A good week

Paris Hilton wanna-be

Will wants to wear glasses, too!

Downward dog (thanks to Aunt Kara for "teaching" them yoga)

Xander and Grace carrying the bag. They love to help.

As you can see, we've had a good week. No major illness to speak of. They have runny noses today and Xander is coughing some, but they're not horribly sick. We did get out quite a bit last week and this week. All the normal spots, museum, indoor playground, storytime, mall, church and grandparents' houses. Will is doing fine handling the steroids twice a day. No real major problems. He is a little more aggressive than usual, we've caught him pushing Grace around and throwing a lot of things. Time outs usually take care of those behaviors, though. I'm glad we're not having any huge temper tantrums. Xander's tantrums when he's tired are bad enough! Grace did have pink eye last week. On Friday morning, she woke up with a lot of matter in her eyes. I didn't really think anything of it, and wiped it out. About 20 mins later, it was back and worse. It just kept getting worse and worse, until by the time we met my mom for lunch, her eyes were huge, red and puffy and the matter was just flowing out of them and drying on her face. I called the doctor and they called in a prescription for eye drops (which cost me $60!). I went crazy that afternoon washing everything in the house and spraying the entire house, including toys, with clorox spray. Luckily, no one else has gotten it. I think she may have picked it up at the museum, and I'm completely shocked the boys didn't get it, because it's so contagious. She's better now, the drops helped almost immediately, and she was pretty good about letting me put the drops in. But, you could tell she was uncomfortable with the pink eye before the drops, she whined a lot about it.

In other news, I have a funny story. We have have been trying to get them to understand pronouns, so we'll say "What's your/his/my name?" etc. Well, they say their name now, and with enthusiasm. (We've also been trying to get them to say their first name and then Niebuhr, so far they don't really get that.) Anyway, during church on Sunday, the kids came with and didn't go to the nursery. Here is what happened during a prayer...

Brian: Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name...

Xander (loudly): Name? Xander!!!

We thought that was pretty funny.

The other thing they're getting a kick out of lately is helping. You can see that they were carrying the diaper bag for me. We refilled it with diapers and packed it to take to the Niebuhrs house that night. Grace likes to sweep and unload the dishwasher. They all love to turn lights on and off, open and shut the garage door or any door for that matter, and do any other number of tasks we let them do. They've become great at getting undresses, coats, shoes, jackets, shirts, socks, working on getting pants down, those are harder. Will and Xander immediately take off their pajamas in the morning when I say "Let's go get dressed" They run around naked until I get around to putting their clothes on. Thanks to Grandma and grandpa Niebuhr for teaching them about red, green and yellow stoplights. I have three backseat drivers now who tell me when to go and stop. When Grace sees a yellow light she announces "yellow!" At least she keeps me aware of how many yellow lights I run. They are also using expressions that Brian and I use all the time like "there you go" and "come on". I think those are funny to hear them say. They are getting good at letters, Grace can receptively do about half the alphabet. When you ask Will what an X is he says "Xander", so he's recognizing that X is for Xander. And speaking of Xander, he counted to ten today, almost all the way by himself. I helped him at 4 and 5, but he got the rest by himself. I was so excited I called Brian to tell him. It's so neat to watch them learn new things like that! Well, that's all for this week. Happy Valentine's Day everyone!