After another long, long break, I'm back to the blog again. Lots of routine things have happened in the time since my last blog. Riley is now well into her second grade year, Jake is in Pre-K and Tyler is now over a year old, walking and learning new words. Here is an update on each of the kids:
Riley has struggled this year with talking at school. She has gotten into trouble more than once for talking when she isn't supposed to. I'm currently at a loss as to how to handle that since anything I say doesn't seem to get through to her. She is always apologetic about it to me after the fact but obviously since she keeps doing it, she isn't feeling a lot of pressure from us to do what she is supposed to when she is at school and out of our sight. One problem is that it's mostly other kids talking to her and then her responding that is causing the disruption. She is very much a kid who doesn't want people upset with her and who wants people to be her friend so if she feels any kind of pressure at all from the person talking to her that they might get upset if she doesn't talk to them, she will give in to that even if she knows she might get in trouble later. We've been talking a lot about who it's the most important to please, God, her friends, teachers, us, and what her priorities are. I know she's still a little girl and she is still doing well in her classes but I also know that if she gets into bad habits now, she will have a hard time breaking them when talking in class can get you kicked out of the classroom or affect your actual grade. Our biggest effort at getting through to her is I've turned over discipline for that kind of thing (and most things that it's reasonable for me to do this) over to Paul. Now, if she misbehaves at school and sometimes even at home, she will have to go to her room and wait for Paul to get home to hand out punishment. She is a major Daddy's girl and seems to respect his talks more than she does mine so I'm hoping that her desire to not face Daddy being upset with her will inspire her to obey better.
Jake is doing really well in Pre-K. He can write his name now and is starting to learn to sound out the beginning letter of words. He is continually saying things like "Momma starts with 'm' Mmmmmomma". It's neat to see him learning that kind of thing and preparing to go into elementary school. He had his first cavity filled a few weeks ago and will go in another couple of weeks to get a crown put on one of his molars that has an enamel deficiency and is falling apart. He's not going to be thrilled about going back for that. When he got his cavity filled which was between his two front teeth, he was very upset that his upper lip was numb. He said he didn't like that it got real big. :) It actually wasn't swollen at all, he just felt like it was since he couldn't feel it at all.
Tyler is a little stinker, climbing everything he can get onto, pulling everything out of the cabinets, running around the house with the toilet brushes if he can get hold of one, pulling books out of shelves, well you get the picture. He's pure energy in the form of a little boy. Riley told me today she thinks he learned how to open doors so that's a new skill I'll be on the lookout for. He can say a few words, dada, pawpaw, car, shoe, bye bye (which also sounds like what he says for Riley), ball, cookie, gone gone, and hi are the ones I can think of right now. Nothing useful like all done, down, cup, or more, but I have hope.
As for Paul and I, we are doing our best to keep up with the kids. Paul got laid off his job in the spring and now works in the Accounting department for the state Transporation Department. The job doesn't pay much but he enjoys it. The pay means I really need to be working but after a couple of jobs over the summer, I'm currently not working. I feel a little like a loser because of that but there were good reasons I quit both the jobs I had in the summer. I have some prospects I'm working on right now and thankfully we have some savings to fall back on. The not working for me is good right now since I just had my gallbladder removed too. It wasn't a huge emergency to remove it but once we got it out, it was apparent that if we had left it in much longer it would have become an emergency. My recovery is going quickly and I'm almost back to normal now and it's been less than a week since the surgery so I'm glad it's gone and we can move on with our lives.
