Communication

Susannna is one of those toddlers who knows exactly what she wants and is dead set on getting her way. Most of the time her requests are reasonable the problem comes in her ability to communicate that request. She gets so confused. Off is On, Open is shut, up is down and so forth. She knows what she wants but can't find the right words to tell me. Sometimes she gets it right but even then I still get it wrong. For example this morning's conversation when Susanna brought me her Aerial doll fully dressed...

Susanna "Aerial dress on!!!"
Mommy " How do you talk to mommy"
Susanna "Please"
Mommy " The dress is already on do you want me to take it off?"
Susanna " "On" so I take the dress off anyway and hand her the naked doll.
Susanna crying " No dress off ! No dress off!!!
Mommy" Susanna how do you ask me"
Susanna Sniffling "Please"
So I put the dress back on and she still keeps crying. Now she goes to time out for throwing a temper tantrum. I take away Aerial and her purse and then I see that in the purse is a different dress. Yep she wanted me to change her dress. Too late now. After time out I can help her explain to me what she wants. It dawns on me that everything she said was right just lacking a key piece of information. If I could just read her mind we could avoid a lot of time outs.

Susnna also changes her mind a lot. I am not used to this. Jennah has to have everything the same way all the time. She is extremely predictable. Susanna is anything but. For example at she always changes her mind about the door. At nap she said she wanted it open so I leave it open and she gets mad so close it and she is happy. So at night I ask her if she wants the door closed and she says yes. So I close it and she cries so I open it and she is fine. Go figure. Well i will keep working to try and figure her out. Wish me luck!

Princess Pony

Our local family restaurant has "family night" with a magician who entertains the kids with magic tricks and balloons. We took the girls for a special treat when Burke got back from Florida. Jennah could hardly wait to get a balloon animal and when it was finally her turn she asked for a purple "princess pony". Jennah watched excitedly as the magician twisted and turned the balloon into a pony and penned on a smiley face. However she seemed very disappointed after he handed it to her. "Mommy this is NOT a princess pony" I was mortified and quickly responded "Why Jennah what do you mean? It is purple so it must be a princess pony ". "No Mommy" Jennah continued " It doesn't have any eyelashes!" The magician couldn't help from laughing. He kindly agreed to attempt drawing his first set of eyelashes ever. Oh don't worry he got extra practice when Jennah insisted that Susanna's poodle needed to be a princess too.

As you can see Susanna's "princess poodle" did not last the night.

Liddy Ann Three Months

I have heard it said that the third child gets left out when it comes to pictures, and I am afraid it is true. I need to make an extra effort to take more pictures of Liddy. Here are a few since she turned three months old.

Liddy is so cuddly. She is easy to put to sleep anywhere. You just snuggle her up and give her a few pats on the back and she is gone. She doesn't need a binki and even Burke can cuddle her to sleep. Cuddling her is a treat because most of the time she goes down in her crib all by herself. I wish I had more time to hold her but I am grateful she is a happy and independent baby. She can entertain herself for a good 15-20 minutes on the floor or in her bouncy chair and only cries for a minute when you put her to bed. She is still sleeping from 11pm to 7 am. She is not quit perfect... she does not like to be strapped in her car seat and is very vocal about it.

Liddy is a great nurser and seems to grow bigger every day. She is officially in her 3-6 month clothes. She is at that age were you can start to "play".

It is tricky to get a good picture of Liddy because she stares so intently at the camera.

Isn't she a goof!

I thought Liddy looked so cute dressed in her little "elf" bunting.

She didn't think it was all that great.

We just love our little Liddy.

Mr. Mom

I recently started attending an 8:30 meeting every Sunday morning so Burke gets to be Mr. Mom and get all three girls fed, dressed and out the door on time for church. To my amazement Burke does a great job and is on time, if not early, every week. I started wondering if managing all three kids on my own was not as hard I seemed to believe. Last Sunday when Church started and Burke was no where in sight I knew he had finally hit a snag. I went out to the parking lot to wait for them and he arrived about ten minutes later looking a little flustered. I smiled knowingly and began helping him unload. When I inquired as to what happened I was shocked at his response"I left Liddy!" He got both the girls in the car drove all the way to the church, parked and was getting the girls out of the car when he realized he left the baby!!!!! He quickly drove back home (fortunately we only live 10 minutes from the church) where Liddy was lying happily in her crib talking to her guardian angels. I thought it was brave of Burke to even tell me! He had to know I would never let him live this one down. The next time I am late, leave my cell phone behind, misplace my keys or forget to pack diapers I can feel better knowing that at least I didn't forget the baby!

Halloween Fun

We had a great Halloween. The s looked really cute and had lots of fun at the school parade, carving pumpkins and going trick-or-treating. We kept up with Craven family tradition by sharing a big pot of chili, warm bread sticks, donuts and root beer with our neighbors and friends. Enjoy the pictures.

School Parade

Susanna wasn't feeling well so Burke stayed home and I took Jennah to the school. We almost missed the parade but luckily I found a spot to park and we jumped in right at the end. It worked out great because it was cold.

Jennah had to hang on to that hat or it would blow off her little head.

After the parade they have dancing in the gymnasium. Jennah's friend Annalisa was a witch too.

At school on Friday they have orange day. Meredith, the mom of one of Jennah's school friends, made the s matching skirts and we got them the cute shirts and socks to match. Mrs. Henderson thought the s looked so cute she took them with her to the office when she got the milk so everyone could see them. Jennah felt very special. Thanks Meredith.

Jennah was also very excited to bring home her "Fall Picture." She has been talking about it for weeks while it hung on the wall in her classroom. As you can see she drew two spiders sitting on top of pumpkins, a tree with leaves falling from it, a scarecrow and a "scary pumpkin" .

A Pumpkin Miracle
We planned on picking pumpkins with Kathleen when she was visiting but we had to much rain. I promised Jennah we would get pumpkins and carve them before Halloween. I completely forgot until Thursday afternoon when Jennah reminded me that the next day was Halloween and we had not carved scary pumpkins. Liddy was hungry so we could not stop at the store. Jennah called Burke and asked him to pick up one for each of them. Burke got home rather later then I expected and announced he had the last carving pumpkin in the town of Gardner. He had to go to several stores to find it. The little pumpkin is a "pie pumpkin" and was really hard to carve. If you look close you will notice that Jennah's miracle pumpkin is a little on the soft side:)

Happy Halloween

Susanna got a head start on the candy

It was a special treat for both the s to get "real" makeup.

The tradition continues. All of our s have been a little Elephant on their first Halloween.

Oh isn't she so cute!!

Her costume was especially appropriate this year with the election. Who knew it would be so popular. Just remember that I found mine first!

And yes we are voting republican.