Little Oaka

So in love with this little baby, can't believe how beautiful she is, and can't believe that she is already 9 months old!!!  Here's some of Oaklee's things these days:

• Pig tails and pony tails.  She's been wearing them for quite a while now, if I don't put her hair in something, it goes crazy!!!  I sit her in the bumbo while I do her hair, but these days she usually rolls out of it mid-twisting the hair tie in.
• Squinty Eyes.  Apparently I make a silly squinty-eyed face to her quite often because now she copies it...and it's adorable!  She is really being a big cheese when she does it and of course we all melt every time she does it!
• Super Baby.  We taught her to stick her arm out with a fist like Superman when we say, "Super Baby!"  Then sometimes we'll fly her around the room.  She loves it when her brothers tell her to do it, sometimes she even does it on her own to them, hoping they will say, "Super Baby!"
• Wreck-it-Baby.  The boys are quite patient with her getting all her toys and wrecking things.  We call her the Wreck it Baby when she comes and wrecks the train track.  And we are constantly trying to get legos to stay in the boys' room only so she doesn't eat them!
• Peek-a-boo.  This little girl LOVES peek-a-boo.  When she was first learning how to play along, she would just raise a blanket or book or anything really quickly above her head and then quickly down again, not realizing that peek-a-boo was about hiding your face.  Then she caught on and how favorite way to do it is to stand up at the couch, we say, "Where's Oaklee?"  she ducks her head down, keeps it down for quite a while, then pops up and we say, "There she is!"
• The Printer.  She is obsessed with getting the printed in the computer armoire. It's pretty much her mission in life.
• Food.  She loves food! She has been eating about 2 jars of baby food, 3 times a day.  Now she is eating more table food and has slowed down on the purees.  She eats, pancakes, French toast, graham crackers, Ritz, peas, mandarin oranges, bread, black beans, pears, and more!  She is almost too busy to drink her bottle these days.  I have to close myself in her room to feed her because the second she sees or hears her brothers, she picks her head up to see them and just wants to play.  Once I changed to the fast flow nipples, she has been guzzling down a lot quicker.  Yay!
• Daddy.  This little girl has a special place in her heart for her daddy.  She gives him the best welcome home smiles and of course...he's wrapped!
• Moving.  She crawls around like a little crazy!  Mostly crawling with her bum in the air.  She can climb up the stairs unassisted in less than a minute.  She loves to play in the lid drawer and with the cupboard doors.  Her new thing is to empty the dirty diapers out of the little garbage can in her room...which has now been moved to on top of her dresser. 
• Laundry Baby/Shopping Cart.  When I do the laundry, she gets to ride in the laundry basket up and down the stairs and loves it!  She is now big enough that most of the time at the store, she rides in the cart, not in her car seat.  And she is also big enough to ride in the bike trailer with Logie Bear.  He takes good care of her in there and we can go on a family bike ride with our whole family!
• Animal Lover.  Oaklee absolutely loves animals.  Anytime she sees a dog, a pig, a goat, a fish, a bunny, she freaks out, laughing and smiling and bouncing.

Thoughts from the Mom of a First Grader

Wow!  It has happened.  I have a first grader.  A child who is gone from 8:30 to 3:30, five days a week, who eats lunch at school, and has three recesses per day.  Weird!  In these first few weeks of school, our family has been stretched in all different directions as we have entered this new chapter of life.  Here are my thoughts and observations:

·         LETTING HIM GO.  I thought starting preschool was hard.  Then I thought Kindergarten would be hard.  It apparently was nothing like the emotions I felt for first grade.  The first day of school was fine.  Tyrel was home that day, and it was early out.  When he got home I asked how it went, to which he replied, “It was good.  But Mom, I just barely made it.  It’s a good thing it got over when it did, because I just couldn’t learn anymore!”  “Oh no”, I thought, because tomorrow is two hours longer!  That day and all day during his second day of school, this was one worrying mom!  I had no idea I would be like that, but I was.  My Si is kind of a sensitive guy, and he kind of gets whiney and dramatic.  What was he going to do when the school day got too long for him and I wasn’t there for him to whine to?  Was he going to eat enough food at lunch?  Was he going to starve waiting for lunch time?  What if he needed to call me and I didn’t hear my phone?  I had a real experience that day in learning to put complete trust in the Lord.  This was out of my hands, I can no longer be with him every second, and I knew it.  But I knew that my Heavenly Father could be with him.  Talk about having a prayer in my heart all day.  That phrase took on a whole new meaning for me as I was constantly praying for him all day.  And guess what.  When I picked him up that day, he said his day was great!  He had no concerns about it being too long, and he even came home with a Ninja Turtle book from the library…what could be better?  And each day since has been the same.  I know that Heavenly Father has and is answering my prayers, and his prayers, and it has been a good teaching experience to let him see that.  He even bore his testimony on Sunday and said that he started first grade and his mom prayed for him all day and that his dad gave him a blessing.  And that he knew Heavenly Father answered his prayers because he made it through his first day of First Grade.  It was a tender simple testimony.  I love that boy!

·         FOOD.  Getting enough food in my kids has ALWAYS been a struggle.  They just can’t seem to focus on eating.  Trying to make sure the food is healthy and hearty is another battle all together.  All summer long I thought and thought on how I was going to make sure Si was nourished when eating lunch at school, and how he was not going to get sick of peanut butter and yellow butter sandwiches.  Then a miracle happened.  He tried and loved ham and cheese sandwiches.  So far he has taken one each day in his lunch and has no interest in PB sandwiches anymore.  It turns out that they only get about 13 minutes to eat their lunch!!!  Not enough time for any kid, and especially not Silas!  So I send him with a half a sandwich, an apple sauce, and $.40 to buy a chocolate milk.  Each day he comes home and I ask how his lunch went.  Half the time he comes home with half of his sandwich left.  Baby steps.  For now I try to pump food into him when he’s at home.  I think he eats about three string cheeses a day at this point and I feel fine about it! 

Lunch at school is not always the easiest for a kid.  Sometimes he couldn’t get his milk carton open, sometimes it gets opened funny and he spills down his shirt.  Yesterday he came home and told us of two problems that made his day not so great.  #1.  “Mom, I’m feeling kind of left out at lunch.  I’m like the only kid that doesn’t get a treat in his lunch.  And some of the other kids have Oreos.  And not just regular Oreos, but those kind that have the orange filling!”  Noted.  Today, guess who got a treat in his lunch.  #2.  S: “Some of the girls in my class are always whispering about me!”  M:  “Oh, do you know what they’re saying about you?”  S: “Yeah I know what they’re saying about me!  They’re saying that I’m cute!”  Poor kid, it’s hard to be cute as a first grade boy.  Oh how Tyrel and I would love to be a fly on the wall to watch our little six-year-old experience going through the world when Mom and Dad aren’t there all the time. 

·         FITTING IT ALL IN.  The first week of school is overwhelming for a Mom, with all the papers that come home to sign and return.  The call for donations and volunteers for this and that.  The need to remember to send a water bottle, a show and tell on certain days, and dress nice for picture day!  It’s amazing that we haven’t forgot something yet…and this is only one kid in school right now!!!  Yikes!  This Mom is also adjusting to fitting everything in!  It’s crazy how little time they have to play after being in school all day!  By the time we talk about his day and have a snack, his play time is about an hour.  Then it’s pumping more food into him at dinner, and off to homework.  He is required to read 20 minutes EVERY night…including weekends!  That is a switch for us.  We never used to do homework on weekends.  In addition, he has a math sheet each night and reading sheets and sight words.  I’m proud of how well he’s handling it after being in school all day.  My brain is getting a little frazzled trying to get it done and take care of the other two, especially when Tyrel is at class or at Young Men’s, but we’re making it and trying to figure out a good schedule. 

·         JUST BEING A KID.  Luckily there are still moments when Si can just be a kid!  One afternoon he had Jake and Josh over to play.  They were trying to figure out what to do and decided they’d like to play “kissing tag” like they do at school!  Then they realized they didn’t have any of the girls to play it with, until one friend said, “Well, I know where we can find one!  She lives in our neighborhood.”  A few seconds later Silas asks if they can invite Sabrina to come play.  (A request that has never been made previous to this moment.)  Finally I realized what was going on.  I told Si that they were not allowed to play kissing tag at our house (I didn’t think Sister Anderson would appreciate Sabrina coming to my house to play it!)  They still had her over and ended up having a huge neighborhood game of tag in our yard.  I love living in this neighborhood and yes, I even love that Si has joined the ranks of playing “kissing tag”! 

He’s also been able to just be a kid as he’s started playing soccer.  Friday he had his first practice and got his uniform.   I realized that he was the only kid on the team who didn’t have cleats.  What?  Why do six-year-olds need cleats for soccer?  Then a friend offered to let us use a pair they had.  Now I am on the lookout every time I go to D.I. for a pair of cleats in every size, because I will not pay $30 for a pair of six-year-old cleats!  On Saturday he had his first game, his team is The Blue Bombs.  He’s kind of a little guy, and so this is how his uniform fit:  socks up to his thighs, constantly pulling up his shorts so they don’t fall off, and jersey down to his knees.  Still, he did great and had such a great time.  I’m excited to be a soccer Mom and watch my Si play on a team!

Logan Goes to School

Another year of preschool for the Logie Bear.  Now he is four and although we are doing a neighborhood preschool again, it's a four-year-old preschool.  Logan was so excited for it to start and especially for the first day to be at our house!  I have to say that I was quite excited also!  I've got the need for teaching bug again and I had the chance to put together a bunch of my preschool stuff I've been working on for years to be our curriculum for this year.  It was really fun to try it out on these 6 kids in our preschool.  It's going to be a great group!  Logan's favorite color is orange and he always wants the orange cup, pencil grip, chair, crayon, etc.  He also always wants to sit by Maia at circle time.  Oh how this boy is growing up!  He wants to have homework and take a turn to read a book to us (which he actually can do) whenever Si is doing homework and reading.  Here's to a great year of preschool!

A Summer Full of Fun

We made it!  We had tons of fun this summer, and Mom still amazingly has a brain left after being home all day everyday with three kiddos!  Some things that got us through:

• Turning over a kite:  Everyday after lunch, the boys would have quiet time downstairs where they would watch a movie and play, Oaklee would nap, and mom would get things done and get her brain back :)  After quiet time was over, if the boys had ate their lunch and followed the quiet time rules, they would turn over a kite.  On the back of the kite card was something fun they could do or have or eat.  It was a success and they were sad when school started and they no longer got to turn over a kite.
• Swimming lessons, swimming at the rec. center with Dad, playing at the park, trips to the library where we invented things, playing at Grammy's, trips to the farm, movies in the park, Wheeler's Farm, swimming in our pool and slip-n-sliding, riding bikes, trip to the zoo, hike to a cave, fireworks, parades, BBQs, ball class, carnivals, and playing with friends. 

What a great summer it was!