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Joseph:
"I want to stay up early tonight" Clearly he means late. And last night we did in fact give him 30 extra minutes before bedtime.
Hannah:
"No way Mommy" Or No Way, or No Way Leah, and said in quite a serious deep voice with emphasis on the waaaay.
Leah:
"Special Treat?" Repeated over and over with an incredible amount of enthusiasm and a twinkle in her eye, in reference to leftover candy from Halloween.
We had a few enlightening and somewhat humorous comments during parent teacher conferences for the kids last week. No real surprises but apparently our eldest tends to "hide during cleanup time". Every time the teacher walks to one side of the room to give instructions, Joseph walks to the other side. We know he understands cleanup time and where things go, because the teacher hears him giving other kids instructions from across the room telling them where they should put things. He also gets excited and likes to participate and doesn't do well with raising his hand or waiting his turn to talk. (Hmmm.....that sounds vaguely familiar.....I wonder where I've heard that before....) We've been trying to work on not interrupting for a while but I think that will be an ongoing effort over the next few (or ten) years. Amazing how in just a few months though he has made so much progress with art and writing skills. Now when he draws a person you can actually tell it's a person (a big head, eyeballs, mouth, ears, arms, legs...very humpty dumpty-esque) and he's starting to write JOSEPH CONWAY instead of just his first name. He even attempted Dominic the other day on his own, and had a few of the letters correct just from sounding it out. So that was Joseph on Tuesday.....and then we had the girls reviews on Friday. Would you believe that little Leah has turned into little miss type A? She leads the charge....takes her hand off the wall during line time when she thinks no one is looking and then puts it back when the teacher turns around. She tries to get on Joseph's bike every chance she gets and she is quite the climber/adventurer. She knows how to do things but if she's not in the mood to do them then she won't do them (like match colors or some other exercise she knows how to do at school) We're pretty sure that she wakes Hannah up every morning and while she definitely loves her sister (they were apparently giggling and "wrestling" with each other the other day at school, at least that's what they said they were doing when the teacher asked) but apparently she also takes out all of her aggression on her. The comment next to "Plays well with others" for Leah was that she's Mastered it, except as it relates to her sister. She pulls Hannah's hair, hits her, takes toys away from her....but plays very nicely with everyone else in the room. Hannah on the other hand usually only hits when provoked (like when Joseph swats at her first). And Leah has a little thing with eating crayons. Needless to say we don't do as much art at home as we should. Usually ends with a very purple or red tongue. With Hannah the most humorous comment was related to her eating. She's usually done with her food while others around the table are still getting served (Leah is in fact the slowest eater in the class) Hannah has been known to shove fist-fulls of food in her mouth and do a happy dance in her chair when food arrives. She's a pretty happy go lucky, friendly and social girl.... but only around those she sees every day....shy around others. And Hannah's a bit on the emotional side, like her brother, and is prone to tantrums and is brought to tears if you use a sharp tone with her. She's mastered the body parts and her favorite animals are elephants and pigs (her pig noise is an actual snort, which she just demonstrated while watching Shrek when the three little pigs came on the screen). Both girls repeat a lot of what you say but usually in just two word phrases, and Hannah is always very quick to answer questions and be a helper. She just needs reminding if there is more than one instruction to be given. With winter approaching Hannah and Leah have discovered mittens and are in love with them. They get very frustrated if their thumb doesn't go in the right spot and the other day Leah was beside herself because I made her take hers off when she got to her classroom and she wasn't done with them yet. I think towards the end of the week we'll actually be busting out the winter coats for all three kids and I know that the girls will be excited because they already try to put them on along with their boots and prance around in hats every chance they get. (they walk into their closet and take all that fun stuff out and parade around their room) I actually managed to loose one of Joseph's winter coats between last year and this year, but he has others so no immediate concern. Jay is in London this week and I suspect he'll be wearing a coat too. And enjoying some fish and chips or bangers n mash when he's not working. Last night we actually went out to dinner after a quick trip to Lowe's (Gina was home with the kids) and Jay ordered a burger since red meat isn't quite the same in Europe. (Just like clam chowder in WI isn't quite the same as clam chowder in Boston...I went out there for a few days for work and the seafood was quite delicious). Tonight is wine and cheese, along with some drama. Gina and I will be catching up on all the must see tv from the past week after the kids are in bed.
