Stephen LOVES his big brother Brendan!

Luke and Brendan were passed out of level 1 in swim lessons yesterday - only halfway through the session! Yay!

Nicklas and Matthew holding two of Tinkerbell's kittens. Nicklas is holding Katzie, Matthew is holding Captain Hook. Her other three kittens are Wendy, Tootles and Tiger Lily. Matthew and Nicklas have claimed these two as their own.
Brendan and Luke are in swim lessons this week.
Stephen is growing like a weed and has just learned to blow raspberries - very exciting! He pulls himself around on his belly very well and is trying hard to figure out crawling. He has no trouble getting up on his hands and knees, but he can't quite figure out what to do from there. Sometimes he hops his legs forwards together which makes him look like a little frog. Sometimes he lunges forwards and face-plants on the floor.

Matthew's Baby Brother

Matthew has decided to be a great big brother and share his toys with his baby brother. He very gently holds Duplos up against my belly and tells me that it's "Bay-bee's turn!"

Progress on Our New Diet

We've been on the GAPS diet since July to heal our family's food intolerances. It hasn't been easy, but we are very excited to announce that Brendan is now healed of his dairy intolerance! He has had a glass of cow's milk at supper every night for the past week without any of his old symptoms. Luke is making excellent progress as well. He can have cow's yogurt regularly and a little cheese now and then without trouble. We haven't yet tested him on milk, but I don't think it will be too long before we're able to do that.
Nicklas has had much more trouble, but he is slowly progressing. We have finally managed to pinpoint the rest of his food intolerances on this diet and we're extremely happy about that. We always knew that there something else that he had trouble with, but we just couldn't figure out what it was. It turned out he has problems with onions, tomatoes, celery AND parsley - all things we ate on pretty much a daily basis which made diagnosing them virtually impossible.

Matthew and the New Baby

I've been talking to Matthew about the new baby quite a bit lately - how he's living and growing in Mama's tummy, how he'll be born after Christmas and such. The other day, he really got to feel the baby kick a lot and understood what it was. He was beyond thrilled! The pure joy in his eyes at feeling his baby brother kicking his hand almost made me cry. The rest of the day he was telling everyone that the baby kicked his hand, holding up his hand to show them. Also, he keeps pulling up my shirt and poking at my belly button, asking if the baby can come out yet. Yesterday, I told him that no, the baby still needs to get bigger. He looked at me very seriously, patted my belly, and said, "Baby big, Mama."

Nicklas' Writing Skills

Today during school, as Brendan was finishing his spelling, I gave Nicklas a warning that he would be starting his reading lesson in just a couple minutes. When it was time, I looked over at what he was doing (he had been drawing) and saw this written in his notebook:
"MAMAIDON
TNEEDtO
HAVAreeDiNg"
Translation:
Mama, I don't need to have a reading (I presume "lesson" was about to be written here).
I told him he did too need to have a reading lesson and sent him to the couch.
Then, I handed the notebook to Michael to read and ran off to the kitchen to laugh!
For a 3 1/2 year, he has amazing reading and writing skills and naughty though he was, it was still a pretty good attempt at getting out of a lesson.

Photo Albums

I've posted links to Picasa albums of the scrapbooks I've made for Nicklas and Matthew's first years. I'll add Brendan and Luke when I finish them.

The News from the Farm

Well, that last batch of kits didn't make it. Sad, but not too surprising. They were quite small and we knew there was a good chance of losing most, if not all, of them.
The boys are all doing well in school. Luke and Nicklas are progressing in their reading lessons and Brendan has finished his first math book and begun his second.
Matthew loves to talk about baby bunnies and "din-dins" (chickens).
Baby 5 is growing and wiggling lots.
Lucy is mostly housebroken now and will probably be moving outside soon. First we need to get some kennel panels though.