A Day in the Life...

Let's see, today was a pretty typical day for us, so I thought I'd share...

4:00 a.m.
Westley troops through our room to use our restroom. We've trained him to come to ours because the toilet in the other one, when it flushes, comes through very loud into Travis' room, and we don't want him waking Travis. I guess either way, we (or I, since Corey's not usually there) would wake up. So he comes through and goes to the bathroom and I take him back to his room to make sure he gets up on his bed safely (top bunk) and doesn't slam his door shut.

5:00 a.m.
The alarm goes off for Corey to get up. Lately he's had Mondays off, and then school is at 7:40 am Tuesday morning. If he leaves here at 6, he won't get to ASU in time to park and walk to class without being 20 minutes late. But if he leaves here at 5:45, he can get to his class by 6:45 and have an hour to kill. Fun, fun, fun. So he gets up and gets dressed. His bags were already packed for this week of school, work and staying in Mesa, so he didn't have to do that. But he did have to eat breakfast and pack a lunch without making enough noise to wake the kids. A tricky endeavor, to be sure, at 5 a.m.

5:45 a.m.
Corey leaves. I turn off all the lights and go back to bed for another fifteen minutes. At 6 a.m., I hear Travis crying. I quietly tiptoe down the hall and lock the boys' door, so they won't come out unsupervised and get in the shower (truly, a rare moment for me, a shower!). I take more time than usual, and even let the water run into the tub for a quick bath as well, savoring the last moments of silence.

6:25 a.m.
I finally am dressed enough to get the boys, who are now yelling through their door because they've gotten up and found it to be locked. I let them out and go in and get Travis from his crib. He is soaking wet from his super soggy diaper, so I go and change his diaper first thing. The boys run out looking for Daddy, but I tell them he has already gone to school. We call him on the phone and have scripture reading.

6:50 a.m.
I pour bowls of Cheerios for me and the older boys and slice up a banana in the bowls. I call them to breakfast, and we sit down to eat. A few minutes in, Caleb starts to scream and I look over and find no bowl on the table in front of him. The bowl is upside-down in his lap, with milk, Cheerios and bananas all over him, the chair and the floor. I quickly get him cleaned up (during all this, Travis is fussing in his high chair because he wants something besides just Cheerios on his tray). Then, I get a Nutri-grain bar from the cupboard and break it into small pieces for Travis. Then I sit down to finish my now-soggy bowl of cereal.

7:30 a.m.
With breakfast done and the boys dressed now, I turn Caillou on for them to watch. They watch it and then at 8, when Sesame Street comes on, they leave to play in their room. I turn the T.V. off, check email, and play with Travis.

9:00 a.m.
I put Travis down for a nap and turn Curious George on for the older boys. I lay on the couch and doze through Curious George and Clifford. Travis wakes up (it's now 10 a.m.), and I bring him out. The boys sit through one more show, Super Why while I do random things and play with Travis.

10:45 a.m.
I start making lunch, peanut butter and jam sandwiches. Last week, Travis ate this, so I make one for him too and break it into bits. The boys devour theirs and ask for seconds, but Travis refuses to touch his. I end up spoon-feeding him some bananas mixed with barley. I eat my own sandwiches. We clean up from lunch and return to the living room to watch Word World.

12:00 p.m.
I put Caleb down for his nap and leave the room. I put Travis down for his nap. Upon leaving Travis' room, I hear Caleb start to scream. I go in and he tries to come out. I don't really understand what he's trying to do or say, so I repeat, firmly, that he must take a nap. He continues to get more frustrated. Finally I ask if he wants to sleep on Westley's bed. This seems to solve the problem, so he climbs up to the top bunk and I tuck him in once more. Then I go out and start preschool with Westley.

12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Westley and I do preschool. We do math, science, and we focus on the letter A for the week. We make an apple book on the computer, complete with pictures of Westley eating apples, applesauce and drinking apple juice (digital cameras can be so great!).

