I’m only going to ask you once, please don’t pee on the chickens.

Q: Can I pee on Tessa?
A: No.
Q: Can I pee off of the deck?
A: No.
Q: Can I pee on the slide?
A: No.

Q: Most superheros are regular people with alter egos. Batman is Bruce Wayne, Ironman is Tony Stark. Who is Spiderman?
A: Emmett!

Hold still! I have to pick your nose.

I don’t need a bath. I already took one a long time ago.

…and that’s the story of the Princess and the Pea.
–Daddy, why did the Princess pee under her bed?

Q: We are going to bring home a new baby. Are you excited to have a new baby to play with?
A: Riley is not a baby. Riley is a big boy. Tessa is a baby.
Q: And do you like babies?
A: No.

(sung) Hakuna Matata, it’s such a wonderful phrase. It means no Murphys for the rest of your days… (no worries)

Mommy, are you taking your mat to yogurt? (yoga)

If you ride the bicycle, you need to be wearing underwear.

Q: Will our new brother be a kitten like Tessa? (We call Tessa kitten because she is cute and cuddly with claws.)

Tessa, if you are going to pee standing up, please take your shoes off too.

Sylvia, you still have a beaver on your forehead? (Sylvia recently stayed home from school due to fever.)

You have blonde hair? I have blonde hair and Riley has blonde hair. Mommy’s hair is grey.

No, thank you, Wall!
–said by Tessa after she accidentally ran face-first into the wall.

We got a bunch of new books–super hero books–and now we can’t get enough of being the good guy. We’ve learned that most super heros have alter egos. Peter Parker is Spiderman. Tony Stark is Iron Man. Bruce Wayne is Batman. In the case of Superman, however, his alter ego is mild mannered Clark Kent. Regardless, everyone who puts on a mask, is a person underneath.

Our favorites are Spiderman and Iron Man. We’ve seen a few cartoons, and we love how they help each other. Like how sometimes Spiderman helps Thor, who, by the way, we love because he has a hammer. We even like the Super Friends. Every morning we wake up and put on a costume or cape, grab a sword and get to work helping imaginary people who need saving.

We got a new pool and we are spending a lot of time outside. Tessa likes to pretend that she’s Tinkerbell, flying around the yard. Riley imagines that he is helping to foil Penguin’s bank heist. And Emmett climbs through the trees, talking to the animals and swinging like Spiderman. We caught a few butterflies yesterday, and we talked about how the Tinkerbell’s fairy friends painted their wings. We are planning on catching some bees, but we have to wait until some more flowers bloom first.

We love to help each other, like the Avengers. Individually, the Avengers are strong. But as a team, they are stronger. When we wrestle, we like to pretend that we are in the evil clutches of Mom or Dad and that we need help to get away. “Help,” one of us yells. And the other two pull until we are free. “Whew. That was close,” we say. And we start it all over again.

Pig Piles are great too. It starts with one of us tripping and falling to the ground. Another belly flops on top and then the last one jumps on top too. We yell, “Pig Pile,” and laugh and giggle until we all untangle or until someone gets a foot in the face. Riley likes to sit on top pretending that he’s riding a great beast.

We are looking forward to the new baby coming home. Despite everyone’s guess of a little girl, Riley and Emmett were excited when we found out officially that we are getting a new baby brother. Now we are trying to come up with a name. Riley and Tessa say no to everything. Tessa wants to name him Gabby and Riley likes the name Riley. We are still working on that. We don’t have as much time as we thought, though. The delivery date has been moved up to August 31st. So, only around two and a half months away. Very exciting!

Talk soon,
E, R and T

We got new bikes! Big kids bikes, with training wheels. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before we take the training wheels off. Riley loves his new bike. The first time he got on it, he stayed on it until he could peddle all by himself. He was determined. Tessa and Emmett, not so much. Tessa loved the princess theme, but didn’t like to wear the helmet. And Emmett thought that running was faster than biking. Dad actually duct taped his feet to the peddles to get him accustomed to the motion of peddling. And, guess what? It worked! Turns out Dad isn’t so crazy after all!

The day after the duct tape came off, Emmett had almost no trouble peddling. The problem is that the break on these bikes is activated when the rider peddles backward. Because it is an easier motion to peddle backwards than forwards, we all wanted to peddle backwards. But that, obviously, takes you nowhere. But we are all going somewhere now! Sometimes it’s too fast, and sometimes it’s not in the direction we want, but we are going…

Another thing that we are all doing is reading. We love that too. We have many books memorized, almost word for word. And Emmett has lot of words memorized and he’s starting to sound words out that he doesn’t know as well. Our favorite book right now is the Big Fat Cow that went Kapow. The first part is about raining big, fat cows. So now, when it rains, we are all looking for the big fat cows that come with the rain. Also, in the book is a story about a girl named Ruth, and she has a super scooter. When we ride our scooters, we like to talk about Ruth. And how we also have super scooters.

Mom and Dad showed us thumb wars and how to give wet willies. We like to dance and run around and give wet willies and play thumb wars before bed. Our favorite music right now is Deep Forest. Emmett sings along and we all shake our hips. It’s great! And now that Dad is all done with his school (forever we all hope!) he can spend more time with us, dancing and playing thumb wars.

School is almost out and we are looking forward to summer camp. We get to swim and do yoga and cook and learn Hebrew. It’s going to be great! The pool at school isn’t as great as the one at swim lessons, where we get to go underwater and we are learning how to flip over and float on our backs. But we get to get wet and run around outside. What’s better than that?

