Kindergarten vocabulary

During lunch today Trevor started shamelessly burping away. Ethan looked at him, shocked, and said "Trevor you are burping with no excusement!!"

The policeman caught me!

Today Ethan was playing with a book that my parents gave him for Christmas. It's all about emergency vehicles, and makes the siren noise when you push a button. Leave it to grandparents to buy even books that make noise!!

So he comes up to me and says that now he is a police officer. I grinned. "Mommy, you run and I'll chase you and get you." So off I ran. He quickly caught me and tackled me down. We've never played "police man" before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Then he took out his little orange notepad and gave me a "ticket." He smiled really big and said, "now we can go to the movies with our tickets, Mommy!!"

Hahahaha!! I just rolled laughing.

Learning styles and structure

Okay, here's the question of the day: How do you structure your "school time" and what is your child's learning style? If you don't have a child, then what is YOUR learning style and structure? I know not all of us homeschool, but all of us DO indeed teach our children, so the question still applies.

For our family, I prefer working on a schedule. That's not to say that I'm usually successful at it, though. I just find that we get more done when we have a general time frame to work by. The kids know what to expect and I don't worry all day about when I'm going to get other necessary things done. Our plan went much better before #4 was born. :-) That's okay... he's certainly worth every interruption!!

As far as learning styles, Isabelle is like me. She could read books and do worksheets all day. We are seat-learners, I guess you could say. Ethan, on the other hand, prefers to work with his hands. He needs visual aids, too. The more reinforcement the better, and learning better be fun or he's not going to pay much attention. He's getting better at doing some of the necessary writing, but it's not his favorite by any means. At first I struggled with not having as many papers in hand for him at the end of the day. Silly, I know. We do a lot of science, history, etc orally and use our maps, and so forth. I'm all for handwriting practice, but I'm learning that I don't need a paper for everything he does!

Trevor wants to be loved on all the time. He wants to be in my lap, or touching my hair, or crawling over my back. If he's physically on us, then he's paying attention. At first I thought this drive to be near us must stem from him needed more one-on-one time. Maybe that is the case at times, but it seems like his attention hole is a bottomless pit. It's a black hole. He just wants us ALL the time. If I bend over to get something, you can be sure there is a monkey ready to latch on my back! Sometimes that drives me a little nuts.

I could go on and on about what we do with our day, who likes which subject best, and how we do our experiments... but I will save that for another survey!
Signing off!

Another point of view

Ann-Marie posed the sleep-over question on her blog. Thought I'd mention it in case you are interested in those responses. We all love and cherish our kiddos, and it's neat (to me anyway) to see how other people do things. Gives me something to think about. And a lot of you, and her commenters, have kids older than mine so I can stand on your shoulders for some insights. :-)

Another survey will be posted tomorrow, hopefully. I'm booked every afternoon/ evening until Sunday, so we'll see how much I get done! JB, you may have been right about me getting too busy sometimes! ;-)

Oh, and Oliver cut his fourth tooth today!! The other top one is just under the gums. Poor baby just wants to eat and cuddle... isn't napping like he usually does.

another Survey!! I was gonna call it Saturday Surveys, but I can't wait 'til then. ;-)

Well, I must say that I'm surprised by both results of my on-page surveys! I am happy about the last post, though. It feels good to know that my own child isn't the only one going through a tumultuous 3-year old transition phase away from naps.

But, back to me. heh heh. I'm surprised that most of you guys think I should go back to red. Do redheads really have more fun? Fred LOVES that color on me. That's the way it was when we met, so I think he has it forever etched in his mind. I guess I like that in a way. I feel like I've grown and changed so much since then, though, and it's hard for me to go back to that look. Jerri pointed out how strange that is. A link between personality and hair color. Hmm... And, of course,she's right. I love honest friends!! So, if any of you have a specific color in mind, please feel free to email it to me. And, Mimi and Papaw, I know you love my natural color ...but I don't even know what that is at this point. ;-) Aren't grandparents great?

I also just assumed that my kids squealing "MOOOMMMMEEEE" was the norm. But I didn't expect so many "Mommas" (Mamas?) out there. I tried to get Trev to switch today (thought it might sound less whiny, like Adelia said), but he would have none of that. Oh, well.

Now, for a cute toddler saying and baby milestone before I get to the survey part! Wen the tornado sirens were going off the other night, Trevor started to get very nervous about those "tomatoes" in the sky outside. That's all he's been talking about for days. "Mommy, it's windy, is there a tomato coming?" I answered, "yep, there's one in your salad." He just looked at me like I was going crazy.

