Jeffery Jack

When he looks back over the record of this blog, JJ will be tempted to feel slighted as far as the documentation of his first year of life is concerned. These feelings will not be completely unwarranted. But what I hope he will understand is that though I wasn't busy taking pictures and recording everything, never before has there been a baby boy so well loved by his entire family as our Jeffery Jack. He has been our center stage attraction day in and day out and we just can't get enough of his squishy, smiley, screechy, scrumptious baby antics.

At nearly 9 months, he is almost crawling. He started rolling over fairly early (before 3 months) and I worried that he would be mobile before I was ready. But he has taken his time. Though he doesn't crawl, he will move across a room by rolling or scooting on his back. Everything that touches his chubby hand gets put to his mouth. The other kids have learned quickly to keep their things picked up to avoid slobber bombing. He does about 500 planks and pushups a day and is built like a fleshy tank.

As his girth would suggest, Jeffers is a good little eater. Transitioning to table food has been a snap. The other night I made salmon with spinach and steamed broccoli and carrots in sticky rice. He ate it all. He doesn't like feeding himself, and will fuss for someone to spoon everything into his mouth. This isn't new to us, as Grant did this until he was 4...

When he is happy (which is most of the time) the world knows it. He is constantly making happy noise. He will sing and jabber to himself. And, our favorite, he will just shriek. For long periods of time he will take big breaths and then just scream happy baby screams. I have to take him out of Church meetings. I have to take phone calls on the other side of the house. We get stares at restaurants.

He is sleeping well through the night again which has been a big relief. He shares a room with Grant and we never did any sleep training with him as we have the others. This is also due to the fact that his daytime schedule is greatly at the mercy of what is going on for the other busy members of our family. I don't think sleep training is really fair or effective if the daytime schedule can't be regular. But even with our unpredictable schedules, he has settled into his own little routine. It just took about 6 months longer. But that is okay. In what will be a likely unending list of ways that we will spoil him more than the others, we have enjoyed snuggling him in the middle of the night and letting him bunk up with us if he wakes up before our morning alarm.

Look at those chubby hands. And the jowls... Mercy!

We debate a lot about who JJ resembles more, Grant or Grace. I came across these pictures of a fleshy baby Grant and had to include them for comparison. No doubt about it, these two are related!

Eden

Some fun facts about Eden:

• She rarely walks. Most often she trots. Not really running, but just a bouncy, quicker way from here to there.
• She only thinks we are a family when we are all present in the same room. When Cori comes home from work, Eden will exclaim, "Daddy! We are a family now!" We are working on this...
• She still sucks on her blanket in her sleep. We are trying to ween her from this habit, but everything we try ends up becoming part of the increasingly ridiculous affair that is her bedtime setup. She now sleeps with Stink 1, Stink 2, the quilt from Grandma Sandy, her favorite stuffed animals - Coconut the monkey and Cougar the cougar -, a book under her pillow, and usually whatever else she was playing with right before bedtime. The binki didn't last- which is totally fine. We are hoping she grows out of this soon.
• She always wants her hair in a pony tail.
• Her favorite way to give a hug involves a running start.

Eden is a good buddy to me through out the day and will attentively help out with our daily tasks. As with most everything else in her three-year-old life, her service is something which is given on her own terms. She will help me with the laundry, but only if she is wearing 'glove socks.' She will help me take things up the stairs, but only if she can go first. She will hold my hand in the parking lot, but only if she can push the button to unlock the car doors. We went through a little chapter of tantrums the likes of which I had never before seen. But I find when I let her have a little more control over details like these (which, truthfully, are insignificant in the grand scheme of things), she is more apt to be compliant on the whole.

Eden shares her sister's talent for waking up with the most outrageous bed head. And just like Gracie, Eden usually wakes up both quickly and cheerfully.



The whiteness of this child's body and hair are so amazing to me...

