Fast forward

We watched some home movies with the kids the other day, and poor Jacob could not have been more confused by the videos of Caleb as a baby. Because baby Caleb bears a striking resemblance to baby Levi.

And by striking, I mean they may as well be twins. (Save for that extra five pounds Caleb was carrying around at this same age.)

They have the same blond hair and big blue eyes, the same chin, same forehead, and same cute little round face. In fact, the only difference between 9-month-old Levi and 9-month-old Caleb might be the fact that Levi's neck is visible. (Again, five extra pounds makes a big difference. Especially since Caleb was carrying all that extra weight in his cheeks.)

Some days, I'm really not sure I can handle all the cuteness.

Problem solving

As is the case with most minor household tragedies, this one caught my ears before it caught my eyes.

There was a whimper (apparently Levi had eaten his last puff), a grunt (while Jacob strained to reach the container on the table), a cacophonous shaking and a frenzied cackling, and the sweet, irresistible belly laugh of a wildly entertained baby.

"What's going on?" I called into the dining room, just moments before I rounded the corner and saw the answer.

"Levi eat all his puffs," Jacob explained, much more calmly than the scene would suggest. "I give Levi more puffs. Levi laugh!"

For the record, there are almost 500 puffs in one of those little containers. And it takes a 2-year-old less than 10 seconds to dump half of them on the floor and on his brother using the flailing-an-open-container-above-the-head method.

These two are going to be trouble. I can already tell.

A gnawing suspicion

My easygoing baby has not had it easy these past few days.

I thought something was up, and I was right. Apparently, he was working hard on sprouting a bottom tooth. Now at least I know why he's been cranky and so busy chewing on everything and everyone recently.

A word of advice: if you suspect your child may be teething, do not offer your index finger as a chew toy. Unless you want to find out the hard way that baby teeth are really, really sharp.

Just trust me on this one.

Goers and senders

The cool thing about hanging out with international missionaries is that our kids get a really good idea of what spreading the gospel to all the nations really means. (It's hard to ignore the Great Commission when you've got friends who are doing the Great Commission for a living.) The bad thing about hanging out with international missionaries is there are way too many goodbyes.

And so it was with joy and sadness that we hosted our dear friends for an evening before sending them off to South Asia to do what they do best. And I won't lie when I say there were a few tears shed when we waved goodbye.

My four crazies lived it up with little Lydia and baby Molly while they were here. Abby and Lydia played with dolls and dress-up clothes and did girly things while my boys competed for her affection and her mom and I discussed which of my sons would make suitable matches for her daughters. The kids continue to pray nightly and thank God for their friends who are on the other side of the globe telling people about Jesus.

For my part, I'm praying for an international vacation that includes stops in Slovakia and South Asia sometime in the next three years.

Pearly whites

Cool shades? Check.

Comfy chair? Check.

Squeaky clean, cavity-free teeth? Check.

That was one painless trip to the dentist. Now if only everything else about being two years old would go this smoothly for him...

11:45 a.m.

This pretty much sums up our every day.

Jacob does a puzzle, Levi practices sitting up, Caleb builds sharks and bridges, and Abby retreats to the backyard to do her own thing. 

Meanwhile, with 15 minutes until the crew starts demanding to be fed again, I attempt to conquer the pile of breakfast dishes so I can move on to lunch in good faith, while my 2-year-old mocks me in the background.

This is life, people. 

The fun one

I was seriously only gone for a couple of hours, and the hubby managed to clear a path in the ivy and hang a tire swing in the back yard in that time.

(And apparently, there was that brief incident where the tire rolled down the hill and into the creek and he had to go swimming to retrieve it, which caused Jacob to panic and prompted Abby and Caleb to laugh hysterically.)

I'm lucky if I can get lunch on the table with four kids underfoot, and he pulls a stunt like this?

I'm doomed.

He's always going to be the fun parent.

Orange you glad it's almost spring?

There's nothing quite like a popsicle on a warm day to motivate a teething baby to feed himself.

Maybe when he learns to speak up, he won't get stuck with the orange one that nobody wanted.

Soccer mom

In the first soccer game of his life, Caleb steadfastly followed the only two rules he had been given:

1. Do not lay down on the field.
2. Do not touch the ball with your hands.

Any activity that expends this much energy and only has two rules is bound to be a hit with our energetic little guy. And this most certainly was. Caleb had a blast, and didn't even notice that it was a resounding loss for the Green Ninjas. (I'm fairly certain that their opponents were all at least six inches taller than Caleb and his teammates, so we kind of all saw it coming.)

But in my book, Caleb certainly brought home the award for Cutest 4-year-old Soccer Player Ever.

And while I'm handing out awards, the Cutest Cheering Section goes to these adorable children:

And the Cutest Fan award will have to go to this guy:

And the Cutest Moment of the Game was this one, when Jacob darted onto the field to join his brother in the postgame prayer circle:

I think soccer season is going to be a good season of life for our family.

Potty training 3.0

Expensive equipment is not really a requirement for potty training. In my experience, all you need is a toilet.

At least, that's all I needed for the first two.

I know it's possible to potty train without a fancy phone, but now I also know that having a camera in my back pocket at all times sure does come in handy when trying to motivate a 2 year old to stay seated until he finishes his business. Especially when that two year old is most easily entertained by his own silly faces.

Technology is a wonderful thing.

Don't slouch

Please join us in a round of applause for the eight month old who can finally sit up on his own.

Levi has his dad to thank for meeting this milestone, as it seems I have been far too preoccupied with taking pictures of his adorable face and keeping him from getting stepped on to put any effort whatsoever into helping him work on his upper body strength and stamina.

Congrats, little one. We're not rushing this growing up thing. Feel free to take your sweet time on whatever milestone you were going to work on next.

