Joy School

Somebody was not thrilled about the crown that we made him wear for his birthday treat portion of Joy School today.

 He ripped it off as quickly as he could. Kind of him to wear it for 3 seconds so that I could get the two pictures above.

Belén was trying so hard to get in there and get a treat too. You're time will come little one. Very soon in fact. 

 We are on our third week of Joy School and are loving it. It was so much fun to have these great kids in our home to learn and play together. They are a lot of fun. I'm also loving my couple of hours twice a week where me and Belén get to spend some time together alone. 

We have a group of 5 kids. All the boys are right around 3, with just a couple months separating them. Shae loves these boys so much and had a hard time going to nursery that first Sunday in January with all of them going to Sunbeams (their birthdays are in November and December, right before the cut off). 

Josh and Carter

Adyen

We were so excited when Sydney decided to join in our group as well. She is such a sweetheart. It's also nice that Shae gets to play with her during the week AND in nursery on Sundays.

Sydney

Freeze Dancing. Aka: Madness.

Snack Time:

Resting: (haha, this picture cracks me up. It just looks so forced--which it was).

Showing off their crayon melted hearts.

We are so grateful we get to interact with these great kids and their amazing moms so often. Shae looks forward to going to school (just like daddy) almost everyday (we have to remind him often that it is only two days a week). 

If you are considering doing a preschool program like this, you should! All of the lessons are planned out with book suggestions and links to music. We really love it so far.

11 Months

This girl is...11 months!!

Love that toothy grin. She has eight teeth! Four on top, four on the bottom. Teething has felt like a constant battle for the past few months over here. She seems to be taking a little break and is sleeping through the night! Woo! Finally! She usually only woke onceish before that, but it is SO nice to go consecutive nights without waking up to help her. She sleeps from 6:30 p.m. to about 6:30/7 a.m. give or take. She will still occasionally let out a little yelp, but then settles herself quickly. 

She is usually still taking 2 naps but some days just takes one if we are out and about in the morning. This makes putting Shae down for a nap much easier since they are then able to nap at the same time.

The girl is obsessed with wrestling. She freaks out if you lay down on the ground and quickly crawls over and nuzzles her head in to you. Lately, she doesn't even wait for someone to be laying down. If I'm on the floor putting my shoes on, she books it over and starts "wrestling." (Daddy has been in a lot of pain the past few weeks with his sprained ankle, but has finally started braving the floor again and the kids are LOVING it, his ankle is not). 

Wearing bows last for about 1.5 seconds these days...

...then straight to the mouth.

We are really struggling to find any shoes that fit her fat baby feet.

Shae is convinced that if we find shoes that fit her, she will be able to walk. Darin does "walking" practice with her just about everyday which she hates.  She has taken a step or two when she is trying to get to something else close by and occasionally lets go of things and will stand for a few seconds before she realizes what she is doing and immediately drops to the floor.

She has discovered the wonders of cell phones. She is constantly trying to get ours and play with them/drool all over them.

This face. She used to lean up against my shoulder while I sang to her before bed or nap, now she just makes this face right in my face and then starts chuckling. She has really turned in to a goof this past month which has been pretty entertaining (but I really miss the cuddles before bed).

She can't go anywhere without her brother on top of her or pulling her to the floor or piling blankets on her. 

Can't believe she is almost ONE!

Science Centers

A few weeks ago we finally went and got a Science Center pass. It seems to be THE thing to do in the winter with kids here. The winter has been pretty mild thus far so we've still been trying to get outside as much as possible, but the past few weeks have gotten quite cold, so we decided it was time to get out of the house and do something fun.

We've passed the Science Center ever since we lived here because it is on a main road. Shae has always asked to go to "that park" (it kind of looks like a cool park outside of it). We always say we don't have money. He got in the habit of looking it at and saying, "I want to go to that park. Oh no, we have no money." So when we told him we were going he said, "Now we have money!"

It was a pretty fun place. I grew up going to the Baltimore Science Center, I didn't realize not all Science Centers weren't that epic until coming to this one. While it was fun, it was no Baltimore. The kids loved it nonetheless.

This little water station was definitely Shae's favorite. He loved dropping the duckies and watching them shoot out.

This girl was like, "PLEASE let me out of here."

So we finally did. (There is a nice little gated play area for kids under 4. I'm pretty sure we will be visiting that area often over the next few months).

The pass is really great too because there are a number of museums in each state where you can use it.  So when I had an appointment up in Rochester a few weeks ago, the fam tagged along and hit up the Science museum up there. Here's some of the pictures that Darin took: 

Shae now refers to these as the white and purple science centers and tells us often how he would like to go again and play with certain things. One evening he went on for a half an hour straight about how he wanted to go to the white museum and play with the crane and construction and dig for dinosaurs and shoot the tennis ball and make the boats move, etc. etc. etc.