Aedan: 72 Months, Week 2
Owen: 29 Months, Week 4
Since my parents were still in town visiting, they offered to babysit the kids for us so Ben and I could go on a date. We decided that Sunday evening would be the best day to go since Samantha had play practice right after church on Sunday. We all ate lunch at Wendy's together, and then Samantha stayed down in Wilkes-Barre with Grandpa and Grandma. Since they weren't going to be able to see Samantha's actual performance the following weekend, I suggested that they watch some of one of her rehearsals so they could see part of the play she was in, and hopefully see the song and lines she had in the play. Samantha was actually bold enough to ask the director if they could please get to her Subbalubble song so that her grandparents could see it before they had to leave. The director was kind enough to bring those kids back from break early so they could perform the song together. Samantha was really excited to able to perform for Grandpa and Grandma, and they loved watching her sing and dance on stage.
While they were all down in Wilkes-Barre, Ben and I came back home with the boys so that we could put Owen down for a nap. Then, once my parents got back from watching Samantha, Ben and I left for our date together. We got tickets for a Wilkes-Barre Penguins hockey game, and Ben got seats pretty close to the ice, so that was fun. We had only been to one game before, and that was back in January with the kids. They were not too in to the game at that point, so it was kind of nice to just have this time together to actually watch the game. They had a whole bunch of mascots there, and during one of the periods they played a silly hockey game and I took this video because I thought the kids might like to see it.
After the hockey game was over, Ben and I went to eat dinner at Olive Garden. The restaurant was pretty busy, and we didn't want to wait, so we sat at the bar, but it was really nice to be able to sit and talk and enjoy our time out together. We got back home in time to do bedtime and then had the rest of the night to hang out with my parents.
On Monday we didn't have anything special to do, so I got the big kids off to school and spent the morning hanging out with my parents and doing some of the normal things I do around the house like taking the trash out and doing laundry. After a little while of being inside, it got really nice outside so I went outside with Owen and Grandpa. Owen enjoyed having Grandpa to follow him around and push him on the swing. I took advantage of a little bit of time to start cleaning up the landscaping around our house, pulling off dead leaves and stems, and gathering piles of leaves. The landscaping around our house is beautiful, but I know it's going to take a lot of work to keep it looking nice, especially after winter is over. There will be a lot spring cleaning to do, pruning of the plants and bushes, and raking lots and lots of leaves. It was going to be a huge job that I would just have to do over a period of time when I find nice weather and time to be outside and get it done.
Here is some of the work Aedan and Samantha brought home from school on Monday. Aedan was working on matching numbers and number words, the letter Gg, and identifying and describing spheres. Samantha had a daily language review and a science quiz she got 100% on.
Here is some of the work Aedan and Samantha brought home from school on Monday. Aedan was working on matching numbers and number words, the letter Gg, and identifying and describing spheres. Samantha had a daily language review and a science quiz she got 100% on.
With the weather being so nice out that day, I decided that it would be a good idea to take the kids to the playground near the condos to let them ride their bikes and play. We had dinner in the crock pot, so we were able to go out after school and still eat dinner at a good time. Samantha was really excited to have an open, flat parking lot to ride her bike around on. We brought Aedan's bike as well, but for some reason he is really afraid to ride it. Last spring and summer he was riding his bike all over Lake State's campus, up and down hills, and going super fast trying to catch up with Samantha, but some reason now he is afraid to ride fast at all. He is really afraid that he is going to tip over and fall, even though he has training wheels, so he pedals super slow and gets really upset if we try to encourage him to go faster. I was hoping that going out to a big, open parking lot like this would help, but he still was really afraid and did not want to ride his bike much at all. In fact, he cried quite a bit when he first got on, and it was difficult to not get frustrated with him because we know that he rode so well in the past and had such a good time. We wanted him to be able to enjoy riding his bike again and not be afraid.
