GRADUATION

June has been a busy month for us. Blake celebrated the completion of his first year of school on June 6th. The graduation ceremony was short thanks to splitting up all 9 kindergarten classes into 2 days. He (and I!) were very glad this school year had come to an end.

Lining up for the procession
His turn to walk
Picture time before ceremony began
After receiving his "diploma"
"What is he looking at????"

Long Time

It has been a long time since the last post. A quick update (if anyone still reads this!). Blake is about to finish up his last few weeks of Kindergarten. He has done extremely well. He continued to exceed his teacher's expectations. As the time goes by, though, it has become more difficult to motivate him to go to school. He would much rather be at home with his momma and brothers! Jacob will be celebrating his 4th birthday on Thursday. We are having a party at home for him with family and friends. He is looking forward to eating his cake! Parker continues to amaze me with his speech. His vocabulary has grown so much in the last several months. He also wants to do EVERYTHING himself. Which is a blessing and a curse at the same time. I think we are finally past the 5:30am wake-up calls, but I am sure as I am writing this I will be up before the sun tomorrow. That is how it always seems to go.

On a side note, we could use some positive thoughts/prayers at this time. Family issues, both immediate and extended, have been keeping the stress levels a little higher than usual.

Keep posted for pictures!

Poop and stuff

We have a ritual in our house every night before bed. The boys strip down to their birthday suits and run around the house being silly. One night, we waited a little to long to put a diaper back on Parker. The boys and Peter were laying on the floor reading books and all of a sudden Parker pooped on the floor! Everyone was yelling in disgust and of course, I was called in to scoop it up and dispose of it. So gross! Now when Parker gets naked he tells me "I won't poop on the floor mommy". I guess he saw how traumatized we all were!

I think Parker is getting closer to potty learning time. He was wearing undies the other night (to be like his brothers) and peed on the floor. He freaked out, I guess because he didn't like the feeling of being wet. Well, today after everytime he peed in his diaper, he would say to me (in a really pitiful voice) "mommy, I peed". It is hard to believe that after 6 years of changing diapers, the end is near! I am going to have a party for myself the day he stops wearing diapers!

School Update

The second half of the school year has been great for Blake! He was able to bring in a Frog and Toad book to school and read to the entire class! He was the only student to do so. He has also been placed in a challenge program for social studies/science. He meets with another teacher 45 minutes each day to work on problems. He also just started participating in a Math Challenge as well. He is given 6 problems to complete in a week. So far, everything has been a breeze for him. He still is excited to learn and I am amazed by how much they teach in Kindergarten. For example, the other day Jacob asked him how day turns into night. I assumed he would respond with something along the lines of "the sun goes down and it gets dark, etc.", but instead he began a long winded explanation of how the earth is rotating! I had no idea he even knew about it!

morning time

With the boys being sick the past week, nightime has been pretty rough around here. I was up a couple times with Blake and Parker last night and just wanted to sleep in a little bit. Jacob crawled in bed with me and was patiently waiting for me to wake up. Around sunrise, he tapped my shoulder and says to me "mommy, the sun is up. It is time for hot chocolate!" This kid remembers everything: he had asked for hot chocolate the night before, but I said tomorrow b/c you are still a little sick and sugar is not the best thing for you right now. Can't blame him for trying!

Blake's Gift

With my birthday coming up next week, Blake has been on the look-out for a gift for me. The other day Peter told me about a commercial on tv for an organizational bag that Blake wanted to get for me. Well, today the commercial came on and Peter said "this is what Blake wants to get for you". I saw the bag, and as sweet as it was for Blake to think of me, the bag was hideous! I politely said no thanks and Blake says to me "but mom, you can find anything even with a blindfold, watch" and sure enough, in the commercial they have the woman wearing a blindfold and she "finds" her glasses. Apparently to a five year old, that is pretty darn cool!

Happy New Year!

Lots to update since my last post. Our camera suffered an unfortunate accident and that is why there hasn't been any recent pictures. I have about 4 rolls of film from my SLR to develop and put onto CD. Once that is done, I will have pictures from Halloween and on.

Blake had a great first half year of school. He is one of the top students in his class and I have seen so much improvement in his writing and reading. I can't tell you how exciting it is to have him reading books to us! The days are long, but he loves it. I also recently discovered Blake has 2 new adult teeth coming in on the bottom! He didn't even know they were there either. He hasn't lost his baby teeth yet, but they are very wiggly.

