Kid Accomplishments

Each of the kids has continued to grow and improve during the "lack of blogging" period. It's so fun to be able to watch my kids take these significant steps in life. I love being a mom!

Emma's biggest new accomplishment was learning to ride a two-wheeler without training wheels! With me being pregnant this last summer, I just couldn't bring myself to chase behind a bike while trying to teach Emma how to ride. And Jason and I spent most of our free time working on the house, so I just scratched off the effort to teach her until next Spring. Then one day about a month ago, Emma came racing home from her friends house saying that she had gotten on his bike and ridden by herself. So we took off her training wheels and she showed me how she could take off and ride all by herself with no help! It was amazing! She is also doing well in school. She's reading fluently and learning new words and things every day. Her principal decided for sure that she is not skipping up to first grade, mostly because she apparently doesn't voluntarily do more work than she's required to--in other words, she doesn't challenge herself. Oh well! I do really like her Kindergarten teacher and she's still learning things all the time. She's also a marvelous help (most of the time) with Josiah and Gavin. Emma has also happily accepted that she's special by being the only girl and absolutely adores Josiah.

Gavin is learning and growing by leaps and bounds. He's talking constantly and comes out with words and phrases all the time that surprise and amaze me. His teachers have mentioned that his fine motor skills are really developing, including finally learning how to color (and mostly stay in the lines). He is the first on the scene with his tools whenever we start working on some part of the house. And he has learned how to clean up! Hurray! He even sings "Meam up, Meam up" (clean up) whenever he helps, we then add "everybody, everywhere" (if you aren't familiar with the tune, then you need to watch more Barney the dinosaur). He's also learned how to boggle and frustrate both his parents and teachers. He can switch emotions on and off like a light switch: one minute he'll be as happy as can be, and then suddenly it'll be the end of the world and he won't do anything but cry and throw a tantrum. His teachers' bribes and tricks aren't working any more and they're not sure what to do now--I say, welcome to the club, everyday is an experiment with Gavin, wondering what methods will work to motivate and discipline him today. So they recruited the help of a professor on campus who is a well known behavior expert. But Gavin has an innate sense of the best way to not give you what you want-- so the couple of times that she's come to his preschool class to observe and give suggestions, he has behaved like a perfect angel! She asked if she could take him home with her because he was such a sweetheart! Funny, funny boy!

Josiah slept through the night yesterday! I wish I could say that he did again last night, but alas, no luck there. But I'm excited about it, because it means that I could start weaning him at night and "helping" him sleep by himself all night long. Wish me luck! Josiah is also smiling all the time now, mostly after he gets his diaper changed. It's very sweet with beautiful dimples! The rest of his developments have already been mentioned in the blog about him.