April 2012

We started out the first day of April with a little bit of reading.

Henry in his bed:

And the three girls in their “fort”.  Can you even find them?  It’s like a “Where’s Waldo?” picture.  Cynthia so thinks she is one of the big kids now.

Then the day got a little bit more exciting when Daniel took the kids on an afternoon walk to look for lizards/bugs/butterflies in the wooded area near our house.  When they got home Oliver noticed something moving in the bushes in front of our house.  It turns out that it was a snake.  He ran in the house to tell me about it, and at first I thought (hoped?) it was an April Fools trick.  It wasn’t.

Here is Daniel with all the kids crowding around trying to catch it.  Oliver is on the other side of the bush, reaching in and trying to grab the snake with his bare hands, ignoring the fact that it is trying to bite him.

Daniel caught it using his homemade snake and lizard catching tool (doesn’t everyone have one of those?):

Oliver proudly showing it off.  I am always nervous to walk around that bush now, which is silly, because we actually have a pet snake.  But snakes in cages are way less scary than wild snakes popping out of bushes to jump on you when you don’t expect them.                                           

Henry loves his new job of putting away the silverware, because now he can hold all the knives and pretend he is Wolverine from X-men.  Elizabeth had this job for 2 years and never once figured that out.

Here is Lizza proudly displaying her winning bracket from our NCAA tournament challenge:

Modeling the new dress and shoes she picked out from Target with her gift card prize:

Cindy doing some coloring after stealing Lizza’s new shoes:

She loves trying on shoes, and she’s figured out that it’s easier to put on the big kids’ shoes, so she’s constantly raiding the shoe bucket by the front door and then clomping around in Oliver’s basketball shoes.

Cindy and Lizza coloring together:

Experimenting with our new camera (see how grainy the pictures above are?  those were with our old camera).  This first picture is of Elizabeth and Henry having an oatmeal picnic for lunch.  They really do love oatmeal.  Also, that is the third day in a row that Elizabeth wore her new dress. 

More experimenting:                                                                  

Easter Sunday (Elizabeth is back in her dress after giving it a break for a few days so I could wash it):

Our church is at 1:00 in the afternoon, and this is how Henry feels about that:

The kids had a day off of school, so I took them to the rec center to see some of their art work that was being displayed there, and then we went over the baseball fields to play at the park:

The older kids were playing freeze tag, so every time I tried to take pictures of them they were in funny frozen positions:

Cynthia hard at work trying to become an artist like her older siblings.  One of my favorite sights:

If you push the green button on this little train it starts to drive by itself, so Cynthia kept trying to push it and then hop in for a ride.                                                                      

Rachel reading Cynthia’s favorite book to her, Goodnight Moon.  I used to not like that book when I was a kid, because it rhymes “goodnight moon” with “goodnight cow jumping over the moon”, but now I really love it.  After years and years of reading to my kids, I have realized that for me the perfect children’s book is one where the author wrote exactly the words you want to say on that page – no more, no less.  Goodnight Moon is just right.

All these pictures of Cindy reading remind me of Green Eggs and Ham. 

Would you read it in a chair fort?

Would you read it on a bean bag?

Would you read it under a barstool?                                       

Or in the book basket?                                                         

But really, her favorite spot to read is on Mama’s lap.                  

Rachel and Elizabeth love copying the pictures from their Fancy Nancy pictures.  I love the pictures in those books, too – they are some of my favorite illustrations ever.

Everyone “helping” Cynthia play the memory game on my kindle:

Poor Lizza has wanted to learn how to ride a bike for a long time.  The sad thing is, when Rachel learned how (only a year and a half ago), Lizza wanted to try it, too, so she hopped on Rachel’s bike and started riding right down the sidewalk (until she realized she didn’t know how to stop, and rode right into our yard and crashed into a tree).  After that I never really finished teaching her how, so she went back to riding her Strider.

I finally decided to teach her this last week.  While the younger kids were napping, I let her bring Rachel’s old bike inside and practice riding it up and down the hall.  Then when the older kids got home from school, we went down to the park where there is a nice big flat sidewalk to practice on (we live on a hill, so our street isn’t great for learning).  She was a pro – I didn’t even have to run behind her or hold on or anything.  After a few tries she mastered starting and stopping, and then she was off.  No falls, no tears, no work for me – I really love Strider bikes for preparing kids for real bikes. 

She went up and down the sidewalk over and over again while the other kids played at the park.

Cindy did her best to keep up with her while pushing the stroller along:

Rachel had her last soccer game of the season.  They didn’t win any games this year, but she still had fun, and learned a little (maybe).

They had their end of the year party at our neighborhood pool:

Rachel with her friend Audrey:

The other kids had fun swimming, too (Tristan and Oliver were at a baseball game, so they missed it):

I love this picture.  Lizza’s like, “Yeah, you know it!”, Audrey is saying “Yum, frosting!”, and Rachel is like, “What kind of tomfoolery is going on here?”

The rest of my April pictures are called “The Bug Catchers.”  Henry has directly inherited all of Oliver’s love for animals and bugs, and he has somehow converted both Lizza and Cynthia to the science of bug catching.  Their favorite thing to do now is go out in the backyard and dig in the dirt and search for bugs.  Then they pick them up and hold them and pet them and make little houses for them.  I’m glad that Lizza and Cindy (as girls) have learned to not be squeamish around bugs (I haven’t learned this yet), but I probably need to have an intervention at some point, because Cynthia has no common sense, and tries to pick up spiders and kiss them and she thinks fire ants want to be her best friend.   

                          

My little bug girl.  I sing her songs before she takes her naps and goes to bed at night, and now the only kinds of songs she’ll permit are ones I make up about her finding butterflies and bugs in the yard with Henry and putting them on her arm.  After I read her a book, all I have to say is “okay, should I sing a bug song?”, and she’ll grab her blanket and cuddle right up to me and close her eyes.

The end.