Boring Espanol

We had our homeschooling co-op today (the kids and I call it "homeschooling class"). I have become the art teacher this year. I had fun earlier planning out lessons through Christmas, and now that we have had our 3rd art class, I'm seeing how all this will work in reality. It's actually going really well. The kids - even the young ones - are following instructions as they should. And I'm often impressed with their talents.

Today, however, we were rushed a bit cause we were adding in a Spanish class taught by an 80 year old woman from our church. She apparently speaks several languages and has taught/tutored Spanish during her life. A few other adults (from the church, I assume) joined us for this class, and so the biggest problem was that the instructor was gearing it towards an adult level. And she went on for an hour. Now, she did start with going over the alphabet sounds, but man, was that a boring hour! The kids amazingly sat still and quiet during all this.

Oh well.

Hello, Old Friend

So it's been a year and a half. I dropped the ball on this blog. Possibly never to return...I have sat down a small handful of times to make an attempt at resurrecting it. But I always got too bogged down in a long update since I last wrote. So I always ended up deleting it.

I'm going to post this, and maybe I won't write any more. Or maybe I will. No promises.

But we're heading into summer where there is more free time for this homeschooling mom...

Snow!

Luke the Climber

While out of town over Thanksgiving at Grandma and Grandpa B's, Luke discovered that he could climb out of his pack n' play.

This was the first trip where all three kids had shared the same room, and after Erin had picked him up out of his pack n' play one morning, he thought he'd try it for himself the following morning.

So naturally, when we got back home, he climbed right out of his big crib. I waited a few days to see if he would repeat this, and he did continue to do it a few more times. So we knew the crib days were over.

He spent his first night out of his crib a couple of nights ago and he's doing great with it. He has such a solid bedtime and naptime routine that he knows it's time to sleep. He lays right down and stays put (well, for his two naps so far, he has gotten up once each time, but not again after I tell him to lay back down).

You never know how they are going to do with this new freedom, but his is making it so easy on us. Such a big boy.

Happy Birthday to you...

Happy Birthday Luke! 2 years out in the big world! What have you been up to?

Well, I'm talking in short sentences now. And here are a few of my pronunciations:

Erin: "ya ya"
Noah: "wa wa"
Lukie: "gookie"
Milk: "nowk"
Giraffe or Zebra: "bik-a-ba"

My favorite phrases are "No, me do it!" and "Tickle me now!!"

I'm quickly turning into the stereotypical two year old with my huge mood swings and melt-downs when I don't get what I want. But I'm also full of laughs and smiles and I love my family so much. I love making them laugh with my silliness.

I love copying my big brother and I'll do anything he tells me to, even if it gets me in trouble. And my big sister also loves playing with me and finds it amazing whenever I say something new (which is often).

My favorite toy is my piggie (Piglet) that I always have to sleep with. I love milk and having snacks. I also eat my dinners pretty well, too. I love playing outside, watching Disney's Mulan ("moo-yon"), seeing the "kitty cats" outside which belong to the neighbor, and reading lots of books.

I'm turning into a pretty cute kid and I think my parents have decided to keep me around.

Are they twins?

A couple of days ago, I was at Bi-Lo with just the boys. I had them in one of the carts that looks like a car (the two seats are up high in front of the mom). When I got to the register, the lady asked if they were twins. Since their height difference wasn't as apparent, I could understand the question. And this isn't the first time we've been asked that.

So I wanted to look back at their younger pictures to compare them at the same ages. It's just amazing how much they look alike (especially the first two sets of photos - could be the same baby if you didn't know):  

3 weeks 

Noah

Luke

3 months

Noah

Luke

1 year

Noah

Luke

18 months

Noah

Luke

2 years

 

Noah

Luke (almost two)

Luke's longest sentence so far

While chasing Noah: "I am the tickle monster"

It sounded like this: "I. Am. Da. Ti. Kle. Mon. Ter"

Talkin'

At Breakfast this morning

Noah: why don't people like moles?

Me: becasue they dig tunnels in the yard.

Noah: and drive trains!

A nice evening to be out in the yard...

Our sweet potato plants got attacked by deer for the second time, so we harvested them a little earlier than we planned (the rest of our garden is safe in our fenced backyard).

Here's what we got from starting with just one original sweet potato:

After that, I spent some time trying to capture some good photos of the kids. Here's some of what I managed to get:

 

she was actually posing for this one

my sweet boy

trying to get all three together

feeding the cat some grass

then running from the tickle monster

is that trouble or what?

