Half a Year,,,Time Flies

Birth Day

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wrapped around her fingers

Cozy

Play Date at the Park

Super Kayla!

Halloween

The All Knowing Look

Smiles for Daddy

Whoa! I'm surrounded by little plastic people! I must be a giant!

Laying Around

Those little plastic people are staring at me again!

Taking it easy

Sweet Slumber

The start of what could be a bad habit

Someone to lean on

Smilie

Lounging

Hangin' in there

ooooo toys!

Getting ready for big things to come

Tummy Time with friends

Toes!

Tongue!

Sitting Pretty

Toy Inspector

and taster

blowing bubbles!

playing!

Helping clean the dishes

Zoooom!

Well January is nearly over and I haven't even posted my Christmas letter!  It might not happen this year.  But in the spirit of FLY Lady I am just going to start where I am.   So here's a little photo montage of our new year so far....

Matia's Pre Birthday Party at Grandma Marion's and Grandpa Gary's

Swimming Lessons began the day after we got back from holidays.  We drive 45 minutes every Monday and Wednesday for 30 minutes of lessons.  Dade is very confident in his swimming skills, so his main objective is to practice listening to instructions.  Matia is working on increasing her confidence in the water, putting her face in the water, and doing floats and glides with assistance.

They really enjoy their lessons.

I have not done many crafts with the kids since we got home from Christmas holidays.  I mainly want them to play with their new toys as much as possible, so Matia decided to turn her Barbie family into mermaids and a merman by attatching "tails" to their legs (the socks are their tails).  Creativity in action.

Matia's 4th birthday was celebrated with a Zu Zu Pet party, thanks Mom for helping me make this family of Zu Zu Pets

The kids also made their own Zu Zu pets, since it was to cold outside to go tobogganing.

Two peas in a pod

Our car when we returned from Christmas Holidays (it's under all the snow)

Best friends.  Dade and Matia do everything together and don't seem to get tired of each other.  They are fiercely loyal to each other, and very generous to one another.  They have their own interests but participate in each others games and activities with gusto. Yes there are skirmishes, but over all they are all for one and one for all.  I'm so lucky to have these kids!

Kayla is hitting milestones at light speed!  Over Christmas she learned where her toes were and promptly rolled over from back to front.   She took to her jolly jumper like duck in water, and she is now learning her balance and sits up for short periods of time.  She is still happy go lucky and enjoys watching her brother and sister play around her.  She sleeps well, and eats well and plays well, what more can I ask?

Other things we have been doing in January are: playing in the snow, catching up on school work, working on house stuff (Mike installed our water heater and will be plumbing it soon), working on carving pine block cars for AWANA (Mike and the kids), visiting and playing with our friends and cousins.  The fun never stops!

Who's Who?

A.  Kayla or Matia?

B.  Matia or Kayla?

C.  Kayla or Matia?

We have been a family of 5 for a month now. Some things are glorious. Some things are difficult. I don't mind admitting that I'm tired, pretty much all the time, I think that's just how it's going to be until the kids grow up for the rest of my life. The coffee cup and I have a little thing going on, ok well actually it's quite serious, we're inseparable really, and honestly when our lips meet there is a lot of hot steamy lovin' going on! Did I mention I'm pretty tired these days? Perhaps I should digress and draw your attention to more wholesome subject matter, like all the things that are glorious about life these days:

• The smell of a tiny baby, all milky and sweet.
• The way my older daughter takes on her sisterly duties with gusto, simply because she can't get enough of this new little person in our lives.
• The way my son will let Kayla grasp his finger when no one seems to be noticing.
• That I am seeing progress in our schooling in just 6 short days (don't get me wrong, we've got a long row to hoe, but still progress in any sense of the word is still glorious).
• We are home, such that it is, it is still home, still our stuff, our friends, our life and I'm glad.
• My husband is renovating our bathroom even as I type this! 
• We have kittens and a mama mouser cat that are sticking around and hopefully eating up the copious amounts of mice on our property.
• Mike got our hot tub refurbished and fired up! Heaven!

 Some things that I'm finding difficult right now are:

• Being tired all the time.  I can't even blame Kayla since I'm only up once a night and then usually she calls for me at a reasonable time in the morning (usually we hang out at 3am ish and 7am ish). She goes right back to sleep and usually I'm free to do the same, except that I really need to get up at 7 so I can get our day on track.  My difficulty stems from the fact that I have a bad habit of staying up until 12am or later, it's the carny in me I guess. All summer we have been rising late (after 9am) and going to bed late (1am ish) so I'm still having trouble getting to bed at a reasonable hour, especially since I like to give Kayla  a dream feed at 11pm ish.  
• Homeschooling.  I thought my kids would enjoy the activities I had in mind, but they have pretty much decided that they don't like school. They have decided this in 6 days.  Matia has gone so far as to say that O Canada is stupid and that she hates the Lord's Prayer. Oh my.  I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot.  I'm hoping some object lessons (a paper mache globe) and a trip to the library for some good books will help things a bit.  Other than that we're just going to plug along and by gum and by golly they are going to learn that I'm the boss and they must get with the program and that they are not going to break me! I'm a substitute teacher, they haven't even scratched the surface of what I'm capable of withstanding! Oh ya, it's going to be so fun around here, let me tell you.
• Renovations.  We are redoing our bathroom. We have completely gutted the old one, it was pretty yucky. I am extremely pleased with this project, the only difficulty is that it means we are living in our travel trailer again this fall.  It also means that I have no washer and dryer right now.  I'm not uncomfortable in our travel trailer, and to combat the laundry pile up I went and picked out 7 outfits for each of us and I'm not keeping any more clothing than that in the camper.  Once we run out I need to run to the laundromat or we wear dirty clothes and that is that (or so we shall see). 
• I'm grumpy.  I'm unreasonably grumpy almost all the time.  I pray for God's spirit to grow the fruit of self control in me every day because I just want to bite everyone's head off all the time.  I know some of it is hormones, some is fatigue, some is running out of patience from constant disciplining of preschoolers, some is circumstances outside of my control.  I know I should exercise and get my sleep and my quiet time with the Lord.  Usually I'm getting one out of three. I'll keep on working on it.  Sorry, in advance if I bite your head off.

Over all I'd say the good out weighs the bad. We continue to learn from all of our experiences and we keep on looking forward to our future with optimistic hope.

Snippets of Kayla's first 3 weeks

Just hours old

Kayla & Mommy

Kayla & Daddy

Photo shoot in her new duds from Great Aunt Annette & Uncle Jim

Awake Time

Kayla won the arm wrestle with Daddy

Sleep Time

A Born Traveler

At 2 weeks Kayla was 9lbs 10ozs

Meeting her cousins

Snug as a bug