The kids were drawing before school. Katie was very excited about her octopus…and I was actually impressed when I saw it.
Category Archives: Kids
Sometimes cheap fun wins.
They co-opted Tom’s box and were pretending it was something I can’t remember from Minecraft. They were both running around wearing it and having a blast!
Could he be any sweeter?
Owen will randomly say that he misses Grandma Marsha and he knows that we have a tiny bit of her ashes. Today he wrote this note and put it with the ashes. /bawl
We still remember you. I am sad that you died.
Painting snowflakes
Art night ceramics at school! I was clueless as to how to decorate my snowflake…until I finished it…at which point my mind flooded with ideas, all of which I liked better than what I did. The kids’ are great, though you are only seeing the boring back side because they were still drying. And Tom’s impressed me, too…the only one that looks like an actual snowflake! A fun night!
Little marines
Someone has his first Chuck Taylors!
So now he can be twins with daddy.
Katie learned to swing!
I’ve been trying to reach Katie how to pump for awhile, but she just got it today. Yay!
And some climbimg and sliding.
Yes I learned my lesson.
No furry Crocs anywhere there’s wood chips. And this is after the first round of cleaning.
Anyone else hate doing art projects with their kids?
Owen’s pieces usually start out decent enough but then he keeps adding stuff and adding stuff and adding stuff and soon it’s unrecognizable. I realize a first grade project isn’t a big deal but my OCD can’t handle it.
This is disguising Tom Turkey so the farmer can’t find him for Thanksgiving dinner.
- There was one zig-zag string of lights and it was perfect…and then he just off and scribbles on another zig-zag strand on the side.
- I thought the yellow star on top was good…then he decided to color it green.
Maybe I need to start drinking wine again…
Veteran’s Day Part 2
The school posted a slew of pictures on Facebook from the assembly today and I snagged these:
I knew from some of the faces it was Owen’s class but it took me a minute to find…his head. 🙂
Two of the three marines in the audience (they played each branches song while the appropriate members stood up).
And lookie here. 🙂
Flu shots for three!
We finally made it in for flu shots at the hospital this morning! I figured what better morning than the morning when we were all already up and showered by 7:15. :/
Owen was adamant about not wanting the shot so got the mist. Katie probably could have gotten the mist but one of the rules is you had to keep your hands completely out of your face all day and we weren’t sure she could do that…so she got the shot. She squawked for the 1.3 seconds it took and then she was fine. Owen made more of a stink about the mist than Katie did about her shot! He knew it wasn’t a shot but he just gets himself so worked up over nothing it’s silly. And then when it’s over and it was no big deal, he acts like he knew it was no big deal the whole time. Kids.
Katie showing Owen her band-aid. (As she repeated many times: “Mama and me got band-aids because we got shots. Owen got drops.”)
Enjoying her stickers:
I’m a monster, I know.
I wanted to throttle both kids by 6:45am.
Owen went downstairs to play on the iPad—which he knows he’s not supposed to do. And then got mad at me when he got in trouble for it. (I’m a monster, I know.)
Katie had wandered around this morning and gone downstairs to find Owen and consequently couldn’t make it to the potty in time (when it was actually time) so peed all over the stool and the rug and her PJs…and screamed when I took her PJs off because she still wanted to wear them. (I’m a monster, I know.)
Owen had tried to clean up the pee—with toilet paper, so it was a sopping mess (but at least he tried!)—but after I dumped the TP I tried to clean the stool off in the tub but Owen had left the shower knob on so I got a head and shoulders full of water instead (which normally wouldn’t have been too awful but my hair is currently straightened so that messes that up).
Needless to say I lost my shit just a little bit. Dealing with that crap is never fun, but even less so before 7am.
Walking and watching
Katie loves to bounce in the bounce house…except she wants you to watch her. 🙂 So whenever I walk on the treadmill, she bounces. She’s actually a riot to watch—with jumps and kicks and tossing big soft things around. Tonight she had to run and get her bear so they could jump together.
Afterward, heading upstairs:
Me: Katie, you did awesome in there!
Katie: I know, I had awesome kicks!
My little puzzle girl
We were at the library and I was looking for books for Owen while Katie was looking at toddler books. I came back a few minutes later to this:
She had found the puzzles and decided to do it right there! 🙂
Gym Birthday Party
Of course we were there early, so we waited in the car for a few minutes.
They got to start playing before anyone else got there:
And then it got a little chaotic with 20 kids…but we got to stay out of the crazy and visit with the other parents (and I really hit it off with another mom—which was a bonus!). The end of the party had everyone zip lining which they all loved!
Sunday Swim
The kids’ lessons are progressing nicely…but today we just get a video of Katie going down the slide during play time. It’s funny—last week was the first week she was even somewhat interested, and one of the instructors made sure to help her climb up and wanted to wait for her at the bottom of the slide. I had to tell them she’s an old hat at big slides and they didn’t need to worry! She showed them today!
Owen helping her up the first time:
Today’s new dress
Today’s “new” dress (hand-me-down from Lisa Len-Beson). She loves it, of course! (And this is typically what her hair looks like on a daily basis.)
