More Birthday Parties and Teeth!

 Adrian

Two more top teeth have poked through and I see the next two on the side trying to catch up too. He can use them pretty effectively too when biting into his meals which worries me that breastfeeding will be painful soon. It's already more uncomfortable and because he is in pain he wakes up in the night more often sometimes. Luckily, he is the cutest little sweetie and is really fun to watch try new foods, and show so much love and interest with his sisters. I even got him to 'play' with Buttercup because she now finally drops the ball for me when she wants to play fetch. He wants to taste the ball of course so I'm careful when he is grabby, but he likes the cause and effect when things fall off his seat so I showed him how to push it. I keep seeing problems with having her toys and bowls around on the ground because he is going to be cruising around really soon. 

Claire

We had another birthday party this weekend, and Claire was invited to it as well because it was our neighbor. The kids all get along and play together which is the best part of having kids in the neighborhood that are around the same age. Shay even had the younger sister, who is in her same kindergarten class, to play with while there when some of the older kids were excluding her. They both got to hit the pinata, make a necklace, play Pass-the-parcel, and have a lot of fun. I'm glad to be in a neighborhood with kids their age, and we look forward to being able to trick-or-treat around the neighborhood this year instead of going to the next one over. There are a lot of people we know now, and hopefully, most people are celebrating even though not many are very decorated.

Shay

I was able to connect to the school account that gets pictures and updates of some of the projects she works on. I was able to see a few pictures that I hadn't seen before celebrating how she got the certificate for knowing all her letter sounds. And she hasn't ever talked about reading with an older student but I saw the picture of them together! There is so much going on at her school that I don't get to know about and I'm only used to it because I've gone through this for the past two years with Claire. It makes me miss her a little though and I remember the couple of months of last year after Adrian was born and she was always so understanding when I needed to take care of him. I always thought it was cute to hear her play all by herself so quietly and we had a lot of fun times together. I'm hoping she is making memories with new friends.

Spooky

We have been trying to find fun things to do together as a family to help the girls love Halloween as much as Chris. I don't think it takes a lot of work because all holidays are special for kids. We introduced them to Hocus Pocus which was their choice out of the 3 Halloween movies we know are good for kids. They were more excited about witches and they are obsessed with it now of course and asked to watch it again. They ask a lot of questions to try and understand every little detail that I don't normally think needs to be paid attention to especially in the first part when things are being established which makes me also think that is why they want to watch new movies several times in a week. We also carved and painted pumpkins after church today before another movie night with Nightmare Before Christmas. This coming week will be fun with all the festivities. 

Corn Maze

Adrian

Chris says that he is at the stage of cutness that he just wants to squeeze him and play whenever he sees him. I agree because he loves to smile and play most of the time as long as I keep him rested and his tummy full. He just plays with all this toys throughout the day and we like to look and smile at each other no matter what I'm doing. He seems content to be in sight and is getting good at throwing his toys away from him but not yet crawling to go get them. The funnest part is when he gets tired and doesn't want to play with anything anymore but doesn't want to sleep. He just wants to be held so he can rub his face on me. I had a party on Tuesday so Chris stayed up with the kids until I got home and Adrian fell asleep cuddling daddy while they watched a movie. We also had fun feeding him while we went out to eat at Texas Roadhouse on Friday. He was in a booster and we kept everything except the small food pieces away from him which made the table feel crowded. While at the corn maze, Chris carried him while he got to look at everything, and he was really worried about the meeting the goats.

Claire

Claire started doing chores so they could earn money because they keep geting sent home with scholastic newspapers with books in them. They circle about 10 of them that they want to buy and I'm glad I gave them a love of reading! She suprised me by making our bed for us and her own bed and then asked when I was going to wash their cloths so she could put them away. It was kind of funny to see her excited about chores finally, and now I have to come up with more things for her to do besides reading books she has already read over and over again. There was a lot of fun to have at the Corn Maze and her favorite was to race me on the bike carts even though it was never a fair fight because she would start before I could get in the cart. 

Shay

I started feeling bad for something I said about the things she likes to pick up as we walk outside. She literally always has something she sees and picks up, I find them in the coat pockets she wears, in her backpack, and on my kitchen table. She did it when we were going through the maze with corn and called them her treasure, and she ran out of room to hold all that she found. By the end we convinced her to 'bury' it in the stocks so she can hide it like a pirate and we could continue to go have fun on the other activities. She has officially had a full week with no incidents at school and only one day that she didn't earn all her stars on our communication sheet. I'm still knocking on wood and praying that she can continue to control her emotions and work well with others. 

PT Conferences and Hunting

 Adrian

I can't believe he is already almost 8 months now! We have some pretty fun times now that he plays with toys and interacts in fun ways. I feel like he doesn't have the motivation to crawl because he can just get upset and I come over to see what's up. Usually, if he isn't tired or hungry, he has thrown or pushed all his toys out of reach and got frustrated. I'm getting used to how the days go with naps, feedings, happy playing time, grumpy playing time, and his wants and needs. Of course, whenever I think I've got things under control and I'm understanding him, he likes to change so we will see how long it lasts. I do think he sometimes gets bored with certain toys and is less interested after playing with them, but usually goes back when he has had a break. Good thing we have so many different toys just for him! 

Claire

Meeting with her teacher during Parent Teacher Conferences was great because I haven't heard much from her compared to Shay. Claire has always been good in school and the biggest struggle isn't surprising, or worrying because as long as she is progressing and getting better we are happy. She is known to be a little disorganized this year and leaves papers in her desk a lot! Sometimes I don't see things she is supposed to bring home and apparently, the teacher has to rummage through her desk to find things she needs to turn in. I've known all along that she is scatterbrained and distractable because she would much rather run and play than sit. With the days off of school, she had a lot of good games around the house with her sister and they enjoyed each other's company, even though she suffered a short stomach bug Saturday night. Shay was super loving towards her after she threw up during our family game, and she woke up feeling 100% herself again.

Shay

I was more aware of Shay's daily attitude in school and prepared to hear the worst, but honestly, her teacher said some great things. Of course, her bursts of anger are a problem we are working on, but for the most part, she is a sweet girl and really good at reading! She has passed all the levels of letters the kids are working on which means she knows the names and sounds of the whole alphabet. She is even starting to sound words out which was the hardest thing to get Claire to do when I was helping her read. So fun to see how different they can be, but also how much they are similar when they play together. We had a birthday party on Saturday we had to buy gifts for so at the store they earned a chocolate egg for behaving well. Their prize gave us an app they played on my phone and I found some pictures they took which was cute. We also got matching Halloween PJs for everyone in the family! They were very excited because they glow in the dark and even Adrian and Buttercup got some.

Chris

On Wednesday, he left work early to go hunting with his dad and brothers then returned around noon on Saturday. I sent a lot of baby boy pictures this week because he was missing us, so thank him for the extra pictures of Adrian. I had picked up his brother from the airport on Tuesday and they both drove from here to make it easier and cheaper. We missed him a lot, especially since it was days the girls had off of school and were at home all day long without getting to be happy he was finally home. They were pretty excited to share the new books I bought for them from their school book fair at PT Conferences. Then they convinced us all to wear the new Halloween PJs tonight and will probably expect us to be wearing them in the morning. Chris was very understanding when I expressed the urge to cook more than one thing for the Linger Longer at church, and then he was surprised when I didn't put it on his plate. I make him these foods all the time though and let him try other dishes I thought he might like. I love him so much.

October is upon us!

Adrian

I wish we had more going on to report than days have been normal. Adrian is learning to take longer naps and eat more food, it is cool to watch him learn to work food in his mouth. He is still only rocking the two teeth, but he has drooled buckets the last two days so we might see another soon! I'm amazed at how happy he can stay playing with toys as long as everyone is around him and he hears his sisters playing in the same room. I can always tell when he is bored now and instead of trying to put him to sleep before his scheduled bedtime I just switch things up to keep him happy. I'm glad everyone sees him at his happiest and thinks I have a perfect and content baby! Honestly, he is a happy baby during daylight hours and I still only wish he slept through the night without wanting to eat 3-4 times.

Claire

The many gaps in her mouth still throw me off sometimes, but she is down 4 teeth all at once! I wouldn't believe her struggle to eat food if it wasn't pizza she was having problems with yesterday, luckily she has been so mature about finishing new foods. Makes me hope that Shay will one day be just as open about eating food I make for the family. Unfortunately, they have had more issues on the bus and have now been suspended twice from riding. I'm very lucky I can take them and pick them up because I'm not sure they are learning their lesson by grounding them. Hopefully, this week will be better or I can find a way to teach them to behave when I'm not around to remind them. We had some bird visitors one day which was so exciting because they kept playing in our sprinklers and flying around. Then I saw they pooped all over my fence...yay.

Shay

This goofy girl continues to make me laugh, we got their school pictures and I just love the joy on her face when I opened it up. She has had too many issues at school since the beginning and even though she got better, they started a communication log to inform me of all that goes on during the day. I think she has a habit of playing crazy when she wants attention and her crazy is not okay with kids her age. I'm hoping everything will keep getting better, at least that is what I'm praying for every day. Apparently her crazy makes adults laugh because they went to a birthday party at our neighbor's that I came late to because Adrian was napping and I was told how crazy she was. I have to keep reminding myself that she still has some growing up to do and as much as I want to treat both girls the same because they are so alike, they are still a year and a half different! They still both lasted about the same amount of time watching conferences before wanted to get back to 'kid games' and be done coloring. I got to learn from Shay's teacher at a RS activity and it was so special, made me feel very close to her.