First Day of Pre-School and Mother’s Day Out

Yesterday Natalie and James started school.  Wahoo!!

We got up early, got ready, dropped Joanna off at school, then came back home to finish getting ready and take some pictures!

Neither of them were as cooperative as Joanna.

James wasn’t having anything to do with me taking his picture, the stinker!

I tried again inside, just to get him and his sign in the same picture.  :)

I was able to snap a picture of Natalie as I dropped her off at her class.

As of last week, their school bags hadn’t come in so I sent her with Joanna’s old bag for the first day.  But now she has her own, not-handed-down bag!

James walked into Natalie’s class just fine – he loves it in there!  But when it was time to go to his room, he wouldn’t walk and began to cry.  So I don’t have a picture of him at school.  But after all the crying and drama, it sounds like he had a great day!  Natalie did too.

I sure did; it was nice to just be alone in my house with my thoughts for awhile.  And I get to do the same tomorrow… after I go to the dentist.  :(  But at least my appointment is on a day that I don’t have to worry about what to do with my kiddos!

Journaling

Last Tuesday, Joanna’s class got out late, and we didn’t make it back home until about 2:10.  I laid the boys down, put the girls in their room to play quietly, and took a shower.  Then I decided to have Joanna come out so she could start working on some of her homework.  No sooner had we started than I could tell that James simply wasn’t going to settle for naptime.  I went in to rock him and soon had a heavy weight on my shoulder.

He was out. (And these pics were obviously taken in the dark with my iPod.)

And it turned out to be the sweetest time with Joanna.  She couldn’t work on her homework because it involved cutting and glueing that I wanted to supervise, so she talked quietly to me more than she had the whole week before.  She also found a spiral notebook that I just cleaned the used pages out of, and she began to “journal” like {I think} she does at school.  She has filled pages and pages with little drawings and she tells me about them.  She hasn’t drawn this much in her whole life.  LOVE IT!!!!

These pictures are from just a couple of days ago.  She showed them to me when I happened to have my camera handy.

This is all of us and our house.  I can’t remember who is who except that it’s not what you’d expect.  :)  And everybody has a belly button.

And this one she told me was “Cat, cat, dog, dog, Christiana, Andy.”  How wonderful!

She has this little computer toy that she loves, and she was copying the words it spelled into her little book.

Joanna had a fever Thursday night so she couldn’t go to school on Friday.  She was so worried that she wouldn’t be able to turn in her homework that was due!  I’m so happy she seems to be enjoying school.  She never drags her feet when it’s time to go.  Yay she’s not like I was!!!

Meet the Teacher

Last Thursday we went up to the church so Natalie and James could meet their teachers and see their classrooms.  Natalie was up first.

There were these little screens that looked like fish tanks, and she was pretty happy watching the “TV.”

She made herself right at home.

James found the cars and the garage and was in heaven.  We were there for I think about 45 minutes, and I’ve never seen him so happy and independent.  I just kept checking to make sure he hadn’t left the room.

So I have my eyes open for one of these bad boys:

Natalie is so cute.  :)

James found this little car and kept saying “Eesa car.”  (Lisa’s car)  It does kind of look like her van!

When it was time to go to James’ class, he couldn’t let go of a car (so we took it and returned it later).

He was a little more apprehensive in his own class.  I’m sure that’s because this is often the room he’s in for nurseries and he thought I was leaving him.

I’m so excited for Preschool and MDO to start tomorrow!  James and Natalie are both going Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:00-2:30.  I feel sanity returning to my life.  (Ha!)  Ray will also go the same days, and I will have baby Laura all to myself probably one of those days each week.  The other I might be all alone.  I already have a huge list of projects.  :)

Lunch this week, the Triple Stroller, and other School Stuff

On Monday night I packed all of Joanna’s lunches for the week.  I was a little concerned the Friday one wouldn’t still be fresh, but I was willing to take my chances.

Tuesday: A tortilla wrap (mashed avocado spread with ham, cheese, and spinach), grape tomatoes, and grapes.  Also, my mother picked up a huge box of those little bags of chips for Joanna to have sometimes, so I sent one of those as well.

Wednesday: almost the same with some snap peas as well.  Joanna calls them crunchy beans.  I sent some almonds in a snack bag along with because it didn’t seem like quite enough lunch.  But it was; she didn’t eat the wraps and she left her lunch box at school so I had to toss them the next day.  Bummer.  :)

Side view of the wraps – yum!

Thursday: tomatoes, “crunchy beans,” cheese, celery with cream cheese, apple slices and peanut butter.  The peanut butter in the muffin cup inside a little baggie actually worked okay, though I’m on the hunt for some small, lidded, reusable containers for dips.  She told me she looooved the apples and peanut butter.

And this would have been Friday’s lunch had she gone to school.  It’s the same as Thursday, just packaged a little differently.  The orange-lidded container worked well for the peanut butter; it’s just a little big, and I only have one.  James ate the peanut butter and a few apples for his snack today.  The rest of the goodies are still in the fridge.

