Owen Reading Books He Has Memorized, School Work, and Daddy's Date with Aedan

Samantha: 113 Months, Week 3

Aedan: 81 Months, Week 1

Owen: 37 Months, Week 3

After doing a few things out of the house for Halloween on Saturday, we spent Sunday at home, just spending time together, watching church online, getting stuff done around the house, and giving the kids free time to play how they wanted.

I gave the boys a bath that night and took a little video of them talking and interacting with me and each other. It's cute to hear their little voices together like this because it probably won't be very long before Aedan feels "too old" to take a bath with Owen. I remember when it got to that point with Samantha, and they were both a little sad about not having that time to play with each other anymore.

 

Monday morning we got a message from Aedan's teacher saying that she had to go into quarantine for ten days because of contact with someone who had tested positive for coronavirus from outside of the school district. I have to admit that hearing that made me a little nervous. His teacher was going to be tested, of course, so we would know if she was positive, but part of me thought about keeping Aedan home from school just in case. It's so hard to hear about people around us coming into contact with people who have tested positive. We have not had any direct exposure, and I would like to keep it that way.

There were a lot of conversations that were going on that day, one being trying to start the conversation with my sister about what our plans might be for Christmas. I had invited my family to come to our house for Thanksgiving, but my mom wasn't able to get off of work because Black Friday is too big of a deal for a retail store, which I understand. Since it didn't look like anyone was going to be able to make it out for Thanksgiving, I started moving on to thinking about Christmas. I don't like always spending our whole Christmas break away from home. Plus, it's close to $700 just to travel to Chicago with paying for a hotel to stay in on the way out (or back), a few nights while we are there, plus food. I wouldn't mind making the trip every once in awhile, but it would be nice if my family would come out and see us every few years or something for Christmas instead. I know we live far away, but we have a home that could accommodate people to sleep in various rooms, and we enjoy hosting and having people over. I don't like the idea of not seeing my family over the holidays, so I never know what to do, and I always feel so torn at this time of the year.

The other conversation I had that day was with our little peanut's caseworker. I asked about our little peanut's mom getting her own car seat because now that she has unsupervised visits, she is driving around a lot more, and I would feel more comfortable if she didn't use our infant car seat that we would like to keep for other foster children, just in case she were to get in an accident and also because she smokes in her car so the car seat always come back smelling really badly.

I also expressed my concern with the lack of sleep our little peanut was getting at her mom's house because she comes back to us super tired, especially now that the visits are unsupervised and for a greater number of hours. For example, after her visit on Sunday, our little peanut was asleep in the swing at mom's house, and she was transferred to our car seat at 2:00 when Ben picked her up. Her mom said she had been asleep for awhile. Then, she stayed asleep in her car seat at our house until almost 6:00. That is not normal for a baby to be napping for that long, unless she had not been put down for a nap all day. Our little peanut is old enough now that noise and commotion will bother her and prevent her from sleeping, so sleeping in the front room in the middle of everything is not ideal. We have her sleep in a room by herself so she can have a good nap and not get woken up. I wondered if there was a separate room that she could be put down in for a nap in her pack and play instead. Napping schedules and good sleep is so important for babies to develop and grow. And sleep begets sleep, so the better sleep she gets during naps during the day, the better she sleeps at night. So when she doesn't nap well at visits, she is just fussier with us and wakes up more at night because she is just so overtired. I'm just concerned for our little peanut, and how this is impacting her. She does so much better when she just has a consistent schedule with us. I sent along a general schedule for both her mom and dad so they would know a little bit more of what we do with her, but it's up to them to try and stick to it.

Despite all of those conversations back and forth on Monday morning, Owen and I got to do some reading together while our little peanut took her morning nap. This little book is called "Elephant & Mouse Celebrate Halloween." We have read it to him quite a bit since we got it from the library. He really likes this book, and you can tell how well he knows it because he is almost reciting it word for word. I remember Samantha reading books like this because she heard them so many times that she memorized them. My favorite phrase is when he says, "quivering and shivering." I love how his eyes are looking back and forth to remember what happens on the page by looking at the pictures. This boy is so smart! I had to split the video up into smaller segments because it was too long to upload at one time, but it's awesome to watch his stamina for reading and retelling the story. I love watching our kids enjoy reading.

Here's some work the kids brought home from school on Monday. Aedan is working on adding and making 10, and writing color and number words. 

Aedan draws quite a bit in his free time at school, and I love seeing the creativity in his drawing. He does not enjoy coloring, but he loves to draw his own pictures. In this picture he drew ninjas from Ninjago, with two of them practicing spinjitzu which I think is why the green and blue is spinning around.

