1st Grade and Mother’s Day Out

We did actually start 1st Grade and Mother’s Day Out. Our schools start early here, so we were actually in full swing by the second week of August.

When Caedmon started 1st grade, he was about to turn seven, had already lost two teeth, and loves all things Minecraft. And yeah, when you homeschool and it’s still blazing hot outside, you wear shorts and flip flops to school.

Honor is three and a half. She loves pink and purple, but is into superheroes too…thus the hand-me-down Captain America t-shirt she chose for her first day of class. With a bow, of course.

They are both doing well and are enjoying their classes!

Why Do My Children Hate Sleep?

This is a question I’ve asked for a very long time. But last night took the cake.

Honor has been through phases of terrible bedtimes. Ok, so maybe this phase has been going on since she was 16 months old. It’s been a long phase. I keep telling myself it’s a phase because that means it will be over one day. One day, she will JUST GO TO BED. No fighting, no fussing, no crying or whining, no getting out of bed 873 times. No parking myself at the top of the stairs with a wooden spoon. No sneaking up the stairs to catch her in the playroom long after she was supposed to be sleeping. No hearing Caedmon yell, “Mom! Honor’s in my room!” thirty minutes after lights out. One day. One day, both my children will sleep.

(Don’t crush my dreams, ok?)

The past few nights have been particularly challenging. Honor has been extra resistant at bedtime, and it’s about driven me to the brink of insanity. Who am I kidding? I was pretty close already. But last night? Last night was it. And I mean it.

I was worn out. I finally dragged myself to bed a little after 9pm, which is way earlier than I usually go to bed, and over an hour after Honor had “gone to bed.” (Yes, in quotation marks. Because she clearly hadn’t actually gone to bed.) As soon as I got settled under the covers, her shrill little voice yelled “Mom!” from the top of the stairs.

I joked with Husband that she must have a sensor that went off as soon as I got into bed. Because it seems that no matter when I get in the bed, she yells for me. It could be 9pm or midnight…she will yell.

I got up and walked to the bottom of the stairs. She was looking down at me from behind the gate at the top. I asked what she wanted. The words that came out of her mouth both made me want to laugh hysterically and scream at the same time, “Mom, why did you try to go to bed?”

That’s exactly what I did. I tried to go to bed. I suppose I just need to quit trying to go to bed. Maybe that’s the whole problem.

Honor Turns 3!

We recently celebrated a certain little girl’s third birthday. It was so much fun!

This celebration was long in the making. I knew Honor would love having a princess theme, so I began collecting things months ago. And I knew we wanted to give her dress-up stuff for her birthday, so I started gathering those things right after Christmas. It was so worth it!

Honor’s birthday was on a Friday. She woke up to birthday decorations on her door, and in the kitchen.

We had a homeschool egg hunt that afternoon that we didn’t want to miss. Since that would knock out naps, I knew we needed to do our birthday celebration on Saturday. So, Saturday morning, we picked up balloons. Someone was excited about her birthday outfit and princess balloons.

When I’d asked what kind of cake she wanted, Honor’s only response was, “A purple cake!” So, a purple cake she would have.

I dressed it up with a crown, and she thought it was awesome!

She was even more excited when she found out it was purple on the inside, too. And pink ice cream? We were drowning in the pastels, and it was pretty awesome.

Finally, it was time for presents. Instead of party hats, I’d gotten a “dress up” hat for Caedmon and Honor. She insisted on wearing hers while she opened presents.

She was so excited about her dress up accessories!

Cini and Papa Duke sent princess “action figures” (I still have a hard time calling them dolls).

She loved Mimi and Papa’s princess card (photobomb by Oz, of course).

And right away, she insisted on putting on the Sofia dress and accessories Nana and Poppy sent. So much fun!

She kept waving her scepter around and saying, “Magic wand, do your thing!” I’m not really sure what that “thing” is, but she waved it at us all. I’m pretty sure it didn’t work.

Caedmon enjoyed his fedora during the party.

The rest of the afternoon was spent trying on all her new dress-up clothes and accessories (multiple wardrobe changes!), and playing with her princesses.

Caedmon was busy, too. He got his very own rolling desk chair.

And learned to ride without training wheels.

It was busy, but we had a super fun day celebrating our sweet three year old!

Tales from Upstairs

Now that we live in a two-story house, I often send the kids up to their rooms and/or the playroom/guest room to play. (They’re not unsupervised, they’re just audio supervised.) Some of the things that I hear (and sometimes have to respond to) are interesting, or let’s be honest, just plain ridiculous. This is a chronicle of a few of those times.

