Growing Up

I swear, every day I look at my kids and think how quickly they are growing up! All the kids love Joey and they are really very helpful. Maggie's job is bringing me diapers and then taking the dirty ones outside--she gets really mad if I do it myself. Hey, if she wants to take stinky diapers outside, then more power to her!As some of you may be aware, Jacob is probably the pickiest eater in the world. Eric and I are honestly surprised that he is actually growing. I go by the book--he can have cereal or waffles for breakfast, I make him something he likes for lunch, but for dinner he has to eat what I make. I don't think he has eaten dinner in over a year (do you remember the soup incident referred to in an earlier blog entry?). I keep sticking to it and experts keep saying that if you stick to it your child will learn to eat dinner. Well, they didn't plan on Jacob. So my new tactic is having him help me make dinner (which he enjoys doing anyway) and then maybe he'd be more likely to try it. I tried it first with a white chicken chili...
He actually tried it and said he liked it! But to my disappointment he still only ate a couple bites. Then I tried again the next night, but it wasn't as successful. Oh well, I guess I will keep plugging away!

Joey is getting so big! Of course when I see him alone he looks big, but next to his brothers he looks small. He is starting to laugh more and you can see glimpses of the fun stage that is coming up when they are very playful. Still waiting for him to sleep through the night though.
One last thing. Do you ever find something your kids have done and just laugh and admire their creativity? Late last night I went upstairs to go to bed and the light in the boys' bathroom was on. So I went in to turn it off and found this...
You may have to look closely, but he wrote "T-rex" on top, then actually composed a picture of a t-rex out of q-tips, a comb (the body), and floss picks (the hind leg and tail). He even included a small upper arm, neck and head. All in all it is a darn good representation of a t-rex, even drawn mostly to scale. I just wonder at his creativity--what on earth made him think to do that? He even signed his name "TY" at the bottom. You gotta love it...