Just a Quick Post

I have about a million stories and a million photos to share but with only 15 minutes until the bedtime of two certain babies, I will have to resort to a short but sweet post.

Conference - Emma is doing so well in school. The teacher said she is an above average student and a "love". He gave us a list of 2nd grade spelling words for Emma to start studying since she consistently gets 10/10 on her spelling tests. Again, I have to say that I adore Emma's teacher and I am so glad that she got placed in his class this year!

Halloween - After 3 years Emma finally retired the old skeleton costume... by passing it on to Oliver! He was a very scary "skeleton bones" and I made Emma a mummy costume with a pair of white sweats and strips of torn bedsheet stained with tea. Pictures will come soon! The weather was wonderful for the first time in years and the kids got some serious trick-or-treating time in this year. They both have big bags of candy to show for it!

I took Oliver to Emma's classroom Halloween party and the teacher had all the students (and little brothers and sisters) quietly sitting on the floor in their costumes and he said that everyone would come up to the front one at a time and tell the class who they were. Oliver immediately shot his hand up in the air and yelled, "I'm Oliver!" at the top of his lungs. Needless to say, he and Emma got to come to the front of the classroom and talk about their costumes first!

Doctor Visit - Today I took both kids to the doctor. Both of them are healthy and growing right on schedule! Emma is 44 inches tall and 40 pounds and Oliver is 40 inches tall and also weighs 40 pounds! Emma is in the 25th percentile for height and weight and Oliver is in the 90th.

Time to get these babies in bed. I will try to post photos tomorrow!

So Much For Keeping This Updated

I was doing so good for awhile there. Forgive me. I've been busy! The Boy is in the midst of Potty Training and let's just say I wish it were going better. *sigh* He also is talking up a storm now and says the funniest things. I can't tell you how many times in a day Tree and I will just bust up laughing at him. And he loves it. He is the ham in the family. He is obsessed with singing and dancing and a new kids' show called "Yo Gabba Gabba". He has written his own song that he sings all the time. Here are the lyrics:

Sing a song!
R-E-D!
Sing a song!
R-E-D!

Emma Rose is into poetry now. She writes poems every night. I am not sure why she calls them "poems" as they are more like short stories. She is working very, very hard on using proper capitalization in her writing. She learned to write using all capitals and it is proving a hard habit to break. Her teacher calls her "The Capital Queen". We have her first Parent Teacher Conference of the year tomorrow and I can't wait to see what her teacher has to say. I believe I will get a copy of her report card then, as well.

Puppies

Yesterday we went to Elijah's football game and there was a little girl there with two teeny-tiny chihuahua puppies. Emma and Oliver of course were completely mesmerized. Lucky for them the owner of puppies was very generous and let both Emma and Oliver have plenty of snuggle time with the puppies. Oliver was so gentle that the puppy he was holding fell asleep in his arms making for a pretty darn cute picture.

(I don't know if you know this already but I just found out recently that you can click on any of the photos in this blog to see them at full-size. I highly recommend checking out Oliver and the puppy at full-size!)

Fun on the Farm

On Saturday, Emma and Oliver were invited to a birthday party held at a farm. There was horseback riding and a hay ride and tons of fun things. Oliver had no problem getting on the pony but Emma didn't want to. She was worried about getting hurt and I told her that it was perfectly safe and that these ponies were very calm and gentle and there was nothing to worry about. She looked at me and said, "Oh yeah? Then why do you have to wear a helmet, Mom?" You got me there, kid. She is just too dang smart!

First Day of First Grade

Here she is in her new birthday dress from Papa Mike. She wasn't the slightest bit nervous this year and is SO excited about her new teacher. Frankly, I too am so excited about her new teacher! He seems like he is going to be wonderful. He was very welcoming and encouraged me to visit at any time and to bring Oliver. That's a big thumbs-up in my book!

