Thursday: last day of school

Today was the last day of school.

Since everyone else is doing it, here they are at the beginning of school...

Haha, when you've been in school for the last nine months and you're only 22 months old I guess that is a large portion of your life.  Joshua grew hair!  I think Isaac looks quite a bit older too, but some of that could be the stance.

Wednesday: talking, geocaching

Today we went to a speech pathologist in the morning.  Isaac has had problems with s blends, and sometimes we notice that other people can't understand him very well.  Well, she said that he was right on track.  S blends (sh, sp, sn, etc.) don't always come until 7yrs old.  The other sounds were good, and his vocabulary and communication skills were good.

We came away with a few things to help with the s blends.  The cutest moment was when we were getting ready to leave and she asked if I had any more questions.  I said no, but Isaac said there was one word they hadn't covered.  So he told her that he was having problems with "top light."  She looked at me, I interpreted, and they went through how to say "stop light".  I was pretty proud of him for asking about it; it's one of the words we've talked about in the car.

After that we went geocaching with Betsy and her kids.  Well, we tried.  There were a ton of options in Paw Paw park, a new park to both of us, but most were hard to find/unfound for quite a while/in the middle of tall grass.  I should have looked harder at the options there, especially since it was their first time and we haven't done it all that much.  But we did explore a new park and that was fun. Isaac and Joshua both picked up some rocks.

Tuesday: food

Isaac must be going through a growing spurt.  Yesterday he ate all his food, had his little dessert, had a graham cracker, had half a banana, had the other half banana, had some frozen peas, and had more frozen peas before we cut him off because it was time for bed.  Today was similar.

Joshua, on the other hand, is on a hunger strike.  I'm lucky if he'll eat two bites of breakfast.  He did eat a good lunch; I got some sugar pea crisps and rices cakes to help tempt him, along with crackers and hummus.  He ate his cheese just to get more rice cakes.  No snack, but then didn't eat a bite of dinner.  (The last several days have been similar.)  Even the pouches and the garlic bread went untouched.  Sigh.  Flurry's rubbing off on him.

Monday: this and that

Yesterday Joshua woke up from his nap a little early.  I finally let him use the Ipad.  He chilled.  When time was up he was in a much better mood.  But he was just so cute!

Today was another work day.  I graded and dealt with things until about 1pm.  One person has now finished...hooray!  I had time to finish several more things on my to-do list, although it's still a lot longer than I would like.

After school we went geocaching.  Isaac had asked to do it, it was a nice day out, and we didn't really have any plans for the evening.  We found one and looked really hard for one, but couldn't find it.

Sunday: sermon

Today in church we're starting a new sermon series called "Ask me anything."  Pastor JD started with why it's ok to ask questions, etc. and mentioned that Jesus says we should be like little children.

Whenever I've heard that phrase I've always thought we should imitate the trust and absolute love and carefree-ness that children have.  The passage the pastor was talking about, he said we should be like children in how we ask questions.

Have I mentioned that Isaac asks a lot of questions lately?

Anyway, the second half of the message Pastor JD answered questions that had been texted to him during the sermon.  So he had to answer them off the cuff.  I was very impressed with the answers, but some of the answers reminded me of how I answer Isaac's questions.

Sometimes I don't answer his question directly.  Sometimes Isaac has an incorrect underlying idea that I need to address that misconception instead.  Sometimes I have to say I don't know.  Pastor JD did the same thing for some of the questions.  He was forthright about it, and always said that he doesn't have all the answers, etc., but didn't always answer the question directly.

Anyway.  An interesting sermon, especially since I'm still thinking about it.

a few days ago: 53 months

Isaac turned 53 months old a few days ago.

I had been thinking about doing a Q&A with him, but my initial questions all got "I don't know"s.  I did get a few answers to the questions I already knew though:
Q: What's your favorite color?
A: gold

Q: What's your favorite animal?
A: dog

Q: What's your favorite food?
A: Donut

He still has a ton of questions.  Although there is a very specific "Ooohhh." when something clicks in his brain.  It's been fun to listen for it.

I'll be honest, not a ton of things stuck out to me this month.  He's getting bigger (literally) which sometimes makes me do a double take.  He is slowly starting to grasp some slightly more obscure concepts, like rich and poor.  (BTW, we're rich because we have a lot of Duplos.  It isn't a bad way of measuring it.)

He slide down a few medium sized slides this month.  After only going down one last summer (and that was because Ben went down with him) I wasn't sure when he was going to do them again.

Here is his nervous face.  He tends to be a happy/silly boy (with bouts of sadness that are over pretty quickly), but whenever he doesn't feel happy he feels "frustrated/nervous."  He still can't pinpoint the cause of such feelings, but at the same time he bounces back pretty quickly.

He loves me "infinity, infinity, infinity, 100, infinity, billion, infinity, infinity..." much, Pluto 100 much, and Ben 11 much.  Ben and I were talking about this last night and wondering if he's playing a game with Ben that doesn't feel like a game.  Isaac definitely has a preference for me, but enjoys being with Ben too.

Isaac does not like going to the gym.  I probably get more complaints about that than anything else.  He does like going to church.  School is somewhere in the middle...I think it would be better except he doesn't like nap time.

Isaac currently is enjoying books by Arthur Geisert.  (This includes black book.)  Two of the three stories have few to no words, but all of them have interesting machines/contraptions in them.  I expect we'll slowly be renting our way through them.  Ben and I find them interesting too...at least the first ten times we read them.  (Books without words are handy though...you can do them quickly or slowly.)  (Haha, that paragraph just brought me down a rabbit hole where I put two books on reserve, found an old Christmas book that I had thought about this year, and a big list of wordless picture books.)

Joshua knows that Isaac's alternate name is Puppy.

Isaac still likes to play with marbles.  I realized that I don't mention that much, but they get put away every Sunday and after the next quiet time they're out again.  Every week.  Even if the marbleworks pieces aren't out, the marbles are.  He has explored marbles a lot.

Thursday: activity fail

Today we had two activities: dust and dress up in toilet paper.  (It originally said toilet paper mummies, but Isaac wasn't excited.)

We started with dusting.  It went fine.  The boys enjoyed using the step stool to get some of the higher spots.  We got some dust out of the house.  Check.

Then on to dress up with toilet paper.  Isaac was still against it.  Well, ok.  I said he could be the photographer and I'd do it with Joshua.  Yeah, Joshua was against it too.  I made myself a little hat and called it a flop.

And I have my first funny Joshua conversation!  We were praying before dinner.  (Usually Joshua repeats the last word of the phrase that we say.)

Ben: Dear God, Thank  you for today.  Thank you for airplanes
Joshua: airplanes.
Ben: Thank you for this food.
Joshua: airplanes.
Ben: and please bless it to our bodies.
Joshua: airplanes.
Ben: In Jesus name, Amen
Joshua: Amen.