More From Tower Gr... Nevermind

We had a productive day today: we managed to get in our walk and breakfast picnic at Tower Grove before it turned 100 degrees, we made six batches of falafel for our post-baby meal stash, and we found a large set of bookshelves so that we can finally unpack the rest of the book boxes that have been sitting on the floor in my room upstairs since we moved!

Are you tired of seeing pictures from Tower Grove yet? We had to mix it up a little today; the park maintenance crew was working on the playgrounds, so we had breakfast and played in the nearby pavilion with stage and steps. There was a lot of room for running.

Mary was feeling particularly silly today.

Catherine found a very nice climbing tree and convinced Michael and Mary that they wanted to sit in it with her.

It didn't last long. Catherine had to get down because Michael kept poking her in the back, and I'm surprised Mary even managed that smile, because a second later she decided she was terrified of being three feet off the ground and had to get down IMMEDIATELY.

The kids watched a little bit of the Olympics with Daddy today. It seems that their favorite part was the medal ceremony and the fact that the winners received medals AND flowers. At dinner tonight Michael Jr told me, "Michael want get flowers, Mommy." Really if he keeps up his current exercise regimen, he just might have a chance at getting some flowers some day. The kid loves to run.

Inside Fun

Why so long between posts? I have no idea. It's probably because I haven't taken much in the way of good pictures lately. I've also been cooking like crazy to stock the deep freeze with about a month's worth of meals so that food is not a big stress factor after baby Augustine shows up (3-ish more weeks!). And I've been working on my sourdough skills because Michael Jr seems to be tolerating some fermented grains pretty well (a far cry from our old diet, but definitely progress in the right direction). I have managed to produce several actual sourdough loafs, as opposed to the first few attempts that resulted in sourdough bricks, so there is hope.

Mostly we've been finding ways to entertain ourselves inside and avoid the 100 degrees outside (except for that one day when it rained for a few minutes, but there's pretty much no evidence of that already).

Catherine has discovered that a bunch of the new-to-her dresses from a friend poof quite nicely when she sits on top of the air conditioning vent. I remember doing this with the heater vents when we got home from church in the winter when I was little (because church day was the only day you could get a dress on me back then).

Have I told you how much the kids love our van? Michael Jr routinely refuses to get out of it when we get to our destination, and none of them are above fake-sleeping in order to delay getting out of the van just a few minutes. What do you think are the chances they will have the same point of view when we drive to the Cape in November? For now, they've settled on building vans in the house using all the chairs they can find. Seat belts and rear-facing car seats are included, of course.

Daddy, on the other hand, stays away from the van as much as possible. He prefers bikes, specifically this bike, which he picked up off of Craigslist here in Saint Louis but it was originally hand made in the UK. It's pictured with all his children; read into that as much or as little as you want.

Snuggles at the Bike Race

Hmmm... remember a few posts ago when I surmised that I might have to put my camera away for a bit for my own emotional well-being? Yeah, I'm assuming you all know that isn't going to happen. I really enjoy sitting down at the end of the day (or the next) and remembering through the pictures moments from the day that I might otherwise have forgotten, or not taken notice of at all.

I think Aunt Jena might feel the same way. Doesn't she look like a professional?

(It might look like a pose, but trust me, that is the only way to comfortably hold a camera between shots when you're dealing with a heavy lens).

Last night we went out to watch Uncle Tommy ride in a practice cycling race. The course they ride is a rather short circle (a little less than a mile around) which is probably tough for the riders with all those corners, but it's great for the spectators because we can sit back, relax, and watch them come around again and again. The kids *love* this.

Besides being excited about the bikes, they were all feeling a bit silly and snuggly last night, but no one complained about hot and sweaty kids in their laps.

Waiting for the bikes to come around...

Grandma is clearly saying something very witty and entertaining.

Michael Jr had a fun time sharing hats with Grandpa.

