Here is a very delayed update on the kids, mostly for the baby book, but also for any interested grandparents and friends. :)

Brigid: Brigid and I have started reading chapter books together; we're going back and forth between the Little House books and the Betsy-Tacy books. We both really enjoy it. She's also beginning to really enjoy kids' science books - books that tell you all about penguins maybe, their habitat and life cycle. Or about the inside of the human body - about bones and tendons and muscles. I love watching her learn.
-When we went camping, Brigid had a BLAST with the other kids, especially Becca. They sat in the hammock together for hours, talking, or having Becca read to them both.
-When I watch Brie playing (and she and Sam and Jane and Kate play together for hours every day), it's easy to remember what a cheeful, excitable baby she was. Now, at five, she'll sit still to color or read - but when she's playing, she still bounces. :) She runs from here to there, making up stories, coming up with ideas, acting them out, climbing and jumping, and drawing all of her siblings into her imaginary worlds. Love watching that.
-Brie's always loved climbing, but she's getting better and better at it. The grandparents B. got her a trapeze and rings for her birthday, and you should see that girl turn flips!
-Brie's also learning to communicate her ideas better and better - I love hearing the analogies she comes up with!
-It is a great gift to have Brigid as the oldest, because she is so good with her siblings. She's kind to them, and (usually) when they imitate her, it's good habits that they're imitating. Also, she just sparkles with imagination, and leads the troops merrily through many fantastic games and adventures.
-Brie's starting kindergarten next month, and we'll be homeschooling her. I don't remember if I blogged about this before, but there's no half-day kindergarten in our area, and neither Adam nor I liked the public school option here. (In addition, California has crazy truancy laws. I remember looking into them and thinking, "so if, say, Brie's grandpa came out from Nebraska for the week, I wouldn't be allowed to keep her home to hang out with him? That's crazy!" But true. In CA, you're not allowed to have kids out of school for anything other than medical reasons. Good grief.) There are other reasons we're going this route, but they're too long to get into here. I'm still a little surprised that we're homeschooling, but the more I look into it, the more excited I'm becoming. I think it's going to be a really good thing for our family. And Brigid's very excited about it. I can't help thinking she's going to LOVE reading.

Samuel: Sam gave up his nap a few months ago, when we moved him to the bottom bunk of the smaller bunkbed. But since then, he's taken to sleeping in. Today he slept till 11 a.m.! But it's a good thing, I think. From what I can tell, he does better on the days he gets an hour or two more of sleep. I think he still really needs the extra sleep his afternoon nap gave him, and sleeping in fills that need for him. Sleeping in = cheerful Sam. Very fair trade.
-When we went camping, Sam seemed to really enjoy making sand castles down by the river. And sitting with Cyndi and throwing big rocks into the water.
-Poor kiddo got carsick going both into and out of Kings Canyon. But oh, I wish you could have seen what a trooper he was. As soon as he was done being sick, he was cheerful. And he was helpful in catching it in a bucket (once we learned that he needed one) and keeping a towel on himself so that it would be easier to clean up if it happened again (which it did) and all sorts of things like that. We told him (from a kids' book we're reading these days) "Sam es valiente!" Because he was: so brave. This kiddo may throw fits about little things, but when (kid-sized) emergencies hit, he keeps his head. I hate that he got motion-sick (oh, I remember doing that as a kid!), but it was amazing to see how well he handled it.
-Samuel loves rhymes, and makes up many poems. He seems to have his dad's gift for wordplay.
-Sam's finally potty-training, and though it's slow-going, it's actually going. My new favorite potty-training tip is: wait till they're ready. The difference between how he's responding now, and how he responded five months ago is vast.
-Sam concentrates very hard on what he's doing. (This, btw, is part of why potty-training is slow for him: if he's intent on his play, he doesn't notice that he has to pee.) Sometimes I think he'll make a good academic someday, because he has that combination of intensity and stubbornness and imagination that a good academic needs.
-Sam's also still super-snuggly, and asks frequently to be carried - not so much because he doesn't want to walk, I think, but because he wants the hug. He is such a boy (oh boy) but he is so very sweet.
-Pray for Samuel, when you think of it, that he will come to know and love the Lord Jesus. Sam is full of many very strong parts, and it feels right now like he is trying to grow them all into a whole person. I think he got a bit derailed in that hard year when the twins were born, and he's doing a lot of growing right now to make up for it. Please pray that the Lord blesses him with grace in his growing, and peace in his heart, and that he grows in the knowledge and love of the Lord.

