Update

Today is July 4th. Our family is mindful of the immense faith and sacrifices of our forebears which make possible the freedoms that so many citizens of this nation take for granted. We are especially grateful that we are able to raise our family in a free nation, in a situation of safety, spirituality, and plenty.

Ella has had a rough few days. We're not entirely sure why (although the usual suspect of 'teething' tends to get the blame), but she's been very difficult and has often been upset. Today was no exception. However, during and after dinner, she and the other two had some nice playtime while Jade did some work in the kitchen. Joel and Grace were both in the cozy coupe cars and Ella was alternating between them...she'd first exclaim "JOEL turn!" and then push Joel. Then, after a few moments, "GRACE turn!" and Grace would have an opportunity to be propelled. All three were having a blast!

When the children first came home, we decided to assign them colors. We haven't always held true to the assignments, but, if opportunity presents itself, we do try to give an available assigned color to the respective child. Ella's color is purple. She does sometimes call it 'pink', but she generally gets the drift. She prefers the purple sippy cup, purple dishes, and her purple bunny rabbit. Also, she has almost constantly over the last few days worn an inexpensive purple plastic necklace. Today after the kids were put in bed, Ella began to cry tragically (as only Ella can). The two words Jade could make out were "necklace...broken!" Somehow, she'd managed to snap the necklace. Jade was however able to make a repair using a twist tie and scissors. We do fortunately have a replacement purple necklace available for our darling little girl.

In a previous post, we mentioned that Grace had become the proud "mother" of three baby monkeys Affe(n). She refers to them (correctly) as Baby Affe. For Easter, the kids had gotten some larger-sized plastic eggs which had fun-sized packets of M&Ms inside. Jade got the brilliant idea to show Grace that a single Baby Affe could actually be fully squished inside one of the plastic eggs with the egg fully closed. This is unfortunate for two reasons:

1. Grace doesn't have the manual dexterity to put her OWN Baby Affe into an egg, so the burden falls on either Mommy or Daddy.
2. Joel began to feel that his Ellie was left out and one time implored Jade to put Ellie into a plastic egg (look at previous photos to get an idea of Ellie's size compared to a small plastic egg!). The best Jade could do was to stuff part of the blanket portion of Ellie into half an egg so that Joel could carry it around...he did seem actually somewhat satisfied. Such a good boy!

A bit later on in the evening, I had to go and pretreat some laundry (the kids have had a LOT of fruit the past few days, and for reasons which should not require further elaboration, there were some stains which benefitted from 'spray-and-wash'). I noticed that both girls were sound asleep, but that the Boy was wide awake and sitting up in his crib. I went over to his crib and he initially tried to lay down so that I could tuck him in. He's such a sweet boy. Instead, I lifted him from his crib with his Ellie and we went downstairs. I sat him in one dining room chair, I sat in the other right next to him, and we enjoyed some European creme-filled chocolate bars. Joel was on cloud 9! He first thought it was 'cookie', but I told him it was Schokolade (chocolate). I managed to get him to say 'schoko' and 'lade' separately several times, and the entire word once. He ate almost two bars the size of KitKat sections by himself. I sat next to him and nibbled when he was looking so that he would know that he and Daddy were sharing a treat together, and provided him with water and a wet wash cloth to keep his face and his Ellie clean. After the chocolate was done, Joel stated "all done lade!" I took him back up to bed, tucked him in and said good night.