No Pictures Came...

My camera is officially worthy of the children taking pictures.  For some reason they're the only ones who don't mind a black, burned-out-pixel area in the dead center of every picture.  That being said, they love taking horrible pictures and I don't have to pay for anything to be developed.  I also don't have to put any of those pictures on the computer...  which is to say you're not likely to see them.  Ever.

Broken camera is a bit sad.  The Christmas pictures were all abysmal... so unless you were lucky enough to watch them open their presents in front of the web-cam, you'll never see how excited they were to open the gifts.

And the video we tried to take of us dancing silly, trying to stay awake on New Year's Eve is thankfully blemished enough to never make it online.  By the way, Grant is the only one of us that could actually stay up till midnight.  I was the first to pass out... at 9 pm.

After trying to upload and photo-shop those events I gave up on the camera.  And with no pictures I gave up on blogging, but there's just so much happening that I want to share with ya'll to keep you in touch with us!

So from the youngest:

Grarrie Fish:

In case you haven't heard, we're expecting again!  This is super exciting timing because Melissa is due in June, Blair is due in July and I'm due in August.  Melissa and Blair are both having girls.  We don't know yet and we might not find out (I'm open to hearing arguments for both sides), but that appointment is within the next few weeks so we should make that decision soon.  True to our family tradition we asked a close friend to name the fetus.  Jenny Sullivan combined Grant with Carrie and the idea of it swimming around in me (Jenny started out as my swimming partner in college). 

Gauge:

His vocabulary is growing in all the perfectly boy ways.  His most frequent words are, "truck" (anything with wheels and a motor) "bum" and "poop."  He discovered the word "gunk" and laughed whenever it was said for a whole night.  And his boy sense of humor has evolved as far as it ever will:  he smelled a fart, said "Poop" and laughed, then repeated it for everyone.

But his sisters do influence him.  He occasionally brings hair clips, tiaras or girly hats to get put on his head for dress up time.  And frequently he walks around the house in my shoes, purse and holding a baby doll calling himself "Mommy."

Cerise:

We started the school year with her actively refusing to learn letters... even with silly arts and crafts.  So I dropped it.  Part of homeschooling (even in the preschool years) for us is to teach the children what they want to learn/ are ready to learn when they are ready for it.  Well, so long ABC's for Cerise.  She has declared herself ready to read.  So we're starting with the Sam Early Readers (which we found we like more than any of the others... including Bob Books).  She can read Book 1... which tells a story with only the words "I see Sam."  

She's also taken to writing messages the same way Cairn does.  It goes something like this: "Mom how do you spell I love you?"  And then I dictate one word, one letter at a time, often stopping to describe the letter or show her what it looks like on a different sheet of paper.  Keep in mind though, she's new to this so the letters in a word are usually clumped together, but not in line usually and the words are almost never in the left to right succession.  Still, we're rather impressed by her.

Cairn:

She is a Daisy Girl Scout.  And it's cookie season.  And I"m the Troop Leader and Cookie Manager...  Which is to say she's making new friends (and experiencing the drama of intertwining friendships among girls) and I'm hoping I can regain my sanity in a week when all of the cookies are (hopefully) sold and the cookie money is (hopefully) deposited.

One of her goals for the school year was to learn how to tell time.  We encouraged her with this by promising her a watch when she could tell time on both out analog and digital clocks.  She got her watch last night.  So today I was told the time every few minutes.

A while ago Cairn got fed up with learning to read.  About the same time a friend loaned us some Bob Books and she practically got belligerent about it.  So we laid off reading for a while.  Then we came across Baron's Get Ready, Get Set, Read! Series at another friend's house.  She loved the few they had from the library.  So we went out on a limb and ordered the first set.  And she's in love with reading again!  If you catch her with one nearby she'll offer to read it for you.  I like them because they have cute, developed stories, nice colored illustrations and a combination of phonics and sight words.  Cairn is not a phonics learner.  She memorizes the story then learns the words as she reads it over and over and over again.  

Grant:

Do you really want to read about us adults?  He works all day.  I work all day.  We've become sort of boring and this post has become sort of long.  I'll fill you in on us later.