i heart my kids

if you're wondering why there haven't been many posts about the kids (or in general) lately, well, it's because allan and i have been working hard to revamp our photography blog. we're hoping to debut it soon, so stay tuned! in the meantime, i thought i'd give you a quick read about what my three turkeys have been up to as of late.

i am considering homeschooling lucas for kindergarten (which he will start in the Fall), so allan and i thought it would be a good idea to give it a go right now while he's preschool-age and there's no pressure. we chose a curriculum called sonlight and lucas and i are going through it each day. sometimes emma joins us, but most of the time we do school while the girls are both napping. lucas really loves it and when i've asked him whether he prefers going to school or being schooled by me, he has always chosen me. hmm. it's definitely a lot more work on my part, and i'm not even doing that much; just kind of trying to get a feel for it. i know that if we decide to do it, it will require a lot of effort and discipline on my part, which i'm a little scared about i have to admit. :0/ besides homeschooling, lucas is really into legos, guns/shooters, transformers, bakugan, curious george (still), playing outside with all of his vehicles, and the list really is pretty long. he will turn FIVE (omg!) in february. my BABY is five years old! i'm getting sad just thinking about it. he is still quite the inquisitive and sweet little boy. one afternoon while we were reading together, this question came up: are there any stairs in which there are no steps? he immediately answered in a very matter of fact way, "a ramp." his little brain amazes me everyday. i love him so much!

emma is our little firecracker. seriously. i love her AND her big personality! but, sometimes it's less personality and more attitude. not good. i decided last friday (1/22) to get serious about potty training her after emailing with my girlfriends about it. so after we got home from story time at the library and a play date at the park, i changed emma out of her diaper and put her into a pair of cotton underpants. to preserve my sanity, i put on a pair of pull-ups over her underpants. well, she managed to stay dry for a while but eventually went through 3 pairs of underpants before we laid her down for bed. i wasn't hopeless, but i wasn't hopeful that it would be a quick process either. the next day we stayed home and i just put her in a pullup (no underpants) and took her to go potty all day long. every 15-20 minutes, i think. i can't remember exactly, but she did really well. on sunday, we put her in a diaper to go to church. after church, she told us that she had to go potty so we took her before continuing on to run errands. i was amazed to learn that her diaper stayed DRY!!! i was so impressed and proud! two hours and no wet diaper! throughout the day she kept asking us to take her to the potty (in public, which i hated) and she did not wet one diaper or pullup! YES! in these last two days, she's maybe had one or two wet pullups (not counting the first one of the morning) and no accidents. hallelujah! i am so looking forward to having only 1 baby in diapers. besides the potty-training, emma is into anything that lucas is into. she adores her older brother and wants to do everything that he is doing. she also loves to sing and dance, which is the cutest thing in the world to watch. she got a keyboard with a real, working microphone for christmas and she loves to crank up the volume and just bust out "Jesus loves me" on it! i've also caught her singing "you spin me right round baby right round like a record player" to herself. she is a hoot!

and then there's my little elise. my baby! i love her so much sometimes that i can't even express it. i just hold her and squeeze her tight and then she squeezes me right back (the sweetest thing ever). it's no more or less than i love lucas or emma; it's just different because i know she's our last baby. and i get really sad thinking about her all grown up, like she's getting to be. she's fully walking now! she's just a little bit unstable, but gets around just fine for the most part. she took her first steps in november while allan and i were away and my sister watched all of the kids. luckily, it wasn't much of anything or i would have had to kill my sister. she encouraged it. then, around christmas time she started getting better and better at it. not long after christmas (definitely before new year's) she was all over the place without a walker or anything. sad! she is the best independent player of the three. she's also the cuddliest of the three. she's pretty quiet until one of the kids tries to take something away from her or she wants something they have. then, she sounds a lot like a seagull, allan and i decided. haha! she's also our best sleeper. she goes down with the kids around 7:45 or 8p and can sleep until 9 or 9:30 in the morning. for a two-week period or so, she was sleeping as late as 10:30a! i got worried! emma and lucas both love her so much and it just makes me feel so blessed to see all three of them together.