What are the kids up to?

It has been awhile since I have talked about what the kids are up to. Broc is working out a lot. He only has a few more months until he turns 16 then it is watch out on the road. He has been really committed to working out and should be in great shape for baseball. In November he and Dennis went on a boys weekend to Ohio state football game. They had a great weekend and the buckeyes won. That was pretty much his Christmas present though.

All the pictures in this post were taken 1/15/11 at Sears studio. Not overly impressed with that place plus the kids were not cooperative but there were a few good shots.

This is as close to a photo with all three in it at the same time that I could get.

I do like this "sister" photo.

Broden still appears to be pretty athletic. He loves to throw balls and play with balloons. He runs and jumps with cooridination. He has not shown a huge interest in cars and tractors. Maybe once in awhile he will pick them up. I feel like that is my fault because we certainly have more girly things around then boy things, so this Christmas I made sure he got a lot more boy focused toys. And he has stated playing with them more. Just this weekend I had the twins while Ky and DK went to Broden Raya and I played with match box cars on the kitchen floor. They were both into crashing and rolling the cars. Broden does like to dress up in princess clothes when Raya and Kyrah are doing it, so I need to get him some boy dress up clothes. He still likes to sweep and clean with a wipe - not a bad thing - oh and when I vaccum he has to push it as well. He seems to have janitor type tendencies. All three love to color and play with makers, stickers things like that. They use the bounce house almost everynight. Not for a long time but 15-20 minutes - it gets a good amount of energy out. He is a good eater and will pretty well eat a variety of foods on his plate. Although he likes someone to be sitting by him and will come over to me and pull me over the the table and pull me and say "down - help". He doesn't necessarily want me to help but just to watch him or do the same thing as him - whether it is color or a puzzle. His new thing now is to look at me and say "watch" and I am supposed to watch his super trick he is about to perform. He still has the crazy hair which makes him soo freaking cute. The bad thing with Bo-Bo is that he wakes up in the middle of the night and cries for me. We have let it go one for an hour and he just won't stop until I go in and pick him up and bring him to bed or hold him. We had this issue before and had to let him cry it out for a few nights. This is hard to do because we don't get sleep and we are scared he will end up waking up Ky or Raya. He can sing his ABC's as well but not as good as Raya - he misses a few letters here and there, or doesn't seem as interested in singing them as Raya and Ky are.

Raya is an angel or devil. The majority of the time she is quiet and plays by herself and loves her baby dolls. She has this set of 4 monkeys that she carries around all the time. It all started when she stayed at Grandma's one day and for some reason she found this baby monkey doll that was mine when I was a kid. This poor monkey had lost its hair on its head and was looking pretty worn - afterall it was 30 years old (ugh I can't believe I am that old). Anyway, Grandma found Raya the same monkeys and gave them to her for Christmas. Now she has an entire family of monkeys with Mom, Dad and twins boy/girl baby monkeys. She liks puzzles and can sing the ABC song, but it is more she knows the melody, but she does get all the letters right. She has a very quiet voice. She still takes a binky at night so as she is approaching 2 we are going to have to start getting rid of that. She also has these two lambs she has to sleep with every night. She rubs the tag on them and the tag is getting pretty thin. Raya's favorite thing in the world though is milk. She drinks so much milk in the evening. We make 3 separate cups of milk for each kid and next thing you know- little devil Raya is coming around and drinking all 3 cups. She is not a great eater - again probably because she is drinking so much milk, but it is hit or miss on the eats - some nights she eats well, others not so much. She also loves fruit. That is always the first thing to go when she eats. The devil Raya comes out when she is super quiet. When you don't hear her for awhile I can guanartee that she is off somewhere making a mess. We will find her with a huge pile of toys spilled, or her food everywhere, or she is writing on the walls with crayons - we know when she is too quiet to plan on cleaning something up. She is still not a cuddler unless she is super tired or upset. She is still a champion sleeper and rarely wakes up in the middle of the night. In the past few months she has started running and chasing Ky and Broden more then she did before. She is still pretty clumsly and falls or trips a lot. And she is soo stingy with her kisses. She just will not give hugs or kisses that often so if you catch her at a rare time and she is in the kissing mood, you better take advantage. No Broden on the other had - he is a lover. Gives squeezes and kisses all the time, of course he is usually on someone's lap so it is easy to do.

Kyrah is 3 and 2 months. She is at a good stage. She listens pretty good and goes in time out when she does not listen which is a few minutes in the corner. When the twins see her go in the corner the follow her and stick their nose in the corner too like it is a game. She still loves to bake. She loves the Disney princesses and Barbie movies. In the last few months she will actually sit and watch a full movie now. I don't like them to watch too much tv and they only do in the evening before bed. Kyrah gets about an hour to an hour and a half of a movie while the twins watch about 30 to 40 minutes. They do not have the attention span for a movie yet. Ky has been potty trained since October which is great. She loves to do crafts, painting, coloring anything that is like a project. She can identify all her letters and sings the alphabet song all the time. Actually she sings lots of songs. She has a good memory. The daycare workers say she is a peace keeper meaning she is always trying make the other kids happy. She is very helpful and actually does help when we ask. She gets bossy sometimes but that is getting better. She is on a noodle kick and and wants them every night so that makes mealtime hard. Every night she has to have a story and it still has to include a mean witch, a mean grinch and a mean ghost. She just won't let go of the mean witch. Her bed time is 8 pm and she wakes up around 6 and she take an hour and a half nap. I love the one on one time with Ky once the twins go down. She is so sweet at the time and loves to sit on my lap.

When Kyrah wants to tell me something and I am busy or not quick enough to respond she says "Mom I need to talk to you!!"

Now the weekened of 1/7 was a bad weekend. Ky was bossy and whinny and yelled and cried all the time. She was doing well listening now she is having a relapse, so I hate to tell her this, but she is about to have a bad week, because it is discipline time! Broden was good although he woke up in the nights again. Raya was good except she was hurting Sunday night because she needed to poo and it was not coming. So that was bad because I know it was hurting her a lot. Luckily she had success at the end of the night. Me, Ky, Ray, Grandma, Lydia, and Tina when shopping at Cape Sunday and Raya was good but Ky not so much. They each got a new swimsuit and Ky's has the disney princesses on it while Raya has a pink two piece with a monkey on it. Dennis, Broc and Broden went shopping in St. Louis to get Broc's baseball stuff. Dennis said he did great - walked around all the stores stayed close to them. Kids one on one are much easier, but then again, Friday night I was on the couch and we were watching the "animals" aka Madagacar 2 and I had Broden on my left, Raya on my lap and Ky on my right and it was heaven.