We adopted a new doggie, Isaac, from the neighbors when they needed to find a home for him. He’s a big German Shepherd, who is mellow and likes to come with us everywhere. Riley hopes that Isaac will be able to sleep in his room when he gets a little bit bigger. We all love Isaac and we are so happy with his addition to our family.

Check back in next month, when hopefully our house is under contract and we are planning on moving to a house where we all sleep uninterrupted! Where we can get ready for our new sibling to come home!

Chat soon,
Emmett, Riley, and Tessa

We said goodbye to our last fuzzy friend, Tally, last night. She was almost 14-years-old, which is like 110 in doggie years. That is to say that she had a long, happy life. She came along shortly after Mom and Dad started dating. She’s enjoyed almost every milestone there was along the way. She ended her life as she loved to live it: A walk with Dad and with him by her side.

She was the youngest pup in her pack, and then in what seemed like the blink of an eye, she was the elder statesman. She was the alpha, in charge of maintaining the status quo. In doing this, she set herself apart, watching and refereeing instead of playing the game. But in the year since she lost her last pack-mate, she reverted a bit to her puppyhood. She would jump and play with Dad, excited for every morning walk and for afternoons working in the backyard.

During the past few months, she withdrew into the quiet coolness of the basement, spending most of her time sleeping. We saw less and less of her, and Riley often said, “I miss my Tally,” not realizing that she was there with him the whole time.

That is how it will be going forward, with all of our lost puppies. We will miss them, but they are always right here with us. We will not forget that.

We had our Pacifier Party! It was wonderful. We had cupcakes and balloons at school with our friends (which was nice because Emmett could take part in it, even if he has no pacifier to give up), then we marched down the hall to the infant room and we gave our pacifiers to the babies. It was perfect. We were so proud. Right up until we reached the top of the stairs on our way to our room for nap that day. At that point, you would have thought that the world was ending.

We screamed, we threw toys against the wall and against the door, we hit each other, and we did not care that Mom was trying to be patient and understanding. We wanted our pacifiers.

Fast forward one week: We are no longer asking for our pacifiers, but we still are not napping. It is as if recognizing that we could live without pacifiers made us believe that we could live without Bunny and without Lamby too. (Mom and Dad take away privileges when we are bad, and it is a privilege to have a snuggly Bunny or Lamby and blanket when we nap.) If we just sat in our beds quietly during naptime, but didn’t nap, it would be okay. But we don’t do that. We jump off of our beds. We climb up on the cubbies and jump off of them. We pull the coat hooks out of the wall. We empty the dresser. We get into the booty wipes and we de-stuff the box. It’s mayhem.

So yesterday, we lost all of our privileges. We lost all our stuffed animals, our blankets, our favorites toys, and our freedom. We were confined to our room yesterday afternoon and we weren’t allowed to go to swim lessons. Sound harsh? We didn’t care. We made up a new game called Owe-y Boo-Boo. It involves one person leaning up against the wall, and the other grabbing that person and throwing him or her to the floor. It was great fun.

We are so exhausted that Tessa almost fell asleep at recess yesterday. Her teacher was wondering if she was getting enough sleep at home. The flip side of that is that Tessa has been so tired that she is no longer trying to push her friends around the playground, which may or may not have been something that she picked up from her older brothers.

So where does that leave us today? Well, we aren’t really sure. Last night wasn’t great. Turns out it is not so comfortable sleeping in a bed with no pillow or stuffies. Just one, prison-issued blanket. We cried for a bit and asked for more of our stuff. To no avail. But this morning we declared that we are going to be nice! We want our toys and our stuffed animals and popcorn! Popcorn? Yeah, we aren’t sure where that came from either, as we have only had it once or twice in our lives, but we asked for it.

And Mom said that if we are nice we can have it. Only problem is that our memories are short these days when it comes to privileges and long when it comes to demands.

Stay tuned,
The Littlest Pigs

We were driving around last week, trying to find a new house, when Riley began to shout something from the backseat.

“Pharaoh! Let us go Pharoah! It’s not nice!” he said.

“Pharaoh isn’t nice,” Tessa said.

“Pharaoh is mean to Moses,” Riley said.

“Mean,” Emmett said.

We studied Passover at school and we brought all of our new found knowledge home. Riley saw a picture of a basket in a book and he told Mom that Moses was in the basket. Tessa talked about how she played with lice at school. (In actuality, we were learning about the plagues and Tessa made a picture with black glitter, which was supposed to be lice. So, just so we are clear, no real lice.) Emmett got to part the waters of the Red Sea, and he really enjoyed doing it.

We’ve been looking for a new house for a while now. We don’t have enough rooms in the house as it is (reference the Thunderdome incidents) and when our new little sister comes home, if we have to further double up on rooms, Mom and Dad’s tenuous grip on sanity might permanently be lost. I’m not joking when I say that we’ve driven 100’s of miles looking for a new home.

Anyway, when we were out in an area where homes were currently being built, Riley decided he had to pee. Dad spotted a Port-a-Potty and he ducked in there with Riley. It happened to be blue, which is Riley’s favorite color. When Riley was done, Emmett decided he had to go. And when Emmett was done, Tessa tried to take her diaper off and say she needed to go too. A good time was had by all. Except for Dad who experienced an anxiety attack trying to get both boys to pee without actually touching anything inside the potty.

Later in the week, while driving around a different neighborhood, Riley saw another Port-a-Potty and said that he had to pee and he preferred to go in the blue potty.

“It’s a good potty. It’s blue. I like it,” Riley said.