Jacob enjoys being the big brother while Blake is away. Recently, my friend and I have decided to do a preschool co-op where we will meet one day a week to have a "lesson" and another day for a field trip. I am excited to see how this will evolve as well as for the opportunity to explore new things in our home preschooling adventure.

Parker turned 2 this past Christmas Eve. He has quite the sense of humor and is constantly making everyone laugh. I am also happy to say that we are at the end of the teething nightmare! He cut his last eye tooth last week. Yay! Our next milestone is weaning. He is nursing about once a day and I think will wean very soon. It is a bittersweet feeling.

I hope everyone had a very healthy and happy Holiday Season!

My new love

A friend of mine has introduced me into a new realm of babywearing- the wrap. They are my new choice of carrier. I find that it distributes Parkers weight (~24 lbs) much more evenly then my mei tai and I can get him higher up on my back. Parker doesn't seem to thrilled, but he was ready for a nap! He actually loved being up there!

Family Scavenger Hunt

Today was Family Scavenger Hunt Day at one of our local Nature Preserves. Our goal was to find 15 things throughout the preserve, found along several of their trails. It was a little chilly, but the boys had fun anyways.

The boys standing in front of a cedar pine.
Blake, in a dried out creek, calling out for rain. For those who don't know, Charlotte is in a severe drought...a 16 inch deficit.
Us in an American Holly bush.
Parker missed the last 30 minutes of the hike. He was snoring so loud, I could hear him from behind! He didn't even wake up when Peter took him off his back.

Random Shots

Funny Faces
Snuggy brothers
My Boys!
Ready to work

Can we keep her?

I just recently started sitting for a 6 month old baby girl full time. I was explaining to the boys how I would watch her at our house while her mommy and daddy were at work. Blake was very interested in how big she was, how long would she be here, would she be here when he got back from school, etc. Baby J was here for about 10 minutes and the boys were absolutely enthralled with her and Blake says to me "now that I have seen how cute she is, can we keep her?" For those of you who know, he has been asking me for a baby sister since I was pregnant with Parker. Unfortunately, we can't keep this one!

Kindergarten News

Blake is on his 5th week of Kindergarten and he LOVES it. He is learning so much in such a short amount of time. He has become much better at writing and is even reading! He is constantly asking us what words are and seems to remember them from then on. A week ago, he was made Top Banana for the week. This meant that he did all his work, followed the rules and was generally great in class (this is how he explained it to me). So, he was able to bring home Curious George for the week along with 5 Curious George books. He was so proud of himself. He made a bed for CG to sleep on at night out of the top part of his toolbench and some long, plastic screws (it really looked like a bed!). He just recently had his progress report in which he received all 3's (highest score) in all areas.

On the negative side, he has caught his third cold this fall! I guess that is the price we pay for not going to preschool!

Still a peanut!

We had the boys yearly check-up the other day and I was surprised to find out the Parker weighs 22 lbs! (I thought he was smaller). He is still in the 5% for weight and in the 30% for height. Poor kid...his brothers are going to tower over him when he is older!

And in other Parker news, he is cutting his bottom two molars...at the same time! They don't seem to be bothering him as much as the top molars did. Unfortunately, it takes him FOREVER to cut teeth and I cannot wait until this is over. Only 9 more teeth to go!

His favorite new game to play is "run from the doggies". He will be holding food in his hands and run around the house laughing hysterically while the dogs chase after him hoping to get some food in the process. The other day he was doing this while saying "Oh pickles". What a nut!

This one is for you Poppa!

The boys were looking at our wedding photos the other day (which they like to do frequently...not sure why!) and I was sitting listening in on their conversation:
B- Isn't my daddy handsome Jacob?
J- Yes, he is.
B- I love my daddy.
J- Well, I love poppa.

So sweet!

Daddy and the boys

We met some friends at one of the Spraygrounds. The boys had an AMAZING time. There were a ton of fountains spraying at all different heights and it was completely covered by shade (which is why the pictures are a little dark). There are no pictures of Parker because, as usual, he wants nothing to do with being sprayed. He wouldn't even put his toes on the water. So strange for a kid that LOVES the pool and will jump off the edge!

Boys and Trees

Cheese

It's how hot outside?!

We are going on our third day of 100+ degree weather. My a/c has been running non stop just to keep it 77 degrees in the house and to top it off, we lost our power the other day for almost 20 hours....and it was 104 outside! When is fall going to come!

Success!

I am happy to say that after 19 months of waking at night, Parker is finally night weaned. The process went much smoother then I expected. It was only two bumpy nights and then he has been sleeping a blissful 11 hours each night. I had forgotten what a full nights sleep felt like!