I know it's too early, but sometimes I swear she smiles at me and it's the best smile. her eyes close the way most Donderoes do and her mouth is open and wide. She's been holding her head up a lot recently. She love sleeping on her belly, only supervised, of course. She will take a dummy. She still sleeps well, a long stretch or two during the day and a long stretch at night. I think until about 3.30 or 4am then she becomes very grunty and needs a diaper change or a serious burping.

Wiley took his first acting class today. They mostly just did pantomime and practiced not using words. I think this will be very helpful for Wiley as I also just had a parent teacher conference with his teacher, Carmen. She said he's doing well--right where she expects him to be with regards to reading and writing. The biggest things she is working with him on are "resting his voice" so he won't be the last kid finished with his work and because he talks all the time; and on keeping focus on some of his work (like when he tells stories in his "writer's workshop" so he tells the same story all the way through the story.) Wiley's really excited about math and asked for more math work. She said she'd give him some math problems to do. He loves getting quizzed on sums and can do addition and subtraction. He can count with no problems up to 100 and by 2s and 10s. Carmen said he has a tight group of friends now--which is something he persisted at since the beginning of the year. She is very impressed with his emotional development, the way he can express himself ("verbally precocious"), and with his ability to intuitively understand the emotions of others.

Archer keeps surprising me with his smarts. Since he isn't as much of a talker always, sometimes it's easy to forget he's still absorbing everything; at some point he'll bust out some information about the way things work or some amazingly creative story line. He still has his family of imaginary bears. Dago has done just about everything on the planet. If one day I ask Archer if he wants to go iceskating he will talk for the next 20 minutes about how Dago is an olympic skater. Sometimes, Dago is conveniently imaginary, though. Like one time when Archer said he didn't want to go to sleep by himself and I suggested Dago could keep him company. Archer replied, "but Dago's not real." Archer is very happy about being a big brother and a little brother and things this is very cool. He loves Cora Bell and is always giving her a kiss and a hug every chance he gets. He is also very careful about washing his hands before he does this!

These kids are great. Yesterday when the weather was so nice, we had a great day. York was at a photo shoot, so it was just me and the three kiddos. Wiley and Archer spent the day getting along really well and playing all kinds of games. Mostly they made clubhouses out of the dog house and the guest cabin. They helped me with some gardening and we played in the sand box. Cora Bell just hung out in the moby wrap. We topped the day off with watching star wars. Quite peaceful.