The rest of May

Miss Sarah is officially a 3K graduate.  She wrapped up the year with her school’s annual art show.  It’s always so fun to go see all of the projects they have worked on throughout the year.  Having been to 2 of Will’s art shows as a spectator, she could not wait to have her own.  In usual Sarah fashion, she started asking when the art show was going to be around oh, February 1st.  3 short months later, Sarah finally had her moment in the sun, and she took full advantage of it.  Really, really cute.

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She’s headed to Mrs. White’s 4k class in the Fall.  I hope Mrs. White is ready. :)  Sarah sure is!

 

For the sake of remembering…Sarah is such a character.  Honestly, she keeps us laughing all day every day.  I think I might have to use bullets for Sarah…

• Sarah is a major creature of habit.  She remembers every detail of every experience that she has in places, and can pull them out years later out of the clear blue.  She wants everything to be the same way it was the first time every time she goes somewhere.  For example, when she spends the night with my parents she expects to take a bubble bath before bed, watch toy story as soon as they wake up, and have white doughnuts and hot chocolate for b’fast (even if is 100 degrees outside),  It is her routine and she does not deviate from it.  At “Horsey Gma’s” she has blueberry muffins.  She often says, “Mommy when are we going to go see Horsey Gma?  I like to go there because she makes blueberry muffins for me.”  It’s so sweet.  Nothing you do for Sarah is forgotten or under-appreciated.  She often thanks me profusely for the most miniscule of things.  It is majorly endearing.
• Sarah can have unbelievably psycho moments.  Luckily, these seem to be getting fewer and further between, but when they happen, she is possessed.  When she flips her lid, there is absolutely no getting through to her.  You must put her somewhere where she cannot hurt herself, let her scream at the top of her lungs (sometimes using her best gremlin impression), and simply wait.  When she gets it all out, she will immediately switch-sometimes midsentence- to the sweetest most pathetic voice you have ever heard and ask you some simple, sweet question.  There is absolutely no way to understand what I am talking about until you witness it.  It is BIZARRE.
• Sarah says the funniest things.  REALLY.  She does.  So often, when having a conversation with Sarah or over hearing conversations between Sarah and Will, Stephen and I are dying laughing.  Some of my favorites…

            “Noooo, I AMN’T!!!!!!!!!!!!”  (No, I’m not)

            “Promise Me” i.e., The bug was huge, promise me!!!! (I promise)

         These are my favorite two consistent things she says, but everyday is something different.  She talks with her hands and her head and is always very insistent about whatever she’s telling you.

• When driving in the car, Sarah always remembers something or some memory about the road that we are on, and wants to know “where does that path (thanks, dora) go? about the road headed the opposite direction.  She is truly like a human GPS.
• Sarah loves school more than anything.  I only thought that Will liked school.  Oh no, Sarah LOVES school.  Every thing about it.
• Sarah loves the grocery store, and is always up for being my assistant. 
• I love my little girl, and I love spending time with my little girl!

Here she is getting her first little pedicure to get the summer started.  What a fun experience for both of us!

 

1st Grade, Here he comes!

This guy is officially a first grader (well after 11 AM tomorrow morning)  Will had a fantastic kindergarten year.  He took right to school, and truly seemed to enjoy every minute of it.  His teacher’s personality was the perfect fit for him, I think. 

Time to brag.  Will received a prize for behavior at the end of every week (sometimes 2).  He received all excellent marks on his progress reports, and is performing well past all of the benchmarks for the end of the kindergarten year.  His reading has reallly taken off!  He went from not reading at all at the beginning of the year, to reading anything and everything you put in front of him fluently.  He whizzed through reading groups, and is reading well past his age level, and truly seems to enjoy it.  I think he got this from his father…bahahaha.  Stephen and I really couldn’t be any prouder of him.

For the sake of remembering…Will remains just as creative as ever.  There is absolutely nothing (and I mean NOTHING) that is safe from Will and his art/engineering projects.  One of his favorite past times is creating pieces of art out of paper, and writing “I love you” on them and leaving them around the house for me and Stephen.  It is so sweet.  It’s a good thing, because every morning as I am making the rounds around the house picking the 9 million (and no, I am not exaggerating) scraps of paper, pens, crayons, and markers, and getting more and more irritated by the second, I inevitably find one of these pieces of artwork and it doesn’t seem so bad.  I am reminded that there will come a day sooner rather than later when he won’t be leaving these little notes, and I know I will miss them terribly.