Jane: When Katie fell down yesterday, Jane went and got a stuffed animal, and brought it to her to make her feel better.
-Jane is, I think, a bit of an introvert. I'll often find her sitting by the bookshelf, happily paging through books by herself. She's slightly hyper when around our family, but when she's around strangers, she clams up. I can tell already that she's got her own quirky view of the world, and she'd rather interact with it on her own terms, thank you. And those terms are a funny mix of wildness and reserve. She's very wired and she very much needs her space - except she very much needs her people too. Jane seems always to be dancing on the inside, looking from one thing to another, and sometimes, it seems, just needs a bit of space to take it all in, because she pays attention to EVERYTHING.
-Jane has taken to walking around the house wearing a backpack and boots. It's hilarious. She's this little tiny pixey of a girl, and she's wearing her sibling's Bob backpack, and Brigid's hot pink Crock boots, which are huge on her. She comes to me with the backpack asking, "on? on?", but she puts the boots on herself.
-Jane also puts on every other shoe she can find - but she insists that I remove them for her before she sits down to eat.
-Jane has started - in addition to her comprehensible words - babbling "gollygollygolly" all day long. It's clearly a stand-in for the words she doesn't know, because she'll do things like grab a book and come over and say, "gollygollygollyBOOKgollygolly."
-Jane's first sentence, "Bye-bye, doggie!"
-Jane REALLY does not like loud noises.

Ekaterine: First sentence! "There's Dad!" She and Jane have been saying "there he is" and "there she is" for quite awhile yet, but the sentence has been said as one word, if that makes sense. This was the frist time she purposefully put a couple of words together on her own.
-Kate loves to sing and dance. She's always the first kid to sing along with me if I'm singing and to dance if I put music on. She puts both hands above her head and quick-steps with her feet.
-Kate loves to find circuits to run. Around the pew in church or up the sidewalk steps and down the grass hill and 'round again just outside our condo.
-Kate is grounded. I don't think her world rocks very much, except maybe a bit when she gets hurt. She likes to mimic and make funny frowny-faces, but she always thinks that it's a great joke. Katie is peaceable inside. That might sound dull, but it isn't. She's funny, she's a crazy runner and dancer, but she is also at home with herself, I think.
-another sentence from Kate, after I gave Jane a turn with their water bottle: "No, no, no, no, no! ME bottle! No!"
-Katie bounces when she's happy - she walks with this extra spring every other step. It's so cute.

Twin stuff:
-It's been interesting, as the girls learn to talk, to hear how they learn mostly the same words, but sometimes say them differently. For instance, for "peek-a-boo", Jane says "bee-bo" and Ekaterine says "ba-bay".
-I can tell we're about to hit the "word explosion". They're picking up new words by the day, and it's exciting. Love hearing their thoughts come to life!
-they're learning to run, and to climb stairs holding onto the rails
-They're getting easier to tell apart (I think). It's funny: every once in awhile they'll have what I call "identical days" when for some reason they look even more alike that usual. But it really seems true to me that the older they get, the more their personalities show in their faces.
It's also true that I never realized how much I relied on easy exterior clues (gender, height, hair color) to tell my kids apart until I had Jane and Kate, and had to find other ways to do it. I never would have known what a crutch those outside clues were unless I'd had MZ twins. In some ways, it feels like I'm getting to know Ekaterine and Jane better, sooner, because I can't just know what they look like. I have to know what they feel like inside, how they act, what their hearts are like. In some ways, it's a very cool experience.

Below is a list of the words Kate and Jane know; though I'm pretty sure it's incomplete.

Twin word list:
-Daddy
-Mommy
-Brie
-Sam (this one is tricky for them)
-there he is!
-peek-a-boo
-yummy
-more
-down
-on/off (same word, associated with the light switch)
-water
-smoothie
-no (or, more accurately, nonononono! for Jane)
-"vroom"
-"roar"
-"bark"
-"meow"
-baby
-grandma
-grandpa
-ball
-dolly
-bucket
-Me! (Kate)
-click
-diaper
-hi
-bye
-banana
-night-night
-nice
-shoes
-belly-button
-uh-oh
-down
-Jane ("jay-jay") (Jane)
-Katie ("day-dee")
-all done
-watermelon ("waa-meh") (Kate)
-hat
-balloon (Jane)
-doggie
-kitty
-bottle
-"the end"
-read
-dip
-up
-down
-water ("walawalawala")
-cracker
-cookie
-eyes
-nose
-teeth
-look!