And Aunt Jena lost her hat to Catherine almost immediately.

Uncle Tommy had a very good ride, leading (sorry, "pulling" in bike race lingo) a few laps and staying with the lead group until the very end when a few guys out-sprinted him. His finish was definitely worthy of a congratulatory high-five from Michael.

A Birthday Photo Shoot

Would you like to guess why our wedding album is about five inches thick? It's because I find it impossible to get rid of pictures, particularly similar pictures that are similarly good but have just slight variations and I like them all.

I realized yesterday that I didn't get any "annual portrait" type pictures at Mary's party, so I asked her if she wanted to take some on her new butterfly bench, and she decided she needed a picture with every single birthday card she received. She's worse than me.

And trust me, that's not anywhere near all of them.

And then we had to add Catherine as well.

And last night we had Mary's special request birthday dinner that included her three favorite dinner foods which just all happen to be orange: salmon, roasted sweet potatoes, and roasted carrots.

Completely unrelated side note: doesn't Michael look like a child tv star from the 80s with his feathered haircut (or rather, feathered grown-out hair)?

Thank you to Carrie for this and many other pictures from Mary's party!! I would have missed a lot of it without you. : )

Happy 4th Birthday, Mary!

Little Merry Mary turns four today, but we celebrated with friends and family yesterday.

Mary has been planning her birthday party ever since Catherine's birthday party six months ago. In those six months she had worked out every detail, from the theme (butterflies) to the guest list (extensive), to the cupcakes (chocolate with vanilla frosting and sprinkles, with the same rainbow candles from Catherine's birthday). She also wanted her three favorite foods for dinner: salmon, roasted carrots, and roasted sweet potatoes (yes, I know they're all orange), but given her guest list I told her we would save her dinner for tonight so she had something special for her real birthday (I didn't get into how there was no way I was serving salmon to a party of 35).

We started the party by decorating butterfly wings for all the kids. It was a happy, creative kind of chaos.

That's our neighbor, Sophia, in the middle. We definitely lucked into having neighbors with a 3-year-old girl, and Sophia has fit right in with Catherine and Mary since the first day they all met.

I'm not sure Daisy knew exactly what was going on at the table at large, but I think she enjoyed all the commotion.

Her big brother was a little skeptical of the crowd, but he focused in long enough to put his name on some wings all by himself (and no, his name is not "Cable").

Caleb chose butterfly wings, but I did have dragonfly wings as an option for the boys as well. (That's our neighbor's lap Michael is sitting in. He likes Sophia just as much as his sisters, and is pretty fond of her parents as well. Plus a lot of people have told me we look like sisters... maybe we moved in next door to long lost family?)

Back to the wings... Catherine's plan when she saw the stickers was to make sure to have a bird and some music notes so we all know the bird is singing.

 And Kali went after all things sparkly, a similar strategy to Mary's.

After a bit of craft clean-up, we dove right into the cupcakes. I really *really* didn't want to make separate batches of cupcakes for my kids (who seem to be much happier overall with our grain/sugar free norm) and everyone else, so we made several test batches of cupcakes last week to come up with a honey-sweetened, grain-free version that we could serve to a crowd without feeling bad. They got Mary's stamp of approval before party day, and I think we succeeded (or at least everyone was polite enough to keep quiet about it if they had a different opinion).

But Mary was pleased and that's what matters. She and Catherine came up with the column/plate scheme in order to put four special cupcakes on the top for Mary's four candles.

Our friend Olivia helped Mary blow out the candles, because even though it was Olivia's birthday yesterday as well, she still came to help Mary celebrate her 4th birthday (Olivia was one of Mary's special guest requests).

Can you see how happy Mary is? Maybe the reason it took them so long to blow out the candles was because she couldn't keep from smiling the whole time.

But eventually they got them, and Mary got her special cupcake. (And yes, that pink bump is Mary's youngest brother trying to steal his way into her picture. Sorry, Mary... I'll try to keep him under better control next time.)