Here is Aedan's practice page for his spelling words and practicing parts of sentences.

Here is work that Samantha brought home: labeling parts of a plant and answering questions about it, adding and subtracting with zeroes in decimals, learning about decimal place value, and learning about the counts that notes get in music, a language review, and practice with spelling words.

Here is more work for Aedan: practice with making a 10 to add.

Tuesday, November 3rd was Election Day, a day that we had been anticipating for some time now. Ben was contacted to work the polls, so he left early in the morning and was gone all day, for 14 hours, so it felt like a long day to me with doing everything with the kids, including our evening routine, on my own.

With Covid still impacting everything that we normally do, Owen and I mostly spend our mornings at home playing, reading, doing things around the house, and taking care of our little peanut, unless it is a Wednesday when we meet her mom for a visit and then go grocery shopping or Thursday when she has a visit with her dad. After getting both Owen and our little peanut down for an afternoon nap, I spent my afternoon stuffing diapers and putting laundry away. Owen wasn't even trying to nap at first and was just kicking around. I went up to his room three times to tell him to be quiet, stop kicking and go to sleep, but he just wasn't stopping. He had napped well a few days in a row, so I guess that made sense. He is doing that a lot more now where he won't nap every day. But, then he finally fell asleep at 2:40, over an hour after I left his room. Silly boy!

Here is some work Aedan brought home from school that afternoon: practice with missing letters and writing words, practice with adding three numbers together, practice making words in the -en family, some practice with sight words, and words with a short e sound.

Here is work Samantha brought home: Order of Operations project written on candy corn (which is a clever way to show the steps), her haunted house she made for art class, and a Social Studies test she got 100% on. I love seeing the work they bring home. It gives me a glimpse into what they spend their time on at school and what they are learning as the year progresses.

This week was a fairly normal week with school and work and home life. Wednesday was my grocery shopping day, so our little peanut's mom met me at Aldi to pick her up and take her for a visit while I then went shopping with just Owen. I feel bad for him, but this is really the only place he gets to go every week. Luckily, he seems to enjoy it, and he's helpful in the store with picking things out, putting them in the cart, and then helping put the items on the belt when it's time to check out. 

Here is some work the kids brought home from school Wednesday. Aedan has a science page, math practice for adding three addends, a reading comprehension page, a bat art project, a grammar page (where his handwriting was so nice and neat!), practice with sight words and short e words, and more practice with adding three numbers.

The other day when I was helping Samantha rinse the conditioner from her hair in the bathroom, a bottle fell and hit this handle, breaking a connection point, and making it fall off. We couldn't get it back on, so we decided to go to Lowe's after dropping Samantha, Aedan, and Owen off at AWANA to look and see what we would need to fix it or if we would need to buy a whole new faucet set. I took a picture of it so that way we would know what to look for. Right now we have to use pliers to turn the hot water on and off, so it works, but it's definitely not ideal. We will add this to our list of things we need to do around the house (in all our spare time). While we were out, Ben and I were able to get take out from Chipotle, too, so that was nice, even though our little peanut didn't stay asleep in the back seat like we hoped she would. Ben and I still enjoyed our time mostly alone, and we were able to have uninterrupted conversations, which is a rarity at times.

This is a picture I took to document the mess that the boys, mostly Aedan, made Thursday morning before school. I'm not even sure how they could make this much of a mess in the half an hour or so they have before Aedan leaves for school, but they are talented at that. I thought about cleaning it up because it was hard for me to ignore this mess all day, but instead, I left it out all day and had them clean it up after school. I figured they made the mess, so they needed to be the ones to clean it up.

It was a beautiful day outside, and with our little peanut's morning nap, we weren't able to get out of the house earlier in the morning, so after Owen and I dropped our little peanut off for a visit with her dad, we got lunch from Wendy's and went to the playground to eat and then play together for awhile. He loved having my undivided attention, having me watch him go down the slides, and play hide and seek with him, squealing with delight when he found me or I found him. It was so fun to spend time with just him and not feeling like I had anyone else to attend to or anything else to do other than be with him.

My afternoon consisted of putting Owen down for his nap, emptying the dishwasher, getting meatballs in the crock pot for dinner, starting a load of laundry, washing Izzy's head off from getting into something inside, and finally sitting down to do some work. Sometimes the tasks seem to never end.

Here is some work the kids brought home from school on Thursday. Aedan has a science worksheet, using strategies to solve addition problems, doing some work with identifying and writing sentences, and practicing words with a short e sound. 

