Cold Season has hit!

Now that school is back and session and kids and their germs have merged once again, we have been fighting the common cold around here.  Olivia was home a couple of days last week with a 102 fever and today it is Soren's turn.  Perhaps this is why I am blogging when the sun is up?!?  Time to make some chicken noodle soup, and read some more books and snuggle up this little guy.

Fall-alicious!

Last Sunday we decided to go out and take a Sunday drive and look for signs of fall. It was fun to meander through the beautiful countryside and see the bits of orange sprinkled throughout the trees. We ended up at a family-friendly apple orchard that had a corn maze, jumping castles, bouncing balls, swings, pumpkins, and of course apples and apple cider, yum! Here are a few pics of our outing.

Well, they say the squeaky wheel gets the oil and it looks like our squeaky wheel, Anya has had enough of this watching the family eat and wants to join in. Lately I have been feeling that Anya is just hungry! She is still a good nurser and eats about every four hours, but this just doesn't seem to be cutting it anymore. She has been waking up somewhere between 12-2am to eat and she guzzles during this time. So, with the hopes of better sleeping and the desire for Anya to be full, solids have begun! Most books will tell you that it is not nutritional necessary until 6 months, but I am finding my mothering experience to not completely agree on all terms of "the books." In my five years of mothering I have learned to educate myself and then combine that knowledge with my God-given intuition. With Olivia, she too was an early sitter and was just about crawling when I started her at 5 1/2 months. I really tried hard to wait until 6 months, but her activity level just required more. Soren got his first nibbles at 5 months and he too was already sitting by this time. And now Anya is 4 1/2 months and has been enjoying tasty morsels of avocado. See a pattern here? I guess I just keep moving up this milestone by 2 weeks with every child!

Big Preschool Boy!

Soren had his first day of 3 year old preschool and he loved every minute of it! We went back and forth on whether we were going to do preschool this year, but we thought that since Olivia was going to be at kindergarten that it might be good to let him have a school experience too. He has a wonderful teacher and is having an amazing experience.

Soren has had to stand by and watch Olivia experience a lot of things first, so we wanted to make this day special for him. I made his name in pancakes, which he loved and now requests often for breakfast. Sorry honey, those are for special days, and days when Mommy has more time and patience. :-) Erik and I both went to drop him off and he went right in to the classroom without incident. The teacher had several activities out and around for the kids to choose and with only 7 students in his class there was a lot of empty stations. Erik and I kind of looked at each other with a bit of surprise when he went in and picked the "fine motor center" stringing beads on a string. That is usually something that frustrates him, but apparently not when you are in a preschool room! He has picked that same center first everyday, so I think making some beaded necklaces may be in our future. When we picked him up, he was having recess in a small play area and playing with some other children. It was so fun seeing him interact with his peers. He was so excited to tell us all about his day. I think he has been listening to his sister's retells because his retell included just about as many details as she puts in...."We did the hokey pokey where you put your hand in like this....we ate crackers in the shape of Toy Story and had juice with a picture of Clifford on the box...we had recess..."

Afterwards we drove through the McDonald's drive thru and ordered 1 vanilla cone and I wish I had a picture of his face lighting up when we handed the treat to him. To make the day even better he got to sit on the front step and eat it while watching a cement truck right across the street from our house. What an amazing day!

.33333

Well, our little peanut has reached the .33333 mark of her first year. This past four months has been a busy, fun time. This time period included a lot of traditional firsts, like first bath, first outing, etc...as well as some fun ones like our first road trip to visit family in Utah, and first hike in the mountains of Colorado. We were very thankful that she took this 4,000 mile journey at 2 months when she was still sleeping a lot, it made the trip much easier for everyone!

At her 4 month check up she weighed in at 16.5 pounds and was 25.25 inches long keeping her in the 90 percentile for both. Some of her milestones during this period has been first smile, rolling over (she is now officially a tummy sleeper), first giggles, and most recently sitting. Her temperment is still pretty laid back and only fusses if she is hungry or tired. When we are shopping, she loves to give anyone who stops and says hi to her a nice big smile and if they are lucky some coos as well. She has discovered her voice and not only like to coo, but make many other silly noises, like a coughing sound or low grunts. The hair on top of her head has also started coming in, but we are still uncertain of its color. At this point it is looking like a light brunette. The verdict is still out on her eye color, my prediction is that they will be similiar to Soren's color.

Ahh man...I just spent an hour making a slideshow collage and it won't load becasue I made it with a noncompatible program. I just figured out an easier way to make a slideshow on picasa, upload it to the web and then just embed the url, but this mama is too tired. So I will give it a whirl tomorrow. And because every post needs a picture :-) here is one of Anya "helping" me carry the laundry upstairs.

Off to Kindergarten!

Well, it is official, we now have a kindergartener in the house. Today was her first day and what a day it was! Last night the school had an open house for the families to come and drop off school supplies, sign up for various events, meet the teacher, and get familiar with their new classrooms to help ease first day jitters. It was helpful for Olivia to have some sort of idea what to expect today. She woke up bright and early this morning and was really excited to go, but for the first day the second half of the alphabet was only going in the afternoon from 1:15-3:45, so it was kind of a long morning for her. Her normal day will be from 8:45-3:45 every day. As the time for her to get ready got nearer she grew more and more nervous and truthfully so did I. Once we got in the car to drive to school she started getting nervous and said, "I don't think I am ready for kindergarten." "What if I don't know what to do?" We reassured her over and over and tried to calm her nerves. Once we arrived she joined one of her friends from preschool in line, but just couldn't hold back the tears. She cried a little and told her teacher that she was feeling nervous. Olivia's tears opened the waterworks among the mothers waiting by for their kids to march off into the building. The moms were on the brink of crying just trying to hold back and as soon as they saw Olivia crying they couldn't hold it back anymore and well with Olivia and moms around me crying, I was toast too. ;-)

Soren had a great afternoon without his favorite playmate. He actually fell asleep for the first time in a long time during rest time, I think he actually let himself rest knowing that Olivia wasn't there. I think sometimes he just gets down right exhausted trying to keep up with Olivia. After he woke up we went outside and waited for Olivia to get off the bus. The bus driver pulled up and gave Olivia instructions on how to safely cross the bus. She was half way across the street and we noticed she didn't have her backpack, so we yelled, "Don't forget your backpack" and I think our yelling scared her, like she thought a car was coming or something. But she ran back to the bus, got her backpack and came running to my arms and collapsed into her safety net and let out some of her anxiety in the form of tears. Once we got in the house, had a popsicle and heard about her day she was very excited. We had her favorite dinner, spaghetti, and heard all about her day. Everything from the songs they sang...thumbs up, bottom out, tongues out...to Mr. Monkey, a stuffed monkey that the person gets to hold when they are talking during sharing time, to super stones for super behavior. I love how Olivia not only includes the activities in her retelling of events, but also her personal narrative about what was happening in her mind. "Well, I felt a little nervous when we were walking down the aisles (hallways ;-)) but then I got into the classroom and put my stuff away and then we started to do fun things and I thought, well, this is going to be a lot of fun. When we started singing all my nervousness just went away." We are so proud of you Olivia!