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Carma is seventeen months old and straight up hilarious. Girlfriend is nuts; she watches her brothers run and jump and climb and proceeds to follow. Her newest favorite thing is scurrying and leaping from couch to couch to chair in the living room without touching the floor - unless you count the times when she miscalculates the distance and plummets to the ground (luckily not that far away).

Carma has a strong belief that sacrament meeting is social hour, and she's the star. I try to keep her somewhat contained, but if she's pretty quiet, I let her wander a bit and as a result she counts Brother Birrell and Brother and Sister Volkert amongst her best friends. Yesterday she spent a lot of time a pew ahead of us, coloring with Raquel, which was fabulous. Towards the end of the meeting she started worrying about young James Fleshman's possible hunger pains and dutifully took him veggie straws one at a time.

 Ohh Carma - I told her to stand by the tree for a picture, and she merrily stood there, looked to the side, and smiled... all with a little twinkle in her eye that clearly communicated, "I did what you asked, Mom! You never said I had to look at you, hahaha!" There's a chance we have our hands full with this one ;).

 How to describe Jackers in his current three and a half year old state? He is the very definition of a lover and a fighter. It is rare to find him without his little fingers in 'star wars blaster' position, ready to take down lurking storm troopers. He is also a self-proclaimed ninja. At the same time, he is by far THE most cuddly child I've ever had... and that's saying something. He climbs on me constantly, usually accompanied by his blanket and his monkey and once he's comfortably ensconced on my lap he announces, "I snuddle with you!" Snuddle either = cuddle + snuggle OR we need to step up our efforts to get him back into speech therapy. (spoiler alert, it's def the latter). He's also taken to sweetly declaring that I'm 'da best' every time he thanks me for something.

Jackers strongly values his space and alone time (somewhat ironic since he denies me those things on a regular basis, but whatev). When he gets hurt or embarrassed, he immediately withdraws, both emotionally and physically. He loves loves loves Clyde and Will but also merrily waves goodbye to them each morning, knowing that he has the run of the house (and the legos!) while they're at school. He mostly lives within the realm of Star Wars with frequent visits to reality and he is also the sweetest big brother to Carma that he can be - he continues to be the first one to run to her when she's crying, offering her 'favorite purple toy' and a kiss to make her happy again.

 Will's life currently revolves around animals and his plan to someday become an animal scientist. (note to self: figure out what an animal scientist is/does). We are (and forever will be) a pet-free household, so luckily Will gets his animal time in elsewhere - one day I kitten-sat for a girl I visit teach and Will was so, so happy that Titan was still here when he got home from school and helped me take him home when the time came. Will has also found a kindred spirit in Sister Sherman, a woman in our ward who we get to visit and eat dinner with every couple of weeks. Will comes with me and promptly fell in love with her two dogs, Einstein and Pretty Boy. He was very sad to find out at our last visit that Pretty Boy had passed away, and I think Sister Sherman appreciated his understanding of her loss. They really are a sweet pairing! 

Willy boy also continues to be the silliest, sweetest kid around: his new favorite game is Apples to Apples Jr. and all you have to do to make him giggle uncontrollably is read a random card like "hog dogs" or "ballerinas" and he dissolves in front of your eyes. Will is killin' it both at school (watching him in his element is one of my favorite parts of helping in his classroom, another being getting to use the copier) and on the social front (where many of his friends are girls. If he keeps this up, he'll be set come high school, haha).

 Last but not least, our fearless leader/oldest kid, Clyde! What a babe. He takes his role as older brother pretty seriously - he is the first to tease, poke, rile someone up (usually his brothers) and also the first one to snuggle, comfort, or help (usually Carma). Clyde just recently hit a real rough spot with his Hirschsprung's, so he's being put through the ol' wringer of dr appt/xray/meds switch-up. We feel good about where we're at now and going forward and we're continually impressed with Clyde's overall resilience and maturity. We talk a lot about it in spiritual terms - that Heavenly Father won't give us more than we can handle, and how he's been blessed with great doctors, stellar parents ;), a very understanding teacher/school, etc.

Clyde continues to read twelve books at time, ten of which are usually books he's re-reading. He just started the Beyonders series and is mixing it up by also reading the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. He's been spending a lot of time in the Harry Potter world lately too - it seems like that's just kind of a fall thing in general, am I right? What's fun for me to watch is Clyde's wit emerge and trace some of it back to his favorite authors (Rick Riordan, especially).

Okay, back to the back log. It's a chilly 54 degrees outside, so we might as well delve back into sunny June!