Tuesday, January 12, 2010

January 10, 2010

I am happy to report that things are still going very well around here from a behavior perspective. Ben is very seldom sassy these days and Nick is throwing very few fits. Nick's current challenge is that he is more likely to hit Ben or take a toy Ben has and Nick wants.

Today B started crying and told me that N had pinched his neck. After comforting B, talking to N about it and seeing that he apologized nicely, I reminded N that he needs to use his words. He told me in a frustrated voice "I used words 20 times!". There was an ending to that sentence (I used words 20 times and...) but I can't remember it. I was so surprised that he said the first part that I didn't hear the rest. I found his response pretty funny but I did not let him see that:).

To be fair, every once in a while B will hit or hurt N in some way or will take a toy or something but it is more likely that N is the culprit these days. Overall, we are seeing much better behavior, less of the bickering and much more playing together nicely for longer periods of time. What more could a mom ask for? I am pleased.

As for the potty training front, we still have an accident once in a while. N is more likely to have one than B but both boys will have one at times. It is funny that we can go a couple of weeks without any accidents and then we will see two or three within a couple of days. I think it is because, when we are in our normal schedule, I tend to tell them to go before certain events (an outing, a meal or quiet time, for example) and I tend to remind N at times. During weekends or holidays when we are not in our normal routine, I forget and they get busy doing something exciting so we see more accidents. Overall, I would say they are both doing pretty well with it though.

Unfortunately, night times are not coming along at all though, or so it seems. B was wetting through his pull up so often, waking us both (me and B) up at night, that we are now waking him up around 9:00 or 10:00pm, just before we go to bed, and having him go once more. Since we have started doing this, he has stopped wetting through and will sometimes wake up dry. N is hardly ever dry, although I think he may go in his pull up after he wakes up. I think he often wakes up early and hangs out in his bed for up to 15 minutes before coming down. So he may be dry when he initially wakes up but is not motivated to go to the bathroom. I just keep thinking it will come with time, although I know part of the problem is likely that we don't eat dinner until around 6:00pm normally and we normally start getting them ready for bed around 7:30.

Now that we are no longer doing naps, they are going to sleep at night very quickly, which is nice. We are doing one hour of quiet time each afternoon and then they watch a movie. It is a nice amount of rest time for me too, which is nice.

Yesterday they wanted to do math and science. So we did a lesson from our Right Start math program and then we did two science experiments. We made two wind vanes and played with and talked about them for a short while. Then we learned about static electricity using two balloons. We rubbed them on a static-y blanket and observed how they could stick to the wall. Then we took them into the dark bathroom, rubbed them on the blanket again and held them close to each other so we could see the spark of electricity they created. They liked sticky them to the wall better and B was more interested than N. N wanted to play with his balloon, hitting it to keep it in the air.

N asked me to play soccer with him the other day. We have a soccer ball that is pretty soft and small that we play with in the house. So we just start kicking it everywhere, chasing it and trying to be the first to kick it again, all over the house. It was very fun and we both had a lot of laughs. B was pretending something at the time but, towards the end, he jumped in and kicked it a couple of times too. N is very good at it and we really need to get him involved in soccer in the spring. I need to check into this. I think he would really love it and he would definitely excel at it. It is clear that he is a natural athlete. I'm not sure with B yet whether he will like athletics or not. I am hopeful that he will but he does not show as much interest as N at this point.

On the other hand, B definitely excels at academics. He still amazes me at how quickly he learns academic related things. Today I was working on a new way to get them excited about learning to read. I was copying a lot of the words on to index cars and copying the sentences into a notebook because they seem to have an aversion to the book we use to learn reading. They were both excited about the cards. They have always liked that sort of thing. They climbed up next to me at the island and started reading the cards. B is really doing well at it, considering how little we do it. He can sound out the cvc words very well, although he will try to guess the ending at times (rat instead of ran, etc.). N got excited about it too and was trying to sound out words. He did very well at the first set of words (ending in at) but less so with the second set. He is still learning how to sound out each letter and run them together to make the word, such as sssssssaaaaaaaaat. He is impatient and if he does not get it right quickly, he gets frustrated. But he did try today for a little while and he did pretty well during that time. For his age, I think he is doing great.

Officially, we are not really doing school yet. Only when they want to, which is why I am trying to make learning to read more fun:). I am really glad they have late year birthdays (end of September and November). They just missed the official cut off which means that they would not actually start Pre-K4 until this coming fall, which means they would not start K until the fall of 2011. That gives us lots of time to be ready emotionally and for them to be a bit more mature. My number one goal is to have them reading very well by the time they are ready to start first grade and I think we are easily on track for that. I also have my eye on a good K homeschool program (My Father's World), when we are ready. They might be ready to start K in January of 2011. One nice thing about homeschooling is that we can start when they are ready. We can start earlier than they would have at public school and take it at a slower pace or we can start later and play catch up during the summer. It is nice to have the flexibility and to know we can go at the pace that fits them.

In other news, I am going to call our architect with our final (minor) changes to the plan tomorrow. So we are almost done with this part of the process. However, we have not sold our house. It was kind of funny. As the husband and I were finishing up the review our final changes last night, we both agreed that we will believe it when we see it. We both seem to have this feeling that it might not ever happen. I think that is more due to the state of our economy and our concerns that it is going to tank very soon, in which case it may be next to impossible to sell a home. We'll see but we don't believe it is looking very good.

We discussed what we could do to our current home to make it more energy efficient, in the event we end up staying here. We still really like this home and we think it is very pretty and functional, although it is a bit more high maintenance than we would like. Of course, any home that you design specifically for your family in mind will likely be more functional for your family and the one we have designed would be extra energy efficient, which would be nice.

I am still of a mind that God is in control, He knows what is going to happen and what the best plan is for us. I tend to believe that, if we end up staying in this house, it is because that is where God wants us for now. That sort of thinking is aways a positive for me, regardless of what ends up happening, since I would rather follow God's plan for my life than my plan.

I read two or three articles within the past week or two about the possibility of the government forcing us to convert a least a portion of our 401K's into annuities. Have you read about this? Take a look at these two links, although beware of bad language in the first one.

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1830-401kIRA-Screw-Job-Coming.html

http://expectedreturns.blogspot.com/2010/01/coming-confiscation-of-401ks.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ExpectedReturns+(Expected+Returns)

If you want to hear the truth about what is going on with the economy, don't rely on the news. Search the Internet. Two good sites that I watch are:

http://economicedge.blogspot.com/

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/

although the market ticker site does have foul language at times, so beware.

So, what do you think? Is Scott Brown going to pull out a win the special election in MA for Ted Kennedy's old seat? It is an interesting race to watch. I think it will be a miracle if Brown wins it but it is interesting that he is doing as well as he has so far.


Enough for tonight. Time to get ready for bed:). Good night.

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