Ryan helps me pick up Gracie from preschool. They sometimes walk out with their arms around each other like they are best buds. Gracie told me that Jonathan and James were picking on her and Ryan came to her defense the other day. This was nice to hear since it isn’t uncommon to find Gracie chasing Ryan around while he has her blanket or toy. Ryan is quite proud of his potty going and does a good job most of the time. He’s still in the needing constant praise and encouragement/diaper for naps and bedtime phase but I’m happy he’s going at all. Before bed he insists on giving hugs and kisses to everyone. This and needing to go to the potty are his favorite stall tactics at bedtime. He is always running somewhere non-stop so he sometimes runs into walls, beds and so forth. He gets hurt and lets me hold him while he pretends to cry. I ask him if his teeth hurt and he replies by touching that part of his body and saying “yeah”. I proceed to cover everything, hair, ears, nose, belly button and toes and sure enough they are all hurt. He lets me read to him in the rocking chair or on his bed and loves gathering lots and lots of books.

Gracie’s favorite past times are combing or brushing my hair and anything Strawberry Shortcake. She also enjoys our daily reading lessons.

Today James came home from school and told me how they had them do something “inappropriate” in VAPA, Visual and Performing Arts. He said they had them dance and move their bums. I asked him if he said anything about it and he said “No, I only thought about it once I was walking home.”

Last night Michael and I were sitting on the ground while Jonathan and James were going to bed. James sleeps on the top bunk and Jonathan on the bottom.

James: “I’m in love with two girls at school.”

Jonathan: moaning and disgusted noises followed by “Ugh, I’m not hearing this. Man, this is bad.” type of stuff.

James explained that he is in love with Melanie and another girl with a name like Melanie but he couldn’t remember it.

James: “Mmm something M, mmm, mmm, Maddie. That’s it. Maddie.”

Jonathan: “Get me out of here. No more secret handshakes with you James” Ugh

Michael and me asked about the girls and explained that sometimes we really like friends and that’s fine but being in love may mean something different than what he thinks it means.

James: “Well I’m a friend with all the other girls, but I’m in love with Melanie and Maddie.” He went on to explain that he is in the same reading group as Maddie and the teacher has them sit on the ground and they read together. He plays a game with a ball at recess and always chooses to give Melanie his spot.

Melanie goes to our church so I had tried to get James to be friends with her when school started. I guess he took it to heart.

As we left the room I heard him saying to Jonathan, “Just try not to think about it, Jonathan.”

Today Ryan and I walked to school to take Jonathan some lunch money he had left at home. Ryan took his own little backpack. When we got to the front office, he insisted on getting out of the stroller, and taking all his toy treasures (trains, tops, train controller) out of his backpack and putting them on the counter to show to the front office ladies. They responded very nicely.

Gracie likes to do her hair like mine. So if I have a ponytail, she wants a ponytail. If I have a braid, she wants a braid. If she has a flower in her hair, she wants me to have a flower too. She has a new phrase she uses often, “Whatdoyaknow?”. She gets it from Michael.

This afternoon, Ryan got some pink butterfly/fairy wings out of Gracie’s closet that she had received from Grandma and Grandpa for her birthday. They go on like a backpack and he put them on. He was quite enjoying his new role as a butterfly when Gracie noticed and turned into a drama queen. She was quite distraught running after a little pink butterfly boy wearing big kid underwear who happens to be very fast. I ended up having to put them both in time out. Well, better put, Ryan got put in time out and Gracie ran to her bed crying. She later came down and apologized profusely to me and Ryan. “Ryan, I just wanted to say I’m really, really sorry.”

I suppose I can officially call myself a busy soccer mom. Jonathan is getting pretty good at changing out of shin guards and into his swimming shirt and shorts while driving in the car. I’m realizing sometimes it is impossible to get two places at once. Fortunately, the boys seem to have good coaches and teachers. Practices and games have been positive. The hard part for me is needing to drag the younger kiddos along everywhere.

Despite having one more place to go, I opted to have Gracie attend preschool since she was so excited to go to school. So far she has enjoyed it. She likes Strawberry Shortcake and wants to take a dance class so she can be a ballerina. She likes to have tea parties and also likes to comb my hair. We’ve found that tea parties with the boys can be quite problematic. They aren’t quite into politely holding tea cups, small talk and smiling.

Gracie and Ryan loved the big moon tonight. Gracie drew a lovely little picture of herself with Michael on one side, me on the other and a big happy, smiling moon above us. Her new thing is that on the back of her pictures she likes me to write, “Grandma and Grandpa love Gracie.” She and James seem to be good little artists. We read Goodnight Moon tonight. Usually Ryan has a hard time going to bed but when I talked to him about how he was like the little bunny saying “goodnight” to the big moon outside, he was quite peaceful and cooperative. He liked pretending to be the bunny. Funny little boy, that kid. Ryan is doing really well potty training as far as “pee pee” goes, now if we can only get him to do as well with the “ pooh, pooh”. While on the subject or the pottying lack thereof, James has decided that it isn’t really very nice to call Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh and thinks he should just be called Pooh Bear instead.