A City Life For Me

Here are the captures of our week… Cursive Lessons began in Handwriting.  She was nervous for a couple of weeks prior to this, and then she just wasn’t happy with her letters so she chose to practice (and reward) on her own time until it “looked like her teacher’s writing.”  Snow Day! First bug.  Our house is infected with these lady-bug like bugs. Marshmallow roasting at Grandpa Fezzie’s while Daddy is out of town. Meeting Bart.  Note:  Bart is not exactly friendly since he’s old and set in his ways, especially to inquisitive one year olds. Big Boy! The Berkshire Museum with Auntie Meredith.  She works here and took us in for free.  The kids had a great time!  (Meredith told them to look like kings and queens.  Liberty is the Queen of Laughs). Learning to play chess.

Since coming home we have re-instituted the stay up late night.  The twins are old enough for this, and it seems like I get asked a dozen times each day who get to have stay up late night.  This is how it works… The purpose of SULN ( stay-up-late-night) is to allow each kiddo to have some one-on-one time with Mom and/or Dad.  It’s not a big production, or with five kids I would never get it done.  It’s not even supposed to be a really late SULN.  It’s just a little bit of time after the siblings have gone to bed.  Ideally it is 20-30 minutes, which makes it very doable for me.  The child who is having SULN gets to select the activity.  Sometimes we have a special snack too (but we try to avoid liquids because its right before bed). Some examples of SULN activities: Read several books Play a game (matching, Candy Land, Trouble, etc.) Do a puzzle Build a Lego item Watch silly YouTube clips (we stay away from full length movies though) ...

We’ve been back for a bit now and life is perhaps starting to settle in a smidge of a routine.  I hesitate to say that because I’m sure it will spin out of control on me again at any minute!  This is what we’ve been doing recently… We are learning about the sun, moon, and stars in science class.  Elaine and Nolan enjoyed making some moon crafts (complete with glitter – one of my least used craft items because of the mess!) Elaine’s Nolan’s Then we conducted a project to visualize the size difference between the sun, the earth, and the moon. The large make-shift paper circle represents the sun (54.5” wide).  Ours is about three inches too small because that’s just how it worked… A mini-marshmallow (1/2” diameter) represents the earth.  The sun is 109 times larger than the earth, so we lined up {almost} 109 mini marshmallows across the center of our “sun” to visualize the vast size difference.  It was very helpful that we had just visited the planetar...

As I’ve been looking at Henry these last couple of weeks I keep having flash backs to when Elaine was this age.  So many times I look at him and I see baby Elaine!  But then some people say he looks like Nolan or Nehemiah.  So here are some fun comparison pictures… Newborn Pics of the Kiddos:                  Elaine                                                           Nolan                      Liberty                  ...

Yesterday and today were pretty rough days in Mommyland.  We are training the twins in regular beds.  Some days they get it.  Some days they don’t.  It means no rest for Mommy right now.  But it can be kind of humorous too. Matching “shawls” for Christmas I had two blessed weeks of consistency.  Elaine learned digital numbers in Math, so we gave her an alarm clock.  She wasn’t allowed out of bed until 8:00 a.m., and 4:00 from naptime.  When Elaine got up, the other kids got up.  It did wonders for my schedule, my devotions, my planning.  I knew what to expect.  Even if they woke up early, they wouldn’t come out until a certain time. Cutest fireman ever. But then the second bunk bed arrived, and with it the crib bar’s restraint went away.  Now I have to teach two toddlers – at the same time – to control themselves and obey Mommy’s directives to “stay in bed!” Bath time is the cure-all.  New finger puppets make it even...