Boy time sure flies when you have four kids!
I have a few minutes before the afternoon school run, so here I am. Tom is asleep, and Joan is teaching Dave to say "doll house," which is cute to listen to.
Things are busy, busy, busy, but going well. Tom has had a huge growth spurt, so sleep has been elusive. He's up every two hours in the night, and eating non-stop during the day. It's such a dramatic spurt, that within a couple weeks, he's outgrown clothes, has to have the belt on his seat moved to new loops, and some days I wake up and he's actually
noticeably bigger than the night before! Very scary. I can't wait to get him back on a scale to see how dramatic it actually is! I have pictures to prove it all, but they're in the camera. I've decided to abandon my hunt, and just find a new cord. Now the problem is getting up the nerve to go into an electronics store with so many little kids. I'm starting to get used to it, but I avoid stores that don't have shopping carts. I took them all to the store to pick up milk yesterday, and got a lot of very strange looks. John was walking, Tom was in his seat in the basket, and the other two were in the cart itself. I'm sure everyone was wondering where on earth the groceries would go. And so was I, considering that Joan gets a kick out of tossing groceries overboard when she's in the cart. But I only needed a couple things, so it worked out. It means we do a lot on Mondays, when Mike is off. Either we all go together, or we split the brood - I might take Tom and John shopping, and leave the others with Mike, or just take Tom, who's pretty low maintenance. Once, I even got to run to the corner store to pick up eggs, all by myself. It was glorious. It was hard to go home! But I guess that's just the nature of having lots of little kids. They're kind of...everywhere. I've gotten used to a crowd of spectators every time I go to the washroom, or little hands passing me the shampoo while I shower. Thankfully John understands privacy. Hopefully, one day I'll have it back!
The kids are doing well. John has only one more school day until summer vacation. He's very excited that he'll get to do grade 1 in the same school! But he's nervous about doing well, so we're starting "summer school" for him, to help him feel like he's ready. Mike has been working on his math, and I've done some work with reading, and he's doing really well already. But he wants to know more before school, and who are we to say no?! With math, he can now read numbers to 100, count fairly well to 100, and count to 100 by 10's. He understands simple addition and subtraction as well. We dappled in multiplication as well, but it's still beyond him - he had to assemble a collection of 100 things for school. So because he
already knew to count to 100 by 10s, I showed him that by making 10 piles of 10 each, we can get to 100. He seemed to get it, kind of, but not really. With reading, we had to start with letters and sounds, sadly. But then we went on to
phonics, by working on "word families", like cat, hat, sat, bat, or cow, now, bow. Now, he can actually figure some things out on his own. Mike told him to pick the "cheese
sauce" from a group of containers, and he was able to find it by looking for the word that started with the "ch" sound, which he knows is c. And he's figuring out how to spell simple words, like toy and cow, on his own by sounding them out in his head. Ask him to read a page in a book, and he gets flustered. But he's really close! He's already beyond what they require for the BC kindergarten curriculum in a lot of areas. And his french is getting really good. He knows as much french as me, and I studied it until grade 9 - a little fact he loves to tell everyone!
He had a visit to the dentist yesterday. His second tooth had come loose, but the adult one had grown in before the baby had fallen out, and it looked terrible. The dentist said it's actually completely normal, and not to worry. He has some crowding issues right now, but as he grows, the teeth will all shift around and probably be fine. He may need braces down the road, but he said not to worry about it until he's older, and things have had a chance to settle out. We thought he'd pull the tooth, but he said to NEVER pull a baby tooth. That's old school dentistry, and now they know it's a big mistake - it'll fall out when it's time. And lo and behold, just a couple hours later, it fell out! But he said his teeth look good, and could only see one potential beginnings of what may or may not be a cavity. Pretty amazing considering his aversion to
tooth brushing! I see little kids all over John's school with stainless steel molars, because they're all rotten. John rarely brushes his teeth - now and then I pin him down and do it for him as he kicks and screams - yet his are fine. Go figure.
Let's see. Joan woke up one morning and asked to have a "Princess party." She wanted a beautiful dress, butterfly wings, and a pink crown. I don't know where this came from - she must have dreamed it. But she insists she must have this party. I think we'll pick a day in summer and throw her this party. Her birthday is so close to
Christmas, it's hard to stomach a birthday party then, so she's never actually had one. I don't even think she's ever even had a cake. For her last birthday, we just took them to Dairy Queen, but she didn't even know it was her birthday - there was no cake, no gifts, but we did sing happy birthday over her banana split. Pretty sad, really! So I think she's due for a big princess bash.
Dave's doing well - he's going through his almost-two language explosion, which has been tons of fun to watch! He used his first three word sentence. Bailey had just scratched him, so he came up to me and said, all sad "kitty hurt me." He's really sweet. We had some tortilla chips, and he held out his hand for some. I put a couple in his hand, and out popped the other hand, asking for more. So I gave him a couple more, and he turned right around and handed them to Joan. He likes to shepherd the other kids. He calls them for dinner when it's time to eat. He gathers them up when dad leaves for work. he'll gently push
Joan towards dad and say "hug!" At dinner, he'll push
their plates closer to them and say "eat!" if they've taken too long a break. He's very into justice - he makes sure everyone has food (unless he's starving - then it's every man for himself!) and makes sure
everyone has a blanket. He likes to wrap up his toys in blankets and rock them. He's really cute.
We had a pet briefly. It was a baby mouse I found fast asleep snuggled next to my shoe. It had obviously been attacked by our cat Bailey and didn't look like he'd make it, so Mike put him into a box, and gave him some of our organic grain. We named it Mary, because it was so tame, it was like it was the reincarnated spirit of our late cat Mary, who vanished just after Tom was born, and we speculate was snatched by a coyote. We kept Mary the mouse for a couple weeks. The kids loved it! Every night, we'd take it out to play. It was good for John, who saw the work of keeping a pet - every night, we'd clean out the box, and change the food, litter and water. They got to see all the rules of a pet - being gentle, always washing your hands with soap after touching it. But alas, Mary was just a field mouse at heart, and could not be tamed. Not only was she not a tiny little baby anymore, but once she started felling better, she would jump out of her bucket at night, to our horror, and Bailey's delight. We put a top on, but we decided that's no way to keep a creature, in a dark, enclosed box - and besides, she was starting to nip - so we set her free into the backyard, to be food for something out there. There were many tears from John, who had grown very attached to her. He's asked repeatedly since if we can get a real pet mouse. We told him we'd see in the fall - it's not a good idea in summer, because we'll be away here and there. We're kind of hoping he'll
forget about it. But we'll see what happens once he's back in school.
Speaking of John and school, I'd better corral the kids back to the van so I
can go pick him up!
I'll try to stop in again soon.
