Hoosiers

Hello! Anyone still out there? Sorry if you are out there and have been checking for updates. Since discovering Facebook, I post little updates and info there. Feel free to look me up!

As we might have expected, the summer was a bit rough. We ended up changing our plans so we could get out of my parents' hair a little earlier. So on June 30/July 1, I drove with the girls and my neice Regan from Forsyth up to Granger. The 12 hour trip took 19 1/2 hours. Many stops were made for going to the potty. But we made it in one piece and were able to sleep in our own house. Our stuff was delivered on July 2. The girls enjoy discussing the old house and the new house. Like Carter lived next door at the old house and Aubrey lives next door at the new house. The girls LOVE Aubrey who is 11 years old and initially thought it was great to have three little girls living next door. I think she's over it now.

We are really enjoying our new house and our new situation. Since Notre Dame started, Mike has been really busy. He is teaching three sections (120 students) and is trying to be very accessible to his students. He has regular office hours in in his office and also has unofficial office hours at South Dining Hall during lunch on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. He's told the students where to find him and he's had several join him to ask questions. It sounds like now he has a couple of regulars who he loves to regale with his stories of the glory days (if you can call 2 years with Jerry Faust glory days).

We didn't realize when we bought the new house that it is less than 1/2 mile from the elementary school. So we have soccer fields and three playgrounds within easy walking distance. We have many wonderful neighbors, but the girls haven't made any great friends in the neighborhood yet. We've had a couple of play dates with a family with two daughters. They do not live in our neighborhood, but their house is a little over half a mile away, so we can walk there.

Addison and Lily have been attending The Bridges school 1 - 3:30p Monday, Wednesday and Friday since the beginning of September. And they LOVE it. They have made a few friends through school and we keep saying we are going to invite Kate over for a playdate, but we've had stomach flu and a cruddy cough going through our house, so it hasn't worked out yet. Kelsey and I take Addison and Lily to school and Mike picks them up. Kelsey also LOVES The Bridges. Most days it takes me a good 20 minutes to get her to leave the classroom with the guinea pig and leave the fun stepping stones that are outside. Finally the school administrators suggested that I bring Kelsey for Friday afternoons with the Parent's Day Out group from 12:30 - 3:30. The group is intended for 3-5 year olds, but they made an exception for Kelsey because the group isn't that big. Kelsey has been to PDO three times. The first time she was a bit reluctant, but the second day, when she saw her teacher, she went running to her and gave her a big hug.

I noticed in my last post that Kelsey was in the I want to do it "all to myself" stage. Thankfully she is over that and will allow Mike and I and her older sisters to do stuff for her. Kelsey continues to amaze us with how sharp she is. She remembers words to songs better than Mike and me. She loves playing with our iPhones and managed to reset Mike's ringer the other day. She also loves dramatic play. She will sit by herself with the princesses and palaces and conduct quite a drama with lots of talking back and forth between the princesses. She is able to spell her own name and ALWAYS recognizes the word "zoo." She is constantly practicing holding up the correct number of fingers. She can hold up 1, 2, 3, and 4 fingers properly. If there was one complaint about Kelsey...she's trying to stop napping. Fridays, naps are now out. And this weekend she went without a nap Friday, Saturday and Sunday, despite our best efforts on Sunday.

Addison read her first book the other day...The Bobbsey Twins, Freddie and Flossie and Snap. I've been encouraging both Lily and Addison to read the titles of books and then words within books. The other night, Addison read the title. Then continued on to read each page. She started off VERY quietly reading, then by the end had enough confidence to say the sentences loudly. The next night both Addison and Lily read the two Bobbsey Twins books that we have together.

Lily also read her first book the other day. It was Friday at school. Since Kelsey's class starts 30 minutes before Addison and Lily's, the three of us go to the school "library" after dropping Kelsey off. Lily picked a book to read "That's not My Snowman" and before I knew it, she read the whole book.

Addison and Lily both are getting good at reading signs while we are out and recognizing words all over the place. As Mike says "This makes Mommy very happy." We are also working on math concepts like measuring, sets, sorting, etc.

Addison has gotten out of the habit of wearing dress up clothes constantly. Until, that is, she got her Halloween costume, Silvermist (one of Tinkerbell's friends). She is quite tall and is wearing a size 6. She is almost three inches taller than Lily. Addison seems to be into winning these days. She wants to know who's picture is prettiest, who has the most marbles, who got there first, etc.

Addison is taking swimming lessons and has improved greatly in her swimming ability. Her lessons are at Notre Dame at the pool in the Rockne.

Lily loves being silly. She came out of my room the other day wearing one of my bras over her clothes. She can be quite friendly and is more likely than Addison to talk to other grown ups and children.

As for me, I am doing a bit more work these days. Some subcontracting on website projects for my friend Fritz Miller, contract work for ScreamFree, and website development for my dear husband (accounting102.com). Neither Mike or I have been exercising as much as we would like, but we do get out and run one or two times a week on average. Last night I spent a while working on taking down wallpaper. We have several rooms that need redecorating and I haven't even finished taking down the wallpaper in the first one yet.

