Annabelle's Kindergarten Graduation

Kindergarten is over and Annabelle is officially a 1st grader!! She had a great first year at "big kid" school; not only did she have the best class and most wonderful teachers, she also learned some stuff too!

Annabelle receives her diploma!

Just a few members of the gang

Annabelle and Lila

It's amazing how much of a change has occurred in one short year. Annabelle seems so much older to me all of a sudden. She's always been very independent but now that she's reading and writing it's like a whole new level of "grown up!" It's a little scary...

One Week

Oliver is the sweetest little boy, ever! Apart from being adorable, thus far he has been a fantastic baby. He is still in the "sleepy newborn" phase and has been very dozy most days. During the night he has typically been sleeping for about 4 hour stretches, waking to feed and then pretty much going right back to sleep! He seems to only cry when he is either hungry or being changed. I could not have wished for a better baby!!

At his one week weight check, he went from his "hospital discharge" weight of 7lbs. 3 ozs. to 8lbs. 4ozs.! He is a breastfeeding champ.

Happy Birthday Monkey #3!!

Oliver John born June 7, 2010 @12:27am

7lbs. 11ozs. 19 inches long

Three Little Monkeys

Go Jack!

Jack had his first attempt at riding a bike without training wheels! He did pretty well for his first try; he managed to pedal a few feet without any assistance and didn't fall once. I think after a few more lessons on the mini bike, aka "Rhino" we'll be ready to take the training wheels off of his regular bike!

Memorial Day Concert

Annabelle's school put on a concert in honor of Memorial Day. During this event, the Kindergarten class joined together with the 2nd and 4th grades for their portion of the concert. The concert took place in the school gym and it was incredibly crowded, incredibly hot and incredibly hard to hear a thing. Jack and I ended up having to sit on the floor as not one person thought to give up a seat to the woman who is 9 months pregnant. All around, it was pretty miserable. As we sat on the floor, unable to actually see Annabelle, listening to the concert, I heard Jack mumble "this is the boringest song ever" and then he fell asleep, right there, squashed in the middle of the gym floor with his head on my lap.

The only pleasant part of this whole event was being able to see the glow on my daughter's face as she sat next to her love, Nicholas!

Graduation Day!

Jack has officially graduated from preschool (even though he has a week of school left)!

His school had a little graduation ceremony in the auditorium and then an after party on the school grounds. During the ceremony each class sang a couple of songs (on stage) and then each child received a diploma. Jack was not overly keen on the performance part of the ceremony and moaned a lot in the beginning (in his defense, it was about 95 degrees outside and there was no air conditioning in the auditorium) but he perked up towards the end and even participated in the second song.

At the after party, they had the usual: snacks, pony rides, face painting, tye dye station and crafts. Jack was only interested in the snacks and playing. Annabelle, however, had to try everything, including the pony... THREE times!

All in all I think the kids had a good time. They even had a special guest appearance from Auntie Kristen who extended her visit from Virginia just to see Jackie graduate!

Congratulations, Jackie!!! Next stop, Kindergarten!

The Countdown Begins!

Well, I met with my doctor this morning and it looks like we will be having this baby in less than 2 weeks... Unless I go before then, we have an induction scheduled for June 6th!!

Oh Lordy

We are letting Annabelle take this Wednesday off from school to attend Jack's preschool graduation. This morning I found this note on the dining room table:

Translation: Nick, I will be absent on Wednesday. I'm sorry. Love, Annabelle.

I suppose actually telling him in person would have been too much to handle.

I also found this one:

Not sure if they are mountain climbing or ice skating. My favorite bit; the matching "I love you" t-shirts!

Here We Go, Again

Annabelle is in LOOOOOVE.... This week it's with a boy named Nicholas. Over the weekend, she made Nicholas a heart shaped love note which she brought to school yesterday. According to Annabelle, Nicholas loved the heart and told her she was beautiful. Apparently, Nicholas is planning to marry Annabelle, when she is 20.

