Today in pictures

My Photo Stream is brimming with selfies of Jack:

That always happens when he borrows my phone.

Cooper is finally feeling like himself (after we went to the doctor for a strep test, a booster flu shot for Dorothy and a bemused what-the-freaking-hell-are-you-people-doing-here-again Justavirus diagnosis) again, but holy cats was he whiny this morning. 

By the time Little Gym was over and he was crying because he wanted to sit at a random small table and eat some other kid's popcorn crumbs, I was ready to run away from home.  And it was only 11:00.

But then he plopped down in the Adirondack chair outside the gym and happily held his little sister on his lap and counted rocks.  I LOVE HIM SO MUCH.

I was so happy that we all made it to lunchtime and blessed, blessed naptime that I gave into my craving and ate myself completely sick on cookie dough while also eating a tiny salad for lunch because all my available calories had to go to COOOOOKIES.  (Mine are only 94 calories/cookies because I make them smaller).

 Sadly, Dorothy woke up after only 39 minutes of sleep (ROBO BABY), and she was totally happy and refreshed with the most adorable fuzzy bed head and rosy little cheeks.

I figured oh well because Ben was due home in 30 short minutes, and I had big plans to pack up my stuff and work on my online class at the library.  Then Ben called to say he was pulled into a meeting with the president of his college and would be home right AFTER the big boys got home from school.  Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

Dorothy decided to trash the nonbreakable cabinets while I cleaned the kitchen and climbed Mount Laundry.

I am glad she's into it because pots and tupperware are less dangerous than her previous household love:  light sockets.

After his nap, Cooper helped himself to some milk and poured it.  Not surprisingly, that adventure went less than well.  He was completely nonplussed and grabbed a towel to clean it up.  HE IS THE MOST CAPABLE CHILD WE HAVE.

But probably not capable enough to play this game with ramekins:

Although there was no breakage and if we ever have to pick teams, he is so my Jenga partner.

They were happy like this for 20 minutes.  GENIUS.

Oh, little Jack.

Updates

This is my favorite picture of all 4 kids that we have taken so far.  Or, more accurately, that I have SEEN so far.  I am hoping the professional pictures that we froze our asses off in last weekend will ultimately be better.  But if they're not, look for one of these on our Chrismukkah card.

Harry's fall soccer season has come to a close, which is great because it has started to be way too cold for me to enjoy soccer.  Also, hockey has started, with 2 practices in the evenings and games on Sunday-- there's travel, even, on the horizon for the season.  Yikes!  He is also working on some enrichment homework for school, and he used my camera to take pictures of our neighborhood for a project-- adorable.  He and Jack were very serious about getting pictures at sunset and sunrise, as well as during the day.  Harry was invited to the girl he is in lurve with's birthday party today, and he spent a half an hour at Target finding the perfect barbie for her and another 15 minutes staring into his closet looking for the perfect outfit.  TOO CUTE.

Jack is learning so much so quickly in kindergarten, and he is taking such quiet pride in his work.  He loves writing the alphabet, and he is so excited to come home and sing the songs he has learned in school.  For a couple of weeks at the beginning of the year, he was sure he was going to be an artist when he grows up-- that's how much he adores his art teacher.  But then he decided he wanted to be a pastry chef after we made our Halloween cookies.  On Friday night, the boys and I watched the first Indiana Jones movie while Ben went out, and Jack changed his career path again: stuntman.  Sounds about right.  He also started hockey again (only once a week), and he is ridiculously cute in all of his pads.  Today while Ben and Harry were at the rink, Jack laid on the couch while I baked brownies and cleaned the kitchen.  He took his shirt off, got a blanket out of the ottoman storage basket, and ate brownie batter out of mixing bowls (I made 2 batches-- one from scratch and one from a box so Ben could do a blind taste test to see if he really does like Betty better -- he does) while watching half of the first season of ANT Farm on Netflix.  He can work the Apple TV like a pro.

