Happy birthday to Mouse and Jubilee Girl!

Our wonderful girls are officially another year older! We're celebrating their "birthday week" around here, starting with some special dinners last week. They had a cake and small celebration with their seventeen Minnesota-Wisconsin cousins over the weekend, and then another family celebration Sunday evening. We still have some celebrating to do...specifically, some ice cream treats and some star gazing...if it ever warms up!

Here are the highlights:

Spring concert

 

 Mouse had her concert debut on the flute last night...and Bear had a short solo on the violin. See highlights in the video below. Mouse playing "Amazing Grace" (shot by Jaybird...sorry for the shaky video) is at 4:20; Bear's solo is at 9:20.

Bouncing!

Another late start due to winter weather today. It is April, isn't it? So another video of how we're spending our not-quite-spring indoors:

What do you do when winter just won't quit? Two options...

It's April 1 and there's still snow on the ground...in fact, we have snow banks several feet high everywhere..and we're still recording wind chill. I wish that were an April Fool's joke, but it's not.

What do you do with a bunch of cabin-fevery kids under such circumstances? Well, you can either take them sledding and snowboarding...again...(see Exhibit A):


...or you can take them bowling (Exhibit B):


As you can see, bowling, while much more expensive than sledding, is vastly more popular. Especially among the three-year-olds! (The Music Man was at home with his PCA, having a bit of a rough day...we'll catch him next time.)

Fun with Alleluia Boy at Home

Alleluia Boy is in preschool two to three mornings a week, and at other programs the other two days...but on those long winter days when he's home all day, here is a little snippet of how we roll:




For all of the drudgery of staying home with kids all day, it's times like these that I think I will savor when they've all gone. Love you, little guy!

Banana Baby, two years on

On March 11, 2011, we uploaded this video of Alleluia Boy falling asleep while eating a banana:



Now, some two years later, that video has been viewed more than 113,000 times. It's a minute long, so that means we've been accessories to all those viewers wasting a grand total of 1,883 hours.

Also, a Danish television station is in negotiations with Banana Baby's agency to purchase the right to use the video in a new TV show called Klipfiskerne...literally, "Clip fishermen."

And Banana Baby is also now listed as one of Ellen Degeneres's favorite videos (of many) on the website of the Ellen Degeneres Show.

Now we just need an endorsement from Pope Francis....

Here, there, and everywhere

Down the street.  Even Minnesotans are sick of this winter.

Mouse, Jaybird, and a friend reading at the CW.

Alleluia Boy and Jaybird at the Children's Museum in LaCrosse.

Jaybird at play at the museum.

The Music Man at his preschool's Spring Sing concert.  He's securely latched, don't worry.

Alleluia Boy got to try out the dental chair when we went for teeth cleanings.

There's been so much going on, this is going to sound somewhat random.  Oh well.





The above video is Mouse's short duet in her school's "Almost Spring Sing."  She got to first the first couple of lines of the Beatles' Yesterday with her good friend Kaia.  She was so excited about and did very well, saying she wasn't nervous, just excited.



Alleluia boy is a handful. Well, he's three! Sometimes he talked in ways that sound almost adult ("We're going to the store today. And we're going to buy bananas and milk and cereal. Oh yeah, that's right.") and other times he points at things and whines like a puppy for it. He has the energy of a tasmanian devil but it basically very sweet--just READY. TO. PLAY. NOW! Right now, he's in ECFE on Thursday mornings, and St Mary's Preschool/Educare Mondays and Fridays. Honestly, he's ready for school. He loves it (at least at two hour stretches); its all about new adventures for him and when he has to stay home in the morning, he has this attitude of "let's blow this popsicle joint."

Jaybird has been writing little theological treatises about Easter coming up. I guess she is getting filled with more catechesis than normal since her first communion is coming up too. So this weekend I got one page long songs or just statements about how God loves us and sent us Jesus and Easter is great because he rose from the dead! With lots of exclamation points!!! Anyway, after getting the third one, I said "My goodness, Jaybird. You're writing all kinds of theological treatises these days!" And she said, "Well, Mommy, I want to be you!" (sniff sniff)

Bear is busy. In good spirits, but busy. He is getting a lot more homework now that he is in Erdkinder (middle school for Montessori), and he is doing very well. He is involved in chess club, just tested to advance in karate, created (!) a debate club, is part of a string quartet, and is in orchestra. He did a piece for his school's recital on violin, and did well...but mom didn't do so well and forgot the camera. He's also an altar server and is planning to serve at Easter Vigil.

The Music Man is pretty cheerful. He has botox shots on April 8 and we're hoping that will kickstart his walking again. He's still doing it but now we have a more freestyle reverse walker in the house he should be using more, and we're borrowing canes (!) from school--where clearly the first thing that needs to happen is that he needs to learn to stand with them. We have (at long last) a wheelchair ordered which he may get his hands on in...8 weeks? And his own walker, rather than a borrowed one from school. His school OT and the two of us have been trying to think how to get him more potty trained...they got an adaptive seat at school and darn it, its too big. Plus he freaked out a bit. So, that's in process. We're seeing the IAC (International Adoption Clinic) doctor for the last time Wednesday, to followup on various pediatric issues. He's enrolled at a new school for next year, not Bluffview. More on the Adopting Alex blog....