Family Happenings as of April 10, 2008

Adam is studying long and hard every day for his final exams, the first of which is on Wednesday. He spent 72 hours awake preparing his final projects for two classes. Needless to say, he's excited to have those out of the way. He finishes exams on April 19th. That will be a blessed day!

Natalie is great with child...need we say more? She only has one month of pregnancy left and is getting really excited to have a smaller belly so she can chase the girls more easily. She's loving Amber's newfound independence, yet needs to adjust to the way Amber operates now that she's a "big girl" and gets her own drinks of water directly from the faucet, spends 45 minutes in the restroom mixing toiletry concoctions, and tormenting Karli. Natalie is working on the outline for her first book. Hopefully she'll be able to make progress on it after the baby is born.

Amber went to her first play date without a parent yesterday. She has a darling friend named Sophie who invited Amber to her house to play. Amber wanted to stay all day and had a grand time. She's quite a monkey these days; no one's furniture is safe from her flips, leaps, and other profoundly rowdy movements. Amber loves to feel the baby move in Natalie's stomach and proudly shows the baby in her tummy (named Cooper) to everyone who seems interested. We all wonder when her baby is going to be born; she tells us it's not for a long time, until she's a grown-up.

Karli is in her "nudie" phase and it drives Natalie crazy! Adam had to sew her onesie shut at the bottom the other day because she kept escaping and removing her diaper. She's on the verge of being potty trained, but somedays she decides that using the potty is just too much effort. As if the stripping-in-the-middle-of-any-public-place tendency wasn't enough, Karli is cutting her first 2-year-old molar and seems to be quite miserable. It's a good thing she's such a sweet, adorable, and snuggly gal most of the time, because she can really be a beast!