The warm sunshine has felt so good lately. And what’s felt even better is an almost healthy family! I say almost, because I’ve just now gotten over phlegmy-phlegm-phlegm and Sarah is just now getting better from a cold as well. BUT, thankfully, the kids have gotten over the rotating wheel of badness, which has allowed us to enjoy and focus on some other things…

…for instance, Valentines was a lot of fun. Keana hand made cards for everyone in her class. We cheated a little by making one drawing for the boys and just coloring each one, but every girl got a custom picture of themselves with Keana. She had herself dancing, flying, and “going crazy” and no two were alike. I have to say, she did get a little stressed out when she realized the breadth of the project she had taken on. She tends to do that—get stressed out over long-term projects. It’s very difficult convincing her she has enough time and that “it will all be okay.” Right now she’s working on her first report for second grade. They’re studying goods/products and she chose almonds. I think it’s because Sarah’s been in the process of converting them to non-dairy milk (just to see if there are benefits for them, not particularly due to any terrible allergy). Keana really likes the vanilla almond milk, so there you go. Keana’s been literally harassing us about helping her research and type. All the research and writing is basically done and it’s not due until Friday, so for now, it looks like this girl is not our procrastinator.

Maia has been having a lot of success sleeping on her own, through the night, with the help of a tracking chart (with fun stickers). It’s something we’ve tried before, but this time it’s really working. We started out three nights in a row then a small prize, then upped it to four, then five, etc. It’s worked so well, we’ve started using a chart for Keana too, but she’s working on cleaning up after herself, particularly with clothes. I too have chart, and I’m working on not getting angry or being mean, and communicating better by acknowledging when I’m spoken to. The anger thing I’ve been working on for a while but I’ve still had my moments of frustration where I raise my voice. And with three kids talking at once, I have found it easier to just listen and not talk, but when I get busy I tend to not even acknowledge important things even if I do hear them. I’m not very good of thinking of reasonable prizes for myself though (like, an iPad isn’t really a fair prize for 5 stickers), but the chart is really helping me too. I attribute it to my competitive nature. Doesn’t matter what it is, I want to win dammit, fill up those squares!

Aliya’s much less cranky now that she feels better and it’s so much fun watching her learn new things and hearing the complexity in her thoughts and speech increase daily. Yesterday she pointed and called out “O!” in the word “stop.” She’s also been figuring out “how many”, mostly just up to two. Her sense of humor is coming along nicely too and I’m pretty sure she’s going to be cracking us up regularly as she gets older. She already appropriates jokes she hears from her older sisters. That being said, she can switch to serious in heartbeat. If you call her “silly” or some other thing, she’s quick to put on her stern face and say, “I’m not silly, I’m ALIYA!” We still call her “Babe-in” too, so sometimes she refers to herself as that. She mostly doesn’t nap anymore but by the time 4 or 5 rolls around, she’s very tired and does tend to get more needy. But at night, she goes straight to sleep and mostly sleeps until 6 or 7. Her sisters are really good about playing with her and she and Maia, especially, can play around the house together for hours, running from one end to the other, caring for babies, catering an event, or just following some other imaginative adventure. This last week she started calling Maia, “Maia Mama” and looks to her for help and comfort at times. It reminds me of when Maia started calling Keana, “Little Mama” around the same age.

This weekend was the first warm one in a while—where everyone was healthy—so we went to this huge park nearby called Woodward Park and had a picnic, ran around, explored, played chase, danced silly, and climbed trees. We also visited the Japanese Gardens and had fun crossing the bridges and checking out the koi. It was a great reminder of how important it is to get out as a family and be in the sun and just do kid-like things. When there’s sickness and it’s cold and hazy out, and there’s all that stress that goes along with that, it’s hard to remember that it will eventually pass, the sun does come out and warm things up, and better times are always just around the corner.