Kaylee’s preschool

Kaylee just finished up her first year of pre-school at Christ the King.  Tuesday and Thursday mornings for the last 9 months have been spent playing games, doing crafts, listening to stories and making friends.  Kaylee likes pre-school and had a very good year.  She’ll be 5 yrs old this August, but we decided to go one more year of pre-school before heading off to kindergarten.  Figured she’d rather be one of the oldest kids in kindergarten than one of the youngest.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Here’s a shot of Kaylee and her teachers.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Thomas is looking forward to preschool in a couple years too!

Thomas shows off his ABC’s

Pretty good, huh?

Flying Kaylee

Kaylee was showing off her acrobat circus skills today so thought I’d see if I could get some good action shots.

The first few are Kaylee gaining more and more confidence in her flying ability, regrettably egged on by her Dad who repeatedly encouraged her to do another one for the camera.  The last couple are of Kaylee going just a bit too high and what your face looks like immediately after it slams into the ground.

Ouch.  Sorry about that Kaylee.  Got some good pictures, though.

The Big Day!!!

The black mail photo on Wednesday?  Just one last hurrah before we finally pulled the trigger the next day.  After 2 years, 5 months and 9 days, Thomas was ready for his first hair cut.

We prepped him by watching a few youtube videos of kids getting their hair cut.  He was all excited and ready to go.  He talked about the barber cutting his “crazy hair” and told us how you have to “sit like this” - and he’d hold his arms like a statue.  Of course it made Kari tear up.  Is he still going to be our baby boy without those golden curls?

 

Thomas was a bit nervous to start too.

 

Maybe if Barber Tom lets me run the chair I’ll feel a little better.  Pretty cool that my barber has the same name as me!

 

Are you sure you know what you’re doing mister?

 

Here we go!

Hey, look at that!  Didn’t hurt a bit!

 

Maybe a little more off the top, if you don’t mind.

 

Looking good!!

 

That wasn’t so bad after all and look — I’m still super cute!  He even left a few of my curls!

Congratulations Thomas!  You did a very good job.  You earned yourself a sucker and a certificate (suitable for framing) to document your very first haircut.   And believe it our not, your mom shed nary a tear.  Way to go Kari!

Extra special thanks to our good friend Lydia, www.mebraldyphotography.com, for the awesome pictures.  Thank you so much!

Blackmail photo

Sorry, Thomas.  Had to do it!

Guess that’s the price you pay for having such fabulous golden curls!

A bit of advice…

Do not twist a comb around in your hair so tightly and so many times that it can only be removed by cutting out chunks of your hair and asking dad to get some tools from the garage so you can cut the comb in half.  (Also a bit of advice for dads – when you’re summoned to get something to cut up a comb with, bringing out the rusty 2 foot wood saw is not nearly as funny to 7 year old girls as it is to you.)

Now that’s a bad mood

We went out to eat this weekend and Thomas was in a bad mood.  How bad, you may ask? 

So bad, that when his mashed potatoes fell off his fork onto his plate he nearly had a meltdown because they landed upside down.

You know things are not going well when upside down mashed potatoes are enough to bring you to tears.

Not much going on

Not too much new to report around here.  With all of the birthdays and holidays done for a while it’s pretty much been business as usual so no big events to blog about.

Our creative kids have discovered the joys of scotch tape and we have mock birthday parties nearly everyday.  They go around wrapping up old toys in typing paper and then we all exchange gifts and act surprised.  Thomas gets very excited when it’s his turn.

Speaking of Thomas, still no haircut yet.  It’s getting pretty unruly.  Kari snipped a few hairs that kept falling in his eyes a couple weeks ago and the remaining 2 inches sproinged back up in curls.  We figured he’d have straight hair once we cut all the long curls off, but maybe not?  Kari still thinks it’s too soon to find out.  He can count to 10 now, though he always skips “2″ for some reason.  He’s also getting the hang of most of his colors pretty consistently (when he’s in the mood) and sings his ABC’s up to “K” before jumping straight to the “next time won’t you sing with me part”.  Pretty cute.

We had 1,400 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies sitting in our living room last weekend.  That’s a lot of cookies.  Mostly all gone now except for a few stragglers, thank goodness.  Kari is Emma’s Daisy troop leader so it kind of comes with the territory.

We had pork cutlets, potato and peas for supper tonight.  The girls have decided that mixing their peas in with their potatos is the best way to eat peas.  They call it Pea-tatoes.  I haven’t tried it but they claim it’s delicious.

Smile!

It’s amazing what a difference a couple months can make.  Check out these shots of Emma’s ever changing smile.

 

 

          December 7

 

 

 

 

       December 18  (Yes, her tooth is sideways)

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 23

 

 

 

 

February 22

She’s almost got her Christmas wish already!

Thomas’ first time-out

We all endured Thomas’ first official “time-out” last night.

To this point his punishments have amounted to mostly stern words and taking stuff away (ie. taking away his food if he starts tossing it on the floor or removing the toy hammer from his hand when he smacks his sisters on the head.  If you’re ever at our house you’ll almost always see a pile of exiled toys on top of our refrigerator taunting their owners with their inaccessability.)

Lately, Thomas has been going through a spitting phase and he’s getting good at it.  He gets more than just himself wet now.  We’ve tried scolding.  We’ve tried ignoring.  We’ve tried duct tape (just kidding).  It’s hard to know when to start time-outs with little ones.  Time-outs are enough removed from the actual wrongdoing that they can be confusing if they aren’t old enough to understand the purpose.  Thomas is a pretty smart kid though.   And persistent as we found out.

Last night was the final straw as Kaylee was being spit at by her little brother and she looked as us with a face that said, “Either you need to discipline your son or I’m going to take matters into my own hands.”  We pulled the trigger.  Thomas got one more warning.  He defiantly spit again, and we sat him in his first time out.

Have you ever tried to hold a big beach ball on the bottom of the pool?  Yeah.  I think you know where we’re going with this.  For the next 1/ 2 hour Thomas bounced up from his designated spot on the floor for sure 200 times.  First playfully, as he giggled and tried to escape and then slowly becoming more and more perturbed as he realized we were not playing a game.  The crying escalated as he alternated between screaming for Mom and then Dad, pleading for somebody to come to his rescue.

After about a 30 minute power struggle he was finally worn out and our 2-year old sat quietly in his time-out spot, his lower lip quivering as he panted to catch his breath.  I sat quietly across the room, at least as exhausted as him.

If nothing else, I think the girls appreciated our efforts.  I’m sure it’s frustrating for them to see their little brother getting away with behavior that would land them in big trouble.  Emma commented later, as she repeated an oft heard mantra in our house, “I guess when you told Thomas he was going in time-out, you said what you meant, and meant what you said.  Right, Dad?”

“Right, Emma.”  (Thanks for noticing.)

Whew.  Parenting is hard.