My Littles

Before I do Spring Break Part II, an update on daily life...

Bubba

  I can see him growing up right before my eyes.  The influence of his peers in showing more and more.  Some good ways, some not so good.  Like Gangum Style.  And You Tube.  I cringe every time I hear any reference to Gangum Style.  He has taken to saying it as a replacement to any exclamation- it can mean "Oh no!" or "Great!" or just randomly uttered with no apparent connection to anything except inside his head.  He asks if he can watch You Tube videos- "I promise they are appropriate, Mom!"  Appropriate in content maybe, but trashy junk as far as I am concerned so "no" is my answer.  Unless it is research of some sort.

 He was invited to a sleep over last weekend.  He had a good time even though they stayed up much too late.  The friend's parents went on and on about what a polite, respectful kid hi is when I picked him up.  I'm not surprised because I agree, but it is still great to hear.

He survived a week of school with a substitute.  By reports, she is not the kindest of ladies out there.  It was a good opportunity for us to discuss persevering with a positive attitude when the circumstances are not the best.  We got his latest reading testing results.  The difference between this time last year and now is remarkable.  He is reading at a 4th-5th grade level.  Why we need to know this exactly, I'm not sure, because to know this they have do test for it.  We know he is reading well, his teacher knows he is reading well, shouldn't that be enough?  But I guess that is a part of public school, thanks Congress and the Texas Legislature.  He does not really have trouble with test taking so I'm not going to worry about it much.  He enjoys the popular books the most, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the Humphrey the Hamster books, A to Z Mysteries, etc. I tried to interest him some more classic books without much success.  But I am not complaining because he is an almost 8 year old boy who is choosing to READ.

He has changed his mind about wanting a hamster!  Instead he wants to use his incentive chart to earn the Skylanders video game...  Peer influence at work again!  You would think I would be bale to tell you more about it since he tells me LOTS about it, but for some reason it all seems to go in one ear and out the other.

He plans to continue with dace next year.  Miss Amanda has offered to scholarship him 100% next year.  She gave him several choices of classes and he chose to continue with ballet.  She is very pleased.  She said typically this coming year (8 years old) is there time when boys quit, but if they stick it out they will often continue on for many years.  We'll see!

 

Duchess

  Ah, my girl.  Not a ton of new stuff to report with Duch.  She continues to do well in school.  She is reading great.  It sounds as if she is friends with many of the kids and talks about them all.  Here is a recent conversation that illustrates the difference between the info you get from boys vs girls. 
Duch: Mom, Kate has the same shirt as me.
Mom: Really?
Duch: Yes, and Kate shares a locker with Anna.  They are in Miss Pitcock's class.  Anna is Vivien's sister.  Vivien, Anna and Ruth are cousins.  And I share a locker with Ruth. 
It's like 5 degrees of Duch!

She had one of her art projects selected to be in a district art show.  She had a hard time understanding why she couldn't take her mask (the orange one) home with her when every one else did.  She was so proud when the whole family went to see it on display with projects from the whole district!  We took her out to diner and she got to chose- Red Lobster it was!

She is also continuing with dance.  She dances around the house and walks with her arms held in various dance positions.  She can not wait to get her dance recital costume. 

We went to see Disney On Ice last weekend.  It was a very princess focused show.  The tickets were donated for staff and patient families at work.  It was pretty fun.  Duch loved it best of all, as is to be expected.  The show was about 2 hours long and had Ariel, Merida (Brave), Rapunzel and Belle.  And the horse, Maximus, from Rapunzel.  How do two people actually manage to skate in that costume???  I made it very clear before we went that we were NOT buying any souvenirs.  I did let them get an $11 bag of artificially colored sugar, aka cotton candy.  Duch did not like it but likes the crown that came with it.  The show was over lunch so we also had hotdogs, but surprisingly a kids meal with a drink, hotdog and chips was only $5. 

She has enjoyed playing with the neighbors very much, as have all the kids.  I think it is funny that she still says she had a "play date" with the neighbors even if they just played for 15 minutes when they all happened to be outside at the same time.  I tried to tell her that is not really a play date, it is just "playing outside with the neighbors" but she didn't believe me.  One of the neighbor boys had his birthday party last weekend and they all had a wonderful time!

Huck

 



The busy 2 year old!  He is working very hard on being able to put up 2 fingers to tell you how old he is.  Many times he holds up one finger on each hand to make two.  In just the last month his speech is getting better.  Still not what I would like, but improved.  He is making more sounds and getting closer to the actual word, like "bash" means bath which is more than he was doing a few weeks ago.  We are going to hold off on the speech eval for a little bit and see how he does. 

I have started the process of night weaning him.  I have told him he can have Mama Milk at bedtime and in the morning, but no Mama Milk at nighttime.  I try very hard to get him to go to sleep in his bed.  Usually somewhere between 1-3 AM he'll wake up and come in our room and then I would nurse him back to sleep.  Sunday and Monday he would not go to sleep in his bed and wanted to nurse all night.  This Mama needs some more sleep than that!  So I started on Tuesday.  The first night he cried/fussed/stayed awake for about an hour.  Last night he fussed for about 3 minutes.  Hopefully that will continue, but I'm well aware that it may take much more work than that!  He is in that awkward phase where if he takes a nap during the day he will stay awake until 9:00 at night, but if he doesn't take a nap he is a wreck by 5:00 or so.  If he does nap I won't let him sleep longer than 2 hours or past about 3:30, because then he'll be up until midnight! 





I'm pretty sure that Huck will be the first kid to need stitches or break a bone.  He seems to have no fear.  He will jump off anything!  He LOVED the bounce house at the neighbors party.  The next day he would not believe me that it was gone until I took him and showed him.  Then he just looked heartbroken :-( 

The Bigs:
The Hubby and I decided to take out all the bushes in front of our house.  Some were dead and the others were scraggly looking.  The Hubby worked really hard to get the rusty metal edging out while Bubba and I chopped off  all the branches of the bushes.  We got about 5 of the stumps out, but one side of the house had 20 stumps!  Yesterday the Hubby was out working and a tree service drove by and offered to grind them all out, so thankfully that is all done.  Worth the money to not have to do it ourselves.  Today the plan is to go to the nursery to pick out new shrubs.  We are looking for low maintenance plants as neither of us is super interested in gardening.  I would like some kind of flowering bush, though.    I post some before and after pics later.