Becoming Mobile

Erik is 7 months and has crossed many milestones. He suddenly seems like an older baby, which is good and bad. Good because he is happy to play on his own and can reach and wriggle to get at the toys he wants, as well as go from lying to sitting, and vice versa. Bad because my baby is growing up!

Here he is having a great time in his swing.

 This is Austin's friend Logan. Erik looks like one of the boys. This was taken a few weeks ago. He no longer needs the boppy pillow to support him when he falls over.

 He's been sticking his tongue out a ton lately. The amazing part of this is that he is tongue tied. Most people who are tongue tied cannot stick their tongue out at all! (He was very excited to take this picture and was flapping his arms like crazy when I did.)

 He's been eating baby food fairly well, but the amazing thing is he let Austin feed him this one time! He can also feed himself Cheerios now, something he's been playing with, but not ingesting until yesterday.

 Another tongue shot, and if you notice, he's on his knees! He's been rocking on his knees here and there, getting ready to blow us all over when he decides to make a dash across the room!

 He's very interested in the "real" toys. Not the baby rattles and fluffy, cushy toys. He especially likes Austin's cars!

 I finally got a good shot of him rocking today!

The last thing that makes him seem older now is that he will sleep for three hours solid during the day, fairly often. He also doesn't need nurse as often. which gives us more freedom with our time.

What a big boy he his!

Growing Up

Victoria completed first grade! It seems strange to me now that I will finally have a child of my own in the grade that I taught about 11years ago: second grade! I have saved many games that I made for the time when my children can play them. I broke them out this year: time games, money games, reading games. It is so fun for the teacher in me!

Theses are the things she accomplished this year:
-she can read very fluently (she's reading verses from the scriptures now)
-her writing is excellent (she was always pretty good at writing)
-she can tell time
-she knows her money (is that good or bad?)
-she can tie her shoes
-she can do her own ponytails and pigtails

She has also enjoyed her piano lessons this year and made great progress there. Here she is at her last recital playing "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid and "I Just Can't Wait to be King" from The Lion King.

 Here's all the girls that took lessons this year with their gift from the teacher.

And here's Victoria with her teacher, and my good friend, Rachel Clawson.

La Escuela

Karissa graduated from her bilingual preschool class last week. I am so happy that we choose to put her in it! I loved PCN when Victoria was there, even though it's a co-op and requires extra work on my part. I loved it even better in the bilingual class, which was new last year to the school. She's definitely ready for kindergarten and she knows some Spanish- a nice bonus! Of course she doesn't speak fluently, she just knows some words and phrases and lots of songs. She understands a fair amount too. The best thing about it for me is that it helped me to see how easy it is to incorporate just a few Spamish words into our every day activities. I know we can do more and hopefully we'll be more motivated to do so. Karissa has loved learning Spanish and has taught Victoria and Austin some things as well, which they also enjoyed. My hope is that when they take Spanish classes later in school that they will pick it up easily and have good conversation skills.

Here's Karissa's last day, performing "Hola Amigo". 

Here's La Semilla (the seed). 

 Here is La Mariposa (the butterfly).

Here she is receiving her diploma with her maestra. Bien hecho, Karissa!

Birthday Boy

Austin is now three years old! Lucky for him, his birthday was on a Saturday this year. He got to open his big present in the morning- a race track that also connects with his wooden train set. It was a hit! The girls enjoyed it too. They had to get out the whole train set to complete it.

 Remember the symphony we went to a month ago? The next free concert, Dance, Swing, Sing, happened to be on his birthday, so we went to Detroit to enjoy another fabulous concert. It was mostly jazzy swing. There was some singing this time and a tap dancer. We all enjoyed it. Here's Austin waiting for it to start, sporting his "Birthday Boy" badge he got from Gramms.

 We took advantage of being in the city and went to Hockeytown for lunch.

 He even got his own special ice cream treat for his birthday, which he shared with everyone.

 Hockeytown is the most "boy" restaurant I could ever imagine. Not only were there pics of all the Red Wings hockey players and their jerseys, but the were video arcade games and motorcycles on display. Austin is still young, so I don't think he cared either way, but he did like looking at the motorcycles.

 Since we were right across the street from Comerica Park where the Tigers play, Jason wanted to get his tickets for the game he's planning on taking Victoria to later this summer. Here's a picture of the big tiger in front. You can see the people from a wedding party in black to the right. They were taking wedding photos there- not sure why, but that's cool.

 As we were leaving, we see this baby coming out of a truck to be put on display for the big race today. Austin was pretty excited, though you can't see his smile behind his cars.

 The kids relaxed when we got home and watched a video. I made this race track cake (which Victoria decided I can make for her 8th b-day, since it looks like an 8).

 We had pizza, Austin opened more presents, he loved these binoculars and a flashlight, in particular, and we had cake.

 He added his cars from his race track gift to the cake.

Austin was exhausted that night, but I think he felt special on his big day. He's so sweet and polite. We noticed how he always says "yes" never "yeah" and is much better about saying "please" and "thank you" than his sisters are. What a polite boy! He likes to hold the door open for everyone too.

He and Karissa play really well together while Victoria is at school. She will play cars with him and he will follow her around as she does her make-believe stories of princesses. He'll play "house" with her too. He loves to help me stir when I'm cooking and he likes to help water the garden. He also enjoys dancing, singing, and swinging outside. His dream for the summer is to wear his Superman pjs to the roller rink so the cape can fly out behind him. He prays about that happening.

Even though he is a 3-year-old boy, he does pretty good at shopping with me. I complain and get frustrated when we go, but I know it could be worse. He's such a great little boy.

We love you Austin!