Katie & Cayenne
Kitchen helper
I was making Tom two different kinds of rice pudding and Katie wanted to help. She tired of actually helping stir after about six seconds, so she did her own cooking instead.
Snuggles with daddy
Ha! Just kidding! I’m not sleeping!
Frozen Painting
They had paint kits at the dollar store so Katie picked Frozen (and we got Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for Owen).
After she finished the two designs in the kit, she did her own free form piece (which I like the best). 🙂
Veteran’s Day
We all went to the Veteran’s Day Assembly at Owen’s school. It was very nice, and each of the grades performed either a song or poem. During one of the songs, every child who had a military family member stood up and waved a sign that said “Thank you, Service Members!” (This is a photo from a random person on Facebook.)
We were a bit too far back to see well, so it wasn’t until afterwards we learned that Owen didn’t stand up…because he was shy. Poor kid. It wasn’t like he was the only one, either—there were probably (conservatively) 50 other kids standing up, too.
This was what he brought home from school:
Perfect playground attire, right?
I made her change out of her dress and tights, but she still had to wear a tutu. We could only find those two Crocs. And she had to take her purse. I love it!
Dancing after lunch
We went to Outback for lunch since daddy was home and we were out running errands. We were waiting outside since it was taking forever for the check and Katie was restless.
Katie’s new hair!
And cropped to better see the hair:
And then, of course, crazy faces. 🙂
Katie is 3 years 4 months today!
(And still not a good hair picture since we didn’t wash it this morning.)
1st Grade Veteran’s Day Assembly project
Owen’s teacher emailed me last night to see if I could help with a class project today for the Veteran’s Day assembly on Wednesday. It was last minute but she thought maybe I could do it since I was already going to be in the classroom (for a makeup P/T conference). I quickly agreed because I like helping out—and I could bring Katie. 🙂 She said she’d let me know what the project was when I got there.
Hoo boy, LOL.
It wasn’t just a CLASS project, but a GRADE project. An ART project. Where I had to paint everyone’s hands to make the stripes on a flag. And stick their name stickers on as well. So, around 100 kids 2-10 at a time in a hallway…ON MY KNEES the whole time.
I gave up control of hand placement on about the fourth red hand, LOL.
I had on the wrong clothes—a tank with a swingy top which kept flapping about getting close to the paint (washable, of course, but still…I’d have worn something different if I knew I’d be painting).
I had the wrong hair—I wore it down, but with all the moving around and kids and close quarters and paint…I would have worn it up.
And my knees. My poor, old, broken knees. I can barely deal with kneeling for five minutes, let alone an hour. I wouldn’t have said no even if I knew, so it doesn’t really matter…I’m just lamenting my old knees and how I took some strong drugs and am currently writing this entry sitting with my feet up because it hurts to walk. 🙂
It was fun overall (though a bit messy and chaotic), some kids recognized me as Owen’s mom, the teachers really appreciated me being there, it turned out cute, and I was too busy to worry about Katie but Mrs. Talley said she was just fine…and I walked in after to see Katie just sitting with the kids (not even with Owee!) watching the math lesson. 🙂
First 1st grade P/T conference
On the way in, we stopped to see Owen’s Hero submission for Veteran’s Day in the main hallway:
Overall, Owen is doing great!
He’s ahead in reading—she said she’s had to keep moving him up levels! He’s currently on Level 8 (levels are much different than back in our day) and needs to be at Level 16 by the end of the year…which his teacher said she wasn’t worried about at all.
He’s doing well in math—he got 13/14 on a recent makeup test from the week he missed (but she didn’t give him any instruction like the rest of the class had). And the question he got wrong he just didn’t pay close attention to the instructions because he was likely going too fast (it was 4 + 2 = ___ + 3 and he wrote 6).
He’s also doing well in social studies, science, and writing—and I got to quickly look at his journals.
He uses his time well (an improvement from kindergarten) and behaves in class.
His teacher said he had no major areas that needed improvement (yay!)—just basic (expected) things like using upper/lower case consistently and correctly, spacing between words when writing, etc…all stuff we know and are working on.
And we got a list of questions we need to ask when he does his daily reading to help prepare him for the state testing at the end of the year (like Who was the main character? What happened first?) as well as more critical thinking like this:
Katie’s first haircut!
Though I’d recently been thinking about getting Katie’s hair trimmed, I hadn’t yet gone through with it. But, when we ended up across the way from a kids’ cut place (Cartoon Cuts) at the mall, we asked if she wanted to get her hair cut and she said yes!
And she did amazing! It helped, I’m sure, that she got to watch cartoons the whole time! 🙂
He blow-dried it which made it look completely unlike her normal self, and of course, we couldn’t get her to pose for a decent pic.
The neat thing about an actual kids’ place? I got this automatically. 🙂
Then it was off to the bouncy place—her treat for being a good girl during the haircut.
This was the photo attempt at home:
So I’ll have to get a better one tomorrow. 🙂
