Miscellaneous

Alyssa was invited by her friend, Elizabeth, to go to Bring a Friend Day at ballet. She loved it; she was in heaven. Watching her dance and point her toes, I was really tempted to put her in right away so she can finish out the semester, but finances and the amount of time and energy I have to chase two boys around will probably have us wait until Fall. We're all excited for that, though. I've definitely decided that that's what we'll put her in next Fall.

Plus, NaDell brought some ant poison bait trap things for us to use, and the ants have been in and out of that thing all afternoon long. Believe me, it was quite the popular place to be among the ant crowd. Let's just hope it's popular enough to kill the whole lot of them! (Sinister laugh goes here.)

Alyssa is getting to be a great reader. She's doing really well, and she has great potential, but she fights every step of the way. "I can't do it," she says, "That page is too long." But when I coax her to read it, she does a fabulous job. She loves having "school" with me each morning, and I've seen huge improvements on her behavior and in other areas from having the extra attention/practice/activities each day. She's also getting really good at riding her scooter.

Ethan is talking up a storm. My dad often says that it took me forever to start talking, but once I started, they couldn't get me to shut up. (And shut up was a bad word in our house growing up. I guess dads are exempt.) So now we're starting to go through that with Ethan. It's not necessarily that he talks and talks and talks in sentences until we've had enough, but he likes to point things out to us (Ook, Mom! A rezeer!) and he'll say it over and over again until we repeat it back to him (Yes, Ethan, there's the river) so he can be sure we've understood him.

He's still the perfect gentleman, except for one point. He likes to burp. He doesn't really know how to burp, though, so he'll be sitting at the table and he'll say, "Burt...'scuse me!" and a few moments later, "Burt...'scuse me!" I wonder where he learned burping at the table from, Brian. I have no idea, Brian, where he might have picked that one up from.

Marcus is this close to going to sleep happily by himself in his crib. He's to the point where he'll lay down by himself, and he wants me to put the blanket over him so he can flip flop around on the pillow to get comfortable, then almost go to sleep until he stands up again, lays back down, and starts the whole process over. We're getting there. He's only waking up once or twice a night, and he's really easy to get back to sleep now. So that's going well.

And, boy the kisses he gives. It's so sweet. For the past few nights, when I'm rocking and hugging him before bedtime, he'll get serious for a moment or two, look at me with big googly eyes, grab my neck, or sometimes he pats my cheeks, then he'll pucker up and give me the sweetest little kiss on the lips, and quickly turn his head away with a very shy smile. And he'll do this seven, eight, nine or so times unti he's ready to lay back down in his crib. He is going to be quite the ladies man someday.

Brian is doing well in Walla Walla. He wears blue scrubs every day at the hospital, and he's never told me where he's figured out to put his keys, since the srcubs have no pockets. He's studying for the third round of Boards, which will take place over two weekends in April.

I'd tell you what I've been up to, but the things I want to say each almost deserve their own post. To sum it all up, I'm having a blast doing Morning School with the kids each day, but I'm getting completely worn out from having Brian coming and going so much, and (like I've said so many times before) I'm so tired of him being away. I'm excited for Spring - so excited for Spring! And I've already bought most of our Easter candy. Can't wait for that. I'm going to have to start hunting around for the hard shell pastel sugar egg things that I love, because they're really hard to find.

And that's what we've been up to.