The Chapman/Long Co-op

I spent some more time at Ebba's this morning as she continued to navigate the veterans adminstration for her dad.

Although 4 toddlers and 2 preschoolers sounds scary for one person, it is always surprisingly easy. Today was even easier than normal.

Allison was in a great mood. When she wasn't chatting and mugging for the camera, she was hanging out in my lap which was incredibly sweet.







As always, Elizabeth had her share of "moments", be they sweet or devilish.





She destroyed this bridge seconds later.


The tracks by the way were very impressive. Lincoln, who at first played by himself in his room, came out later and built this amazing track. Parker was in heaven.







The girls all had a little snack together.








The girls actually played together today a bit. When they weren't trying to grab eachother toys that is.

Here, Fiona and Miranda played a good game of peek a boo:


Elizabeth and Allison try to connect the beads:


Miranda occupied herself for much of the day. First with some clipping.


And then with a big mirror.


Until Ebba got back. At that point, Miranda just hung out with her.




All in all...a good morning.

Rice & Beans

At every preschool tour we went on, they had a big tub filled with beans and rice and scoopers. Apparently, kids love to play with this. So today, I made one. And you know what...the kids DID like it. Amazing.






Then I put the beans and rice back and filled the tub with water. They liked that even better. They all started drinking the muddy, gross water so we ended that game fairly quickly.

You just never know...

Today, I put the kids down for naps around 12:30. Eli was asleep within moments, but Miranda stayed up until 1pm when Parker went down.

About an hour later, Miranda started screaming bloody murder. Simply out of the blue. I ignored her since an hour nap is a crap nap to me. About 3 minutes later (which seemed like eternity), she got quiet again and everyone has been sleeping since then.

Oh, it's 3:39.

And for those of you that don't like math in your blogs, that's over 2 and a half hours for everyone!

Tiny Sippy Cup

Along with the doll that Aunt Monica gave Miranda, there was a botte, hat, and sippy cup. The girls have been playing with the sippy cup, and since it was an actual working sippy cup (for some bizzare reason), I filled it with water today and Eizabeth had a drink.




In other baby doll news...Miranda was wiping her baby with a real wipe yesterday. Then she stood up and started walking away with the wipe. Michael and I looked at each other wondering where she was going. She marched into the bedroom and then a moment later, we heard the diaper pail open and shut. Then she came back. We laughed outloud.

Loards

Parker and I walked down to Loards, our local ice cream joint last night. It was a nice night and I just felt like having a cone. As we walked down, I asked Parker what flavor he wanted. He said Orange.

So I got him the only orange flavor they had there...orange sherbert. He was pretty happy with it. And for the first time, he ate pretty much the whole thing without most of it ending up on the floor or himself. Apparently, he didn't know until Michael told him that he could eat the cone.

Barf

At music class yesterday, I had Elizabeth for the second-to-last song, which is always a lulabye. Generally, all the parents lay on the ground with their kid and everyone mellows out. With a toddler, however, mellowing out isn't always on the agenda, so as I lay on the ground I had Elizabeth on my stomach, and then would lift her up so she was floating above my head, which she thought was a blast. In fact, she enjoyed it so much that she opened her mouth in glee and barfed all over me.

We had a change of clothes for all the kids with us, but not for poor, old, stinky Dad.

New Drum

In a weak moment, I got the kids a tiny drum set. So far, it's a big hit.

Update to update

Right before baths tonight, I told Elizabeth I was going to take off her diaper and she was going to go pee in the toilet before getting in the bath.

So she did.

And then she wiped and flushed.

Observations

We took Parker to a preschool observation today. The school wants to observe the children before they decide who to accept. This was after tour and parent interview. For preschool! I figured we would be allowed to be there since they wouldn't possibly take a 3 year old away from parents to hang out with strangers. But...they did. Luckily, a friend of Parker's was there too so he had someone he could hang out with. It's a Spanish immersion preschool so they only spoke Spanish during the observation time. From the room we were waiting in, I kept listening to see if I could familiar screams. But I heard nothing. In fact, when one of the teachers walked him back to our room after the hour was up, she brought along 3 pieces of paper. (Each child had at least one. With scribbles. Or whatever a three year old could draw.) But not Parker. He wrote the numbers out on one piece. On another he wrote his name embedded in a 3 and didn't bother to write the R twice since he wrote his name in such a way that only one R was needed. The teacher said,

"He had fun. He's very smart."

No shit, lady.

Potty Training Update

So everything is going fairly well with the whole potty training thing. Save a few accidents now and again, I'd consider Parker potty trained during the day at this point. Some nights he asks to go pee and then wakes up with a dry diaper, but some days he doesn't.

Now that Parker is pretty much done, I can focus on Elizabeth, who took a giant crap in the toilet today. I saw her looking like she had to go, so I picked her up and put her on the toilet and sure enough...a few seconds later, she went. Then she waved bye-bye to her poop.

Poor Miranda wanted to try, but it was a no go.