You started preschool this fall, so we had a small party and you got to invite your friends from school. This was a big deal for you and you were super excited, all the way from making the invitations to planning out the cake that you wanted (thanks to Grandma for the awesome Care Bear rendition). I think you really enjoyed being the center of attention for the day (who doesn’t).

You have really transformed recently into such a fun little girl. Maybe it is going to school, maybe it is finally breaking into the world of having a full conversational vocabulary, maybe it is just your own timeline… but I recently looked down and realized that you are no longer a toddler. You are little girl! A little girl with an amazing imagination. You can play for hours (really, hours… which is like days in the adult attention time frame) on your own with little figurines or toys or dolls. I love to listen to you when you are in the midst of this, because you don’t just play ordinary things. You always have great huge stories that go along with whatever you are playing. These usually involve sharks and hot lava and someone breaking rules and getting into terrible trouble at which point they are saved by another brave character or simply told, “Oh, that’s too bad. I hope you make a better choice next time” (hhhhmmm, wonder where you heard that one). You love to dress yourself and to pick out all your own outfits, most of which I don’t even need a sign to alert people to the fact that you are clearly in charge of your own wardrobe. You are really creative in so many ways! You love music and any kind of arts and crafts. Painting, coloring, and simply cutting paper into designs are all favorite past times. You also LOVE to cook. You are my biggest helper in the kitchen. Weekend pancakes and waffles are your specialty, but you are also pretty big on banana bread and any dish where you can chop things with your kiddie knife. Unfortunately, this love of cooking hasn’t transferred into a love of eating all foods. You are a picky, picky, picky eater. Dinnertime never goes down easy with you.

You are like a sparkly little sugar cube in our family. Oh so sweet, quick to melt, very sensitive to your surroundings and people’s words or actions, but such a wonderful addition to our mix. You are very loving and are definitely the cuddle bug of our family. You are also pretty funny, and love to share laughs with people. You are not aggressive and don’t need to be the center of the show, but you are also not overly shy. You seem perfectly content to just be you, and this is really one of my most favorite things about you. I hope that you carry this with you always. Sweet, creative, imaginative, sensitive, and brilliant little sugar cube that you are.

I was wrong! She loves it. The first day, she came jogging back in and said, “That was sooooo much more fun than I thought it would be.”

Costumes were fun this year. When Olivia told me in July that she was going to be a shark for Halloween, I just nodded and waited for the wind to change. Only, it didn’t. And as the months grew closer, and my little (then) 2 year old still held fast in her shark desires, I realized that I was going to need to find such a costume. Who knew that there must have been lots of like-minded 2 year olds, since Old Navy had just such an outfit this year!

Ava wanted to be a penguin, which we borrowed from a good friend over a month ago before Halloween ever arrived. She has been wearing it around on random days leading up to the legitimate day for costume wear. I drew the line when she asked if she could sleep in it.

Mia was a pumpkin, because… well, she is the third child and still has no say in anything that occurs in her life. It was given to us, she was cute in it… what more is there? I wasn’t sure that Mia would really be into Halloween this year. HA! Seriously, which part of free candy did I underestimate my 19 month old would not understand? It only took one confused trip to the neighbors’ front door, followed by realization that yelling “trick-or-treat” would net her one tasty chocolate goodness (which she promptly ate before even making it down the driveway) for her to be fully committed and on to the next house. As she looked over at me, her slightly confused, chocolate covered expression read, “This is the MOST AWESOME day E.V.E.R, and while I have no idea why you are allowing me to do this, I’m going to keep going until you wake up and stop me.”

And sweet baby Charlotte (who really deserves a post of her own on here, even though she isn’t technically one of mine)… was a soft baby green dragon who peacefully slept in some adult’s arms the entire trick-or-treating trip. If she wasn’t so damn cute I would be really mad at the fact that she has already (at 6 weeks) single handedly destroyed my notion that “my kids are totally normal and all babies are this fussy, active, busy, and demanding”. But, we’ll save that post for another day. Right now we’re talking cute kids in cute costumes.

Turning five is a big deal. You started kindergarten this year and sometimes when you look at me a certain way or say something funny and oh-so-big… I realize that you are well on your way to growing up. You’ve had a lot of big milestones recently. Reading books on your own, doing the whole bedtime routine on your own, washing your own clothes and dishes (HaHa, still waiting for that one…), telling jokes and asking LOTS of really good questions that I just don’t know the damn answer to half the time (how DOES electricity build up in the air to produce lightening and why doesn’t it happen in Oregon? Thank God for Google on my iphone).

People always talk about how much they love the baby stage. And, I did love to cuddle and snuggle with my little ones. But, I am really loving this age too. I love that you are developing a sense of sarcasm and humor (although the attitude that goes with it isn’t so fun). I love that we can actually talk about issues and real things, and you think about the conversation and ask pretty good questions, and come up with some pretty good responses. “Sometimes life works out the way you want, and sometimes it doesn’t” (you said to Olivia when you won eeny-meeny-miny-mo recently).

