Opal at 14 Months

The biggest change Opal made this past month is that she is now walking!  It is so adorable to watch, and she has such a proud look on her face as she walks around on legs that look way too short to be doing such a thing.

Fortunately, she still lets me hold her.  Here she is below holding an object she can name, "Ball!"

 Opal also says, "uh oh!", "thank you", "again", and "bear".  We've also heard her attempt to say each of her sister's names, which of course, made them even more devoted to her.

Opal also says, "Draw" and gets a kick out of scribbling with pen or crayon on paper.  

She is starting to sleep better after overcoming two huge set back this month - another round of the stomach flu, and getting four molars.  When the stomach bug hit our house again, this time even more furious than the last, I officially went crazy.  The budget was thrown out the window as I bought a can of Lysol wipes for each room of the house, two new sets of toothbrushes (for every member of the family in both our upstairs and downstairs bathrooms) and several boxes of latex gloves.  The kids were under strict instructions to keep all toothbrushes out of the bathroom, and to apply toothpaste to their brush with a clean q-tip so as to not pass on germs.  Later that night, after my new sanitary rules were in place, I realized that one of my kids had set the table for all three meals with dishes from a dirty dishwasher.  You could have knocked me over with a feather.  Needless to say, everyone came down with the bug a second time (minus Violet and I, who didn't catch either bug and are now calling it our Super Power).  The toughest part of the entire ordeal was that it slowly went through our house again, and lasted for over two weeks between when the first person got it to the last person finished with it.

I'm almost giddy with gratitude that Opal is back to a sleep routine.  The other night I thought that she wasn't ready for bed with her sisters since she had taken a late nap.  After tucking in her sisters, I headed downstairs with Opal.  After I sat down on the couch with her, prepared for a late night, she took me by the hand and led me upstairs and to bed!  God bless you child is all I had to say, as Will was working late that night and I was in need of a break.

She loves books, blankets and bears.  She also loves putting on Lucy's old fashion glasses and making us laugh.

 What a squishy, adorable little baby she is!

 Opal, you are a goof, and we love our sweet and sassy little girl!

Daffodils and Skunk Cabbage in April

I am still recovering form April.  I knew this on an intuitive level, but after compiling all of these photos, it is amazing I am doing as well as I am.  So what if our house is a disaster, we've more than once plucked dirty clothes out of the laundry basket to wear and my usually smooth meal planning and prep has completely fallen off track with eggs and toast a staple "healthy" meal lately.  April rode me hard, and put me away wet (and sometimes covered in puke).  Fortunately, as much as I was able to just do the very next thing required of me with no chance to plan any further, we did make some great memories and survived some other things that make good stories now.

We started off the month of April with a three day trip to Chicago to visit a dentist for Violet.  We had a lovely stay, and not only did the AirBnB we stayed at work out perfectly for us, but we got to visit the Lincoln Park Zoo, a giant baseball bat sculpture that the kids had just studied in their art class, and best of all, visit with good friends of ours. 

Usually we lock Charlie in our garage if we are going to be gone overnight, but on the morning we left for Chicago, he was no where to be found.  I worried about him the entire trip, and was so relieved to have him greet us in the driveway when we got back!  Little did I know that my relief was short lived though, when a few days later we found him injured in our garage with a wound on his back thigh.  We took him to the emergency vet (Charlie only gets injured after hours and on holidays) and found out that he had a BB gun bullet in his back thigh.  We were so heartbroken to hear this, and it put me into the downward spiral of despairing about the right thing to do with our super loving, but very outdoor cat.  In retrospect, the day we found him as a kitten, we should have worked without ceasing to find him a forever home indoors with someone.  Now, at 6 years old, he would be miserable living indoors and the risk and danger of an outdoor life to himself and all the small critters around us is more apparent than ever.  Oh, Charlie!  If only I wasn't so allergic!  Well, it turned out that a bullet wound was the easiest injury he has had so far, as unlike a cat bite, a bullet usually doesn't have any bacteria on it and because it missed hitting all of his major organs, the vet advised us to just let it be.  We kept him locked up in the upstairs of our garage until his wound had healed, and kept the cone of shame on his head for as long as it took for him to figure out how to get it off.  He also figured out how to break out of our upstairs, our smart and loving cat.  We were in the garage one evening, and all of a sudden from the ceiling we heard meowing, and there was Charlie, looking so proud, on top of the ladder that hangs on the garage wall.  Not only did he remove his cone, but he also found an old heat register in the floor upstairs and jumped through it to get to us.  I felt bad putting him back upstairs, but at that point, his wound wasn't completely healed yet.  You better believe we sealed off the heat register too.  I always say that Charlie deserves so much better, but as friends have pointed out to me, he is perfectly happy loving on us and prowling around outside to his heart's content.  So that just leaves me to worry about the welfare of the local wildlife.  

Emma turned 8 this past month, and we celebrated with Will taking the day off of work, presents, all of Emma's favorite foods...

