Easter weekend recap

Church Easter Activity: What can I say? Raya was terrified of the Easter bunny. It was fun though, the kids loved the candy, the activities, and the cake.
Community Easter Egg Hunt: It was such a beautiful day! We needed the sunshine!! 

 Can you find Seth?
 Soccer after the Easter Egg hunt, it was really cute watching the boys play in ties. Later that day we also went to the WA-ID symphony family concert.  

Babysitting: It's kind'of strange to blog about it, but the kids love it when we babysit.  Like, the boys woke up on Saturday and the first thing they mentioned to us was, "Kharisma's coming over tonight!"  The kids don't watch movies, really ever, that's always exciting for them: they ate popcorn and watched Winnie the Pooh.  They also wanted to all wear hats.
Easter morning!
 Hiding their "Easter baskets" -- water bottles this year that match their backpacks.  Trust me, it was the best gift.
 The Feast!
 EGG FIGHT! (Jeff won)

 My mom bought Raya the most beautiful Easter dress:

And some Easter pics of the kids:





cute, huh?

This semester sucks.

venting

I think we've hit our busiest most un-fun semester yet. It's even busier than the semester that I went back to being a full time student with a 2 week old baby.   No day care, no bottles, exclusively breast fed, no pacifier, 2 full time students.  That semester is a bit of a daze.  This semester sucks.

I think it's because Jeff is gone all the time.  He got home at 3:40 a.m. this morning, slept a little and went back to school at 8:45 a.m. this morning.  Usually he gets home around 1:00ish ... but still. 1:00 am! 

Me? I've been spoiled a bit by Jeff in the past, he has always helped me get the kids fed and dressed in the mornings so I can be supermom for the rest of the day. ... not so much this semester.

Although he's gone a lot, I do need to acknowledge that Jeff does give us all the time he possibly can, he's home for about an hour and a half for dinner and to help get the kids to bed.  And instead of vegging or taking a nap, he's wrestling or reading with the kids and helping me clean.  He's amazing.  -- Maybe that's why I want him home more? 

9 days and counting.

Good fences make good neighbors

My neighbor towards the back of us recently got a new dog ... an enormous puppy that barks incessantly at the kids.  It's pretty annoying when you take your kids out to play and there's the dog, non stop barking -- there's Seth under the slide with his fingers in his ears, Levi not playing because he is mesmerized with the dog, and Raya freaked out holding onto my leg afraid to move.  Lovely.

My neighbor has recognized the problem, and is trying to train her dog not to bark at the kids (which I appreciate) but now ... we have a barking dog, and a semi-weird lady that comes outside to yell at her dog whenever we're outside wanting to play. Lovely.

I ordered privacy slats for my fence last week, to try and distract the dog a bit, ... probably wont work, but maybe, right?

I was working on the fence and.. big surprise, the dog starts barking, then the lady comes out to yell at the dog.  It's a continuous ... dog: arf-arf  Lady: "No bark!" dog: arf-arf Lady: "No bark!" dog: arf-arf ... over and over... oh my gosh, shoot me now.

Seth is sitting atop the slide and starts conversing with our neighbor, "Do you see our fence?"
Neighbor: "Yah, It looks great!"
Seth with his finger waving at the lady: "It's to keep that dog from barking at us!"
Neighbor: "Yah?"
Seth: "Yah! We don't like that dog barking all the time!"

I freeze. I'm thinking: ((SETH YOU"RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TELL HER!))  Sure she can assume what we're doing, but you're not supposed to say it...

Neighbor: "Well I've been working on my fence too, see:" She indicates the random aligning of assorted dead tree limbs she's been gathering from who knows where.  We thought she might be making a tree fort... or something, we had no idea it was for privacy, because it really, doesn't, work.... at least that mystery is solved though.

 -- Anyways, It was a really funny moment.  I love that boy.  Maybe I should have Seth suggest to our neighbor bringing the dog inside.... genius I know.

Seth

It was a surreal day today.  We registered Seth for Kindergarten.  I have a school aged child.  I decided not to homeschool. He will ride the bus. -- this is crazy talk!

Seth is really excited, he has really opened up socially since being in Montessori and has made some great friends.  It's sad that they can't all go to the same school together, Seth will either go to Sunnyside or Jeffserson -- I'm excited to see what this new phase in life brings!

We had parent teacher conferences last week; much of what was said was said before, that Seth is very bright, kind, well rounded child.

The only thing new that stood out to me is how Seth has developed socially.  Here are some excerpts that  put a smile on my face:

"Seth always has a big smile on his face when he plays with his friends.  He demonstrates confidence in his gross motor skills."

"Seth is a fantastic role model to the younger children."

"Seth is very motivated, and he works hard to accomplish goals he sets forth with great consideration."

"Seth is quite artistic, he learns through visual imprinting.  his attention to detail helps him create masterpieces of structural and artistic design.  He can truly express himself in marvelous ways."

"Seth has a wonderful sense of order."

"Seth enjoys learning.  He finds interest in his work, and he absorbs the information with an incredible memory for knowledge."