That night after dinner it was time for everyone to take a bath. Ben gave the boys a bath and captured these funny pictures of Owen standing up holding on to the bar in the shower. He is such a crazy, silly little boy. Some day he will probably be really embarrassed by these pictures. :)
Tuesday was Grandpa and Grandma's last day visiting us. Their flight left mid-afternoon, so the plan was for Ben to work for awhile on campus that morning before coming back home to give Owen lunch and put him down for his nap so I could drive them down to the Allentown airport, which was a little less than an hour and a half away. I planned on going to the play gym with Owen and having my parents come along, too, so they could get a glimpse of what he and I usually do together on a normal Tuesday, but they weren't quite ready in order to leave on time to get to the gym on time, so I figured it wasn't worth it to go at that point. Nevertheless, Owen had a great time playing at home, showing Grandpa his Paw Patrol puppies, and having him read even more books to him.
The only strange thing that happened that morning was that I found a tick on Izzy's leg. She was sitting on my lap when I dropped the kids off for the school van that morning, and I felt a strange lump on her leg. When I took a closer look at it, I noticed that it was a tick that must have been attached for awhile, probably since she was running through the woods the previous day, as the tick was a decent size. When I got back to the house, I got a pair of tweezers and my dad helped me to pull it off, while I helped to hold her still. It looked like we got most of it off, but I looked up what to do and read that I just needed to make sure I cleaned it regularly and watch to see if it got red or infected.
Ben got back home around 11:30, and I left with my parents to drop them off at the airport. We stopped at Panera just a couple minutes from the airport to eat lunch together before I dropped them off. It is a very small airport, they were already checked in, and they had no bags to check, so it wasn't going to be an issue getting through security and getting to their gate in time. It was so nice to have them come out and visit us. We love having family visit, even though we are farther away now. The kids really enjoy being able to see family, and it's a lot easier and simpler for us to have people come visit us at home rather than to travel with all five of us, especially because the kids don't really get much time off of school during the year.
Here is some work the kids brought home from school that day. Samantha got a 100% on a "Charlotte's Web" quiz and a 95% on her Chapter 4 Science Test. Aedan continued to work on identifying and describing spheres, plot comprehension, and the letter Rr (which he colored very nicely and completely!).
This week was a busy one in regards to our schedule with Samantha. It was tech week for her play, so starting Tuesday night she had practice every night for a couple hours, with the shows starting on Friday night. We ate dinner early every night so that way Samantha could eat dinner before leaving for play practice that started at 5:30. Ben and I took turns picking her up and dropping her off so that way we took turns with who was responsible for cleaning up dinner or putting the boys to bed. On Tuesday I took Samantha down and picked her up, though, because I had a MOPS meeting. I just left early to drop her off before stopping to get some Dunkin' Donuts hot chocolate to share with the group. I was only able to stay for an hour, but it was good to connect with everyone because I think I missed the last meeting, if I recall correctly. Even though Samantha had a super busy schedule that week with school, homework, and play practice, she did a great job handling it all, and she was really looking forward to the production that coming weekend.
Wednesday was an exciting day for Aedan because he finally got to bring his Leprechaun Trap into school. He and I worked hard on it over the weekend, on Saturday morning and then again another time to help build a better, stronger way to hold up the horizontal tube. This was his final result for his project, and he was so excited to bring it to school. This little boy puts all his effort into projects like this. In fact, he wanted to build it the very first day he came home with the paper describing the project. He was disappointed when he had to wait until I bought more construction paper and other materials that he needed. Samantha promised to help him hold his project on the van and help him carry it into school so that way he didn't drop it or have it fall apart before he could even get it back to his classroom. Here he is posing with his Leprechaun Trap that morning before school.
With our new guests, Ben's parents, arriving on Thursday mid-afternoon, I had a little bit of work to do get things ready for them, but not too much since I cleaned the whole house really well before my parents came last weekend. I just made sure to change and wash the sheets so that they could use our bed to sleep, and I wiped down counters and cleaned toilets and stuff like that.
