We had a visitor at breakfast this morning

Sophie brought in some crape myrtle branches last night to make a bouquet for the table, so he must have spent the night inside. After we photographed and played with him a bit we put him back outside.

Also on the camera:





Anna helped Julia put on her (too small) shoes. :)

Thursday Shenanigans

On this rainy, dreary, inside morning I was in the kitchen making pancakes while the girls, who were supposed to be getting dressed, were arguing in the living room. I heard Sophie shouting "Ellie, you take me off that list right now!" so I went to investigate. I found Ellie prancing around with the following paper and taunting her sisters:


I confiscated it like a good teacher, but I couldn't help giggling at Eleanor's phonetic spelling of "crimnuls", "cuoot" and "jooleu". What a stinker.

Sophie, in her never-ending quest to master every bit of information the world has to offer about horses, immediately went back to her reading about horse evolution and telling me at great length what a shame it is that those tiny rabbit-sized horse ancestors in her book are now extinct so we can't get one.

Meanwhile, Anna and Julia were in the kitchen squabbling over their favorite toy oven rack. Anna won, of course, but Julia is learning to fight back and I'm sure will soon become a force to be reckoned with.

Highlights from conversations with Eleanor

I haven't posted many of these stories lately because I began to wonder if our beloved readers would rather just skip the stories and look at pictures of the kids, but I really love telling them and it occurred to me that the blog is also for me to enjoy, so here goes:

This one is from dinner last night, when Tony and I were discussing the new handwriting books that the girls are working in and how they will correct the problems that the little girls have with letter and number reversals.
(this from Ellie:) "Well, I can't reverse the number 8! But I can reverse 2, and 4, and 3, and 5...."
As her doting parents we of course see this as evidence of her budding genius. :)

And another from a few days ago, when Ellie was doing her characteristic wandering around the house and talking to herself, she came into the room and said to me "So mom, if I'm not Good, and I'm not a Jerk, then just what am I?"
I don't actually know who told her she wasn't good, but I'm afraid it's mostly true. ;) She also isn't a Jerk, so I guess she's just a funny little kid.

Just some photos of the kids

Anna eats toast with jelly

Sophie has an attitude

Ellie has another new talent

Anna takes her potty everywhere

Anna can make very scary faces (she had green paint on her forehead)

piggie in a basket

Ellie's New Toy

Here we have the cute little girl pushing something in her stroller...





What could it be, that beloved toy she's playing so nicely with?



Why, it's Log!

Anna answers the phone

I just got off of the phone with a very confused and (thankfully) amused woman who was calling our house to talk to Margaret about the homeschool drama group the kids are doing...

I saw Anna walking around with the phone and talking like she was having a conversation with someone, and I just thought she was playing with the phone like she often does. I did notice she seemed to be talking a lot more than usual, and saying things like "Need Fofie? (Sophie)" and "Sure" and "Hello" over and over again. I was commenting to Margaret that it's too bad that she won't actually talk like that when there's someone on the line, and something clicked in my head so I decided to get the phone and see if anyone was there. And there was! Hee hee.

I think Anna heard the phone ringing and picked up and started talking, because it wasn't a number we have programmed in for her to accidently call.

So that's one more thing for me to keep an eye on around here.

Has it been a week already?

I realized this afternoon that it was Thursday again, and I'm not really sure what we did all week. The girls and I have been passing around a cold, it was pretty mild as colds go, but we're all a bit out-of-sorts and out-of-routine because of it.

A few sleepy pictures of the girls that I took this morning...
Anna fell asleep with blue marker on her hand, and apparently rubbed her eye a bit in the night, because she woke up with a blue eye:

Ellie:

Sophie:

Almost a dozen eggs from our own backyard:


I can't think straight right now since Anna's screaming, so I'll update more later...

Overheard Conversation

Ellie: Sophie, can you give me the red crayon?

Sophie: You have to say the magic word.

Ellie: What's the magic word?

Sophie: Guess.

Ellie: Lily cupcake?

More Fall Fun

Well, the rest of the leaves fell yesterday, so the girls got busy raking this morning:

A Lile Post

I meant to do this sooner, but we've been busy... I've been anxious to move on from the Poo and Pee posts. :)

So, this is a post about Sophia and her dog, Lile. (Lily)



Lile is about the closest thing to a "blankie" that any of our kids has had. She is a webkinz chihuahua that Sophia received for Christmas last year. Lile goes everywhere that Sophie goes. Lile eats off of Sophie's plate at dinner, sleeps at her side at night, sits by her at church, and so on. Lile is Sophie's best friend and also her favorite experimental surgery subject. Lile has had hip replacement surgery, tail replacement surgery, liver transplant surgery, and brain surgery (and a few others, I'm sure). Sophie has a weird fascination with operating on animals, and even though she loves Lile, she regularly snips her open, messes with her fluff, then borrows a needle and thread to sew her back up. To quote my mother, my kids are weird.

Here is Lile's photo shoot (by Sophia, of course)

Front

Side

Other side (I think this one is her good side)

Back side


Note the sign behind Lile, you can't read it but it says "Liel" with hearts and a butterfly. If you look closely, she is also surrounded by paper butterflies. :)

Here is Lile with her would-be dognapper:

Oh no, she's been taken hostage!

She's getting away!!!!


