The kids are . . .

. . . doing great.

Olivia is crawling everywhere. She loves to stand up in her little entertainment bouncer, but spends most of her time crawling around her room or the living room. She is constantly pulling up to the coffee table and trying to eat my magazines. In addition to crawling around and getting into everything, she is sitting up really well on her own. In other news, I have finally figured out how to get her to eat. She hates cereal of any type,and won't drink any juice that we give her. Until a couple days ago I couldn't get her to eat anything, and she was starting to drink way to much formula and too often. I could get her to eat food like soup, yogurt, ice cream, etc. . . off our plates but no baby food. Then, I had an epiphany -- warm the food up. I don't know why I never did that or even though of it until now. I mean you would think with four kids I could remember something so basic. Oh well. She is eating now. She is in general, a very happy baby. She smiles and talks all the time. Although she sleeps well at night, she really doesn't nap well. About once a week she takes a good nap, but the rest of the time we are lucky to get her to take two 15 minute naps all day. I guess it is a good thing that she is a happy baby. LOL. We have had one accident. About a week ago I sat Olivia in the middle of our king size bed with pillow all around her. Somehow, she managed to move herself off the bed in the amount of time it took me to walk to the other side of the bed to pick something up. I have no idea how she managed, but I think she was a bit startled by the hard stop at the bottom of the 3 foot drop to the floor. Luckily she hit nothing on the way down and had no marks from it. Needless to say she is either in something or on the floor from now on.

Caden is doing really well. He is starting to get most of his colors down and counts pretty well to five forwards and backwards. Little Einsteins taught him the backwards and I have had a heck of a time teaching him to count forwards. He is mostly accident free at nights now. This would be a better thing if he was holding it all night. Unfortunately he is waking up at 3 and 4 in the morning and needing help to the bathroom and then back to bed. He is riding his bike so well that we raised his training wheels a bit so that he would have to balance more. Hopefully by next summer he will be able to get rid of the training wheels all together. I have started doing a little school work with him. He always talked about doing his work like brothers so we have been doing some numbers and letters and colors. He does really well at matching games, and learns really fast. He recognizes his name now when it is written, and pretends to be writing it himself all the time. He has also started to "read" books a lot. This is exciting. I am really hoping to get him reading early since he has such an interest in it.

Ezekiel is screaming through third grade. He really loves history and his math is doing so much better this year. Spelling is still his worst subject. I am still not sure what to do about his spelling. Spelling never came naturally to Russell, but he always memorized easily so he would just memorize them. Not only does spelling not come naturally to Zeke, but he has a really rough time memorizing anything. Spelling makes me tired. His drum lessons are really coming along. It is actually beginning to sound like he is playing something, and not just hitting the drums. He is really enjoying himself. Because sheet music for percussion is so different, I am also teaching him how to read music and play the flutephone(recorder). He really does enjoy music. I am excited to see him do more with his music. The boys took the Presidential fitness test with the local homeschool PE class. Unfortunately we were on vacation for half the test but Ezekiel did get to do the run and scored the highest getting a "Presidential" mark on the run. Very Cool!

Russell is working his way through seventh grade. I am really trying to force him to be more independent and manage his time better this year. He has learned a couple of rough lessons already, but the key is that he actually learned from them and is improving. We have a new policy in effect now that he is in "middle school". No Pass, No Play. Meaning that if he does not complete all of his weeks school work in a fashion acceptable to Mommy then he does not get to play in his football games. This has been a major motivator for time management. LOL. Football is going awesome this year. His team has actually managed to score a couple times and even win one game. He is still playing the part of "utility player". He plays whatever position the coach needs him at, so he is constantly moving. I cannot wait to see him on a team where he is more focused. He has one more year with this team, and then it is off to high school football. I can't believe he will only be at home for school one more year after this one. It is going so fast. I can't believe in a couple very short months -- I will have a teenager. He is still playing guitar, but we are not sure how much longer he will take lessons. After he has finished the book he is in now he will know all the notes and chords. Then, he will just be working on techniques etc. . . . Russell also took the Presidential fitness test. He scored National one category and Presidential on another. He didn't do bad on the mile run (right at 10 minutes), but you have to do in around 9 minutes to rank on the run for his age.