That's it for me. Ta-Ta for now.

News, news, news

So while posting on facebook tonight, I realized I hadn't posted here in a long time. And when I checked the posts it appears I haven't even mentioned we are moving. To South Bend. Well, technically to Granger, IN which is a 15 minute drive to campus...where Mike will be teaching starting late August this summer.

And we've sold our house in Athens. Well, we have a contract and a closing date of June 15. And we've bought a house in Granger. Well, we have a closing date of June 1 or 3 for that house. But the schedule for our move is a bit crazy. Ends up the folks who currently own our new house needed to stay in the house until June 26. So, we will be without a home from June 15 to the 26. And Mike will be teaching the first summer session at Ohio University which goes until July 23.

So our schedule goes a little like this:
Movers arrive June 9 and pack up our stuff. They drive away with our belongings June 10 or 11. June 12 we drive to Asheville, NC to spend the night and a little time with our ND friends the Olingers. June 13 we drive to Duluth GA to spend a couple days with our friends the Kaplans. June 16 we drive to Forsyth GA to spend 3 weeks with Gram and Pop. June 19 Mike flies back to Ohio to teach. He returns to Forsyth the following weekend to celebrate Addison's and Lily's birthday. On July 1 I fly to Ohio and drive with Mike to Granger where we will have our belongings delivered on July 2. We spend the weekend without the girls settling into our new house. July 5 I return to Forsyth. July 9 Mike flies to Atlanta and we begin driving to our new home in Indiana. July 10 we arrive in Indiana for good. July 16 or 17 or there abouts Brenda (aka Grandma) comes to help out in Granger for a week or so.

There are actually even more moving parts than these, but this helps show the grizzly life we will be leading for the next few months.

Interesting stuff about the girls. Addison and Lily have their last week of preschool next week. We have definitely seen a few changes in them thanks to this experience. During the last story of the day Lily chooses to sit with her friend Mailey rather than her daddy. At our parent/teacher conference a few weeks back, Addison's teacher said they were starting to worry about Addison's socialization because it seemed like she was pulling back and not engaging as much as she had been. But their worries subsided when she struck up a friendship with a little boy in class. Maybe the Snow White thing is just a ruse and Addison will end up being a tom boy after all.

Today Lily drew her first real picture. She drew a tree. She drew stairs on both sides of the tree so Cinderella (aka Lily) and Snow White (aka Addison) could climb up at the same time. Kelsey will have to wait her turn. Lily is quite good these days at coloring inside the lines. Addison is still working on it and while she is working on it all of her pictures still look like scribbled pictures.

Puzzles are a favorite activity for all of the girls. Addison, when asked to do something, frequently replies with "Just a minute, I'm doing this puzzle." And literally you can count on it being just a minute or so because she is getting to be so fast at the puzzles we have. Kelsey can also do puzzles "all to herself" Sometimes she needs a little verbal assistance, but she is quite good at figuring out where pieces go and how to put them in.

I like playing the game of "I spell a word and you tell me what it is" The other day we were doing the guess the animal game (i.e. an animal that has black and white stripes and looks a little like a horse). Then I switched to what animal is spelled C-A-T. Addison and Lily both got that one quickly. Then I did D-O-G. While Addison and Lily paused for moment Kelsey spoke right up with "Dog."

Kelsey has officially hit the terrible twos. Primarily she wants to do things "all to herself," but she forgets to communicate this to Mike and myself. And when that happens she throws a tantrum. And when she does communicate what she wants she changes her mind. After going wee wee, I asked if she wanted help getting up her pants. "Yes" then when I started to pull them up, she started WAILING "I want to do it all to myself!" Then 10 seconds later through her crying she says "I need help", so I go to help her again. "NO! I WANT TO DO IT ALL TO MYSELF!" WAILING louder (if that is possible). Even Addison chimed in then and said "Why do you keep changing your mind?" Me: "Thank you, Addison. So I'm not the only one who thinks she keeps changing her mind."

Addison is a daredevil these days. She loves jumping off of things like chairs, couches and beds. She is quite tricky in figuring out exactly what she knows. The other day I wrote the sentence "My pony is blue." because she has a pony that is blue. She wouldn't read the sentence to me, but she said "It's a puppy." because she was pretending it was one of Pongo and Perdita's puppies. So I'm pretty sure she at least knew the jist of the sentence. And another day I was quizzing Lily by writing color words (red, yellow, green, black). Lily was busy sounding out B-L-A-C-K and Addison walks behind me and under her breath says "black." I just hope she doesn't hide how much she knows when she gets to real school.

Lily loves to narrate her life. Lily: "'Can I have something to eat?' asked Cinderella as she walked into the kitchen." Lily: "'I jumped down" said Cinderella bravely." Me: "Lily, are you done with your dinner?" Lily: "'No' Cinderella replied."

