One of my favorite things is when I get to see pictures of Samantha and Aedan at school posted on Class Dojo. I like to see little glimpses into their day and the activities that they do. Here is a picture from February 3rd that I realized I didn't include in my last post. Aedan is making an Earth, painting blue on for water first. I like the cute little smirk that he's giving his teacher in this picture.
I was up in Samantha's room that afternoon, looked out the window, and was just struck with how beautiful our backyard was with the sun shining through the trees and reflecting off the white snow covering our yard. I love seeing how the seasons change around our house and how beautiful it is. It's like our little oasis in the woods. I'm so glad we found this home.
Aedan and Owen love to wrestle with Daddy, and when he puts the boys to bed, it's much different than when I put the boys to bed. I walked past the room that Sunday night and saw Aedan on top of Daddy, and Owen curled up underneath Daddy. He's a good sport in playing along with the boys and giving them that physical attention that they crave.
Mondays are my day at home to get things done around the house. I usually try to do laundry, get things put away, and generally just get caught up on house stuff before the week gets into full swing. That morning I was in our little baby's room putting her clean clothes away, so I was letting her just roll around on the floor and explore the room. As time went on, she ended up figuring out how to roll underneath her crib, play with the dust ruffle, and see what she could find on the floor under her crib. She thought it was a lot of fun!
On Tuesday on my way to work, I stopped by the 415 hardware store, and I found a brass plate thing for the door knob to latch into, so hopefully we can just screw that on to where it should be and the door will latch properly again. Samantha's door had not been latching properly for a while, so she had to put a stack of books behind it to keep it closed when she was sleeping at night. Otherwise, it would just unlatch and open during the night, which isn't the best for making sure her brothers and other house noises don't wake her up in the morning.
Here is some work Samantha brought home from school. She got 10/10 on a ReadWorks article with questions about WWII and the Great Depression, 100% on her Chapter 8 Science Test, 100% on her "Passage to Freedom" Reading Test, and 44/50 on her Science packet.
When I was at the hardware store that morning, I noticed that they had sleds for sale, and they were the long oval-shaped ones that work pretty well and allow the kids to go quickly down hills. Even though it was almost the end of winter and sledding season, I decided to buy three of them just so that way we had decent sleds for going into next winter as well. When I picked the kids up from school and told them about the sleds, they were very excited to go out sledding when we got home. Izzy ran around with them and had a blast, too. Our yard has a great hill to sled down, but it's a little tricky trying to find a good spot. If they start more in the middle, than they are more likely to run into the bushes or the fence, which I don't want them to do because we let them do it too much in the past, and the fence started to bow a little. But if they start at the top of the hill, on the other side of the rocks in the middle, than they almost get going too quickly. We need to figure out a way to make our hill more sledable. It's just so steep, and there's not flat area where their sleds can start to slow down at the bottom. It just sends you straight toward the fence. They still had fun though, and I enjoyed watching them from inside while I was with our little baby and starting to work on dinner.
Our little baby takes a nap right when she gets home from daycare, since she doesn't sleep all day when she's there, but we usually wake her up around 6:00 so we can feed her some baby food for dinner, let her play for a while, and still put her to bed between 7:30 and 8:00. In this picture, she was enjoying getting attention from Samantha and Owen. I also took a video where our little baby keeps saying "mama" over and over again, which made Samantha and Owen laugh. It's fun to see her become more vocal and see little glimpses of her personality coming through.
Here is some work from Samantha and Owen. Samantha had a pamphlet she filled out for the reading story "Passage to Freedom," and Owen did a color by sight words page, a page writing and identifying his name, as well as completing a heart maze.
Wednesday mornings are always a little hectic because Ben leaves early for his class, and I have to get everyone ready, including myself, so I can drop Samantha and Aedan at school, our little baby at daycare, and Owen at Mrs. Heather's house. The kids were not helpful that morning and fought over things that didn't matter. Owen wasn't getting his shoes on. Then, I found out that a worker in the nursery tested positive for Covid, and she was with our little baby some last Sunday, so then I was worried all week about her having Covid.
It was the 100th day of school at school, and they celebrated by doing special activities in Aedan's class. I love this cute picture his teacher took of him.
I went home quickly after school because I had an appointment to see what was wrong with our radon detection system in the garage, but it ended up being that a little tube just came out of the hole it was supposed to be in. I felt a little silly that that's all that it was, but now I know for the future, and I didn't have to pay anything for them to come check it out.
My friend, Jen, and I met up for dinner together while the kids were at AWANA. We went to Mexican restaurant in the Back Mountain called CKs, and it was so much fun just talking and catching up with her. We have started to become really good friends since being in the same community group. We have a lot in common, and we enjoyed sharing stories of parenting our kids. The time went by quickly, and we decided we should definitely try to do it again sometime.
We had forgotten that Aedan's valentines were due to be turned in on Thursday, February 10th, so after getting all the kids ready for bed, Ben had to run out to get valentines for Aedan. Luckily he found some Baby Yoda ones that we knew he'd like at Dollar General, and he would have enough time to fill them out the next morning before school. It's little things like this that are very hard to keep up with lately. There are just so many things to remember, and I try my best to not let things fall through the cracks.
Aedan has been struggling some socially lately. Over the weekend Aedan told me about something that happened at school that made him feel pretty bad. He said his teacher was talking with another teacher in the hallway or doorway of the classroom, and then another girl in his class pointed at him, said something, and he said half the class started laughing at him. He said he didn't hear exactly what she said, but that it sounded like she said his face looked weird. I asked Aedan what he did after that happened, and he said he didn't do anything, but that everyone stopped when his teacher came back into the classroom. He also said that he put his head down after that because he felt so bad and embarrassed. Aedan is just so extra sensitive sometimes, especially about people making fun of him or singling him out in any way. A lot of times Aedan says he feels like he doesn't have any friends, or that the boys tell him he can't play football with them at recess because he's not very good. I asked his teacher how he is doing socially and if he appears to have friends in the class and people to play with at recess and talk to at lunch. I was just worried about my little boy and wanted to make sure he was doing okay. She responded by saying that it does seem he has friends at recess and in the classroom, that he's mostly with a boy named Caleb and a few boys from the other second grade classes. She said he seems to bond with Caleb and Joey over computer games, which is funny, because Aedan doesn't even play any computer games. But she also shared that he does seem to prefer reading to himself or more solitary activities.
Then, on Monday afternoon I got a call from the technology teacher and a message from his teacher, asking if he brought his Chromebook home because they couldn't find it at school. I was not aware that he was not allowed to bring it home, but when I talked to him about it when seeing that it was in his backpack, he seemed to know that he was not supposed to be bringing it home. I talked to him and told him it's against the rules to bring it home and that he shouldn't do that again, unless he was specifically told to bring it home for a snow/FID day.
To continue the week of Aedan struggling, on Wednesday, we discovered that he was lying to his teacher and to us about the note and taking the AR quiz. She even sent home a note on Wednesday saying that he would not complete the work in his group, so he needed to do it at home. She said he basically said he was not going to do it, and that he does complete work, but it is often reluctantly. She said that he enjoys reading his books so much, and if he could be in a library all day surrounded by books, he would pick that over school. We see that same attitude at home sometimes when he refuses to clean up or get ready for bed, but he doesn't normally do that at school, so we were feeling a bit surprised and embarrassed. We made it pretty clear that these events this week, his attitude, not doing his work, saying no to teachers, and lying to people is unacceptable. We gave him consequences at home. We were wondering if we need to "crack down" on things with him for a while to make sure he knows we are serious.
To round off the week, even though we completed the work at home that he refused to do at school, he did not turn them in. He lied to me and told me he turned them in, but I found the worksheets hidden under a couch in our basement. He also hid the book fair books that he got under couch. I honestly was stumped about what was going on with him, why he was hiding things, not turning in his work, and lying to us and his teacher about it. Ben and I were starting to get very concerned, and we requested to have a meeting to discuss some solutions and consequences to help him with whatever is going on. However, we did not get a response about our meeting request, so that was disappointing.
Here is some work Aedan brought home from school. He got a 100% on his weekly spelling test, a 100% on his reading test on the story "A Weed is a Flower," an 88% on his Chapter 5 Math Test on double digit addition and subtraction.
Feb 11, 20
This last picture is of the page of work that he refused to do at school, simply because he didn't want to, that I talked about earlier, that I then found hidden under the couch. He clearly hid it so that we didn't see the note posted on it from his teacher.
Thursday was a busy morning because both caseworkers came to our house for a home visit that morning at 8:10 before getting the kids off to school and daycare, and Ben and I heading off to work. It's nice to get the meeting over in the morning, but it definitely makes our mornings more hectic.
Our little baby wakes up in the strangest ways sometimes. She is a little small for her pajamas, and with how she kicks her legs and scoots herself around, sometimes she actually gets her legs out of her pajama legs, or smushes both legs in one leg hole. It's always fun to get her out of bed in the morning and see what she did with her legs!
Later that afternoon, I found these papers hidden behind the futon, even though when I asked him if he turned them in, he said yes. I also found the books he must have gotten at the book fair, with the Lego figures taken out. I didn't understand, and said we are just going to have to start confiscating his backpack. Why is he hiding stuff from us? He told me he left his book fair books at school, and the money, but the empty envelope was on the floor, too. Does he not feel like he can tell us stuff? I was frustrated, confused, and disappointed. It was just one thing after another this week with Aedan, and it was hard to know what to do or how to respond.
When Aedan got home from school, I took him into my bedroom with me and had a heart-to-heart with him. I asked him why he hid his books that he got from the Book Fair. We gave him money to use to buy things, as long as they just weren't toys or silly things, and I told him I would have liked to see them and have him show them to me. His answer to why he hid them was because he was afraid Ben would yell at him because he got books with Legos attached to them. I reassured him that he would not have yelled at him for that. We also talked about the importance of being honest and not hiding things from us because that just makes it worse and is more likely that he will get into trouble.
Here is a picture of Samantha at the book fair. I'm not quite sure what the face is that she's making, though!
Lately, we have been having pizza on Friday nights before watching a movie together as a family. However, we decided to switch it up a little bit this Friday and make stromboli instead. Aedan really likes stromboli better than pizza, and this was our first attempt at making it at home. It looked and tasted pretty delicious!
Dinner time is rarely ever quiet or boring around our house, and this Friday was no exception. Samantha and Aedan decided to perform their rendition of "We Don't Talk About Bruno," which has been on repeat in our house lately. They did one version of their performance in the kitchen, and then went out to the living room for a better performance. They make me laugh how they know the words by heart and have all the motions planned out.
Saturday evening we decided to take the whole family to a Wilkes hockey game. We went to one game before Covid shut everything down, and we haven't been back since. We decided to be brave and take all the kids. It actually went pretty well. We got food to eat while we were there, and the kids really enjoyed watching the game. There was one time that our little baby got scared by two players slamming into the wall, but other than that, she did great, and Samantha enjoyed holding her and playing with her. We also saw these signs posted on a bulletin board, and Ben and I talked about maybe signing the kids up for the Learn to Skate program as something fun to do once a week during the end of winter and into early spring. It was nice because all of them would go at the same time on the same night, simplifying our schedule, and allowing us to go all together, rather than Ben and I being pulled in different directions.
(Blog about February 6-12, 2022)
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