Rocket science

Oh, that?

That's just Abby's scale model project design for the triple-shuttle launchpad she wants to build. She spent about an hour and a half this morning tweaking the design until she was satisfied with the outcome. (We may have skipped school this morning. Rocketry takes priority these days.)

If she ever does become a NASA engineer, I fear space may not be big enough for some of the stuff she's dreaming up.

Passing the time

A little light reading is a perfect way to kill time while waiting for your parents and siblings to get their act together and get everyone loaded up for church on Sunday morning.

This is quickly becoming one of Jacob's favorite pastimes. (The page turning, not the waiting.)

Looks like his fierce need for autonomy isn't the only thing he has in common with his big sister.

A penny saved

It's officially the oldest thing he's every ingested, and also the most inappropriate. Until now, we haven't really found anything that Caleb didn't like to eat. But pennies, according to our resident expert, apparently taste like poop. (There's perhaps a reason for that, but we're getting there.) And after the moment of panic, the admission of guilt, and the trip to the emergency room, I don't think he'll be eating money again anytime soon.

If you've ever needed a compelling reason to remind your kids to wash their hands after handling money, here's one: the penny Caleb ate didn't stay in his intestines. In fact, it made a two day transit through his gastrointestinal system and landed in our upstairs potty. Retrieving it was one of the more exciting moments of Caleb's young life. I can't say the same is true for me.

After it was over, I sat down with Caleb and told him how glad I was that the penny fiasco had passed. "I love that you don't have money in your belly anymore," I said.

To which my wise son replied," Mommy, you cannot love both God and money." (Thank you, Sing the Word CD, for arming my son with appropriate scripture.)

I'm determined to save the thing and show it to him one day, when I need to illustrate one of those "you have no idea how much parents do for their children" stories.

But just in case it does happen to end up back in circulation, you should always wash your hands after you handle money.

Especially if it's a 1992 penny.

Dress for success

Fractions aren't easy.

Costumes can help.

Once properly attired, the ballerina princess had this worksheet finished in no time, while the cowboy looked on approvingly.

The best part of waking up

Oh, just a little coffee to start the day off right, that's all.

Maybe I should start rethinking their morning routines.

Making spectacles of themselves

My kids have perfect vision. When they get older, I'll remind them repeatedly how blessed they are to not have inherited my extreme nearsightedness.

And then I'll look back at these pictures, and realize how adorable they are when they play around with their grandparents' reading glasses. I think they pull it off quite well, in fact.

Levi looks like a college English professor.

Jacob is channeling his inner mad scientist.

Slap a goatee on Caleb and he could be smoking a pipe and penning his thoughts on a park bench somewhere.

And Abby? I think she'll make a really great hipster one day.

Maybe being called four eyes isn't so bad, after all.

A beautiful sight, we're happy tonight

Happy first snow, Levi, from the land of wacky weather.

Try to forget for a second that Spring starts in just a few weeks or that my flowers are beginning to bud.

Just enjoy the snow, little guy. All three minutes of it.

And if you want to hear about real snow, you can ask Abby or Jacob about their first snow experiences. Don't ask Caleb. He was born in a blizzard. I've put that midnight drive to the hospital in the sleet behind me, and there are no pictures to commemorate it.

And you can thank your sister for the wintery weather. She's been praying pretty confidently for months now for some snow. That was her running around in the front yard yelling "Thank you, Jesus, for all the snowflakes!" We could all learn a thing or two from her.

Go for launch

For her first rocket launch, things could not have gone more smoothly. Abby and her dad spent the morning assembling and decorating her rocket, and the family braved a dusting of snow as we counted down to lift off.

When her little orange rocket lifted off the launch pad, any disappointment that this one wasn't going to take her to the moon was quickly forgotten. The rocket she had built soared high into the air, just like the ones in the footage she's seen of the moon launches, as a huge smile erupted on her face. And when the parachute deployed and she bounded across the field to retrieve her rocket, she may as well have been captaining a ship on a booster rocket retrieval mission across the Atlantic.

We launched it once more before heading home, and this time she even let Caleb push the button when it was time to blast off. She's already looking forward to the construction and launch of her next rockets. Each one, she assumes, brings her just a few miles closer to an actual moon landing.

This may very well have been the greatest day of her life.

Momentum

My stationary baby days are over.

He can't crawl, but that doesn't seem to stop him. Levi can roll like it's nobody's business, and has no trouble getting to a specific destination across the room to retrieve an errant toy or discarded truck.

And when the object of his desire is mere inches away, he defaults to an inchworm-inspired move that is really more of a wiggle than anything else.

If it gets him where he needs to go, who am I to criticize?

Little fish in a big pond

It struck me the other day that in a few short months, our family will be poolside again. And whereas last year my kids were content to splash around in the kiddie pool while mommy sat around grumbling about how miserable it was to be pregnant in June, this year will look a bit different.

This year, there will be four of them. All of them will be mobile. Two of them are confident swimmers, and will not tolerate the kiddie pool. One of them may or may not be able to walk yet, and will likely spend his time bobbing around in an infant float within arm's reach. That leaves my third born standing in the gap between the fun he could have in the kiddie pool and the fun his siblings will be having in the big pool.

So I snagged the spot vacated by his older brother and put Jacob in swimming lessons, just like the big kids. He kicks, he splashes, he crab walks along the edge with his hands, he blows bubbles, he goes down the slide, and he jumps in, feet first, with a great big smile on his face.

After each lesson, I ask him what he did, and if he had fun.

"Bow bubble! Plash! Eyes in! Fwim! Fwim! Go down fwide!" he'll tell me, arms flapping in a frantic attempt to help me understand.

I think that's a yes.