Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Yes...I'll admit it...

I'm addicted to Twilight.

So much so, that when we took the Goobers to see Toy Story 3 last week, I noticed that our theater was having a midnight showing of Eclipse.  So I chatted up a few friends, and I found someone as crazy as me to go.  Chef "volunteered" to watch the kids so I could go drool over some werewolves (Yes.  I'm on team Jacob).

So I'm about an hour away from needing to leave for the theater.  I bought my tickets already, and my friend keeps messaging me on facebook with a countdown.

Brillantly we took the little goobers to a carnival tonight, and got them cotton candy.  So guess who's still awake and bouncing off the walls.  :D  Poor Chef.

Sigh.  I feel like I'm 14 again.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

And so the schooling begins.

We're officially in schooling mode over at the Goober House.  Sweet Nut and Cute Boy LOVE learning, so it's been pretty easy so far.

Spawn finished school yesterday, and he was asking for things to work on during the little boys "schooltime".  Chef was working on him with some math review, since it seems like Math is not going to be one of his strong areas.

We hit Target the other day, and scored in the dollar bin area.  We got 2 packages of small foam shapes that we're using for math manipulatives.  They had a ton of workbooks so we got some of those.  They had some weather stuff that we picked up, as well as some small whiteboards.  We ended up picking up a 3 drawer plastic cart that we can use to store school stuff.

So here's the plan this summer:

Spawn:

Math-work on reviewing math concepts learned during 1st grade, review telling time and counting money

Reading-he as a summer reading assignment that we'll be using for this.  He's going to be reading 20-30 minutes for his reading log, and then once a week he'll chose one book he read to use for his Story Quilt piece for school.  It's like a basic book report.

Writing- He'll be doing copywork once a day.  We're going to be working on spacing and neatness.

Sweet Nut:

Letters-We're working on letter recognition.  He wants to work on a different letter each day, but we're trying to slow it down a little bit :D.  We work on writing the letter, practice the sound the letter makes, and try and find things when we're out and about that start with that letter.  We're also making a letter wall using Sesame Street coloring sheets from sproutonline.com.

Numbers-He can recognize all his numbers now and can count to 20, so we're working on writing them and counting items using manipulatives.  We're also working on patterns.  We count when we're out and about, and he's also doing Sesame Street coloring pages from Sprout that we'll hang up.

Colors-We've been playing with color, seeing what happens when you mix colors etc.

Shapes-We've been practicing drawing shapes and finding shapes when we're out.

Writing-we're working on writing trying to get our letters facing the right directions.  We're also starting with some basic sight words.

It seems like a ton, but he's doing some here and there.  We basically write out on his white board what we're working on and he can go to his school drawer any time and pull out the work.

Cute Boy:

Letters-we're working on singing our ABC's.  He's almost had it for awhile, so we're trying to get ALL the letters in there.  He also copies whatever Sweet Nut is doing.  He also has the Sesame Coloring pages.

Numbers-He can count to ten, so we're just working on finding things to count.  He's also been playing with patterns.

Colors/Shapes-  we're working on recognition.

Writing-we're working on some basic writing skills-drawing lines, curves etc.

All 3 boys want to learn more about the world around them and are always asking questions, so we let them pick topics they wanted to learn about.  We'll basically stick with a topic for a week, learning about it.  For the next 3 weeks, we'll be learning about water, trees and cows.  Where they come from, how they benefit us, etc.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Turning 5...

Sweet Nut,




My sweet boy.  I can not believe that you are 5 already!  It seems like yesterday that we were in the hospital, and you were giving us a bit of a scare with your breathing.



Since day 1, you have been keeping us on our toes.  You can usually be found with a smile on your face...or getting into trouble.  






Lately you enjoy spending your time with Cute Boy working on your letter "projects"  Who would have thought you would be so into learning?  You're constantly asking for more school work to do, Kindergarten should be a joy for you.






You've also been very patient this year waiting for your birthday.  It's been hard since you are the last in the family, with the rest of us having birthdays in January, March, April and May, but once you saw June show up on the calendar, you've been asking every day if it's your birthday.  You've been doing a countdown since 8 days ago.  I can't wait to see the look on your face when you wake up to erase the last mark on your countdown!


You're also the first of the boys to have a big kid party.  You're the lucky one since the rest of the boys are winter snow babies.  You chose Chuck E Cheese, and all your brothers and cousins are so excited to go!  You chose to invite your little cousins so you could "teach them the games" and you chose to invite C. so Spawn would have a friend.  We were very surprised that you chose your family over your school friends, but in the end, we shouldn't have been, that the type of sweet boy you are.






I'm so proud to be your mommy.  I love the boy you've grown into and look forward to meeting the man you are going to be (but let's not get there too fast ok pal?)


I love you more!


Love, 
Mommy

Friday, June 4, 2010

Cloth Diapering...Again.

So Cute Boy has been cloth diapered on and off since he was about 6 months old.  The kid had exema on his bottom until he was about 1.5 which was aggrivated by lots of things, so if he had a flare up (which was more often than not) we used sposies because I didn't want to ruin my cloth stash with the cream he needed.

The he got older and the kid who loves all things soft would go back and forth between what diaper he wanted to wear.  That and not having a washing machine, kind of made it hard to stick with cloth.

