Who knew a baby sister could be so much fun?

You can be sure my boys love having a sister. They love watching her, playing with her, feeding her, and they love to celebrate all the new things that she can do each week. I think they actually clapped when they realized that she was feeding herself Cheerios a couple of weeks ago. But I have to say it is pretty hilarious to see some of the things they do when left alone with her for a few minutes. Sometimes I ask them to entertain her while I go throw some laundry in but other times they just decide to entertain her on their own. Just last week, I caught them trying their glasses on her and I had to laugh with them because it was so darn cute. She just sat there and didn't make a peep, just looked around trying to figure out why things were so blurry.

I am so thankful to have such an easy baby who pretty much fell into the flow of our life without a fuss. She really is a mellow little lady. When we visited my family a couple weeks ago, I left little L with my niece for a few minutes and when I came back she was wearing clip-on earrings and looked like a gypsy baby. We all laughed and laughed at her and she just sat there and smiled.

As I was busy with a phone call this week, the boys gathered around her and laughed as she dumped her Cheerios on the floor. The next thing I know they are all hysterically laughing and the bowl is on her head. I am not sure who decided to do it but it was pretty funny. Who knew a baby sister could be so much fun?

1 turtle, 20 snails & 10 tadpoles...

Freddie the turtle lived with us for 2 weeks this month courtesy of a neighbor who found him while mowing their front lawn. I know how much animals make my oldest son happy so I volunteered to take Freddie when my neighbor told me he found two but they only wanted to keep one. "We will totally take it." I said. So for two weeks, Freddie, the baby turtle with the shell the size of a quarter, lived on our kitchen counter. I must say that it was quite interesting to watch the little guy. Turtles have much more of a personality than one might think. He watched us walk around the kitchen as we went about our day, tucked his legs in to sleep at night when it got dark and would even come up and sit on his little rock when we would hand feed him worms that we found in our yard. He knew that when the top of his terrarium was lifted, it was feeding time and he was always ready. He really was pretty cute. But he was also stinky and after 2 weeks of cleaning out his tank every other day, I was able to talk my son into setting him free in a forest preserve near our house where we like to walk our dog and check out nature. Ahhh, yes, that meant no more turtle racing on the kitchen table at the hands of little boys but it did mean he would probably have a long, happy life.

So off we went, the entire family plus our dog, to let Freddie go. I was so looking forward to not having one more thing to take care of. But as my sons were bending down to let him go, they spotted tadpoles swimming around in the little pond. And my husband said, "Hey guys, why don't you scoop up some water and a few tadpoles and we can take them home?" Famous last words. We now have 10 tadpoles, which are actually starting to grow legs, and about 20 baby snails living on our kitchen counter in Freddie's old tank. Thankfully, they seem to be doing just fine despite the fact that we don't change the water. We feed them fish food and check them out several times a day. They don't have names yet but my kids are working on it. Here we go again...