On Thursday morning I had Bible study but we were unable to meet at Abide because there was no one to watch the kids for us, so Grace offered up her house so that way the kids would have more space to play while we talked. It was a smaller group than normal, but Kaili brought an air pot of coffee from Abide to share with everyone, so that was really kind of her. All the kids were more whiny than usual, Owen in particular, so it was a little bit difficult to talk about too much that day. In fact, a lot of our conversation ended up revolving around the coronavirus that had now made it's way to the United States. It was all getting really scary sounding and was making me start to feel anxious. I am normally fairly anxious about our kids (and us) getting sick with the regular flu, strep throat, or stomach bugs, so something like this that seemed to spread so easily, be so contagious, and be dormant in people for so long before symptoms would even manifest themselves, made me even more nervous. The other ladies were talking about how it was making us feel and how cautious they thought we should be in the wake of this new information.
In fact, as the day went on we heard more and more information about things being cancelled: pretty much all colleges/universities were going to teaching online, lots of activities are being cancelled like library story time, play gym time, small group, and our church was going online for the coming Sunday. It's kind of scary to think about how bad it could potentially get. However, so many people, including our president, were downplaying how bad it really was, saying that it was not that big of a deal and that people were overreacting. But then I didn't understand why so many things were then being shut down. Samantha and Aedan already had school off for Friday, and I wanted to go down to Philadelphia to do something fun, but we decided that it wasn't a good idea anymore with all the coronavirus cases increasing in Philadelphia. There were a lot of warnings about not going out in public places with more that fifty people, and large public events like St. Patrick's Day parades were all being cancelled. People were starting to get worried about stocking up on supplies, and when I stopped by Aldi to look for a dog bed for Izzy that evening, it was pretty empty and I was glad I had already gotten my shopping done earlier in the week. All of this was crazy and overwhelming. I didn't really know what to think about it, and I was feeling a little tired of it being the only thing everyone was talking about. It was too much for my mind to take in.
In fact, as the day went on we heard more and more information about things being cancelled: pretty much all colleges/universities were going to teaching online, lots of activities are being cancelled like library story time, play gym time, small group, and our church was going online for the coming Sunday. It's kind of scary to think about how bad it could potentially get. However, so many people, including our president, were downplaying how bad it really was, saying that it was not that big of a deal and that people were overreacting. But then I didn't understand why so many things were then being shut down. Samantha and Aedan already had school off for Friday, and I wanted to go down to Philadelphia to do something fun, but we decided that it wasn't a good idea anymore with all the coronavirus cases increasing in Philadelphia. There were a lot of warnings about not going out in public places with more that fifty people, and large public events like St. Patrick's Day parades were all being cancelled. People were starting to get worried about stocking up on supplies, and when I stopped by Aldi to look for a dog bed for Izzy that evening, it was pretty empty and I was glad I had already gotten my shopping done earlier in the week. All of this was crazy and overwhelming. I didn't really know what to think about it, and I was feeling a little tired of it being the only thing everyone was talking about. It was too much for my mind to take in.
Samantha and Aedan had an early dismissal on Thursday, so Owen and I went down to pick them up from the school van before I took him upstairs to get him down for his nap. He always has a harder time calming down to go to sleep when he knows Samantha and Aedan are home and playing without him. Owen even woke up crying during his nap and wouldn't calm down on his own, so I had to get him back to sleep again. Luckily, it didn't take too long, and Ema and Papa arrived at our house later than initially projected, so I wasn't still upstairs with him when they arrived.
Here is the work Aedan brought home from school that day: a beautifully colored St. Patrick's Day picture, practice with beginning blends, identifying and describing cylinders, and a Unit 4 Benchmark Test on which Aedan was marked Proficient in each category and earned 100%. I'm so proud of how well he is doing in Kindergarten and how well he has adjusted to going to school full time, even though sometimes it is sad to have to leave playing in the morning.