Not to worry, a hefty ransom of a cookie was paid, and Lile and Sophie were reunited later that afternoon. ;)

A little Anna funny

This evening she was walking down the hallway with her sippy cup, and looking rather pensive. I asked her, "Anna, are you drinking milk?", to which she replied "Poo".

Apparently she was thinking about something other than what was in the cup.

Ellie reads a book

Edited to Add:
Ellie didn't know I was filming her until right at the end. The book she's "reading" is Pajama Time by Sandra Boynton.

Anna's vocabulary

Anna has been doing a lot of talking lately and she's surprisingly clear and easy to understand.

So far she can say:
uh-oh
no no
down
let go (she uses this with Ellie all the time :)
hi
bye
doggie
ma ma
daddy
marba (this is what she calls Margaret)

a few others I can't think of right now,
and just the other day she said

coo-kie.

Oh boy!

Sophia, in motion and at rest

Jumping from the window sill onto the bed.


"Watching a movie."

Wha' happened?

Catch up time

I've been busy and sick, which is a bad combination since being busy while sick inevitably leads to being sick longer than necessary. Due to the long interval between posting, we have lots to share, mostly in photos, so here goes.

These are our Pascha baskets from back in April. Pascha came much later than western Easter this year, causing confusion amongst our family and friends. Here is a fairly concise explanation of the disparity, for those who are interested: http://orrologion.blogspot.com/2008/03/on-dating-pascha-or-why-orthodox-in.html
The dark brownish-red eggs were dyed with onion skins, something new we tried this year and they turned out very nicely.


Maggie, aka the world's only midwestern bear dog, fell asleep under the crafting table and got covered with bits.


The girls had a nice day at the zoo recently, and Sophia made a new friend.




I tried to capture the beauty of the lilacs at twilight, but you really can't photograph the lovely smell, so this was the best I could do.


Anna was hanging around and doing that funny scrunchy nose thing she does, but due to the low light the photo is a bit blurry.


Margaret created this lovely greeting for me on Mother's Day that made me smile.


We have growing things in our Square Foot Garden beds at last. The black pots on the left have potatoes in them, the beds have beans, tomatoes, some herbs, lettuce, kale, spinach, and swiss chard in them.


I have more, but I'd better save them because blogger is acting up and I don't want to lose what I've posted so far.

Anna and Grandpa

I meant to post this bit last week. Grandpa Jim drove up for the day with his power auger to help us dig fence post holes (Thank you Grandpa!) and to share his hat with Anna. She kept pulling it over her eyes, then walking around until she bumped into something. We tried to capture the cute, but the pictures don't quite get it. Here are a few anyway:

Another quick Ellieism

I have lots of things to post, but I had to add this first. This from Ellie this morning at breakfast after Margaret said she was very ANIMATED today: "I'm not animated. Anna is animated. I'm ELLIMATED."

April Fools

This morning, as I got up and headed down the hallway with Anna in tow, passing the bathroom, I glanced in and noticed a rather obvious crumpled piece of plastic wrap hanging down the side of the toilet. I continued into the kitchen and told Margaret to go and remove the plastic wrap, because this isn't really a funny joke and it would be very messy if someone went potty. She sheepishly went to remove the wrap, I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down to check my email.
When, a minute later, I heard a splashing noise behind me I looked back to see Margaret at the sink, covered with water, hastily removing a rubber band from the sprayer. This time she was apparently caught by her own trap.

I proceeded to give her a little talk about jokes that are funny and those that are just plain messy and mean and admonished her not to try and do anymore April Fools jokes. Her response: "I didn't mean to mom."

It seems she somehow accidently put plastic wrap on the toilet and a rubber band on the sink sprayer. Rrrrriiiiight.

Gotta love her :).

Ellieisms (or random funny Ellie stories)

The other day we were looking for the DVD remote, and I asked "Has anyone seen the remote?" Eleanor answered "Yes!" and then said "it was on the sofa, then it was in the kitchen, then it was in the bathroom, and now it's lost."
At the Jacobs Circus someone is always trying to locate something they've misplaced. I've posted before about Eleanor's less than helpful input when we're looking for something. When she did it again the other day, I realized something. When asking Eleanor if she knows where something is, never ask "Have you seen X", rather ask her directly if she know where X is right now. Because if you ask her if she's seen it, the answer is likely "yes," she has seen it, many times, in fact. When she gives a list of all of the places she's seen it, "on the sofa, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, under the bed," and then ends the list with "but now it's lost" she's only answering the question she was asked.

I haven't posted before about Ellie's embarrassing fascination with the names of body parts and with bodily functions, because they're usually too gross to mention, but this one cracked me up.
We were visiting at the house of some friends who were hosting a celebration in honor of their son's 16th birthday. Ellie was seated next to the dad as he was busy putting candles on the cake, and she leaned over to him and said "Hey, listen to this" (pause) "PP and Jam!" and then she just cackled so loud everyone around was laughing with her. Get it, not PB and Jam, but PP and Jam. I don't even know where she got that one.

OK, I have one more that might not translate well, but I'll give it a try. Ellie frequently, when asked to do something, will invent some reason why she can't do it. I've come to expect it, so when I say "Ellie, it's time to clean up this paper mess" I expect her to immediately say "My arms hurt too bad" or something of the sort. The other day she had a bunch of toys all over the living room that she was finished with and I said "Ellie, it's time to pick up this mess." She immediately said "Ummmm" as she was trying to decide what excuse to use, then said "I'm so embarrased." (pause) "And, I have a tummy ache."