Awww--Sisters :)

Tryin' to Fill Daddy's Shoes

Baby A #4

Yes--if you didn't already know, you read the title correctly :) Today we had our 20-week ultrasound for Baby A, so I decided it was finally time to inform those of you who weren't already informed of our newest little one. This pregnancy has had a little bit of a complication, which is why we've waited to tell the world, but after seeing our little one again today, I'm ready to share. If the Lord lays it on your heart, continue to pray for this baby that he will make it to term without any further complications.

That being said, we are very excited to welcome our newest family member somewhere around the end of June. And no--we didn't find out the sex, so hopefully, you'll just have to wait until June some time :) Mikaela is especially excited and is adamant that "A" (whom she named--A for Axelson--duh) is a boy and gets very uptight if you mention the baby might be a girl. She says she already has a sister, and now it's time for another brother :)

If you want to see a couple of pics, click here. Enjoy!

Munchkin Funnies

This week, Mikaela has started a trend of saying, "Mrs. Martin, I brought something for show and tell today (as she hides her hands behind her back with some item)," to which she waits for me to ask her what she brought. I hear this a good majority of the day. So, of course, Elijah has to follow suit, except his rendition goes more like, "I show, tell today," and then waits for me to respond :)

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Yesterday, Mikaela was really wanting a snack. We were on the phone at the time, so I informed Eric of what she could have. He told her she could have an apple, a banana, or some raisins, to which she replied (in a very pouty tone), "I don't want anything healthy." :)

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Another trend this week is that MJ and EM have started singing "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" over...and over...and over. What makes it even worse is that MJ insists of tacking on an s to the end of MacDonald--kind of drives me and Eric nuts :)

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Kerith Update

Our little piece of sweetness is now 10 months! She is all over the place and has started pulling up to her knees. She is oh so pitiful when told no or when she gets thumped or popped--it's so sad. But she's a pretty stubborn little girl, so it looks like there's lots more of that to come :) She LOVES her food and is pretty good at feeding herself lunch and dinner, which is very nice. She has learned a new trick the past couple of days though of dropping some of her food on the floor rather than putting it in her mouth. It's just sometimes way more fun to watch it fall to the ground :)

Below is a little clip of another new trick she's started in the past few days. She can roll her r's better than many adults I know :)

Munchkin Funnies

Mikaela was looking at pictures of people that we have on the refrigerator.

MJ: "The Schiels! The Schiels!" (then looking some more) "Who's that lot (as in "a lot") of family?

It was a family in our church that has 11 kids. Her description of them just kind of cracked me up :)

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Elijah has this shirt that has Scooby Doo on it. So every time Eric or I sees it, we can't help but start singing, "Scooby, Scooby Doo, where are you?" And since those are about the only words we know, we usually stop there and just start humming. Well, Elijah must think we're asking him a question, b/c he always responds, "On my shirt!"

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I've posted before about Elijah having a couple of favorite shirts. Well, today he wanted to wear his green dinosaur shirt and the camo shorts that go with it so bad that he got the stool and dug in the hamper and got them out--all without me even knowing it. He then walked slowly into the dining room and proudly showed me he found them and wanted to put them on :)

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Yesterday, after playing a game with MJ & EM to quiz them on their shapes, Elijah started quizzing me on them. Each time I got one right, he would say, "Good job, Mom!"

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Mikaela Funnies

So yesterday afternoon, I woke up from my nap to hear Mikaela talking, and there was a voice (or voices) talking back to her (MJ usually plays while the rest of us nap :) ). I was still only half awake, so I was really confused. I hear, "Hey, Mikaela, I have to go now, ok? Bye." So I get up really fast and ask her who she was talking to, to which she answered, "Auntie Monica!" I got my phone and saw that just a couple of minutes before that, she had called Eric.

I've been debating on whether or not to teach her how to call 911 in case of an emergency, but she's only supposed to call Eric if it's an emergency, so I think I might be waiting on teaching her about 911 :) So if you get a call from my little sweetie, I'm most likely ok--ask her just to be sure, but she probably has just been wanting to talk to you :)

Look!

Recently, Mikaela has been asking us when she can paint her nails. She'll see people at the store or at church with their nails painted, so, of course, my little girlie-girl wants to do the same thing. Well, for Christmas, one of the things Mikaela got was one of those velvety pictures that comes with tiny markers that you use to color it. So today, she finally got to color it and kept coming in at different intervals to show me her progress. She finally finished and then disappeared for a few minutes. When she came back in, she hurried up to me, held out her hand and said, "Look!" My little princess decided to go ahead and paint her own nails with the markers :)

Gingerbread House

A friend gave us a gingerbread house kit, so at some point in the last week, I finally gave in and let Mikaela help me put it together. I knew it was going to be a messy project and wasn't really looking forward to it, but it was kind of fun. It actually wouldn't have been nearly as messy if I hadn't had to stop 2-3 times to take kiddos for potty breaks. We weren't able to hold the pieces together long enough for them to really seal and stay, so pieces kept sliding off. MJ and EM had great fun eating/putting on the candy :) Needless to say, by the end of it I was just ready to be done and gave up my silly idea of trying to make it look perfect. I think it would be a fun tradition to keep up though. Maybe we'll even branch out and make our own gingerbread in the future :)

It's Official...

