out of Abby's backpack and show them to her. She can identify what letters objects start with... I mean I was pretty impressed when she knew that otter (a word I'm 99% sure she has heard like twice in her life) and octopus started with O... but I wasn't expecting her to tell me what the rest of the animals on the worksheet started out with. (Ok maybe it isn't as impressive but I'm her mom) I was just impressed that she could go beyond simple letter recognition to realizing that objects are attached to words and words have these letters.

She also told us all about the Bible story of Jesus healing the blind man with mud on his eyes and that the story summary was that "Jesus can do anything." (simple theology but she's three) No prompting... no pictures... my little girl is growing up!

She even made Tom tomato soup last night.... 

Must... Find... Motivation

Tonight is one of those, "If I make it off the couch for necessities it will be a miracle" nights. Necessities being of course cereal and the friend I have spent most of my 9 months getting to know. Pretty much everything needs to be done at this point... dishes, folding laundry (tom has wonderfully washed 99% of it) and a variety of other things.

Will they go away if I stare at them? *stares harder* .... maybe the pizza crust moved a little.

But I miss most the interaction and play time with my girls. I last 5 minutes on the floor playing before I lose all feeling in my legs and they (my legs) begin to scream in agony.

In case you missed it...

Yesterday Abby explained to me that her hands were brothers and that one of them was trying to break the other's evil spell.

She is a hoot to be around right now with story after story. I want to do a better job of writing up the entertaining portions of the last few days but for now cannot really do them justice. Perhaps after I lay down...

Play Dough Cookies...

Tom and I found this the other night while we were cleaning up and got a good laugh out of it. Apparently Barbie had a little bit too much fun driving around the kitchen. Life can be pretty rough on a Barbie that lives in a house with three little girls.

Home for the weekend and loving it! I have so much more energy early in the morning then I do in the afternoon so I finally feel like I can get a little bit done around here. So far all of the dishes are done, pots are washed and the counter tops cleared. How long it will last in our tiny kitchen I'm not sure but it's a start!

All three princesses are wearing dresses and dancing around the house to either the fridge magnet toy or Angelina Ballerina television show. At the moment Abby is making dolphin Play Dough cookies with Kara's help. Kiley got banished because she isn't very good at sharing this morning and has already been in time out for bouncing on the beds.

Tom took the three girls into the ENT (Ear Nose & Throat) doctor yesterday to have Kiley's ears checked. She is such a wonderful doctor that she checked all three because of course after Kiley was done, Kara said "Me too!" And then Abby wanted to be checked too. Kiley's right ear had fluid and was retracted (infected) so she earned herself an antibiotic. Kara's has fluid so they want to see both girls back in 3 weeks.

Hopefully that means an end to some of the 3am screaming! Might be part of our problem with bedtime...

We are home all weekend, at some point I need to visit my grandma to see if she can help me with my dress for next weekend. Tom and I will be heading up North to a wedding while Tom's parents come to hang out with the girls for the weekend. I'm the Maid of Honor in the wedding so it would have been difficult to be in the wedding with the girls. I'm sure they will have a great time with Grandma and Grandpa.

I think Tom is nesting a little himself again ;) He is finding more projects again around the house to do. We are thinking of having all three of the girls room together again so that when baby boy comes we have a 'nursery' or place where he can be without being harassed constantly. It might be interesting to try the bunk beds...

Abby's Snow Angel from our walk this afternoon :o)