Updates

Time for kid updates.

Ethan - Although his fastest method of transportation is still army crawling, Ethan can crawl on all fours now.  He usually prefers to do that when he's outside or sometimes even when he's on carpeting.  He mastered pulling himself up in the past few days, to the point of being able to pull himself up to a standing position on my legs.  Plus, he's started pushing stools and toys around to practice walking.  The girls love helping him walk around.  Maybe Matt and I won't have to do much stooping over to help him practice taking steps :)

Ethan also started saying "uh, oh" the other day.  He doesn't exactly initiate saying it at the appropriate times, but will repeat it fairly consistently if we model it for him.  He's so proud of himself :)

Kate - She really enjoys her preschool time, but also values her playtime in the mornings while Ethan is napping.  She'll stop her playing just long enough to help me with some apple work (drying apples, canning applesauce, etc.), but then wants to go right back to her playing.

When Ethan wakes up from his nap in the morning, Kate likes to climb into his crib and read to him.  She has a handful of books memorized for just that purpose.  My favorite part of this video is how Kate can crack herself up :)

Anna - She seems to be doing well with 1st grade.  Kate, Ethan and I joined her class for the last day of their swimming unit at the high school.  Anna was very glad to see us (we were able to walk over to the pool with her class) and we watched her have a great time while her class was swimming.  When I asked Anna recently what she likes best about school, she said her literacy time is her favorite, which surprised her.  She said she likes it because she can read the longer books now and she always wants to know what happens at the end :)

Yesterday Anna came home with her daily math homework in addition to her first spelling list that had some homework attached.  The students were supposed to pick six of the words and write a sentence using each of those words and return the homework by Monday.  We told Anna that she needed to do at least two of the sentences last night, but after Anna did her first two, she asked if she could do the rest of them.  How can you say no to that?  Our favorite was "I dash to school.  I don't want to be late!"

Over the weekend we had another campfire on Saturday evening and then had a busy Sunday with church, Sunday School, and our Bible Study in the last afternoon.

Matt's taking Mondays off this fall to use up his vacation and has decided (with some encouragement) that it's time to clean up the garage again.  He's working really hard at it and even made a trip to the county landfill this week with a full truck bed.  Since this task hasn't been done for at least four years, there's still a lot of work to be done :(

Getting into a new routine

Before I move on, here's one more story that I want to remember.

Kate's favorite author is Bill Peet.  He's written wonderfully illustrated, creatively imaginative picture books for a few decades and Kate LOVES them.  She loves them so much that she knows exactly where to find them in our library.  We have to limit how many she can check out from the library at one time and when they can be read at home (they're pretty long for picture books).  We've read almost all of the ones he's written, some multiple times, and will often request his books from other libraries.  They're known as "Bill Peet books" at our house :)

We're settling in to our new routine with school and preschool.  Everyone seems to have adjusted fairly well, with Ethan's life being the most disrupted.  I feel bad for the poor boy who almost always had to get woken up from naps.  Oh, well.  At least it's not every day.

In addition to 1st grade, Anna will be starting her 5th year of Kindermusik next week.  She's pretty excited.  Last year she learned to play several songs on her Glockenspiel (mini-xylophone) and this year she will learn a few other instruments.

In addition to preschool, Kate started a creative dance class last Wednesday morning.  She really seems to be enjoying herself in the class, and Ethan and I have had some fun times in the waiting area during her 1/2 hour class.

I hesitate to even mention this, but we've all be relatively healthy for a few weeks.  It's been nice.  We were actually able to enjoy ourselves over the weekend without having anyone be ridiculously ill.

Friday night we had our first family campfire of the fall.  We were all enjoying our smores (except for Ethan, of course) when we heard the unmistakable sound of a hot air balloon.  We looked up to see one passing right over our neighborhood!  Kate, Anna, and I proceeded to run down the street to watch it land in an empty field a mile or so from our house.  What an exciting evening!

On Saturday we managed to take a family hike together at our favorite local state park.  I have memories of going there almost every fall with the girls, although I think Matt took them by himself last fall.  Anyway, the first few years we'd go, we would always have to plan on making several stops for snacks and rests and for someone to take a ride in the backpack.

This year, however, both girls practically ran or skipped almost the entire way.  We also remembered to bring along a bag for them to collect their "treasures" (walnuts, leaves, sticks, cool rocks, hickory nuts, acorns, etc.)  It was a nice outing.

Sunday I watched some of the Packers game with Anna and Kate while Ethan took a nap.  This time of year I can't get myself to sit down for an entire football game yet; there's still too much to do.  But it's fun to see how excited Kate and Anna are about the games.  They stayed downstairs and watched more of it while I went to the kitchen to make and can pearsauce.  Anna made sure that Kate turned away for the commercials; they can really scare poor Kate.

I think that's about it right now.  I'll try to keep track of more milestones in this coming week.

Stories to remember

Every so often I have to write down a few of these stories to remember years from now.  Here's a few select ones from our life recently.

