They are doing a bunch of work in the roads in our neighborhood. We are told they are running fiber under the road. The kids sure like watching the workers.
Happy Sixth Birthday Aidan!
It’s hard to believe he is now 6 years old. He is such a sweetie-pie. (Except when fighting with the twins.) He is very analytic – his favorite toys are his bionicals. He likes to read. His favorite books are Captain Underpants. His favorite tv show is Spongebob Squarepants. His favorite thing to do outside is ride his bike. His favorite color is still blue.
Sprinkler Fun
The boys had so much fun playing in the sprinkler this morning. I had Dan buy them this oscillating sprinkler specifically for the kids to play in. I remember how much fun I had playing in this type of sprinkler when I was a kid. I wanted my kids to be able to experience this too. It has been so hot here lately. This is the perfect way for them to cool off.
Swim Class
The new swim session started this week. Jared and Riley are in one class and Aidan is in a different one. The are all doing well. The twins can both float on their backs by themselves and Aidan is learning how to do big arms with breathing and can also do backstroke. The twins are suppose to sit on the top step when they are waiting their turn. They keep getting in trouble for not staying there. Grandma Nancy came along today so that I could take pictures. More pictures here.
Swim Class Was A Disaster
Jared, Riley and Aidan had their first swim class of the summer today. It’s a 1/2 hour class and will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We got there and the gate was locked. The person that is suppose to do the registration is not there and there is someone else filling in that showed up late because of a wreck on the freeway. This person doesn’t know how the boys teacher is suppose to be. Everyone starts getting in the water and I’m asking who is suppose to be their teacher and no one seems to know anything. I finally am able to get the fill in person to find their name on the roster and tell me that their teacher is Allison. Turns out that Allison is also not there and some other guy is taking over the class for her. I finally hand the boys over to him and go sit back down with the girls to watch. They start off with kick boards and Aidan is having a blast. Riley doesn’t want to do it and Jared starts screaming. I go over and tell Jared he hast to do the class and he says he wants a kick board. I told him that if he gets in he can have one. So, he gets back in and both Riley and Jared do the kick board. After that they go to pushing off the side and kicking to the teacher. Aidan does great and neither Jared or Riley will do anything. The rest of the class goes pretty much the same way. Aidan does great and loves it. Jared and Riley hate it and keep crying and won’t do anything. (They seem to have this reaction to anything new.) The instructor let them sit on the side and cry and do nothing. I told him that he needed to make them do stuff, but he didn’t. They spent the majority of the class on the side of the pool doing nothing! I don’t pay good money for a class to have the instructor let them get away with doing nothing. Their regular instructor had better not do that next week or I will be very unhappy with the program there and let the director know. I had a long talk with Jared and Riley about particpating in the class. I let them know that if they didn’t particpate, the wouldn’t get a treat. Yes, I am resorting to bribery. But heck, you got to go with what works! This worked well in getting them to participate in speech class, so I’m hoping it will work with swim class too.
Gone Most of the Day
Today was Aidan’s last day of preschool. They had a picnic and puppet show and invited the families to attend with their child. So, I went with all the kids. Aidan and the twins sat up front for the puppet show. I think they all enjoyed it. After the puppet show, they had hot dogs and chips and cookies.
Then this afternoon we went to a girl scout pool party. Since the boys do not swim very well, I bought them floaties for the party. They weren’t too thrilled with the idea, but once they got them on and got in the pool they liked them. I got a new spray sunscreen that I just love. You just spray it on them and that’s it. You don’t have to rub it in, except for the face – you can’t spray it there so you have to spray it in your hands and rub it on their faces. Everyone had a blast at the party and were very tired afterwards. I was exhausted afterwards! I was holding Falyn the entire time and then kept having to take one boy after the other to the bathroom. I barely sat down the entire four hours we were there.
Why is it that things always happen when I’m nursing the baby?
I was nursing Falyn downstairs this afternoon when I hear an “I’m hurt” type scream coming from Aidan upstairs. He continues to scream while coming down the stairs and I ask him what happened. He tells me that John Paul kicked him in the nose. I look over and see blood pouring out of his nose. That sure got my attention! I unlatch the baby and put her down and rush Aidan into the bathroom. I grab some toilet paper and have him hold it on his nose. Then I yell upstairs to John Paul to tell him that he has to go home. I have never had blood pouring out of any of my kids noses like that before. I quicky googled what to do for a bloody nose and find out that moist cotton balls held in the nostrils works well. So I run upstairs and grab the cotton balls, run back downstairs, get them wet and apply them to Aidan’s nostrils. This, combined with light pressure on the outside of the nose, eventually gets the blood to stop pouring out. I then had to clean the blood up off the tile. Which is when John Paul and his dad show up at the front door to have John Paul tell Aidan he was sorry. This whole time the baby is crying because she still wants to eat. Twenty minutes after the first scream, I’m finally able to get back to feeding the baby.
Aidan learned to ride without training wheels
Aidan can now ride his bike without the training wheels. It took him about a week after we took off the training wheels to get enough confidence to ride it that way. He is doing great without the training wheels now.
End of the Year Update
Talia – She’s have a great time in 5th grade. They have gotten to go on a number of fun field trips this year with several more planned throughout the year. She continues to be a honor roll student, excelling in everything she tries. She has taught herself to play the harmonica and has gotten pretty good at it. She does choir and girl scouts and challenge (which is a Catholic girls group). She is a beautiful girl, both inside and out. She has a great group of friends, most of whom she has been friends with since kindergarten. She spends most of her free time outside playing with the other kids in the neighborhood. She also enjoys her gameboy and playing online on Neopets and Disney’s Virtual Magic Kingdom.
Kayli – She is now 8 years old an in 2nd grade. She enjoys school and also excels in everything she tries. She was recently voted class president for the month of December. She is very outgoing and has tons of friends. She has taught herself to play the recorder and knows a large number of songs on it. She does choir and girl scouts and did soccer for the first time this year. She is very good at soccer and I’ll likely continue to have her play next year. She also spends most of her free time outside playing with the other kids in the neighborhood and enjoys her gameboy and playing online on Neopets and Disney’s Virtual Magic Kingdom.
Aidan – He is now 5 year old and in a preppy-K class. Over the last month of so, reading has really started to click with him. He knows all the phonetic sounds for a while know and has recently caught on how to blend the words. I expect him to be reading quite well by the time he starts kindergarten next year. He played soccer for the first time this year and really enjoyed it. He says he wants to try baseball next year, so I will likely put him in that instead. He is all boy and his favorite thing to do is run around outside playing. He also enjoys playing on his leapster.
Jared and Riley – They are now 3 years old. I play to start them in preschool next year. They continue to be in speech therapy this year and are getting much easier to understand. I’ve also had them in swim classes and they are both making great progress. They continue to refuse to be potty trained, but we are hopeful that they will decide to start using the potty before preschool next year. They are also all boy and like nothing better than to run around outside playing.
Decorations are Down
We got all the Christmas decorations taken down today. I was getting very tired of telling the boys to leave the tree alone every few minutes. It sure is nice not having to constantly keep them away from it. It’s also nice having back the room the tree took up. They boys are happy to have it down since they get their light sabers back. After Aidan took his light saber and hit an ornament, breaking it, we took them away till after the tree was taken down. Several other ornaments also were broken this year. You would think that not having glass ornaments would prevent them from being broken, but not with my boys around! They still manage to break plastic ones.