Birthday Week

Birthday Week Begins with a dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's house on March 22nd:

Opening a gift card to American Girl from Auntie Carrie and Uncle Mark. Oh boy! Oh boy! We can't wait!

Gma made butterfly cupcakes on Kyrie's request. Aren't they beautiful?!?!

Enjoying being sung to

Blowing out her candles

The Kons cousins wearing the penguin hats that Gma designed and the girls (sort-of) helped her to make


Birthday Week continues with a dinner at the Berrall House on March 29th:

Kyrie receives a big girl necklace from Grandma Jean and Grandpa Harry

Reading a book (a present from Nana and Pop-Pop) to Amelia

More singing! Sheesh!

Blowing out her candles...again!

And again.


More birthday at preschool on March 30th - Kyrie brought smoothies and penguin hats (made by gma) for the entire class:

Kyrie poses with part of her class

And the other part

Kyrie and her teacher, Mrs. Washburn - whom I think is an awesome and most excellent teacher.


Kyrie is excited to receive a present from G-Gma Starr:



Kyrie blows out a candle at home on the evening of March 30th (since I know she won't have much time on her actual birthday:



And...for her actual birthday, today, March 31st, Kyrie was lucky enough to go to American Girl in Chicago with her mom, sister, Nana, and Grandma:

Kyrie has her doll in her hands after talking about it for weeks and weeks!

And the winner is...Felicity!

Lariska also gets to choose a "Bitty Baby" for her birthday (not till May)

Lariska gives her baby, newly named Sarah, some tea at lunch.

Kyrie serve Felicity some tea as well.

Mommy with her big five-year old at lunch.

Kyrie listening to us sing her Happy Birthday

Blowing out a candle for the fourth (and hopefully final) time this year.

The girls and the Grandmas

All of us girls

Welcome

My sister finally had her baby last Friday, March 20th at 11:14am. We had to wait until Sunday (or was it Monday??? Yes, it was Monday!) to get the official name of the poor girl. But, now we know that we can call her Teagan Sophia Elise Schambow. She was 8 lbs. 7 oz. and 20-inches long. Check out the photos below:

Mommy Day

Last week Wednesday it was Mommy Day at preschool. I got to be a part of circle time and hear what goes on there (I was really surprised at how good these kids are at their days of the week and knowing their numbers on the calendar, etc.) They had to guess the next thing in the pattern and I could tell that Kyrie was excited about this because she didn't participate till the very end when she yelled out what the next picture would be before anyone else could. We also had to guess which of our children wrote what about us. Kyrie got very squirmy when her teacher quoted her as saying, "My mom and dad got married so they could have beautiful daughters." How cute! The kids served us cake and lemonade and sang some very silly songs. I wish every day was Mommy Day at preschool. I just loved it!

Luck O' the Irish

So...Kyrie woke up this morning and said, "It's St. Patrick's Day! What are we doing to do to celebrate?" I was kind of at a loss. But then she went on to tell me this whole saga about how she thought what we really ought to do is find the end of the rainbow and the pot of gold, because she would like to give the pot of gold to all of the poor children in the world who don't have any toys. (Can you tell that that line comes up a lot in this house? As in, "Kyrie and Lariska, do you know how lucky you are to even have that toy?! There are children in this world who don't have enough food to eat, let alone nice toys to play with.") Umm...yeah...so, I thought that was a really noble idea and hated to disappoint such a grand notion. So, I called my mom up and she was able to go to Bartz's while the girls and I went to my Dr. Appt. She got us a pot, some fake coins, some chocolate coins, and $10 worth of pennies from the bank. (THANK YOU, MOM!) After naptime, I told the girls that a leprechaun had heard of their great idea and decided he wanted to share his gold with them to share with other kids. The searched the house and finally found the end of the rainbow tucked away in our front hall closet:

10 weeks, 2 days

Yup, that is the countdown till Baby Genghis' due date. I am almost 30 weeks along and had a check today. My blood pressure was good (I think) - 118/58. The baby was measuring right at 30 weeks and gave the Dr. a run for her money when he moved quite ferociously during the exam (she was attempting to determine if he was head up or down...possibly head down, but he moves around so much that could change on an hourly basis at this point). Kyrie got to measure my tummy and put the gel on for the heartbeat. Lari helped put the tape away and they both got three princess stickers. It was a fun appt. Next time we get the diabetes test. Joy.

