We bought Chloe a baby doll for her birthday, and holy cow does she love that thing. It goes with her everywhere. She feeds it, burps it, dances with it, puts it to bed, wakes it up again, changes its diaper, walks it around in its stoller...you get the picture.
Her birthday was fun (now that it's a month later)- she was spoiled with lots of family and lots of presents and lots of cake. Here's a couple of pics from the event...
It looks like she had fun. :-) Anyway, because we had things going on pretty much everynight that week, we didn't get around to carving pumpkins until Haloween morning. So instead of getting Chloe's clothes all mucked up, I left her in her pajamas and she helped me carve the pumpkins. She was all excited as I stuck the knife in the pumpkin and started cutting out the top. Then I pulled it off and showed her all the insides, thinking that she would love to get her fingers into that. The second she saw all the pumpkin innards, though, she stopped and said "Ewwwwwww!" I urged her to stick her hands in, showing her what to do as I pulled out some seeds and she backed up and put her hands up and said "NO!" Didn't realize I had such a pansy for a daughter! Seriously. Anyway, she was a lot more excited about it after I cleaned it all out. For all who are wondering, incase you can't tell, I carved candy corn. It looked cooler all lit up. 
Linus has his six month checkup next week and I'm a little nervous because he's not sitting up nor is he rolling over. He's almost sitting up and the rolling over thing happens on accident sometimes when he's on his stomach, but he just isn't real motivated to get out and move around quite yet. I think he's developing just fine- he comes up with interesting schemes to get his face next to mine so he can get a good taste of my cheeck or a fistful of my hair- I just don't like the raised eyebrows the nurses give you when they ask you why they're not solving E=MC2 or compising sonatas in C# minor yet. I finally got some pictures of him sucking on his two fingers. It's always the same ones and that's pretty much how he puts himself to sleep. Craig and I are scratching our heads about this: on the one hand, we don't have to worry about losing a pacifier or making sure we have one wherever we go incase he needs it, but on the other hand, you can take away a pacifier when you want him to stop using it at a certain age, and as far as I know chopping off his fingers would be illegal...not to mention painful. Anyway, the scratching of heads stops when you look at how funny he looks choping away at those fingers. Also, he finally started eating solid foods the last couple of days and oh my goodness was he ready for it. He eats and swallows every bite of his rice cereal. We didn't even have to start with some in his bottle or anything at night. By the end of the first food I fed him he was gaping his mouth open for more after every bite- I couldn't get it in fast enough! He just is a food man I guess. He's also dangerously close to fitting into size four diapers already...Chloe is in size four diapers. I'm holding out as long as I can, but holy cow! He's a monster. But a cute one, so I guess we'll keep him. :-P
So Opening Night for the Av's was last week and Craig was so excited to pull out Chloe's old outfit for Linus to wear. We didn't have anything for Chloe, so Craig put on one of his shirts on her and she wore it as a "dress". It was an exciting ten minutes of our day, cause then they went to bed after that. :-) Too bad the Av's lost that night.
I had to add this picture in- if you can see, Chloe slept on her braids one night and woke up with one of them sticking straight up out of her head. She didn't quite know why Craig and I were laughing at her that morning anc kept scowling at us through breakfast as we'd snicker at her hair.
So Linus had his four month check up about three weeks ago and I never posted about it- he's in the 95% for everything. He weighs over twenty pounds already. I have giant callouses on my hands from lugging that stupid carseat with him in it everywhere. I thought Chloe was a chunk, but she didn't weight 20 lbs until she was nine months old. He still drools like a leaky faucet, but he's also testing out his vocal capacity with loud piercing screams whenever he feels like it. I swear I hear all the metal in the house ringing at the same timbre when he's through. Good news is (or bad news, depending on who you are) his horn is slowly fading away. Unfortunately the magical powers associated with it are also diminishing...
...but at least he doesn't have to get it removed, for the next little bit anyway.
Chloe has croup right now. Well the doctor said it was croup, but I always thought croup wasn't contagious and whatever she has, her cousins had it the last couple of weeks too, so we're pretty sure she got it from them. Everyone tried all we could to keep it from her (cleaning toys, being watched during the day at our house instead of theirs, keeping her out of her cousins' play areas, etc...) but how do you keep three very active toddlers from interacting in the same house day in and day out? It was inevitable, pretty much. Friday night when I picked her up to go home after school, she excitedly ran across the lawn to our door and was wheezing audabley and gasping for breath by the time we made it inside. That night she started fevering and didn't sleep much and worried the heck out of her parents with her death rattle breathing. She's doing much better now- still has no voice, but she's breathing fine and running around getting into trouble as usual. But now Linus gets to sleep in our room until she gets better- we are crossing our fingers that he doesn't get it, I'm not sure how well a five month old would take a viral infection like that, even a twenty pound five month old.
And that's our update. Hoorah!
So I started doing the potty thing again with Chloe- this week we tried underwear. She can wear them just fine! She can also pee in them just fine too! The good news is, she hates it when she does pee her pants, but she hasn't quite figured out that the way to solve that is to tell Mommy to go to the potty and then do it before she wets herself. We sit on the potty for lots of time every day and she has a grand old time reading books and telling me what color all the hairties in her hairtie sorter are, and then she stands up and dramatically looks in the potty as though something would magically appear there. Someday I'll catch it right I know, but in the meantime I'm doing laundry almost every day!
Craig has finally started school again and I have finally started teaching. Eventually I'll post pictures of my classroom...but my classroom right now is not really done. It's a brand new classroom with a collapsable wall that folds out into the gym with a lip for a stage and everything, but I have to wait until they get the wood floors in and all. So I'm in a temporary room right now, which hasn't necessarily motivated me much to decorate it a ton since it'll all be coming down in a month anyway. Craig is enjoying school...I think. Maybe enjoying isn't really the right word...enduring maybe? I dunno. He's enjoying the fact that this is one more semester closer to being done! And I think he enjoys the change anyway. In the meantime we are having tons of fun with our kids and I have to say that teaching half time the first year should be mandatory for every new teacher- it's so great!! Okay, so the pay kinda stinks (and by "kinda" I mean "REALLY") but I get to be home with my kiddos every morning and that is worth anything.
And that's all for now. Join us next time...
