So, what have we been up to?

Well, a lot! We've had beautiful weather down here, which means lots of family run/walk/bikes along the American Tobacco Trail, or as Vincent calls it, the Kabaca Trail. Kabaca, in case you're wondering, is what people smoke in pompettes, and pompettes make people sick, as he is sure to tell everyone he sees smoking one.

Besides that little educational foray, the kids have been learning about the human body, so they did a neat project that involved tracing their bodies life-size on large sheets of paper and coloring them in. Roger thought Catherine's eyes looked a little too Joan Rivers-ish so he took an eraser and pencil to them. Vincent's doppleganger also got a facelift after he got confused and drew the nose above the eyes. At first Vincent insisted that his paper friend have a skeleton so he could carry him around, and I kowtowed to that by taping rulers together for a spine, but after the fifth broken bone (courtesy of Dommie) we bandaged him up. When I asked Vincent where we should hang him he decided that we should hang Paper Vincie on the closet doors the master bedroom, "so you and Daddy can look at me all night long."

Old faces: 

New faces: 

And then there's Dommie. Speech-wise, he has gone from "Uh, should we get the kid tested?" to "Be quiet for just a second, would you?" He came out with his first sentence in December ("Hit rooster!") and now strings together things like "Mommy help me puzzle" and "Dommie candy. Dommie candy. Dommie candy!" The other day when Vincent lost his popcorn privileges Dominic rather gleefully reminded us for hours on end, "Dommie popcorn, Vincie no popcorn!"

So the house gets louder and louder, and in March it'll get louder still! The other morning the kids came with me to a doctor's appointment and when the doctor asked the routine, "Do you have any concerns about this pregnancy?" Catherine answered, "YES. We are CONCERNED that the baby might not be a GIRL" while giving her brothers the evil eye.

And I do have to admit, sometimes, like right now when the boys are running around with their arsenal of guns and swords, I think that it might be nice to have a sweet, quiet little girl.