This morning when Annabelle came into my room, fully dressed, I could smell the hair spray she had just been using. After she announced that she carefully chose an outfit she thought Nicholas would like, she left the room and went downstairs to make him another note. Sadly, she forgot to take the note to school with her today... and evil Mommy found it!

Mr. Numbers

I am completely freaked out by Jack's mathematical ability! I was just putting him to bed and he asked me how many minutes there are in 12 hours... My first thought was, "I need a calculator!" but then we started to work it out:

Me: If there are 60 minutes in 1 hour, how many minutes are there in 2 hours?
Jack: 120
Me: Do you know how many minutes there are in 3 hours?
Jack: yes, 180
Me: What about 4 hours?
Jack: I don't know.
Me: Well, there are 60 minutes in 1 hour and there are 180 minutes in 3 hours so you would add 60 to 180.
Jack: Oh, 240.
Me: How many minutes are in 5 hours?
Jack: 300
Me: What about 6 hours?
Jack: I'm not sure.
Me: What is 300 plus 60?
Jack: 360, so that's how many minutes are in 6 hours?
Me: Yes. So to figure out 7 hours add 60 to that.
Jack: 420
Me: Add another 60 for 8 hours.
Jack: 480

The conversation went on like this until I stopped him at 14 hours! The cutest part about it is the way he pronounces the word "minutes"... He calls them "mimmits".

Happy 5th Birthday Jack!!

I'm a little late with this post, like almost a month, but I'll date it for the 21st of March, which is Jack's birthday. Better late than never...

Jack is awesome. He is a very, very bright little lad. He has this incredible natural ability to understand mathematics, it's pretty amazing. At 5 years of age he is capable of counting by 2's, 5's 10's, 100's, 200's etc... All the way to infinity and beyond, as he would say. I have actually watched him count to over 60,000 by 200's! He can also work out basic addition, subtraction and logic problems: Once he asked me what 1,000 minus 2 was and before I could answer, he shouted out 998! The other day we were driving in the car and Jack asked how long it would take to get to our destination- I said I wasn't sure but we could time it. I told him we left the house at 5:01pm and at 5:14pm he announced that we had been on the road for 13 minutes! Although we forgot to look at the time when we arrived, I am pretty certain he would have worked out our exact travel time.

Jack has an amazing imagination. Using any materials at hand (blocks, rocks, paper, chalk), he will often construct elaborate roads and ramp set ups for his cars or monster trucks. Last summer he was very keen on chalk and would create these huge roads and detailed cities for his cars. He kept our street and driveway both pretty much covered in chalk for the entire summer.

He also likes to write and create books. At the beginning of the school year, Jack went through a "book making" phase where he would produce about 3 to 4 books per day, mostly about rally cars. His books usually consisted of pictures and random letters, sometimes actual words, with numbered pages. He was always pretty good about his title page though- one could usually work out what the book was intended to be about because he would write things like, "Rally Car Book- 2009" on the cover. As of late, his book making seems to have slowed down- thankfully. Not that I want to discourage the book making BUT, he was burning through several reams of paper per week!

Jack is secretly learning to read on his own. When asked to read/sound out words he will not perform on cue but he pays close attention when being read to and sometimes, when Annabelle is reading a story and gets stumped on a word, Jack will tell her the correct word... He definitely recognizes many, many words.

Jack has recently discovered the world of video games, thanks Nick. He's not obsessed with them (yet) but he's getting pretty good at navigating his way around the world wide web. He likes to go on-line and play race car games or Webkinz, which seems to be "the thing" at the moment. He has been collecting various Webkinz stuffed animals... it's pretty funny watching him drag around his pink poodle with a bunch of monster trucks!

Jack is, for the most part, pretty easy going but can definitely be very strong willed about certain things, especially if it's something he does not want to do. At the same time, he can also be very sensitive- if he thinks someone is angry with him he gets very upset!

Jack is an extremely sweet little boy (except when angry!) and can be very cuddly, especially at bed time. Nick has, on occasion, referred to him as "kitten man!" Jack still sleeps with Teddy and Other Teddy- his stuffed bear friends he's had since birth.

