He Works Hard! & Maybe Some Potty Progress?

He Works Hard!
We had Luke's second parent-teacher conference this week and he's doing very well! My first question was his multi-tasking and if he has improved... at his first conference Mrs. M told us that Luke loves to sing and sings while he is working. Sometimes he would get so involved in his song that he forgot the project he was working on and then when Mrs. M said it was time to move on to the next thing, he was still working on the first project. She said he has really improved and can now sing WHILE working! She then told us that he works very hard and wants to get things right; sometimes he takes longer than the other kids to complete the task, but he would rather finish it without rushing instead of move on to the next project. Mrs. M said this is just fine with her (she's very flexible and understands all kids are different! we really like her) and she isn't concerned as long as Luke is okay with it.

He can recognize all of his upper-case letters and all but "y" of the lower-case - Mrs. M said they haven't learned "y" yet. :-) He has taken off with learning the letter sounds and does really well sounding out words and reading them. As for math, he can write his numbers up to 20, then when he got to 21 of Mrs. M's assessment he turned the "2" into a "5", but he understood the pattern of counting by 10s. He can also read graphs very well - my reaction to that was, "He can read GRAPHS? I didn't know they learned graphs in kindergarten!" Mrs. M said yes, the kids are learning so much more than when we were in kindergarten.

One of Mrs. M's assessments was she read a sentence to Luke and his challenge was to write the sentence. Luke wrote the first half of it correctly, but he wrote the words as a list, not as a sentence. He didn't write the second half of the sentence and Mrs. M thinks it's because they haven't learned those words. She then read a second sentence to him and he wrote all of the words (not all spelled correctly but spelled how they sound, which is fine) and again he wrote them in a list and BACKWARDS. Mrs. M thought is was cute that he wrote "We" as "iieW." For those of you with a Wii game system you'll get it. :-) He wrote We and added the Nintendo spelling, too. Mrs. M showed his work to the other kindergarten teachers and none of them had seen a student write this exercise as a list, either, or written the words backwards. Mrs. M isn't concerned about it, she just found it very interesting and said that sometimes when a student is concentrating on one aspect of the task (figuring out how to spell a word) they will digress on another aspect (writing the letters in reverse order).

Mrs. M is working on Luke's socialization; he has a couple of really good friends who he always plays with, which is fine, but she wants to make sure he interacts with all of the kids so he learns how to get along with all types of children. He has some goals to reach before the end of the year but he is still right where he should be and even ahead of the curve in some areas. We're very proud of him. :-)

This week we signed Luke up for summer t-ball and signed both of the kids up for swim lessons that will start in April. We will be busy but it should be fun! We also had an offer from our friend Jessica R. to watch Luke over the summer! Her daughter, Lauren, and Luke went to Ms. Louise's for a couple of years together and they're going to move to NL in a few weeks! We are thrilled that our friends will be just a minute drive away from us and we can walk to their house! We already have plans for Luke and Lauren to take swim lessons and do library activities... Jessica is a teacher and very creative so it will be perfect for Luke! It will be nice for him to be in a comfortable home with just a few kids instead of at a camp with lots of kids. It might be more relaxing for him.

Potty Progress?
This morning Audrey went on the potty and told Ben that she is not going to pee in her diaper anymore. Woo-hoo! I asked if she would like to take her potty ring to Ms. Louise's and she said yes. Audrey has a fear of falling in the toilet (this happened once, her bottom touched the water but Ben caught her), and Ms. Louise doesn't have a potty chair; I thought, well, duh, lets take her potty ring to school (for those who aren't in the potty training loop, it's a little padded toilet seat with handles that fits on top of the big toilet seat). As soon as we got to Louise's Audrey said she would go on the potty, so that's what Louise did first thing. Hopefully it was a success! Audrey's reward for not going in her diaper anymore is a "big girl bed." We have the bed and the bedding (a princess set), and she has seen both, but so far that hasn't been enough motivation! She has a lot of sassitude and I guess it just has to be her idea. :-)

Valentine's Day

For Valentine's Day Ben took me out to lunch on Friday the 13th. On the 14th I made salmon, mashed potatoes and veggies for all 4 of us. We used the good dishes and the silver complete with candlelight. :-) Luke had fun decorating the table for me.

A few pictures

Here are the kids at Colin's 5th birthday party on February 7th.

And We're Back in the Game!

I've gone back and forth between a website, a blog, and a combination of both to share our family's many adventures, and now I'm going back to the blog and will figure out how to post pictures on it, too. Our website on Babysites is still up, but I will probably not renew it come March. This blog is for you, our friends and family, so that those who are not near can read about the kids. But it is also for us as a way to journal these memories so that Luke & Audrey can read about them when they're older. Now, on to the update! I'll try to condense it since it has been so long since I posted to this particular blog!

Luke is almost a first grader... he announced that the day he came home from having the "100th Day" party. I know it's exciting that he's looking forward to another year of school, but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves! Kindergarten is great; he loves it, has many friends and even friends in other grades because he goes to the BASP (before and after school program). It's so awesome to see how excited he gets when he sounds out a new word while reading a book. They're also adding & subtracting and working on counting to 100.

He just lost his third tooth, another one on the bottom, and has many more that are loose! Some friends at school introduced him to the Pokemon trading cards and he's into watching comic hero cartoons: Wolverine and the X-Men and Spiderman. Audrey even enjoys the shows! He loves drawing and has filled a whole notebook with pictures and said he's going to start drawing on the other side of each page, as well. Takes after his dad! Another new interest is he wants to learn how to play the piano and so I taught him Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and from that he figured out Baa, Baa Black Sheep. Great Uncle Dennis gave him a piano book to help him start and he can play one of the songs. Takes after me a bit, I think. :) His favorite foods are cherry tomatoes, grapes, cheese sticks, salmon, corn dogs (every Tuesday at school!), and chicken noodle soup.

Audrey has recently gone through a growth spurt, at least she seems taller than she was last week! She has started to fit nicely into most 3T clothes, so I am having fun shopping. :) We have been trying to potty train her but she would rather wear her diaper, which is funny because she's always telling us she is a "big girl" when we slip and call her Baby. I tell her that only babies wear diapers, but that hasn't convinced her to go on the potty. She'll go sometimes when we take her in, but rarely tells us that she needs to go.

She gets a lot of the letters correct when singing the ABC song and she can count to 10! She really enjoys playing with her baby dolls, Barbies, trains, and the little My Little Ponies (Ponyville). Right now one of her favorite books is "Fancy Nancy" - very girly. : D She is very opinionated about what clothes she wants to wear and sometimes will change 5 times in a day. She tells us she loves us at least 10 times a day and gives lots of hugs & kisses. She is so sweet but also sassy! If Luke is doing something that she doesn't like she will let him know, loud and clear! We have to stop ourselves from laughing sometimes. Her favorite foods are peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, grapes, cherry tomatoes, bananas, apples, and fruit snacks. She also always has to have juice and milk when having something to drink, always!

As a family we have been playing our new Wii system and it is a lot of fun. Luke loves bowling, golf, and the tank game on Wii Play. We just got that one over the weekend for Valentine's Day and I was surprised how Luke wanted to keep playing the tank game (you have to shoot the "bad" tank before your tank gets shot). We were watching Luke play the game and Audrey was playing on the floor, not paying any attention (or so we thought) until we heard her say, "Fire, Lukey, Fire!" She enjoyed playing her first game of bowling over the weekend (with Daddy's help) and was so proud of herself! Wii is a confidence booster even for a two year old.

I think that will be my update for now. I hope to keep this more up-to-date than I did the website! Thanks for reading...

K