Taking a minute to write on a stomach bug day

I have been meaning to write a post about the kids for weeks!  Ironic that I'm finding time this morning.  Last night around 1:30 AM, Jordan and I were awakened by surprise throw-up in our bed.  Robert's.  We had to strip our bed of sheets and mattress pad and camp out on the sofa and recliner in between cleaning up after Robert.  Poor, pitiful little guy.  It's 8:30 now and he finally fell asleep a few minutes ago.  Jordan is taking a family sick day after he attends the meeting he's in right now.  Thank God for amazing daddies who don't mind cleaning up puke.

The girls are in the yard.  Last weekend we did something that some of our neighbors probably think is tacky.  We split our backyard in two with dog wire fence and a gate for the kids to go through, keeping the dogs out of their play area.  This keeps their play area poop-free and our silly Phibby dog from lying in their sandbox.  Also, the way we divided it keeps the kids away from the compost bin and storage building.  I know it's not going to make it into Southern Living anytime soon, but it's beautiful to me.  We now have a yard we can use!

Anyway, here's what's going on with the kids:

Robert:  Just turned two on April 9th!  His Nana and Papa (Jordan's parents) took us all to the zoo to celebrate.  It's the same zoo I visited on my second birthday and has sort of become a two-year-old tradition.  Then on Sunday, my parents took us to the Cabbage Patch.  He adopted a "babby" girl named Casey and has been so sweet holding her and feeding her!  Robert can say most anything he wants and talks in sentences all the time, even though sometimes his words are a little hard to understand.  Still working on potty training.  We got him this spinning seesaw for his birthday and he loves to play on it with his sisters!  Our sweet little guy is really growing up!  Even so, most of my days are hard, hard, hard.  And it's mostly because of him.

Ivey:  She really wants to take a dance class, and I can't wait to see her in one.  We are hoping to get her into a summer camp, if we can find one that fits in with things we've already scheduled.  We aren't really homeschooling yet; she joins in frequently with Suzi and I am helping her learn her letters.  She spends lots of time playing with her little brother and also enjoys working at her desk.  For Easter she got a set of glitter glue pens and loves working with those!  She's becoming such a big kid, not only with how she acts but also how she looks!  I can't believe she'll be four in August.

Suzi:  She just started tee ball yesterday and loved it.  It's a six-week session, and I'm sure when it's over she'll want to do another one.  For homeschool, she has started a sort of journal with writing prompts about recent subjects we've learned about or things we've done.  I give her a list of a few big words she could use for each subject, and then she fills in the rest phonetically.  At first, she insisted on knowing exactly how to spell everything, refusing to misspell a word in her writing.  Now she's having a bit more fun with it.  I also stapled together some little books for her to write stories in, and she enjoys that.

I don't have time to upload photos.  Maybe later in a separate post.  Right now, I'm just glad I got this written!