Our Family Right Now

Since it's been awhile, I wanted to post a quick update on the status of our family.  This is our most recent family picture, on Christmas Eve, 2015.

Justin is 34, teaching across the street from our house, as he has been for almost 3 years.

Noah just turned 6 on March 18.  He loves Minecraft more than anything and is still super crazy smart.  We're unschooling, but he is so good at everything mathematical, and about two months ago, without ever being taught, he suddenly started reading really well.  If I had to give him a grade level, I'd say he's a grade 2 level.  His skills are about equal to all of the average grade 2 students I taught.  He's so sensitive and loving, and he's super excited to be having another baby.  Yesterday I overheard him talking to Justin and he said "Dad?  At first I was excited that Mom was having a baby.  But then I remembered seeing a video of someone giving birth, and it seems like it would be really painful.  So now I feel really bad for Mom." 

This was Noah on a really beautiful day in November.  So kind of an old picture, but I don't have any really nice more recent ones.

Isaiah is 3.5 years old (turned 3 last September).  He is super enthusiastic about everything. He LOVES super heros with a passion, and always wants Justin to "BE BATMAN!" (said in a yell) and he pretends to be Robin.  He also loves to play with our baby dolls, who he named Okanawa, George, Pink Baby, and Purple Baby.  He is always asking me questions that make zero sense, but wanting me to reply as if they do.  He is so adorable, and is definitely the "baby" of the family.  When we told him we were having a baby he wasn't too happy at first, but he got over that quickly and now he asks to see my baby about ten times a day.  Each time he gently pats and rubs my tummy with this giant smile on his face and says, "Whoaaa, your tummy is so huuuuge!"

He is nothing like Noah was at this age.  He has almost no interest in anything that would be considered "academic."  He still can't reliably count to ten (he starts to mess up around 7), only knows 2 or 3 letters, and still mispronounces a lot of words (particularly using the "w" sound for S and F).  I'm not at all worried, because he is clearly an intelligent human, and I know that Noah knowing all the letters, upper case and lower case, and all their sounds before he was even 2 was not normal.  Isaiah will get there, and when you're 3, none of it matters.

He potty trained almost a year ago when he was about 2 years and 8 months.  It happened later than it did with Noah, but when it happened it only took a day.  No struggles at all.  He is still nursing, but he stopped nursing overnight all on his own last May when he was 2.75 years old.  Yeah, it kind of took awhile, but I didn't have to do anything to make it happen, and I'm all about taking the path of least resistance.  We still cosleep, and he sleeps really well at night now and rarely needs me anymore if he does wake up. Sometimes he will ask to hold my hand, but that's been happening less and less (although it did happen two nights ago).  And it's not bothersome, since he's right beside me.

Both kids love their weekly gymnastics lessons.  The local gymnastics club puts on lessons specifically for the homeschoolers that are the same as they offer to the public, but like half the price.  And they're during the day, so its nice to get things done when Justin is working.  We also do other activities with local homeschoolers, such as field trips, Lego Club, swimming lessons, soccer, etc. 

So that's what we've been up to.  Life has gotten pretty "easy" with slightly older kiddos, and we know we're in for it starting right back at the beginning with another baby.  But it'll likely be our last one, so we're going to enjoy it!

Isaiah at 18 Months

Isaiah was 18 months on March 22, so I wanted to record a few things about him at this moment in time.

-He's 25lbs and just shy of 32 inches tall.

-He still only has 8 teeth.  His molars have been huge bruised "marbles" under his gums for MONTHS, but just now one is actually cutting through so that part of it is through the gums.  The other ones are still just bruises.

-He gets up between 2 and 4 times a night to nurse.  It's just recently he started sometimes getting up only 2 times.  I love those nights.  But I usually end up laying awake for 2 or 3 hours anyway.

-We cosleep, and we love it and have no plans to stop.

-He doesn't talk much, but he does say Mama, Dada, Noah, more, no, yah, ball, block, Papa, Nana, baby, bird, moo, cheep, and maybe a few other things.

-He likes to build now, not just destroy.

-His "lovey" is a panda that Noah built him at Build-A-Bear, named "Pandy".  He ADORES Pandy, which is especially cute because Noah made him for him. I don't think I have a picture of it, unfortunately.

-He hasn't been sick that many times.  4 or 5 times total, one of them being right now (we all have a cold except Justin).

-He's a super smiley, friendly baby, but he is not easy.  He is pretty high maintenance and requires a lot of attention.  But he's a toddler, so yeah.  I expect that.

-I've always said that 12-18 months is my least favourite age (for so many reasons), and literally just in the 1.5 weeks before Isaiah turned 18 months he suddenly got a little easier.  Up until that point he still wanted to be held or worn every second, even while I was cooking, washing dishes, cleaning, etc.  Right before turning 18 months he suddenly preferred to play than to be worn.  Nothing else got easier, really, but that made a HUGE difference.

-He is a MAJOR STINKER.

-He loves to strut around like a peacock on the dining room table.

-He's not a "good eater" even though he always wants to eat.  He just doesn't actually ingest a whole lot, and he's rather picky.  He still gets about 95% of his nutrition from breastmilk, which is fine.  It's healthier than most things he could eat anyway.

-In the tub he is constantly doing this (don't mind the old lady tiles):

-He continues to be a hitter, scratcher, pincher, and biter. He's always done these things, ever since he was an infant. It's usually not even malicious, but it HURTS! We are just finally starting to make some headway with the whole "Be gentle, be gentle" and petting things instead of hitting. And finally when we say "No biting! Just kissing." He will kiss whatever he was about to bite. Up until now those things didn't work. And interestingly, if he's hitting or biting and we just say "No hitting!" or "No biting!" it will make him do it even more. Every single time.

Trying to bite for no reason:

Still trying to bite...

A split second before I yelled "ISAIAH NOOO!!" and he smashed Noah on the head with the old diaper sprayer:

-He's a HUGE gym rat, and pretty much his favourite place to be is in our garage gym.

In short, he's "challenging", but he's a pretty awesome kid!  We like him :)

Happy 4th Birthday Noah!

On March 18 we celebrated the fourth birthday of our first baby, our sweet Noah.

Noah is sweet, funny, smart, and kind.  He loves Cars (especially Cars 2) and fish.  He loves to play racing games on the iPad or Wii, and he loves putting on his "tuner" ("Shoom SHOOM!!") and then racing around the house against his Daddy.  He also loves to paint, draw, make bracelets, and build things (although that's mostly been on the back burner for the past while because his little brother is The Destroyer... Noah calls him "Isaiah Godzilla").

Everyday he tells me a hundred times that he loves me, and it always comes out somewhere along the lines of "Mommy, I love you a million thousand two hundred pieces!"

He got a trampoline for his birthday, and he loves it (this was before we put the net on).

We are so thankful for the past four years with our Noah.

March 18, 2010:

March 18, 2014:

The kids really didn't want their picture taken... here is an example of what the rest of the pictures looked like:

That's real life, people!

Noah and Isaiah

Again, I've taken a super long break from blogging.  Mostly because I can never remember my freaking password.  BUT, for the heck of it, here are a few pictures I took of the kids yesterday (March 11, a week before Noah's birthday).  Noah is almost 4, Isaiah is 17.5 months old.

This is the squinty-eyed scrunchy face Isaiah makes all the time.  We get such a kick out of it, as does everybody he does it to: