Wow it’s definitely been crickets around here lately. I’ll try to fix that 🙂 But here’s a photo from some warmer days when we went to overnight camp in August last year.
We are standing outside our cabin, three days dirty from the great outdoors. We had loads of fun, but someone didn’t want to be in the picture.
Quick fish-eyed selfie from the women’s soccer league which you can sort of see the sign in the back. We saw our first professional women’s soccer game!
Getting it in right under the wire!
Sorry for the cell phone photo, I remembered to take a real camera photo, but then I forgot. So here’s one of all five of us enjoying our first ice cream cone on the front porch of the summer. What they didn’t know is that I replaced the regular ice cream with the non-dairy Ben and Jerry’s, and other than it being banana flavored it was a hit.
Cobwebs around here? Yes, we’ve been busy with the move and a bum foot and other health issues. But I’m going to try to get into the swing of things again!
Celia last month turned five and a half! She is growing and learning so much each of these days. She has literally been growing and is now almost 48″ tall with shoes on, which is great for going to the amusement parks this summer when all the rides let you ride on the big kid and little kid rides if you are exactly 48 inches tall. She is very strong thanks to her weekly gymnastics classes. She spends a lot of her own time cartwheeling and doing handstands around the house, sometimes even in spaces where there is enough room for her to do it safely. She can do a beautiful handstand and has enviable core muscles. In class though, I think her teacher wishes she paid a bit more attention. Celia is frequently found fooling around with her friend Sasha in class and they get separated.
Other than gymnastics Celia has also been doing choir all year and loves to dance around and sing the songs. She had her final performance last weekend and said she ‘wasn’t nervous at all’, she calmed whatever emotions they may have been and sang beautifully. This spring she has also been on a soccer team, which I have had the pleasure of coaching. She’s a firecracker on the team and always scores a few goals at the scrimmage. Through the winter she also did futsol which is an indoor variant of soccer. Now she says she’s ready for a break from soccer which is just fine. We’ll do some swimming this summer and continue gymnastics. We’ve also done a few weeks of t-ball. Last week she was so much quicker than all the other kids that the coach had to tell her to stop getting the ball all the time. I could see from across the field that she was just half a second quicker in her reaction than all the other kids.
Academically Celia is really blossoming. She’s reading beginner books, level 1’s no problem, and level 2’s slowly. She’s very eager to be read to as well, but will also read to me frequently. Math is her preferred subject although she’s not too fond of the drills of adding and subtracting. She has trouble explaining now how she gets her answers often. I will ask her a question, she’ll go off to the corner, and come back with the right answer but isn’t sure how to explain how she got it. So we keep working on that, but she loves patterns and shape play as well. She’s halfway through 1st grade math.
Celia is definitely my most volatile child. Talking to another mom on the soccer field this weekend we may have found that age 5 plus being the middle child seems to be a tough place to be. Celia will go from very happy to extremely mad very quickly over any slight disappointment. We’re working on teaching her to use her words and explain her feelings, Ewan even re-explained that she shouldn’t kick today when they were fighting. She’s got some great aggression to use on the soccer field.
One of her happiest moments lately has been losing her first tooth! You can see it missing in the photo below.
I love seeing her gain more abilities and confidence. Unfortunately she is not fond of displaying those capabilities, such as carrying her shoes or clearing her dishes even though we all know she can manage. She likes to help feed the cats but that’s about all she’s interesting in helping with most days other than cooking. She likes to wash vegetables and cut things with knives. She can also crack and separate an egg.
While she loves to play with Josie, she’s also learning the enjoyment of playing with Ewan and being the bigger kid in the relationship. Now that Ewan can play lots more imaginative games I often find those two out playing with each other, dressing up, building forts and imagining new places.
We’ve moved! The couch got kicked to the curb.
All of us on our annual trip to the Cape Codder Resort! We had a short trip this year of only one night, but we had lots of fun and it still felt like a great weekend away. Next year they will have a much bigger expanded water park which our kids should hopefully be big enough to actually enjoy and appreciate.
Sorry for the poor picture quality but I haven’t picked up my camera in a while. I need to start on a new project to get things moving. This is from our family trip to see Fancy Nancy: The Musical! At the Regent Theater in Arlington. We all enjoyed the show which was a children’s theater production and definitely better than the average high school event I believe. It was a gift from Santa for Christmas. Josie liked the song about being her mothers daughter, and Celia liked the one about being a shark. Ewan wanted to know why the lights kept getting turned off, didn’t like the dark.
