Readin, writin, and poopamatic

We often wonder about the decision that we make to send our boys to school at such a young age, while we pound away at careers. We will always wonder about this, as we likely would regardless of which decision we made, but things like the following help. While we know that being home with ones kids is superior to any other situation, we feel so fortunate to have the option and ability to send our boys to this school.

This is Alder's second book. The first one featured a fish. So, several "works" in one:

he cuts and staples to make the book,

he colors the body parts to identify the parts of the animal,

and he traces the letters in each word. Alder is so proud of these, incorporating them into play at home, like they are new toys.

Another feat of late, Alder sounded out his first words while I was reading to Heath on the potty: pop and hat.

And on that note, Heath had a bm on the toilet at school last week and he has actually been telling us when he needs to poop for the past week or so. And he just loves success on the potty. As with Alder, flushing and saying "bye-bye" and clapping is reward enough. Days sans diapers aren't that far away and they will be wonderful days when they come.

Christmas

We had our first Christmas day with just the four of us this year and while we missed all of our extended family, it was really nice (and easy) to do it this way. ...and we got in some excellent extended family time in the days following that we will post about soon. Recall we are quite late in catching up on the blog...

I cooked some yummy lasagna for our christmas eve dinner and we spent some quality time snuggling and reading books that night. This is when it really started to sink in that we were about to be together 100% for several days and nights, something that with two big jobs, we often yearn for.

Jason and I stayed up a bit later than we had hoped finishing up some capes that we made for the boys. Jason really did most of the work, from buying fabric and choosing a pattern to actually sewing. I gave him a quick lesson and he was ready to go. They have not been worn much since that day, but Heath did not take his off for several hours after he got it. Super cute though.

The day was low key and wonderful. The boys enjoyed the new things and played peacefully for hours. We had enjoyed carefully selecting the gifts that they would get - it might have been more fun for us to watch how they reacted and what they chose to do with them. In short, they did not at all react the way we thought to specific things and the "old stuff" was quickly intermingled with the new, with strange organization and random pretending. This was so cool to watch.

Then we headed out for a walk around the neighborhood. It took us well over an hour to go around one block as we stopped and explored and let the boys trade off pulling the wagon. It was quite nice to just let a day take its own course.




...and so that was our solstice (last post) and Christmas. Full of intentional time together, apreciating each other and our surroundings. We really do have so much to be thankful for...

Winter Solstice

Boy are we behind… WAY behind, as the holiday season was jam packed with goin’, and doin’ and fun-havin’, for all ages. And not much has slowed down since then, so rather than attempt to catch in one bomb of a blog post, we will have to attempt catch-up through rapid fire.

That attempt begins here, with a wonderful kick-off to the season for us: the winter solstice. We are so very fortunate to have a group of friends here through the boys’ (yes, now Heath is attending too!) Montessori school, that see the great importance in recognizing and celebrating this most ancient call for celebration. We know the boys will “get it” more with age, but it was fun this year to start some family traditions. The main one so far: learning what the solstice is, what it used to mean to our ancestors, and why we should/how we can continue to appreciate it, and celebrate it, along with other natural calendar events throughout the year.

So, (remember, rapid fire, not bomb post) we shared the evening of December 20^th with many of our family of friends, for a pot luck followed by a shadow puppet show. Each family made a puppet. Click *HERE* for the video and here are some pics.

And as many of you know, this year we were able to also experience a full lunar eclipse on the winter solstice. Lesley and I did get up at three and take a look, and I decided then to get really excited, clamor around to find the tripod and crunch around in the snow on the deck to take pictures for the remainder of the night. The pictures were mostly junk, but we wont forget it.

Here is a shot taken by a colleague of mine in Boulder, if any of you missed it and haven’t seen pics yet.

Stay tuned, more to come. (Dad)