We will be going back to Emma's classroom this afternoon to bring ice cream cups as a birthday treat. Since the school year started the day after Emma's birthday, her teacher didn't want her to have to wait until the end of the school year to celebrate her birthday with the other summer birthdays so he asked if I wanted to bring treats on the first day. Emma is very, very excited. She also gets a birthday crown and gets to sit in the Birthday Chair while all the other kiddos have to sit on the floor. What a cool way to start the school year!

Six

Emma says she had the best birthday ever this year. On Sunday we had a little family party where she received Polly Pockets aplenty, some really cute school clothes and a new two-wheeler bike! She also got cards in the mail from her Nana with an Old Navy gift card and one from her G.G. with a 20 dollar bill which she plans to use to buy more Polly Pockets.

On her actual birthday, the 14th, she took Oliver and two friends Nolan and Parker to Chuck E. Cheese for lunch and picked hot dogs for her birthday dinner.

National Night Out

Every year on August 7th neighborhoods around the US host block parties. We were finally able to attend ours. The visit from the firefighters was by far the highlight of the evening!

He's 3

We finally had the great bed unveiling on Saturday. Oliver went to Grandma's house while Tree put the bed together. Oliver came back home a couple of hours later and we sent him up to his room where the assembled bed was waiting. He saw it was pretty shocked, "Lightning McQueen? Lightning McQueen! Lightning McQueen!" and then there was a pause and a cry of, "Where's my bed?" once he realized that his crib was gone. We explained that this was his new bed and then he was okay. He crawled and bounced all over it like a little bug and he and Emma both played in the bed all weekend. Big, big thank-yous to everyone who made this possible. This truly was Oliver's dream present!

Guess what is in our garage right now?

I will give you a hint: it is BIG. Very, very big. Yup. Yesterday we went and picked up the Lightning McQueen bed and it is now hiding under a blanket and a shower curtain in the garage. The box is almost 7 feet long and hung out the back of our van. We had to drive home very slowly with the hatch open in the rain but we got it home safely.

The plan for Saturday is to get Oliver out of the house while Tree and I go buy a mattress and box spring and assemble the bed. I can't wait to see the look on his face. As of right now the only part of his birthday that he has shown interest in is the cake. "Where's my birthday cake?" I think he has forgotten that on birthdays you get not only cake, but presents, too!

Short O

On the walk home from school yesterday Emma told me that during class the teacher had asked the students to think of words with the "short O" sound in them. Emma's contribution to the group? "Rock On". Two short o's in one and plenty of laughs from the teacher.

Two Cute Ollie Stories

Yesterday we went to Target. While we were shopping there was a group of people from Invision which is a local center for mentally handicapped people. One of the women in the group saw Oliver and fell in love with him. She came over to him in the cart and tried to say hi to him but Oliver just ignored her. I asked Oliver to show the woman the new car he picked out and he said, "No. Want get out of here." which made everyone laugh. The woman and I tried a few more times to get Oliver to comply but he just didn't want to talk to a stranger. We started to walk away and got halfway down the aisle when Ollie burst into tears. I asked him what was wrong and he said, "Want show lady my car! I ready!". So I pushed him back over to the woman and Oliver had a nice little conversation with her about his new car.

When we got home Oliver had to add his new car to his bucket full of cars. When he did so he realized that he now had two Maters (Mater is a character from the Disney movie "Cars"). He looked at both of them and said, "6,7,8 Maters! Give one to Emma." and he proceeded to hand his brand new car that he had just picked out at Target to his sister. For this story to be special you need to know just how possesive Oliver is with his bucket of cars. He can't even sleep unless it is in his bed with him! It was a big deal for him to give Emma one of his cars. Especially his brand new one.

Someone's Turning 3 This Month

This is his dream present:



He is OBSESSED with the Disney movie "Cars" and when he first saw this bed online one night he positively lit up. Bad thing is that it costs $300. Plus $100 shipping. Really, really expensive but possibly doable. Maybe.

