I drafted this post back in October before the birthday/Halloween crazyness hit in full force, and now I'm finally getting around to fleshing out the stories and posting...
Nathan
Nathan has been keeping track of what number spot he is in the school pick up line (the possible numbers are 1-6). He was reminding me today that he's never been #6 and that he hopes that he's never #6 all the way up until twelfth grade and then he'll tell Ms. Jones... Then he trailed off and told me "never mind". I guess he realized that Ms. Jones wouldn't be his teacher when he finally makes it to 12th grade. (I think it was the next week that he finally was in the #6 spot. But he took the crushing of his ambition well!)
Nathan's always been so interested in the weather, wanting to check the weather on my phone and reporting the current temperature for Knoxville, Boston and California (I can't remember if that started in Boston or not until we came to Knoxville). Also when there's a chance of rain, he will read me the percentage chance of rain by the hour. So this week his unit study in school was the weather and he was about the most excited he's ever been to do his school work.
The next week Nathan's unit study was about musical composers, in preparation for his class going to the symphony. He was super pumped about the assignment to create a poster about a composer with their picture and five facts about them. At first he was telling me about two composers that he had been learning about in music class, and I couldn't understand the names he was saying. But he was insistent and finally I googled "famous composers" and started reading names to him and sure enough he had been learning about some more recent composers that I was not familiar with! But for his project we decided to pick Mozart since we already knew a bit about him from the Magic Tree Hose books and some other "music and story" cds that we had listened to (
Mozart's Magic Fantasy: A Journey Through 'The Magic Flute' and
Mozart's Magnificent Voyage). The project was assigned to be completed over two days of homeschool, but he was so excited about it that he worked all afternoon to finish copying the five facts onto his poster. Then after he went to the concert he came back talking about the musical pieces by name!
For fall break, Nathan had the whole week off while Sarah only had Monday off of school. So on Wednesday we had a rare day where Nathan was running errands with me but without Sarah. He had some money in his wallet (probably mostly collected out of Daddy's change bowl), and had counted it that morning and told me he had three dollars and asked if he could buy something for himself and Sarah at the store. I reluctantly said ok (because with that amount of money all he was going to bring home was junk!), but he found two things for himself and one for Sarah from the Target dollar spot. It was so sweet - Sarah had a wand that had gotten broken by a friend during one of our small group nights, so he found a replacement one for her. But when it was time to pay he came up very short on money (I was already planning on paying the tax but he was still way short). I asked him to count out his money on the counter so I could help him, and he put down two quarters and a dime and called it a dollar. After a minute it hit me - he thought 60 cents was a dollar, just like 60 minutes is an hour! So I handed him an extra dollar bill to make up the difference. So funny to me!
Sarah
Sarah's started to really be into hanging her dresses on hangers, and since she can't easily reach the bar in her closet (she has a stool, but installing a lower rod is on our to do list), she has started hanging her clothes on the tension rod that's used to hold up the fabric for her "secret hiding place". And the amazing thing I noticed is that all her hangers were pointing the same direction. That's my kind of girl!
Last time I did one of
these posts I wrote about how we have a ritual at naps and bed where I make the bed over her and then we give each other Eskimo kisses. But then she decided she also wanted to give me "forehead kisses" where we rub our foreheads together.
I was texting one of Sarah's preschool teachers about cookies for a class party (always gotta be careful of those pesky peanuts!), but during the conversation she sent this message: "We adore her! If you have any thoughts of adding school days to her schedule, we will cheer - with pompons!!!". I thought that was so sweet and made me happy that she acts in such a way that they would love more time with her.
Andrew
Andrew loves his new mobility! Some of his favorite things to do upstairs when he has free reign is to play with the door bumpers on the wall of his room. They are the spring-style kind, and he'll hit at them and they'll "boing" and swing around. He also loves playing at the return air vent, which makes cool noises when he bangs on it and runs his hands over it. Unfortunately it is missing one of the screw-things that secures it at the top, so more then once its fallen and bumped him on the head! (Securing the vent properly is also on the to-do list.)
Two bottom teeth are finally in and back to two naps a day - hooray!! (This is what I wrote sometime back in mid-October. Now Andrew is solidly in a one-nap-a-day routine and has been for 2-3 weeks. At nine months he can make it through the day on one sometimes-crummy nap?!? Crazy I tell you!)
The other morning I was emptying the clean dishes from the dishwasher and was thinking to myself, "Now that Andrew's mobile and loves to pull up on the dishwasher, I probably need to be careful about what he can pull out of the utensil tray." Then I glance over at the dishwasher just in time to see him pull out a steak knife and swig it around over his head (the motion reminded me exactly of someone unsheathing a sword and waving it around threateningly). I leapt over to him and immediately grabbed the knife from his hand! Since then I've gotten a lot better about putting the utensil caddy on the counter whenever the dishwasher's open.
