The megablocks are back out of storage. Already. I feel like they were just cluttering up the pen and getting underfoot a second ago, when Devon was a toddler and the girls were still nursing twelve hours a day. He outgrew them and I put them in the spare room closet. Before I even decided which of our friends to gift them to, the girls were sneaking in there to dig through them when I wasn't looking.
It's one of the few perks to having a few kids really close together. I may have lost the hand-me-down lottery overall, but at least I don't have to save things for very long. The robot is, of course, a Daddy-and-Devon creation. Thankfully they snapped these photos right away, because the moment I lifted Carrie out of her crib the next morning she spied it in the pen and ran to it, lifting its head off its body and laughing.
So long, C3PO.
As I mentioned in the last post, we've had a pretty sick three months. Lots of extra sippies and Lightning McQueen Kleenexes have been in order.
Devon had his first course of antibiotics ever, for an ear infection. Eight days in we discovered yet another way he takes after my side of the family. Devon is allergic to penicillin products. They give him pinpoint hives all over his body.
Thankfully, when you're almost three years old popsicles cure most of the evils in the world.
"Look, Mommy!" he says. "All of the engines are watching me color!"
I watch the engines watch my big boy color a picture of... engines.
Thankfully, he finally seems to be over the phase where he colors the walls, floor, siblings, and pretty much anything that isn't made out of paper. Whew.
"Shhh, Mommy. I'm talking to Uncle Tim and Auntie Bojana. Because they're here!" says Devon when I check on him, hours after he should be asleep.
I'm still trying to get the girls to tolerate a "pretty" in their hair. So far, all they won't rip out are cornrow rubber bands, so sometimes I do side ponytails that stay. If not, we just live with the bedhead.
We three girls enjoy outings while Devon colors and paints with ten other little boys at TOTS.
The girls seem to have calmer and less adventurous personalities than Devon, but with one notable exception. I've never seen babies that climb like these two. Last week I caught Melina standing on the raised horizontal slat of a dining room chair back, hands clinging to the window like Spiderman. Not even their sleep sacks keep them in their cribs any more, since they learned to shuck their bodies through the neck opening like an ear of corn and climb right out. As a last resort, I searched the closet for Devon's outgrown PJ's and sewed the feet of two pairs together. So far it's grounded them like a pair of clipped wings. It's made their morning wakeups pretty resentful, too, but it's a small price to pay for safety.
"Guck!" says Carrie when I go in to get her in the morning, glaring at me.
"Yes, you're stuck," I acknowledge.
"Meemo guck!" she reinforces.
I've been waiting to see what the kids would call each other. After months of "Sissy", Carrie now calls her sister Meemo and Melina calls her Cayo.
Devon, or course, can say Carrie and Melina very clearly now, but he still can't tell his own sisters apart.
They call him "Debby".
Mommy takes "Debby" to Home Depot for Saturday crafts.
Toaster waffles are a winner at our house, but the favorite food of all three kids is, surprisingly, gumbo. Daddy made the first version on a Sunday Soup Night, usually a time to supplement with extra PBJ's if the selection is a bit too obscure. All three kids finished their helpings. Mommy followed it up with a crock pot version when company came a few weeks later, and it too disappeared without complaint.
But the real confirmation came this week. I decided to make up for the gastronomic and budgetary excesses of our Disney vacation by making a big pot of soup that we could eat on for a few days. Since I didn't have any crabmeat left, I opened a can of chicken to round out the andouille sausage.
I'm not sure what happened, but all day in the crock pot and the carrots were still hard. We made other plans for dinner and I turned it up to high, planning to finish cooking it and transfer it to containers in a few more hours.
Or six. Oops. It was midnight by the time I finished the floors and laundry. The next evening Craig and I poked wary spoons into bowls of a greasy brown sludge that defied explanation. The broth hadn't thickened and the canned chicken hadn't tenderized and fallen apart like I thought it would. Large chicken chunks like gravel floated on the surface with overbrowned bits of sausage. I tasted it. It was revolting. Probably the worst meal I've ever made in a repertoire that includes Fish Enchiladas. I sighed and made to dump the whole pot in the trash, ruminating that soup wasn't exactly a money saving idea if you ruin it and have to order a pizza.
Just then, I noticed Devon tucking into his bowl with relish. Carrie and Melina opened their mouths wide and gestured towards their portions. I let the girls taste the soup so they wouldn't cry when I took it away.
They loved it.
Seriously. They opened their mouths wide for every overcooked carrot, every gummy bit of okra. They chewed up the sausage and the stringy chicken, opening their mouths wide to show each other their bites and laughing excitedly. When I emptied the bowl of chunks to spoonfeed them, they cried when I made to throw the broth away, so I got a straw and let them drink it. They sucked it down like it was Jamba Juice. Not one to waste food, I've let them eat it for the last three days. They finished it this evening, licking up the last bit of broth and looking around for more.
And to think I consider them picky eaters.
Carrie and Melina enjoyed a beachwalk with Kaley and Ryley last week. Those are some pretty stoic faces for one of the most gorgeous beach spots in America. Come on, kids! Mommy and Daddy almost moved to Illinois instead of here! You'd have learned to wear your shoes with three feet of snow on the ground!
However, I scored two plastic pairs of dress up heels at a garage sale that made them pretty excited. Several times a day they put their pretty shoes on and go straight to the kitchen, clicking their heels on the tile like tap dancers.
Silly babies. If you get Mommy's height, you'll be tall enough.
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