April 2021: a recap

I have no idea if I'll ever get caught up to real time in this space, but I'm just going to keep chugging along anyway. Here's a general recap of April:

We're always reading something. Even if it's "reading books" in ABC Mouse, via the iPad:

In this season of life, millions of stuffed animals are VERY much a part of our daily lives. Trumpkin, obviously, but also Trumpkin's friends. You never know where you'll find them:

Hallie continued with all of the baby progress and development:

The big girls continued to be such marvelous help with watching Hallie, keeping her safe, and entertaining her:

Everyone still loves Brad:

I made sure to get in a few pictures with my offspring:

If you've never been to our house, I should maybe explain that we have an ENORMOUS mirror on a wall that most people never would have thought to put a mirror (we inherited it with the house- we did not put it there ourselves). It would be really pricy to have it removed, so we've just learned to live with the super strange mirror. 

And sometimes we use it for selfies.

We've hit a season where there are a lot of sibling squabbles, which is hard and frustrating. I spend a lot of my time mediating fights, trying to instill good habits of interpersonal communication and conflict resolution, and generally disciplining bad behavior resulting in (or from?) sisterly fights. That said, I did snap some pictures of sweet moments:

These two are the primary culprits for the squabbles. Bless.

These two are rarely ever squabbling.

And I grabbed this picture of Lily and our neighbor, Bruce. He and his wife live behind us, and Lily really attached herself to Bruce over the past year. When we were pandemic-ing particularly hard here in Durham, they would chat in the yard all the time (Lily *mostly* remembering to socially distance). If Lily was outside, Bruce could not even open his front door without her hollering, "MR. BRUCE??", never missing a beat. While it can be an aggressive and overwhelming form of affection, Bruce has loved it and loves Lily.

We also finished the school year on April 30! Although, I didn't plan things out well enough to get a picture of that. Right after we wrapped April, May came in hot with ALL THE THINGS. As May usually does...