Olivia

Olivia is 14 1/2 months old. She is playing more with her siblings! It is fun for me to watch their interactions. 

Jonah gets in front of Olivia and puts on a huge smile and makes funny faces to make her smile. This is the same approach to her as when she was a tiny baby. 

Annabelle's interactions with Olivia are like a mother to a baby. She picks her up and bounces gently up and down. Turns her upside down over and over to make her laugh. Wants Olivia to sit in her lap always.

Grace gets right in her face and laughs - way too close to her face. She tries to pick her up, too, but that doesn't work. Tries to hug her tight but gets pushed away. But Grace doesn't seem to mind. She still adores her little sister. Here is a cute moment when they were playing well together:

One day while I was washing dishes, Olivia was bored, so I pulled a chair over to the sink and let Olivia stand next to me and play with the dishes in the water while I continued to wash. She loved it! Olivia quickly learned how to climb onto the chair all by herself. So now I have keep an extra eye on her in the kitchen. She can get to things on the table now, and loves to play with plates and forks and food that didn't get put away right away.
Ever since her trip to the ER, Olivia has been attached to soft things. She loves to hold something soft as she falls asleep. When we pick her up from her crib, she likes to keep that soft thing with her and snuggle with it, sitting in our lap, for several minutes. Jen and Sungti gave Olivia a soft pink piggy mini blanket when she was born. She clutched that for a few weeks. Then we realized Olivia isn't particular about which soft thing she has, just as long as she has something to hold. Justus gave her a teddy bear for Christmas, and that is her usual cuddly toy right now.
Here Olivia has a swollen lip. Can you tell? I don't even remember what exactly it was from. She tripped on something.

Olivia has two new teeth peeking out the top!! Four teeth now!

Tooth Update

We had a party to celebrate Annabelle's first lost tooth! Cake and a movie were enough to fall into the "party" category. We made a cake to look like a tooth! What a great excuse to throw a party. It sure made the kids happy.

Annabelle wanted to save her tooth, not give it up to the tooth fairy, who didn't give hardly any money at all, so Annabelle heard. She finally agreed that when she lost her second tooth, she would put one of them under her pillow. And she did. Annabelle had lots of questions about the tooth fairy that night. I didn't have all the answers. So early the next morning I did some research. www.toothfairyland.com has a page (click on ask the tooth fairy) with all the answers to every possible question. So the tooth fairy left a note with the dollar she left ("a whole dollar bill?! for such a tiny little tooth?!").

Jonah wrestling

This is a picture of Jonah's first wrestling meet. Do you think he cares what place he got? He wrestled hard and did a great job. He was mostly excited that he got to eat a hot dog!

Other Winter Projects

We've had a lot of free time from several snow days in a row. (Actually, school was cancelled more from frigid temperatures, not from snow.) So we had to get creative. So we've done more creative crafts than usual. Here is our igloos, made from mini marshmallows:

Our snowflakes. Who says snowflakes have to be white?
Jonah and Grace made these adorable sock and rice snowmen.

MLKJr Day

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr, we learned a little about him today and his famous "I have a dream" speech. Then, I had the kids write their own dreams on cloud shapes. These are Annabelle's dreams: 

I have a dream that every day candy will fall from the sky.

I have a dream that I have a ranch of horses all to myself.

I have a dream that when I grow up I will be a famous artist.

Jonah's dreams:

I have a dream that it could be Independence Day and Halloween forever and it would never stop.

I have a wish that whenever it rained it would be grape juice and when it snowed it would be marshmallows, and storms of hamburgers.

I have a dream that when I grow up I will be a baseball player and a gymnast.

Grace's dream:

I have a dream that I will be pink.

Ezra's dream: 

I have a dream that little children will pick up after themselves.

I forgot to mention before that Grandpa Slaugh gave Jonah a rope before he left to go home. Well, Jonah had already put it to good use before Grandpa even had a chance to put his coat on and get out the door! He was already making booby traps and pulleys.
Making brownies: