The Kids

Jenna is now 8 months!
This past month has been crazy busy with her, she is everywhere!
* She pulls herself into standing position on everything and everyone.
* She is crawling everywhere (the right way now) and I'm constantly looking for where she has disappeared to. She roams from one end of the house to the next. Yesterday she even crawled outside because the kids had left the door open.
* She can also crawl up the concrete stairs which has lead to a few falls and tears.
* She eats everything on the floor. I constantly feel like I'm fishing things out of her mouth.
* She doesn't really like to play with her toys anymore. She just wants to try and keep up with the other kids.

* Occasionally she'll sleep through the night, but most of the time I still nurse her a least 1 to 2 times during the night. She's my last baby so I figure soon enough I'll get some sleep!


Isaac is 2 - what else do I need to say! Sometimes he's delightful and sometimes he makes me want to pull my hair out.

* The most exciting news is that he is potty trained. He has shown NO interest in the potty until a couple of weeks ago and then he just decided he was ready and the rest was easy.

* He also likes to wake up VERY early. We're talking around 5 a.m. every morning he's up and ready to start the day. It's caused us to start going to bed earlier just so we can survive these early mornings.

* He loves to build and can put together 25 piece puzzles all by himself.

* He loves to sing. I even had to buy a Barney songbook so I could play songs on the piano for him to sing to. It makes me smile to hear him singing all the time.

* We are working on colors and letters during our Learning Time everyday. He likes to argue with me when he gets a color wrong. Chuck's also working with the kids on Spanish so sometimes he tells me the colors in Spanish instead of English.

* He loves playdoh, trains and markers.

Sweet Bella girl will be 4 this week and I'm just not sure how this happened so fast!

* We are doing Joy School again this year and we both love it.

* She's doing great in her gymnastics class and can do a cartwheel and arch. She is in an older class because it's the only time that worked for me and I think it's really helped her progress.

* Bella and Samuel are both doing the Let's Play Music Class. She really loves to sing too.

* She also loves our Learning Time each day.

There have been days lately where I look at Samuel and think what happened to my little boy? The past month since he started school he has changed so much. It's hard for me to pinpoint what the difference is. He just seems so grown up. It's exciting to watch him grow into such a wonderful responsible boy!

* He started Karate a few months ago and just got promoted to a while belt with a yellow stripe. He LOVES Karate and so do I. His teacher is amazing. Karate has made Samuel a lot braver. He is my thinker and at times doesn't like to take physical risks because he thinks really hard about the consequences. But Karate has changed this in him. The other day he called me upstairs so he could show me something. I walked into Bella's room where he quickly scaled to the top of the closet. He then told me he was going to jump down. I looked at him and thought there's no way he's going to jump. I didn't even consider telling him that might not be such a good idea because I really didn't think he'd do it. Then he did it! He jumped from the top of the closet to the ground. I told him that sure was brave, but maybe not a good idea to try again.

* He loves going to school each day. I was worried about him being bored, but he loves the technology curriculum.

And now for me:

I feel blessed every day to be able to raise these precious kids! I love fall and October. We decorated our house, made yummy Halloween treats, went to the pumpkin patch and have been hiking. I also have been taking lots of cute pictures. Life is good!