The Summer

I used to not want a full week to go by without blogging and now look how I've let this slip. A month and a half! Well, first I started my other blog which divided my blogging attention and then a semi-major shift happened at home.

Preschool (5 mornings a week) stopped for Erin and Noah and suddenly I had them all at home all the time. We went right into homeschooling back in June (sitting around with unstructured days would have driven us all mad) and most of my "free" time has been focused on what to do for homeschooling or just taking a moment to relax.

So what has been going on over the summer? Well, as I said, since June we have been homeschooling. The mornings are preschool time with all three, and then Erin gets Kindergarten time while the boys nap. I have been polishing up our routine (I viewed the summer as more of a practice time for me) and I think we've got a pretty good thing going. The kids seem to like it and I do too.

Prior to right now, I don't think I've mentioned on here that we decided to homeschool. At one point I drafted up a long post as to why we're doing it, but I never posted it. Basically, we have a long list as to why we feel we want to keep our kids out of public school and homeschooling seems to be a good fit for us. We will evaluate year by year if it's what we want to keep doing, but I can certainly see us doing this long term.

Aside from schooling, we took a trip to the beach (Topsail Island, just past Wilmington) in August. We stayed at a house that is owned on Sean's side of the family. Had Luke been a little older, I think it would have been a better trip. There were certain areas of the house we just couldn't child-proof and he was a major headache in the house. Also, he didn't much care for the ocean (water or sand). But we did have good times too, it was basically a mix of wonderful and horrible....

Another event over the summer was back in July when Luke had outpatient surgery to remove a cyst on his chest (actually, you can see the little red scar above his blue collar in the above photo). A few days after the surgery, it started to get infected and it ended up that he had a staph infection. It got pretty nasty, even giving him an actual 1/4 inch in diameter hole in his chest...but all ended well as the antibiotics did their job. That was a scary few days as we didn't know how bad it was going to get (the most common strand of staph infection is very resistant to antibiotics).

Other minor summer events...we just put a new roof on the house and we have committed plans for new windows (yay home ownership!) We went to the Atlanta aquarium back in June, Erin just started a Ballet class and Noah has outgrown his peanut allergy! (although not the tree nut) Oh, and my birthday was yesterday...welcome mid-thirties.

That's about it. Looking forward to a break in the heat as we get into Fall. I hope to pick the blogging back up, but no promises. I have gotten severely slack in taking photos of the kids. But maybe as we have nicer weather it will prompt me to snap a few.

Till then...

Learning the things of the world can be a funny thing

I was just reminded of how much Erin has to learn. So many little things.

A few minutes ago, I was folding laundry on my bed. Erin comes in a watches me for a minute. She asks why daddy has long underwear (as in boxers). I told her that men either wear boxers or briefs like Noah has.

Then I told her that briefs are sometimes called "tighty whities" and we both laughed hysterically for a good 30 seconds.

Warning to Caterpillars: Don't eat from our garden or you will become the pet of three little kids

Our tabacco hornworm has two names: Crawly (given by Erin) and Leafy (given by Noah).

(update: he didn't make it)

Just Go Naked

A week and a half ago we started potty training Noah. We took the same approach that we did with Erin. No real method, just putting them in cotton training pants and taking them to the potty when we think they may need to go.

This is difficult to start out with, since the whole thing is a guessing game for us, as only they know when they have to go potty.

For Erin, it took her several days of having some successes and some accidents to fully have it click that she needs to tell us before she pees. But after she got it, accidents quickly became fewer and fewer.

I expected Noah to follow something similar to this. But day after day, he was only having accidents, never telling us beforehand that he had to go. It was starting to get more and more frustrating for us, and after 8 days of this, we knew we had to change our approach.

Our neighbors are potty training their 2 1/2 year old boy at the same time we are. What she's doing, is having him go around without anything on and taking him to the potty at regular intervals until he goes. He is quickly having fewer accidents and actively telling her when he has to go.

The idea behind this, is that if they are wearing underwear, it makes them feel like they have on a diaper and they're more likely to pee in it. If there's nothing there, they probably don't want it to just go everywhere.

I thought we could give this a try. He's gone around bottomless for two days now and it's working! He's had a couple accidents, but mostly he's intentionally going to his little potty to use the bathroom. It's a complete change from the first 8 days.

I'm so relieved to be getting some progress. I certainly had thoughts of waiting to do this until later. But now I know he can do it!

Big man at the table

Luke has made the switch to booster seat and now joins us at the table. I think he's happy about this....