But today we ran out of diapers and Cute Boy said " 's otay mommy, I wear my orange diaper"  (His favorite dipe is a orange GAD pocket.)

So, now I have to convince the Chef to use them...He likes the AIO's that I have (because there's no thinking involved) but never got the hang of pockets.  The only ones I have that fit him right now are the GADs, which we love.  As much as I don't want to buy more dipes because I *hope* he's going to get the hang of going potty soon, I probably should get some.  Much to the Chef's dismay *giggle*

I want...

well...let me rephrase that.

I think it would be really, really cool for Sweet Nut to have a Strider balance bike.  I mean look at it.  It looks fun!

I like that it seems like a better transition to riding a regular two-wheeler without training wheels.  And I like that it's easily adjustable, so technically speaking Sweet Nut and Cute Boy could share.

I first found out about these from Christy over at One Little Word She Knew.  I've known Christy for 5 years I think it is now...maybe longer.  We met on a message board for mommies who were due in June 2005.  So when I saw her girls (who are Sweet Nut and Cute Boy's age) riding the bikes, I thought they would be fun for my boys to try.  So, we're going to hopefully get one for Sweet Nut's birthday, but definitely by the end of July.

Would you like to win one of these cool bikes?  Head on over to One Little Word She Knew, and enter the giveaway.  And remember, if you win, Sweet Nut's birthday is this month :D

Thursday, June 3, 2010

I never thought it would happen...

Join in over at Peanuts are Evil.

So, we decided to be daring tonight.

We ventured into Chuck E Cheese.

And we enjoyed ourselves.

A new one opened up about 10-15 minutes away a few months back and we decided to try it tonight.  It was remarkably clean, the staff was polite and fun, there's no creepy characters on stage that always creeped Cute Boy out.  The food was decent, and we all had a ball!

We're *probably* going to surprise Sweet Nut with a trip there in a few weeks for his birthday.  Probably.

I'm still getting over the shock of enjoying myself though.

Let there be laundry!

Day 3 in the blog challenge being hosted by Peanuts are Evil.  It's simple.  Just blog each day during June!

So, we've been without a washing machine and dryer since April 2008.  And it sucked.

At first the house we moved into, the landlord wouldn't allow them.

We moved into this house in November, and while the landlord said ok, there was no hookups.

We scored some off of freecycle a few months back, and finally had someone out to hook them up today.  I never thought I'd be excited about being able to do LAUNDRY!  

But I am.  It's going to save us alot of money each week not having to go to the laundromat, and I can was things right away, if need be.  I'm very VERY excited!


Wednesday, June 2, 2010

So explain to me...


Day 2 of Peanuts are Evil's blog challenge.  It's simple really.  Just blog once a day every day in June.  

So.  Inquiring minds (mine) want to know.

Is it really that difficult to reach under the bathroom sink and grab another roll of toilet paper?

Is it just because I'm the only girl in the house, and I need it every time I'm in there, that I understand the importance of having toilet paper within reach?

I guess I can't complain too much.  They do put the seat back down.

(But, I think it's only because Cute Boy is attempting to be like the big boys and go on the potty, that they do it so he doesn't fall in.  He did once.  Totally threw off our plans for potty training for awhile.)

Boys.

June Blogging Challenge...


So I decided bravely to enter a blog challenge.  It's a pretty simple one.  Just to blog every day in June.  Head on over to Peanuts are EVIL if you want to join in!

So I know...I'm writing this at the last minute, coming in under the wire, and it'll probably be after midnight when this posts...but I tried, so I get points for that right?  LOL.

I'm still adjusting to being home during the day.  I haven't been home during the day normally for a LOOONG time.  But I'm enjoying it!

We jumped into homeschooling for preschool for Sweet Nut and Cute Boy today with both feet.  We kind of played around with it last week, but today we hunkered down and got some learnin' done.

The big goobers were gone all day (one with Dad, one at school) and so that left me and Cute Boy all alone.  We watched some dark clouds roll in, watched the rain and talked a little bit about how the rain gets in the clouds.  We also talked about trees and how they drink the rain and they make air for us to breathe and they make good homes for birds.  I was pleasantly surprised because he REMEMBERED it and when we picked up Chef at work, the Chef quizzed him (I hinted about our day) and he remembered most of what we talked about!  I guess at 3 I shouldn't be surprised, but I was.

After dinner we worked on our letter for this week which is B.  Sweet Nut did a word search left over from the letter A, and then did some B writing practice and a B word search.  We're making an ice cream cone to help us remember our colors that we're going to put on the wall so he worked hard on cutting that out (with some help from Spawn.)  Cute Boy got the Chef in on the action.  They worked on a B coloring sheet and attempted to trace some B's, and then Chef worked with him on cutting.  He holds the scissors weird (which we're trying to correct) but he cuts pretty well for a goober.

I decided tonight to make a box for Sweet Nut with some letter and writing worksheets in there.  He really likes doing them, and this way he can grab one if he wants to do it outside of school time and do it if he'd like.  He loved the idea, so we'll see how that goes.

We're also working on a letter train to put on our wall.  The Goobers love trains, so this is a very fun project for them.

Anyways, I'm off to bed, night y'all!