Here is the work Aedan brought home from school that day: a beautifully colored St. Patrick's Day picture, practice with beginning blends, identifying and describing cylinders, and a Unit 4 Benchmark Test on which Aedan was marked Proficient in each category and earned 100%. I'm so proud of how well he is doing in Kindergarten and how well he has adjusted to going to school full time, even though sometimes it is sad to have to leave playing in the morning.
Ema and Papa picked a great weekend to come because the kids didn't have school on Friday so they had even more time to spend with them. Ben still had to teach classes like normal on Friday, and it was going to be an interesting day because he had to talk to all his students about how they were switching to online classes for at least the next two weeks. He wasn't sure how he was going to do this transition, and a lot of the students had questions and worries themselves about what was going on and what this meant for the rest of the semester.
That morning was bad with the kids. Aedan was being annoying on purpose right off that bat, and Samantha was complaining at breakfast that I put jam on her toast and said in her sassiest voice, "You could have asked me if I wanted it." Samantha continued to just give me lots of attitude and was being mean to everyone, Aedan and me in particular. Aedan was just not listening and purposely doing things to bother people. I felt like it was the longest morning ever, and it made me hope that our schools don't close. I didn't want to be stuck at home with all the kids for three weeks and not be allowed to go anywhere. They were just being mean, ungrateful, and impatient, and I didn't understand why they were acting in this way when they had Ema and Papa here to play with and talk to. I think I was in a bad mood, too, because I really wanted to get out of the house and go somewhere since they actually had a day off of school and with Samantha's play practice, we hardly have days where we have nothing to do and can take a longer trip, but instead we were stuck inside and it was raining outside all morning.
Luckily, the rain only lasted for the morning, and after I put Owen down for his nap, the rest of us all went outside to start working on trimming and cleaning up some of our areas of landscaping. Ema was planning on helping me do a lot of yard work when she came for this visit, but with her wrist injury, there was no way she could safely help me. However, Papa got out the loppers that they brought along, and even Samantha and Aedan helped trim down all the long grasses that we had lining the road and landscaping area behind it. It was amazing how much better and different it looked with all that dead grass cut down. I was also able to walk around the yard with Ema so she could tell me what she would do as far as pruning, trimming, and cleaning up so that our yard can look nice and so we can facilitate new growth this spring. I was really glad to have her guidance as I feel pretty clueless as to how to take care of plants properly. I know it's a learning curve as this is only the second home we have owned, and the first one with this much property and landscaping, but I just want to make sure I am taking care of things properly so our home can look as nice as it did when we first saw it last year.
As we were working outside that afternoon, we finally got the official call from the kids' school that it was cancelled for the next two weeks due to the coronavirus spreading in the United States. We thought it was coming because so many other things were shutting down, too, but I was a little intimidated by the thought at first. I hoped that it wouldn't rain too much so that we could spend a lot of time outside and not just stuck inside the house. We have definitely never experienced this long of a period of time where we don't have to go to school or work, but we also can't travel or go to any public places, so it will be interesting to see how all this plays out. When we told the kids the news, we thought they would be more upset about not going back to school for at least two weeks. We especially thought that Samantha would be upset because she loves going to school. However, she took it really well, and I think they were initially excited about the extended break from school and the extra time to just hang out and play together.
With church being online on Sunday, Samantha decided to take it upon herself to plan children's church for her and Aedan to participate in while we watched church online. It was cute how detailed she was with her plans and how she tried to follow how they normally do at church. Ben took a picture of her plans and sent them to our pastors because we thought they would get a kick out of it. She was excited to have Aedan and Owen go up their room for the lesson, and she even had me move the easel upstairs so that she could use that as part of her lesson. She had everything ready and prepared ahead of time, and she couldn't wait until Sunday morning.
This weekend was busy for Samantha as she had her first performance of "The Journey of the Noble Gnarble on Friday night, and then she had two performances on Saturday. We got Ema, Papa, and Aedan tickets to the 2:00 performance, and Ben and I had tickets for the 7:00 performance.
