Audrey Update

Audrey turned 3 last month.  We had a birthday party for her in the backyard.  We invited a local singer/songwriter who plays children's music.  He plays around town regularly and she is a big fan.  It was a surprise to her and Aaron and when he showed up and she literally could not speak.  She just spoke jibberish, she was so excited.  It was a lot of fun.

Her hair has gotten so long.  I gave up on trying to trim her bangs straight, so we've been growing them out.  Most days they are in ponytails, but not when we harvested our pumpkins yesterday (when we took these pictures).

Audrey has a style all her own.  It mostly involves wearing stripey pants, or polka-dots.  And pink.  And an owlie hat a lot of times.  Despite the pink, she's not very girly.  She is just as happy to wear a hand-me down shirt or jammies from Aaron as she is to wear the more girly hand-me-downs we've been fortunate to get from friends and family.

Shortly after Aaron started Kindergarten, I signed Audrey up for a preschool class that meets once a week and requires a parent (or nanny in our case) to stay.  They have circle time at the beginning and end, but the rest of the time is self-directed.  There is always a craft or two for the kids to work on and outside time to play.  Kim has been taking Audrey for the last two months.  She is really blossoming there.  Audrey is a very shy girl, but at the preschool, she interactes with the teacher quite a bit and does tasks independently of Kim (who is also watching Lila).  The class is offered in 3 week sessions and at first I only signed her up for 1, but I've been signing her up for subsequent sessions because she enjoys it so much.

Audrey will turn 5 just nine days after the cutoff for Kindergarten in 2014.  The state of California is moving the cutoff date up one month each year until 2014.  This year the cutoff was November 1.  Audrey already knows her alphabet and about half of the letter sounds.  She can almost count to twenty without making a mistake.  And she now recognizes the word 'the' which is how Aaron started learning to read.  Since they are teaching the letter sounds to the kids in Aaron's class and many of them do not know them, I'm pretty sure Audrey will be ready for Kindergarten in 2 years.  I can't imagine making her start when she is almost 6.  Since Aaron already knows what he needs to know by the end of Kindergarten, I am hoping the school will let us enroll Audrey for the 2014-2015 school year. 

After Aaron started school, Audrey went through an adjustment phase.  She did great while he was in school, and even up through nap time.  But in the afternoons, she wasn't listening to me, melting down and ending up in time-out every day.  After awhile, maybe after she started her preschool class, she settled down a bit.  But she is still high drama when she doesn't get what she wants.

Audrey is such a sweet girl.  And so verbal.  She often talks about how much she loves her family, and lists off all the people in her family. Yesterday, she told Thom "I love you, Papa." And he replied "I love you too, Audrey."  And then she announced "We love each other!". 

I love her use of language and how much she seems to understand.  This morning, I was still in bed when she got up.  Whenever I'm in bed, she is impatient for me to get up and go potty with her and make her breakfast (I think before Papa does it instead, because she wants me to do these things for her.)  So this morning, she was telling me to get up and that I could go potty after she went potty and then I could get her the special cereal that she has been waiting until Sunday to have.  I said she was awfully bossy this morning.  So she immediately said in her sweetest voice, "Mama, will you please get up and help me go potty?"  Because she understands what bossy means and knows how to use her manners when she remembers.

A couple of weeks ago, I had given Aaron a heart shaped cookie after lunch.  Audrey wanted one when her lunch was done.  There was only one left in the bag.  When I pulled it out, part of the top of the heart was broken off.  She looked at it and said "That's not a heart."  I told her it was broken and braced myself for a melt-down.  She just looked at it, said "Thanks you, Mama" and ate it.  She often says thank you to me without prompting for getting her meals or milk or water, all of the things I expect my kids to take for granted.

She still naps every day for about 2 hours.  There was a time when it was a bit of a struggle at nap time with crying and lots of declarations of "But I'm not tired!"  But we seem to have gotten past that.

Her favorite food of all time is quesadilla.  She could eat it every day for lunch and dinner.  With raisins.  I try to broader what she will eat, but I have to say quesadillas are darn simple to make.  And since Thom doesn't get home until close to 7pm, I always make the kids' dinner separately from ours because they need to eat closer to 5pm to get to bed on time.  It is tough enough planning our dinner every night, so I rarely plan their dinner more than 5 minutes in advance.  Plus I try to make something quick and simple for the kids' dinner since it is Lila's fussiest time of day.  Then Thom and I make dinner after all 3 are in bed which is much easier.

Aaron Update

Aaron has been in school for 2 months now.  He knows all 117 Kindergarten sight words that he is supposed to know by the end of the year.  He knows all his letters and sounds and his number 0-30.  They tested him on these things.  He knew the numbers and sounds before Kindergarten and recognized all but a few of the sight words which he learned in the last few weeks.