This one was actually made for his teacher, but it is a good example of the kinds of notes I find daily.

Will continues to be an excellent big brother (most of the time).  Luke is absolutely enamored with Will.  His face lights up like you wouldn’t believe when Will gets home from school.  Will is able to entertain Luke better than any of us.  He is always asking to hold him and feed him.  It truly is a neat relationship to watch. 

      

As for Will and Sarah.  The best way I know to describe their relationship is this…they cannot live with each other but they CANNOT live without each other.  Sarah absolutely thinks that Will hung the moon.  She misses him terribly when he is at school.  There are times when they great fun together especially when outside or when making a humongous mess downstairs.  However, there are also so, so many times when they absolutely cannot stop bickering.  (Jeff and I got along so well, that I have absolutely no idea where they could’ve gotten this…)  They are both so highly competitive that even just getting in and out of the van first turns into a daily battle.  These are the only moments, just about, when Will can become absolutely unreasonable.  Sarah digs her heels in better than anyone I know.  It can be a battleground.  Will is most likely to eventually give in.  Will being the older, bigger child sometimes likes to think that he can overpower/manipulate Sarah, but Sarah is usually pretty quick to remind him just how scrappy she can be.  More often that not, Will is the one that comes out crying at the end of their skirmishes.  Daily, I hope and pray that they will grow out of this, but knowing my own relationship with Jeff, I’m pretty certain it’s going to be a while.  There’s no doubt in my mind that my parents are totally enjoying this (except of course when they are baby-sitting) ;) 

A reminder of the good times

Our first strawberry harvest.  Note that Sarah is watching Will to see what to do for the picture.

Will loves to spend time with Stephen working on projects.  Their latest project is a rain barrel for our house. They were able to go to our local library one Sunday afternoon, and for 30 dollars, they made a big rain barrel to start collecting rain water to water all of our plants.  Here it is…

 

What about Luke?

He’s here.  He’s here watching all the daily chaos.  He’s so happy.  He’s so sweet.  He’s such a good sport.  Poor guy is cutting both top teeth this week.  He’s running fever, his nose is like a faucet, he is drooling like a maniac, and he just generally doesn’t feel good.  He has been so cuddly.  I know he’s not feeling well, because he has never let me rock him to sleep.  Just like his older siblings, when he is tired, he wants to be put down.  Not this week.  This week, he lays his sweet little head down, sucks his thumb and goes to sleep while I’m rocking him.  I hate that he feels so bad, but I am so thankful for these moments in the rocker. 

While downloading pics off my cell phone, I came across this video of Mr. Man.  Luke went through a stage where he growled for food.  Every time he saw his bottle or a bowl of food, he would start growling until we gave it to him.  Hilarious!  Here’s a short clip of him growling.

Luke growling for food

The animals?

They’re still here.  I definitely feel like a live in a zoo.  I love them dearly, but they are all quite quirky.  Tigger has a sneezing issue.  He sneezes constantly.  We’ve taken him to get some steroid shots that help temporarily, but it always comes back. 

Aubie is pretty much a punk a lot of the time.  He walks around yowling, scratching the carpet and the kitchen chairs, and he beats up on Tigger.  He has lots of sweet moments,but he’s pretty much a punk. 

This is Aubie summing up pretty much exactly what I feel like every night.

Ellie is still scared to death of thunderstorms, but otherwise, she’s  sweet dog and wants to be with me all the time.  She knows the sound of my alarm on my phone and knows that that means we are going to go out and wait for Will to get off the bus.  She gets so excited.  It’s cute.

Jack still remains the sweetest dog.  He still occasionally has seizures and has some definite quirks, but he is the sweetest.  This is his favorite time of the year, because he can spend hours in the backyard barking at the billions of squirrels that tease him from sun up to sun down.  Jack’s worst habit is trying to get into the cat closet to eat their food.  He had a slight little mishap last week when he got himself stuck in the cat door.  HILARIOUS!!

 

“What?!  Is there something funny about this?”  LOLOLOL.  Poor Jack.  We took a million pictures before we helped him out.