Pre-K

We started off November with a Parent Teacher Conference.  It was nice to talk with his teachers and hear how he's doing.  They seem to enjoy him.  They're impressed with his understanding of letters and numbers and ability to write and draw.  He displays a lot of pre-reading skills and they expect he'll be reading before the end of the year.

He started the year with 5 goals.  He's always polite and interacts well with others so they are marking his 2 social goals as complete.  He'll continue to work with the PT but she said that he's willing and able to do whatever she asks.  And the speech specialist says he's very cooperative and works hard and remembers things they've covered and they've been able to keep moving onto more and more sounds.  They are marking one of his speech goals as complete.

One story they told us about him was that the very first week they had "jobs" his job was to be the caboose.  And one time when they were walking down the hall as a class, a classmate stopped so our preschooler went up to him and said, "You have to stay in front of me, I'm the caboose."

He really loves school and it's fun to hear that he's doing so well.

The last class day before Thanksgiving families were invited to come in for a little bit.  Our baby was 8 days old so I stayed home, but our toddler and their dad went.  And brought me back these pictures. Our preschooler finishing a project, and a thanksgiving snack/feast.

Introducing & Details

Our little one:


A little after 4 on Thursday is when contractions began.  About a half an hour later our preschooler got home and wanted to go down the street to play at a neighbor's who has a daycare.  So we went, they were outside playing hockey and my boys joined in.  After dinner the contractions were pretty long and frequent so I decided to call my visiting teachers and my mom.  I thought it would be best to get the boys to bed normally before leaving but wanted to call to let them know it was coming.  My visiting teachers showed up as we were getting them into bed so we were able to leave right after ... probably 8:15 or so.  My mom would take over for them when she arrived.

Thankfully triage was full so I went straight to a delivery room.  I was 8 cm.  After one particularly long and difficult contraction I looked at my hands and my fingers were all stiff and straight and I swear they looked discolored but my husband said they weren't.  I thought I was gripping his hand so it was freaky to see they were like that.  Anyway, at that point I asked if the midwife could come in because certainly this couldn't go on much longer.  A little later I felt a bit silly about that because the baby still hadn't come.  The midwife left for a little bit and I didn't ask for her again until it was definitely time to push.

She broke my water before having me push and within a few pushes he was out.  At 10:17.  I felt pretty good about how I did except for screaming at the end.  Not sure why I felt I had to do that.  Besides the pain, obviously.  I'm just saying I didn't feel too out of control so shouldn't have done it.

Anyway, then I got to hold my baby for the next hour ♥   I got 4 stitches for a 1st degree tear.  He almost immediately started to make his way to breastfeed and by 11 had figured it out.  When he was an hour old his dad had a quick turn with him and then they weighed, measured, and washed him right in the delivery room.  In fact, he didn't leave me until about 4 am Saturday morning when they took him for shots.  My other boys had their baths and their hearing tests away from me.  He was 7 lbs, 20 inches.  I love when he stretches out those toes!



My mom brought the boys over in the morning and it was really fun to introduce them to their baby brother! (I couldn't seem to snap the camera at the right moment for a kiss from our toddler, though he gave me lots of opportunities.) Both boys were really sweet.





Before they left my preschooler came and patted my belly and said "You're growing another baby, mommy." I gave what I thought was a decent though brief and simple explanation of why my tummy was still big but his response was just to repeat "You're growing another baby, mommy."



After dinner that evening the boys came over again.  My dad had made it up too and got to meet the little guy.


Love these of him with his dad!


My parents and boys came over again in the morning and we all left the hospital together.

October

How cute are these boys? I'm always happy to get some snuggles ♥


Some Friday nights Hot Cup and our preschooler sleep in sleeping bags on the floor, and our toddler wasn't going to let it happen without him anymore. I love how we found them in the exact same sleeping position as each other. The second pic is later in the month.


Our 2nd born moved into the toddler bed this month. He likes to sleep with his midsection on his pillow and animals, and his legs in the bars, like he did in the crib.  He's starting to put his head on the pillow now. He loves the toddler bed!


Posing for the camera.


Big brother at bedtime.


He loves books! See the stack next to him of ones he's already looked at?


Slide pictures. (Our toddler is going down 100% by himself now.) October was a beautiful month for playing outside.


Yes, these are all slide pictures. The hill is a slide to him.

Our toddler loves to dig his fingers into mud and dirt. And to splash in puddles.

Playing hockey. A neighbor let us borrow a couple hockey sticks and a ball for a while, and when Hot Cup went to return them he came back with 2 additional sticks. Fun for us that his kids have outgrown them :)


I don't think I mentioned last month that my big sister came up and stayed with the boys while we went on a date, and for the date we used a gift certificate she gave us for Christmas so it was her treat all around. The boys really loved it (and we did too)!
This picture is from this month though, this time she came up for my baby shower and came over after (my mom too). She drew on the chalkboard with them, I thought it was fun that after after she left our preschooler erased her drawing to draw it himself.