Jack loves to swim. He has been taking swimming lessons for a while and is really getting quite good at it. Actually, he loves anything involving water, except drinking it!

Jack also loves music. When he finds a song he really likes he will often listen to it over and over again. For a while there, his favorite song was Playing For Change's version of "All You Need is Love" from a Starbucks compilation. One of Jack's teachers brought the CD to school for the kids and Jack loved it so much, he listened to that song whilst grooving in front of the CD player for an hour!

Several times I've asked Jack what he wants to be when he grows up and his response is always the same; "a Daddy." Currently, he has plans to have many children and a cat named Fisher. When he is a Daddy, he also wants to get a fat belly and lose all of his hair!

Jack's favorite color is red. Favorite flavor of ice cream is vanilla. Favorite food is probably breakfast sausage, or just meat. At his 5 year check-up he was 44 inches tall and weighed in at 47.5 lbs.

Happy Birthday, little man! I love you!!

Wise Guy

So I go to pick Jack up from school yesterday and I find out that I just missed him mooning an entire hallway filled with people! Apparently, he was at the front of a line of students, heading back to their classroom from the activity room, when he decided to stop dead in his tracks and drop his pants!! It was right around pick-up time so the hallway was filled with parents as well... I feel so proud.

When I asked Jack why he showed everyone his bum he just laughed and said, "cause I wanted to and it was funny!" Although not the type of behavior I would want to promote, according to several witnesses, it was indeed very funny!

Monkey People

The girl on the monkey bars...

and the boy, looking like a monkey!

Morning Commute

On the way to school this morning, Annabelle decided to give Jack the run down on kindergarten... The conversation went something like this:

Jack, when you are in kindergarten next year and I am in 1st grade you're going to have to do REAL work. You're going to have to write in your journal, write REAL words, and you're going to have to sound things out. Can you do that, Jack? At the beginning you just have to write the letters that the words sound like. But sometimes when you're writing in your journal, the teacher gets bossy. She doesn't always let you write "I love" or "I like" you have to write other stuff and she can get REAL bossy about it.
"Does she get bossy to you, Annabelle?"
Yes. She doesn't want me to write things like, "I love puppies" anymore and that's bossy. But it's OK, I can write other stuff now. Also, Jack, when you get to kindergarten, you can't bring toys into school every day. Only on Friday, when it's share and care day. AND you can only bring in ONE thing!

Happy 6th Birthday Annabelle!!

More like six, going on sixteen. Still wondering where that time went. In the words of Annabelle, "six year olds are sassy." And she ain't kiddin'. Annabelle has become quite sassy in her old age!

This past year has been a very busy one for Annabelle. A few weeks ago, she lost her first tooth and then lost a second one on her birthday! In September she started Kindergarten at the "big kid school" where she has been doing really well. She is learning all sorts of new things and has made a slew of new friends. She absolutely loves school, mostly for the social aspect, I think.

Annabelle is so independent, she has always wanted to do things for herself but all of a sudden I feel like she has her own life. She constantly wants to be with her friends; every day when I pick her up from school, the first words that come out of her mouth are, "can I have a play date?" Often she and her little friends will make plans to get together, unbeknownst to the parents, and get very upset if things don't go according to plan... It can be very tiring at times!

Annabelle likes to keep busy with activities. She is always up for trying new things and signing up for groups. Currently, she plays soccer in the Spring and Fall, takes ice skating lessons, swimming lessons, belongs to Daisy's (girl scouts) and takes an after school art class once a week. If we let her, she would sign up for everything!

Not only is she keen to do everything, she is also very good at most everything she tries! She has a bizarre natural sporty ability- she is very good at soccer, she mastered riding her bike without training wheels over a year ago, she can ice skate, ride her scooter, skate board and roller blade pretty well and is now swimming in the 10ft. side of the pool. Now she wants to try snow boarding and play baseball and take dance lessons and karate and everything else under the sun.

