Kids

I can't believe my little baby is 7. I remember when he was a baby, the idea of having such a big kid was just completely foreign to me, and now here we are. Colwyn has been a really wonderful kid lately, and I'm totally soaking it up. Not that he's been difficult in the past, but every kid has their rough stages, you know? Plus, he's into Harry Potter now, so we have that to talk about, and he's been so creative lately. He makes books of spells and potions, draws prolifically, and does these hysterical videos (sometimes without my permission, but whatever). He's such a good help with Niall, and he delights in Niall's cuteness almost as much as I do.

Lachlann's a funny guy. Lately he's been going through a phase where he's scared to be alone in a room by himself. It's driving me a little crazy because he whines about it, and I feel bad for him because he ends up compromising too much on what he wants to do, but I don't know what else to do to help him through it. That's a pretty minor thing, though. He's still very much into Star Wars. He's so snuggly and he still *loves* being tickled. Seriously.. he'd be happy if I could tickle him 24 hours a day. It's too funny. He still says he wants to marry me. :) I'm amazed at how well he does with math he's never actually been taught. When the boys and I are doing math problems in our heads, Lachlann often gets the answer before Colwyn does. I heard him the other day saying, "4 plus 4 is eight, so 4 plus 5 must be 9." I was impressed with the fact that he wasn't just adding 4 and 5, he was making the connection that changing 4 to 5 makes the answer increase by 1. He's learning to read and is making great progress, it seems to come very easily for him. The only thing he has trouble with is fine motor things like writing. He absolutely hates to write. So I've been trying to come up with other activities like cutting, stringing beads, etc to help develop his fine motor skills.

Fiona is at one of my favorite stages. I love watching her language skills develop so quickly. She adds these adorable little turns of phrase every few days. Her most recent one is to tell me that she'll do something 'in no time'. And speaking of time, she's also experimenting with that concept. 'Tomorrow' is one of her favorite words: if I tell her she can't have something, she'll say, "Oh, tomorrow!" If she wakes up early from her nap and I ask her to go back to sleep, she'll say, "Oh, I get up tomorrow!" She also loves to sing. She's quite good at Row Row Row Your Boat and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. She also sings most of Moon Moon Moon by Laurie Berkner and the Blues Clues song. The boys and I have been playing a lot of Wizard Rock lately (I think it's pretty funny), and she'll sing along with that, "My broomstick better than yours, whoa-oh.." She still loves her dolls and anything girly, but she also likes to play with Colwyn's Star Wars blaster and the Harry Potter wands (she walks around waving her wand and saying "Leviosa!").

Niall's keeping me on my toes. It's funny, you'd think I'd stop being surprised that the kids can still throw me for a loop, but there you are. He's a very happy baby, smiling and laughing all the time. He sits up well now, plays with his toys, and loves jumping in the Jumperoo. He gets so excited when Doug comes home, it's really cute. He loves watching the big kids, especially when they're moving around a lot. He's rolled a few times from back to front, but not front to back. He's not as mobile as I was expecting him to be at this age, probably because he's chubbier and also because he's just generally content to be where he is. He does pull up from sitting by grabbing onto my hands or my shirt. He also lifts his head and shoulders up off the floor when he's lying on his back. Just the other day he started babbling - babababa. He's always so thrilled when you babble back at him. Solid foods are going well, he really loves fruits. I was hoping that if I fed him solids regularly (providing he was developmentally ready, of course), he'd start sleeping better, but no go. That's the one problem with Niall.. he's a horrible sleeper at night. It takes at least an hour to put him down most nights, sometimes it takes almost two. Then he's usually up every hour or so. There's not much we can do to fix the problem at this point.. he's too young to start watering down his bottles, and we already cosleep. We don't believe in crying-it-out, so that's not an option. I guess we'll just have to be sleep-deprived for the foreseeable future.