She has enjoyed doing joy school this year and I think it has been good for her in a number of ways. She has learned the alphabet and all the letter sounds (time to start reading lessons! Yay!) and she can count to 20. She has even started writing a few letters and is obsessed with spelling her name. More than her academic progress, the social progress has been most impressive to me. At the beginning, she had a hard time peacefully interacting with the other girls in our small group. I think part of it was the fact that these girls also have strong personalities. Also, I think it was simply that Eden's socialization experience had been mostly with her siblings- older kids who doted on her and who did all the leading in their play time. It was hardest for Eden when we had joy school here. She had to practice sharing her toys, her mommy, her baby brother, and her turf. Over time, she has learned to relax and enjoy it.

Leaving the nursery at Church was also a big adjustment for her. We had more tearful drop offs this year than we ever had when we started taking her to nursery. Really though, what is not to like about nursery? Toys, songs, and snacks? Anyway, Eden has the sweetest Sunbeam teacher who has helped her so much and Eden is all smiles going to sharing time now.

Eden is still in love with puzzles. The putting together of puzzles and putting away of puzzles remains a sizable chunk of our daily doings. 

Lest she go through life thinking that her entire childhood was spent being drug around to things for Grace and Grant, here is photographic proof that we took her, JUST HER, and did something fun! Well, Jeffery was with us too, but he was so little I don't think it should count. We had a groupon to visit Pioneer Village just a quick drive away. Cori took a couple hours out of his work schedule and we spent an afternoon wandering around and letting Eden call the shots. Picture by a wagon? Check! A run through the hay maze? Check! A ride on the horsey? Double check!

Grant

Grant has had a few new adventures this school year. He started taking piano lessons in the Fall. He has shown good aptitude for it. Fortunately for me, he still enjoys practicing - I'm not counting on that to last. He will also just sit and fiddle around, testing pedals and different patterns and chords. I hope he really learns to love playing. He got to perform at the recital in January.  Poor guy was the first one on the program and was more than a little nervous. He asked me to play a couple of duets with him and he did a wonderful job.

We have a pretty firm rule about the number of extra curriculars that go on around here. Grant wanted to play basketball in the Fall and so we put soccer on the back burner for a bit and I signed him up. There were a couple of months between this and when the basketball season was starting. The bishop of our sister ward started up a little soccer practice club and we decided to let Grant participate until basketball began. The little soccer practice club turned into the best, most organized soccer experience Grant has had so far. They practiced for 1.5 hours a week and we had saturday morning games at a local park. Parents helped volunteer coach the games, and the boys were always on different teams. His skills really improved and, as evidenced by the smile on his face in all these photos, he loved, loved, loved playing.

The soccer club and basketball ended up overlapping for a few weeks. Those were crazy days. Many of those Saturdays, Grant would go straight from one game to the other. But he couldn't get enough. Basketball was another great experience for him. He worked hard to listen to coach Julie and practice the things she was teaching him. The league he played on is part of a large nearby church. They are great about encouraging good sportsmanship, even from the parents. And the parents are the ones who need it most, I think. We were grateful for coach Julie. She worked to teach the team to pass and work as a team. All the kids had opportunity to lead and shoot. And she was good about making sure they closed their games with a prayer. Grant surprised us when he confidently and uncharacteristically volunteered to offer the prayer after one of the first games. He just stood right up and did it. (And I took a picture!) When we asked him about it later, he was all nonchalance.

Grant is doing well in school. Academically, he is excelling. And his social skills and confidence have improved quite a bit from the beginning of the school year. He still would prefer to keep to himself and is hesitant to speak up. Kindergarten and sports have been really good for him in this way. He has had to reach outside his box and summon up his bravery on his own. 

