Miles

 An update for Miles. 

 

 I love spending my days with Miles (and Wes too). He makes me laugh every day, he's funny and cute and is usually very sweet... but he is going through a phase right now - at least I hope it's a phase. It's called the "I will refuse to listen to anything you have to say and do the complete opposite of what you asked me just to see what will happen" phase.  Tonight I asked him (multiple times) to go and brush his teeth. I went in to check his teeth and he was unscrewing the drawer handles on the bathroom cupboard! He is struggling in church in his Sunbeam class too and doesn't listen well there either. He loses his Sunday night dessert if he doesn't listen to his teachers, and he hasn't had dessert in 3 weeks! I don't want to dwell on the negative, but this is real life right now, and I know that it is a phase, and one of these days I will figure out what works best to get Miles to listen better. Because that's what parenting is all about. Thinking you have found something that works and then the next child throws you for a loop! I wouldn't trade it for anything, though. Here are some other, more pleasant, happenings with Mr. Miles.

He recently was gifted a trike from some friends and rides it everywhere he possibly can. Some days he rides it 2-4 times a day. To take the girls to school, to the park, the library and picking up the girls from school. He does great and loves to lift his feet off the pedals and go down the hills really fast!

He started playing t-ball and was very excited about it. We've only had one practice and he loved it, but it was right next to the park so after a while he got distracted and only wanted to play.

We finally got Miles to stop waking up at 6 (or earlier) crying for chocolate milk. It was one of those parenting things you know you need to stop doing, but was just easier said than done. I let him pick out a toy at the store and told him as soon as he stopped asking for chocolate milk for 10 days in a row we would go and buy it. He did it and we bought it and he hasn't asked for chocolate milk since. Best 20 bucks ever! And I haven't bought chocolate milk since then.

Miles doesn't like to draw! Both the girls loved to draw and color at a young age and although Miles knows how to write his name he just has no desire to sit and color a picture. When he went to his 4 year old dr. appointment they gave him a piece of paper and asked him to draw a person and he just stared at them like they were crazy! Just yesterday he actually drew a face on our magna doodle and we were all pretty excited about it! But it's not that he can't do it, he just doesn't care to.

Miles is very observant, especially in the car. Whenever we go in the car he'll say things like, "This is the way to so and so's house, or this is on the way to where we got ice cream, etc." He also notices people's cars. We biked to the library the other day and as we pulled up he said his friend Nicholas was there. I asked him how he knew he said, "That's his car over there!" And sure enough Nicholas was in the library.

Miles is sad every day that Brian leaves for work. He wishes daddy could stay and play cars with him all day long!

He is very in to Batman these days. Our friend got the Imaginext Batcave for his birthday and Miles loves playing with it and now wants everything Batman (of course, since we got him all train stuff for Christmas and his birthday!!

Miles still calls Sophie and Nora "his girls" and loves when they include him in what they are doing. 

He is learning to play with Wesley. This has not come as easily as it did for the girls (unless I forgot - which is possible!) Miles doesn't enjoy playing with Wesley all that much. And I can't really blame him. They play at very different levels. But they are learning and between the hitting, pinching, biting and pushing, I know they really love each other. :)

We love our little guy! I can't believe he starts 1/2 day school in the fall. Where we live they have a program called T4K (Together 4 Kids) as part of the school system for four year olds. Miles will be going to school for 3 hours Monday through Friday this fall. I was sad at first, but I really think he is going to LOVE it! And I'm pretty sure I will too.

One year older and wiser too.

 

 I turned 31 on the 17th and had a good day. The kids were all so excited to tell me Happy Birthday all day long. For dinner Brian picked up some pizza and ice cream and we walked/biked/strollered to  our favorite park here. It's not too big and all the kids enjoy it. We ate and played tag till we almost tasted our pizza twice! 

 On Sunday I made a yellow cake with my favorite frosting and the kids helped decorate (I made them go easy on the sprinkles cause I don't like 'em). All afternoon the kids were whining that I didn't make a chocolate cake. Finally I said, "Excuse me little people - on your birthdays I make whatever it is your little hearts desire. I've made a race car cake, a blue Thomas cake, a purple flower cake with a princess on it, Barbie cakes that take forever and lots of others - this is MY birthday and I wanted a yellow cake with fluffy white frosting so THAT IS WHAT WE ARE HAVING!" 

And it was delicious! Sadly 1/2 of it went down the garbage disposal, but I couldn't have it sitting on the counter come Monday morning or it would have been my breakfast...and my lunch  
(can we still be friends Marianne?)

I'm a lucky girl! Happy Birthday to me!

Mother's Day weekend (aka: my favorite weekend)

I love Mothers Day! My cute family made my whole weekend great. Saturday we spent cleaning the church and getting donuts, cleaning up the house and yard, riding bikes, playing tag at the park and watching a movie! Sunday was just as great with breakfast in bed and lots of sweet notes and loves. Brian didn't have meetings before church and was able to help me out in Sacrament meeting when two other little girls joined our bench and Wesley fell asleep. I got to lead the kids in singing in Sacrament meeting and they all sung wonderfully. We had a yummy dinner with our neighbors and Brian made peach/blueberry cobbler for dessert. A perfect day! I love being a mother and am so grateful that these four beautiful kids are mine. Being a mom is the best!

