May

We've had a fantastic month. Simon is finally getting easier. He's a happy guy most of the time. Now if only he'd stop getting up so much in the night. I'm tired! 

Anyway, one night we had a couple of families over for dinner. The kids were too cute. They decided to picnic on the floor after fighting over who would sit in which chair. That wasn't as cute.

 Mina and Charlotte fight about half of the time and get along famously or ignore each other the rest of the time. I'm doing my best to let them figure things out without intervening, but it's difficult. Sometimes I have to separate them because of the screeching. They're so loud.

 Charlotte loves to wear anything ruffly and pink or purple. She always gets attention when she wears this outfit. It's covered in spaghetti sauce stains now. I've given up.  Poor Charlotte.

 Simon has decided to stop being a complete lump and actually rolls around the room some these days. I snapped this picture after he put together a few rolls in order to get to his sister's storytime nametag. He was pretty pleased with himself.

 Mina graduated from preschool so we took some obligatory photos. She insisted that everyone get dressed up fancy for the ceremony. Charlotte really took that seriously. Simon wore a tie, but we apparently didn't get any pictures of him.  Oops.

 Mina received two awards from her teacher. The first was for creativity. She's always putting her own spin on art projects and loves to make art for people. She's darn insistent that you take what she's giving you. If I kept everything she made, my closets would be full!  The second was for sunshine because she's such a happy girl.  Hmmm...and I thought she was starting to act like a teenager. At least she's good at school.

 I asked Mina to pose with her best friend, Brennen, and this is what she did.  My oh my. He wasn't complaining.

 Mina stopped taking naps a while ago and Charlotte is really trying to stop. I'm not having it. She's going to have rest time until she's five. The other day she finally crashed on her floor and I thought it was hilarious. There's a lamp on its side, barbies in all sorts of tableaus, and her clothes were completely different from when I saw her last.

 Check out the shoes! Sometimes I want to kiss her and never stop.

 Jon and I have been continuing on with our fitness endeavours. Jon did the Gladiator Assault Challenge last weekend.  He got all wet and muddy, but had a great time. That's him about halfway up the net on the right.

 This part of the course freaked me out.  Closed in dark spaces.

 Doesn't this look like fun?

 He ran to the finish and completed the course in a little over an hour. He earned fourth place in his wave (if I remember correctly) and first of the people he went with.  Oh yeah. I'm proud as heck of him.

 Muddy man!

Simon was with me in the bjorn, but once again, I forgot to take his picture. He's my little accessory.

Jon's muddy race looked like so much fun that I signed up for the dirty girl 5k mud run in July. I guess that means I'll have to keep running.  I can now run a 5k without stopping. My first official race is in a week. Jon will be running his first marathon and I'll be running my first 5k.

We went to a park last night even though we could see rain clouds on the horizon.  The girls wanted to visit Loomis Park for the first time of the park season.  Charlotte is so much better at climbing now. She wanted help, but we were able to stand back and let her gain confidence by climbing the ladder over and over again after spotting her one time. She was proud of herself. She had zero problems climbing the ladder and going down the huge slide without either of us within reach.  However, it was sprinkling so the flat part of the playground was slick. She fell. Of course.  Bloody nose!  That's how we knew it was time to go home.

Oh, and the other bit of new news is that Simon has teeth. He has one on the bottom that's almost all the way in and another that has just broken the skin.  We can't seem to get any pictures of it yet, but I can certainly feel that tooth when he eats. Ouch.  I've done a terrible job of keeping up with his baby book calendar so all dates for firsts are going to have to get figured out from Facebook or approximated from here.  These kids are keeping me busy!