...a spring time hike on our favorite local trail...

...dance class with a picnic dinner, plenty of time to build the Lego sets she received, and a dessert of oatmeal peach bars after dance class was over.  Daffodils were in bloom on the day Emma was born eight years ago, and ever since then, daffodils have become Emma's official flower.  Lucy picked Emma a birthday bouquet from our garden on Emma's birthday.

Two days after Emma's birthday we were hit with a BRUTAL stomach bug, which actually was the second stomach bug we had in only a few short weeks.  Both Emma and Lucy puked for six days straight, and it took medicine to finally get them to stop puking.  Opal also got the bug, and puked on and off for six days but never got dehydrated like Lucy and Emma, thank God.  Opal did however puke on me so many times that I lost track and ran out of clean clothes.  It was shower after shower for both of us, and a full-time job just to manage all of the laundry.  I still have a nervous tick when I hear any sort of cough or gurgle and run for non-carpeted flooring.  For some reason, Violet and I were immune to this bug which I am so grateful for, as who would have taken care of us if I had gotten sick?!  That's right, Will came down with the bug too, and his lasted for almost six days.  

Above is a screenshot of us Facetiming friends of ours who were also sick at the same time, but with a different bug.  

Will was the last one to get sick, and was down and out over Easter weekend which was a bummer for us, but good that he didn't end up missing too much work.  Fortunately, Will was pretty easy to take care of compared to the girls, but the tough part was I didn't get any break or help for the holiday.  All of Lent, leading up to Easter I had promised the girls that we would make homemade pretzels together.  Life had other plans though, and we finally made the pretzels the day before Easter.

We also dyed Easter eggs the day before, and I curled all of their hair in rollers for Easter morning.

We had a nice Easter, and Will was well enough to go to church with us in the morning.

Charlie joined us for our annual Easter egg hunt in our backyard after church.

While the kids played with their Easter goodies, I made the food we were supposed to bring to my parents house for Easter dinner.  Normally Will and I would have tag-teamed this, but since he still wasn't 100% better, we thought it best he didn't contaminate any of the food.  Below center is a photo of the two brownie pizzas I made so that we could celebrate Lucy and Emma's birthdays at my parents house that evening during the Easter festivities.  

Will stayed home while I took the girls to my parents, which was a nice time, although we all missed Will and agreed that it wasn't the same without him there with us too.  It was fun watching the cousins interact with each other, and there is nothing like the spontaneous joy of kids when together to make a gathering feel like a holiday.  And I am speaking for multiple generations, as when I am with my siblings, we have a spontaneous old time as well.  See the after-dinner dish massage happening with a pack of siblings.

Next on our holiday celebrations for April was Lucy's birthday, one week after Easter.  Lucy is now proudly double digits, and I think had an excellent birthday since it was on a Sunday and we had no other commitments that day besides Will's cousin coming to cut our hair.

And Lucy, being the gal of style that she is, found it to be a bonus to have freshly styled hair on her birthday.

Violet had a little bit of a struggle with all of her sisters having birthday before her, but took it in stride.  She continues to make us laugh with her antics, impersonations and general humor.  Here she is below being silly.  In the right hand picture below, notice the two sets of eyes looking at me.

It's hard to believe there was any time left for book learning this past month what with the different festivities and flus and the trip to Chicago, but we did pull off school as I don't want to get too behind.  We missed some extra curriculars when we were sick, but then others were rescheduled, so that was nice.  In clockwise order from top left below: Lucy and her friend in art class, Lucy and her friend in art class again, Lucy and Emma at dance class, the girls and their friends using their yoga teacher's trampoline after class one day, and Emma and her friend in art class.

We had backyard play, and in clockwise order from top left below: Will demonstrating his Skip-It skills, Violet painting, Lucy painting, the girls with a gift of Easter chalk from their aunt and uncle, the girls with a neighbor friend, and Opal with another neighbor friend.

We were healthy and able to attend two different birthday parties for some of our friends and even were able to get a chiropractor appointment in, complete with fort building while waiting for their turns.

As if holding together my family of six through the thick of celebrations and the thin of sickness wasn't enough, April also started the busy season for my business.  I rolled out several new products this past month that I had been working on for well over a year.  And probably the biggest news of all is that my bees LIVED THROUGH THE WINTER!  After 6 years of trying, I finally pulled it off.  But really, Will pulled it off, with me shouting directions to him through the dining room window!

We had such a busy month, and I am thinking of taking the rest of the year off.

These little ladies sure are worth it though, and I'll end this post with the bottom photos in clockwise order from top left: Emma searching for frogs on a hike, Emma in front of "her" daffodils, the first wildflower of the spring spotted on a hike - a skunk cabbage, and finally, me out for a walk with all four of my girls not long after they had all recovered from that brutal stomach flu.  That afternoon, we felt like we could take on the world!  Here's to good health, good celebrations, and rest for this mama!