Afternoon
Westley quietly plays with playdough for the next hour. I chat with my SIL, Allison, online and then go in and watch the rest of Yes, Dear. After that, Travis wakes up and I spend the rest of the afternoon with a crying baby following me around. Caleb finally wakes up too, and the boys go off and shut themselves in the toy room and won't play with Travis. Travis has a cold right now, so he's got a runny nose and is miserable. Finally, my visiting teachers arrive at 3:30 p.m., and the boys spend the whole time showing off to them. They leave by 4, at which time I phone my mother and talk for a bit. Then I get the corn dogs in the oven.

5:15 p.m.
I feed Travis his dinner, chicken noodle dinner with sweet potatoes mixed in. Then I get the boys' plates ready and call them to dinner. We eat our corn dogs, canned corn, and canned pears. Then, I get Travis down and clean him up. I put his pajamas on him and make him a bottle. I brush his teeth, give him a dose of Tylenol, and try cleaning out his nose with the suction thingie. The boys, meanwhile, finish eating and then get their pajamas from their room. I rock Travis with a bottle and put him in bed, returning to set up the humidifier. Then, I go out and help resolve the issue of the stuck tape in the VCR, which Caleb tried putting in backwards. They start their movie, an animated story from the Book of Mormon. I clean up the kitchen.

6:15 p.m.
The movie is over. We play one round of Old Maid. Then we brush teeth and use the potty. The boys go to their room and each choose one book for me to read. We read books and say prayers. Then I sing to them and put them in bed.

7:15 p.m.
I finish blogging and then who knows what? Maybe a bowl of ice cream and then a nice soothing bath to finish out the somewhat chaotic day!

Travis Turns ONE!

Well, we actually celebrated Travis' first birthday two days before the actual birthday. That way we could have a more relaxed dinner with Corey not having to rush off to work. (Turns out, he came down sick Saturday morning and missed work on Sunday anyway...)



Grandma and Grandpa Fowles joined the celebration and we had fun opening gifts (the older boys did all the gift opening for Travis). Travis really loves his new toy cell phone, courtesy of Nana King, and his stuffed football from G.G. He hasn't really had much chance to play with the little people sets he got from his grandparents and parents because his older brothers have been hogging those, but the few moments he's had, he seems to enjoy those too!






I made a cool baseball glove cake, which I'm quite proud of. I can't take all the credit, I got the idea from the June issue of Parents magazine. It's fitting because Westley had a football cake, Caleb had just a spherical baseball cake, and now Travis has a baseball glove cake for the first birthday. He actually dove right into the baseball cupcake that was placed on top of the cake and put his own face in it! With Westley, he wouldn't even try it, so Corey shoved his face in. But Travis had already had doses of frosting earlier, so I'm sure he recognized that! He then had a lot of fun playing in the cupcake after it was smashed to bits on his tray. I'm not sure he really ate very much of it...

Happy Birthday Travis! Already one!

Caleb, Caleb

Caleb is definitely a challenging child. He simply is NOT motivated to be toilet trained. He has the ability to do it, he just doesn't want to. Often, when I am getting them ready for bed, or ready for the day in the morning, he will go potty in the toilet and then request a diaper. But then he refuses to let me change his diaper unless he is really poopy or it's been all day. Often he wears the same diaper from when he gets dressed in the morning until he goes to bed at night. Sometimes, he even insists on going to the potty during the day and the diaper remains dry. But I can't get him to wear underwear anymore...he's not interested. I'm hoping that this will change in a few months and he will realize that wearing underwear is much better.

He also is struggling with speech, I think. He is almost three, yet I can hardly understand anything he says. There are a few words that I know for sure, but sometimes, I think he's saying one thing and it's really something else. Even though Westley's vocabulary by this age wasn't huge, you could still understand the words. I think a lot of this is due to his finger always being in his mouth. I don't really know how to rectify that problem either. I am waiting for his 3 year checkup with the pediatrician to discuss these concerns of mine.

Otherwise, he really has a delightful personality. He's very happy and loving, and he likes to be silly. I think he will be our little comedian, when he's finally able to really talk. He sure loves to laugh.