Spring time happenings.

We are having a great Spring here and keeping busy with the usual stuff! Scooter is getting big (13 pounds) and is a good little pup. We have more good days than bad, and I haven't threatened to give him away in quite a while! :) I had my first "mother/daughter" activity at church with Sophie and it was fun to spend some time with her, but it made me feel kind of old!

The boys and I spend a considerable amount of time playing in our driveway. They love going up and back over and over again. It's fun to see them playing together. Notice the dent in our van above the tire.... Brian took the van to work one day so he could have the tires rotated. He came home and later that night I left to go to a meeting and saw this nice dent. He hadn't noticed and there wasn't a note or anything. Grrrrr. It isn't scratched so hopefully it can be popped out somewhat easily.

Here is Wesley saying "cheese"

This is the smile I got from Miles when I requested one with his eyes opened. Awesome.

The girls bought a bunch of plants with their own money at a church across the street that was having a sale. They were pretty excited about them.

Nora loves reading to Wesley up on her bed. He loves getting on the top bunk.

Nora had a school concert and was excited for weeks to have Brian and I come. She did a great job and looked so cute. She is the one wearing a hat..... I asked her to take it off at school, but she said her teacher let her wear it. We made the mistake of taking the boys with us to this concert (will I ever learn?) and so it wasn't extremely enjoyable with them there, but we loved watching Nora sing her little heart out.

Wesley and Scooter at best buddies! Wesley doesn't like to let Scooter take his nap though and Scooter is so patient and just moves from one location to another trying to escape Wesley.

Brian went to San Francisco last month for a conference, just for a few days, but he was sorely missed by all of us. He's quite popular around these parts! We are getting everything worked out to hopefully close on a home at the beginning of next month. So very excited for that. It is just around the corner from where we are now so we often walk by it and get even more excited. We are so happy to stay in the same neighborhood and school system.  June will be a busy, but fun, month!

Nora

Here is the update on our Nora Gracie Girl! 

Nora spends most of her waking hours outside if she has a choice! The minute she is home from school she has a snack and heads outside either with her butterfly net and jars or her jump rope or skip-it. Or she climbs up the pine tree in the backyard or roller skates in the driveway. She does her homework after dinner....  or all on Saturday :)

She is a sweetheart. At parent teacher conference her teacher said Nora is kind and a great student and friend. Nora loves school and playing with friends. She, unlike Sophie, doesn't cling to one friend but plays with different people all the time. Or she'll play by herself with no problem. Sometimes I'll ask who she played with at recess and she'll say, "No one. Just me." She has always been this way, she can be outside playing and exploring for hours just by herself. Cute. Funny thing though, she hates being in the house alone. She won't go downstairs without someone,  or stay inside alone!

Nora needs loves and cuddles every day. (Which is kind of a contrast to being able to be alone so much - but maybe that's why she does!) Nora loves to snuggle and rub her face on my face and have her back tickled, etc. She is a very lovey girl. 

Nora could probably be a famous gymnast if we sent her off to Romania to a professional coach. :) She climbs and swings on and off of anything and everything. I am often saying, "Nora, our house is not the playground!" This started right when she turned two and could already go down the fireman poles at the playground and climb over and through the dome shaped monkey bars. But there was no stopping her so we embraced the idea, "Since we can't stop her - lets teach her to do it well!" And she has yet to have an injury from her climbing adventures.... although there's no doubt it will come. Her current favorite is to swing from the bars on our porch overhang thing. If people are here they always tell her to get down or be careful.

There is a nursery rhyme that goes like this, "There once was a girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. And when she was good, she was very, very good. And when she was bad she was horrid!" Well, this is definitely Nora. She is usually very, very good. But when she isn't - she really, really isn't! Luckily it isn't often, but she can throw a temper tantrum! Her little body goes completely rigid and she shakes with anger. I have yet found a way to de-escalate her before she goes in to full blown tantrum mode. I have a few ideas from pinterest though....

If Nora can't be outside, she will be making something out of paper, glue, staples, tape, fabric, ribbon, pipe cleaners or whatever. She can sit at the kitchen table and create stuff endlessly! 

You may see Nora on a future episode of Hoarders. She keeps everything! Currently on her special shelf (aka: the only shelf where she can do whatever she wants to do with it - inside her closet) is the tops of all the easter eggs she colored, rocks, pictures she's colored and cut out and taped to her shelf, a rubber ducky, a tiny tea set, crayons, money and a bunch of other stuff I don't remember. And I clean this shelf off probably once a month. I put everything in a bag and organize her shelf and when she comes home from school if she can remember anything I took off she can have it back :) But she hardly ever remembers. She has a huge sack of pine cones in the garage that she is saving and I am always finding containers and boxes and bags full of rocks she has collected.

