Road Trip Day 5-Columbus,IN

June 13,2012:Today we packed up and left Ohio, not without a stop at an awesome playground right down the street from Tara's house. Just under four hours later we were pulling in to Columbus, Indiana. Our great friends from Taft, the Orbens, are from here and have family here. Mrs.Orben met us downtown and gave us the royal treatment for the rest of the day. We went to the beautiful downtown area. It was as all American as it gets. We had great sandwiches, the kids were able to play at an amazing indoor gym and climbing structure like the one in the Boston Children's Museum as well as a fun children's playhouse. We went inside an old ice cream parlor with a marble bar and old fountain machines that have been around since about 1900, so cool. Then we headed to the Orbens lake house on Grandview Lake just 15 minutes from downtown Columbus. The Orbens have a beautiful house on the lake. We went swimming, the kids jumped off the dock, we went for a row boat ride, fished, Mr Orben took us for a ride in his gorgeous Chris Craft and then we had a nice BBQ. We feel extremely fortunate to have such wonderful and hospitable friends like the Orbens in our lives. Thank you!!!

Road Trip Day 4-Ohio

June 12, 2012: This morning we packed up and said goodbye to the Adams family and headed west into Ohio. It was a quick and easy drive, Julia & Molly slept almost the entire way. We went right into Columbus and found Katzenberg's Deli, which we had heard of from Man vs Food. James got the Reuben they are known for and I had a turkey Reuben. They were pretty good, but definitely not worth the long line and $10 price tag. We took our sandwiches to the Ohio State Football field and explored all around the stadium. The place is huge! We ran around on the field and had a lot of fun checking it all out. Afterwards we drove 30 minutes back to Granville where my aunt Tara lives. We went to the campus of Denison University where Tara went. We worked out on the track there and then explored their athletic facility. Afterwards we went to the Granville fire department where Tara& Bob were fire fighters. They let the kids climb into the trucks and gave them little hats, it was great. We picked up some groceries and came to get settled for the night in Tara's beautiful house. We are all exhausted and happy not to be in a tent tonight, but sorry that Tara and her kids are not here to visit with.

Road trip day 3-Pittsburgh

June 11, 2012: today we spent another day in Pittsburgh. We had a relaxing morning at the house and then headed into the city. Craig took us to the Consol Energy Center where the Penguins play. It was really cool to see the locker rooms and all the facilities available to the players. We met Dan Bylsmsa when we were in the locker room. We got to see the dressing room, weight room, training room, and the shoot around room. The kids were having a blast drawing on the white board, playing bubble hockey in the players lounge, and exploring everything. After seeing the rink we went and James had a sandwich from Primanti Bros, a famous Pittsburgh sandwich place. We saw our friend Lindsay from Taft and the girls played in the fountains outside her office building. We spent the rest of the day playing at home and had another great dinner that Craig made for us.

Road trip day 2-Pittsburgh

June 10 , 2012: this morning we woke up around 7. I thought we'd be up much earlier because we were in a tent but the shady spot we had and the late bed time allowed us a little break. We broke camp and went back to Gettysburg battle fields to explore more. We went to Devils Den, High Water Mark, the wheat field, the peach orchard and to where the 20th Maine held the line in a decisive moment of the battle. It is a beautiful spot and we were lucky enough to go late in the day and very early before the tour bus onslaught filled it with crowds. We saw lots so sun burned boy scout troops and lots of smokers. After a few hours we left to head to Pittsburgh. We took a smaller route, route 30, for half the trip before getting on the highway. Route 30 was the first road across the country and is known as the Lincoln highway. There were some big passes over the Appalachian mountains which would have been fun to bike. We arrived at the Adams house and the kids all had a great time playing. It was very hot, in the 90's, so we went to their club to swim in the pool. It was fun for the kids and nice to relax. We came home and gave the kids some dinner and got them ready for bed. Anne and Craig took us to a great restaurant downtown called Meat & Potatos. The city looked very cool at night with the river, bridges, buildings and stadiums all lit up.

Road trip Day 1-Gettysburg

June 9, 2012: we started out our trip today and left Greenwich around 10:30am. We headed first into Amish country We explored some back roads at saw many Amish people at work and play. Riding in horse drawn buggies, working in the fields with horse power and we bought some home made Whoopie pies. Then we headed to Gettysburg. We went to the battlegrounds and it was great because it was a little later and most of the crowds had left. It was quiet and the sun was low, the grounds are a beautiful and powerful place. We had pb&j's there and the kids climbed on cannons and had fun running around. Around 8pm we left to find a campground. We set the tent up as it was getting dark and didn't do too badly considering it was the first time. Casey & julia were tired but molly was bouncing off the walls and didn't go to sleep until 10:30! She ended up sleeping with us. The kids slept well and we all got up around 7am. We went back to the batte fields and saw some more of the sights for a few hours. Now we're on our way to Pittsburgh

Spring 2012

June 2, 2012: .

It has been so long since I updated my blog. So I will have to give a wrap up of the Spring and what's been going on with the girls. In March we drove down to Florida for Spring Break again. We went straight through the night and made it in 18 hours. After such a successful trip last year I was worried that Molly would be very difficult or that it just couldn't possibly go as smoothly, but it did! We had a great two weeks down there. We watch the sunrise almost every morning from the beach and not long after are in the pool to start the day. We move in a constant rotation from pool, beach, bikes, food, naps and start again. The girls absolutely adore the pool.

Casey is a strong swimmer and can snorkel in the pool and is working on her real swimming stroke. Julia had a lot of improvement over the vacation but is still not swimming independently just yet, but she is close. Molly is brave as ever and loves dunking under and jumping off the side to us over and over again. Easter was very exciting in our house, the kids loved the candy at 6:30am!

In April the girls' preschool had a day when you can come and visit the classroom and get a feel for what they do. It was chaotic but so fun to sit in with them for a little while. Julia is just so small and cute that it kills me to see her in class. It is amazing to see how much the kids grow and mature in the course of two years in preschool. Casey is so old seeming and so ready to move on (not that she doesn't love preschool, just that the difference between her and some of the younger kids is very noticeable). Casey turned 5 years old on April 30th. Wow, as a parent it suddenly seems shocking to have a 5 year old. We've been happy to have the nice weather upon us and have spent lots of time outside. Julia has taken to biking and wheels around on her big girl bike with training wheels. Molly likes pushing a stroller or lately wants to push me in things, so I have to squish into the little bikes or cars while she pushes me. In May the girls had their first sleep over. Casey slept on a trundle bed in her friend Sydney's room and Julia started out sharing a bed with her friend Maya but, of course, could not go to sleep, and had to be moved into another room. We slept over too so it was a big family sleepover and so much fun. Our big news is that we are moving. After four years at Taft we are moving on and heading back to Greenwich. James took a job at Brunswick and we are so excited. It has been lot of work for me getting the girls new schools and doctors and a new place to live all lined up. Casey will be going to Greenwich Academy, where I went, which is just amazing. She is so excited and absolutely loves the uniform and everything about the school. Julia is going to Round Hill Nursery School for a year before hopefully going to GA as well. So now onto what the girls have been doing...

Molly continues to be a handful. She is just into everything in a way the others were not. She will move a chair all the way across the house to use it to climb up onto something and get into something she shouldn't. I think she is border line obsessive-compulisve. She washes her hands a million times a day and must have used up more soap than anyone in our house. She also likes to give herself hand soap shampoos when I am not looking. I will come into the bathroom and find her with a wet soapy head 2 seconds before we are to leave to take the girls to school. She also does not like her hands to be messy in general. When we eat she always wants a napkin to wipe her hands. She loves bagels with cream cheese but can't figure out how to hold it without getting cream cheese all over her hands so she gets so frustrated that she cries and yells at me until I cut it up nice and small and place the piece in her hand so that she isn't covered in it. She also flushes the toilet about 20 times a day and will refuse to go to the bathroom is someone else's peepee is already in there. She has to go in a clean bowl. She is very loving and sweet sometimes and just still has that innocence that the other two have grown out of. She says "thank you Mama" every time I hand her anything. It is the most adorable voice too..sort of like "tank-eww muma". She continues to have a love hate relationship with her sisters. She loves them and gets a kick out of the things they do. But she can also be mean and has bitten them before and will also scream, 'NO JJ BAD' at the top of her lungs. She is an incredibly picky eater.

Julia is doing well. She is learning a lot in school. She knows all of her letters and is learning how to write her name, which just amazes me. With Casey I had more time to spend with her on it but Julia has really learned all of it in school. Her drawing has also gotten much better. She used to just draw blobs of color but lately she has drawn people that actually have some resemblance to people. It is so neat to witness this change and development. A few weeks ago I said to James that we had really turned a corner with Julia. She has always been our toughest challenge but I really felt like things had gotten much better. I must have jinxed myself. She got the stomach bug (again!) and ever since then has been such a pain in the neck. She has temper tantrums, she is disobedient, stubborn, will not listen to us, and so irrational. It drives me nuts. Needless to say, with all the work I have right now trying to pack our house up, I need nice, agreeable kids right now, not this monster. It is so difficult to manage as a parent.

Casey has had an exciting month. Shortly after turning 5, she came to me crying saying something was wrong in her mouth. She had her first loose tooth! Two weeks later it popped out into my hands when I was wiggling it. Casey and I made a tooth pillow and the tooth fairy brought her one dollar for her first tooth. She now has a second loose tooth right next to it. One day at dinner Casey declared to us that "when I get married I am going to marry Austin". Austin is a little boy in her class that gets a LOT of air time in our house. It was so funny to hear her say it. As James said, "and so it begins".

Winter 2012

February 13, 2012:
This is a little winter ramble...



Nap schedule these days...Molly is still taking two naps a day. Casey had given up her morning nap by this time, but JJ did two naps until she was 2 years old. Sometimes I get the sense Molly is getting ready to go to one nap, but inevitably she will end up exhausted in the days following that experiment. We also tried dropping JJ's nap because she was staying up so late at night, but she was a total mess when she went a few days in a row without her nap. If we have something special to go to she can manage to skip it one day but she feels the effects the next day. As it stands Molly still naps at 9 and again at 1 when JJ naps. Casey and Molly go to bed at 7pm and JJ goes to bed at 8pm.



Molly is talking more and more all the time. Her vocabulary is exploding. She still does not make sentences or combine words very often, if at all. She copies everything the girls do and especially in the car she picks up on all the songs we listen to over and over. She knows a lot of the Sound of Music and tries so hard to sing along, it is very cute. She has always called her blanket "mine", and has just now started calling it blanky. Molly has stopped drinking from bottles completely! A major phase that has ended for us, washing bottles! She now just drinks her milk in a sippy cup during meals. She is still an incredibly picky eater, she lives off of bread, cheese and fruit.She loves junk food, here is a video showing her enthusiasm for cake!



Casey also hit a big milestone, she is no longer in pull ups at night. Totally diaper free! Julia has had so many bouts with the stomach bug this year. I can think of at least 3 times she was home sick from school with a throw up bug. I love the reports I get when I pick the girls up from school. We ask what they learned and they have no idea, but they always give me a detailed run down of what they had for snack. Although the girls are in different classrooms they often play on the playground at the same time and it seems from their stories that they play together out there every day with Casey's best school buddy, Stella. They play a game Julia invented called "cow in the middle" they walk around the playground with a hula hoop and say cow in the middle.




Casey and Julia have been really great and well behaved lately. Knock on wood. We go through stages where they can be so difficult and I am screaming all day long and other stages when they are sweet and nice. They do cause trouble though. I was cleaning the play room up this morning and found hair all over the floor and discovered that Casey the barber was at it again. She gave herself a haircut last year and decided to give Julia one this time, JJ now has bangs and a few uneven clumps in the back. Julia was doing some arts n crafts at the dining room table and stuck a sticky piece of craft paper to the table which has been very difficult to remove, good thing its bright red and blends in! ha.



Molly is also handful! She is pretty much spoiled and it is our fault. If she whines or complains we have been giving her what she wants just to keep her quiet so we can move on to the next chaos or needs of the other two. Well this plan backfired! She is very difficult at the table, complaining over everything and fussing. She has a little mean streak in her where she will go whack one of the other girls on the head, pull their hair, or squeeze them. It is sort of funny but also not. Molly is also a menace in ways that our other kids have never been. She is constantly climbing up on things and getting into trouble. She got up in the medicine cabinet and dropped a bottle of pink nail polish (obviously the girls, not mine) which has stained the sink pink, she unrolls paper towels, toilet paper, dumps out baskets full of clean, folded laundry, throws stuff in the trash that is not trash, puts things into the laundry that are not meant to be washed, flushes the toilet at least 10 times a day. Probably it is because there are not enough eyes on everyone at all times now, but she can be a menace! Casey is so sweet with Molly in the mornings. She gets into her bed and brings baby books that she reads to her. She will be trying to teach her words and reading it to Molly just the way we do. It is so nice. Casey is a big helper in the house.

Fits and Starts

December 16, 2011: Man, having three kids this young and this close in age is exhausting; mentally, physically and emotionally. I feel like I spend my entire day putting out fires...if one is in a happy mood another is in a rotten one. They push each other's buttons, annoy one another and inevitably it escalates into a whining or yelling match. The sound of my own voice makes me cringe by the end of the day. This is not to say it is all bad right now. When I am worn out by the kids, I remind myself how short lived this time is and how this innocence will not be here for long. So that's the "fits" of this entry. Someone in my house is always having a fit, myself included. "Starts" is the more positive side to what's been going on lately. All the things the different girls are starting to do. Casey has been a late bloomer in terms of potty training. She's been all set in the day time for quite awhile, but has continued to wear a diaper at night. She has to wear the most absorbent diaper on the market and often she would still wet through it to her sheets. Then, all of a sudden, she started keeping diapers dry 3 nights a week, then 4, and now almost always. She has started wearing pull-ups and it's so great. She is so happy about it, and so am I. Casey has also started hockey officially. Well, really it is the Watertown Youth Hockey's Learn to Skate program, but every Saturday and Sunday morning, off we go to the rink.



And so begins the rest of my life I guess. She has to wear shin pads, elbow pads, a helmet and skates. At first she was very unsure and did not like it. I cannot blame her either as it was totally chaotic and she was used to going skating at the rink when it was just us. Now there are 60 kids with two parents there each and the place was a zoo. It is not the best run program but she enjoys going and it is a good social experience anyways. We are fortunate that we can take the time to skate with her and teach her on our own. She is enjoying it more and participates willingly and happily. Besides that Casey is doing well. She is emotional and sometimes cries at the drop of a hat. She loves writing notes to people. She is always having us spell things and putting notes in envelopes to people here at Taft. "I would like to have a play date, Love, Casey". When we were in Florida Casey was so good at swimming. She learned to really snorkel in the pool and could do it well.



She is also a big helper to me. She watches out for Molly a lot and helps do things. She wants to help her put on her socks and shoes when we are getting ready to go out. She will help give Julia a push when she is stuck on her bike. Casey has gotten so good at her two wheeler. In Florida we went for family runs and she would bike along with us. This is something that James did with his Dad as a boy and I know it makes him happy to do it with our kids.



I don't have too much of an update on Julia. She continues to be a fashion crack up. She loves layering and does it to no end. She will put on tights, a skirt, and a sweater, then just to top it off, she'll throw a dress on top of it all. It is a riot. This past week she has been saying she does not want to go to school everyday which is always upsetting to me. I tell her fine but that she has to come to drop Casey off and inevitably she wants to go in her classroom. In Florida we really tried to work on her swimming with her. She can do short spurts, and she is not afraid of the pool at all, but she did not make too much improvement. Julia is just not willing to put the time in that Casey is.



Casey is a smart and capable but she is also a hungry student in everything we do with her. Julia is also very smart and competitive but she just wants to do things on her own time. She is not patient enough to give it the time just yet. Another example of this lack of patience...this Christmas the girls have chocolate Advent calendars. Casey patiently opens one square a day. I found Julia hiding one day having eaten the whole calendar in one sitting! She has been excited to move from a tricycle to a big bike with training wheels. Another crack up is when she is using the bathroom to go poop, she will make us all leave and tell us she "needs her privacy". Here is a pic when JJ and Molly got in the shower with all of their clothes on still.





Molly has been exploding with developments. She is getting a ton of teeth right now. She has always had her hair flopping right in her face, it is just the way it grows and she has always refused to keep a bow in. Now, all of a sudden, it annoys her when it is in her face and she does this adorable thing where she brushes it out of her face. She has finally been letting us keep bows and elastics in it. Molly is talking much more too. She says Casey and JJ in a very cute way. She likes pointing to things and saying the name if she knows it. She will come up to James and I and pull on us to get us to do what she wants. She will pull us off the couch to the floor and say "play". She loves doing her baby puzzles right now, she has gotten more interested in books and she is also climbing all over the place. She can blow her nose in a tissue when we hold it for her which is great and this past week James has been experimenting with potty training with her. We let her run around the house with no pants on and she will often say poo-poo when she needs to pee or poop and we make it to the toilet successfully. There have also been some accidents.

Early Fall 2011

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