Getting ready for bed tonight, Josie using mouthwash, Mio seeking some attention, Celia and Ewan in the bath taking a short break to see what I’m doing. Somehow we all make it work in our tiny bathroom.
Last month, Celia turned 4.5 years old and we celebrated with half of a birthday cake. Cake is on the mind a lot at our house, see Ewan’s 1.75 year post for information about that, but I haven’t written it yet, hopefully tomorrow. Celia is like a person who has eaten a lot of cake. She is an eternal bundle of energy and happiness, except for when she crashes and then crashes hard and is very tired and grumpy like someone coming off a sugar high. She absolutely adores riding her bike and wants to ride it every day, even tolerating us requiring her to just ride it around the driveway and nowhere else for those times when we can’t go anywhere. She transitioned in under a week from her balance bike to the real bike. The frustration was tough, but she kept at it and figured out stopping and starting with brakes quite quickly, although not quickly enough for her!
Her other favorite activity right now is gymnastics. She’s on the Bronze pre-team right now and has been moved up to the silver team as of this summer. Basically it’s the uber-beginner team in a very competitive gym. Today she was very proud of how she was able to do some backwards rolls without any help which she has been working on for a few months. She also likes to bounce on the tumble track a lot and has started to get the hang of climbing the rope. Celia has mastered the monkey bars at the playgrounds too! She finished up her ballet lessons a few months ago and she’s been disappointed not to have those anymore as well, although I think it may be more of an issue of jealousy rather than true love for the class, because Josie’s class runs longer than hers did.
At school Celia has been enjoying herself. She says she primarily plays with her friend Safi, but her teachers say she plays with everyone. She’s like me in that when she gets home from a big event like school, she likes some quiet time to unwind and decompress before talking about it. That combined with her teachers not writing about what they did most days, I’m rather in the dark about what she does at school most days. Tonight she told me the parts of an insects anatomy, so there’s something they covered apparently! She’s one smart cookie for sure. We’re working on her reading and she’s picking things up quickly. She will also read to Ewan books she’s memorized, or can figure out the words from the pictures. I’m bragging, but this is my blog, so yes I’m bragging. Celia’s also been playing around with her math skills and adding and subtracting. She begs to use Khan Academy on the ipad to practice her math skills. She only has to wait because she can’t read the words to understand most of the questions if they’re not just straight equations. I also work with her on some workbooks and she still loves to play games.
Her happiness moments are listening to us read books to her, and playing outside in the park as a family. We’re looking at trying new activities, but Celia often feels shy of trying new things if Josie isn’t doing them as well. She wants to wait until the fall to try soccer too. Her listening skills need some work too, but I think we’ve made a bit of progress at least on that. She helps around the house when required, folding laundry, emptying the dishwasher and dusting. Celia is particularly fun to talk to and hang out with when she’s on her own as the green eyed monster is very strong at this point with her. She’s also afraid of bears, and sleeps with her head under the covers every night to hide from them. Jordi sleeps with his head under the covers too, but I’m pretty sure it’s for a different reason. No problem seeing the bears at the zoo oddly enough.
Now that Celia is 4.5 and showing signs of interest and readiness, I’ve started giving her reading lessons a few times a week. She was really fighting me on reviewing letter sounds, so I decided that she was just really bored with doing individual letters again and again because she already knew them, and so we skipped ahead to real words and she’s no longer disinterested. I keep it short, but this day, Josie decided she wanted to make up her own phrases for Celia to read for her using some of our words. Plus she likes to use the white board. Celia indeed could read it for her.
This past weekend we visited my grandmother for an early Mothers Day brunch. Jordi was under the weather so he stayed home. We brought some food, toys and some balls and the kids played around in the grass while we ate and talked. The girls also gave a choral concert to Bubie with at least 8 songs. Although I don’t think she could really hear them, she could follow along with the beat by watching their mouths and really enjoyed their efforts.
Here’s a quick shot of my grandmother, still going strong, although not quite sure who each one of us is anymore. She really liked the strawberry banana coconut milk smoothie I brought and appreciated our cards.
Yes here it is May, the middle even, and I’m finishing up writing about Christmas. C’est la vie. It’s been a busy spring. But back in December, before we had the terrible winter, we had a lovely visit to my dad’s sister and her family. We got a hitch put onto our minivan and bought a rack for the back that can hold stuff and so we put large rubber bins on the back of the car to hold presents and other gear, leaving most of the interior space for us. It worked out very well. We wrapped the bins in trash bags, strapped them down with ratchet straps and put 7 people (including three car seats) into an 8 person car. It was a fairly comfortable ride and the rack in the back didn’t change much except when going over really bumpy spots. We stopped at our usual haunt on the way there and on the way back, catching a swim both directions and dinner at a local Italian restaurant.
I’m going to let the pictures do a lot of the talking. First up, the classic holding your stocking in front of the fireplace picture! The kids all love to play with all the little Christmas decorations at my aunt’s house.
After we settled in early on Christmas eve, we headed to church for the service and then went to my cousin Sue’s house for a yummy dinner and some gift exchanges.
Here’s Abby, not feeding Zeke.
Here’s my lovely aunt and cousins!
My kids are no longer the only little ones in the family! Ewan’s got a buddy just a few months older than him now! Here’s them trying to sit together. 
Here is Ewan stealing her book, because we got her each one of our kids favorite board books, so he wanted it too. 
Josie and Celia needing some snuggle time with Layla. 
The delicious spread which has graciously gotten more vegetarian over the years, at least the years we show up 🙂 
My dad and cousin Sue who was hosting us all. 
My dad and uncle. 
Most everyone at the party, it was tough to get everyone’s cooperation to get in the photo, and clearly I needed it raised up some more. But still we’re (almost) all in there. 
After eating and opening, we head back home to sleep before Christmas morning! Here we have the girls opening up their santa gift this year, tickets to Frozen on Ice! Santa should have rescheduled the snow storm for us too! 
Photo in front of the tree before Ally went off to a mission trip so we could get us all in there.
After gifts and breakfast, we go for the stockings! Here’s my dad opening his. 
My aunt and Ewan. 
Phoebe the cat, who has sadly passed a few months ago. She was very excited about getting her photo taken. 
My uncle and Ewan. Everybody likes to hold the baby! 
And our final heading on our way home shot. The time always goes by too quickly. At this point we will hopefully see them again sooner now than it’s been since Christmas! 
Yes this was Celia’s best shot, she needed a nap. Us at the Cape Codder resort again.
We’ve had a great spurt of gorgeous weather lately and have spent tons of time outside. Josie got her new bike for her birthday last week and so with the hand-me-downs everyone’s got their own new bike! We do a lot of biking around on the driveway (and the nicer driveway next door). It will be really nice to get the driveway fixed, hopefully later this year. Celia took less than a week to learn to transition from the balance bike to a full-on two wheeler. Josie picked up using her hand brake at the same time. Ewan has now moved on to sitting on the balance bike instead of just walking along with it in-between his legs, he’ll be off to the races pretty soon too! He is over the moon to ride along with the girls and even enjoyed a trip in the trailer (squished in with Celia) behind my bike over the weekend as well.
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