it's been a while...

Life has been crazy, busy here as usual. The girls are getting so big and changing so quickly. Claire has been talking up a storm in the last week. She's started waving and saying hi and bye and she loves to drop something and then say "uh oh". Whenever she does something new, her face lights up and she gets this coy little smile on her face like she's saying "I bet you didn't even know I could do that!". She also loves to point and everything and say "this" and sometimes "that". A week ago, all she could say was mama and dada...it seems like she just started talking overnight.

Madeline is slowly learning to be compliant. Her new thing is to throw a fit over whatever she wants and then after about 30 seconds, she just looks at me and says, "OK" in response to whatever sense I've been trying to talk into her. And just like that, the tears and the screaming stop and she moves on with her day. She cracks me up. I've started laughing now when I get the OK, because I know from the start that it is coming at any time :)

Last week we went to Emma's Kindergarten Open House (already!). We got to meet the teachers and tour the classrooms and watch a video all about what she'll be doing in school next year. She was really excited to be there and Ryan and I were surprisingly impressed with the school and are feeling much more confident in our decision to send her there. On Thursday she takes her placement test, so we have been cramming the last few days to teach her some sight words. Teaching kids to read is not easy...I'm so thankful right now that I never ended up using that teaching degree. Ugh!

We went up to Orlando for Mother's Day weekend. The car ride up there was TERRIBLE!! I think that when the kids were younger, the ride was actually easier because they would sleep most of the time. Not so much, anymore. This time, the big girls slept for a little while in the beginning of the trip and then it was three or four hours of fighting, screaming, giggling and "Are we there yet?". Claire slept and cried on and off. By the time we got to my parents house I had the worst migrane of my life. I wonder how that happened?! I've come to the conclusion that having three little kids is exhausting. Go figure.