Heard Around Our House This Week

Jack: (to Ben, when "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" comes on) Daddy, this is The Bugs! Have you heard of them? The Bugs?

I've just started introducing the boys to The Beatles, obviously not soon enough...

Graham understands that Daphne is not yet born and that she's in a belly, but he seems to think that she's in his belly, as well as mine and Ben's and possibly Jack's. Today at lunch Graham was sweetly offering to share some food with Jack. Jack rejected the offer with a simple "No," which Graham corrected, "No thank you, Jack?" Graham proceeded to offer food to Ben and to me, and then we asked if he wanted to share some with Daphne. Graham, with a big smile on his face, pushed his sandwich gently up to his shirt on his belly and said, "'ere go, Baby Daphne!"

Graham's other favorite words lately include: "Haa-boot" (caboose) and "All 'Board!" imitating the conductor in The Polar Express with perfect inflection. He's also learned to put train tracks together impressively well for his age. Looks like we'll be making lots more trips to the Transportation Museum in the near future!

Surprises

1. I'm blogging. I'm going to try to do that more this year.

2. I'm pregnant. With a baby girl.

3. A ton of other things have happened in the past 9 months.

Well, I suppose that last point is not too terribly surprising. But in the interest of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, those things will (hopefully) come out over time.

For now, updates on each child.

Daphne, our baby girl still in utero, is due April 26, making her the fourth Angelette birthday within a two week span. I'm 23 weeks along with the easiest pregnancy I've had thus far. At least the easiest for me. I've been horribly moody, so Ben in particular and Jack to a lesser extent may not agree that it's been fabulous, but morning sickness was mild and short lived, and I had very few food aversions. Amazingly enough, both my brother and my sister are due to have their first babies on the same day, 6 weeks after Daphne's due!

Graham is 20 months and at a completely adorable, chattering stage. He loves to talk and is learning what seems like a million words a day. His favorite phrases right now are, "Christmas lights," and "Lego guy." Yesterday morning when I walked in the door with Starbucks for Ben (who had the day off) and me, Graham lit up and came running toward me shouting, "Chocolate milk!"

Jack is reading like a fiend. He started really reading well around his 4th birthday and has improved about a grade level every 2-3 months since then. Right now as best we can tell he's reading at a 3rd-4th grade level. He loves it. Legos were the Christmas theme this year, and we've just started reading Harry Potter together. J.K. Rowling is a genius writer--it's thrilling to see Jack's reactions to hearing the story for the first time. His amazement and excitement are definitely contagious.

Ben's company, Savvis, was sold to telecom giant CenturyLink last summer, so his job responsibilities have been changing significantly and for the better. He's been taking so much vacation that today is only the fourth day of work for him in the past two and a half weeks. I'm missing him a lot today!