Introducing...

Daphne Catherine! She was born April 20 at 2 a.m. and she is amazing. An unbelievably easy baby who only cries when hungry or needs a diaper change. And I need it, as her birth day was also the day we moved into our new house, and because Ben didn't have any paternity leave since he just started his new job at Energizer two months befor, and because my Aunt Jane, who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer only a month before, had died a few days before Daphne's birth and her funeral was that afternoon. There's been a lot going on in our lives the past few months! Just as an observation, no one has yet said the completely unhelpful but seemingly universally used phrase, "Wow! You've got your hands full!" since Daphne's birth. Interesting, since just about everyone I saw for six months after Graham was born said that to me. I'd like to think its because I now look so competent with the three of them that it doesn't look difficult. More likely it's because I have a crazy, don't-mess-with-me look in my eyes at all times. Although I suppose people may actually say it but I'm just too distracted to hear them.

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!

Quick Catch Up on the Last 5 Months

I've been horrible about posting. Yes, the blog was really dying, and, no, this is not a guarantee of continued vitality, just a random post that may or may not be followed up any time soon. As consolation, here's an update on what we've been doing since I last posted at the beginning of what turned out to be a very long, cold, snowy winter that is thankfully now drawing to a close.

Graham learned to sleep! When he was still waking 2-3 times a night in mid-February and was only sleeping 15-45 minutes a day total (not a typo), would not go to sleep without being attached to my breast, and was crying in excess of 3 hours a day almost every day because he was clearly so exhausted, we decided to consult a sleep specialist at the hospital where Graham was born. She prescribed a course of action that involved Ben sleeping on a mattress beside Graham's crib for a week, then slowly moving out of his room. He did. Graham slept. It was amazing. There were a few tears--the first night it took about half an hour for him to calm down, though Ben was there the whole time so that Graham didn't feel abandoned--but overall the whole process was a great experience. Within three weeks he was sleeping 11 hours straight through the night very predictably, and napping at least 45 minutes each for two naps a day without any struggle to go to sleep. In fact, sometimes he now practically jumps into his crib from our arms when he's ready for bed!

The change in Graham's mood and ability to learn has been astounding. He is truly like a different child than the one in the last post from November. Graham loves to play peek-a-boo with anyone who will look in his direction, using any covering he can scrounge up, and his face practically glows when he's "discovered." He still has his serious baby moments, but he is happy. He is really a happy baby, which it has very much relieved me to discover.

Graham learned to crawl and to pull up all in a single weekend in mid-December. By early January he had started to stand by himself. Whereas Jack tried every possible new skill right away, Graham seems to wait until he's really ready to do things perfectly before he attempts something new. By the time he stood for the first time, Graham was already falling gracefully. Not a single bad fall yet. Jack, by contrast, had bumps and bruises almost constantly for the entire year between 6 and 18 months of age.

Jack has been very supportive and loving of Graham, despite all the attention a baby requires. At one point over Christmas Jack worried to Nonna about Graham being able to reach one of Jack's CDs that was nearby. Jack then explained that he was worried, not that Graham would break the CD but that Graham would try to eat it and would get sick.

Jack's teachers also tell us that he's just blossoming socially. And he does seem to be. Last week we spent almost every day at a playdate, and Jack just loved it. Saturday was a treasure hunt with Thomas and his parents, Sunday Maddie and her family came over to grill out, Tuesday we visited Ava's new house with Ellie and Walker, Wednesday we went on a picnic with Thomas and Colin and Leander, Thursday we went to Bible study with Gabriel and John Paul, and then Friday we met up with Gabe and John Paul again at the park. Only on Monday were we alone together, and even that is qualified by the fact that he had preschool that morning! Jack gets along with almost everyone, and is learning to be assertive when other kids do something unkind to him.

But the stress of learning new social and academic lessons daily, if not hourly, has not left Jack unscathed. He's had sleeping trouble, in particular some dreams that seem to have truly terrified him. Sometimes after having a scary dream (we started using that term instead of "bad" dream, because Jack seems to have thought that that adjective meant he was bad, not that the dreamwas unpleasant), Jack would refuse to discuss it. One time he even explained why.

Jack: Do you know why I'm not telling you about my dream, Momma?