But it all still seemed fresh enough for lunch, so that’s good.

Joanna had a fever and started feeling puny yesterday around 4:00.  Matt had been feeling a little off, so I think that may be where it came from, rather than a Kindergarten bug.  She woke up totally fine this morning and felt good all day until about 6:30 when a slight fever came back, and she didn’t feel great.  James took a 2+ hour nap (unheard of!) today so I was expecting it when he woke up with a fever.  He didn’t seem to feel too bad though, just a little puny.  Everyone got a bit of Tylenol to perk them up.  So far, Natalie and I are unaffected.  Hoping that lasts!

Tuesday I tried out my new triple stroller for the first time.  Don’t I have a good-looking bunch?!

That bad boy was HARD to push!  But I persevered, and I’ll probably get better at it.  I’m thankful I won’t have to do it every day, though.  :)  I’m super happy to have it and thankful we’ll still be able to walk to school, even with a full house!

This was also from Tuesday – Joanna’s first batch of “stuff” coming home!  She had a homework assignment due today (We finished it last night, and she was so upset she wouldn’t be able to go to school to turn it in!)  She’s been coming home with a handwriting paper and her reading bag each day.  She has a big zipock with a folder in it.  Each day she gets to choose a book from Mrs. M’s class library to put in the bag to read at home.  I have to enter the book in a little log in the folder and put my initials.

I think it’s a very nice way to read new books we don’t have at home!

Ninth Grade

This photo has nothing to do with the post; he’s just cute.  (And he was witness to my excavation that caused this blog entry.)

When I was in the ninth grade, I took algebra from Miss Nelms.  We had a class set of graphing calculators that she kept in pockets on the wall.  We all had an assigned calculator that we used each class.  I was in fourth period along with my best friend Laura; my boyfriend at the time was in sixth period.  That meant that on Thursdays with block scheduling, he had class right after us.  And he and Laura shared the same assigned calculator.  This is a long story all to say that I used to leave him notes on the calculator.  I thought we were being totally sneaky about it, but it turns out not so much.  A few years ago I ran into Miss Nelms (only now her name is Mrs. Snell).  We were at a spiritual retreat where I was a table leader and who should be at my table but my ninth grade algebra teacher.  Whoa.  And I had to use her first name!  Anyway, she mentioned how she was pretty impressed that my friends and I managed to send text messages before that was even invented.  :)

I was reminded of this today because somehow in all the moves and purging in my life, I still have this bin full of notes.  Most of them are from the ninth grade, and I’m pretty sure I could reconstruct my freshman year of high school with this box of paper.  :)

I took a picture of this pretty one from Kathy before I unfolded it.  I wasn’t totally sure I could refold it.

Most of the notes are from Kathy, Laura, and Jennifer, with a few smattered in from other friends, including that boyfriend with the calculator.

It’s fun to take a walk down memory lane with these little artifacts from fifteen years ago.  Some things, like notes I can’t read, hall passes, and copies of demerits, don’t need to be kept.  But I’m hanging on to a big stack of these notes.  They won’t take up much space, and I’ll have them when I need to remember what it was like to 14 years old.

No Puppies were Harmed in the Making of this Blog Post

I promise.

I was sad Matt had to work today, but the rest of us enjoyed a lovely day with our Joanna home from school.  (And I was so glad to have an extra day to get ready for the school week!)  We went to the grocery store this morning, and the kids were all pretty well-behaved.  I did tons of laundry.  We went to my mom’s and had lunch with her and David.  They fed us leftover brisket bbq sandwiches and some super-yummy beans.  Wahoo for not fixing lunch!

After lunch we took the kids out for some puppy socialization.

Favorite shot of the day:

This was Joanna’s first chance to meet the puppies.  She did spend most of her time fetching them for her brother and sister though.  What a great big sis!

My mother says all the things the kids were doing to the puppies is actually good for them, even though it might look terrible.  She says it’s puppy socialization 101.

And the puppies didn’t even whimper!

James is saying “puppies, c’mere!”

Seeing James with these puppies is the closest I’ve ever come to wanting a dog.  Keep in mind, I don’t want a dog; but this got me pretty close to even considering the possibility.

And then it was time to put them back in their puppy oasis pen so everyone carried one puppy back.

Is he the cutest or what?!!

Thank you David for taking all of these pictures and letting me steal your memory card!

The puppies are Reba, Roxanne, and Max, and they’re going to beagle rescue on Wednesday.  I hope they find lovely homes – they sure are cute (for dogs, anyway).

We took care of Junior Vandenberge this weekend, and I couldn’t get over how much less grumpy James was than usual.  Usually he wakes up just rotten awful in the morning and from his nap.  It takes a long time and much snack for him to be almost human again.  But this weekend he woke up and asked first thing about Junior.  That’s another thing that almost made me consider being a dog owner.  Almost.  Junior is suuuuch a good dog and so tolerant of the little kiddos.  He was a good house guest, that’s for sure!