An Update

Our nephew Christian was born on March 15, so Brendan, Matthew and I went to Milwaukee to visit and help out for a little while. Luke and Nicklas are hanging out with Daddy back in Boone. We'll all be going home on Saturday. I've been enjoying my time back here with family, but I miss Michael, my middle boys, and my own home.
Matthew has learned to pull himself up on furniture while we've been here. He thinks it's very exciting but it has increased the number of bumps and bruises he has! He also enjoys trying to sneak up on Oma and Papa's pomeranian, Kit.
Brendan has been being a good helper as always. He's almost done with his reading book and his kindergarten math book. We've begun reading Paddington Bear together, which he loves. He's also gotten to hold Christian a few times!
After we get home, we'll be building a chicken coop pretty soon and once we get back from Christian's baptism in mid-April, we'll buy some chicks! Brendan's very excited about the idea of helping take care of the chickens.

New Teeth!

There are six new teeth in our house! Brendan has cut all four of his six-year molars and is very proud of the fact that he now has 24 teeth - more than any of his brothers. And Matthew has finally cut his first two teeth! He's been drooling and chomping for a few months now; we've been expecting teeth "any day now" for at least two months. He cut his first, the lower left, on the 11th, when he was exactly six months old. He cut the lower right tooth on the 13th, his Papa's birthday.
Papa and Oma came to visit this past weekend. My mom and I tore up the carpet in the living room with a great deal of assistance from the older three boys. Luke and Brendan were working on pulling up staples and Nicklas wandered around with a pair of kiddie scissors randomly snipping at carpet and padding. Later that evening, Mom and I slightly rearranged the furniture, turning the TV armoire at an angle in a corner. Michael and my Dad hooked up a new receiver (our last one was fried in the recent power outages). When Luke got up the next morning and came into the living room, the first thing he said to me was, "Mama, why is the receiver black now?" Nothing about the fact that he had to look in a completely different place to see the receiver in the first place, just that it was a different color. Papa and Oma also brought us a fish tank and stand, which is now set up in our dining room and is occupied by one blue and red beta fish named Thomas. We'll be getting a couple more fish later this week most likely.

Latin

We've been teaching Brendan Latin in school. No, we don't speak it ourselves, we've found a great program, Prima Latina from Memoria Press, that he (and Michael and I) are learning from quite well. But I didn't realize just how much the younger children were picking up until yesterday when Nicklas began to insist on calling his water bottle an aqua bottle. At supper Brendan was talking about one of his vocab words, amici, which means "friends". He was wondering how to say "my friends" and said "Oh, mea!" At which, Nicklas replied with "culpa." As in one of Brendan's recent vocab words, mea culpa, which means "my fault."