Momma: Why not sweetie?

Jack: Because then you might be scared of it, too, and I don't want you to be scared.

One time, he described with a horrified look on his face what happened during the dream. But his explanation left us a little befuddled and really working hard not to smile/crack up laughing.

Jack: In my dream a mean Humpty Dumpty came in my room. And I said, "Boo!" And the mean Humpty Dumpty said, "[gasp!]" Then he said, "Jack, your red birdie is eating a lemon!" in a mean voice. And my red birdie doesn't like lemons!

Well. Okay then. Not sure what to say to that. I think we managed to mask the amusement with a concerned look and asked something like, "And that made you worried about your birdie?"

Then there were the trips to the doctor. We logged at least one a week from mid-December until the end of January. On December 29, as Ben and I were getting ready to go out to dinner with friends, Jack fell off the step stool in the bathroom. Though he cried for about five minutes, which is uncharacteristically long for him, he seemed to be fine immediately afterwards. Two hours later, however, when our friends arrived to pick us up and Jack was still holding his right arm at a strange angle and refusing to use it, we asked our friend Neesha, who's an internist, to take a quick look at it. Jack let her move his arm around a lot, so we decided to wait until the next day to take him to his regular pediatrician. It was then that we discovered he had broken his clavicle. A broken collarbone. On a three year old. Seriously? Yeah, that was not fun. Fortunately he didn't need a cast, but he was in a soft canvas brace for six weeks and needed three sets of X-rays. It healed relatively very quickly, though; in three weeks it was mostly healed, and by his six week checkup, he was back to a completely normal range of motion and strength.

Most of January was a complete haze. In addition to dealing with Jack's immobility from his broken clavicle, we had two straight weeks of all of us being really, really sick. First we all caught the flu. Jack went down on a Friday afternoon and had temperatures of 104 for five days straight. Ben and I started getting really sick on Monday and were completely useless until Thursday. It was the kind of sick where you don't want to leave your bed for a week. But when both of you are sick and you have children to take care of, that obviously just can't happen. It was miserable. Wednesday night Jack was starting to mend, but Graham finally succumbed. Graham's bout was a lot less serious than ours, but it was still not pleasant. We must have gone through 20 boxes of Kleenexes. Chills, very high fevers, coughs, congestion, snot, body aches. We had it all except digestive ailments.

Nine days after it began, we seemed to be all mostly clear of the flu. That night Ben developed a horrible stomach bug. The next night I got it. Two hours after I started getting sick, Jack got sick. After two days of that, I called my dad and begged him to come stay with us for a few days. He did. The day after he got home, he got sick. We were down for the count for another week. The only good part of that week was that Graham didn't get the stomach bug. It was miserable.

But there were some fun developments bookending our two weeks of confinement. On January 9, Graham first started clapping and Jack first started reading his BOB books. By February 2, Jack's phonics awareness had developed enough that he made this card by himself.

He put the letters on from right to left and didn't leave spaces, so if read backwards with spaces it says, "I hop yo feel bettr." My jaw dropped. I was sitting right next to him as he did it and helped him find the letter stickers after he had told me which letter he wanted, but otherwise I did not intervene at all. It was truly amazing to watch.

I Can't Believe

how big our boys are getting.

Just after he got out of the bath tonight, Graham took his first real steps! He didn't stop walking until we put him in his crib. The light in his eyes clearly revealed that he was thinking, "Oh, ho, ho! Now what can I do with this new way of moving!? Any new things I can get to?" Quite pleased with himself, and very steady on his feet. As well he should be--he's been cruising for over four months now! He just had not yet seen any value at all in walking independently since he could do everything he wanted by cruising or crawling. But this walking thing, he seems to realize now, is a game changer.

Then at bedtime Jack showed us how incredibly well he can read. He sounds out 3-4 letter words and has great comprehension. He can read just about any word with traditional letter sounds and short vowel sounds, along with blends (sh, ch, th) and a few double vowel sounds (ou, oo, ee). I suppose this means we'll be skipping the spelling-out-words-we-don't-want-Jack-to-understand phase.

Both of these developments call for serious regrouping on the parental front. Brace yourself--we've got quickly growing boys here!