I love how she put the cloth back in the drawer after cleaning up her mess. Sometimes I find dirty cloths in there, and now I know why. The funny thing is, she really does like things to be nice and tidy. Every day she likes to dump out all the shoes from her shoe bucket to try them on. When she’s done, she’ll usually pick them all up and put them back in the bucket, and then try to straighten out the bucket. The other day I was watching her, and she had already straightened out the bucket, but she stopped when she got to the closet door, turned around, looked at the bucket for a second, and then went back and straightened it a little more. Then she did lots of little nods to herself, like, “okay, much better.”
She isn’t at all clean when she eats, though. It’s usually best after a meal to just plop her straight into the bathtub. 
Which is probably all part of her master plan, because she loves baths. When I was little we used to always listen to Raffi (a children’s singer) and one of my favorite songs was called “Baby Beluga”, and it was about a little baby Beluga whale swimming in the “deep blue sea” and at the end it said “and the little white whale on the go!” I can’t watch Cindy playing around in the bath without thinking of that song – she is my little white squishy whale.
See? My little Baby Beluga. I love her squishiness. (also, she didn’t draw that star – she just likes me to draw lots of shapes on the paper, and then she colors all around them). 
Tristan had an overnight scout camp at the beginning of March, so Daniel went along and took Oliver and Henry also, to make it a father/son campout. They had a lot of fun. 
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I was not surprised to hear that Oliver spent most of his time fishing with the pole he got for Christmas.
Some March reading pictures:
After we finished reading the little picture Book of Mormon as a family, Elizabeth decided she wanted to read it on her own, “like a real book”, she said. She carried it around with her for a few days and read the whole thing. I think it made more sense to her to read it that way – she kept coming up to me and telling me about exciting parts she was reading that she had never known about before. Now we’re reading the actual Book of Mormon as a family, and she pays much more attention, and is always calling out “ooh, I know what’s going to happen next!” I love it.
Here she is reading it to Henry at one of Rachel’s soccer games:
Cynthia likes to combine reading with her other favorite activities. She and the other kids always love to wrestle with Daniel when he gets home from work, and Cindy started this funny thing where she would run grab a book from her book basket, and then she’d try to read it while she was wrestling. Our little multi-tasker.
She might be embarrassed someday that I’m writing this down, but she also likes to read while going to the bathroom, and she’s decided to turn the toy cupboard in the kitchen into her own personal toilet area. She’ll empty out all the toys, grab a few good books, and then about 10 minutes later she’s ready for a diaper change. Maybe I should just stick a little toilet in there? 
Here she is reading books in her bed. Sometimes in the evening when she’s tired or grumpy, but it’s not time for bed yet, and I’m still trying to get the kitchen cleaned or something, I’ll ask her if she wants to read in her bed. She’ll run back there, and then I’ll get her set up with a bunch of books, and she’ll read happily to herself for 20 minutes. It’s a great system. 
Another of her favorites is reading the “trip books” that I make, with pictures from our vacations. She loves pointing out all the members of our family, and she’ll walk around holding these books all day, saying, “lap? lap? lap?”, just begging for someone to sit down with her and let her plop into their lap to read. 
March is always a good month for finding animals on the walk home from school, and Oliver usually walked in the door (late) with some sort of creature. In the second picture, he had caught a whole family of little crayfish, one for each of the younger kids. I love how Henry is looking up at Oliver in complete adoration – Ollie is his animal-catching hero. 
Also in March – the NCAA Basketball Tournament. We created a group on ESPN with some of our family and friends, and we had our kids (minus Cynthia) fill out their own brackets.
This is what March Madness looked like at the Mott house – Tristan, Oliver, Rachel, and Lizza working on their brackets, the night before the deadline. We told them that whoever got the most points in our family (not the whole group) would win a $25 gift card to Target, so they took it pretty seriously.
Rachel took the longest, by far. She was stressed about every pick she made (which I could completely relate to, because I felt the same way when filling out mine). 
Lizza was the opposite – very fast, and very decisive. She didn’t get a lot of points in the first few rounds, but she ended up surprising us by getting all of her final four picks right, and winning it out of our family (she got second place overall in the group). She was pretty excited about that Target shopping trip (she picked out a beautiful blue dress).
We kept everyone’s brackets out on the kitchen counter, and it was a lot of fun to keep track of each game, and then mark off on everybody’s bracket if they had gotten it right or wrong. Here is Tristan being a good sport after Duke lost (he had picked them to go all the way). Maybe next year, Tristan. 
Lizza and Rachel on St. Patrick’s Day, with their green four-leaf clover chocolate chip pancakes with whipped cream. Rachel had also decided that it would be appropriate to wear her “participation” medal from last year’s gymnastics class to honor such a special holiday. 
The best part of March was having my older sister Rebekah and her family drive down from Oklahoma to visit us for a few days. She has three little girls (one Lizza’s age, one Henry’s age, and one just a little older than Cynthia) and our kids had so much fun with them.
Cindy stealing food from her cousin Sally: 
The first night the kids had very optimistic sleeping arrangement plans (which had to be adjusted later, due to nobody getting any sleep):
I loved watching Henry and Elaine together. Henry was so excited to show her all his favorite puzzles.
Rachel and Mariah coloring together. There were dozens of coloring parties while they were here:
They also had fun reading together:
And they played lots of games. This is my new favorite game – Spot It. Everybody needs to get this game! It is so great, and fun for all ages. Lizza beats me all the time. 
Lizza also whipped up some of her specialty Memory games. I have no idea what this arrangement of cards was supposed to be (wait – I just asked her, and she said it was a sword and a shield. Okay.)
On the way to the park:
Henry took about an hour to ride to the park just down the street, because he had to stop and catch every single bug that he saw (Oliver has trained him well). That little speck on his arm is a roly poly that he carefully rode with all the way to the park. 
Cynthia and Sally: 
And of course, with this many girls in the house, there were lots of princesses running around at all times. I love this picture, because with the light coming down through the window above them, they look like little princess angels. 
Until Cindy joins them in her diaper and ruins the effect. At least Lizza was happy about it.
All nine kids ready for church (plus a stroller and a doll and a dog and a sippy cup full of applesauce);
And eating dinner together on their last night here:
After they left, Cindy entertained herself by trying on clothes from a box of summer clothes I brought in from the garage. She loves trying to get herself dressed, but she’s not very good at it – she puts everything on her legs, even the shirts. I’m trying to learn how to be patient and not step in and help her, because she’s really content to just sit there for a half hour trying over and over again, and she doesn’t really want help. Whenever I see her happily trying to do something that is taking her a long time, I remember something my mom told me when Tristan was little – babies don’t usually feel a sense of urgency, because they have all the time in the world, so if they are content working something out, you should let them try to work it out. I have been reminded of that more with Cindy than with some of my other babies – she will sit by her bucket of shoes in my closet and try to put them all on, and she usually can’t get any of them on her feet, but she just keeps trying patiently. Sometimes it stresses me out to see her trying to do something that isn’t working, and I’m always amazed that she doesn’t get frustrated. This box of clothes kept her entertained for a really long time. 
Other March pictures:
Cynthia hard at work coloring:
Henry hard at work doing some math problems (or “pretend practice homework”, as he likes to call it):
Henry and Lizza hard at work with what looks like all the puzzles in the house:
And Oliver hard at work playing baseball. Daniel and I went to one of his night games for our date, and it was really nice to actually be able to watch him play without the distraction of having all the little kids there. 
That’s it for March.
