Talia

Natalia hasn't slept much over the past week. As in, even less than usual. She has been finally passing out between 9 and 10pm, she wakes up between 5 and 6am, and she doesn't always sleep all night. And, of course, she rarely naps. It's been fun. We assumed that she was just having a tough time with her siblings returning to school after three weeks off for spring break, but she provides a different explanation. "My body is still 'regular' but my brain is nocturnal." Well, not much we can do about a nocturnal brain.

In other fun Natalia news, she has been obsessed with how babies are made. Our other kids have always been okay with a generic explanation along the lines of when moms and dads are grown up, they can have babies when they are ready. With Ree we had to get into the details of how babies make their entrance into the world, and after marveling at the wonder of it, she was done asking questions. Not Natalia. This line of questioning will stop for awhile, but just this morning while I was working out to a fitness DVD, she choose to spend more than half the workout painstakingly asking me as though I was a complete idiot, "But, MOM! How does a baby get INSIDE your belly???"

There was also this evening's existential crisis. During dinner Natalia asked if everyone dies. We simply said, yes, all living things die. Suddenly faced with her own mortality, she then spent two hours lamenting, "But I don't want to die!" We have no idea where this is coming from. She doesn't know anyone who has died, she's never been to a funeral, and she has recently seen her two great-grandmothers who are 90 and 94. As this went on and on and on, and it became clear that there was no way to reason with her, I alternated between sympathy, frustration, and amusement. Thankfully, she was finally distracted by multiple flavors of Goldfish crackers for snack. (Thank you, Harris Teeter BOGO sale.)

At bedtime tonight, I was prepared for another round of questioning either about babies or death. Nope. Just the usual stalling. Thankfully, about 30 minutes after I tucked her (and after checking in with me 7 or 8 times) she simply announced, "My brain is no longer nocturnal." I congratulated her, she headed back to bed, and she went to sleep.

Phew.

Palindromes

In case I had forgotten what wonderfully nerdy offspring we produced, I got a nice reminder this morning. Easter morning is a sugar free-for-all in our house. In fact, Halloween and it's relatively controlled sugar consumption (at least for us) pales in comparison. The candy filled eggs start early, and today we followed them with doughnuts. Wheeeeee!

As they were finishing breakfast, I could clearly see the kids' blood sugar spiking based on the speed with which they were talking and the fact that Leon was all but levitating over the table from the sugar surge. (He can eat an entire breakfast with neither his bottom touching his chair nor his feet touching the floor. It is a very unique balancing skill.) In this crazed state, my children decided to...frantically compile a list of palindromes. What are "palindromes" you ask? They are words that are spelled the same forwards and backwards, and my children took immense pleasure in giddily naming them off (and compiling a written list) as quickly as possible.  It helps that "poop" is on the list, but it still seemed like an awfully odd use of all that chocolate and sugar. It wasn't too much later when we headed to the park and the kids begged to run laps around a pond. We did not stop them!

It was actually a pretty eventful weekend. Some of our highlights include a visit from Jeff's parents, an egg hunt at Natalia's school (that the big kids were able to join), the first real beach trip of the year (although it was a bit chilly), park trips, Easter and my mother-in-law's birthday. 

I am happy to say everyone is now passed out after all of that. Another holiday without a serious injury. Phew!