Mommy, you are beautiful!

One thing that Tim is always very good at is complimenting!  Kaden, in particular has picked up Tim's verbal affirmations and he will often come up to me and say "Mommy I really love you and you are beautiful!"  I am always very grateful for those sweet times and for Tim's example to the kids!

My little cleaners!

The 3 older kids like to clean stuff which usually involves them sneaking into the baby wipes container, each of them taking out a few, tucking the corners into their pockets and then letting them hang out and wiping off everything.  This morning Kaden was wiping down his bus and Piper was sitting on the floor in his way so he leaned down and started wiping off the back of her shirt, then he lifted up the back of her shirt to clean off her back.  I asked him to stop cleaning Piper so he moved on but then I look up and Joey was getting ready to follow his brothers example and begin cleaning Piper......I had the no cleaning Piper conversation again with Joey.  If only I could get them to clean up the things I really want them to clean up........their chairs after lunch, the floor after lunch, the table, etc.  Were making progress!

Kaden's rules for tea time with Daddy.

As Leala posted, Kade, Mia and Joey had tea time with me a little while ago.  Kaden started telling me what the rules for tea time were.  Mia and Joey followed up with their rules as well.

Playing outside and saying hi to aunties

The kids were playing outside and we got them to say hi to their aunties.  When we got home, we decided to let Joey's hair grow out.  This video was a few months ago.  At that time, his hair was still sort of fuzzy.  We have since trimmed it.

Although you may not be able to understand what he says, he says hi to Auntie Karianne and Auntie Arielle.

Music time

The video above is of the kids playing some of their music.  They really love music and we are happy they are as creative as they are.  Enjoy.  For those that knew Mia and Joey at Amani--it is amazing how much they have grown.  This video was from a few months ago but we have had trouble getting it to post on the blog.

Piper, Pipey, Pipes!

Piper is going on 15 months, she has 8 teeth, and she has a big smile and a big personality!  Before you have kids and if you haven't spent a lot of time with little kids, its hard to imagine how much personality a little 1 year old can have!  Piper is full of personality......she loves to scream, she loves to be thrown in the air, she loves to have people scare her, she loves it when we sing to her, she loves to follow her brothers and sister, she loves to be tickled, she loves her pacifier, she loves to laugh, she loves to try and eat the cat food, she loves the cats, she loves phones, she loves to make faces, she loves to growl, and she loves to climb on things!  She was a pretty easy baby but she definitely gets spunkier as she gets older.......she will keep us on our toes!

Fun with painting!

Kaden and Joey were having a lot of fun painting and drawing with chalk!  I don't know if they will turn into little artists, but I love encouraging them to be creative!  I have a lot of great memories from when I was little of painting with my grandma.  My grandma was very creative and was a wonderful painter and did beautiful china painting.  I would spend time at her house and she would teach me how to paint......I loved doing those kinds of creative things with her!

Special Tea Party with daddy!

Last week I went to a cooking class, so Tim had the kids for the evening!  Tim got the kids ready for bed, put Piper to bed and then they had special tea time with daddy!    When they have tea time, they like to keep refilling their tea cups and then add some sugar, stir it and sip their tea.  They do this over and over again.  I teach them to speak properly and that when we have tea we talk about very sophisticated things......they of course, have no idea what that means.  I suppose one of these days I could let them try "real" tea, as opposed to the water that they pretend is tea....that might be interesting, Kaden may not like tea time anymore if real tea is what he had to drink.