January

Happy 2013, everyone! I've been thinking, now that we're in the "teens," is it ok to start dropping the first two digits of the year, like we used to do in the 90s? For example, could I say something like "back at the beginning of '13, I had big plans for getting caught up on the blog..." No. That's not really working.This new millennium certainly has its challenges. I miss the 90s. Life was so much simpler then. As my dry-humor-loving piano student Jacob likes to say, (with a small sigh,) "Those were the days. Those WERE the days." 

2013 started pretty slowly for us. I have a smattering of pictures to illustrate that point: prepare for excitement that is fair to middling. 

Eve's hair, which is not so much of the curly variety (like the other kids) but tends more to be of the catawampus variety, finally grew long enough for piggies. I'm a little sad because it means my "baby" is not really a baby anymore, but a little giddy, too, because PIGGIES ARE CUTE.

Charlie's two front permanent teeth are slowly creeping into place;  we have officially entered the my-teeth-are-too-large-for-my-face stage of childhood. 

We were on an all-too- rare Sunday walk when I took these pictures. I wish we could have taken advantage of the beautiful weather more often. January and February in Vegas are the months that give the rest of the country weather envy.

We took a similar picture almost exactly a year ago, seen here For some reason they were more skittish about climbing on the wall this time than they were last time... 

This is one of my all-time favorite dresses of Antonia's (Grandma Geri has good taste!) and pretty soon it will be too warm for long sleeves, so I had to get a picture. Not to mention, I could just as easily get Antonia to wear thumb screws as long sleeves these days. I finally started cutting off the long sleeves of some shirts to make short sleeves, which doesn't sound quite as W.T. as it sounds... 

Never mind Antonia, direct your attention to the delicate flower poised charmingly in the background.  So young, and already such a lady...

This was Charlie's "Dress Your Career" outfit. Can you guess? (Side note to Mom: look what's hanging in the background)

It took about six hours, and a LEEDLE bit of help from Dad, but Charlie finished building the Lego Star Wars X-Wing Santa brought him. Antonia offered plenty of moral support, in the form of trying to sit in Charlie's chair with him, removing pieces of the ship to other locations, taking the instructions out of his hands, etc. It's not hard to tell that she does not love it when Charlie has a project which does not involve her. 

As always, the box and the packing peanuts are more fun than the goodies inside.

I hope taking selfies is still cool, because Antonia and I are just starting to get REALLY into it. And nobody takes better selfies than a girl whose cheeks are jet-puffed.

Costco is Antonia's favorite store because she can sit next to Eve in the cart, and she does a superstar job of keeping Evie entertained whilst we shop. It's a job that apparently requires a lot of cheek-squeezing, giggling and singing, but hey, whatever works. 

You have to look closely to appreciate the handiwork here, but this is what I found at the end of Antonia's nap. Lately she's found better ways to spend nap time than sleeping; in this case, she was hanging up her baby's laundry to dry. Or something. Naps are a bit of a quandary, because the amount of whining that starts about two hours before bedtime indicates she still needs the extra sleep, but often she's just not quite tired enough for a nap... 

This seems like a good time to give a little update on the children's developing personalities, or whatever.

Charlie:

I really have to pay attention to the clues to know what's going on with Charlie these days; he's not the most communicative fellow. I generally have no idea what's happening socially at school, because a.) I don't think he really pays much attention to who is friends with whom, what's cool and what's not, and other first grade politics, (so I guess I shouldn't really care) and b.) he never tells me anything. He does share the occasional juicy tidbit such as "Mom, everyone in my class says that I'm the best at opera singing," which is impressive, to be sure, but doesn't really give me as much information as I would like.
-Lately he's been kind of obsessed with facts and statistics, poring over these flashcards and books to come up with details to share with us like President Obama's birthday, (year and date,) how many feet tall is the Washington Monument, how many steps lead up to the Capitol building, how many miles it is to Virginia, etc.    And he pays a curious amount of attention to the sugar content of his food, and he will either ask me or search the packaging to find out the exact number of grams of sugar per serving. Sometimes food will exceed the limit of what is acceptable to him, although I'm not sure where exactly he draws the line.
-Extracurricular-ly, he's now going to gymnastics 3x a week, and mastering some fun new tricks like backflips and round-offs with no hands, plus pomel horse, parallel bars, rings etc. I'm not really clear on the technical aspects of  that other stuff, and I should probably spend more time watching and talking to his coaches... He does complain that his hands always hurt, and in fact he comes home from gym with his palms rubbed raw, but he's getting some thick callouses, so hopefully that issue resolves itself. I asked him if he could wear that cool hand type like the older boys and he looked at me like I was asking him to eat cooked broccoli and avocados, so I guess that's not a solution.
-He's as responsible and self-motivated as ever, with his homework and also with his piano practice; I rarely have to get after him to do either, which probably means that Antonia is going to give me heck on those two fronts. He does what needs to be done, and he doesn't kick up much fuss.
-In general, it's pretty smooth sailing with our firstborn, with the occasional anger-management episode or email from the teacher that his silliness got a little out of control, (but really, whose doesn't, once in a while?)