Nora loves money! Nora loves spending money! She loves going to the store with me and buying stuff with her own money. She pretty much spends it as fast as she can earn it, besides her tithing. This is definitely something Brian and I want to help her overcome and learn how to save. But she is also very generous. If we are out and the other kids want something, Nora will offer to buy it for them. I usually don't let her do this, though. She truly seems to experience some sort of adrenaline rush when she buys stuff, she gets so excited and her face is all lit up and happy.... maybe kind of how I feel after I go to Target? 

Nora is a giver and a peacemaker. She is almost always the one in our home who will give in to keep the peace. Even if it brings her to tears after she does it. The other day she was crying on the couch and I asked what was wrong and she had let Miles have something she was playing with because he really wanted it. 

I have a bowl in my laundry room that is for Nora's "treasures." Meaning that is where I put all the junk that comes out of Nora's clothes in the wash!! It has all kinds of stuff in it, rocks, glass, beads, money and stuff I'm not sure what it is.  She has an eye for finding stuff on the ground!

Nora always has jars of various bugs around the house. I let them go regularly so she can refill them. She found a caterpillar the other day and put it in a jar and he made a cocoon and she was thrilled about it!

How we love this one-of-a-kind girl!

Sophie

I've decided it's time for some updates on each of the kids. They change and grow so quickly I want to remember what each of them are doing right now.
First up: Sophie! 

Sophie is such a good girl. She tries hard to do what is right, and feels very bad when she doesn't! She loves her friends and her school and is such a great oldest child.
We just had a parent teacher conference a few weeks ago and her teacher told us that she gives a timed reading comprehension test that she has been giving for years (it is two pages of text with each sentence having a blank to fill in with a choice of 3 words and the kids circle the correct word). She said in all the years that she has been giving this test she's never had a student finish the whole thing, but Sophie finishes it and gets them all right. This makes sense because ever since Sophie could read she could finish a chapter book so fast that I wouldn't believe her and would quiz her on it to see if she just skipped to the end. But she could always tell me everything I asked her about the book. She's currently reading "The Secret Garden" for the 5th time, "Matilda" for the 3rd time and "To the Rescue" a biography of Thomas S. Monson (the one Brian and I are reading together. She loves to ask us what page we are on and smiles because she is so far ahead of us!) She loves to read, but she doesn't like reading anything sad or scary.

Sophie's mood determines how well the kids all play together. This is so very true. If Sophie is in a good mood and is being sweet and motherly to the other three they all play so nice together. She plays school or family with them and solves their problems and basically does my job for me! However, if she wants to be left alone she can be very disagreeable and will whine and complain about not having her own room and everybody is always touching her stuff, etc.

She can be very helpful and will put her hair in a ponytail and put on an apron and just start cleaning. Of course, I really love when she does this. Sometimes I have to remind her that she is 8 1/2 when she wants me to get her a spoon or bring her her backpack or something else she is very capable of doing. What goes around comes around, right?

No one believes me when I tell them Sophie was a fireball of a girl until about age 5. And it kinda ticks me off. Only a little. But the other day I was talking with someone who has a 5 year old and they were telling me how feisty their daughter is. And I laughed and said that Sophie was the same way. They looked at me like I was an idiot and I wanted to scream, "Listen people. Just because my daughter appears to be an angel at school and church doesn't mean she is or has always been this way!"  But I just smiled. And of course I have always loved Sophie's spunky personality and feisty ways. I really wouldn't change anything about her (now that we are past those temper tantrums anyway) And I don't want her to feel like she was a pain or that I didn't still love her every moment. And I can fully admit that some of her being hard was because she was my first. But it is true that she is a very good girl at church and school.... and mostly at home too.

For Sophie right now when it rains it pours. If something goes wrong for Sophie - like stepping in a puddle at the park ;) or forgetting her homework at school, or having her book fly out the window on the highway (this happened a few months back) she is devastated and turns pessimistic and all the sudden everything in her life is wrong and she wants to go back to Michigan. We are trying to get her to look on the bright side and "roll with the punches", but she has a hard time doing that in the moment of trial. She puts up a pretty big fuss with yelling, stomping, crying, etc. and cries in her bed or closet and then later on she gets totally embarrassed about how she acted! Funny, emotional girl. I know this is just a glimpse of her teenage years.

She still says the funniest things. She is so funny without even meaning to be. Just tonight I asked her and Nora to get in the shower and she said, "Can't I please shower alone? I just feel more like a lady when I shower alone." 

She is just fun to have around. I love coming across her notes or papers from school and reading what she has written. It always makes me smile. She did a small report for extra credit on a person and she chose to do it on President Monson. She didn't even tell me this and just decorated this paper with his name and wrote at the top: "Am I a MORMON {mor-men}?" YES!!!!!! It was so cute and made me so proud. She also got her teacher to ask the class not to take the Lord's name in vain. I know she has a lot of years ahead of standing up for her beliefs. I know she can do it, too!

I feel pretty darn lucky to be her mama!