Nine Weeks Old and Growing So Much!

Jesse is getting BIG! Joe was a big baby. Not at birth—all of my babies have been small to average at birth, but Joe grew soooooo fast! I looked back at pictures last week and he looked like a 6 month old at 2 months. I can see Jesse taking on this same pattern. I’m glad he’s so healthy, but I do not want him to grow big so quickly:-). He weighs in at 13 lbs. this week.

I have decided to enjoy him as much as I can. What I mean by this is that I follow Baby Wise to the letter with my babies, and for the most part I love it. I am a scheduler and thrive on schedule, routine, doing things at the same time each day, but I just don’t have the heart to let Jesse cry it out. I also want to hold him as much as I can. Although I don’t anticipate Jesse being my last baby—I hope and pray Heavenly Father will see fit to bless our family with at least one more sweet spirit—I just love every second I get to spend holding him and smelling him.

Things I love the most about Jesse right now:

• the soft pads on the bottoms of his feet
• the rolls he’s getting on his thighs
• his soft cheeks
• his fluffy hair right after a bath
• the way he looks at me, and calms down as soon as he hears my voice, or I pick him up

It’s never too late to be a pumpkin is it—even after Halloween? This outfit was too big for Jesse the week of Halloween, but it fits him now, and I think he looks so cute in it. I had to get a picture of the back of it.

Of course I got some close-ups. I have certain poses that have always been my favorites. This is my most favorite because it is close-up and I can see his sweet face so good.

Smiling at his toys:

Jamie brought Jesse in to sleep with me one morning this week. This is my favorite picture of the week. I love this picture because it reminds me of how good it felt to lay right next to him and hear him breathe those soft, quick baby breaths.

This week I thought often of one of my favorite quotes by Dorothy Evslin, “It will be gone before you know it. The fingerprints on the wall appear higher and higher, then suddenly they disappear.” This is so true!

What We Learned This Week

We learned much more this week in our homeschool than just academics. I learned alot too. I’ll start with what I learned. I learned to relax a little. I learned it’s ok to take a break and to back off a bit and just have a little more fun. I am finally realizing that one of the advantages of homeschool is being able to make it work for your family—as to when you school, how you school and what you teach.

School has been very difficult for me the past 8 weeks. It is so hard to teach Hanna and Joe while Jack runs around and Jesse is sometimes awake and being fed as well. I finally figured out (with some advice from my mom) that school works best for us in the afternoon when the little ones are asleep, or at least Jack, and we can concentrate better—all of us.

I have also decided no more pictures of schooling. It’s just too stressful and honestly, pointless—to me—to interrupt school and teaching time to snap pictures. Sure, finished projects, craft pictures, but no more during work and teaching time. I realized I have been letting blog linkies and other homeschool bloggers' activities dictate alot of how I do our school, and that is so totally ridiculous! I am going to go back to pure fun—teaching, learning and loving alongside my children—not in front of them with the camera. This week went so much better for all of us!

Lastly, we are taking it easy until January! I realized two weeks ago we were halfway through our school year already because we started in June, so we are going to enjoy this wonderful time of year. Hanna will only be doing ELA, Science and History. Joe will be doing phonics and math. He actually read his first word on his own this week—hot! I look forward to seeing how he develops each week with his reading. Of course, we will be doing LOTS of book reading and crafting:-)!

On to our week….We spent this week reading books about Thanksgiving and learning about Pilgrims and Indians. This was Joe’s first year really learning about Thanksgiving. Hanna and I both shared our knowledge of it with him, and took turns reading to him. We enjoyed reading:

• One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims
• Twas The Night Before Thanksgiving
• Thanksgiving Mice
• This Is the Turkey
• A Plump and Perky Turkey
• Setting the Turkeys Free
• The Fire Fighter’s Thanksgiving
• Let’s Celebrate Thanksgiving
• The Thanksgiving Bowl
• I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Pie

I also printed off some non-fiction Thanksgiving info from Apples 4 the Teacher.

From Itty Bitty Bookworm Joe made an adorable dream catcher. He spent lots of time weaving the yarn through the holes in the paper plate. He didn’t want to stop. He worked really hard on this project.

Hanna made a cool dream catcher too, from That Artist Woman. She put her own twist on her dream catcher and did a great job.

Joe built log cabins (another great Itty Bitty Bookworm idea!) modeled after the Pilgrims made from Lincoln Logs.

Hanna found more lizards. She found lizards each day she was outside this week, one day she found four! I love that she still enjoys finding “critters”. I will be sad when this phase of childhood innocence is gone. I take pictures each chance I get of her with these findings.

Next week we have a bit more to do with our Thanksgiving studies and will enjoy Thanksgiving dinner together as a family. We’ve already started putting up our Christmas trees and decorations throughout our home. My goal is to have everything decorated for Thanksgiving dinner, except our live tree—we always put that up the day after Thanksgiving. I LOVE this time of year!

Recipe for Service (and cookies too!)

