Update

Anna will be 10 in a little over a week and we're planning a Nancy Drew birthday party for her. She is so sweet and appreciative, but knows how she wants things down to the tiniest detail. With this party and with everything in Anna's life, I get the job of trying to support and facilitate her big ideas while also trying to remind her about things like budget and time constraints, etc. She also wants to invite everyone she's ever met. I love that she's so inclusive, but I'm insisting on only inviting people she's seen in the last 2 years. We love Anna.

Yesterday we were driving home from my parents' house where we had just been with some of my siblings and their kids. Abby started talking about how Macy did a really good job with naming their kids and then began telling us all the names she wants to use on her own kids someday. "Ellie, Emily, Claire and Lucy. Then Lucy will have a cousin once removed with the same name!" Brennan's jaw dropped as he turned to me and said, "Is that right, the cousin once removed thing?" "Yep, she's dead on." Abby's definitely her mother's daughter. I was also impressed with her names, good taste. We love Abigail.

Nate has impressed me to no end with his patience with Ben. Ben has been on kind of a rampage lately being just generally stinky and Nate gets the brunt of it. He'll grab some of Nate's action figures which had been oh so carefully placed and take off. I'm having to do "time out" more and more with Ben and Nate hates it. He begs me to let Ben come out or to answer him when he yells, "Moooom!" over and over. When Ben is allowed out, Nate quickly tries to cuddle and hug and comfort him and most often gets angrily shoved away. It doesn't deter Nate. He is such a tenderheart and I love that about him. We love Nate.

Ben is quite a character, always has been, but now that he's talking a lot that's becoming even more evident. His favorite things to say are "Aye (I) Haaad it" right after I tell him to give Nate's action figure back to Nate. Then after a few more attempts by me to get him to give it back he'll say, "Aye (I) don't haaave to!"

Perhaps my favorite thing in the whole entire world is the fact that instead of saying "what" he says "why." So whenever I call for him, I hear "WHY?" Or whenever I'm talking to him and he doesn't understand he scrunches up his face and says, "why?" You have to hear it all day long to get how cute it is, but I needed to write it down so I'll always remember it. It will be a sad sad day when he learns "what" like normal people.

Yesterday he was being particularly noisy and boisterous in church. Then all of a sudden completely out of the blue he looked down the row at his 3 siblings who were sitting there quietly and loudly said, "Guys, be ki-ut (quiet)!"

Lastly, whenever I pull out the camera he says, "Mom, I want to take piC-ures OV it!" We love Benjamin.