We are sad to be leaving our wonderful neighbors and friends in Athens. When Mike got the job at Notre Dame, he received two cards of congratulations from friends here. He commented that he had never received a congratulatory card for a job before. Kelsey and I will especially miss Carter and his mom Jenny. They live just two doors down from us and I can say with confidence that Carter is Kelsey's best friend and Jenny has been mine. I only hope that the number of swing sets that are visible from our new house are an indication of the number of children our girls will be able to befriend in Indiana.

Addison and Lily are already signed up for preschool in the Fall. They will be going to school 3 days a week in the afternoons. It should be interesting because they still take naps most afternoons. I hope it works out well.

I imagine that is plenty of news and updates for now.

Easter picture

Happy Easter

A few videos from the day. The theme of the morning was "Put the eggs in your basket."

Little Black Coonhound

So we really miss Peoopee. Kelsey definitely hasn't grasped that "Good-bye to Peoopee" meant forever. She still asks where he is and talks about him like he's going to come around the corner at any time.
One thing we haven't missed about Peoopee was constantly worrying about having food sitting on the table and counters. Peoopee could just stick his nose up over the edge of the table and snag all sorts of sandwiches, turkey, cheese, etc most times without leaving any evidence of having done so.
The other day after putting Kelsey down for a nap, I was downstairs with Addison and Lily. Addison came from the kitchen and asked intently "Mommy, why is Jack on the table?" I peered in the kitchen and low and behold there was our little black coonhound standing on the kitchen table. It appeared that he then didn't know what to do (I mean after he ate every morsel of food available there). And, yes, today, Jack was once again up on the table.

A Good Dog Who Does Bad Things

This is how we taught the girls to refer to Peoopee our 9 year old redbone coonhound. Peoopee barked at neighbors, ate diapers, ate multiple wallets and watch bands belonging to Mike, ate poop, looked for any opportunity to snag food from the table or counters, ate leather shoes, and probably lots more bad things. Even with all these things we didn't call him a bad dog. After all he also endured lots of "love" from little girls, gave stuffed animals rides on his back, enjoyed his time on the couch, provided a source of comfort to his Mom and Dad when we needed a soft dog to sit or lay with, joined Jack in clearing the floor from the many food items dropped by little girls, greeted everyone with a tail wag (and an occasional jumping on by a 100 pound dog), and generally gave us a consistent presense of calm, joy and love. And because of all of these things, Peoopee was a good dog who did bad things.
Unfortunately I now speak in the past tense. Today we decided to euthanize our sweet coonhound. Unlike his mother and brother and Jack, Peoopee was pretty healthy. He never had surgery for a knee problem, stomach problem, or eye problem. He, like his mother and brother and sister, did require thyroid medicine. He also developed lots of fatty tumors. Some reaching golf ball, even orange size. But one tumor on his left side grew and grew and grew. When it was the size of a softball, we thought "Wow" that is really big. When it got to be the size of a cantalope, we thought "Yikes". But in the past months as it grew to the size of a watermelon, Peoopee had obvious discomfort. We started giving him daily pain meds back in November. Then we supplemented those pain meds with some narcotics back in January. As with all dogs with chronic illness, Peoopee had good days and bad days. But lately the good days were the ones when he came up the stairs before dinner time. The good times were when he would wag his tail. Just 2 weeks ago he and Jack enjoyed a long walk with me. But today on his last day, he enjoyed a walk, but it consisted of taking a few steps, then catching his breath. Taking a few more, then catching his breath. One thing that makes me the saddest is I can't remember the last time my coonhound (who always barked and barked and barked)...well, I can't remember the last time he barked.
Despite feeling so bad and being so tired and out of breathe all the time, yesterday Peoopee summoned the energy to snag a PB&J off the counter. So all was not lost. But although it was a difficult decision, our decision to send Peoopee on to the next life was the right one. I'm so thankful that he can now bark and bark and bark and will never be short of breathe again.
Call it coincidence, call it fate, call it weird or strange. This morning I got a call from Gram. Through her tears she let me know that Shelby, Peoopee's littermate, died early this morning. In some way it is comforting to know that
Peoopee, Shelby, Nuttin, Mars, Deohgee and Denuen are all running, barking, chasing racoons and other small animals all together somewhere.

Sledding

Too funny

A conversation today was just too funny not to document.

An ongoing battle in our house is to transition Lily, Addison and, now, Kelsey from the "I want..." to "May I please have...?" or "Mommy/Daddy, will you please get me...?". For the past few months rather than correcting the "I want..." with "Do you mean 'Can I please have...?'" Mike has been replaying with "I want to be taller" or "I want Notre Dame to beat " or "I want Notre Dame to have a better team next year." This usually gets a laugh from the offending child or a response of "No, Daddy."

Well today Addision said she wanted something. Mike replied "I want to be taller." Kelsey interjected "You can't."