Jackson at 6.5 Years

Height: 46"
Weight: 46 lbs.
Size: 6
Shoe size: 13 or 1 depending on the brand
Favorite show: Super Mario Brothers, Bill Nye
Favorite activities: playing video games, cooking, baking, playing board and card games

I love this picture Mika took of him doing Legos.

We celebrated the end of homeschool at Paradise Park. It has a station where you can do your own face painting. 

He loves to sort the pretend mail at the Johnson County Museum.

School Stuff:

• I continued doing homeschool kindergarten work until the day before he started first grade. I kept a daily journal of our work and we did 250 days of school.
• He started first grade in public school August 16th. The school is in our neighborhood and less than half a mile away. I like the school and his teacher is excellent.
• We started on hard first grade/easy second grade level books after his sixth birthday. He can read about 90% of them by himself. I have to help him with long words, words he hasn't seen before, and certain words that he consistently mixes up (like saying "this" when he sees the word "these"). When he was assessed at the start of school, he was reading at the level the school shoots for first graders to be reading at the end of school. He also quickly got through the 160 sight words that they are supposed to know by the end of school. I was so relieved that he was that good at reading because I felt like I had so much pressure on me to get him to a certain level as a homeschooler. People will doubt you and think what you're doing isn't as good as public school. So for him to be so far ahead validated for me all the work I put into his homeschooling.
• He LOVES public school. He likes being in a community of other kids his age, he'd rather listen to a teacher than me, he likes having a lot of friends. He likes everything except art because he was having trouble following along with the directions, and math which he complains is too easy. He seems to be well-liked and gets invited to a lot of birthday parties and playdates.
• A typical school day starts with him waking up around 6:30 and playing video games until I get up around 7:30. I get up earlier if we need to brush up on spelling words for the test that day, finish make-up work for missing school, or read library books so he can turn them back in. I sleep in later if I don't have to do anything except make him breakfast. Half the time he'll be dressed with his teeth brushed by the time I come down. If I have to tell him to get ready, he does it quickly. He's very organized and sets out his clothes for the week in advance. We never even told him to do that, he just came up with the idea on his own. I usually make him cheesy grits or scrambled eggs for breakfast (I prefer to stay away from cereal, but I still buy it once in a while). The doors open at 8:15, they can go into their classrooms at 8:25, and they are tardy after 8:35. We walk to get Jackson at 3:25 because school gets out at 3:40 and Mika takes forever to walk the 4/10 of a mile. He misses me a lot at school and needs to reconnect as soon as I pick him up. He spends the whole time walking home telling me about school. Then we spend about an hour playing games before we need to start the chores/homework/dinner/bath marathon. He doesn't have much homework because his teacher doesn't believe in it (I love her!!). She expects parents to either read to the child or have the child read for at least 15 minutes a day (which we were already doing). Other than that they just have to turn in their sight words by the end of the year (we were done with that in October) and learn the spelling words. The spelling words don't feel like work to Jackson because we put the words into spellingcity.com and the website generates games for him to play. So his homework is just reading and playing spelling games.

First day of school!

His first field trip...I am going to miss the sweet things these little kids do!

Sports:

• He doesn't want to do gymnastics anymore.
• He enjoyed swimming. He took several lessons and I am going to sign him up for more in May.
• He played soccer this fall. I felt bad for him because I felt like we kind of threw him into it. I wish we had enrolled him in classes that only went over skills and didn't do any games before we put him on a team. He doesn't want to do soccer again because he thinks he's bad at it.
• He is going to do basketball and baseball. I learned my lesson and put him into clinics before he will have to play on the teams.

I groaned a little when they pulled out medals for everyone...

Tidbits:

• I think he still wants to marry Mika, or at least be a stay-at-home person like me and live with Mika and freeload off of her. (He doesn't understand that what I do is actual unpaid work. I think he just wants to play video games all day and have Mika work and pay for everything.)
• He calls my stretch marks "baby stripes."
• He can whistle. 
• He loves playing board games, especially Monopoly. He also really likes Battleship. I am trying to work on developing strategies with him. Any time we play a game that involves strategizing, I explain my thought processes.
• He is still shy. I try to prepare him in advance for situations that might make him uncomfortable and give him scripts to say. He also forgets his manners a lot.
• He usually sleeps 9-10 hours at night from 8:30/9 to 6/6:30. He almost always sleeps through the night. The few times he gets up, he can use the bathroom and go back to sleep without needing to be tucked in again.
• He lost his first tooth right before school started. It came out while eating steak, so now he wants to eat steak when another tooth feels wiggly so that it'll come out.

We started up chores again. They get 10 cents for each task they do a day-cleaning the living room, cleaning the playroom, dirty clothes in hamper, dishes, and shoes in cubbies. They like to spend their money on candy at Dollar Tree.

He was a skeleton for Halloween and he wants a skeleton birthday party.

I give him all our change. He enjoys rolling it and taking it to the bank. (This was one of his favorite homeschool math activities.)

So proud to be a big brother.

Maxwell at 2 Months

Weight: 13 lbs? I find out on Tuesday

Height: 23.5" (as of Jan 17)

Clothing size: 3 month (and he can wear a size 2 disposable already, sheesh)

• He started cooing December third. He loves to look at Paul and coo at him. He started smiling intentionally this month.
• He likes looking at fans and lights.
• Sometimes he screams when he's hungry and I'm not moving fast enough to feed him and he sounds what I imagine a dying lion cub sounds like.
• He makes this "heh heh" sound like the Beavis and Butthead laugh when I'm about to feed him.
• When people see him they exclaim, "Look at all that hair!"
• He can hold up his head but you still have to keep a hand on his back because he'll lurch to side. His back and arms are getting strong. He can do push ups/planks.

Sleep:
He sleeps really well at night and not well at all during the day. He is so spoiled now that he will only nap if he is on someone's chest. If I try to put him down, he will sleep for 20 minutes max before he starts screaming. If he sleeps on your chest, he will sleep for 2-3 hours. For the past several weeks he has already been trying to have the morning nap, afternoon nap, late afternoon nap schedule that older babies do. He usually goes to bed for the night between 9 and 10 and sleeps for about 5 hours until he needs a feeding and diaper change. Then he goes back to bed until about 7 or 8. He will sleep without being held at night.

Couldn't resist buying the baseball sleeper since his initials are MLB.

He was baptized on Christmas Eve.

He was sick basically the whole month of December. He was having trouble breathing one night and we took him to the hospital. So tiny in that big bed.

 We did a lot of driving over the holidays and he was so good in the car.

 The flash startled him and he threw his hands up in the air.

 I am going to miss these newborn stretches so much!