Top Ten Reasons Why it's Good to Have All Girls #2

#2: You Get to Poke Holes in Their Ears.

(For those of you who are new to the blog, you can catch up on the other Top Ten posts here)

I have wanted to pierce my girls' ears ever since Amy was about 6 months old. Joseph was dead set against it. Our compromise was this: At the age of 5, the girls should be able to understand pain and the responsibility associated with taking care of pierced ears and can then decide for themselves. So, for the past year, I have subconsciously convinced Amy that she wanted earrings. We just happened to be in a mall in Savannah on Black Friday (another story for another time) which was the day after Amy's 5th birthday. As we entered the mall, Claire's was right there. I asked Amy if she wanted to get her ears pierced and--surprisingly--she said yes. We went and picked out a pair of earrings, but after watching another girl get her ears pierced, Amy said: "That hurts. I don't want earrings." We walked out of the store, but she kept looking back. She changed her mind at the last minute, and decided that she did want earrings after all. She was very brave and only cried from the initial shock. She has been modeling her pretty blue-green earrings ever since.

Top 10 Reasons Why it's Good to Have All Girls #3

#3: Creative Color Coordinating: Claire has found a new hobby...munching on markers. Claire is very sneaky in this endeavor. She takes markers from Amy when neither Amy nor mommy are looking. Then she hides. Claire likes to experiment with different colors (and her 5 senses). So, sometimes they mix. But Crayola has made things way more complicated. It's not just "green" anymore. It's "mountain meadow". And with all this creative color coordinating, we must match Claire's skin tone with "piggy pink", her eyes with "beaver", and her hair with "desert sand". (Shout out to Crayola for always making their products non-toxic!)

Top 10 Reasons Why it's Good to Have All Girls #4

#4: Natural Hair Styling Skills: Kala has two habits--her passy, and her hair. Lately, she has been teething and not feeling well. When this happens, she twirls her hair so much that she curls it! (And it actually looks really good.) Well I guess if you can't have a kid with curly hair, at least have one that will curl it herself!

Top Ten Reasons Why it's Good to Have All Girls #5

#5: Culinary Prowess: Yes, that's a load of flour all over the stove. Mikala (shown in time-out) wanted to make bread. She was caught white-handed, shamelessly flouring the kitchen. We're not quite sure why she would do this, except for the pleasure she receives watching Mommy clean up her gratuitous messes. Amy wanted to help clean up. The thought was appreciated, but she only managed to make it worse. Keeping the Hood House clean is an art. It involves constantly cleaning while at the same time preventing Thing #1 and Thing #2 from coming in behind you and destroying your work. If you get behind, it takes a village to catch back up. Here are some housekeeping stats for the interested reader:

Average numbers per Day:

• 2 loads of laundry (yep, two full super-sized loads everyday)
• 0.75 dishwasher loads
• 2-3 living room cleanings
• 12-16 diaper changes
• 2 children bathed
• 5-10 soaked barf rags (Sara)
• 10 changes of clothes (mostly for Sara)
• 10-30 time-out sessions
• 4 books
• 6 prayers

and much, much more!

Top Ten Reasons Why it's Good to Have All Girls #6

#6: Luscious Locks
Hood-hair is special. Just ask Joseph. It sticks straight out of your head until it reaches a terminal length, at which it falls down with thick, wavy, gorgeous locks. This is great for hood girls. This is not great for hood guys. Just ask Joseph. Except for Joseph's short lived John Lennon phase as a teenager, he has had short hair. Short hood-hair cannot be cut like normal hair. It must be painstakingly sculpted. Just ask Tammy. Sometimes the sculpting doesn't go so well. Just ask Joseph's snickering co-workers.
The girls have it made. They can live their lives with hood-hair to the fullest. Good hair days will be the norm for them, and they won't ever have to have their hair sculpted.
By the way, Caleb and Thomas have figured out the secret to living with hood-hair--Going Bald and buzzing off what's left. Joseph is contemplating this solution.

Top Ten Reasons Why It's Good to Have All Girls #7

#7: They're so dern beautiful

Claire's 6 month pictures have arrived. On picture day, Claire had two bruises--one on each side of her forehead. If it were only one bruise, we could turn her head the right way to fix it. Since there were two, we just embraced the contusions. Luckily, we're pretty handy with photoshop, and once the photos were scanned in, we made the bruises (mostly) disappear.

Top Ten Reasons Why It's Good to Have All Girls #8

#8: All the Drama

There's never a dull moment at the Hood Home. The current percent-crying-time estimates for all the girls are: 15% (Sara), 12% (Claire), 4% (Mikala), and 6% (Amy). Combining these percentages, the probability of at least one child crying at any point in time is 37%. This means that about a third of the time, someone is crying or whining or pitching a fit or throwing a wobbly (as the Australians say it). We do not have a lot of crying pictures. This is probably because crying is typically ugly. And, as a rule, while picture taking, one tends to avoid ugly.

These pictures have a story. Although this is cheating, Amy's picture is not a genuine pouty face. She likes to make faces while posing for the camera. This was taken in Newberry behind Grandma Baker's house. Amy, however, is the ugliest of them all when she throws a wobbly. Mikala actually had a good excuse for her wailing. If Mikala's picture had included her hands, you'd see them covered in bandages. She burned her hands on a hot merry-go-round (ouch). Claire and Sara need no excuse to cry. Their default activity is crying. If they are not sleeping, eating, or being held, they tend to break out in a cry-chorus. Cliare does have her moments lately when she has so much fun playing that she forgets to cry--until she see mommy walk by, or just hears her voice.

At the Hood Home, we know drama.

Top Ten Reasons Why It's Good to Have All Girls #9

#9: Motherly Instincts

Amy loves to hold Claire and Sara. She has a very gentle way with the babies and is always concerned when they cry. Amy always says: "I wanolder," which, being interpreted, means: "My I please hold her?" She then talks to them in a very high-pitched "mommy" voice to try and keep them happy.

Mikala's motherly instincts are slightly less developed at this point (I think that's an oxymoron: "developed instincts"). More precisely, she has the motherly instincts of the boogie monster. She likes to make Claire laugh, but it often turns into a laugh-cry and soon develops into a cry-cry as Mikala get more excited and louder. Mikala does love her sisters very much, she just likes to express it in her own way.

Top Ten Reasons Why It's Good to Have All Girls #10

#10: It's really easy to make them match.

These are the girls' Christmas dresses for 2007. They had their pictures taken in them, along with their new cousin Cadence (the new daughter of Tammy's sister Maria and hubby Will). Cadence had the same dress as the rest of the girls. When the pictures come in, we will post. I wish that we were able to go the studio, sit for a picture, and immediately walk away with a digital file that we can do with as we please. Instead, the studios are still taking analog photographs, and they still "own" the image, and it is probably illegal to even scan it to post it on a blog. Oh well..

We are all decompressing from the holidays. The kids are enjoying their new things. There is a problem with the train table though. The kids like to take the track apart, and it's so complicated to put together that it just ends up staying apart until a tall person comes along to put it back together for them. We are probably going to just glue sections of it together and leave them a few track pieces separated so that they can be creative.

Sara is slowly becoming more interactive. She has smiled (real smiles) for Mommy a couple of times (all Daddy gets is gas smiles--except for one time that looked like it may have been real, but was still very likely just gas). It is difficult to have to wait so long for the interactive phase. She is almost 4 months old (but only 2 months from her due date). She has beautiful blue eyes, and she's somehow looking more like a Hood everyday. I guess you are what you eat.