Baby...Bath

Last night before dinner I found Katie and Ceci huddled over the toilet in the downstairs bathroom.

I peered in worried about what I would find lodged in the bowl while calculating the plumbing bill in my head and saw a baby doll.

"Mama, baby bath. Baby water."

They were giving their dolls baths in the toilet and quite proud of themselves.

Other People's Plates

Why will my children only eat food off of other people's plates? They have the EXACT SAME meal in front of them that they will not touch, but when their sister is not looking they eat off of their plate. AND when someone eats the food they just deemed "revolting" off of their original plate they scream and cry like someone has told them the American Girl store burned to the ground and Kit Kitteridge is dead.

Last night Katie frowned and took each piece of broccoli off her plate saying "No Bwoccowi! NO BWOCCOWIIII!" She was looking at me like I had lost my mind and put a steaming plate on Eeewws in front of her. "Done, done, done, done, done!" She then hopped into my lap and ate ALL of my broccoli like it was chocolate chip cookies with a big smile on her face.

Go Blue Dolphins!

The Blue Dolphins (sometimes referred to by players as the Blue Rainbow Dolphins) are now 1-1-2 after a tough tie with the Green Shamrocks.

Sophia is athletic but her need to socialize takes over when she's with a group of 5 yr old girls. She can't control it. She gets to the ball quickly gives it a kick and then tells the other team members how much she LOVES their bow or that their uniforms are SO cute as they take off after the ball.

She's unscored on in her 2 quarters in goal.

After Dinner Fun

Most nights there is about a 30 minute window when some sort of trouble is gotten into while Rick and I are cleaning the kitchen after dinner.

Tuesday night while I was changing Ceci she did her patented double twist move and was on the couch peeing in about 5 seconds.

Last night Katie and Ceci took off their clothes and pushed the chairs from the family room into the living room and pulled them up to the coffee table. They were each holding onto a chair chanting "push, push, push..."

I was laughing at Ceci in Ella's bike helmet. I think that came from the garage. She was determined to get up onto the chair while holding both Cookie and Monkey.

They were very proud of themselves and I think were trying to show me that we can in fact actually use the living room. Since no one sets foot in there they were testing it out. In between this picture and the previous one Katie ripped the helmet off Ceci's head and Monkey from her hand while they both screamed "SHARE!!!!" at the top of their lungs.

Pumpkin Patch

We took the girls to the pumpkin patch Saturday:

They had a hay ride to the pumpkin patch where we actually did pick pumpkins on the vine. Ella was not excited for the hay ride. She wanted to go on the giant spinning strawberry ride and kept threatening that if we make her go on the hay ride "I am going to.......FALL ASLEEP!". I'm not sure why she thought this was a particularly terrible thing to do to us, but she kept repeating it. I was thinking to myself that if she'd said she was going to launch herself out of the tractor (which is exactly what Katie and Ceci were doing on the way back from pumpkin picking) or pee in her pants we'd skip it. Falling asleep I can handle. She ended up managing to stay awake and actually had fun.

They had one of those big bumpy slides. Nothing says pumpkin farm and Fall like carnie rides. Rick and I took Katie and Ceci on our laps. At the bottom they would jump up and make a break for the stairs yelling in chorus "again! again!" Rick and I were considerably slower getting to our feet and kept having to chase them as they climbed the stairs or ran into the crawl space behind the slide.

Katie did not like the dirt on her pumpkin so she held it with her palms so her fingers stayed clean.

I love this picture of Sophia and Ella from 2005:

Family dinner

Last night was a big one in the Patterson house. We took the trays off of Ceci and Katie's highchairs and pulled them up to the big table with the rest of the family. They have been in their highchairs at meal time and starting last night they are eating off of plates just like the big girls that they are.

Now we can all hold hands for grace where before we all reached out our hands to pretend to hold hands with Ceci and Katie. Sophia says grace most nights something like this:

Thank you for the food we eat

Thank you for the flowers sweet

Thank you for the birds that sing

Thank you God for everything!

Amen

One night last week she was particularly excited to say grace. We all bowed our heads and she began very solemnly:

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America..."

Rick and I each opened an eye and smiled at each other and tried not to laugh hysterically. After she finished a perfect rendition ending with "Father, Son and Holy Ghost". We explained that this was not actually a grace. Now we have a new tradition at dinnertime. We say grace and then all (including twins) put our hands over our hearts and say the pledge of allegiance. Does this mean that I have to hang a flag in our kitchen? We've been saying it to an orchid plant. If any of our neighbors are watching this I'm sure they think we've lost it.

Here are the girls recovering on the couch after our first meal all together:

It was so sweet I had to capture the moment. Sophia with her arms around Katie and Ceci reclined like Archie Bunker after Thanksgiving dinner. Ceci hugging "Cookie" and Katie her "Elmo". Ella's hair is wet because as I was plating dinner she staggered out of the bathroom with her pants and underwear around her ankles dragging urine across the kitchen floor. She had made it into the bathroom, but for some reason could not hold it the extra second it took to sit on the toilet so Rick had to give her a quick bath while dinner got cold.