high/low

f. graduated kindergarten this week. it was a sweet little ceremony. they sang the requisite songs about the days of the week and of course a song where they get to say butt eighthundredandfiftythousand times and then snicker and giggle with their cohorts. his teacher even included a candy-themed award presentation. think kindergarten version of most likely to.../best... fin was presented with the "100 grand" award for his outstanding math performance. which might as well have been a "most unlike his mother" award. but he was thrilled and so was i. and then he went up to accept his award and graciously shouted "yeah baby!" at the top of his kindergarten lungs on the way back to his seat. it was wonderful to see him so proud of his own accomplishments.















after graduation the plan was to come home and my mom would watch the lil boys nap while f. and i spent the afternoon at the swimming pool.

a little back story here. an unforeseen fear of the pool somehow developed while we were there last time, which i think correlates to the fact that when he asked to go down the slide in the big pool i responded, "sure, daddy will be at the bottom to catch you." apparantly this was the wrong response because therein began the automatic crying (which has now been renamed "my reaction"). keep up folks. amidst being yelled at 3 times by the lifegaurd because m.&k. were running around the baby pool, f. and his reaction sort of got lost in the fray. when it was brought up again on the way back to the car, he insisted it had nothing to do with the slide.

however, f. could not be talked into spending the afternoon at the pool with me. he could not be bribed into spending the afternoon at the pool with me. as hard as my mother and i tried, he was just not having it. when he thought we had finally given up and the little boys had gotten up from their nap, he says "you know, i think i would like to go to the pool now." in an effort to have him face whatever was causing his reaction head on, i said yes. then he backed out and said, "yeah, actually, i dont want to go to the pool."

instead i took them all for haircuts. boy do we know how to celebrate milestones around here.














f. sporting a new fauxhawk














m. terrified, but trying hard to stuff his face with hairy animal crackers and watch cartoons














k., who earned the gold star for the day.

tomorrow

tomorrow my firstborn graduates kindergarten. my baby is old enough to read and write and do math and dress himself and have friends that i dont know about and have crushes on little girls with names like brooke. when did this happen? i swear just yesterday, twelve days after my due date, that i was calling the hospital hoping beyond all hope that they would say "why yes, you can come in now to be induced." i swear just yesterday i labored for 18 hours and then pushed futilely for 3 hours to bring him into the world only to end up having a c-section anyway. i swear just yesterday i brought him home from the hospital and when my mother told me to go take a nap while she watched him i refused and cried actual tears saying that i would miss him too much to be in the other room sleeping. tomorrow my firstborn graduates kindergarten.

where did this child come from?

do you ever look at your child and think where did they come from? somedays i can see mine or j.s attributes all over my children. but then there are days like today when f. got up in front of a class of 24 kids and nearly as many parents and read his page of the book the class authored without an ounce of nerves showing through. one parent even said to me that he has a natural affinity for broadcasting. both j. and i are deathly afraid of public speaking. in that circumstance, i would have broken into a sweat, my heart would have been racing and i would have been close to passing out. that is after i would have fretted about it for weeks on end in preparation. j. is the same way. somehow, f. has skated by without this trait. i was so proud today. so proud!

capturing time

the days are just slipping away from me lately. we have been super busy and every once and awhile i stop and think this is just the beginning of managing the schedules of three active children. and then i go hide under the bed.

later this month f. will celebrate his 6th birthday. i have NO idea how it is that i became the mother of a 5 and 3/4 year old (as he will tell you if you ask). f. is still having some bouts of anxiety, but for the most part is doing really well. he is a budding reader. i am an avid reader, so for me this is soo fun to watch. he is a creative soul and love to tell stories and author and illustrate his own comic books. of course they mostly involve potty humor or destroying bad guys, which i suppose is typical behavior for a boy his age. he has been counting down the final days of school for about a week now. and really i cant blame him. he got his final report card a few weeks ago, so i cant imagine what the teachers are doing to keep their charges engaged and busy. he got a fantastic report card, which at the ripe old age of 5 means exactly what?! he was still emerging in the areas of hand eye coordination and using writing conventions. really, in kindergarten?! every other area was exceed. nonetheless, i am super proud and still somewhat shocked that he will be a big first grader in the fall! even though he squeezed into a pair of 2T shorts over the weekend thinking they were his, he is growing up so fast.