I love that you wanted a dinosaur party and that I had to go to the boy section of invitations to find one that would work, but also that when the day came you insisted on wearing your nicest dress. You still love animals and your most prized possession is the dogged, duct taped copy of Animal Encyclopedia. You are incredibly focused and love video games, puzzles, board games, and anything competitive. You don’t like to lose. Similar to how you don’t like to be bossed, but prefer to do the bossing (or perhaps I should say “organizing”). One of your favorite games to play around the house is “library”, where you make your sisters check out books. Or, “transforming otter” where they have to be your zookeeper while you play a magical transforming otter who really doesn’t have to follow any rules because you can magically transform to accomplish anything you wish. You can be a bossy older sister (hhhhmmmm, surely doesn’t remind me of anyone I know). But, when your baby sisters really need you, you step up and offer them a hand. You watch out for them. You interpret for them. You comfort them. You’ve got their back, and I get that and I’m happy to see it. You are not overly affectionate, and you don’t like people hugging all over you (not that I blame you). I think this is why I still let you climb into bed with us in the early morning. I still love when you wrap your little arms and legs in with mine and fall back asleep next to me. I know after a few more of these birthday posts, that just won’t happen anymore. I know I’ll miss it, and that I’ll try to remember the smell of your still-damp-from-the-bath hair and the way you always mumble about whether it is Saturday yet as you fall back asleep.

For awhile I thought I might just give up this blog. I thought I might post more on Facebook, but that sort of stresses me out because I always find myself trying to come up with something interesting and funny to say in my status update instead of just the boring old truth which is usually something about me trying to hold my head on straight in the crazy happy chaos of our life. So, here I am back at the blog. Dave reminded me that we started this when Ava was born, and it is pretty cool that she (and now the other two) will be able to look back over it and see what was going on at different points of time. So, I’m going to do better. Post more. Show you what we’re up to. I have a few posts I want to share, but first a brief update to get you up to speed.

Summer was good. Busy. Fun. Sweaty. HOTTER THAN A MOTHER*****R. We went to San Antonio. We went to Oregon. We visited friends and family, made new friends, and welcomed new family. We lost our cat Oliver. We got a new kitten named Lilly. We said goodbye to Jeff, while he headed to Afghanistan. We helped welcome his new baby daughter into the world with my sister (love you little MIss Charlotte Alexandra). We said goodbye to my sister who went to graduate school. We welcomed by little sister who moved into with my parents. We had friends get engaged, friends get married, friends have babies, and a friend get diagnosed with the return of metastatic cancer. We almost moved to Belgium, but didn’t. We spent lots of evenings at the beach, in our backyard, and at the park. We ate lots of BBQ and more than our fair share of smores. We lost some sweet old friends who had lived beautiful long lives, and celebrated birthdays of little ones who have lots more living to do. Speaking of birthdays, Ava celebrated the big number FIVE, and Olivia is now THREE (or 3 1/2 to her since she believes you always have to add the half onto your age).

So, here’s our video of the summer…

By the end of the week… every kid there is swimming. Its not always pretty, and its definitely lacking some coordination. But at least they could probably swim to the side if they fell in. In fact that is one of the first lessons they teach, if you fall in, turn around and swim to the side.

By the end of the week, Ava was swimming across the pool. She’s been a fish at our pool ever since. She’s now doing handstands on the bottom of the pool, diving for diving sticks, and just swimming her little heart out.

And Olivia did great too! This was her first year and I had to really push a little to get her in. They don’t like to start them until they are three. I explained that she really NEEDS swimming lessons because she thinks that she CAN already swim. She will walk right up to the edge of the pool, and jump in… only to promptly sink. Luckily, we know this and haven’t let her near the edge of water without us there. But if you have met this little spit fire, then you know that there needed to be another plan.

So, we convinced them and off she went. Her little doggie paddle swim under the water is about the cutest thing EVER, so I will have to get some video up for you.

She really lucked out since she was the youngest; she got the head coach to herself the whole week (pink hat). Since her lessons she jumps in and swims her little heart out at our pool. Finally, something that can wear her down!

The Zoo is one of our favorite places to visit, and they recently added a nice new water pond and train. Add that to a new baby elephant, and an awesome dinosaur exhibit and it is hard to believe we haven’t been there in months. Even though it hit 99 degrees before noon, we managed to sneak in a quick visit before heat stroke set in.

Baby Baylor is a new attraction. Only a couple months old, he is so cute. The zoo has had a lot of trouble keeping baby elephants alive. They are very susceptible to an elephant specific form of the Herpes virus which is easily transmitted among the zoo elephant population, and still somewhat of a mystery. Our zoo has lost several baby elephants, and Baby Baylor was named after Baylor Hospital since they are working hard on a vaccine for the virus. In any case, he was just about a cute as a human baby.

The dinosaur exhibit was fun too. There were lots of life size dinosaurs that had some animatronics. It makes you realize just what a small feat we would be against these guys, a little snack really . Poor little Olivia was half frightened, but so intrigued that she couldn’t look away.