They have a small sign language vocabulary that includes milk, water, eat and more.  Netta has a few syllables she is saying for certain things but most start with 'B' – Buh (book), Bah (ball), and Bye Bye, which she just really mastered last night while running in naked circles with Bailey upstairs and ducking around the corner while waving and saying bye bye over and over again.  Bailey has a shoe-like sound that she uses for shoes and says "sah" for sock.  I think it's interesting that they each have different words.  Bailey also has been doing a tight-lipped face when asked what sound a giraffe makes.  It's our in-house joke since giraffes don't make a sound.

The last few times I've brought them inside and set them on their feet in the kitchen they have each reached for their zippers on their jackets to take them off.  If you say, "Let's go in the basement!" the girls both make a beeline for the basement door.  They love it down there.  (Watch out, Uncle Mike!  You'll have requests in stereo someday soon.)  They are still nursing and it is their preferred method of saying "Hello, Momma!".  It is not my preferred method.  Netta is especially adamant about nursing at our reunions, which she expresses with lots of squawking. 

It's a lot of fun around here, however I am completely exhausted and still keeping terrible house.  Someone said, "I don't know how you do it."  I wouldn't say I deserve a medal or anything.  I'm not doing anything magical by taking care of four young kids.  I'm just deciding not to do a whole lot of other things to keep level-headed.

Last Friday Art skipped school and we all went to the zoo. He expressed a sudden and welcome urge to learn how to take photos. Jessica took this nice cellphone picture of me showing the little boy how to use our point and shoot.

Here are a collection of Art’s photos. When we got home he wanted to print them all out. Then he cut them out in a little pile and flipped through to admire them. For the record, I took the photo of the frogs and the closeup of alligator teeth but Art wanted to include them. And the blue coral on the bottom left is Lewis’ photo. Everything else is Art’s.

Lewis’ preschool friend Anika came over the other day to play. Here she is finding him hiding under a laundry basket.

Art getting his first x-ray.

Art has a crazy mouth full of teeth coming in in all sorts of directions. Any ‘th’ sound comes out like ‘f’. One, two, free. He even mentioned the other day how it’s hard to make certain sounds cause ‘air comes out his teeth’. The dentist admired how many teeth he already lost and Art noted that he had lost the most in his kindergarten. His teeth, according to the dentist, are coming in fine. Which is relief, cause if you look in there and you might think he needs some hardcore braces. Noooooo! I had braces, what a torturous and unpleasant experience. with four kids I bet someone will have them. That child will have my full sympathy.

Picasa has some fun new filters, including this ‘1980’ one.