Antonia:

She is still pretty much the opposite of Charlie in every way. When she's happy, she's a delightful gigglekins, or a sweet helper, but when she's grumpy, we all want to jump in the car and drive away really fast before she realizes what's happening. We would never, of course.
-She is still loving preschool, and asks me every day "Do I go to preschool today?" Even though she usually already knows the answer.
-Right now she's in the early stages of reading, sounding out little words, but I don't think we've quite crossed the threshold into official reading-ness. One day we were in the car and she asked me "Mom, why do all the "Exit" signs have P's in them?"  I finally mustered the brainpower to figure out that she was looking at stop signs and thinking they were exit signs (don't know where she got that idea) and she was confused because the word 'exit' has no P sound.  And I was actually more impressed with myself for figuring that out than I was of her knowledge and interest in signs and letters.
-She has an ongoing obsession with flip-flops that do not have a strap on the back, and I think I mentioned the long-sleeve boycott already.
-The thing about Antonia that I find the most challenging is her default volume setting, which is loud. And she yells a lot, and shrieks and sometimes screams. And frequently bursts forth in song. But also, there's that delightful giggle that is one of my favorite sounds in the world...
-She is a thoughtful, and usually patient big sister to Eve. They have a cute relationship that is getting more "sisterly" as Eve gets bigger.  They have this "bit" that they do, which goes like this: (and always ends in major giggles for both of them)
Antonia: Cock-a-doodle-doo!
Eve: Cracker?
Antonia: No, Evie, cock-a-doodle-DOO!
Eve: Cracker?
Antonia: No, COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!!!
Eve: Cracker?
...and so on.

Eve:

Eve is at that age where something significant changes about her almost every day.
-She finally started walking, which was thrilling for me, because NO MORE RUINED PANTS!
-She's very snuggly, and every time I get her up from her nap she nuzzles her head on my shoulder for a little while. As soon as she was mobile, she'd started scooting or crawling into the room as fast as possible if she heard anybody giving kisses, to make sure that she got some.
-One of Eve's defining characteristics is her interest in copying what everyone else is doing. She waves her hands when we sing the hymns in church (like she's leading the music) she folds her arms or hands for prayers, she tries to put her shoes on, get dressed, brush her own teeth, brush her hair, put lotion on, put chapstick on, eat with a fork/spoon, or pretty much do anything else that she sees the rest of us doing.  One of my favorites is when she gets a notebook and a pencil and lies down on the floor to write, like a teenage girl writing in her diary.
-Her trademark move is the shoulder shimmy; it's her default dance move and also an expression of excitement or delight, like when she is receiving a favorite food item (or any food item.)
-She is an excellent eater, perhaps TOO excellent, as I recently noticed that she is already growing out of clothes that Antonia wore well past her 2nd birthday, but only in girth, not in length.
-She's an excellent little mimic, and practices matching pitch with Charlie's groans and Antonia's shrieks and even the trumpet students doing their mouthpiece warm-ups. She does a fantastic Curious George impression.
-She's a great sleeper, and if we had the luxury of flexibility in our schedule, she could take two 2-hour naps every day and STILL go to bed at 6:30.
-She's a pincher. To put a positive spin on this proclivity, I like to think of them as "love pinches."
-She's really quite the adorable character, and utterly loveable, with her throaty chuckle/chortle, rotund little belly and the Howdy Doody gap in her front teeth.


(That's all for now. Next time I'll be catching up on quoteable quotes.)