Olive's prayer just now: "Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day, please bless Mommy will have a great night, and please bless that Heavenly Father loves all the daddys amd brothers and sisters. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen." And then she asked me if Heavenly Father heard her. I said he did, and she said, "Where is he, behind the roof?"

Here's Olive with her favorite boy buddy, Konner, at library craft time.

I was pretty impressed with her letter b. And today when she was trying to write the number 2, she had a little bit of a hard time with it. But once she figured it out her whole face lit up, and she asked if she could keep writing 2's.

It's happening. George has started climbing out of his crib. I actually expected him to do it way sooner than this because he's such an agile little guy. But anyway, it's happening now. Bedtime was really rough for a few nights until I thought, "What did I do when the girls started doing this?" And then Chris reminded me the total hell we went through for a few months with them, until I started singing them to sleep. Staying with them until they went to sleep was against my ideals at the time, but I chucked that ideal out the window when I realized how much more peaceful bedtime was for them and for me. If doing that is my big crime as a mom, I'll happily be that criminal! It's been about 2 years that I've been singing them to sleep. And I knew doing that with Georgey would be helpful. So, I sat the girls down and told them it was time to start going to bed on their own; that Mommy and Daddy would still tuck them in and listen to their prayers, and that we'd leave their door open if they needed it, but that they had to go to bed on their own. They've been little champs about it. They chat and sing for just a few minutes, and then they go to sleep just fine. And staying with Georgey is working well. Sleep is precious around here; ideals are for the birds.

I've been doing planks as part of my exercise lately, and they're getting longer and longer and thus harder and harder. I usually do it when Chris is around, and he'll either do it with me or talk me through it. I really need that, they're so hard that I'm trembling (and almost crying) by the time I'm done. Today I did it after he left for work, and it was extra tough because I had already done 3 sets of them at Staci's this morning. Not too far into it, my whole body started shaking, and I wanted to give up. Olive came over, rested her hand gently on mine, and quietly said, "You can do this, Mommy." My sweet, special girl.

George and Lucy were just shooing a fly away from their dinner. Olive came in and said, "I'll handle this," and then went to work aggressively swatting at it.