If anyone is interested in helping to get Oliver the bed, let me know ASAP and then I can determine if this is something that we can do or if I need to come up with a more reasonable Plan B for the Boy's birthday!

International Night

Well, I have decided I need a telephoto lens for my camera. None of the photos of the performance turned out very good. And in our classic style, we ran out of video tape less than halfway through the performance. Good news is that we can order copies of the performance from the school district and they should be really nice, professional copies.

After the kids sang, we headed to Emma's classroom where she showed us a "suitcase" she had made filled with all kinds of Australia projects.

Emma says, "International Night was fun. My favorite part was singing. It was fun when we played before we went on stage. The kids in our class were being so funny. We made koalas and we made kangaroos for our hats."

Emma's Report Card

Click the picture below to view Emma's most recent report card. We are pretty proud of our girl!

100 Days of Kindergarten

Not only was last Friday "Pajama Day" it was also the 100th Day of Kindergarten. Emma's class celebrated by making "I Survived 100 Days of Kindergarten" crowns and necklaces with 100 Fruit Loops strung on them. They wrote about what they would do with $100 and drew pictures of what they would look like when they are 100 years old. Emma was positively bursting with excitement when I picked her up on Friday. I think it may have been one of the best days of kindergarten yet!

Pictures

Just some quick pix I took today. Notice Ollie's haircut and in the lower left photo you can see the bump on his noggin that he got on Saturday after running full speed into a door. He is going through a major accident-prone phase lately. Just two nights ago he knocked over an entire bowl of scalding hot soup and it spilled down his chest. Fortunately his shirt prevented him from getting any serious burns but it sure scared the heck out of Mama and Daddy!

Writing

When we had Emma's conference her teacher mentioned what a great writer Emma is. While some of the other kids will write a sentence or two, Emma fills the entire sheet with words. Here is something she wrote recently. The teacher asked the students to write about what they would do if they had a dog. Emma worked so hard on the assignment that her teacher gave her a PRIDE ticket (a special award teachers hand out when a student is showing a good example). Emma's essay reads: I would take my dog to the park and I would take she to the slide then we would go to the ice cream place then we would go home then we would play hide and seek and then we would get my dog in the tub and then we would watch TV and we would watch "Polly Pocket Movie".

Dentist Appointment

I took Emma to the dentist yesterday. No cavities. This is a big deal since she has had at least one cavity at all of her previous appointments. Poor kid has her mama's teeth.

Emma's Conference

Emma has known her alphabet since she was 2 and learned the sounds the letters make soon after. So it came as a big surprise when at the Parent Teacher Conference last September we were told that Emma had failed the "Initial Sounds Fluency" part of the DIBELS test. Badly. In one minute's time Emma was able to point out the beginning sound of three words. Only three. When they retested her, she got a zero. We were pretty puzzled since Emma went into kindergarten knowing all of the letter sounds and even how to spell and handful of words.

We had our second Parent Teacher Conference of the year last Thursday. Tree and I met with Emma's teacher and one of the first things she went over were the results from the DIBELS testing. As we went over the "Initial Sounds Fluency" part she reminded us about Emma's 3 and 0 and showed us where they were on the chart. Then she showed us Emma's most recent test score. A 106. The teacher said when she inputted the score that the computer asked her, "Are you sure that is correct?". Emma got the highest score in the whole kindergarten for that part of the test. I have to admit, we were pretty dang proud.

A Blog is Born

So, I have been seriously slacking when it comes to sending pictures lately. And I haven't been the greatest at emailing about school conferences, doctor's appointments or even about the super cute things these two do on a daily basis. I am hoping that keeping a blog will change that. This will be a place where I can post photos and tell stories and keep everyone informed.

So, bookmark this site and check back often for updates on the amazing adventures of Emma and Oliver! Those kids are nothing if not entertaining so stay tuned!