29 Weeks

BASM

Ahhhh yes, the Bi-Annual Screwing of the Mother - Daylight Saving Time. Matt thinks I am over-preparing, but I know in my heart there can be no such thing. On Thursday we headed up the stairs at 5:45pm and had the kids in bed by 6:45pm. On Friday we tried for 5:30pm and 6:30pm in bed and didn't quite make it, but the effort was there. Today, they were in bed by 6pm, which as you hopefully know becomes 7pm due to DST. My mom pointed out to me that the switch does not occur until 2am or something like that. Ummmmm...does it really matter when the switch occurs? Tomorrow morning when my kids get up at their normal time of approx. 6:45am it will actually be 7:45am. Church does not start an hour later to accommodate the fact that my kids are going to be messed up. So...we go to bed early the night before or risk having super-crabby kids tomorrow...which will probably happen anyway as Kyrie may have been in bed by a little after 6pm but was not asleep until after 7pm. Tomorrow is not as big a deal as it will be on Monday when we need to be at preschool by 8:45am. If they don't get up till 8am that doesn't really work! Stupid DST and how it screws my life up. I mean, no offense to any farmers out there, but really?!?!

Just Do It

This morning I took Jackson, Kyrie, and Lariska to see "Hotel for Dogs" (which, by the way, was a fairly cute movie that I wasn't embarrassed I took my children to). I did this by my lonesome because Matt had to go in to work, J.J. had an appt. and Dan was watching Tyler. The kids were very well behaved and I was extremely proud of them all.

You know who I was not proud of? Old women. Yeah... So, this movie is for kids, but I can understand why some senior citizens might want to get in on the $2.50 movie action, which includes free popcorn. But, when we got there I had trouble finding four seats together, holding on to four popcorns, three kids, a prego belly, a diaper bag, coats, etc. So...I grabbed the two aisle seats I found right away and got Lari situated. Then I found two more seats two rows higher for Jackson and Kyrie to sit in all by themselves(!). After getting everyone somewhere where they could sit and not spill all of the popcorn I looked around a bit and realized that with a little maneuvering I could get all of the kids together. All it would take is asking two older women to move down a row. But, when I went out on a limb and asked these women if they would mind doing this for me they just stared at me like I was dumb or something. Instead of just moving for me, they wanted to know why I was aking them such an aggregious favor. I had to explain the my three kids being separated story but before I could get through my long saga the seats in the row down were now being taken and the women were like, "Oh daaaarn, I guess it won't work," (not regretful at all). Thanks women. Sheesh! On behalf of all moms everywhere if a mom asks you nicely to do something, please don't ask questions, Just Freaking Do It!

Okay, I feel better now.

Big Girl

We have been psyching Lariska up for many months now to move into a big girl bed. She has been saying for just about as long that she is ready, which was very exciting to me. My back is killing me to have to lift her little (yet big) body over those rails and into bed every afternoon and night. (Pregnancy does not agree with crib rails.) But, we have been waiting to get some new carpet in her room before putting up the bed. I finally decided last week, however, that my back could wait no longer and we borrowed a toddler bed from my sister for Lari to sleep in until the carpet comes and we can put up the big big-girl bed. So, sigh, we can mark March 4th as the last time Lari slept in a crib. Ugh, how does this happen? My Little One is not so little anymore.

Kyrie and Lari enjoying seeing how the new bed works.



Lariska pretending to be asleep in her toddler bed.

Lariska wanted a photo with Mommy.

And Daddy.

After which Kyrie insisted we take photos of her in her bed as well. (We have actual photos of Kyrie when she moved to a big girl bed already posted long ago - Scroll down to March 11, 2007.)