It's starting to feel like home, with coats hanging near cubbies and routines for the morning (except this morning, when William woke up at 4:52 and Penny followed soon thereafter...) and the drive to school for William and Marilee and the bus pickup for Penny. They are starting to make friends. They are starting to call this place home.

Penny spends most of her free time reading and writing (hmm, I guess what they say about first children following in their parents' footsteps is true, extra chromosome or not):

 A few nights ago, she came home with her first homework assignment of the year, which required her to make a graph by rolling a dice and plotting out the number she rolled. I went through it with her once, and then I drew another chart for her to fill in when she wanted to do it again. I came back into the room a few minutes later to find her erasing the initial graph. "Pen, what are you doing?"

"I wanted to keep doing homework," she said. I guess that's a good sign?

William and Marilee aren't quite as studious:

But they are enjoying themselves as much as their big sister. William has discovered Thomas the Train (due to a generous gift of four bins of old trains and tracks from a neighbor) as well as the Ipad ("But Dad," he told Peter the other day, "there are so many challenging things on the Ipad!"). Marilee wants to be her big brother so she scampers after him and follows him in everything he does.

There are moments of yelling and crying every day, with time outs and apologies and trying again. But the smiles are beginning to outpace the tears: