*gasp* Nearly two months! Sorry! We have big changes happening around here, with a house remodeling project going on right now. It seemed to take forever to get started. Mark took out the chimney, fireplace, inside brick wall and all paneling and drywall in our family room in March. The contractor we chose started work the middle of August, and it looks like he might be done by the middle of October, the way things are going! It will be a warm room when we're done, as we are replacing the traditional fireplace with a gas fireplace, fiberglass insulation with foam insulation and the slab floor with a crawlspace and wood-framed floor.
We've also had the floor raised to the same level as the rest of the house so that the dining room, which will be completely open to the family room, can be expanded if we need it. The kitchen countertop also extends over the cabinets along the length of the family room, so we will also be able to put stools there if we want to. I'm very excited about having the room back, too, because I would like the toys to be confined to one room, and right now that isn't really feasible. They have taken over my house! I'm sure that there will be a fairly steep learning curve once toys have to stay in one room, but hopefully, the kidlets will learn eventually.
Speaking of the kidlets, they are both growing up so fast. Irene is excited to have learned how to write her name and is also learning how to write other letters. No reading yet, as far as I can tell, but she doesn't really seem to want to yet. She IS only four. Why read when Mommy will read to you? She also loves to sing songs of her own making and put her hair in a ponytail. Helen's hair is now long enough for a little ponytail on the top of her head, and Irene has tried her hand at putting Helen's hair up as well. Swimming is a popular activity with both kidlets, and Irene is now willing to "go under", while Helen wants to feel solid ground beneath her feet when in the water.
Helen's vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds, but she still doesn't speak in sentences. Her first (and only sentence to date) is "Hep me!" (Help me!) She can string foam beads onto a shoelace without much difficulty, but she was stringing them on then immediately pulling them off when she looked at me and said "Hep me!" for the first time. Her favorite toy by far is any baby doll. She pushes them around in strollers, rocks them, bounces them, shhhhhh's them, feeds them, kisses them, and in general mothers them. She, too, loves to sing, but she doesn't sing on her own; she wants me to sing with her, and she especially loves songs with hand motions. She copies the motions, but she doesn't sing many of the words yet.
In other news, I have a beautiful new niece! I spent all of last week helping out my sister and brother-in-law and bonding with Brooklyn. It was strange to be without my children for that long, and I missed them about as much as they missed me. There were no theatrics when I came back, thankfully, just pure joy at seeing Mommy again. I got lots of hugs and snuggles, and they haven't even been overly disobedient this week. I was expecting to be challenged constantly, but that hasn't happened! Of course there have been challenges, but nothing really out of the ordinary.
