My first post of 2009

Wow! I know I haven't been very good at blogging lately, but jeez, I just saw that I hadn't posted since New Year's Eve! What day is it today? The 13? Nope, even worse. It's now January 14th. I guess I have been pretty busy. Not with big things, just kids and house stuff like our never-ending laundry. So that's my excuse. Blame it on the kids and all of their messy clothes and all the crumbs and goopy stuff they get on everything.
Really, nothing huge has happened here (Except that our friends Jamie and Jake had their 1st BEAUTIFUL and big-10lbs. 9.5oz baby!). We are pretty routine. Everyone who is awake at 6:45 eats breakfast together, we say bye-bye to Daddy at 7:15 and then the kids and I work through our morning chores (The kids' chores list: Make bed. Get Dressed. Pick up Books. Brush teeth.) while taking breaks to read books, do painting projects, puzzles, and eat again. My kids seem to need 2 or even 3 breakfasts some days! Some days after we do our morning chores we run an errand, but not often. I think I am pretty good at consolidating. I only need to go to a big grocery store every couple weeks or so, with a trip to our fruit/veggie market every week. We love having friends over for playdates before Jack's nap too.
Today we had a friend of mine and her 2 young children come over. The baby, Eva, is 4 months old, chubby and smiley, so cute! Anyways, I was surprised at Jack's reaction to her. I picked her up soon after they got here. I thought he might get upset that I was holding another baby and get jealous (When Paige was this age, she would say, "Baby night-night!" and point to their carseat. She got very jealous and upset!), but that was not Jack's reaction. Immediately he came to me and motioned that he wanted to hold the baby! Jack sat down right in front of me on the floor and held Eva many times through our visit. He was so cute. He just kept smiling at her and kissing her. And when he was running/dancing to music, he would do a little loop and every time he passed Eva, he would kiss her again and go on her way. I loved seeing my boy act so sweet and gentle.
Hmmm.... Let's see. Paige is still her sweet self. She helps out more and more around the house and LOVES doing worksheets in the afternoon. She loves dot-to-dots and math problems and color by numbers. She's starting to just know what the sums of numbers are now, rather than always having to count on her fingers. We are also realizing that she can read a lot more than she or we think. So that is exciting. Her goal is to be able to read a page in an "American Girl" book when she is 6. I think she will definitely be able to do this.
Jonah is just the goofiest kid ever. He still loves skunks and possums and other weird animals. My friend Ingrid was here yesterday and told us about the possum that is in her garage that she cannot seem to get rid of. Well, Jonah heard "possum" and kept asking Ingrid about "her" possum. He wants to know all about her possum and wants to see it. We'll see... Jonah is also very interested in learning Spanish. We are all learning it, with the hopes that we'll be able to speak like toddlers in South America. Jonah asks constantly, "How do you say ________ in Spanish". Sometimes he wants an answer, but other times he has made up his own word to share with everyone.
So, hopefully you feel a little more connected now. I'll try to get back into the (blogging) swing of things!