*****

Sending Caedmon up to watch a movie on the guest bed for his rest time, I warned: “Don’t get up until I come to get you.”

“But what if my movie is over before rest time is over?”

“If you fast forward through all the slow parts and watch all the good parts of your movie before time is up, then have to go back and watch the slow parts again, that’s not my problem.”

(The lesson hasn’t been learned, by the way.)

*****

The kids were upstairs in their respective bedrooms for roomtime. (Roomtime is when they play alone in their rooms for a little while each day. It’s a wonderful practice.) Caedmon was told he must pick up his room before he was allowed to get other toys out to play. As this was not the news he wanted to hear, he proceeded to pitch an epic fit – behind his closed door. Before I could get upstairs to put a stop to the tantrum, I heard Honor yelling across the hall, “Caedmon! Stop your fit crying! You’re ok!”

It’s good to know the fullness of my gift of mercy is being passed down.

*****

While playing together upstairs:

Caedmon: Honor, my LEGOs are in the playroom, and I don’t want you to mess them up. So, I guess we can go in your room and have a tea party. *deep sigh*

Honor: YES!

*****

(A different day than above)

Caedmon: Honor, do you want to have a tea party?

Honor: YES!

Caedmon: Ok, but will you let me shoot all your stuffed animals with my Nerf gun if I have a tea party with you?

Honor: No, that’s not fair!

Caedmon: PLEASE?!

Honor: Ok, you can shoot them.

There’s a heavy price to pay for a decent tea party around here.

Knock Knock…

Husband has been trying to teach the kids the fine art of knock knock jokes. I’m not sure that it’s going very well.

I don’t think Caedmon really understands the “punny” part of the joke. In fact, I’m quite sure he doesn’t. Most of the time, Husband’s attempts to tell (and then have Caedmon reciprocate) knock knock jokes ends up with Caedmon answering some sort of “eyeball” and laughing hysterically.

Eyeballs are funny, right?

The situation got even further complicated when Husband introduced Honor to the time-tested, “Guess What?” “Chicken Butt!”

And then we all laugh uncontrollably because hearing “Chicken butt” come out of Honor’s mouth is…well, hilarious. And I do not have the parenting skills to not laugh at that.

The problem is that they are now getting them mixed up. As I was getting ready for church Sunday morning, Honor came and knocked on the bathroom door. I asked, “Who’s there?” (We do like to at least try to teach manners around here. Sometimes.) Her response was, “Chicken butt!”

We’re really going to have to get this straightened out.

Conversations with Honor

Honor was playing in her room, and I heard her dump her toys in the floor. When I went to get her out of her room, the conversation went like this:

Me: “Honor, did you make a big mess?”

Honor: “I have no idea what you sayin.”

Me: “Excuse me?” (Did she really just say what I thought she said?) “Did you make a big mess in here?

Honor: (Shaking her head) “I no know what you talkin’ bout.”

Yes. She’s two. TWO.

****

We quote movies. It’s part of our language. So it shouldn’t surprise me when one of my children quotes a movie back to me. But it does.

One morning, I got Honor out of bed, and was asking her if she’d slept well the night before. (She hadn’t. She’d been awake, yelling at me, more than once.) She looked straight at me and replied, “I don’t know, Margot.”

I died. Not only did she pull out a movie quote, she used it in the proper context. That’s my girl!

(In case you aren’t aware, that came from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.)

****

We recently introduced Honor to America’s Funniest Home Videos. The first time she watched it, she and Caedmon cackled and giggled so much, they could hardly breathe.

The next time we sat down to watch it, all I heard every three seconds was, “I wanna see the guy fall in the water!”

She knows what’s funny.

The Nose Knows

The nose. It’s the only body part people think they can “steal” and it be hilarious. Honor recently learned this first-hand. It went kind of like this.

Caedmon stole her nose.

See? Here it is!

What? He took my nose?

Nah, it’s still there. Isn’t it?

Yep. Still there.

But maybe I can take Daddy’s.

Smart girl!

False Start: It’s Not Just a Football Foul

It’s also how I’m going to refer to our attempt at potty training last week.

Honor has been asking to use the potty since February. February, people. I knew she wasn’t ready then. And I thought she might forget about it.

Wait, did I really just say that?

My children forget nothing. Nothing. So of course she hasn’t forgotten about it.

She asks to sit on the potty all the time. So I let her. And she’s been figuring things out. But the best part? She randomly takes her diaper off. The other day, it was just after she, um, well, let’s just say it was a good thing that Caedmon tattled on her that time.

So, I figured we’d give it a shot. Like, for real. We bought undies, juice, and M&Ms. I’ve got nothing to lose. Except my sanity. And a brand new-ish rug. 

