Out Of Sight

When Emily finished her reading rainbow at school (letters, sounds, 3 sets of sight words), she started receiving a little red book in her backpack every day. It was homework for us to do together. We were so excited for her first book that I wrote
a post about it.

The first book was cute, fun, 8 words total and she didn't need any help. Then, they got a lot harder and those darn books just kept coming. There was never a good time to do it. After school, she was too tired. After a snack, all she wanted to do was play and I couldn't blame her. Right before bed, forget about it. These little red books came to mean one thing to me. A big fat headache.

Not to mention the rest of the homework that was sent home every day. She has to draw a picture and write a few sentences about it in her notebook. She has to read the red book. She has a very easy white book that is sent home every day too. Then, she has additional sight words to master. It easily takes 30 minutes to get all of this done and for a five year old who is already mentally drained, it usually means much longer than 30 minutes.

I can't tell you how happy I was to find out that we are on our last set of sight words. When she masters this set, Emily will get a gift certificate for a free scoop of ice cream at Baskin Robins. She has waited all year for that. We haven't gotten all the words down yet, but we will suddenly have a lot more time to work on them because Emily came home yesterday and told me that book #79 was the last of the red books. Oh happy day! I seriously did a happy dance in my kitchen.

I thought I'd get a little video of the last book and you can clearly see why it takes 15 minutes to get through all 7 pages.



We are done with the little red books. And Emily was the first kid in her class to finish all of them. It's time to celebrate! I think she deserves a big scoop of ice cream from Baskin Robins. And after the heck David and I went through for 79 nights, we deserve one too!

On Cue

Noah is 8 months old today, really 6 months. Most babies start to sit up on their own at 6 months.

And right on cue, he can sit up in the tripod position.



He does much better with a little help from the boppy. Plus it cushions the fall.


Because it has taken him so much longer to do anything, it feels weird when he meets another milestone. I can't picture him doing anything but laying on his back or in his jumperoo. I'll be amazed when he starts crawling.

Next milestone to meet, sleeping through the night!

Bikes, The Attic and Why Emily Doesn't Want To Be A Mom.

When we lived in Phoenix, over 3 years ago, we bought this bike trailer used from a friend. We thought we would buy bikes for ourselves. It never happened.

We used the trailer as a stroller for the kids which worked great as they were too big for traditional strollers. I finally found bikes for David and I on Craigslist and we bought them. The kids love David taking them for a ride. Now, Noah needs to get a little bigger and he can go in there too. Talk about a workout for David.


David needed to check out something in the attic and the kids thought it was the coolest thing ever. They were dying to get up there. We had a cool attic when I was a kid and it had a built in ladder, so my friend and I would go up there all the time. We'd take blankets to cover the ply wood and we'd eat Lucky Charms and play sweet ginger brown.

For now, the kids just had fun walking around.
**Emily dressed herself. She will never be on Project Runway.


I think Santa will be storing presents up there this year as Emily is way too observant and there aren't a lot of hiding spots in our house.

Emily has been saying for awhile that she doesn't want to be a Mom when she grows up. I figure she sees how much work it is and decides it's too much. I tell her that's fine. She can be anything she wants. But, I never really knew why.

I finally found out the real reason she doesn't want to be a Mom. She told me she didn't want the doctor to cut her open (like he did to me) and take out a baby because all her bones would fall out. I told her that is not the normal way to have a baby. I pushed her and Ben out my vagina. To which she looked even more horrified and I'm sure she thought having her bones fall out was the better option.

We'll revisit the topic in a few years when she's gotten over the shock.

Jumpin' Jumperoo

When Emily and Ben were babies, we had an exersaucer. I think they enjoyed it. They could spin around and look at different toys. When we got pregnant with Noah, I knew I wanted a Jumperoo instead. It just seems more fun. And boy does Noah agree!

Easter

We had a great Easter.
We dyed eggs.

Noah was really excited about it.



Emily posing pretty.

Ben not posing pretty.

Emily wrote a note for the Easter Bunny and left him carrots.
Here are carrots for Easter. Love, Emily, Ben and Noah

Opening up Easter gifts.

Ben got a Batmobile.

Emily loved these little pink chicks.

Noah even got a little something to jazz up his car seat.

And of course, there was an egg hunt.


I wanted to make sure the kids knew what Easter was really about. So, I told them how Jesus died for our sins on the cross and that Easter is the celebration of him rising up again.

To which Ben replied, "Does Jesus like Batman?"

Next year, we are going to church.

At Our House...

I just wrote this post about how Emily and Ben have outgrown the playhouse.

Now they are using their play kitchen for high flying adventures as well.




I snapped a few photos and then told them to get down. Why is everything that they climb on next to a very large window? I would get rid of the play kitchen, but I need to keep it for Noah. Santa got it for Emily when she was 2. Ben played with it more than she did. I'm sure Noah will enjoy it too. Maybe they need a trampoline. I just noticed when I looked at the pictures that Ben is in a power ranger costume with a mask. I don't even notice it anymore.

We had an Easter party for with some friends.

We decorated sugar cookies. Ben got a belly ache from eating too many.


They found Easter eggs.



Played on the hammock.


And after everyone went home, we blew some bubbles. Our dog Rocko is too funny and was trying to eat them.


The Easter Bunny is heading out all by herself this afternoon to do a little last minute shopping. AND she got 10 hours of straight sleep last night thanks to Mr. Bunny taking care of baby bunny.

I'm a lucky bunny.

I'm Published!

Well, sort of...

In the back of my mind I always thought what if someone hacked into blogspot and everything I have worked on for my kids was lost. If someone can get on Facebook, log in as me and post viruses, it could happen to blogspot and all my work could get erased.

A few weekends ago when everyone was sick and we were home bound, I decided to finally start working on turning my blog into a book. I used this web site which allows you to transfer your blog directly to their book editing software complete with pictures. I actually thought that I might have to copy and paste each entry. Silly me. I also had a 20% off coupon which expired mid-March, so that was extra motivation. I got both books with shipping and tax for $90. Not bad.

It took the better part of two weekends to edit all of it. I didn't reread every post, but I had to go on every page and adjust the layout and format of the pictures. As I was doing that, I got a glimpse of everything I have written and I'm so glad that I'm doing this for my kids. I would've loved to know how wonderful and rotten I was when I was five.












As a stay at home Mom, I sometimes feel like I don't accomplish much of anything for weeks on end. When David comes home from work and asks what I did today and my only response is, "I got all three bathrooms cleaned." It doesn't feel like much of an accomplishment.

When I look at my blog books, I realize that I'm accomplishing something every day, whether the bathrooms are clean or not.

I'm proud of myself.