"He is a well-rounded individual.  Seth has always been very independent in his quest for his own human potential.  We have seen him explore all areas of the classroom independently, and still he finds a balance where he can laugh and play with his friends."

I've really enjoyed our experience with Montessori.  Seth really does thrive in the type of environment that they provide.  Too bad that they do not have a Montessori throughout elementary.

We may have a problem.

I think I've mentioned before that the boys like to pee together
 (weird? yes, I don't know... they're boys).
Raya lately has been "peeing," or wanting to pee, with the boys now too...
meaning, when one of the boys informs us that they need to use the bathroom 
(which they make sure we know, every time)
Raya gets excited and starts lifting her shirt up and leans forward to use the bathroom too....
We may have a problem.

Science Center love: DITL Friday mornings.

Friday mornings you will typically find us at the science center, another one of our haunts that we frequent regularly.  I love the science center (almost as much as the library) and have found another great group of community members that have befriended the kids.  Stephen is always there to greet the kids excitedly when we walk in and is interested in whatever new stories the kids have for him that day ... whether it is a new hat, or what they ate for breakfast.  And Donna will come out of her office in the back to say how cute the kids are typically, and then she'll say to us she'll meet us in a few minutes for our lesson.  --- I often think of the phrase, "It takes a village to raise a child" and we have definitely found this support in our community!  I feel like a lot of the people are surrogate family members.  Ms. Kathleen, and Ms. Donna are the grandmother types .. Stephen an uncle, along with the aquatic center staff (I'll have to do another DITL later on that haunt) would fall under the categories of aunts and uncles.  There are so many people in the community that love and care for my kids, that are excited when they're excited, and are eager to share with them their knowledge, it's a wonderful thing! -- sorry got side tracked, have I mentioned before that I love Pullman? :)

So.... before we leave for the Science Center... or anywhere for that matter ... Raya attends to her babies.  She puts them down for a "nap" with her special blanket, and sometimes leaves them with a book to read or some play food to eat. She is very attentative and thoughtful ... and cute.
The kids have had such an urge lately to run.  The sun is out and they just want to be free, I don't blame them, it has been  a long winter ... they bolted out of the van door and went on a "nature walk" beside the science center.

 Raya is terrified of her shadow, it's crazy!  I'll never forget when she first saw her shadow.  At first I didn't know what was wrong, she was stomping rapidly and started getting distressed .. then full blown hysterics pursued with intervals of stop and go running.  She would run a little bit to get away from her shadow, and then stop and cry because it was following her.  She refuses to walk if her shadow is following her... which means I get to carry her...  but we made progress last Friday!!  She is coming to grips that this shadow will not leave her alone and bent down and touched it (with some encouragement from me...).  This is a huge step.
"Discovery starts here."
We go in and play until lesson time ... kids get their lily pads --
Seth and Levi found the lesson really interesting this week, it was about how to create fire.  Ms. Donna was showing the need of oxygen by putting a glass jar over a lighted flame.  The boys watched as the flame slowly went out as the oxygen in the jar ran out.  Then there was a discussion on fire safety and why we stop, drop and roll.

Levi had a little incident after swim lessons on Thursday... I still don't know how it happened.  Seth and Levi were running out of the locker room after swim practice (once again with the running) out towards the foyer ... so on the carpeted area.  I'm walking Raya-paced and hear Levi just crying.  A lady in the fitness room signals to me through the window that his nose is really bad.  Yep, I find Levi with a bloody face.  Nose bleeding from inside and out.  Jeff and I noticed yesterday that his rug-burned nose was still bleeding slightly.  Poor Levi.
 Doing a math lab
 We eat lunch at the science center so we don't have to go home before we take Seth to Montessori.
 Raya likes to point to all the animals.

 Favorite thing at the moment are the tiny little figurines.  I love it because it's something that all the kids can do together.  Seth and Levi were seperating the animals between continents for a bit
And Raya was lining up her little polar bears in a row.
We end our time with reading in the quiet room:

Heart Attack Birthday

Dan's (Grandpa's) birthday consisted of:
breakfast: Jeff piling his plate high with sausage links
lunch: cougar country monster burgers

and the grande finale a 240+ grams of fat German Chocolate Cake
It was really (really) good.
Excuse the crazy-haired disheveledness of the kids, we just got back from swimming

Happy Birthday!
Our 2 hour 30 minutes John Wayne movie that we bought and watched with him.
If that isn't proof of love I don't know what is :)

Grandparents visit

It was fun to have Grandma and Grandpa come and visit us this week!  The kids love their grandparents... when they left Levi was inconsolable for over an hour.  It was pretty sad.  But we had fun while they were here!

 Raya and Grandma were twins
 Playing at the park.... you know that one extremely nice day before it snowed (bah!)

 Playing duck-duck-goose after the boy's soccer practice.  They had practice indoors this week because it was so cold and rainy.

It's nice when adults out number the children.  We had more people to read with, play games with and bake with ... and do other fun activities like go to the conner museum and the WSU greenhouse (the corpse flower was in bloom), swimming, special "errands" with grandpa that detoured to ice cream at Dairy Queen, and the kids favorite -- riding in the suburban.

Thanks for coming!

heart


I love that Raya takes such good care of her babies.