He was finally assessed for his reading level and his teacher is now sending books home more at his level.  He's been able to read since just before turning 3, but he prefers us to read to him.  If I ask him to read a book, he might read it, but more likely he will say he wants me to read it.  Or if he chooses a book to read out loud, it is well below his reading level.  But he is a rule follower.  He knows he is supposed to read his homework books 3 times so he will read them without complaint.  And I think he is gaining confidence in reading already.  Based on his reading level we were told and looking online, I think he is reading at about a 2nd grade level. 

Since the math they do at school is not challenging him, I am looking into starting a co-op math class with some other families I know who have mathematically talented children like Aaron.  For example, I want to explore things like different number systems since Aaron and the other kids I know have shown an interest in learning to write numbers in different ways.  And I just want Aaron to be around other kids who love numbers and math as much as he does.

Lila Update

Lila turned 5 months old this month.  For awhile, she had been only waking me up once per night and I was getting plenty of rest.  But about a month ago, she started to wake up at least twice and the first time was often within 2 hours of when I went to bed.  Sometimes she wakes up just as I am falling sleep which is the worst.  I'm pretty sure it is because she is teething.  Then she went from taking a morning nap and a long afternoon nap to taking 3 naps because she'd wake up too early from her afternoon nap to make it to bedtime.  It's a little frustrating, but Tylenol seemed to help 2 nights ago and last night she did better, waking up once before Thom went to bed so he got her back to sleep while I slept and she only woke me once and even slept in a little this morning.  Hopefully the teething calms down and she returns to being the champion sleeper she was.

She has also started rolling over with ease.  When she goes on her mat on the floor, she flips over a lot and looks like she wants to crawl.  I had to lower her crib mattress and I considered switching her from a swaddle to a sleep sack, but that did not go well.  She wouldn't stay asleep.  Plus, I found her after nap one day swaddled but on her stomach and she didn't seem in any distress or in danger of suffocating, so we'll keep swaddling for now. 

Lila is still generally a happy baby.  She fusses when she is tired, but even then, if you hold her or take her outside, she'll quiet down.  She loves her brother and sister and they love her.  Aaron loves to make her laugh.  Audrey wants to touch her and kiss her all the time.  Too much, actually.

Below is a video from about 3 weeks ago of Aaron stacking blocks and calling them baskets.  Lila was cracking up.

Owl on the Roof

Thom noticed this owl sleeping our our roof one morning recently when he got the paper.  I had no idea owls would sleep out in the open like that.

What Powers of 2 has to do with family photos

Yesterday, when Aaron was getting ready for bed, he asked me if he had 2048 great-great-great-....-great grandparents.  I lost track of the greats, but I recognized that 2048 was a power of 2, I just didn't know which one.  He told me he'd said 13 greats. I assumed his question was based on something Thom had told him.  So at lunch today, I got out a sheet of paper and created a chart like this to see if I could answer his question:

For each line, I wrote the left-hand side and then the power of 2.  But after I did the Grandparent line, Aaron told me the total.  We got to nine Greats Grandparents which was 2048 and he realized it was 9 greats, not 13 and it was 2 to the power of 11.  I think he miscounted and was thinking 2 to the power of 13 was 2048.  Since we still had room on the paper, I figured 10 greats was a good stopping point and he figured out what 2 to the power of 12 was after asking me and not waiting for an answer. 

I'm not sure, but I guess he was doubling the previous number.  He was doing it in his head, so that's pretty good, but I don't think he was calculating powers of 2.  He may have had them memorized from working on powers of 2 with Thom, but he did seem to think about it like he was doing some kind of mental calculation.

After lunch was quiet time for him.  He took the sheet of paper I had written this on at lunch.  He complained that my writing was too fancy and he couldn't read it very well.  I explained that it wasn't fancy, it was just messy.  But he took it to the couch with him for quiet time anyway.  Exactly when quiet time was over, he came to me with the sheet of paper and wanted to sit with me and look at it.  We talked about it again and he pointed to the 4 circles on line 3 and he said the ones under the circle designated as me were his grandma and grandpa.  And then he pointed to the circles under Thom and said those grandparents had died.  So I got pictures off of the shelf of Thom's parents.  And then he wanted to see my parents' wedding photo. 

And then he asked me if one of the circles was Alan.  We don't have any Alan's in my family so I was confused.  And then he clarified that he meant the one whose tummy Grandma had been in.  That would be my Grandma Helen.  I happened to have a picture of my grandparents on the shelf, too, so we looked at them and then I got out some wedding photos and showed Aaron pictures of his aunts and uncles on his dad's side as well as another picture of his Grandma Lillie.  There were also a couple of cousins from his dad's side that he hasn't met.  He was fascinated by all the pictures and wanted to refer back to our chart.  But I pointed out his aunts and uncles aren't on there, just parents and grandparents and great grandparents.

I'm frequently amazed with how his mind works.  And how a lesson on the powers of 2 turns into a family tree discussion.  I think I will try to make this chart for him with photos instead of circles next.  And maybe another family tree showing aunts and uncles, too.