Monday night we had a really fun and memorable Family Home Evening that I’d like to share. It was nothing out of the ordinary, but it was a first for us of a tradition I hope to keep. It began by me taking Hanna and Joe out Monday afternoon to shop for the contents of their (our) Operation Christmas Child boxes. I am so glad we decided to participate in this wonderful project—we will do this each year from now on. We did two boxes this year, one for Hanna and one for Joe. Hanna was really impacted by our shopping experience. It hit her that we were buying for children who are much less fortunate than we are. She talked alot about this during shopping and later at home, and put alot of time and thought into the gifts she selected and her hand made card. Joe was very sweet too, and he picked out things he’d enjoy having and made a precious card as well.

For our Family Home Evening lesson I selected an activity from our magazine The Friend, copied it, had Hanna cut it out, and I presented it.

We will be putting a puzzle of a house together over the next few weeks. Each piece of the puzzle is centered around an attribute that a home/family needs to be happy.

This week we put our first piece of our puzzle together and focused on the attribute/act of service. We talked about serving one another in our home and serving others. We also talked about how serving each other and serving others is the same as serving Heavenly Father and our Savior.

After our lesson we put our Operation Christmas Child boxes together. The kids made their cards and our boxes are ready to go!

We made and ate Autumn Surprise Pumpkin Cookies for a treat. These are so quick to make and taste good too! You can find the recipe *here*, (scroll to page 15).

This was a wonderful lesson and such a rewarding activity. I am anxious now to find more ways that our family can serve together over the Christmas season.

Learning Through Love Update!

I have decided to end Learning Through Love linky each week beginning now. I do love doing my weekly wrap up post and will continue to do so each week, but it will be without a linky. The reason is I simply cannot comment on each and every blog every week. I always do, and it is very time consuming. I love reading blogs, and I love seeing what others are doing and getting new ideas, but right now I just don't have the extra time that it takes to host and comment on linky posts weekly. I would not feel good hosting a linky if I didn't comment. So for now, this will work out best for me.

I have been doing lots of thinking about what blogging means to me lately. When I began my blog a year ago in December it was strictly for recording my family's growth, activities and memories. I didn't even know at the time I would be a homeschool mom in just six short months. My blog kind of "ran away from me" over the last few months and I have decided to regroup and make it fun for me again. In the beginning I posted many heartfelt posts--my feelings. This is what I want to go back to. Of course, now I will add in our crafts and homeschool activities because this has become a huge part of our family--who we are now, and I am thankful for the blessing of homeschool in our home and family life. So, I hope you will stay tuned and see what we continue to do. Not much will change, but you'll see and hear alot more of "ME", because after all, this is my blog and MY FAMILY, MY FOREVER!

Bread Slice Bird Treats and Leaf Art

Each year after we read Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf, by Lois Ehlert, we make treats for the birds out of bread slices, just as described in the book.

You simply cut out bread with cookie cutters, punch a hole in the bread near the top with a paintbrush handle, brush the bread cutouts with beaten eggs, dip in birdseed and let dry. Once dry, string and hang in your tree!

Hanna also made a leaf art picture to go along with this book:

Joe made one similar to this a couple months back:

This is one of our favorite Fall books and activities. Fall is such a fun time of year!

To see what others are doing this week in their yards with birds head over to my friend Shannon's and check out Naturally Curious Tots.

Another Turkey Craft

Here’s another cute turkey craft. It’s fun and is made with things you most likely have on hand.

You simply cut a paper plate to look like this, and paint it to resemble feathers and feet:

Cut a paper towel roll into two pieces, one longer one for the turkey’s body and a shorter one for the turkey’s head, and paint these pieces brown. Glue a beak and eyes onto the head. Glue head and some wings onto the body, and then glue this piece onto the plate.

So cute!

Daniel and The Word of Wisdom

It is very important to me that my children grow up with a strong moral foundation rooted in the gospel and their Heavenly Father. I believe it is important to not just show up at church on Sundays, but to LIVE a life each day outside of Sunday services that is pleasing to the Lord. I feel that my children need to be taught much more about the gospel and their Savior than can be learned in an hour of Sunday School each week at church, and I try to do my best to take advantage of the teaching moments that present themselves at home or while we are out and about. Now, I am far from perfect, but I try my best to do these things with them.

This week I saw a perfect opportunity to teach Joe about the story of Daniel and The Word of Wisdom, instead of the food pyramid for healthy eating and living. The Word of Wisdom is a health code that we, as Latter-Day Saints, live by. I started by reading to Joe the story of Daniel from the Bible and from our Old Testament Stories reader. We discussed how Daniel chose the right and obeyed The Word of Wisdom by politely refusing the food and drink offered to him by the King, and then went on to show by example how healthy living would benefit himself and others.

After this discussion, Joe colored the activity I’d printed out from a book I have for religious based activities, and we put it together.

After it was put together he had fun feeding Daniel healthy foods for a healthy body.

I also put some personal hygiene items in a bin and we discussed the importance of caring for our bodies in that way too.

Lastly he put on his skates (well one of them at least, he and Hanna are into skating with only one for some reason right now) for exercise—something else we need to perform at our best, and remain in good health.

I really enjoyed preparing this lesson and presenting it to Joe. This was only the second religion based lesson I’ve worked into our school time, but I plan to do many more. We both had fun, and it felt good teaching him things that he will not only need to know in this life, but in the next as well.