Oliver is 3!

Happy 3rd Birthday to Oliver!  We celebrated his big day with a construction cake, which was a more simplified version of what I had seen online, but seemed to work just fine for Oliver. 

3 things I love about Oliver:

1 - He is obsessed with cars.  He calls himself "car".  As in "Oliver, so get your pajamas and bring them to me", his response with a serious sad face, "Car can't.  Car doesn't have any more gas", or "Car has a flat tire, Car can't move", while slowly moving his foot my direction to show me his "flat". Or if I say "let's go get a snack" he'll say "ok, Car will ZOOM in there".

2 - The way he says "cha-lock-it" instead of chocolate.

3 - His use of the day "Saturday".  He does not say any other day of the week, or yesterday, or tomorrow, or before or later.  Everything happens on a Saturday, and when it happens to fall in place and he gets it right, he really impresses people.

One of his gifts was a set of 9 little Disney Cars books.  He didn't want to move on to his toys presents until he was able to look at all of them.  Good thing he has 3 older siblings to read to him this summer.

Final note:  Since the babies waited until after Oliver's birthday to be born we cannot claim that we have 4 kids age 2 and under.  Oh well!

Everyone needs a Genevieve

Our littlest girl turned 18 months last Sunday.  It is hard to believe,  but at the same time we kind of needed it to be true since she is about to assume "big sister of 2" duties! 

Genevieve started out as one of the easiest babies in the world. I cannot imagine an easier baby.  We always said "everyone needs a Genevieve".  She has always loved to eat, loved the stroller, loved to entertain herself,  loved to be held, loved the car, and loved to be put in her crib wide awake as long as she has her blankie.  That has definitely not been the case with all our kids!

Over the last 2 or 3 months she has really found her own little personality, which is quite sassy at times.  She can absolutely stick up for herself - seriously, she has bullied both Camille and Oliver lately.  She is a smart little thing that watches everything the older kids do.  She is not a very early talker, but the words are starting to come more and more quickly.  She absolutely understands what you ask her to do.  She helps unload the kids' dishes from the dishwasher and stacks them correctly in the cabinet (better than her daddy to be honest).

She makes us laugh all the time and we are all crazy about her sweet chubby cheeks, arms and legs.  She looks a lot like Lucy did as a toddler - minus some of the long curly hair.  We just recently made our first attempt at pigtails.

She has no idea what is about to happen to her position in our house, but I am not worried.  This is the same age Oliver was when she was born and I know what great buddies they are now.  Plus, she will be an excellent bossy big sister that will alert me when the twins are causing trouble down the road.  Lucky them!

New Stuff

Here we are just waiting for the twins to arrive now.  I have been very focused on just making it to the month of May, so I am surprised by the amount of free time I have now that we are this far into it. Here is what's new with us since my last post.

new glasses

new carpenter skills

new communion-taker (yay Lucy!!)

new net to match big brother's (watch out lepidoptera of the south plains!)

new missing tooth

new vocabulary

Not yet 3 and he recently said, "This is my conversation and it truf.  I'm mad!" when I wouldn't let him outside by himself.  He is also capable of saying nice things like "don't worry baby, it'll be fine" to Genevieve.

new glasses prescription

and new hearing aid - which has been wonderful for all of us

new tree swing

at Noni and G-Pa's house

is a big hit

new profile

and finally, new walker
Genevieve waited until around Easter (16 1/2 months old, less than 2 months before her twin brothers are born) to start walking as well as routinely sleeping through the night.  I would like to thank her for both.