Painting


He was using an 8 pack of crayons, so naturally ...


Our littler guy is pretty cute at prayer time. Sometimes he gets distracted and is upset when he misses the end, in which case he'll position himself for prayer again and say "Christ, amen!" He loves to help with prayers like he sees us do with big brother and even "helped" with one of the prayers they did at General Conference. Meanwhile, big brother is actually wanting to pray without help lately, and it's super fun to hear what he says, he can be very thoughtful with it.

Both boys are talking tons. Our little toddler echos pretty much everything we say to him and I'm often amazed by how much he shows us he knows through speaking. Big brother is getting quite articulate and always has things to tell us. I love our conversations.

Our preschooler continues to love letters and numbers and school. He'll sing little jingles they do in school about circle time, clean up time, etc, and this month he was singing the alphabet phonetically. He loves writing letters and numbers and doing math, especially counting and addition. And he's getting good with reading analog clocks.

Little brother is catching on and I've heard him softly singing parts of the alphabet song. He recognizes all the capital letters.  He's starting to understand numbers and knows what a lot of them look like. He counts the 13 steps with his dad when they come down the stairs in the morning and can now count that high by himself (skipping 10, ha). And I think he's finally recognizing that more than one does not always mean "three".

Little brother has gotten more affectionate and I love it. Lots of hugs and kisses and cuddling for mommy.

School Photo

Love this boy!

Halloween!

We had such a fun Halloween this year. There were a few days of celebrations and our boys loved it.

For costumes, the boys were Daniel Tiger & O the Owl from Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. They loved their costumes. Their dad was Mr Rogers, and I was Mr McFeely.
(For those not familiar, the modern animated show stars the son of Daniel Tiger from Mr Rogers' Land of Make Believe as the title character, and O the Owl is X's Nephew. Mr McFeely is in the animated show as well.)
Anyway, here's what we were going for -


The 28th, Ward Halloween Party

Both kids had a lot of fun and our preschooler didn't want to go when it was time to leave.

I didn't decide to do a costume until the evening of the 27th, but would have looked much better with his glasses and hat.


I'd planned to make our Daniel Tiger a watch and was super disappointed in myself for forgetting to before the ward party, but the next day I made one, and O helped by writing the numbers on it. I love it and think his costume was incomplete without it.


The 29th, O the Owl goes to school, and School Halloween Party

Our preschooler really loves his costume and I'm so glad :D

Aside from it being blue there really isn't anything to distinguish our preschooler's costume as the character O, and even if there were his preschool teachers don't know the character I'm sure, but they loved his owl costume anyway :) His teacher emailed me about Parent Teacher Conferences and included this: "Jenny and I want to say that [O]'s costume was our absolute favorite for the day. I don't know if there is a more perfect costume to show [O]'s personality. He certainly is our little Wise Owl and Professor!" So that was fun.

Face painting by one of the para teachers of his preschool class.


Coloring with markers.


In the gym.



Both boys had loads of fun and our preschooler didn't want to leave this party either.

The 31st, Halloween!
We put on our costumes while there was daylight to take a few pictures. I totally messed up the ones with me in them, but super love these of the others!!



Some of our other Halloween Day activities:

Sticker pumpkin.


They helped me make the cookies on the 30th and we frosted them on Halloween. I suggested black sprinkles on white icing for the bat and cat, but he picked the rest of the colors. Little brother frosted 2 with significant help, and then decided to eat the 3rd cookie without icing and then get down and play. Big brother stuck with it though, doing one of each shape. He's been making his own PB&J sandwiches lately so he knows what he's doing ;)

↑ buttercream ↓ royal

I couldn't seem to master the jack-o-lanterns, haha.

Everywhere was sold out of pumpkins so they carved the one our preschooler had brought home from school, painted light purple, and put stickers on.


A couple of our other decorations.
> Hot Cup thought our mister would make a great snake, so we got a costume-accessory snake and put them together!
> Hot Cup made this web out of glow-in-the dark paracord. Evidently it needs to be somewhere darker than a porch-light-lit Halloween night in order to glow. Still awesome.


My mom came up to spend the evening with us. She played with the boys, took us to dinner, and joined us for trick or treating. Taking a picture of her with her costumed grandkids didn't occur to me until she was gone and the boys were in bed. Sorry mom :(  But she's in a couple of these super dark pictures.

Trick or treating!

We only trick-or-treated around our street and our preschooler really wanted to do more. He just really enjoyed it and a small part of me wishes we'd said okay and done another street. But he really enjoyed handing out candy as well so I'm glad the evening went as it did. He would invite the trick-or-treaters to "pick two" from the bowl on his lap and occasionally wish them a Happy Halloween as they walked away. It was super cute.