i've been slacking, i know

i've just kinda been in a blogging funk. the kids are still doing cute/gross/funny things, i just can't seem to find the time or energy to always blog about it!

peanut turning one was bittersweet; i'm glad that he is healthy, growing and learning and discovering more and more each day but i miss my ''baby''. he is still a cuddler. he would rather be worn in a carrier than pushed in a stroller. he still takes 2 naps and loves his bottle. but he is getting so big! he can now climb the stairs-completely to the top without looking back (and without needing any help). he can point, clap and stretch up his hands when you say ''so big''. he knows how to open the kitchen drawers and can walk across the entire room with his wooden wagon. his personality is really starting to show and he's starting to interact more and more with his brothers each day.

at his one year check up he weighed in at 21lbs 2 oz and 29.5 inches tall. he is perfectly healthy. we're are suppose to wean him off of the bottle but, eh we're working on it. honestly he wouldn't even take a bottle the entire time we were nursing--i think introducing it at 10 months was a mistake [in hindsight] but when he wouldn't take a sippy and i was an emotional mess we did what worked. on a normal day he only has 3 so i'm not too concerned. (okay okay, i'm not concerned at all. call it 3rd time mom syndrome but it doesn't bother me in the slightest).

bubba and pooks are doing great too. homeschooling is going pretty well, somedays are better than others. bubba's attention span is quite a big longer than pooks' so i think he's benefiting from it more but that's to be expected. (sometimes i have to really remind myself that pooks' is only 2.5!) bubba knows all of his colors and shapes. (okay we haven't yet delved into into hexagon/pentagon/trapezoid, etc). he can recognize almost every single uppercase letter of the alphabet when it's on a menu, sign, object, etc. he spelled out 'tomato' at breakfast on sunday. we're really starting to work on phonics and sounding the letters out, as well as introducing the lowercase letters.

pooks does better when it's more hands on activities. he loves painting, coloring, cutting, and gluing but he won't even attempt to write his letters. he can count to 5 all by himself and recognizes a few letters. he knows all of his shapes but not his colors. everything is either blue, pink or orange. maybe he's just being a toddler, maybe he is colorblind i guess only time will tell for now. it isn't really at problem at this age, so for now, we're just gonna keep an eye on him.

we're learning all about thanksgiving this week. turkeys and food, fall and autumn, what we are thankful for, scarecrows and farms, etc and then incorporating numbers into that as we can.

today we made turkey's from painted handprints, then talked about the turkey's 4 feathers and what we were thankful for. i explained that being thankful for something meant that you were happy to have it. it might be something that everyone has or something that no one else has. it can be a person, place or thing, etc. i didn't want to coach them too much--i knew they would have some pretty interesting things to be thankful for. so without further ado, here is what they came up with:

we'll do bubba's first-
just in case you can't read it (i scanned this btw) he is thankful for: our house, cars, Kansas City, Matt and Rachel and...bugs? hmm, okay bubba!

pooks was equally strange unique
he was thankful for family, trains, glue and carrots. he doesn't even LIKE carrots but apparently he is thankful that they are there, you know, to look at.

aren't they just the cutest? i love this age!