1. Matthew finally got most of his scout prizes from popcorn sales. He was pretty jazzed about his new lamp (with USB charging!) camp chair and pillow and can't wait to use them. He also had earned some scout bucks to spend at the local toy store and picked a wooden crossbow and rubberband gun, meaning that we now have 457 varieties of projectiles that can be flying through our house at any given point.
Spencer likes the chair to as a change of pace from his other baby seats.
2. Oh dear sweet John, he is in a phase where he *really* likes to "help" everywhere, but specifically in the kitchen. It's the worst/best. He made the salad the other night for us and then insisted on carrying it to the table, dropping it all over the floor. He was so proud and then so crushed I couldn't break his heart by not serving the salad, so we ate floor salad. I can only assume it's one of the many ways we utilize the hygiene hypothesis to our advantage.
He is also clearly a big helper with Spencer, if Spencer needs touched or poked or needs a silly face in his face, John is very much our go to guy.
3. We are currently watching the Superbowl and I'm attempting to multi-task, which means I'm getting interrupted approximately 3 more times per minute, bringing my average up to about 632 times an hour. John needs everything he sees confirmed by an outside opinion, i.e. "mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, that man was on fire, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, they said time out . . . " Matthew is our comedy czar and has to make sure we all have heard whatever joke was made and didn't miss it (in case you missed it, a robot said "you have a dumb face.") and Catherine adds color commentary wherever possible and asks a lot of logistics questions.
However, speaking of superbowl we headed to the superbowl of MT robotics yesterday and in our sports worshipping culture (enjoy the irony as I write this watching the superbowl), it was refreshing to be at a competition about ingenuity, science and engineering and see kids excited about competing. I got weirdly emotional about it, some if it bringing back awesome memories of all my nerd conventions in high school, some of it was I'm sure sleep exhaustion and hormones, but I think a lot of it was hope. The kids really are alright and on a bright path, even if the adults of the world sometimes aren't.
And Catherine, never to be left out, got her new kiwi crate and went straight to working building an arcade claw this morning. Thanks to Teta for all these great projects!
She also was my rockstar as she and her good friend offered to help me with Kindergarten STEAM club on Friday. They were awesome!
4. Oh, and then there's Spencer, who has been cranky the past few days and when he's not cranky he is a happy shrieker. He's also sooooo close to crawling and I'm not kidding when I say the excitement attracts everyone in the house (the speed on this might be wonky, I apparently recorded it in slow-mo, but it's not really 1.5 mins of excitement:
We can only assume the cats' tails and a satisfying handful of hair will be the ultimate motivator. I however am not ready for him to crawl AT ALL, and will be over here sobbing in the corner when it happens. He unintentionally moves around too much already, I can't have him purposefully moving!
5. As I shared on the Facebooks, 4 kids is a lot of kids. Like, hard to buy a new car a lot of kids, like hard to muster the will to take them all anywhere A LOT. We've been dividing and conquering recently, James takes the older two skiing while I attempt a reasonable nap schedule with the littles on Saturdays etc. 6 ish months is one of my favorite baby phases and it was fun to look back at all 4 in the same outfit. However, just because it's my favorite doesn't make it one of the most exhausting as we approach the maximum unhappiness with the facts that he's not moving independently and the maximum weight for a phase where mom is still responsible for all baby changes of scenery. Our neighbor passed on a bumper sticker to the family that says "honk if kids fall out" and I cannot wait for whatever vehicular monstrosity we get to be adorned with it because it feels true, though I'd add "honk if kids (projects, backpacks, lunch boxes, winter gear, pets, skis, sleds, bathing suits or the nice sippy cups or expensive gloves) fall out"
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