School Days

 

All three big kids have started school. Jackson has a male teacher this year and it seems to be going really well. He llikes 2nd grade despite the fact that he now has 20 spelling words...... He is happy to go everyday and happy to come home everyday :) He is still full of energy, creativity, and emotion. Maggie started full day Kindergarten. She loves it. It hasn't made her tired at all. I remember Jackson coming home so tired but Mags just goes and goes. She loves doing the projects, art work and seeing her friends. She loves to dressup, have fashion shows and play with her siblings. Hailey started preschool two days a week for just a few hours. She also loves it. Her school focuses a lot more on play than on academics so she loves to go play with her friends. It does make her tired. She eats lunch and takes a nap right after. She is energetic, very caring, high strung little girl. Caleb is home alone with me for those few hours that all the others are in school. For now, he still takes a morning nap so it's usually very quiet around here :) Sometimes I get a lot done and sometimes I sit and update the blog :)

Mess. Mess. Mess.

 

 

I have to document things like this so that I can look back and see that I've made progress....hopefully :) Caleb loves to play outside A LOT. So that's where you can find us when he's awake. Unfortunately, it leaves the house a bit of a disaster. or it could be a huge disaster...... With Matt working on house remodeling projects all the time I don't have the back up help to keep things under control. It might make a difference that I let the kids get messy..... just look at Caleb. He had a great time in that mud though. That means I spend valuable clean up time - cleaning kids up. Dishes can only be done when Caleb is sleeping because he pulls everything out of the dishwasher....knives first, of course. Or he pushes me away from the sink and clings to my legs because he wants to go play outside..... So for now I do the best I can and try not to get too frustrated about the fact that it doesn't look like I did ANYTHING that day.

Busy

 

Hailey and Caleb love to play in the water at the sink. It can keep Caleb busy for over an hour..... However, I have to stay right there because he is not that stable on the chairs and tends to climb....... so eventhough he is highly entertained I can't go off to get anything else done. Ho hum. Someday all this mess will just be traded in for teenage paraphenalia right? so I shouldn't get my hopes up that it will be cleaner once this toddler stage is passed.......

Broken bone.....

Well, we have the first broken bone in one of the kids...... I'm kind of amazed we have been as accident free as we have given their personalities and energy levels :) And the broken bone?? It's not even one of the big kids! Caleb broke his collarbone towards the end of August. In the picture you can see the lump on his left collarbone. He was sitting on one of the the kitchen chairs - those red ones - and fell off to the side. He just landed the wrong way. He was really fussy and didn't want to use that arm at all - so after about 2 hours we decided to take him in to the urgent care - it was closed. Of course. He was doing better so we just waited until the next morning to take him in. They said he was fine - no fracture, no break. Two days later he accidently sat down on a shoe and fell over to the left side. He caught himself with his left arm and started crying pretty hard again. He was fine 10 min later but later that day I noticed he had a pretty good lump along his collarbone so we took him back in for another x-ray. Sure enough, this time they found a fracture. So it was probably weak enough from the first fall that the second minor one made it worse?? Anyway, treatment was to keep him from climbing....... riiiight. He is the biggest climber at this age out of all of our kids. That's why all the chairs are down on their backs. He climbs on the chairs and onto the table. They are very lightweight and tip easily so this is how our dining room looks now and probably will for the next 6 months or more. I can't even put them up on the table because he can pull them down...... He is healing nicely and aside from the first couple of days hasn't slowed him down AT ALL :)

 

 

Park play

 

Why is it that when you have a swingset, slide, trampoline etc in your own backyard the kids still love to go to the park?? :) I guess we all like a change of scenery now and then. They play in our backyard almost everyday so I'm very glad that we have what we do. It gets a lot of use. This park was the same one we took those family pics at. It's made of mostly recycled tires. I love going to the park on cloudy days - as long as it's cooler. Cloudy does not always mean cool here - sometimes it means crazy hot with high humidity. I can't believe how big all of these guys are gettings and so independent!

Idlewild

 

The day before school started we headed out to a nearby amusement park (about 1 1/2 away) In this area..... that's nearby :) However, we had to make a quick stop off at the instacare before heading out..... everything was ok - kind of. I will do another post about that soon. We had a good day. This park has a lot of rides for even really little kids. I wish I had gotten more pictures. There was a lot even Caleb could go on. He LOVED it. He wanted to go on some of them again and again. They all really enjoyed the rides. Jackson was big enough to go on almost every ride by himself. He really loved that. We spent a couple of hours at their water park also. The water was VERY cold!! Other than that there were also a number of slides and things that the little ones could do. I love it when all the kids can be entertained in the same place :)