More Preschool

This week was a busy week with Westley's preschool. In Math, he worked more with pattern blocks and teddy bear counters. We also made a graph of boys and girls in our family. He even included Snoopy and Eliza in the graph. He learned that there are more boys than girls in our family. He has also enjoyed playing with the pattern blocks at other times of the day, and Caleb has played with them some as well.

In Reading, we worked more on memorizing the alphabet. He's almost got it down perfectly, he just gets confused in the L-P part (because it's so fast in the song), and he gets S and X mixed up. I think we will do one more week focusing on the whole alphabet and then we will start individual letters for the week and concentrate on their sounds.

In Science, we studied insects. We talked about what makes an insect an insect (six legs, three-part body, antennae). We studied ants and butterflies in more depth (mostly because I already had access to papers about ants and butterflies that we could use). When we talked about ants, we looked in the encyclopedia at lots of color photos of ants, close-ups. Then we went on an "Ant March", looking for ants outside, but pest control had come on Monday so we didn't find any. When we studied butterflies, we looked in the encyclopedia at the colorful pictures again and we talked about the life cycle of a butterfly. We will probably touch on butterflies again in the spring when I can get a kit and actually watch Painted Lady butterflies grow from caterpillars. We also talked about the differences between moths and butterflies, and I had a worksheet that I used in second grade where you identify which ones are moths and which are butterflies based on the criteria. After explaining the differences to Westley, he was able to identify all the butterflies and moths on the paper!

Other activities we did include talking about the difference between night and day. Westley just gets the terminology mixed up. Sometimes he says it's naptime when it's bedtime and sometimes he says that he wants to stay up all night when it's naptime. So we are trying to get him to remember what is what. The next thing we need to work on is time in general. Often he talks about doing something "last night" when it's something we did six months or a year ago.

We also had fun with some hidden picture activities. This past year, we've subscribed to a Highlights for Children book set of Hidden Pictures books. Westley has really enjoyed those. One of the last things I purchased before cancelling the subscription was a set of four Hidden Pictures books that contain masters for hidden picture activities. I copied three of those for this week and we used them in conjunction with the lessons about night/day and insects.

Sometimes the teaching is frustrating because Westley really wants to do his own thing and doesn't follow directions, but we are working on it. He is a very bright little boy, with a mind eager for knowledge. I hope to be able to channel that in the right direction, at least for now. I'm sure the public schools will whip that lust for learning right out of him...

Preschool for Westley

Westley and I started doing preschool at home on September 4th. Our first day consisted of lessons in math, science, social studies, and reading & phonics.

I first had Westley put together his giant Alphabet train floor puzzle. He has done it so many times, but I think this was the first time that he did it without me giving him hints as to what letter came next. Every time he asked for help, I had him sing the alphabet song to the letter he had just finished and then find out what was next. Then he had to locate the letter from the puzzle pieces himself. After that, we did a phonics review of the letter sounds with a Hooked on Phonics CD and flash cards that I purchased earlier this year.

Math came next. I had purchased a Saxon Math homeschool program. It's actually for kindergarten, but it starts out so basic that I thought I'd give it a try. The first part of the first lesson was on the calendar. We talked about the calendar and how it tells us the month, day of the week, and the year and also the date. We filled out the first few days of September in his student notebook calendar, colored a green/orange AB pattern on the days, and filled in the numbers up through the 4th. I think the calendar is a very abstract thing for a 4-year-old, though, and it may be a while before he gets it. After the calendar, the lesson was on pattern blocks. He had only ever looked at the pattern blocks in their packaging when the math program arrived in the mail, so he'd never used them before. I was proud that the first design he made was so symmetrical!

Science came next. We have been talking about the human body since he asked about it last Sunday. This week we are studying the main parts (arms, legs, head, feet, eyes, mouth, etc.), the five senses, and the skeletal and circulatory systems. We will also touch on the other main systems (nervous, digestive, etc.), but only briefly. So on the first day, we put together a puzzle of the body. On the second day, we put together a skeleton while we named the different bones.