Baby milestone: Oliver got his third tooth yesterday!! But it's NOT on top. It's on the side, like a fang coming in. How weird is that? All of my other kid got their bottom teeth and then progressed normally to the top ones. Oliver is very much his own little person, though. He's such a sweet, happy, easy baby, thank You, Lord!!

And now for the part you've all been waiting for...Ba-Boom...the survey question of the night is:
Do you let your kids spend the night with others? Kids spend the night with you? We don't do it at all. I think my kids stayed one night with my folks when I was in the hospital having my third. Or maybe my Mom stayed here, I can't remember now. I'd just rather keep it simple and say no to everyone, then try to pick and choose and explain. The only time we've ever had kids stay here is when a friend had her third baby. And that was different. Friends in need can always stay.

And, if you do let your kids spend the night, at what age did you start? I ask because we're being pressured by a relative to let the kids come stay. I'm dead set against it, and Fred is on-board with me. So it's just not gonna happen. But I'm still curious what the rest of you do!

Mom survey

In addition to the two surveys on my page, I've gotta ask one more question:
First, how old were your kids (bunnies, Ann-Marie? ;-) ) when they stopped taking naps? I know it varies from child to child, even within the same family. I know most of my kids took two naps a day until they were 18-months old. I was lucky.

Trevor stopped taking naps about a month ago. He turned 3 in November. Before we gave up, we went through some struggles trying to get him to lie down and be still. It used to be SO easy. He went right to bed. But that last month he really fought us on it, and then didn't want to wake up, and wouldn't go to bed at night. So, we did a test run. He took no nap. He seemed fine, didn't get overly fussy in the evening and went to bed at 7:30. All was well with the world. I had my evenings back, even though I still terribly miss that 2-hour time after lunch when I could get the tougher subjects done with the bigger kids.

Anyway, lately he's been falling asleep at about 6:30....sitting up or on the floor, wherever. So I'm thinking that maybe he needs his naps back again. We have been outside a lot lately. When the weather is nice we walk, bike ride, you name it. Hmmm...
Just curious what the rest of you do.

Okay, I'm gonna post a resolution like everyone else!

It's that time again, huh? New Year's Resolutions. And, yes, I realize that I'm already procrastinating, given that it's the 5th of January.

This year I have ONE goal. Yes, just one. But it's a biggie.

I want to reclaim my time. I don't want it to disappear. Does it ever seem that you start out the day, with grand plans of all the things you'll accomplish...and then you look at your list at the end of the day and one thing has been crossed off...and it's not even an important thing? That seemed to happen all too often last year. I had too many balls in the air. And too many interruptions.

So...more specifically, I want a working schedule. I want to make sure to do the important things: spend time with and teach my kids, and spend time with my husband, and spend time with my Lord. The important things need to trump the urgent things, like phone calls and errands, etc.

Not everything has to get done. And there are only 24 hours in a day. This is so hard for me. I wrote out all of the things that I need to do in a day, and I really need at least 5 more hours!!! Or I need to be able to run on a lot less sleep.

Ah, but I'm saying "need," right? What really needs to be done? Okay, so then I eliminated and cut down on the amount of time that I really spend doing certain things. I need to do laundry faster in order to have more game-time with family in the evening. You get the idea.

I'm a fairly clean person. The house gets messy, but I really can't stand that. It drives me crazy and I feel like I can't function. I like to wake up to a clean house and I have a VERY hard time concentrating on schoolwork if there are messes all around me. So we will straighten up, then start school. And, since I know that laundry will be done at 2pm, I won't need to worry about it all day. It's time is coming. I can relax and enjoy the moment, the smiles, the kids and their cuteness.

I also want to start spending 15 minutes a day alone with each child doing whatever he/ she wants. Isabelle has already told me that on Monday (when we implement the new plan) she wants to spend her 15 minutes sketching with me. Of course, we do that for art all the time, but she is excited that it will be just me and her. :-) Ethan wants me to play dinosaurs. "And not math dinosaurs," he said. Heh heh. He caught on early that when the sharp tooth ate one of those four long-neck dinosaurs,leaving three left, I was really sneaking in math. Trevor would be content to ride around on my back. That suits me, too. Fun and exercise!

And I want to claim one evening a week for family time. Nothing can interrupt or mess that up. We just get too busy, all going in different directions. We're tied to lots of great organizations/ functions, but then we don't have time to relax and just take walks and go hiking and play games.

Now you can share your resolutions, or give me tips for mine! :-)