2014 Calendar

In addition to our paid holidays for the year, we also take 5 paid personal days.  Any additional vacation days we take after that will be of no charge to you.  If you are on vacation, please remember that you must continue to pay to hold your child’s space.

Friday, April 18: OPEN for Good Friday due to snow days- we follow local school schedule on this

Monday, April 28: paid personal day

Monday, May 26: paid holiday for Memorial Day

Friday, July 4: paid holiday for 4^th of July

Monday, September 1: paid holiday for Labor Day
Monday, October 13: paid personal day

Wednesday, November 26: paid personal day

Thursday/Friday November 27/28: paid holiday for Thanksgiving

Wednesday, December 24: paid holiday for Christmas Eve

Thursday, December 25: paid holiday for Christmas Day

Friday, December 26: paid personal day

Wednesday, December 31: paid holiday for New Year’s Eve

(Thursday, January 1, 2015: paid holiday for New Year’s Day)

2 paid days remain- we will let you know as soon as we get them arranged.

Friday Focus: Merryweather

I'm going to do my best to get Friday Focus started again!  I've lost track of where I was or who should be next, so I'm going by age order and starting with Merryweather.

This child explodes with personality.  She is delightful and goofy and sassy.  Hot Sports Opinions on just about everything, and always ready for a hug and a snuggle.  I will say I am ready for her to be out of the stage where she can stand on tiptoe and reach up to pull things off the counter.  She can't see them, and just figures there's probably something good she needs up there.  My kids leave their breakfast dishes on the table sometimes when they go off to school and I've had to clean leftover cereal and milk and glasses of water up quite a bit lately.  She does it while I'm cooking lunch too and I have to do a dance to keep the cutting board back far enough that she can't get it, but still stand away from it.  She tries to weasel her way between the cabinet and my legs most of the time and wants to squish her head.  I have to leave space.

Evidence of her head, pre-squishing.  Not sure what she was doing with her hood in this picture but I have a whole series of them.  Odd.

What?  I'm not trying to climb on the couch.  For real.

Lunch is very tiring.  Sometimes you just have to take a little nap.

She's decided she loves this duck.  I don't understand the fascination with it, but when I had Lady last year, she loved it too.  I had to keep it in her box because she wanted to sleep with it at naptime.  Merryweather can't quite quack yet but she makes a funny attempt at it.

We went outside several days this week since the weather is finally nice.  I got the stroller out for the babies who are too little to sit in the grass and she would NOT believe me that we weren't taking a walk.  She thought I was gonna take everyone else out and leave her there in the yard, I think.  She insisted on getting in.  Then she realized I wasn't kidding and the stroller was just going to be sitting there with babies in it while Merida ran around the yard without her.  This is the face I got.  I'm pretty sure she's wishing bad things upon me.  :)

Mawwiage Is What Bwings Us Togevah Today

So I realized I didn't have a blog name for Assistant.  She says she wants to be Anna from Frozen.  I think my family is the last in America who hasn't seen the movie yet.  I had to ask which girl that was and she said, "not the one with the powers.  The one who gets engaged to a guy she just met."

Which is funny because she just got married after a rather short engagement.  Some of us went to the wedding.  It was really pretty.

Vanellope in her fancy dress, checking out Anna's fancy dress too.

My Duchess was a junior bridesmaid and had her first updo.  So SO cute.  It was freezing cold and so she borrowed a suit jacket from Vanellope's daddy.

Merryweather and Aurora with Mama and Auntie Doll, and me and Duchess.

Be My Valentine

Happy Valentine's Day!  We spent yesterday and today getting little cards made for the parents.  I'm a sucker for footprints and I figure I can't be the only one.  Most of our people are too little to color, but it's fun to paint their feet so they can make a card.  Families love it.

 Merryweather went first and thought it was the funniest thing.  She laughed the whole time and then I had to do everybody else on the sly so she didn't help WAY more than I needed.

Mufasa was pretty chilled out the whole time- he let me do it without any protest but thought it was a little weird.  He stayed still though so his footprints came out really clear.

 Miss Merida's foot, making a cameo appearance.

 I had to practically hogtie Maid Marian to keep her hands off her feet.  She wanted to eat the paint SO BADLY.  I needed about six more hands for this job, especially since Merryweather snuck up behind me and grabbed the paintbrush off the table.  She dropped it in my lap and I still have red paint all over me.

Then she got all kinds of offended that I wouldn't let her grab the rest of the supplies so I had to console her before we could carry on.  I love the way Maid Marian has her foot stuck straight out and is still staring at it even after I washed it.  She can't quite figure out what I did to her.

While the littles were napping today I took Merryweather and Merida to eat lunch with O'Malley at school.  The weather hasn't been nice enough for a walk in forever and they talked and laughed the whole way there. 

 I got wise in the afternoon and put Bernard in the jumper to do his painting.  He decorated the floor while I went to get the wipes.

He had a good time too.

Last but not least was Vanellope.  (I watched Wreck-it Ralph with my kids again tonight and she's so great.  Big smile, sassy little attitude, makes you happy.  It works.)

She put up with the first foot, although she let me know she thought the whole thing was weird and possibly a little scary.  We didn't take pictures of the second foot.  Girl got angry.  :)  But they all turned out really cute.  Happy Valentine's Day and I'm sorry if there is a little paint left between your kid's toes tonight!