We did social studies next. We talked about Labor Day and all the different jobs people can have. We then put together a Labor Day alphabet book using a print shop computer program I have.

All in all, a good day, and Westley is still excited. All this morning he kept asking if we were doing school again, and was quite excited when I told him we would be. We will do it Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday each week.

Travis, the 10-Month-Old

Travis is such a clown! He is always making the funniest faces, and he crawls around the house 90% of the time with his head on the floor, like he's a little bulldozer. He also loves to wrestle with Westley, probably Westley more than Caleb because Caleb gets way too rough. But they mostly wrestle with a blanket as a prop--they roll around with the blanket and play peek-a-boo, during the game. Peek-a-boo is Travis' favorite game, and he gets really excited, kicking out his legs and pumping his arms every time we play. The usual way that we play involves him covering his face (and only his face) with something...a blanket, towel, or toy...and then I say, "Where's Travis?" and he laughs and laughs and kicks his legs and pumps his arms. Then he reveals his face with a huge grin, laughing, and I say, "Peek-a-boo!" which just makes him laugh all the harder. It's so cute!

Travis has been waking up lately with his pajamas all over the place. One morning, he woke up with one leg in and one leg out of his pants, shirt intact. Another morning (so pictured), he woke up with his pants completely off and on the floor and his shirt pulled halfway off. Sometimes he's only in a diaper. Apparently, we are often too slow in getting him in the morning and he gets bored.

He is just starting to take steps here and there, but mostly he still crawls. He's pretty good at walking behind a walker or with someone, but he just won't let go.

Travis really is a cutie!

Disciplining Four-Year-Olds

I think that four-year-olds are harder than three-year-olds. They're asserting their independence, and that makes them rather difficult to deal with sometimes. Of course, you need to give them situations where they can be independent yet still make good choices to learn how it feels to make the right choice. It's hard to give them this type of freedom though, especially for your first child. Obviously, a ten-month-old isn't capable of making choices at all, so the parents must make all choices for them. But a four-year-old is capable of making quite a few choices and must be given the liberty to do so.

For example, a ten-month-old just wants to learn about everything. So instead of leaving a house full of breakable and dangerous items, we, as parents, move these items up to higher levels out of the baby's sight and put items lower that the child can play with. Then the child does not have to choose which items are okay to play with and which ones are not. But a four-year-old can decide between an item that is safe and one that is not, like whether they should play with a knife or a toy car. Tempting as the knife might be, a well-taught four-year-old chooses the toy car and knows that he/she has made a good choice when the parents do not scold. They probably have been warned before not to touch the knives in the kitchen and perhaps have even had experience being punished for trying to play with one.

Currently, our four-year-old is giving us trouble. I recognize that many of the issues that we tend to battle about are really just a quest for more independence on his part. The problem is that I don't always know where to draw the line. How far do I let him go before I tell him he can't make that choice? If he makes a bad choice, like talking back to Mom and Dad, is he really trying to be defiant and downright rude or just trying to assert some independence? I'm sure the best way to teach him not to talk back is not spanking, but sometimes, when he goes on and on and won't be quiet, I have a hard time controlling that hand. Or when he acts out because he has to leave the pool before he's ready. I can understand not wanting to leave, and that's a fine opinion to have, but how do you properly teach him that he shouldn't have a wild temper tantrum because he doesn't want to leave? How do I teach him a proper outlet for his frustration? I just don't know. It seems easier than it is. Logically, I should be able to tell him that behavior is inappropriate, of course in his terms, and reward him when he behaves appropriately even though he's angry. But often the problem lies merely in the inability to calm him down. Usually, once he's calmed down, he doesn't even care or really remember why he's so upset. And then it's worthless to try and bring it up because he sweetly smiles and says, "okay, Mom," although I can tell he doesn't even get what I'm trying to tell him.

I guess it's just a constant learning process. Lucky me, I have at least three more kids to do this with. I hear it only gets better...