For some idiotic reason, I chose to work on it while Husband was out of town on a business trip. Maybe I thought that since he’d be gone, I wouldn’t feel guilty about doing nothing but hovering around Honor all day and not getting anything else done. What I should’ve realized is that I would be near the point of insanity by the end of the day and might need to bust out of the house alone. Which I couldn’t do with him gone.

Anyway, we tried for a couple of days. And she did ok, but not great. I think she’s mentally ready, but the physical part isn’t quite there yet. So instead of beating our heads against the wall (and cleaning up the floor over and over), I decided to just put her back in diapers/pull-ups and take her to the potty when she asks to go.

After we’d worked on it for a couple of days and I realized we weren’t really getting anywhere, I sat Honor on my lap before bed and had a chat. I told her that I was going to put diapers back on her and she could still go to the potty, but we wouldn’t worry about undies right now. She was fine. Caedmon? He was crushed. Poor guy. He was so excited about helping Honor use the potty. Such a sweet, supportive brother. Except for when he was telling her he didn’t want her to hold his stuffed puppy because he didn’t want her to accidentally pee on it. Love only covers so much.

This is definitely a different route than I planned to take, but it’ll be fine. She’ll figure it out and probably just ditch the diapers one day and it’ll be done. Until that day, we’ll just wing it.

2 Year-Old Pictures

I finally took some 2 year-old pictures of Honor. And a few of Caedmon. I haven’t had time to edit them yet, but I wanted to post some, because, my goodness these kids are cute.

I started with Honor. She was a m.e.s.s.

But so stinking cute.

This is the birthday outfit I made for her. I still love it.

I got a few pictures of Caedmon, too.

He’s growing so much!

We’re practicing for senior pictures with the angst. (He was upset that Honor was throwing sticks off the bridge while he was being tortured in front of the camera lens.)

And of course, I had to get some shots of them together. Which sounds much easier than it is. Really.

Finally, they sat still for a nano-second.

I think it’s safe to say that Honor was feeling sassy that day.

Seriously? This cracks me up.

I can’t say it enough. I love how much these two adore each other. Sure, they fuss. But they don’t just love each other, they actually like each other. I’m so blessed by these kids and am thankful to be their Mom.

Honor is 2!

Our little girl is two. TWO. And since she hit that mark a couple of weeks ago (yes, I’m super late in posting this), the two-ness has definitely kicked in. But back to the birthday. We had such a fun time!

The night before Honor’s birthday after she went to bed, Caedmon and Nana blew up balloons. She always seems to get that job!

Caedmon blew up his first balloon all by himself. I think he was excited.

I baked cupcakes to decorate during naptime the next day, and we decorated. Minnie Mouse style.

I decorated her door, of course.

And the next day, we picked up balloons, 

I added some decorations in the dining area,

and the entry.

When she woke up the next morning, the birthday girl was greeted by her big brother, singing “Happy Birthday.”

She was thoroughly underwhelmed by her door décor.

But she loved the balloons!

Minnie ears were a necessity for this Minnie Mouse birthday girl!

During naptime, Caedmon helped me decorate cupcakes.

We had fun making Minnie Mouse cupcakes!

After naptime, Honor got to put on the birthday outfit I made for her. I think she likes it.

And after dinner, we opened gifts.

I took Caedmon to the store and let him pick out a gift for Honor. It was so sweet to see him thinking and studying toys on each aisle, trying to decide what to get for her. He picked something I never would’ve, but she loves it! (It’s a “Lambie” from Doc McStuffins.) Sweet, sweet brother.

Nana and Poppy gave her an Olivia, along with a video and book. Her love affair for Olivia was reignited. How can a pink pig in a red dress and striped tights not be cute?

Then, the biggie. I knew months and months ago that I wanted to get Honor a kitchen for her 2nd birthday. So when the deals came out on Black Friday, we got a great deal on this one. And it’s been sitting in storage/the garage, waiting for this day. (It took me 3 hours to put it together a couple of nights before. But it was so worth it!)

I know it’s blurry, but that’s because she’s so excited!

I know this toy will be well worth it! They both love it.

Our friends came over for cupcakes and ice cream to help us celebrate. They brought a sweet gift for Honor. We’ll be sticking stickers for a long time with the sticker books they brought! They know the way to this girl’s heart, for sure!

Honor wasted no time diving into her cupcake.

We had a wonderful time celebrating Honor’s 2nd birthday. She’s a sweet, sassy little girl, and every day with her is an adventure! We are so thankful God has allowed us to be her parents.