The big kids finished two weeks of swim lessons, and I am amazed at the progress they made. They each started at different places and grew in confidence and ability. Bud is still very cautious in the water, but he came a long way. Sugar likes to show off her new skills, and since grandparents don’t often get to accompany us to the pool, here is a tidbit of her swimming.
Wow, 10 months?! Ten months seems so old to me–it is so close to a year. For me, the first year of having a baby is often the longest year, but not with Speedy. It really has sped by! Or course, I think his older siblings have a little something to do with that.
Speedy continues to be a very busy boy. He pulls up on anything and cruises along furniture, walls, legs, etc. He can even let go for a second or two and remain standing or reach out to grab something else. He loves pushing his little walker around and even yells, “Yeah!” and shrieks as he walks along. He hasn’t figured out how to turn it around, so he just pushes it from the opposite side until it tips over.
Speedy is still taking two naps a day. The first one is at 9 a.m. and lasts 1.5 hours. His second nap is around 1 p.m. and lasts 1.5-2 hours. He really wants to go to bed by 6:30 at night, which makes for some time to spend with the big kids. He still wakes twice a night (sometimes thrice) to nurse and goes right back to sleep.
He has four teeth and loves to bite things. If he is hungry, he tends to try to nibble on my arm, face, etc. I try to encourage signing, but the only sign he does consistently is “all done” or “finished”. He even says, “Ah Dah!” with it. He will say, “Bye bye” and “nigh nigh”, “momma” “dada” and he will repeat some things we say like “Ya ya” for his big brother’s name. His favorite phrase is “uh oh” which he says all day long. It is so cute!
Speedy is the messiest eater. If anyone has a recommendation for bibs that babies cannot remove, please pass it along! He can pull the over the head ones over his head and spits out a lot of food.
His favorite foods are orange veggies (sweet potatoes, carrots) and fruits. He loves bananas, fruit bites, avocado and meat for finger foods. He still has a hard time swallowing finger foods, so most of his bites are swept through his mouth, chewed and then spit out onto his bib (or shirt if the big has been thrown down). He is a really indiscriminate eater, pretty much if you feed him, he will eat it.
Speedy can make a big mess very quickly. He loves trying to get into the refrigerator and pull out anything he can get. (I quickly removed the cherry tomatoes from him after taking this picture.)
He has a course that he crawls through the house, pulling things out of cabinets (or climbing in them), pulling out nightlights, pulling magnets off the fridge, and then dumping toys out and scattering them around. He sure is a fun little guy!
What is your favorite food? beans and chicken
Favorite animal? monkeys
What are you really good at? singing, counting, climbing trees (for the record, she cannot climb trees on her own yet)
What are you not so good at? jump roping, sports like basketball
Who are your favorite friends? Micah, Gabriella, New Katherine
What is your favorite thing to do at school (CC)? Play
What is the best thing about having a baby brother? Playing with him, trying not to push him too fast
What is the best thing about having a big brother? not so good because they hit you. I like picking flowers with Daddy.
How are you different from Bud? I don’t want to play with him when he hits me. Nervous he might bite or hit me.
What does Bud do that makes you mad? throws mud in my face Read more »
I got this idea from my friend Megan’s kids’ summer bucket list of activities. I gave the big kids a mission: find something in the house that starts with each letter of the alphabet and take a picture of it. Obviously, their pictures weren’t that great, but I was blown away by their creativity. You have got to check out what they picked for X. I think Sugar has a future as an actor and Bud as a director/writer.
A – (Sugar’s real name), B – Baby, C – carrots, D – diapers, E – eggs, F – flyswatter, G – games, H – high (ceiling), I – eye, J – (Bud’s real name), K – Kaley, the penguin’s name, L – legos, M – “me”, N – November, O – octopus, P – paper, Q – cute, R – racecar, S – Cinderella, T – top hat, U – up, V – vacuum, W – water, X – execute, Y – yarn, Z – zipper
Execute? Really? Bud is holding a wooden knife from our little play kitchen and took the picture. It only took them 15 minutes, but I highly recommend it as a kid’s activity.
We had a nice mini-vacation a few weeks ago in Galveston with my side of the family. My mom and Woody rented a house on the west end of the island with a nice, private beach only about 100 yards from the house. The kids (and Thomas) had a blast playing in the ocean. Neither of us had ever spent much time in Galveston, and I have been spoiled by the beautiful beaches in Destin, but Galveston wasn’t bad, and you cannot beat a 3 hour drive with 3 kids in the van.
We enjoyed boogy-boarding in the waves, building sand castles (with their uncles doing the brunt of the work), eating sand (Speedy), burying in the sand, and collecting vast amounts of clams and hermit crabs. There was quite a bit of seaweed in the water, which was annoying as it brushed against my feet and legs while in the water. The beach was cleaned at night, which was really nice since a certain little baby kept trying to sample the seaweed.
Our family spent an afternoon at Moody Garden’s Aquarium for some more learning about oceans and wildlife. It was my first time at an aquarium, and it was not disappointing. Everyone had a great time, until a fish surprised Sugar by brushing against her hand in the touch tank. We also went crazy and let the big kids each pick out something from the gift shop.
It was great to get away after our hectic May.
I have a confession. I did not read a single book in May. I did not start a new one and not finish, nor did I work on one and not finish it. I seriously did not read anything. Three reasons:
1) Planning the nursery programs for our CC Parent Practicum (see previous post)
2) Lack of reading material (I need to place a book order soon)
3) I’d rather be working out during afternoon rest time
Hopefully I will have something to report next month.
May went by in a whirlwind. Between commitments, papers to write, a birthday party to plan, and a curious, mobile baby, I did not have much free time.
We enjoyed a break from our homeschooling commitments, and replaced those with playdates with friends at the park. Our CC class has gotten together several times, and I have really enjoyed getting to know the moms better. I wish we had had more time together earlier in the year, but this is great, too.
Speaking of CC (or Classical Conversations), we helped host one of CC’s free, three-day Parent Practicums. For the past two summers, we have traveled to Austin or Waco for these practicums, and while they were great learning experiences, we were all exhausted at the end after staying in a hotel for three nights. Turns out, even with getting to sleep in your own bed, it can still be exhausting! I helped coordinate the nursery (ages birth-four years) during the event. It was a wonderful experience. I spent most of the month of May planning and preparing activities for the classes. The picture above is what my living room looked like many nights. The threes and fours learned the continents and oceans. One of the activities they did was this little felt puzzle:
I feel like it was a success judging by Sugar. She learned the continents and the oceans fairly well, so hopefully the other kids did, too.
After the practicum, we celebrated Sugar’s fourth birthday.
We harvested onions, broccoli, green beans, zucchini, and a few tomatoes from the garden. I spent a few mornings battling a ladybug-like beetle that had killed and covered the broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and brussels sprouts with eggs. It was nasty, but I think I got rid of it by pulling infected plants and leaves, picking off the beetles by hand into a bucket of soapy water (very tedious, but very satisfying), and spraying the rest of the garden with insecticidal soap and neem oil.
Other than that, we spent a lot of time at the park, splashpad and pool. We were doing well about continuing with school for the first few weeks of the month, but since the practicum, we haven’t been as motivated.
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