The essentials

We may not know our alphabet yet, but at least Lucy and Jude have a handle on some of the more important stuff:

Analphabet soup

analphabet \(ˌ)an-ˈal-fə-ˌbet, -bət\ n: an illiterate person who does not know the letters of the alphabet.

Yep, I'd say that definition fits the Fab Four to a tee—or should I say, "a T"? Fortunately, it seems that you don't have to know your letters to love your letters:



I guess I need to get serious about teaching my kids the alphabet ... they're definitely interested!

Head shaker

A mother wears many hats—often in quick succession. Like the other day at the table, when I was an enthusiastic entertainer one second, and an amateur paramedic the very next:



Who knew that my silly sight gag could induce a case of actual gagging? The real head shaker, though, is why Ted kept taping instead of telling me that Jude was choking—I'm guessing he was just as distracted by Isaac's delightful laugh as I was. One thing's for sure: These kids keep us on our toes from one moment to the next!

Rub a dub dub

From the beginning, I have been kind of a wimp about giving my kids a bath. At first—when they were fresh out of the NICU and I was still giving them sponge baths on the kitchen counter—I was scared because they were so, so tiny. As they got bigger, I dreaded baths because it was just so much work to stand at the sink and wash four squirmy little ones in a row. In fact, I disliked bath time so much that the babies were 4 months old before it even occurred to me to take a picture of them in the tub:

My bathing beauties, 4 months old
(clockwise from bottom left: Jude, Isaac, Lucia, and Dahlia)

By the time the kids were 13 months old, we'd moved the baby bathtub from the kitchen to the bathroom, but I was still too nervous to put my slippery babies directly in the big tub for another couple of months. When I finally got brave enough to bathe them two at a time, I'd scrub the girls, and then Ted and I would each take one to dry/diaper/dress before repeating the process with the boys. That remained our mode of operation for almost a year—until yesterday, when I thought it would be fun to change things up:

(left to right) Isaac, Jude, Dahlia, and Lucia at 26 months

Managing four kids in a tub was a lot easier than I thought it would be—probably because they are well past the stage of slipping and sliding all over the place. And since Lucy and Jude are out of diapers, we could easily get them dried and dressed right there in the bathroom while watching the other two.

We probably won't do this every time (logistically, two at a time is still easier for us to handle), but I am glad that we tried it at least once—from the looks of it, it won't be long before they won't all fit in the same tub anymore!

Puzzle partners

Over the past few weeks, we've been seeing a special relationship develop between Dahlia and Isaac. It started with Dahlia feeding Isaac snacks to cheer him up, and it has progressed to her bringing him the books he likes or finding his pillow for him when he's looking for it. Dahlia will also randomly decide to sit down and "help" Isaac when he's working on a puzzle or shape sorter. She usually calls out the name of the puzzle piece or shape that she is handing to him, but yesterday I caught her letting him do the talking (much like we do for his speech therapy):



I think they demonstrate pretty good cooperation for 2-year-olds! And for the record: Both of the girls can name and pick out all of their shapes, and the boys are close (even though Isaac only names a couple of shapes in this clip). Thanks, Baby Newton!

Potty 'gin!

They say that time heals all wounds, and I suppose two months was just about enough for us to forget how difficult the first round of potty training was. So today we finally took the plunge (no pun intended) and gave Jude his turn on the potty!

Because he's been showing signs of readiness for a while now, I was pretty sure he'd do well. I was completely unprepared, however, for just how ready he was to pichí in the potty: All we really had to do was put him in big boy underwear and let him see Lucy get an M&M as a reward for using the potty—after that, all he wanted to do was "potty 'gin!" He was so excited about using the potty that he did not have even one accident all day!

We'll see how the next few days go, but really, we couldn't have asked for a better start to round 2 of potty training. If Jude can keep this up, it's two down, two to go—wish us luck!

In the blink of an eye

Isaac's first week in glasses couldn't have gone better. I would put them on him whenever he was distracted or in a mellow mood, and the second he started to fidget with them, I'd make them disappear until I saw my next opportunity to put them on. With this approach, Isaac quickly grew more and more accustomed to his glasses until, just a week after getting them, he successfully wore them all day (except for during his nap, of course). We were so proud of him!

But then ... Isaac scratched a lens. We're not sure how it happened, but it seems likely that he fell and hit them on a toy when we weren't looking, as the mark on the scratch-resistant lens was pretty sizable. It must have been pretty annoying, too, because, after that, nothing could convince Isaac to keep his glasses on. Naturally, we got the lens fixed ASAP (thanks, Uncle P!), and I thought we were good to go.

I was SO wrong.

This morning, while I was fixing breakfast and Ted was changing a diaper, this is what Isaac did to his glasses:

Note lens and screw popped out of the frame, temple rotated 45 degrees, 
and one cable completely removed from earpiece.

Talk about a horrible way to start the day! We don't know exactly how he managed to wreak such havoc on his glasses (he is not a destructive kid, by any means), but one theory is that he might have yanked them off to burrow into his favorite pillow, and then rolled over on top of them (I found the popped-out lens underneath the pillow). I really can't think of any other way that he could have mangled his wire frames so badly—I mean, he's strong, but he's not that strong.

In any case, we realize that Isaac needs close supervision while wearing his glasses. But the fact is that we happen to live with three other little people who almost constantly demand that we divert our attention from him! If only I could clone myself ...