Days at Our House

Well, the craziness continues at our house.  John Paul is now 10 months old and the girls' birthdays are coming up this next week.  I have finished my most recent consulting project, one report and final presentation left.  Working on nailing down the next thing, and looking forward to reducing my "To Do" list which has been accumulating on the white board.

September was pretty fun, Alex is back in school but it didn't really hit the family until this past weekend as this term started slow.  But it is fast and furious now, it will be a lot of work for him this year.

The girls are loving school.  Lucia came home the other day to inform me that "five and five makes ten."  And they are using "oil pastels" in school.  All this adorable stuff, I know she is learning a lot and loves it.  Magdalena insists on wearing shorts every day still, and comes home covered in dust all over her legs from playing on the playground at recess.  She frequently heads straight to nap when she arrives home as she has completely exhausted herself from the day.  This afternoon she and I were outside with John Paul who has recently begun to say "Cah" for car.  She was articulating to him how to say it "CaRRRRR" - it was pretty cute.

Lucia has been cracking us up lately too.  The other night Alex and I were talking over dinner about John Paul's messy diapers (all you parents know that mature dinner conversations go out the window once you have kids!).  I asked Alex, "John Paul pooped twice on my watch, did he poop on your watch?"  Lucia stared at me incredulously and asked "John Paul POOPED on Daddy's WATCH???"  We busted up!  I think she was a bit embarrassed.  Then a day or two later, we walked to a park in the afternoon and Alex came to pick us up.  We decided to do a drive by on a house in our neighborhood that is listed very low - a complete fixer-upper.  As we got to the house and were slowly rounding the corner to peer at it, Alex and I were commenting about how dilapidated it was, the yard was awful, it obviously needed several hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work, etc.  Lucia pipes in completely deadpan "At least it has a roof!"  Again, fits of giggles from the peanut gallery. :-)

John Paul is moving so much, it is hard to keep track of him.  Our door to the downstairs must stay closed at all times when not in use.  The second he sees that door open, or the refrigerator door for that matter, he makes a crawling beeline for it.  He loves to pull up and stand anywhere, and has even taken to pushing the girls high white plastic IKEA chairs around the kitchen like a walker.  He has been climbing backwards up our little plastic slide for a week or so now, sliding back down on his tummy when he loses his footing.  But just yesterday I caught him standing on the first step of the ladder part of the slide - he is now climbing up that way as well.  Video later in this post.

That is the basic update in a nutshell.  I haven't gotten a chance to post on some fun things from this past summer and the bucket list - Enchanted Forest, wine tasting, our coast trip with the Cornett family.  Maybe my time off will yield the ability to post some backlog blogs.  And hopefully I'll get back into more of a groove now with a few more free hours a day.  We'll see!

Before pictures - here is a video of what dinner is routinely like at our house.   It's kind of long, but a pretty good sample of our life right now.  Someday (year) we'll look back and miss this time of our lives!

Green Eggs, no ham

Lucia took this cute shot of JP

Friends from SF were in PDX for a weekend, Dads and Dudes here

Such a sweet cutie!

Bathing beauty cuties!

JP was all over that fountain, crawling everywhere and loving it, didn't mind the wet or cold in the least

Another Lucia Special of JP - love how the angle is looking up at him :-)

I just read Lucia and Magdalena "Fancy Nancy and the Mermaid Ballet" so we had to practice (for the record, I practiced too :-)

The oven handle makes a great balance bar.

I just love how good of friends our girls are.  They will often play together, the other day Lucia was the "Queen" and Magdalena was the "Princess."  And M is still wearing the "eye bandaid" about 1 hour a day (more like 5x/week as we're kind of bad about it).  We'll see what the doc says next week when we go back again.

Anyone contemplating having three - let me tell you that these moments are few and far between (but completely priceless when they do happen!)

JP and Daddy!

JP and Mama!

I had to laugh - Lucia traced her Tickle Me Elmo doll to make this, and named it "Elmo Susan Jones."  For the record, Lucia's full name is "Lucia Susan Jones."

Lucia has been lining up her babies for a "Family Photo" lately...

Another Family Photo a few days later...

I just love this photo of JP

JP and Apa

JP and Ama

Climbing the ladder!

Here he is going up that slide