Five Little Monkeys: So Blessed

Have I mentioned lately how much I love these children that God has blessed Chris and me with?

Christopher has been especially sweet and fun recently. I know that being the oldest of five children must have its challenges, especially with such young siblings. He loves it though. Most of the time.

The boys have absolutely awesome imaginations. They are always saying the funniest things about handguys and their 'special things'. For example, at dinner they each have a special food that they get to take the first bite of. "My special food is the noodles!" or "My special food is the chicken!" Gabe usually winds up with "My special food is the broccoli." Poor guy, but it doens't matter because he usually doesn't eat anything on his plate at dinner anyways. Their special foods sometimes cause problems though if there isn't enough different things for each boy to have one, or if someone takes the first bite of someone else's special food. We have had to tell them they aren't allowed to have special foods some evenings.

They have special monster trucks, animals, airplanes, and many more. Just their favorites of those things.

They also have "special sounds". They'll say, "My special oodle is a noodle." Or "My special ack is a track...snack...package." It's funny to hear what they make up.

They have claimed "speical babies" as well. Anna is Christopher's special baby and Leah is Matthew's special baby, although they don't actually treat either girl any different because of that. Gabriel has been assigned Ella as his special baby. Who is Ella, you may ask? She is our third baby girl that the boys have been planning for since Anna arrived four months ago. We've told them there probably won't be an Ella, but since none of them know the technicalities of how an Ella would come to be, we can't really explain when they ask how we know that we won't be having her. So Gabe is getting jipped when it comes to his special baby.

So Christopher brought home a paper from Awana that he showed me which said something to the effect of...your main job as a child is to go to school...and Chistopher changed his to this...your main job as a child is to ~~go to school~~ take care of babies. Keep in mind that I may ask him to watch Anna every once in a while so I can change a load of laundry (so obviously it's not very often!), but he definately is not taking care of my babies. Everytime the boys hear Anna or Leah wake up, they ask if they can go get her. Christopher recently asked me if he can teach Leah's Awana verses to her when she gets old enough. He just loves his sisters.

We are leaving for Florida tomorrow morning at seven o'clock. Christopher set his alarm clock for 6:30 AM a few days ago, just so he's ready. We told him the other day that our church is having a free childcare evening tonight that we are taking them to and ever since then he has been worried that he won't get enough sleep the night before we leave on our trip to Florida. He talks to both Chris and me about it and it's fun for us to swap stories of our conversations with him about it. He wants us to put off our date night so he can go to bed by 7:30 PM. No can do. Childcare is expensive when you have five kids, so we take advantage when our church blesses us with these free nights. Nevertheless, Christopher is still worried about not getting enough sleep the night before. I told him to bring his pillow along and he'd have two days worth of sitting in the car that he can take naps during.

Matthew with his little-est sister.

Anna had her four month well baby doctor appointment yesterday. She's doing great with everything but hasn't started reaching out for objects yet, so that'll be coming soon. Really, life gets a little bit harder once they start doing that, so as long as she's not too far behind, I'm completely okay with that! She grabs things that come near her hands though, which include my hair, which is not-so-fun and crazy that a tiny little thing can actually hurt someone physically so bad!

Speaking of her tiny little self, she's is exactly that. Her weight was 11 pounds, 11 ounces, which is at the 10th percentile for her age, and her length is 22 1/2 inches, which is at the 4th percentile. This is the point where Leah really slowed down in her growth and she picked back up at 18 months, so it looks like Anna's following in her footsteps.