A big fat mommy!

Let me introduce a new feature of our blog: Which Chamberlin is Which?
It goes like this: At the beginning of some posts, I will put one of my multitude of baby pictures. You see if you can guess which Chamberlin it is, and at the end, I'll tell you the answer. It's harder than you'd think - their daddy frankly stinks at this game! So we'll start with a slam dunk-easy one (answer at the end of this post):

After years of begging Katherine and Elizabeth to let me braid and "fix" their hair, only to get horrified looks and rapid retreats (occasionally Elizabeth would take pity on me and let me do something, but rarely), I have discovered what I was doing wrong. It wasn't enough to use peer pressure - "Didn't Kayla's braid look great today?" - and plain ole pleading - "C'mon, I'll be quick and then it'll look so cute!" No, what I was missing was dolls. Since the girls brought their new American Girls home from Grandmama's I have gotten to play with more hair than the entire previous year combined. Granted, some of said hair is attached to the dolls, but a significant amount is my babies' hair! Yea! Caroline especially wants her hair braided every day. The only one I don't get to do much is Katherine, who's always been ridiculously tender-headed. (Can you tell that's my perspective? She would put it that she's legitimately tender-headed!)

In a related idea, I can tell you now for sure exactly why Daniel and Katherine hated learning to write (several years ago, of course). I bought them writing workbooks and handwriting notepads, etc., but they acted as though it was punishment. Suddenly, in a burst of generosity, I have solved this problem for my family forever! Even Caroline is loving to write letters this week, and the others are overflowing with the written word. Instead of buying nice, plain, OK - CHEAP, notebooks, I took them all to Target and bought PRETTY notebooks. Problem solved. That was it. Rachel hasn't gotten far from her new notebook all week. Katherine keeps thanking me. Who knew? Not me, that's for sure.... How did all those generations of kids learn to write before kitty-cat cutesy notebooks existed? Daniel got one with a robot and spaceship on it, of course.

In another related topic (Wasn't that a smooth segue?), we got schoolbooks in this week! Yea! So much excitement for things that they will spend so much time glaring at. Only Daniel is old enough to say, "Why on earth are y'all so excited about school all the sudden? What's wrong with you?" Fortunately, we're not going to start the new books until Labor Day, so we have about 2 weeks to clear up any left-over work from last year. Rachel however, is so desperate to start her kindergarten books (the same ones Elizabeth is finishing up, a fact which makes Rachel pretty smug) that she will start tomorrow. Caroline is learning to write letters with absolutely NO instruction from me, which is pretty nice, let me tell you. She ran up to me yesterday with her notebook screaming, "Look mommy! It's a big fat mommy!" With a frown, I looked down to check out the expected drawing, and then I realized what she had written. If you know that she calls all letters by the name of a person attached to it, it makes perfect sense to see that she had written a big-yes, fat-yes "A" in her book. An "A" is called a mommy in this house (she knows my "real" name). A "C" is a Caroline. See, makes perfect sense - a big fat mommy!

Katherine and Elizabeth have suddenly re-discovered their roller-blades after not touching them for weeks. They've started skating around the neighborhood looking for hills and steep driveways. This has led to the obvious results:

And, yes, they were wearing helmets. 2 scraped knees, a shoulder, and what doesn't show in this picture is that Katherine's face (her right side) is scraped up as well. Katherine has told me several times that she aimed for the grass to fall on and missed. I'll say.

Caroline had her first ballet class on Monday (a make-up class, her normal class is Tuesday). She wanted SO badly to take ballet last year when Rachel did, but she was just too little. Telling her this repeatedly has led to her telling me all the time that she is growing. I've explained that she grows when she sleeps (This happens to be true, but the benefits of telling her that are multitude!) and frequently her first words of the morning are, "Mommy, I growed. I'm bigger (flexes bicep)." Anyway, she was dressed in her little white outfit Monday morning by the time I got up. How could I make her take it off? Even though she got lunch all over it, which required a quick hand-wash right before class, she couldn't have been happier. Here she is all ready to leave the house:

Seriously, take a closer look at that face:

This is a happy child. A few more:

She was so cute during class. One of the things I LOVE about the new place we're going to for ballet is that they have a HUGE window for the parents to watch during class. (One of the other things is that they let the little ones wear whatever kind of ballet costume they want to - almost no dress code except for the shoes.) The place where Rachel took last year had NO parent viewing except for one "parents' observation day." Yuck. So now I can take pictures like this (Caroline is in the all-white outfit on the left. For those who know her, Pacee is in the black on the right!):

Of course, I made Caroline go to the bathroom right before class. Well, we left and headed to Wal-Mart to pick up something (and silliness),

and when we went to pick up Caroline we noticed something was a little different. Here are the pictures of her after class. Notice anything, besides the extreme cuteness, of course?

Yes, that would be the leotard tag in the front. Meaning her leotard is now on inside-out and backwards. Good thing she wore underwear under those tights, because she sure had the cheeky thing going on in back! And where's her skirt? Oh, it's at the front desk because someone found it on the bathroom floor. Nice. We didn't find out until her regular class today (Tuesday) but she also managed to switch one of her ballet shoes with another girl. Just one. Pretty impressive work for one bathroom break!!!

Rachel had her first gymnastics lesson today and I could've died because I forgot the camera. So I had to run home to pick it up and still missed all the good shots (no-flash indoor sports photography is HARD), but will try again next time.

Let's see. Of note this week as well... well the pictures say it all:

Don't let the pictures fool you - he's actually pretty proud of himself! Woo-hoo! I won't have to cut the grass again for, what? Fourteen, fifteen years? Sweet.

The rest of the week should be pretty quiet, HA!, but we're looking forward to Uncle Scott's visit this weekend. The kids know that we'd like to take him tubing on the Bogue Chitto again, now that my bruises from the last time have finally, mostly faded, so they're pretty psyched up for that. Way to make them look forward to your visit, Scott - tie it to something they ADORE anyway, and voila! You're golden.

Answer: Elizabeth!