It’s been quiet here on the blog, I’ve been sick, and with finishing up my year long photo project I haven’t had the kick in the pants to get posting every week. But last month Ewan turned two and a half! And boy is he a kick in the pants to get moving. He’s always on the go ready to get into and explore everything. Yesterday we were at the park and he decided he wanted a stick that he left at home, so he left the park and walked all the way home himself to get the stick. He assured me that he looked both ways at the streets. We had a lot of talking about that (and no he didn’t make it home without be going after him fairly quickly but he was not in a listening mood and he’s never done that before).
The biggest change in him is how expressive his language has become. He can explain what he wants and often why, although the reason doesn’t always make sense. Ewan tells stories about what happened, complete with facial expressions and arm movements to emphasize the big parts.
When we’re at home he spends a lot of time in his trampoline. He likes to jump to music, spinning himself in circles and flopping down. He also loves to read books and is pointing at different words for me to read them to him individually. He has started to play games and tolerates taking turns remarkably well for a two year old. The first orchard game we have is a favorite. He’s learning his colors although he’s not terribly interested in them so he’s a bit flippant about me questioning him on them. He also is getting more excited about puzzles lately solving 12 piece ones alone and bigger ones with his sisters.
Outside of the house he’s taking a gymnastics class this winter, our classic one with coach Tanya. He’s reluctant to attend some weeks but once we’re there and he’s running around he has a blast. He likes to show off how he can do forward rolls and tries the backwards ones. He also swings from the bars and likes me to call him a monkey.
His favorite shirt is his ‘yoyo’ shirt as he calls it. It says ‘Y is for Yoda’ on it and we gave it to him for Christmas. Unfortunately it is a short sleeve shirt, but he will wear it over or under other long sleeve shirts for the winter and it should fit all summer too! He’s wearing that almost every other day at this point just so we have time to wash it inbetween. He is very picky about what he wears, even down to what color diaper. So many of my friends have told me their boys don’t give a hoot what they wear, but clearly that is not the case here. Also about those diapers, one of these days he’ll hopefully give them up for real. He can use the potty as desired and on command and he’s super excited about underwear but he won’t remember when he’s wearing it that he has to keep it dry, and he won’t tell me when it’s wet all the time. So I’m not pushing on that as I don’t need more puddles to clean up. Right now it’s easier to keep him in diapers and let him use the toilet when it is convenient. He will also just take off his diaper and go if he so desires at times. See the above story about walking home for a stick to show how he’s decided he’ll just do things for himself. He is resourceful! He’ll use anything for a stool so we really have to watch out with where we put things and when he says he wants something. If I say ‘no’ I need to be ready to follow it up with a physical restraint because he takes that as a mere suggestion. He wants to do everything himself and tries to claim that everything belongs to him.
Outside Ewan loves to play with all the balls and toys. He plays with his hockey gear, soccer balls, basketballs, bike, and his tennis ball. He is full of energy and this quite warm winter has been fantastic for being able to keep getting him outside. Today he lamented that there was no more snow to shovel though, maybe he’ll get some more. It is still only February.
We love our local library, we spend lots of time there and check out oodles of books each week. This fall they started a program called ‘reading to a dog’ and we have joined them three times now for it. This week it was very popular and only one dog came so all three shared the ten minute time slot and were very patient with the dog. The first time only Celia went, and she liked it pretty well. The second time there were two dogs, and not many kids so both Josie and Ewan elected to read to the dog. I picked a book for Ewan without any words. This week he had anticipated the dogs and picked out the stack of books he wanted to read to Rufus two days ahead of time. The day before Ewan was practicing reading them to me so he’d be ready for the dog. Rufus is a big big dog, and he likes to lay his paw on you while you read and connect. Josie found his paw rather heavy and kept trying to move it off, while he kept trying to put it back on. Josie read him several pages of a dolphin dreamer book, Ewan “read” him Go Dog Go and Maisy Drives the Bus, book he’s memorized mostly. Celia at the end took a few pages of Maisy for Rufus and fun was had by all.
And that does it! 52 weeks, a whole year of all three kids! I love having captured so many more of the everyday moments of the three of them. I think I may have to do it again, but I also think I may take a short break. I was also considering trying to get better at my iphoneography and pushing myself with that too. I’ll have to decide, but for right now I’ve got a cold and I just want to relax. I should also print off a book of this year!
Entries (RSS)