Wonderful kids

I feel so lucky to have such good kids!!! They are sweet, considerate and for the most part do the right thing :o). They love each other too, which is huge bonus. They play together every morning and last weekend, Ryan and I rolled out of bed at 8:30! That is unusual, but I feel very lucky that they can play 2 hours together unsupervised and fairly quietly! Is is a surprise sometimes, what they get into in the morning:
Big man on campus:
Reggie’s school is big on physical fitness and they run laps to get popsicle sticks. When they get 4 popsicle sticks, they get a foot charm to go on their necklace. When they get 10 little feet, they can trade it in for a large foot and I guess the kids trade feet and think they are really cool. Reggie already has 4 little feet, which means he has run 4 miles (he runs a mile twice a week when it isn’t 100 degrees!). He is asking when run day is because he wants to get more charms. He’ll be in better shape than me soon!!! This week his school was awarded the prize for the Governor’s Fitness Challenge, so there’s lots of buzz around the school right now. They received 100K to spend on equipment, but because his school has what they need, they donated it to another deserving school. Pretty neat experience for the kids and staff: http://rancho.schoolloop.com/. Notice Reggie's feet on his necklace....

Reggie’s only been in school for about 3 weeks and we can already see a significant improvement in his handwriting :o). He also has been very interesting in doing homework…it used to be like pulling teeth! The other day, I asked him to help me read part of his homework and he knew the colors, red, yellow and green. I’ve been really trying to get him to read sight words when we are reading together and it doesn’t go well at all. I’ve only been working on “and” and “the”, so I was wondering if he was just being a stinker and could actually read some things. So, I thought I would be tricky and leave him a note in the morning that said, “candy on dad’s desk.” Turns out he can’t read unfamiliar words, but he is making progress. Might be a fun game when he gets a little better at sounding out words.

Big Girl:
We were at the store the other day and the checker said, “Oh, what a cute little girl.” Ainsley was very quick to correct her and say, “I’m a BIG girl.” It was pretty cute and she is growing up rather quickly these days! We’ve been working hard on picking up our messes and I asked her to clean her room a few weeks ago and she put everything exactly where it goes. Big mistake on her part! Now we’ve been working on putting her clothes away. She constantly surprises me with her comprehension and memory…I guess I still think of her as a little girl too. We pulled into Reggie’s school the other day and she said, “Oh look and A and an R.” Rancho is written on the wall and somehow, I guess, she is learning letters. Maybe I should start working with her…she might be reading “the” and “and” before Reggie!
She started her gymnastics class without me and that has been fun to watch. She really likes to look at what the older kids are doing. She doesn’t quite get how the class works yet, but she’s only been twice and really improved the second week. She sure is strong, but not very flexible. I wonder who she gets that from???

The big girl found some lip gloss (notice her fingers)....
Here she is feeding cooper:
We also discovered this summer that Ainsley gets car sick and will throw up at the drop of a hat. That wasn’t so fun, but after it is over, she is totally fine, so that is good. We also leaned from our good friend, Laura, that Ainsley probably had severe acid reflux when she was a baby. We tried Zantac, but it didn’t do anything. I guess you have to pair it with Prilosec to see improvement. So, if anyone ever tells you that their baby has to be asleep to eat/nurse, they probably need to see a feeding specialist. Too bad all of my resources (several Dr.’s/Breastfeeding Center/Chiropractor) didn’t tell me about that when we were going through it. She grew out of it at 15 months, but I think she might always have a weak reflux and throw up easily. We’ve had salmon a couple times recently and she’s thrown up after eating it, so she might have some sensitivity or allergy to salmon. Who knows??!! We won’t be giving it to her anytime soon!

Sound of rain

It was very HOT here this week, so hot that we couldn’t even open things up at night :o(. Last night I awoke to the sound of rain and thunder! I quickly opened the window to enjoy it and was blinded by the lightning. It was quite a show and went on for a couple of hours. Amazingly, the kids didn’t wake up. Today was a perfect day, about 75-80. We went for a bike ride this evening and ended up at the park. I’m looking forward to fall when the weather is more like today.
It has been a busy couple weeks and we are starting to get into a routine, although, I still feel like I’m going to forget one of the kids somewhere! Ainsley started preschool and loves it. I told her I was leaving and she thought I meant that we were leaving and she said, “I don’t want to go”. I told her she was staying and she got a big smile on her face. She’s been waiting to be a big girl for awhile. She has school Tues/Thurs. mornings and then Wed. morning I have bible study. We pick Ainsley up and go directly to Reggie’s school to drop him off (did I mention they don’t have school buses here!) and then back to the house. As if lunch wasn’t fun enough, I get to have 2 lunch times, one with Reggie at 11 and then one with Ainsley at 12. It makes riding bikes a little more complicated, but we’re still managing to do it some days. He figured out how to start and stop, so we don’t have to worry about that anymore!

Reggie had back to school night and I decided that both Ryan and I should go, so we got a babysitter. We didn’t want to waste the sitter on an hour school meeting, so we went to a comedy club in Pleasanton afterward. We laughed a lot, but we were more impressed with the opener than the main show (Tommy Davidson). The next day we went to an end of the summer party at our church and had a sleep over with Mike and Sam! They did soooo good. The older boys were pooped at the end of the day, so they went to sleep pretty quick. The other 2 did pretty good, but Ainsley didn’t fall asleep until 9! Sarah warned me that the boys would be up early, probably around 6, but Reggie and Ainsley woke up first at 6:45 and they didn’t get up until 7:20! That was great for us :o).

Sarah and Eric invited us to the Oakland A’s game and since they were playing the Mariner’s and the seats were awesome, we couldn’t say no. Thankfully, our babysitter was available on short notice, so we had 2 evenings out in 3 days! We decided we HAVE to do it more often. The next day Ryan, Reggie, Eric and Michael headed back to the stadium for another baseball game. The Mariner’s lost both nights, but everyone had fun. Reggie hasn’t been to a game in 2 years, so we weren’t sure how he would do. He wasn’t really interested in the game, but really enjoyed his sundae in a hat and the baseball bat Ryan bought for him. He got home and was all about baseball, out in the yard swinging away. It is amazing to me how much better he is at hitting then just a couple months ago (without even practicing).

Labor day was spent celebrating Sam’s birthday. It was a fun weekend filled with the Bliss’s. We had cheetos and cake and pizza and everyone was full and happy :o).