What can I say?

I know it has been a while. I have not been blogging because of my lack of subjects, but more because there are just too many things bouncing around in my head to pick one. I think I should just start jotting the ideas down so I can just pick one as needed.

Here we are, the third week of September already! The kids are all back in school and loving it. Allison has always loved school, but I think this year will be her favorite. Come to think of it, I think 4th grade was my favorite too. Her loving school has also been helped by the fact that she has had great teachers. I still am baffled that she is in 4th grade already, I swear she was just clinging to me begging me not to make her go to preschool.

Nicholas is in 2nd and so far it seems to be going well. His teacher is great and I have already had to contact her about some homework issues. Unfortunately by the time he gets home from school his medication has worn off and it takes a while for the second one to kick in, so that makes for a very unpleasant after school routine. I have been letting him just kind of play and decompress after school for an hour before making him sit down to do homework and even that is a struggle. It almost always leads to tears and yelling about how stupid it is. Yesterday's homework couldn't have been easier. He got three words wrong on his spelling pretest and had to write those three words correctly ten times each. Really a no brainer, but you would have thought he needed to find the square root of pi! I think a lot of it was frustration with himself because the week before he got a 100% on the pretest and got out of taking the big spelling test that week. It took about an hour for him to do it and I finally just took it away from him and told him he could finish it in the morning before school.  My poor kid has such low self esteem and is constantly saying how stupid he is, which is far from the truth. We are trying to build him up, but it is hard when he is constantly tearing himself down. He turns 8 next week and he is having his first friend Birthday party. He got to invite 9 kids and handed out invitations 2 weeks ago. Guess how many people have RSVPd? 4! He is getting worried, but I told him that even if those four only show up, we will still have a great time. I put my phone number and email on the invites, how much easier can I make it? Perhaps next time I will put my cell umber and tell them to text me. UGH!

Alexander is in his final year of preschool and is enjoying it. It helps that he is at the same school with the same teachers and some of the same kids. The first day there were tears shed, but he went in and has been fine since.  He turns 5 tomorrow and  has already had one family party. We will have the other half over on Thursday. I choose not to have friend parties in preschool, it would just be too crazy.  He requested to have a Jack Skelington cake and I of course was happy to oblige. While it wasn't anywhere near professional, he loved it.

Lauren is doing good. She is still receiving speech once a week in our home and it really is helping. She can now put words together and for the most part I understand what she is trying to tell us. A few words I wish she didn't know? Boobies! Boobies! Boobies! Which she proudly shouts while holding her chest. Oh yeah it is quite amusing when she points to her chest and says boobies. I say, no you don't have boobies. Then she turns to me and point to my chest and says Mommy boobies, big! Thank you big brothers. :~/  She also says butt head, but not with consistently. How is it that a kid that struggles with speech can say butt head clear as a bell?  We are working on her colors and she knows blue, purple, pink,  black, and yellow.

I finally finished the latest quilt and burp rags I was working on. With the shingles (which I recovered from nicely) and back to school craziness it kept being put on the back burner. Lauren's speech therapist was happy with it and I was glad to make it for her.

Burp rags

All my fabrics were leftovers from previous projects.

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Not too bad..