Samantha has a Mid-Chapter 3 Checkpoint for Math that she got 43/50 on, all dealing with decimal work, and a 5 Minute Language Review.

It has been my tradition to let Owen watch a show after Samantha and Aedan go off to school because that's usually when I have to sit and give our little peanut a bottle, so it works out for him to watch a show while I feed her. On this Friday morning Owen was even still in his pajamas, it was just that kind of a day. Fridays we usually just hang out at home, since we don't have any visits to drop our little peanut off at, and I do the sheets and towels laundry, changing everyone's linens.

I think Owen is so funny watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, which has been his favorite show to watch lately. He loves to get up and dance along to the music, and in the pictures you can see him laying back on the couch, clearly comfortable. I included the last video because you can see our little peanut playing on the floor gym as well. It doesn't show her face, just a view from the top of her head, so I figured it would be okay to include. Owen does a good job of walking around and dancing in circles around her. He's been so good and gentle with her. It's been a good experience for him to have practice as a big brother, even if only for a few months.

Samantha and Aedan had an early dismissal that Friday afternoon, and it was such a beautiful day outside again, that I decided to just let Owen stay up to play outside with them that afternoon, since he probably wasn't going to nap anyways, knowing that he's missing out on playing with Samantha and Aedan. Overall, it worked out okay, but at one point when Samantha and Aedan weren't being kind, I gave them the job of taking turns picking up Izzy's poop instead. Nevertheless, we are thoroughly enjoying these warmer fall days after how cold it was Halloween weekend.

Being a homeowner sometimes is not very much fun, like when you have to spend your weekend fixing your dryer. It was making a super loud squeaky sound every time it ran, so much so that I could never run it when anyone was sleeping, and it was just getting worse and worse. Ben ordered a repair kit for it, and we watched several different videos on how to repair it. We worked together to figure it out. We had to change the wheels that turn the drum and replace the belt, which took awhile for us to figure out how to get back on right. We started in the morning and then spent most of the evening working on it before finally giving up in frustration. Then on Sunday we started working on it in the afternoon, and I found a video that was better for the model of dryer we have, and it finally made sense how to get the belt on and I was able to see what I was doing wrong. We could finally do laundry again! I felt pretty proud that I finally figured it out. Plus, we saved a lot of money doing the repairs ourselves and not just calling someone, even though sometimes that seems so much easier.

I discovered that since I am a graduate student at Wilkes, I am able to talk to a counselor for free via telehealth appointments. I started talking to a counselor last week to try and help me with how I've been feeling lately. I was tired of feeling the way I was, I was feeling so overwhelmed with life, and I thought getting help might be a good idea. It's nice that I don't have to leave the house, and I can just schedule it during nap time so I can talk in peace and quiet. I felt nervous about it, but it was something I really felt like I needed to do for my mental health.

Here is a picture of our little peanut fast asleep during her morning nap. I love how she sleeps with her hands up in the air or resting on her head like that. She is such an adorable little girl.

On Saturday Samantha was invited to her best friend Cadence's birthday party at Barnes and Noble, and Ben took Aedan down as well to have a little date with him. It was just Samantha and Cadence at the party, and Ben said they browsed books together for a while, picked out something they liked, and then sat at a table with a coffee-free Frappuccino while they read their books together. Sounds like the perfect idea of a birthday party for Samantha. Samantha and Cadence have a lot in common. I'm glad they were put by each other at the beginning of the year so they could get to know each other, and I hope we can continue to encourage their friendship throughout the year. I know I've said this before, but Samantha having a good friend this year is such an answer to prayer.

Ben's date with Aedan consisted of letting him pick out a couple of cheaper Lego sets, and then going back to Ben's office building on campus to sit in the lounge area and build the sets. It looks like they picked up some Dunkin' Donuts to share as a snack as well. This kind of a date is right up Aedan's alley. He loved it!

As he's building in these videos, you can hear him quietly humming and singing to himself. It's so sweet and endearing.

Finally, after several days of waiting for all the votes to be counted, Joe Biden was officially declared the winner and the next President of the United States. It was such a relief to me, and to a lot of the country. I don't normally post or comment about political things, but I saw this and had to repost it on Facebook because it explained exactly how I felt. I remember having to have a conversation with Samantha four years ago when Trump was elected because she had heard that he was saying mean things about people, especially women, and she was honestly worried if he was going to say mean things about or to her as well.  I was glad that we could finally be moving from the previous administration to someone whose character matters and who finds it important to be a good person and tell the truth.

(Blog about November 1-7, 2020)