Today is a drippy sort of day. The sky is dripping – in a refreshing spring way. The eyes of my girls have been dripping, in a not-so-refresing, but much more emotional way. There was enough fussiness today that I actually started taking temperatures, almost hoping to find fevers that would explain it! It’s been a long week with Matt out of town for work. It’s actually gone quite well, but I definitely miss his company and time with the girls! Alyssa’s won the prize for fussiest baby, but this morning as she chomped on my finger I think I figured out why – there was a little tooth in there! Her very first one at seven months! Believe it or not, that’s really early for one of my girls to get teeth. I guess that explains at least some of her fussiness, but I don’t know where the other girls got theirs. And I can’t say I’ve been a chipper chicken myself. Though there have been quite a few lovely moments today, there have also been plenty of stressful ones! We got a late start on school (the little school that we did) , as with the outdoor (and "indoor") weather the way it was, I decided to start with a rousing, if not so educational, game of hide and seek. That was fun, and the girls LOVED it. I have to admit I’m terrible at playing with my kids – great at reading, terrible at playing! So this was good fun for all of them. After this a big package of diapers happened to arrive, which provided two big boxes and a whole bunch of butcher paper to play with. It’s funny, these girls have a playhouse, but it’s so much more exciting to them to pretend a big box is a house! Then just as we all snuggled up to read on the couch,Alyssa playing on the floor with toys, two rather dreadful things happened. One was that Alyssa began to wail her discomfort and annoyance to the world, and refused to be comforted. The other was that I got the hiccups. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to read a story about a magical three-legged stool over the sound of a baby crying and interspersed with your own incessant hiccups, but I quickly decided it was just not worth it, much to Isabelle’s disappointment.
I decided the day needed a fresh turn. So into the tea room we went. I set Naomi at the table with a fun magnet flower garden toy, Juli at the table with a flower garden peg stacker, Hannah at the bar with her playmobil farm, and Isabelle at the bar with a draw write now page. Alyssa went into the bumbo with some cheerios – her favorite companion lately. On went the NIV Kids Club, a movie of kids singing Bible verses, and I made some peanut butter sandwiches (on white bread – mmm, they think it’s such a rare treat!) After lunch, and after a generous helping of my cookies (I almost prefer giving cookies over any other snack when they’re made with freshly ground flower and natural sugars!) I tried an experiment that worked perfectly, and is now my recommendation for creating smiles on rainy days. I put my broiler on high, lined a cookie sheet with foil, and filled it with marshmallows. Three minutes on each side later, we had some perfectly roasted marshmallows, with no bbq necessary! Oh, they were grand! We even stuck little pretzel sticks in them to make "trees". I’m sure that was the highlight of the day! It definitely cheered everyone up. Not that it made the day perfect or anything. After lunch, I ended up rocking two fussy little girls – one teething, one just plain pooped two year old. After a couple of lullabies, they were so happy, and gladly went to sleep. I came downstairs, hoping I hadn’t caused the three older ones to fuss with eachother by being gone so long. It was totally quiet (not usually a good sing!) and I had to hunt through the whole downstairs before I found them in a rather odd spot! One girl was using the bathroom, and the other two were standing in the bathtub reading the "learn to poopy book" aloud to her! But they were happy, and so was I. Now, of course, instead of napping while they did like I probably ought to have, I’ve been blogging. Silly me – this is why I don’t blog very often anymore (a bit of sleep usually sounds more necessary!) I’ll just make a cup of coffee – ooh, would you like one more "recipe"? I think I’ve settled on how I like making my coffee: one shot of espresso (one ounce), one shot of pure maple syrup (again, one ounce), and 8 ounces of steamed, frothed milk – yummy (and the caffeine doesn’t hurt this tired mommy)! Well, now I’ve officially chronicled our day, and here are some photos to finish it off – the outside ones were from the other day.
Naomi finally named her dolly, after months of insisting that her name is Dolly. She named her Annie, which I love since it was her name when we adopted her!
One of the aforementioned boxes – still not sure how Isabelle managed to bring Alyssa in there with her!
Hello Kitty!
Fun with friends, picking non edible berries to play with.
Hannah very much wanted me to take her picture, so she forced a smile 
boxes are such fun!
Golden marshmallows – although they had deflated a bit before I decided to get the camera;
noisyvillage 