One time I made up a story for Anna or Kate (I can't remember that part) that involved two sisters named Kat and Hannah.  Every so often Matt or I would tell one or both of the girls a story involving these imaginary girls.  Last winter Kat and Hannah had a baby brother named Wheat Thin and the stories have made a comeback recently.  The three siblings have lots of adventures (Matt's are usually better than mine) and the climax often involves. Wheat Thin pulling something out of his utility diaper or arriving just in the nick of time in his helicopter.  This may not be too funny to anyone else, but in our family telling these stories often ends up with someone giggling a lot (usually Kate).

Kate and Anna have never seem any Star Wars movies, but they know several of the characters (Jabba the Hut, Princess Leia) and some of the music.  They are quite certain that they'll never want to watch the movies, though, because they're convinced that they're too scary.  If you ask Kate, she may say that she'll not watch Star Wars until she's "grown up ... maybe 18 or 23 or something like that".

When we were eating peaches with practically every meal last week, Ethan would get SO excited as soon as a peach was in sight.  They were very tasty for all of us :)

Kate has been struggling lately with being afraid of being alone, especially at bedtime or if she has to go to the bathroom during a meal.  At bedtime, she gets pretty upset if she knows that Anna is going to bed later than her, just because she doesn't want to be alone.  We're working through this, but it's still sweet to see how much she loves and trusts her sister.

Ethan was fussy one evening before dinner while he was in the exersaucer.  Kate ended up entertaining him by jumping up and down in front of him, then he would bounce for awhile and laugh, then Kate would jump again, then he would bounce again.  Both kids were pretty tired by the time dinner was ready.

Ethan is still just army crawling, but he's getting really fast at it.  When the little guy is really fresh, it almost looks like he's gliding across the floor.  The girls like to play peek-a-boo with him around furniture, corners, doors, etc.

And here's my personal favorite, even if it needs some explanation.  I realized that the pick-up lane for Anna's school was going to be very frustrating for me this year, so she and I came up with a meeting spot about a half a block from school (right by a crossing guard).  Then I park somewhere else, walk to meet Anna, and we walk back to the van.  Kate will usually only be coming along on Thursdays since I'll first pick Anna up, and then pick Kate up on preschool days and a neighbor will bring Anna home on Fridays.  This week, however, Kate came along on Monday and Tuesday because of the different schedule.  Both days, as soon as we saw Anna coming down the sidewalk, Kate started running to meet her, and then Anna started running to meet Kate.  When they met up with one another, they hugged and proceeded to hold hands until they met up with me and Ethan.  Such sweet, sweet sisters they are :)

On to preschool!

Kate started preschool at CLM this week.  She'll be attending on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays from noon until 3, as Anna had done.  This past Monday was the "meet the teacher" day, Tuesday was only an hour session, and Wednesday was her first full session.

So far, so good!  Kate was a little reserved on Monday, but had no issues saying good-bye on either Tuesday or Wednesday.  Tuesday she told us that no one wanted to play with the toy food with her, so we asked Kate if she'd asked anyone to play with her.  She said no, but that she could ask another girl, Reese, if she wanted to.  On Wednesday she came home saying "I made a new friend today!"  Apparently she asked Resse to play with her and they got along great the rest of the day :)

She's going to have a wonderful time this year.  Oh, yeah ... she wanted to do silly picture, too on her first day.

First day of first grade!

Yesterday Anna and I went for her "meet the teacher" day at school and today is her first full day of first grade ... yikes!

We can already tell that first grade is going to be much different from kindergarten; we hope to help her through this next step in her life journey.

She's very excited to be back at school :)

The end of summer

We were a few days late with the 9 months pictures, but at least we finally got a record of this big guy's milestone.

We tried our best to make some good memories last week and over the weekend.

The kids and I played in the pool almost every day; Matt was able to join us/them several days, too.

My mom came on Thursday night and Friday to help out with the garden and we managed a trip to the library and the cafe for ice cream in the midst of things.

We had more pool time over the weekend and a trip to the park, too.

 

I feel a bit like a canning machine right now.  Since our last post, we canned 28 quarts of grape juice, another 14 quarts of salsa, 30 pints of diced tomatoes, and 10 pints of tomato soup.  I just picked up a bushel of peaches this morning that a friend brought back from Michigan and the pears, apples, and plums are on the verge of ripening.

The raspberries, however, are a lost cause this fall.  Last Friday I learned of a pesky new fruit fly that has made its way to Wisconsin from Asia.  Apparently this fruit fly is particularly nasty because it can lay its eggs in healthy fruit, instead of just rotting foods like the indigenous fruit fly, due to a serrated ovipositor (the part of the female that actually lays the eggs).  Once the eggs are laid, they hatch, and your fruit becomes filled with fly larvae (a.k.a. maggots).  Soft-skinned fruits like raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, and peaches are particularly susceptible, but other fruits like grapes, plums, pears, apples, and tomatoes can also be affected.

When I finally got a chance to check things on Saturday morning, I discovered that our yard was already infested with this fruit fly.  We cut back the raspberries on Sunday and set up a few traps to see where else the flies were.  We've found some around the grapes and tomatoes, but not "in" either of those.  The pears and apples are all bagged from the spring so they should be safe.  I haven't had a chance to pick any plums to see how they're doing.

There's not much we can do about this fruit fly besides a rigorous insecticide program, which we're not going to do.  So we'll just have to wait and see what next year brings :(  I'm thankful for all of the yummy produce that we already have stocked away!