Then there were about a hundred presents to open. I didn't get pictures of most of them, but this one is a painted glass butterfly that Catherine thought up and picked out all by herself, and she was really excited to give it to Mary. Mary has been gazing at it all day.

I'm pretty sure Mary is enjoying a musical birthday card in this picture, but what I really love about it is Sophia chomping watermelon in the background. That had to have been about her tenth piece. Long lost family indeed...

After all the official party business many people were able to stay and hang out with us for a while. I don't know about them, but I really enjoyed the afternoon. It was fun to watch Daisy steal the show and wrap an entire room of adults around her finger in a matter of minutes. (Sorry, bad focus, cute smile.)

And what would a party be without some fake-nose glasses?

Side note: these came from Carrie's diaper bag, where Caleb put them after finding them in Carrie's craft stash. She told me that she got them from a care package my mom sent her when we were in college. Who would have guessed that our kids would be playing with them together more than ten years later?

More From Tower Grove

I guess Michael and I are officially old and boring; it's our 11th anniversary today, a Saturday no less, and we're home and have been most of the day, just playing with the kids, getting ready for Mary's birthday, this and that. We did go out to dinner earlier this week while my mom watched the kids, and do you want to guess where we went? We went for pizza. With the family diet still highly restricted in the area of sugars and grains, as Michael put it, "Pizza is the real treat now."

But even if we're old and boring, the kids are as entertaining as ever. You would think that I would eventually stop bringing my camera to Tower Grove for our breakfast walks since it is the same thing almost every day, but I don't. I still bring it every time, and occasionally I still take a hundred pictures before we leave. It's a problem.

The other morning the kids each found perfectly sized walking sticks not long after we left the house which meant all three of them happily walked the whole way to the park instead of riding in the stroller. It was a good turn of events for everyone.

It also meant we could meander through the park when we got there instead of staying on the paths.

The kids found some neat trees they hadn't noticed before.

And they loved this bench tree.

Eventually we made it to the playground and the fountain turned on a little early - our lucky day! (Although if you can't tell my the swimming clothes Michael and Mary chose for the walk, I think they had schemed various ways to make sure we were still there when the fountains turned on whether they were early or not.)

Catherine convinced Michael Jr to stand under the fountain waterfall.

He completely freaks out if I drip one little drop of water over his face while rinsing his hair in the bath, but he doused himself in the fountain dozens of times.

Then Catherine tried to convinced Mary to do it. Here she is explaining to Mary that all you have to do is close your eyes and hold your nose when you go through. Mary was not convinced.

So Catherine came over to give me the step-by-step instructions for ducking through the waterfall. It looked like this.

Mary stuck with leaning over the pop jets to get her hair wet.

Heart

A couple days ago I had a bunch of errands to run at a bunch of different stores so I decided to leave the kids home with Daddy instead of shuffling and buckling them all in and out of the steaming hot van all afternoon. Catherine did not like that idea at all. She cried, she told me she didn't mind the heat, she argued that she could do her own buckles now so I really only had to buckle two kids, and finally proposed that she and I could sneak off together and leave Mary and Michael home. Usually me being out of the house for a few hours is not a big deal to her, so I asked her what was going on, and she squeezed me really tightly and said through tears, "I just miss you so much when you're gone!"

And I believed her. 

And for a moment it almost killed me how much I love these kids.

Miss Catherine, the sweetest thing I have yet encountered. (And Hi Aunt Jena! We think you're really sweet too.)

My Merry Mary, who just might teach me more in this life than any other single person.

And oh, Mr. Michael Man. Do I need to explain why I love this kid?

Which makes me all the more excited to meet Gus (because I'm pretty sure this little basketball's identity is Augustine?).

I'm just going to go ahead and assume my heart can take another one, although I might have to stop looking at pictures like this.

And this.

I really might have to put my camera away for a while.