Today I'm thankful for...

1. 5 Months. Sunday was April 15th. We had some friends over after church for a BBQ and one of them asked, "So how old is Liam now?" I get this question a lot and I gave my automated response without thinking, "He's 4 1/2 months- almost 5 months." My other friend Silvia (she's like Liam's second mom) happened to be listening and she looked at me and said, "No. He's 5 months. He's 5 months today!" Indeed he was! Time is flying by. Thank goodness I have friends who are paying attention for me. Liam is certainly growing fast. He seems bigger (and heavier!) every day. He still drools gallons upon gallons and he keeps us on our toes when we burp him- we never know when he's going to spit up all over! His most recent hobby is pooping straight out the back of his diaper so he gets a nice poop stain on the rear side of all his onesies. He also likes sitting in the Bumbo chair, watching Raffi and Signing Time DVD's with his big sisters, staring at his hands like they are the most extraordinary thing to behold, shoving toys (and bibs and blankets) in his mouth, and playing with toys that make crinkling noises- like the new book that Grandma and Grandpa B got him for Easter. I just love that he's a little boy and that he's so happy all the time. My favorite thing to do with him is to kiss his big cheeks over and over- it always makes him smile!

Liam isn't looking at the camera because he's too busy watching "Baby Signing Time" on the computer that's in front of him. He's working on his couch potato (or should I say Bumbo potato?) look.

2 . Three times the charm. Sydney has spent three nights and three days without her baboo. I hope I'm not jinxing myself here, but each night is getting progressively better. She slept straight through the night last night without a hitch. She only asked for her baboo once the whole day. I'm quite impressed with how well it's been going. The last time I tried to cut her off from her baboo, she had hysterical crying fits in the middle of the night. That was months ago and I haven't been able to gear myself up for what seemed to be the inevitable miserable process again. So I was skeptical when Bobby wanted to try it again this week. I thought we should wait until next month when his schedule will be better. But it's been going great so far, and I'm glad we're getting it over with now instead of later.

3. "The kindergarten way." Tonight at dinner I asked the girls to tell me their favorite part of the day. Lillian thought about her answer for a long time (as she typically does), then she told me that during project time her teacher taught her how to write her name "the kindergarten way!" Lillian was so very excited about it, and although I had a pretty good hunch as to what this meant, I didn't want to spoil the fun so I asked her to show me what that meant. She ran to get paper and pencil (it had to be a pencil- she insisted) and she told me not to look until she was finished. This is what she showed me:

Yes, that's an exclamation point [!] at the end of her name. She's very into exclamation points right now. They go at the end of every word to add excitement! She'll write things like Lillian! LOVE! MOM! DAD! It's all very exciting!!

Just as I though, it was her name written with a big L and the rest of the letters lowercase- the kindergarten way, of course! Up to this point she has only used all uppercase letters- LILLIAN. She was so proud of her work that she showed Bobby when he got home and she wants to hang the paper in our bedroom. :-D I'm so proud of her and everything she has learned at school, but most of all how she loves learning new things. She's also starting to learn how to read. Today she read "Here I Go" all by herself. Other words she can read and write on her own are love, mom, dad, gma, gpa

4. Rain. It finally rained just barely enough for the girls to justify using their new fairy umbrellas from G-ma and G-pa. It was drizzling on our way home from our Costco outing. I wasn't expecting it to rain so I hadn't packed any umbrellas. When we got home Lillian asked me to go into the house to get her umbrella while she waited in the van. This girl was not going to waste any good rain drops on her head when she had an umbrella she could use. Sydney on the other hand came in with me, grabbed her own umbrella herself, then went back outside to play with it. It's funny how the girls are so different. Both of them enjoyed using their new umbrellas for a real purpose for the first time! And their matching strawberry dresses just make it that much cuter. :-)