October 14, 2011: It has been awhile since I've written about our daily routine. Lately, the kids are up around 7am. On school days we eat breakfast around 7:30. The kids generally eat a huge breakfast. Everyday it is waffles, yogurt, 2 hard boiled eggs, and fruit. Then we rush about the house brushing hair, teeth, and getting dressed. We are out the door at 8:35 and into the car to school. I try to take turns with who gets dropped off to their classroom first. The kids don't seem to mind or have a preference. But it is so cute because they hug each other when they part. Molly and I head home after school and she goes right to bed for her morning nap. I've been trying to take advantage of this new free time to get things done around the house and to start getting in shape. I've been waking Molly early from her naps some days and take her out in the jogging stroller. At 11:15 she and I are back in the car to pick the girls up. They are always so excited to see me at pick up and I am genuinely happy to see them too. they always look so adorable to me when I pick them up, it makes my heart swell every day.
We all head home and go down to the dining hall for lunch. Lunch is peanut butter and honey for JJ, turkey and jelly for Casey, and who knows what for Molly. She is a picky eater and would like to live on bananas and grilled cheeses. The kids get sides of american cheese, peas and a few chips. After lunch we head home for nap time. JJ and Molly nap at 1pm for two hours. Casey has stopped napping. Some days I nap and Casey will be happy doing a project on her own, otherwise we read books or play games that are best played when the younger kids are asleep. After naps we usually head outside to find some buddies to play with, or we go for walks, bike rides, or just wander around campus. Dinner is usually around 5:30, followed by a shower and pjs, books and bed. Casey and Molly go to sleep at 7 and Julia usually goes to sleep around 8pm.
So thats our day to day at this stage. Here is a little blurb on recent developments of each kid.
Casey is just developing all the time. She has learned to whistle and snap and loves practicing and showing off her skills at any chance she can. This Fall she has shown a new interest in skating and has self motivation to do it. She asks James to take her to the rink almost every day. She is now willing to wear a real hockey helmet with a cage. She uses a pusher and over the past few weeks has gotten faster and more comfortable with it. She will do a few minutes without the pusher and likes to shoot pucks on the little net. We are happy that she is having fun with it and has shown the initiative on her own to try and learn to skate. Her other big skill is her training wheels have just come off about a month ago. She can now start by herself without us running behind and has very good control on the bike. She does not have the confidence to ride all around like she used to with her training wheels but it will come with time. Casey is very nice and caring with Molly. She is nurturing and responsible with her. She and Julia remain hot and cold. They get along beautifully sometimes and annoy each other to no end at other times.
Julia is doing better and better with school. She used to say, 'I don't want to go' every single day, but just recently has stopped saying it. Her teacher told me she has become more outgoing and bubbly lately so that makes me feel good. She talks about her friends in school, a girl named Maya and a boy named Andi, which she pronounces On-dee. I asked the teacher about this and she told me Julia was correct. Besides that she went through a phase of needing to sleep with the lights on (which has since ended). She mixes up the use of am/are, she always says 'I'm are'. When she hears crickets outside she says 'who turned on the crickets?'. She calls the song Yankee Doodle...yankle doodee. It kills me every time.
As for Molly, the Moll-Doll...she had her 1 year birthday check up last month (a few months late). She is doing great, she is tall, in the 90th percentile and 50th for weight. Throughout September we continued to see a number of doctors in our search for the reason for her head shaking. We saw a neurologist at CCMC who diagnosed it as spasmus nutans which is a rapid movement of the eyes from side to side. He thought the head shaking was a result of it, trying to catch up with the eyes. He sent us to a pediatric optomologist who told us her eyes were fine and he did not agree with the neurologist's diagnosis. We also saw an ear, nose and throat specialist but there is no way to know if she was shaking her head at the time due to ear infections or unusual pressure changes in her ears at the time. So after seeing all the specialists and getting nowhere I had another phone call with the neurologist. He is content now to just observe her and if the behavior begins again then we will run a full day EEG and make sure again about seizures. For now it is being chalked up to a behavioral thing. Besides all that scary stuff Molly is doing great. She points up to the sky every time she hears a plane, she loves bending over and putting her head on the floor. She looks through her legs and will stay like that for a little while.
She loves dancing to music, it is almost instinctive, she can barely keep herself from doing it. She is not talking much at all. Sometimes she is more "talkative", and babbles a lot, other times she is quiet. I worry about her lack of vocabulary sometimes but I'm sure it will come along. She says hi, bye, ball, balloon, mama and dada. She calls her blanky mama and is so attached to it right now. She is like Linus and carries that thing everywhere. She is into everything right now, we have had to break out all of the child proofing again. She loves dipping into the toilet, so the lid locks are back on, we find boxes of tissues unloaded, rolls of toilet paper unrolled. Molly is sweet and I love watching her. I feel sentimental watching her toddle around the house, knowing it is our last "baby". I think I try to relish it all and hug her a little tighter. She is in such a different stage than the other girls, less independent which has its pros and cons, but not getting any attitude from her the way we do from the other two makes her so enjoyable all the time. She can still be fussy and difficult. She has a temper and is a fussy eater which is tough. She gets frustrated with her lack of ability to communicate and her sign language gets mixed up. She does not like the car seat and that can be a pain when we're on a trip. One thing that calms her down in the car is holding hands with Julia, it is so cute they reach out and hold hands from their car seats.
Little tid bits pop into my head all the time about the girls and I do my best to jot them down so they end up here in the blog. This is basically going to be their baby books some day, as poor Molly does not even have an attempted one yet. The picture above is the girls looking out the window to watch "the carboard truck". This is a highlight of their day when the card board recycling truck comes to the loading dock outside out window. The older two have been to the dentist now, which is a riot. They go in the same room at the same time. They are so tiny in the chairs. they wear sun glasses and there is a tv mounted on the ceiling above them with sesame street playing. They were both very well behaved and are obsessed with teeth brushing and flossing now. Julia goes through so much toothpaste because she reapplies just for the taste of it and rebrushes about 6 times per session at the sink. They love listening to music in the car. We went through a HUGE sound of music phase where that was the only thing on, we now are doing more Raffi and other kids music. James has gotten them to love some of his favorite rock music including Guns n Roses, Knockin on Heavens Door, and Ozzy's Ironman. Casey know all about Axle and Slash and wants to go to a concert to see them. Better that than Justin Beiber or the Wiggles I guess! In early Fall we went to the county fairs around here which the kids absolutely love.
We went to our good friends the Carrolls house one day and the girls got to go tubing.
It has taken a long time to type this up...photos will come another time! Stay tuned