Since Samantha didn't have to be anywhere until after lunch, the kids spent the morning playing together. They got out a lot the Playmobil stuff out that we have in the house, like Samantha's Fairy Castle set and NASA set, as well as all the emergency vehicles and buildings that we got them for Christmas. They had it all set up on the living room floor, and it was fun to see them all play together. We had a little issue with Samantha being possessive of the toys and not wanting Owen to play with it, but once we got past that, they all played pretty nicely together. Aedan and Owen have especially been enjoying playing with each other lately. Owen loves to do anything that Aedan does, and it's cute to see how much he looks up to him and copies everything he does and says.
Luckily, the rain only lasted for the morning, and after I put Owen down for his nap, the rest of us all went outside to start working on trimming and cleaning up some of our areas of landscaping. Ema was planning on helping me do a lot of yard work when she came for this visit, but with her wrist injury, there was no way she could safely help me. However, Papa got out the loppers that they brought along, and even Samantha and Aedan helped trim down all the long grasses that we had lining the road and landscaping area behind it. It was amazing how much better and different it looked with all that dead grass cut down. I was also able to walk around the yard with Ema so she could tell me what she would do as far as pruning, trimming, and cleaning up so that our yard can look nice and so we can facilitate new growth this spring. I was really glad to have her guidance as I feel pretty clueless as to how to take care of plants properly. I know it's a learning curve as this is only the second home we have owned, and the first one with this much property and landscaping, but I just want to make sure I am taking care of things properly so our home can look as nice as it did when we first saw it last year.
As we were working outside that afternoon, we finally got the official call from the kids' school that it was cancelled for the next two weeks due to the coronavirus spreading in the United States. We thought it was coming because so many other things were shutting down, too, but I was a little intimidated by the thought at first. I hoped that it wouldn't rain too much so that we could spend a lot of time outside and not just stuck inside the house. We have definitely never experienced this long of a period of time where we don't have to go to school or work, but we also can't travel or go to any public places, so it will be interesting to see how all this plays out. When we told the kids the news, we thought they would be more upset about not going back to school for at least two weeks. We especially thought that Samantha would be upset because she loves going to school. However, she took it really well, and I think they were initially excited about the extended break from school and the extra time to just hang out and play together.
With church being online on Sunday, Samantha decided to take it upon herself to plan children's church for her and Aedan to participate in while we watched church online. It was cute how detailed she was with her plans and how she tried to follow how they normally do at church. Ben took a picture of her plans and sent them to our pastors because we thought they would get a kick out of it. She was excited to have Aedan and Owen go up their room for the lesson, and she even had me move the easel upstairs so that she could use that as part of her lesson. She had everything ready and prepared ahead of time, and she couldn't wait until Sunday morning.
Since Samantha didn't have to be anywhere until after lunch, the kids spent the morning playing together. They got out a lot the Playmobil stuff out that we have in the house, like Samantha's Fairy Castle set and NASA set, as well as all the emergency vehicles and buildings that we got them for Christmas. They had it all set up on the living room floor, and it was fun to see them all play together. We had a little issue with Samantha being possessive of the toys and not wanting Owen to play with it, but once we got past that, they all played pretty nicely together. Aedan and Owen have especially been enjoying playing with each other lately. Owen loves to do anything that Aedan does, and it's cute to see how much he looks up to him and copies everything he does and says.
Later that night, after eating dinner together, Ben and I took Samantha down for the Saturday night show. After dropping her off, we went over to Target to buy her a little "congratulations" present. Ema and Papa took Aedan to pick out flowers for Samantha, so we wanted to get her something different. We were able to find a little stuffed animal fish that had sequins all over its body, and we thought that would be a good choice. Ben and I really enjoyed watching our little girl perform as a Subbalubble. She did a wonderful job. She was confident. She knew her lines and her dances. She loved being on the stage, and it was awesome to see all her hard work pay off. The play was really cute, the songs were sweet, and the costumes were great. Here are all the pictures and videos I took of her during that Saturday night performance. It was fun for both Ben and me to be able to go and watch her together.
(Blog about March 8-14, 2020)
No comments:
Post a Comment