We now have a full-blown-out crawler in the house. Here's a teeny, tiny clip of the action, but the girl is literally all over the place now, getting into everyone's things :) First order of business--training on not touching the trash :) Little miss is also starting to pull up on things; we'll see if she can out-do sister and brother on learning how to walk :)

Mikaela Funnies

A couple of times now, we've thought Mikaela was crying in her sleep (once at night and once the other day when she had actually cozied herself down for a nap). So, of course, we try to see what's the matter. But the further we look, we notice she's not crying at all but is cracking up laughing. And it's not just a little one-time laugh, it's all out cracking up for a few minutes. It makes us laugh too :)

Biter Biscuit

Well, KL had her first (and maybe last) biter biscuit. I'm always reluctant to give these things to my kids b/c they're sooo messy, but every kid should get to experience at least one, right? :) Anyway, it kept her occupied and totally content for a good hour, so maybe it wasn't such a bad idea after all! It's kind of funny b/c I think my fear of "mess" has rubbed off on my kids some. MJ & EM kept informing me of how messy she was and that she had it all over her clothes :)

Elijah Funnies

Last week some time (and many other similar scenarios since):

EM: "Mom, my tummy hut (hurts)."

Me: "Why does your tummy hurt?"

EM: "I haf baby." (in his tummy)

Me: "Is your baby a boy or a girl?"

EM: "Gul!" :)

MJ was very quick to inform him that boys do NOT have babies, and she was not happy with me for indulging him :)

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Little man now has a favorite shirt and outfit that he wants to wear every day. The problem is that his fave shirt is a red and navy jersey-type sleeveless top, and the fave outfit is camo shorts with a green, sleeveless dinosaur shirt. He literally wants to wear one or the other every day now, and the little stinker is extremely persistent.

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These are some of the first things I hear out of Elijah's mouth practically every morning. He usually wakes me up with:

"I haf go bafroom," which is soon followed by, "I wut (want) socks, shoes on. I wut stinky diaper off. I wut me-uk (milk). I wut wat (watch) somefing. I hugry. I wut red shirt on."

This usually all occurs within a few seconds of each other. He's just a tiny bit self-absorbed right now :)

My Cuties

V

Our little Kerith Lovey is already teaching herself the alphabet! She's been making the letter V quite a bit :) :) Of course, it looks more like a V when she has her head down, but she was looking at Mommy for the picture :)

Mikaela Funnies

Me: (The other day after running an errand) "Now we're going to Subway to get some lunch!"

MJ: "SubWARE, not SubWAY!"

Me: "No, it's SubWAY."

MJ: "No, it's SubWARE."

Me: "Why are you saying SubWARE?"

MJ: "B/c that's what it is!"

As we're leaving the drive-thru, MJ sees the sign and starts spelling...

MJ: "S-U-B-W-A- (I'm waiting for the Y) R"

Me: now laughing "What?!"

I finally decide to look at the sign. Yeah, the Y really does look like a lower-case r :)

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This morning after eating a blow-pop:

Me: "Did you just swallow the gum?"

MJ: "No, I didn't swallow it."

Me: "Then what did you do with it?"

MJ: "I just chewed it and then ate it. I didn't swallow it." :)

Christmas Tree

We actually decided to go with a real tree this year! I haven't had a real tree in years b/c I'm allergic to them. But I thought it would be fun to try it out. The cool thing is that it smells really nice; the negative thing is that it sheds needles everywhere. So we'll see what we do after this, but for now it's been nice to have the smell, and it really hasn't made me sneeze very much at all!

Playing With Friends

Yesterday, we had some friends come over to visit. It was great; all the kids had so much fun together. They played so well that I feel like I actually got to talk to my friends! Pretty late in the afternoon Elijah just couldn't hang on anymore and fell asleep in my lap. So then he was in a very whiny, fussy mood when everyone was getting ready to leave. I hadn't gotten any pics the whole time and had to get at least a couple. The older kiddos were totally fine with cheezing it up, but the 3 two-year-olds weren't wanting anything to do with pics. So I was trying to be silly to get them to smile--that's why Elijah looks so funny--he's trying really hard not to smile (and he's cut the top of his lip and nose in the past two days) :)

About to Crawl/Update

This little piece of cuteness is getting close to crawling forward. Here she is on all fours and in her "push-up" position. She also knows what it means to turn the light on and off and how to give Mommy kisses :)

Just a cute pic--she often pushes backward until she gets stuck under the piano bench :)

Animal Play

This sweet girl has the best imagination and loves to arrange her animals and babies and go through different scenarios with them. On this day, she decided to line them all up on the bookshelf :)