March!

This month was less crazy (and depressing) than February (thankfully!). We are six weeks post cleft-palate surgery now. Tate has one stitch left. The transition to solids has been tougher than we anticipated-- he's gotten lazy with all his bottle-drinking. But we've managed to move mostly to a sippy cup (he uses a Nuk or Nuby top so he can bite the liquid out-- he can't suck, so keeping the stopper in a regular sippy is out of the question, and traveling with a regular sippy stopper-less is also out of this question; the Nuk is a great compromise). He's mainly focused on soft foods, though we are letting him have foods that get soft easily and very small bites of chewier foods, like meats. Once the last stitch is dissoved we'll start letting him have crackers with corners again, probably. Tate continues to be the busiest toddler in our bunch. He has officially figured out how to open toilet seat lids so he can play in the water. So it looks like we may be buying some toilet locks (or keeping the doors closed, or some other alternative). His hair is getting long. Check him out: Marcie has really gotten into softball and been enjoying being part of the team. She also really likes Daisy scouts. I'm glad-- I think it's important to learn to be a part of something bigger. One great thing about t-ball is that they really focus on learning the game, so all the girls experience all the positions, and everyone bats each inning. A couple games ago, Marcie hit a home run!

And Casey has been trying out lacrosse this year. (He keeps calling it LAY cross.) We were a little worried it would be too much with baseball, but it's been fine. Baseball has been less encouraging because he got bumped up a level. And even though there's no Little League world series on the line or anything, they sure do take the game more seriously at this age. So it's nice to have lacrosse, where all the kids (in first and second grade, anyway) are still learning the game. Today he actually attempted to score a couple goals.

It should tell a lot that I know what my kids are up to. The trial I've been preparing for has been continued to the end of April. There's still work to be done, but the pace is less frantic (for me, anyway) than when you're getting the documents prepped for the pretrial hearing. It's meant that I could volunteer in Casey's class this week and take Marcie to her Daisy scout event. It meant watching Casey play lacrosse and finishing our adoption paperwork. It's been nice.

And speaking of adoptions, we filed our paperwork with the State court Friday and have Tate's readoption hearing set.