Starting off well

Before I rattle off details of what's been happening these first two weeks of 2019, I'll include our NYE family photo, clearly not at midnight with 4 littles up, but who's counting...

On New Year's Day, we made it out to City Park for the last day of Celebration in the Oaks, the annual lights display, the kids' favorite part being the train ride, of course. It was a bit muddy from 3 days' rain, but it was still lovely to make it in the knick of time. Train ride, the lights-to-the-beat-of-the-music display, and the Cajun Night Before Christmas reading+lights are the big hits.

Then we have this little lady, who's growing beautifully. She's interacting a bit more with the big3, and she entertains herself for a solid chunk of time after waking up just lying around, moving freely, and seeing what there is to look at. This, for me, is huge; this is the proof of the light at the end of that newborn-tunnel, wherein I only hold a baby while everything around me feels like it's falling into disrepair. She's going longer between meals, she's happier to be shifted around and has eyes no longer only for Mama. Some people love that phase, but I relish a quick pace so much that that major shift to s l o w hits me pretty hard. NOW, though ... now I'm starting to return to my meal planning, we've started school back up (more on that in a jiff), and with the changing of seasons from Christmas to Mardi Gras, we're getting the house back into a little more of an ordered space. Oh, there's still chaos, and with Mardi Gras, comes incessant play with beads and (imo yucky) throws (from parades), but it's more in line with that "ordered chaos" bit instead of just utter chaos, which is what was. And Pippa is this cherry-on-top in our family right now. And she's recently rolled over! Watch out world, here comes Pip.

Our last free weekend before school and several months with weekend activities, Dylan put in a ton of effort into organizing the backyard since having some roofing work done. We enjoyed a lot of play, a nice fire, and we even roasted chestnuts. Lovely.

School! School got going on Wednesday of last week - after a king cake party at the playground to start the week and a morning at the dentist - and, honestly, I didn't know how Paul (or the others, for that matter!) would transition back. I have been oh so pleasantly surprised by his (and their!) go-get-em attitude, and it's given my own attitude a huge boost! Hooray for homeschool in the new year! Jack's in the very early stages of letter recognition and repetition (still not a big talker, but, oh my, his teeny voice with the words he can say gives me heart-eyes). Ada's decided to read. Yep. She just started sounding things out, like, last week, and she is starting to read. She's been in the I-memorize-all-the-books camp for over a year, and all of a sudden, she's looking at the words differently - beautiful. And Pauly dear is rockin' it; his favorite subject is cursive (!), but he also likes reading, math, and copybook (handwriting) ... which are basically all the others, ha. He did leave out spelling, though ;). If ever I have complaints, they're more to do with his work ethic and not his end-product, but this new semester has started swimmingly with lots of "Ok, Mama"s straight away ... instead of, ya know, smearing himself all over the floor to go from desk to pencil sharpener or "helping Jack with a puzzle" (doing it for him). Dylan and I even recently got a report from a parent-friend about how Paul stepped in to help her son out of some shyness and hesitation to join in with a group. Paul. Our shy Paul. We were floored and felt so proud ... when casually asked about it, though, he didn't mention a lick of detail that would give him away, of course.

Baby #4 gets tossed in the stroller next to library books. She slept like that for almost an hour!