Aw Shucks Guys

Y'all should have told me you were actually waiting for me to blog!  Because I pretty much thought nobody ever read it- not like you comment frequently.  :)  I really do like the feedback- it makes it easier to write regularly when I think somebody cares about reading.  Mufasa's dad texted me today and referred to him as Mufasa, which made me laugh.  I couldn't come up with a good quote back to him on the fly.  But clearly he read!  YAY!  And Maid Marian's mom (HI THERE!) mentioned that she stalks the blog.  Maybe it's hugely narcissistic of me, but I'm super flattered.  Just for that, extra pics of your babies.

She holds her own!  At least for a few seconds anyway.

When it is really cold outside they bring Mufasa in this bear suit.  I squeal every time- I just can't help it.  He's so darn cute and extra snuggly when he wears it.

Okay.  *clapping hands briskly* moving on, I need blog names for several of the munchkins, and also for The Assistant.  It is getting difficult to write about the day with unnamed people.  OH!  I could call the twins Phineas and Ferb.  I've used so many names up that I'm going to have to branch out into TV soon anyway and I like that for them.  Done. 

Then we have this sweet new little guy.  I think I'm going to call him Bernard, like in the Rescuers.  I like the way Eva Gabor says it.  (I did have a Bianca a couple years ago, but since I'm fairly certain nobody but me is paying attention to the horror of having two different families using names from the same movie, we'll just brush that aside.....)

Meet Bernard!

Here we have the serious look...

And also the smile.  Cutie pie.

Two more girls to name, but I'm still mulling over options... good night.  :)

New Post! Dance and Sing!

I'm pretty sure I've already used every single post title I can think of.  Clearly I've not been in a blogging mood much lately either!  We are still here!

There are five full-time kiddos here these days, with two more either three or four days of the week.  Also, once a week my neighbor's twins visit.  So we have five, six, seven, or nine just depending on the day.  I'm really enjoying it.  It's definitely busier than it has been for the past few months with just three or four, but the kids seem to be getting a kick out of the interaction and it's fun to stay moving.  Merryweather and Merida are running all over the place and everyone else is scurrying to catch up.

Maid Marian and Mufasa, just hanging out and shooting the breeze.  Notice he has her sock in his hand- he took it off her foot and then was trying to figure out how to get it back on.

On an unrelated Mufasa note, the girls are all obsessed with his hair.  They love it because it feels so different from theirs and they come by to pet his head while he's playing.  He lets them.  It's super cute.

Look!  Food with a bowl and a spoon!  This makes breakfast look more successful than it was- the bowl frisbeed off a few minutes later and then she stuck the spoon too far down her throat.  But hey.  We make the little progress, one day at a time.

Maid Marian is really exploding on her gross motor skills these days- she's getting pretty good at sitting up by herself for a few minutes at a time and loves to play the piano.  I really hope this piano never breaks.  Duchess got it for her first Christmas, so it's 10 and I'm sure they don't make it anymore.  Every kid I've ever taken care of has LOVED it.

 My Tuesday twins.  I can't think of a good set of Disney names.  Tweedledum and Tweedledee is the only thing that comes to mind but I don't think that's very complimentary and they're really sweet boys.  :)
What's a good name set I could use?

Pictures are kind of biased toward the Maid this post, but I couldn't leave this one out.  So flippin' cute.

We also have a new three month old little girl who is amazing and delicious.  No pictures allowed of her, but I'll come up with a name for her soon so at least there will be stories!

Just Wait a Sec, It'll Change!

So here I was, keeping a couple babies by myself, then all of a sudden Melody left to go spend her days with Grandma, a new little girl started, and so did my assistant!  Now I'm back to two grownups in the house and working on ramping up to keeping more kids again.  We've had several interviews this week with SUCH sweet families- would love the chance to take care of those boys.  They are fabulous, and as an added bonus it would be nice to balance out the estrogen overload we've got right now.  :)

One of the boys just turned two, so I'm rethinking the "infants only" thing.  With two adults here, a split age group works really well and it's likely that we'll move the graduation date back to age three.  I miss Remy, Alice, and Perdita!!  Darn.  But I hear wonderful reports from their new teacher and I know they're doing well.  These last few months just didn't work for me to have everyone.  I'm really hoping that now things are settled down- the kids I have plan to stay awhile, Assistant and I are happy and onboard, and a few more are in the wings.  All is well.

Aurora dropped on in Fair Day when her kindergarten was closed.  Merryweather really enjoyed having sister around for the day, and they all had a good time.  I don't usually get to post anything of Merida at all, so I'm happy to have this one that completely hides her identity and still shows her playing.  She's got the MOST awesome laugh- it's very low and throaty for a baby, and she was laughing and having a great time with this hat.  Fun day.

 Maid Marian says to you, "blah."  She is such a laidback and easy baby- just hangs out and learns how to use her tongue.  :) 

And here's our newest addition, as yet unnamed for the blog.  She's made a quick and smooth transition into hanging out with us and is a joy to be around.

I am very much enjoying this season!  Fun and happy kids = happy me.  It feels very different to not be on the move every minute like I was when I had older kids.  Now we lie on the floor a lot and build block towers for each other to knock down, and we chase balls around and take things in and out of boxes.  However, Merryweather is quickly approaching complete mobility, and even without walking yet she's doing this:

It'll be no time at all before we're back to art projects and outside time!  They grow up so fast.