For many years I always said spring was my favorite season, because my birthday is all after all in the spring and who doesn't like celebrating a good birthday (ha ha), but now if asked the question I would say Fall. (And I am sometimes asked this question as I do have a four year old). I like the cool but not cold weather, I like the fires and pretty colors, I really like the start of the fall lineup on tv (I'm a drama queen, what can I say), Jay loves the start of football season, and we all love apples, pumpkins, Halloween and Thanksgiving. Joseph in particular really goes crazy over Halloween. Costumes, Decorations, Treats, the whole works. Walking or driving around to look for cool or scary or festive houses is now part of our daily routine. He's also a bit of an apple fanatic, eats them almost every day and yesterday he showed us the proper way to pick an apple off the tree (he learned at school). Hannah and Leah also picked their own and seemed to enjoy doing so. Though they didn't like the wind so much, as while it was sunny it was a very blustery day (as Joseph and Winnie the Pooh like to say). This year I also very much like fall because it's the end of a somewhat crazy busy period of our lives and we are now back to normal (whatever that is!) and getting to do fun stuff, relax, and spend time with family while enjoying the new house that no longer has any gross carpet, leaky roof, or crazy colors. (well, except in the dining room which is covered with two very unflattering patterns of wallpaper as pictured in the prior birthday posting. That will be our winter project!)
The girls frequently wake up before Joseph and wander their way into his room through the bathroom, sometimes landing in his bed saying "Jo Jo sleeping" or "Jo Jo wake UP". Though in this particular scene we had already changed the girls before they went running over and crawled into bed with him. Joseph's room has blue walls (with a hint of grey) and new dinosaur bedding that he had a hand in picking out. The orange T-Rex (and sale price) sealed the deal.
I think this may be the longest I've ever gone without posting something....though I have been taking pictures all the while. I am after all, still me. And the kids are, still quite cute. Hannah in fact knows how to cheese for the camera, and will ham it up when given the opportunity, whereas Leah will turn and run away and refuse to look in your direction when the photo snapping device appears. Joseph, well he could go either way. Sometimes he likes to make all kinds of different faces and then review them himself in the viewer. He hasn't started approving his own photos yet, so for now I still have control. He took some pictures with the camera at school of his friends, and so far he's having a good time with 4K (they call it kindergarten, some might call it preschool). He learned about apples and had some fall homework where he had to cut out his own apple on paper and then color it, and then the class went to an apple orchard to learn about the types of different apples and pick their own from a tree. This past weekend he had to draw a bat and come up with an interesting bat fact to share with his class (he told his friends that bats eat mosquitoes, and I in turn learned how to spell the word mosquitoes) The girls have been getting some assignments too and I have to say, they are doing a good job at introducing us slowly to this homework concept but it causes just a bit of fear of what is to come. Joseph can now zip up some of his coats and the girls can both put theirs on (and you must let them do it by themselves or brace yourselves for quite a scene, they are both quite independent). When Hannah does it she then shouts, "I did it, I did it!" and Leah sometimes will clap and say "Yea". The girls have the same reaction when they go potty. They aren't doing it all the time, and we're not really able to keep up with it, but they practice at daycare quite a bit. It's possible that underwear is in our future. Twin beds are also in our future, but we haven't gotten around to that yet. As you can see, the girls crib mattresses are on the floor in their room and that's what we've been using ever since our little escapee (Leah) started treating the crib like a playground jungle gym. And as it turns out, she just likes to escape. She frequently makes appearances long after her bedtime, to the point where Joseph now says as part of his bedtime routine "but I'm hungry and thirsty, don't let Rosco in here, watch for Leah, and I love you". We have found Leah in Joseph's room on several evenings, or noticed her head poking around the corner of his doorway with what appears to be a smirk, and have also had Joseph get out of bed several times to alert us to the wandering girl. Hannah however sleeps through all of this, and lays quietly in bed after being tucked in for the night. Then in the morning you find them either giggling together on one of their mattresses covered in blankets, or a few times we've found them in Joseph's room attempting to wake him up. The three of them do enjoy each other's company...most of the time.
First Day of School, First Day of School! (All you Nemo fans will know this little chant) Joseph started 4K on Tuesday at Grandma's House (where all the kids have gone for daycare). He was pretty excited because it meant that show and tell was starting back up. He quickly selected his bat mobile and batman figure to bring in, and later decided that he should also bring in his batman costume for full effect. In addition to show and tell, he also had to think about what his favorite recipe was (he decided on star wars cookies) so I wrote that down for him, and he then put his name on the top of the page all by himself. The letter "S" has been a tricky one but he didn't need any help this time. He's also learned our address, and now the debate is, what phone number to teach him? I mean really, three phone numbers does seem a bit much for him to need to know. I guess we'll start with the home phone number, and then move on to my cell number. Such dilemmas. Joseph also had school supplies for the first time! A pencil box, scissors, glue sticks, regular glue, crayons, markers, notebooks and folders. I made the mistake of buying him a cool transformers pencil box before realizing that the items were all "shared". Oops! I warned the teacher that she may need to give him the transformer box first in order to avoid any catastrophic event. In a few weeks, Joseph has a field trip to the theater downtown to see Seussical the musical, followed by a visit to a farm. And before you know it, it'll be Halloween!
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