Cooper and I started taking a Kindermusik class, and we both really like it.  But exactly 3 days after his first class, Cooper came down with a horrible something.  I think it's probably a Justavirus, but we are going to have to take him to the doctor tomorrow because he's had a 103+ fever for 3 days.  Yuck.  But he listens to his Kindermusik CD every morning and plays his sand blocks so seriously that we will absolutely go back to that cesspool.  Cooper has started using the potty a few times a day (not using it actually-- just sitting on it and using lots of toilet paper to wipe himself) and insisting on a fresh diaper when he is wet.  So we might soon be dragging our sweet baby girl into every damn public restroom in town if our sweet baby boy keeps this up.  Ugh.

Yesterday when the two of them were putting away laundry, I heard Ben say to Dorothy, "Oh baby, you make everything better." And she does.  She's a dream come true, this sweet baby.

Family fun time!

You might think this baby is Dorothy. But no! This is baby Jack, who looks a helluva lot like baby Dorothy, no?

Yes.  She smiles every time she sees a camera or my phone.  I really love that about her.

 

I also love the way she claps all the time-- it is so sweet

 

Seriously, this could be the same baby.

We made Halloween sugar cookies today.  Huge mess.  HUGE.

Cooper took 45 (seriously) pictures of hi foot and the diaper change happening in the background.  If I scroll through them really fast, you can see the whole change happen.  FASCINATING.

As if cookies weren't enough family fun time, we also carved the mess of pumpkins on the porch.  Well, we didn't carve them on the porch because it is so damn cold here (snow yesterday!), but they have been hanging out on the porch is what I mean.

A baby in a pumpkin!

How about a little Halloween preview?  Abe, Clark, an elephant, and a monster all went to a party at school last week:

MANGOES ARE HORRIBLE

I have been trying to keep my work inbox at 0 (which is awesome in terms of stress, BTW), and I came across this picture from our Santa breakfast last year.  Cooper was such a little baby!  (And I was pregnant with another little baby, crazy, huh?)

I love lattes

Finished a huge chunk of the work for my online class that I am developing, and I am so relieved!  There's still a ton of work to do, and then I have to do a quick redesign of the online class I built for the career college where we adjunct, but still! Latte-fueled progress today, and I am basking in its glow and using the last 10 minutes this coffee shop is open to blog about it.  (Even though there are weeks of work ahead before I can read the excellent novels burning a hole on my bookshelf.)

Yesterday, I volunteered in Harry's class for a morning of pumpkin math.  The kids brought in pumpkins last week and spent some time eyeballing them so they could come up with estimations of weight, circumference, and number of seeds.  Then yesterday, they weighed, measured, and gutted their gourds and did math to compare their guesses and their actual numbers and then painted their pumpkins.  It was slimy and adorable.  Harry was the first kid done and even completed his bonus pumpkin worksheet in record time, meaning he got to pass out snack.  I watched him do it and commented that he was giving some kids more than he gave others.  Three second graders turned on me "It's a handful!" They shouted.  "Sometimes a handful is a little bit bigger, and sometimes it's a little bit smaller!"  Clearly that was a discussion that had happened a few times in the second grade.  OK, then.  I volunteered to take all the seeds home and bake them for snack today, and I also sent in (gluten and nut-free) pumpkin chip muffins made from the adorable sugar pie pumpkin on my counter.  Bonus!

Today, I made sweet Dorothy a batch of baby food from all the leftover, too-ripe stuff attracting fruit flies on my counter.  Hope she likes pears/plums/apples with a side of apples/carrots.  4th baby: not as special of a snowflake as the other babies.

Um.  That's all I got.  Boring and lovely around here.  Pictures?  You have probably already seen them on Facebook.

(OMG-- the passive-aggressive barista  TURNED OFF THE WI-FI 5 minutes before the coffee shop closed to encourage stragglers to leave which pissed me off.  If you want to close at 4:25, then PUT THAT ON YOUR SIGN.  SO I am typing this from my front porch.)

Before school baby meeting:

 He got out the bagel, PB, knife, and stool all by himself apropos of nothing (well, he was probably hungry, but we were hanging out in his room, and he just got up and made a snack).

 He helps himself to everything

 I LOVE THIS HAT.  And her giant Northface bunting.  We debated forever but ended up going with the huge 12-18 month size hoping she can wear it in March and April still

 Minecraft.  I am not sure how many more conversations I can have about that game.