A few of my favorite moments from the last week:

• Jeffrey crawling into bed with us one cold morning, huddled between our knees like a sleeping puppy, with his blanket over his head.


• The girls in their hammocks at the USS Constitution Museum


• Beth and Eleanor "taking a nap" one afternoon (oh, the decibel level on the giggling!). I heard Beth get out of bed at one point, and when I went in to wake them up (they did finally fall asleep), Beth's doll Baby Margie was in the crib with Eleanor. I guess she decided her friend needed a doll to snuggle with.


• Snuggling sweet baby William


• Rub-a-dub dub, three kids in a tub

• The "We did it!" moment when Brooke and I got to the Children's Museum on the T. I've already written about this, but wow! were we impressed with our cool streetwise urban mommy selves.


• Bethie and Eleanor giving each other hugs, over and over, and falling down almost every time.


• Discovering the Danish Pastry House with Brooke ('cause I never would have gone in by myself). Cream-filled marzipan frogs...yum.


• Radio Jeffrey: all talk, all the time.


• The morning our friends left, when Scott was pushing the trundle under Beth's bed, and she wailed, "Where's Jeffrey going to sleep?"


• The chaos of the playroom


• The Swiffer Brigade, in their newspaper hats!

Some growing up...

Sarah actually started real hands-and-knees crawling the day after I posted the video clips of her scootching around the kitchen. She's getting terribly fast, and is even more daring with her standing-up maneuvers: pushing her belly into the back of the pew at church so she can lift up her hands and grin at the people behind us; attempting the same while leaning against the bathtub (she nearly went over backward that time); actually trying to climb in the bathtub to get to the rubber ducks inside.

Oh, how she loves those ducks! Beth loved them at this age too (her first word was "Huckies!"). Sarah's dragging them with her everywhere, and rolling around on the living room floor with them, and stuffing their rubber heads in her mouth.

Bethie and I both got haircuts today (serious short cut for me, a trim for her) and she got lots of attention from the orange-haired old ladies in the salon. "Oh, look at that curl!" "We used to look like that, huh?" Beth sat atop two cushions in a salon chair, a cape with pictures of doggies on it thrown around her little shoulders, gnawing on an Italian sesame cookie someone had given her. This haircut was serious, grown-up business, not to be taken lightly.

She speaks! (Kind of)

So, this morning I was getting wiggly little Sarah dressed, and Bethie came over to say hi, and as her head got close to Sarah's, little bitty Sarah exclaimed, "Beh!" With major glee and excitement and obvious pleasure. Sarah loves her sister.

I think she knows her sister's name, and she just has to work on the "th" sound ('cause, you know, even Beff can't say it yet). That's my story. And I'm sticking to it.

Five kids, two strollers, and a trip on the T

My friend Brooke, and her three kids, and (until yesterday when he took a train down to Philly) her husband Brian are staying with us this week, and it's been a whole heap of Adventure Days in a row. Beth is thrilled. Exhausted and all, but thrilled. She has two friends to run around the house with, which is what they've done for HOURS — they run shrieking and chasing each other around the loop in the house. It's going to be Very Lonely when they leave, and I'm not looking forward to the tears and the hangdog looks. (Beth may handle it fine. The tears may be mine.)

Today we took them to the Boston Children's Museum, and we had the extra-brilliant idea of doing the trip on the T. We are INSANE. And it was FUN. We walked down to the bus stop, wrangled the strollers onto the bus, got off at Harvard Station, took the Red Line down to South Station (the view as you're crossing the Charles is gorgeous), got off, found the right elevators to get out, and walked three blocks to the museum.

Silly us — today is Veterans Day, and every kid who was out of school was at the Children's Museum, and the Boston Ballet was doing a special Nutcracker presentation. The museum was packed. We holed up on the upstairs floors, avoided all the little ballerinas standing in line for the performances, and had ourselves quite the good time. I think Beth's favorite thing was playing with the gigantic chess set. And we're going to have to take Scott back just so he can see the Japanese house (shipped in pieces from Kyoto) they have on the third floor.

On the way home we piled all three girls on the double stroller, and since they'd played hard and hadn't had naps, they all conked out. That's a successful outing!

To the tune of the Yogi Bear theme song...

Sarah Bear is smarter than the average bear
Sarah Bear is always pulling Mommy's hair
Sitting in her high chair you will find her there
Stuffing down more veggies than the average bear

Beth-Beth is Sarah's sister and they're in cahoots
They giggle at each other and it's really cute
Sometimes a girl gets jealous, but it's always moot
'Cause when they work together they know they get more loot

Mommy's here to try to keep our girls in line
They push their bedtime back until it's after nine
Sure her job is tough, but you won't hear her whine
'Cause she gets hugs and kisses, and that suits her just fine

(If you've seen the High School Jim "Yogi Bear" video on Cartoon Network's Boomerang, well, that's what got us going.)