Although she is a very, very busy little lady, she also enjoys her down time too. She loves to draw/color/paint and do anything crafty. She loves books, especially being read to, but is also learning to read for herself. Although she is desperate to read and often gets frustrated when she can't work out certain words, she is trying very hard and making great progress.

At six years of age, Annabelle still cannot sleep without "blanky", her ducky blanket which she has had since birth. She is still completely obsessed with puppies and can't wait to get one of her own. For the past two years, we have been promising Annabelle that she could get a puppy when she turned six. Well, six is here and we have had to put getting the puppy on hold for a year; instead of a puppy, she will be getting a new little brother soon! In the meantime, she has been collecting stuffed puppies and, at the moment, probably has over 200 of them!

Currently, Annabelle's favorite color is blue. Her favorite flavor of ice cream is chocolate. Her favorite food is macaroni and cheese. At her six year check up she passed all the tests with flying colors. She measured 46.5 inches tall and weighed in at 46 lbs.

Happy Birthday my big girl! I love you!!

Status Update From Jack:

"Hey, guess what! BOO HOO, the groundhog saw his shadow- six more weeks until my birthday. That's boring and rubbish. Wah."

...He learned about Groundhog Day at school today

Kindergarten Concert

Annabelle has been looking forward to the Kindergarten concert for weeks. It's been completely maddening because she has been talking a lot about it but never really giving any details! Every time I would ask her a question about the show, she would tell me, "it's a big surprise" and nothing more. Once, she mentioned that they got to practice on stage but when I asked what they had practiced, I got the usual brush off. Who knew she was so good at keeping secrets? I did find out, however, (from her friend) that they were performing several songs, including jingle bells.

Well, the big day finally arrived and Annabelle was very excited. The show was made up of all 4 kindergarten classes so there were about 100 kids on stage. The music teacher did a phenomenal job of keeping all the children in sync! The concert was adorable and the kids did a great job... and they did indeed perform jingles bells, amongst a few others that they had been learning in music class. But the BIG SURPRISE was that Annabelle had been one of the few chosen to play an instrument- I had absolutely no idea she would be playing the maracas for one of the songs!

Here are a few pictures from concert day:

Annabelle's class- before the show (photo stolen from one of the other moms)

On stage, waiting for the concert to start!

Patiently waiting for her big debut!

Showing off her maraca skills!

Oh Boy!

That little waving hand cracks me up... It's like the baby is trying to say hello!

So we had another ultrasound yesterday and everything looks great- phew! Baby is right on track for growth, etc. Oh, and if it wasn't obvious from the post title, it's a BOY! He is expected around June 10.

The kids were very excited to find out what we are having. As I'm sure I've mentioned before, Jack wanted a boy, Annabelle a girl. Jack was pretty thrilled when I told him we are having a boy, Annabelle, not so much. Her initial reaction was less than favorable... She immediately started screaming, "NO!" "I WANTED A GIRL!!" "I WANTED A GIRL!" then she proceeded to push Jack, who was trying to make her feel better, and punch him in the nose! I was so pleased I told her directly after school, whilst still in the schoolyard, so everyone could see how happy she was to have a new brother. Not.

By the time we got home, she realized how ridiculous she was being and apologized for acting crazy. She also told me, several times, that she is happy that the baby is a boy. I'm guessing that she became upset initially because Jack got what he wanted and she didn't... Everything is a competition with her and apparently, he won this one!

Concentration

Good old Santa brought these Vtech computers for Annabelle and Jack. They haven't had much use until today- I guess it took them this long to burn through all their other loot- but they sure are making up for lost time! Both kids started playing this morning before school and have been sat here since retuning home from school, almost 2 hours ago! I wonder how long this will last...

Also, random thing: today Jack told me that he wants the new baby to be a girl! I'm pretty shocked about that- he was holding strong, wishing for a boy, for weeks and now this sudden change... I'm guessing Annabelle might be behind this.

Something is Missing?

Looks like the tooth fairy will be making a visit to our house... Annabelle lost her first tooth today!