we have sponsored two midshipman this year from the naval academy and f. has really enjoyed getting to know them. they are fantastic guys and really super role models for him. they are active, super polite, and love to play with all of my boys. f. thinks of them as family and gives them a good workout by chasing them with water guns, introducing them to icarly, and telling stories about his school friends. they keep coming back for more, so either the food is soo bad on the yard, or they have fun with us too. it has been such a great experience that we signed up to sponsor two more in the coming academic year.

f. has been anxiously looking forward to his birthday and plans to celebrate by having a party at the new lego store in the mall. bad mommy that i am, i didnt camp out to reserve a party date, so that wont happen until august. i had no idea the parties would be soo popular and that calling within the 1st half hour of when you could start signing up for parties would only enable us to celebrate in august! oh well, he can spread his birthday out and have something to look forward to all summer long!

m. is getting big too. he lives life to the fullest. he plays hard and has the battle scars to prove it. he looks soo much like f. did at that age and reminds me of his big brother more often than not. he is an eating machine, until it comes to dinner time, during which he mostly goes into hunger strike mode. he is starting to talk in sentences and continues to narrate our days. his latest favorite phrases are "whats going on?" and "whats happening here?" not sure where they came from, but they crack me up almost everytime i hear them. he responds to questions with a zestful "oh yes!" especially if food is involved. he loves to play with his brothers and is always inviting them to join in whatever game he has concocted last. he still runs everywhere like a madman. we went to the pool in our community for the first time this weekend. i quickly realized that, due to said running, i will not be managing the pool with all three or possibly not even just the little two on my own.

k. is talking a bit more. but mostly still conveying his message through his combo babble and point method. occasionally he opts for pulling m.s hair clear out of his head to get his point across. thankfully these times are the exception, rather than the rule. every once and awhile he will say something totally understandable and you will wonder where that came from. his therapist says she is happy with his progress, so that is good. although she also informs us that unless something changes drastically she expects him to qualify for child find (basically the preschool aged version of the infant and toddler program) when he turns 3. i have mixed feelings about that and wish he were making progress at a more rapid rate. i cant help but wonder how long the effects of prematurity will stick around for this little boy. when he enters child find, official records will be retained and become a part of his school file that follows him through the public school system. part of me thinks so what, if he needs the help better that he get it early on. but another part of me worries about him being labeled and having this record follow him. in the end, i know we will pursue the child find program, if that is what they think he needs to succeed. still, i cant help wishing that my body would have held on a little longer to let him grow a little stronger before he was born.

k. is happy and silly most of the time. when i get cross with him he laughs as me, and i cant help but want to laugh back. vicious cycle, i know! he loves to wear his plastic fireman hat and has been known to refuse to leave the house without it. hat, or haa as he calls it, is a good friend that can only be substituted by one of f.s oriole hats. thankfully big brother likes to play along.

one of my greatest joys is watching all three boys play together. they love to wrestle, giggle, tickle, and chase each other. they love to work as a team to make gigantic pillow towers that they climb to the top of and inevitably fall back to the bottom again, laughing the whole time. before we tuck them in to bed they all race from one side of k.s room to the other and back again. j. and i just sit and say "ready, set, go!" until one of us grown ups gets tired and sends them all to their respective sleeping spots. it seems like they never tire of each other. i hope this feeling lasts them a lifetime. my heart is full.

new favs

the previous owners of our new home clearly had a thing for roses, we must have 15 or more rose bushes. one of my favorite things is to have fresh cut flowers in the house. these bushes are affording me the opportunity to have endless bouquets.

there is a beautiful pale pink rose bush that climbs over a trellis at the end of our driveway. here is some of the bounty:















(also pictured is the princess blue rotary phone that i found on a recent girls weekend that i had to have)

busy busy busy

we have been super busy here lately. this week i took the boys to see the blue angels air show as a part of the naval academy commissioning week festivities. frankly i had *very* low expectations and it turned out being one of the best times i have had with my boys ever. it was a great day! we went to a friends house that morning for a playdate and lunch, with plans to travel on to the blue angels in a caravan. we quickly realized that parking was going to be a challenge, but made the best of it. we fit an suv and a minivan in one spot that had been passed over by many cars. its all that mothers of multiples training i suppose! so we packed the little ones in the strollers and headed for the severn river. we probably walked at least 1.5 miles to find seats, mostly uphill, and f. was a real trooper. he was glad to sit down, and enjoy the reward of a yummy snoball.

no sooner were the snoballs gone when fat albert made his appearance. shortly followed by the blue angels themselves. f. was beside himself with excitement. it is moments like that when i love, love, love being his mom. k. was all about "da pa, da pa" as well. translation: the plane. even m., my little timid one, was enjoying himself. that is right up until one of the blue angels came close enough that we could tell his eyes were brown. m. then pulled his sun shade over his head on the stroller and freaked the ef out. k. kept pulling m.'s shade up and trying to get him to watch the show. it was actually pretty cute to watch k. trying to convince m. to have fun. but alas m. remained unconvinced and eventually fell asleep mid airshow! anyone who has been to an airshow in person will recognize this as a feat in and of itself - sleeping through an airshow! we left just before the show ended to try and beat a bit of the crowd, which really worked out well. again f. was a total rockstar on the long walk back to our cars. later when j. asked f. to recount his favorite parts of the air show he told two stories. one about the time the jets flew right into the sun and didnt burn up and fall out of the sky. and the second about the time that one jet flipped upside down and landed on the top of the other jet and they didnt burn up and fall out of the sky. 5 year old perspective, its something to behold. we finished the day off by hosting one of the midshipman we sponsor and his father for dinner. it was a perfect day!

the next day the five of us got up early and headed over to see some friends on the eastern shore and go strawberry picking. it was a fun event. i think m. was probably the biggest fan and pretty much ate his way from one end of the field to the other. he started off just picking anything off the plants and eating whatever he could shove in his mouth. but by the time we finished filling our pint baskets, m. was getting a little more selective and eating only the red ones and leaving the hulls and stems behind as mulch. all the kids and grownups were sticky sweet when we returned to the farm stand to make our other purchases. f. discovered some delicious cantaloupe being sampled there and could have eaten an entire melon on his own. he finally agreed to take two home with us, and leave some samples for the rest of the patrons. we scrubbed everyone down the best we could and treated the kids, and frankly the grownups too, to a delicious italian lunch. the kids were surprisingly well behaved given that there were 6 kids and only 4 grownups. k. had a lot of fun as well and insisted on wearing both a baseball cap and a plastic firemans hat for most of the days events. he only relinquished the hat when i agreed to carry his pint of berries inside of it. i dont blame him, the berries were delicious and well worth protecting!

the next day j. and i got up early and headed back to the naval academy to attend the graduation. it was the first time either of us was ever lucky enough to hear a sitting president speak in person. i was super excited to get tickets to the event and hear obama deliver the commencement address. he is so charismatic and i really enjoyed the whole event. it was an amazing ceremony filled with tradition. however, given the fact that we were roasting in the sun in something like the 4th to the last row in the upper, upper, uppermost level of the sunfilled stadium, j. was quickly able to talk me into cutting out early when we realized they were going to call each of the 1000 midshipman by name to walk across the stage and receive their well earned diploma. i had really wanted to take a picture of them throwing their covers in the air, but settled on going out to lunch with my hubby instead.

there is more to share and i am overdue for a capturing time post which i will try to get to in a few days. remind me to tell you about f.s report card and k.s new words...

what i'd really like for mothers day

a new camera. my old one only allows me to take two pictures on a fully charged set of batteries each time. here is todays 1st shot: