First Day!

So a while back we decided to skip 3 year old preschool. C knows his letters and what sounds they make. He can count to 15 easily and 20 with a little coaxing. (There's a lot of teens, why shouldn't 20 come sooner?) 

And while I firmly stand by the decision to save $1500 for 2-day a week preschool I was a little sad at the one thing my house can't provide for him as well: socialization. I know that the homeschoolers sometimes find this subject touchy but my house has me, C and M. And he get's to socialize with me all the time. We don't have cousins or next door neighbors to see on a regular basis.

Luckily I had 2 friends in the same boat. So we invented "At Home Preschool." 3 kids. 3 moms. 2 days a week for 2 hours at a time. It rotates houses weekly and it is a drop off so that the kids can learn, socialize and use their listening ears with someone other than their mom, but in safe spaces they already know with kids they know. We are doing a letter of the week and starting with the letters of their first names. Letter M is this week. We host next week and I've got Letter C activities all ready to go!! 

Today was the first day. He was very excited to "go to school." I think it will be good for him to spend just a little bit of time away from me. I think it will be good for M to have a little bit of one on one time with me. And he will learn a little and socialize and have a great time I think.

So this is what works for us now. I will probably send him to the Parish preschool for 4 year old preschool because that is the elementary school we would like him to go to. It's a big first step for Mom and Dad! He doesn't seem to notice. :)

6!

Oh Goodness. M turned 6 months this past week.

I just can't believe it!

New this month: 

• Sitting up all by herself!
• Getting herself up to sitting all by herself!
• Army Crawling!
• Rocking on Hands and Knees!
• Eaten baby oatmeal and applesauce!
• Can pull herself up to standing if she can grip (like on Mom or Dad's fingers)

All the pertinent info: 

• Still size 2 diapers, though she's moving up when we finish what we have.
• Still size 6 month clothes.
• Her shoes still really don't fit. (6-9 month shoes.)
• No teeth.

Likes:

• Crawling.
• Chewing on anything.
• Her brother.
• Ompa's Waterfall.
• Jumping in the Exersaucer.
• Jumping while someone holds her up.
• Pretty much jumping.
• Smiling (Smiling is her favorite!)
• Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes (Still.)
• Keeping time to music by banging her hand.
• Snuggling. 

Why can't they both cooperate at the same time? 

Where the Heck Have I Been: 7QT

Hello Friends! I am here, linking up with Kelly, because I can if I want to and I actually have seven things to say. It's been a long April and I basically fell off the blogging wagon but I am back and prepare yourselves because I've got posts coming out of my yin-yang!

• Hi! I went to visit my parents. For 9 days and 8 nights. I brought the kids. Husband went on 2 business trips. We had a blast. I was nervous how the car rides would go, but all my planning and it went pretty well. M had to cry it out one time yesterday in the car, which broke my heart because I'm not really a CIO kind of mom but what she really wanted was to not be on the road and I couldn't really do that. 

This is my conquering the road trip duck face selfie.

• While I was away M turned 6 months old! Anticipate a post coming your way soon with pictures and facts and other baby things. 

She be like "Just let me play Mom, gosh."

• Speaking of turning... Husband had a birthday! Happy Birthday Husband! We celebrated by all coming home from our respective journeys and having chocolate cake. He got some presents too. 

• M got to try applesauce because that's our first food of choice. (The orchard and homemadeness and all that. I canned this stuff when I was still pregnant. Or maybe she was a teeny tiny infant. Either way. Family orchard = free apples = first food.) 

Depicting the scene in our kitchen . Toddler eating cake. Baby eating applesauce. Birthday boy feeding applesauce and ignoring the cake. Mom taking pictures for posterity. 

• While I was away the tree in our backyard got some leaves! Sweet! The tree in my neighbor's yard hasn't made it to that point yet though. Either way, a far cry from the ice pellet sleet and SNOWFLAKES falling on Tuesday. I was decidedly not a fan. It was like your drunk ex sitting on your porch singing to you in hopes you'll fall in love with them again. Only you've been broken up for a month and you really haven't missed them at all. 

• One of the highlights on my trip was meeting up with the Miss Congeniality of Blogging.* *She didn't actually win that Sheenazing Award but mayhaps she should have because she knows everyone! And is totally awesome.* Okay okay, it's Marie from Joy Beyond the Cross. 

• We met up at an indoor playground. Which was great we figured that out because if you look back up a take it was SNOWING and very windy. Team Toddler played. Alone and together. It was so funny, C is super cautious in situations where he perceives danger. He would not cross the net tunnel pieces, not even to go down the slides he REALLY wanted to go down. I even had to climb up and help him through the first bit because it was a net and see through plastic and that wasn't good. Elizabeth was just "go go go Little Miss Fearless." Even still they did interact, C even shared his walrus with Elizabeth which a true act of friendship right there! Elizabeth shared her strawberries, and my boy loves strawberries so the bond runs deep. 

• 

  I bribed C with yogurt covered raisins. 

  
  

  

  How cute is this? They're having a deep talk!

• The Needy Baby Club of the Midwest met and decided that they didn't really feel like being super needy right then. In fact both girls played in each other's vicinity for a good while then decided to take a nap. This from the "I'm possibly allergic to sleep" group. 

Playing out of the way of the big kids






Katharine is already asleep and M would join in very shortly. 



• Best of all Marie and I got to chat. It was crazy fun. We probably could have kept talking for days and not run out of topics. And since we've been online friends for a while now we just dove into solid conversation. (With the occassional check on/rescue/redirect a kid stuff.) It was great. And now I can call her my friend and don't need to silently add "from online." in my head! 

• I am pretty sure 1 take with 3 subtakes and 5 pictures rounds up to 2 so I'm just going to wish you a happy Friday here. 

Checking In

Oh how far we've come.

My kids played together for the first time this week.

M is officially 100% mobile and can army crawl her way to where ever. She's pretty speedy. It's amazing, a week ago she got up on her hands and knees and rocked for the first time and now she needs to be fully contained if I leave the room. It's fun watching her explore the world as she sees it. She is so much more careful than her brother was.

M's 5 Month picture. Totally delayed. In her Easter dress.

M wants to be able to sit up all by herself. She's trying so so hard to do that and I can't wait to see her accomplish this task. She can get halfway there and for now I help her. She does a good job when she's sitting, less folded and can go for quite a few minutes without a bobble.

And I have been a puddle of goo. I am a mushy, proud mom watching her kids grow and interact. Yet there is a pang of sadness with the knowledge that my kids are growing up and hitting milestones so quickly. There's so much more to come with these two but I ache a little that even my baby is 5.5 months old doesn't need me as much.* *Much being relative since she still needs me for food and all that.*

It's weird, when babies are super new and you can't get anything done at all because you have to hold them/feed them/change them all the time and you think it can never get better. But that fog has lifted and I can let M play for good chunks of time now. She can roll! She can sit up! She can army crawl! It's not quite the crisis to run down and switch the laundry or get the dishwasher running. It's good.

C's vocabulary grows daily and I see daily improvement in his annunciation. What just a month ago was a "Blueberry Muttin" is a muffin now. I find a joy in the fact that he can say things correctly because as Husband can attest to you, his speech has been one of my biggest concerns with him. Yet I find myself sad that he's getting all grown up.

His Terrible Twos are heading out the door and he is getting ready to be a Threenager. I'm not saying the tantrums never come, but they are less out of control. I am not sad about that however.

I know. I'm ridiculous and lucky and there's so much more good to come. It's weird though.

So I've been wanting to do this for a while and it happened to work out perfectly. C had a onesie that I just loved. (I even bought it in a bigger size for him.) Anyway, so I always loved this one picture of him and so we did a compare picture with M. They are the exact same age (169 days) in the exact same onesie, doing approximately the same thing in the same place.

I just love it. 

Sorry to deny you all the Easter post but let's sum it up: it was very nice, very very low key and everyone was happy. 

April Fools!

April Fool's Day was pretty spectacular! I didn't play any tricks but the day was a real treat. 

We hosted a play date in the morning. C's friend Mason came over. And M's future friend little girl no name was there too but she won't make her grand entrance until June. It was a very successful play date with little boy screams and running around. 

After lunch we baked cookies to decorate later. It made a complete mess but in the fun way I swear! 

Then we all headed outside because it was 79 and sunny. Yes. That's right. April Fools on us by Mother Nature. 

C got grimier than the day before and I seriously think I underestimated how many pairs of shorts to buy him since if this trend continue I'll have to wash them after each wear. 

We also took some time with our neighbor meeting his dog. Josie the doll has been around almost two years but she continues to be scared of C. She barks once and runs to the other side of the yard. C thinks she's pretty great because he just loves animals. It's really funny because Josie is a Bull Mastif so in other words HUGE. She weighs 130 lbs to C's 30. 

But we made progress in that regard so she doesn't bark at him anymore. 

This little girl has gone from rocking on her hands and knees on Monday to full faceplanting forward on Tuesday. Yesterday she started doing this thing where her legs push her forward and she shoots her arms out and around kind of like she's swimming butterfly. It propels her forwards anyway and she's happy. 

When dad joined us we got the grill out for the first time in 2015 and had a hot dog party! C even tried a hot dog so I was pretty impressed. 

Then we decorated our cookies. We made bunny butt cookies and bunny heads. (not pictured.) 

Writing it all out it doesn't sound like much but it was jam packed and actually really fun. A good start to April and a nice addition to Holy Week!