Pop!

Pop Rocks--oh yeah, they still make them.

Well, we have one that likes them.

A Very Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween!

More This Evening of course.

A Girl's Gotta Do

What a girl's gotta do. Even in a dress.

Gardening gloves and kitchen ware at the same time.

But they are tenacious, and generally figure out how to reach their goals. By the time we came back from church that morning, she had ripped the feet out of her tights and made them into leggings for better climbing traction I'm assuming.

All this while remaining amazingly adorable.

Getting There

Last year around this time.

This year around this time.

Now if we can get dad to stop being a goof ball.

Food Play

Bravery

The staircase feels three times wider without the gates. The girls get on their bellies and start backing toward the top stair to go down somewhere in the middle of the hallway up there about five feet from the actual stairs. Too cute.

Ghosts

This Is What I'm Talking About

We were walking up there.

Radomness

I know you are all getting a little big for this Nicholas.

Confession: We don't bathe the children every night. We bathe them every other night. We always bathe them on spaghetti night.



Why can't you all understand that things are so much more fun when we're all happy instead of when we're all fussy?

Yet, we all get fussy, don't we?

This still scares me when I think about it. Really, who made two-year-old-sized holes on walkway over the river?

Every time there is a season change, I get excited about the new clothes they get. I also get a little sad for the clothes that I put away.

You are 15 months old now. For the past week we have been able to go to sleep expecting to actually sleep. Thank you.

(I have no idea when I will get the courage to stop giving you bottles.)

Where Were The Other Three?

Since you people don't believe I let them play in the street, would you believe I let them play in the backyard? When we finish dinner we have three jobs: clean the dishes, make the boys go potty, and keep the girls from wandering into the bathroom to play in the toilet. So girl one is cleaned, changed and loosed to the backyard, then girl two gets the same treatment. Elaine is usually first because Alida likes to make sure she doesn't miss extra food. At the same time the boys are making the rounds in the bathroom and then go straight to the yard.

If one set of hands is aggravating when you are trying to load the dishwasher, imagine four sets of hands stealing the dirty dishes and running each to a different room to hide them. Benjamin opted to stay in and look at his catalog the other night. It is generally the perfect set up: three outside, one in. If you can get one boy out with two girls, outside boy is generally much nicer and much more patient with the ladies. This night Benjamin was picking out all of the things he wants for his birthday and Christmas, which is everything by the way. (He took that catalog to bed with him that night and when we went to check on them at 9:45 he was still laying on the floor reading by the light of the closet door.)

And that is how it is that the Dukes' mom is correct that one of four is actually one eighth as much work. They feed off each other. One child can be told to leave that alone, and he generally will.
Such as the exchange:
"Daddy has some work to do."
"Oh." And he goes back to his catalog.

When there are four, if you manage to get one convinced to leave a thing alone, there are three in queue, waiting to test your resolve. For example, try cleaning up the kitchen while four children play musical chairs around your feet some time.

If We Had Only One

A Movie Is In The Works

Yo Gabba Gabba

Always Messing With Us

Someone go to sleep. Stop teasing us. please

Name That Tune

In the Stuber house sometimes things come out of our mouths that sound a little like a song we may partially remember from the past....

I told you we have a video camera. It was just incapable of actually connecting with the computer, so we bought a new one.

The Saturday Outing: Kids Country

Technically: "Kidz Kountry", but that makes me bristle a bit.

Makes me want just a little bit of farmland (or a maple tree farm dad).

Elaine is certainly a fan of swinging. We now limit swing time and velocity due to the fact that you never know when that smiling face will suddenly turn green and fill her lap.

And even the ladies got to ride with daddy on Nicholas' favorite ride,

Thomas.

Every single time that little train rode by for the rest of the evening, which was many, many times, Nicholas let us know when it was coming and going.

Then we hardly ate any of our funny dinner.

And went on a hay ride--a very smartly caged hayride.

And this is not a tractor made out of old barrels. It is a train. It is Nicholas' very own Thomas train, than you very much.

That's More Like It

Little jeans, long sleeve shirts, and jackets to keep the chill off when we go out the door.

Fall colors, corduroys, and even a little shine of happiness so early in the morning.

Darker mornings, quiet tv, and

the glean of Neosporin to help fix the little hands. The drawback to less humid weather is certainly the eczema flare ups.

TV Dinner

Let's have pizza in the living room with the kids and watch a movie for dinner.

Yeah! And let's not use sippy cups; let's give them regular cups!

Another great idea hatched from the minds of the people who managed to have four kids in under two years.

It's Coming, I hope

Even if it was probably too warm for jeans on Saturday and the sun was shining and being near the water didn't bring even a hint of a chill,

we are beginning to see signs of my favorite time of the year.

And these little guys are just waiting for a Saturday football frying pan with a little cornmeal.

But if it keeps up the way it has around here, I will resort to turning down the air conditioning some more and creating a false sense of Fall in this house if I have to.

Those Little Legs

Those little legs of theirs were deemed long enough to go on the inaugural trike ride on paved ground over the weekend.

A little maintenance was necessary before we got started.

And they were off. It is so much easier than on the grass in the back yard. But Nicholas needs to work on actually watching where he is going when he is at the helm.


And Ben was off in the low rider in no time.

If it was hard to have twins and teach them to safely be in the front yard and stay out of the street the first time, you might think the second time would go a little more smoothly. However, our daughters apparently think they have minds of their own. Alida will fall to the ground face first in an all out tantrum if you try to hold her hand and guide her from running into the street, and Elaine will stand and scream as if being beaten with a switch. So we drug out the third trike, put them both on and pushed them along behind the brothers...for a few houses. And then that about broke my back and the thing wouldn't steer and someones toes kept scraping the ground. So a few houses down the trike was abandoned in someone's driveway so the girls and I could make a screaming retreat to the safety of the living room and watch Yo Gabba Gabba, which I have not decided if I will be banning from the house yet on the principle that it is wildly annoying to watch.