Lots of Catching Up

It has been so long since I blogged. Mostly because we have been incredibly busy. Between the normal stuff, lots of sickness, and some extra projects I feel like I haven't had the energy to do anything by the end of the day. 

January was a rough month for us in the health department.  January started with a very sick Ruthie. She had waking pneumonia and an ear infection. She was absolutely pitiful. 

When all was said and done my tiny little girl lost almost 4lb. She dropped down to 20lb! She's finally gained about half the weight back but more importantly she is finally eating and drinking normally again. It took a few weeks after the pneumonia but I feel so much better about her health now! As she was recovering from pneumonia JP had to go to the doctor for bronchiolitis and an ear infection. He wheezed for about 4 days and while it didn't affect his appetite at all, it definitely affected his sleeping. We had many nights of being up every few hours at night...not fun! 

A week or so later Emmie ran a low grade fever and complained about her throat. Poor thing had her first case of strep (the first case any of my kids have had)! She was a tough little cookie and really didn't complain much at all and fortunately nobody else got it. Then when I thought we were finally getting better the worst happened. The stomach virus. Ugh. Paul was out of town, Ruthie woke up throwing up about 1145 one night and by 4am I was throwing up too. Then I had to get Emmie to school in the morning. And Paul was out of town. Then the next night Ellie was sick.

 Emmie has a little bit of a cold right now but nothing abnormal for winter time. I'm hoping we are finally catching a break from the germs!

Ellie is so NOT a morning person. Ruthie gets up with Emmie and they eat breakfast and then I get Ellie and JP up when it's time to get in the car to take Emmie to school. The other morning Emmie and Ruthie were belting out "Let it  Go" and I looked back and had to laugh at Ellie's expression! She was not amused. I feel ya little girl, I feel ya. 

Two weeks ago we moved JP from the rock n play to the crib. He LOVED the rock n play. We would put him down at night and he would coo and talk and then go to sleep. He was NOT a fan of the crib!!! For 3 nights he screamed for hours. We were up until 1 or 2am and then he'd be back up a few hours later. We totally would have caved and put him back in the rock n play if we weren't afraid we'd have to go through the sleepless nights again the next time we tried to move him. Fortunately night 4 he did great and he's gone right down each night since. Naps have still been hit or miss but we're working on it!

I've been busy getting my consignment stuff ready. I'm so so excited about clearing some of these girl clothes out of my attic! So far I have entered over 250 items into the system! 

Last week I set my other projects aside and sewed a scrub set for a former coworkers child. It should have been super easy but that neck band was a hot mess (really the directions were the problem...AWFUL). Thank goodness my mom came for the day and figured it out! Fortunately, the pants and hat were easy!

It has been so nice this week so instead of picking up Emmie and Evelyn and going from school to home to dance, I decided to take them to the children's garden. They had a blast and I was glad to not have to spend quite so much time in the car!

Big girl!!

So for a few months we've been talking to Ruthie about using the potty. She was  definitely interested in the potty and would sit there but never did anything. I thought I'd potty train her at the end of spring break. 

My little independent girl had other plans!

About 3 1/2 weeks ago we got home from taking everyone to school, she had a dirty diaper so I changed it and then she decided she wanted to wear panties. I let her and figured she'd either hold it until it was time to put her diaper back on to go get Ellie or she would have an accident. She ended up having a little accident and then finishing in the potty. When it came time to put her diaper back on she flat out refused. She was DONE with diapers. I was quite suprised! But three days later and she was potty trained! I also must say that I can't really take any credit for it...she pretty much did everything herself! There were a few times that I had left the room and came back and she had pulled down her pants, gone to the potty and was just waiting for me to get back so she could show me! She is so so independent! Within a few days she was also potty trained at night which is just crazy!! (Although she still wears a pull up since she's in the crib.) 

We're very proud of our big girl and she's very proud of herself!

Funny Sister

Today I was holding JP and Ellie came over to talk to him.  JP was in a particularly good mood and he thought that everything Ellie did was just the funniest thing he had ever seen. Baby giggles are the best!

Preschool Evaluation and some Valentines

I recently had Ellie's parent-teacher conference. I knew what they evaluated them on since I had gone through it with Emmie the year before so I went in totally expecting to hear that she was right on track. Or not. Apparently there has been a parent fail at our house.

One of the things they evaluate the kids on is using scissors. Children in our house are not allowed to use scissors. Oops! So after Emmie cut her hair (a few times) and Ellie's baby curls the scissors were confiscated. Obviously Emmie is a pro with scissors but poor Ellie has never been allowed to use them!

For the evaluation they had a piece of paper with a line down the middle and a circle on one side and a square on the other. They had to cut down the line and then cut out the shapes.

First they had to help Ellie hold the scissors and then once she finally cut down the line they let her stop. Apparently it was a pretty excruciating process.

When I heard all this I realized that yep, we never gave that kid scissors at home. She definitely does not have the scissor skills that Emmie has! I definitely thought though that she had more scissor abilities than what she showed the teachers. I was pretty sure she must have been tired that day and just got lazy and didn't give her all. I was wrong.

A few days later I decided we would practice scissors at home. I gave them to Ellie (she was super excited to get to use them) and drew some shapes on paper for her. I was shocked at what I saw! She was holding her scissors sideways instead of up and down and hacking away at the paper. It was pretty painful to watch. I finally (after much coaxing!) convinced her that it would be so much easier if she held her scissors the correct way. (And of course I was right...I used this as a lesson that mom is always right!)

So we've been practicing with scissors and for Valentine's Day she wanted to make her teachers Valentines so I decided to put her scissors skills to the test. I traced a heart on the paper and had her cut it out. Y'all, she did this all by herself! I was beyond proud of her! And even better she was so proud of herself! She couldn't wait to take her Valentines to school and tell her teachers that she cut them out by herself.

I was also so, so proud of her writing. Writing letters was so easy for Emmie because she's very artistic. I never had to really teach her how to make them, she just looked at the letter and copied it on to her paper. Ellie is not so much artistic and so when we worked on letters over the summer she really struggled with writing. Her teachers mentioned in her evaluation that she seemed to enjoy writing and was doing well. I didn't think too much of it until we did those Valentines. I wrote the words on a piece of paper and then she copied it on to her hearts. This summer she struggled with any letters that had curves and any letters where the straight line was on a diagonal (like K and V).  I know that her AMAZING improvement (and her excitement about writing) is mostly due to her wonderful classroom teachers and her fabulous Letter Land teacher. They talk so much about how to make letters and do lots of fun activities involving letter formation. (I believe they use Handwriting without Tears.)

When Ellie made her Valentines we all gave her lots of praise for her cutting and writing and I loved seeing how proud she was of herself!

As a side note, she did great on the rest of her evaluation and is definitely ready for kindergarten. She's always helping Emmie with her homework so I knew she was academically ready but I was glad to hear that socially she was ready as well. She's a July birthday so she'll be one of the younger ones in her grade. I think it definitely helps that she has an older sister! 

Next step in Ellie's education journey...reading! She's been practicing Emmie's high frequency words. The child loves books like nobody else and is so excited to learn to read!