My little doctors

Isabella is indeed, kissing my toe.

I seriously injured my big toe on Monday night.  Seriously, as in I have never felt that kind of pain before. The pain where, at first, there is no pain. You know there should be, but there isn't. Then you grab for anything around you to hold on to as the pain begins to surface and then you decide you're going to scream, pass out, throw up, or in my case, convince my kids to stop laughing.  Yes, they were laughing. Thing is, they've never seen me cry so hard. So hard that my head was thrown back in agony and they thought I was laughing at a really good joke.  I let them laugh. Thought it may keep them calm at a time when I was far from calm.  Then they saw the tears, realized the pain and I watched as Declan's little chin started to quiver.  As they hovered around my foot I told them to back away and not go anywhere near my toe. Declan begged to just kiss it, not touch, just kiss.  Then proceeded to ask me if it was okay to sit on every other part of my body, as long as it wasn't my toe. Isabella said, "it's okay mommy, I know just how you feel. I broke my arm one time. You'll be okay."  Then my own mom came to my rescue and I will never call her again in the type of hysterics I was in.  I feel bad about that...
Anyway, I have tried so hard to "protect" my toe since then. But with two quick kids, a new walker, and my own clumsy self, there's bound to be more injury. Which leads us to the above picture, where Isabella is sweetly kissing my toe because Quinn was walking around in the backyard and walked directly over my toe.  I winced, took a deep breath and all Isabella had to do was look at me and then said "Mommy, just let me kiss it. It'll feel better, I promise. Just let me kiss it real quick." I wanted to tell every one to pretend I was in a bubble and to stay at least 10 feet away from all of my appendages.  But instead, I let her kiss my toe.

And on to less painful news.  We have resisted moving Declan into a bed simply because we enjoy the gaurantee that every night, at least one out of our three kids will go to sleep in his crib and stay asleep all night, and when he wakes up, he will call for us and wait to be lifted from his crib.  We find peace in the little things. But he was ready.  His willingness to go to his crib was waning and he was asking for a bed like Bella.  We figured we would give it a try since we already had a double mattress for him and his crib would convert to a headboard, and if it didn't work, we'd just put the crib back up.  We made a big deal out of it and he was excited.  We played in his room a lot over the weekend and moved his train table into his room so that he would want to play in there on his own.  That night we all read books in his bed instead of Isabella's. We all laid down together in his bed instead of Bella's. And then we moved Isabella back to her room, kissed Declan goodnight and he stayed until morning, called for us to come get him and looked pretty darn comfortable sprawled out in his big boy bed.  We've had success since then so I think the big boy bed was a good idea.  And to top off our luck, Isabella's been sleeping in her bed all night as well...zero wake ups.  It only took four years, but I think we're seeing a trend. A good one at that!

We were reading books tonight (well, they were reading to me---my reading liscense has officially been revoked by a 2 and 4 year old...) and as they were finishing up and getting ready to lay down, Isabella whispered to Declan "you want me to do what I do to Quinn?" He whispered back "what?" And she said "you know, like this" as she lay her hand on his cheek and started rubbing and shushing him.  He told her "no thanks" he's not a baby, after all.

But he's just the same.  As I looked into the backseat the other day to find him emulating his big sister and how she takes care of Quinn in the car.

They never cease to amaze me. These three.

 Declan and Quinn offered to make dinner. Grass soup...yum!

She looks all innocent there standing, watching Declan pile handfuls of grass into the water table.  But she instigated that whole activity. As soon as that table was full, she was in the grass, pulling up chunks and dipping them straight into the water and whirling the grassy water around.  Sly little one. She gave him great ideas...