Kindergarten is only half day at his school. Both he and Grace - when she was in KG -  have been part of the enrichment program which made it so they could be at school the full day. In Grant's enrichment class they did a section on notable Americans. Each child was assigned two Americans about whom a poster was made and then a presented given. Grant was assigned Abraham Lincoln and George W. Bush. The instructions for the poster were specific and Grant was required to do all the work on his own (aside from help gathering research). His presentations went well- the only comments for improvement being that he needed to look around the room a little more and smile once in a while. Meanwhile, I was thinking, since when do kindergarteners do research projects and give presentations? As it was for enrichment, there were no grades involved. Just the good experience of having done it all. Grant was proud of his work.

At the end of that unit, they held an etiquette banquet. Each child got to dress up as a notable American of his/her choice. The boys escorted the girls to their tables. Everyone sat with their napkins in their laps and they practiced the proper way of using a knife to butter bread and cut lunchmeat. I have to say, there are plenty of times I scratch my head at the amount of work this school requires of its students. But we will miss it. I really love what they are working to do through education. Anyway, Grant chose to dress as George W. from the days of the former president's service in the Texas National Guard. 

Though his cool, quiet guy demeanor would suggest otherwise, Grant can be a real goofball. He is learning quickly how to use his charm to diffuse tense moments - something that is at once hilarious and infuriating. He is often heartbreakingly sweet. He is also grouchy quite often. He asks to go to bed when he is tired (even if everyone is still up) and would sleep and sleep and sleep if normal daily life would permit. He gives everyone foot and shoulder rubs during family scriptures. He DOES NOT like doing chores most of the time, but does them anyway. On that same note, he does not particularly choose to read very often, but he is a good reader. He makes his bed every morning and his penmanship is as tidy as his room (which is usually tidy). He is already talking about his baptism and the commencement of his scouting life which will happen next Fall. 

Grace

Life is the same old adventure with this one. She loves school as much as ever with one possible exception. Grace loathes penmanship. She is at the same time very imaginative and loves to write. This presents a sizable problem when it comes time to write final copies of projects and book reports. She whips out lengthy, descriptive paragraphs and then requires large amounts of time to copy out her final drafts. Many a tear has been shed, poor girl. But, this seems to be her only complaint where school is concerned. Well, this and days off. She would rather be at school!

Pictured above and below are a couple of shots from a fun activity at school. The first graders finished up their unit on ancient Greece with a day of Greek Olympics. Each class represented a city-state (Gracie's class was Athens) and they had five stations where they battled it out. I was glad I got to be there to help out. They all wore togas and wreathes of golden laurel leaves. And the competition was fierce. Sheesh.

Grace remains a most avid reader. Like her dad, she is most content when in the middle of 4-5 books at a time. And also like her dad, she finishes them up regularly. Usually there is a scramble as she leaves every morning to make sure she has enough reading material in her backpack for the day. And she often has her nose in a book as she walks out to the pickup line after school. With everything she is filling her mind with everyday, she still shows an impressive ability to memorize. She has a recitation due once a month, just like in years past. Some of the poems on the second grade list are lengthy. Every month when we choose what recitation she will work on, she usually has one most of the way memorized just from listening to other kids recite it on previous recitation days. It would be so useful if my brain would function more like this once in a while!

January brought another piano recital. Grace played An Irish Dance and Silent Night. She chose to sing along as she played Silent Night. She is still a fearless performer. A little while after this, the music coordinator of our ward asked me if Grace would sing a solo in Sacrament meeting. When I asked her, she responded, with one eyebrow in the air, "Mom, what do you think." She was thrilled. Clearly, we are wasting our time with sports and gymnastics. We need to find this girl a stage. But in the meantime, we are so happy that she loves to do these things.

Speaking of sports and gymnastics... after a year and a half of going to gymnastics every thursday, she gave it all up to play a season of volleyball. She had been begging me to sign her up and I finally found a team that a couple of girls from our ward play on. The coaches were outstanding and Grace had a great time. She had to work pretty hard. The team she joined has been playing together for several seasons. So, Grace had a little catch up work to do. She had lots of opportunity with two practices and a game every week. The coaches always commented on how happy she was - always smiling, never discouraged. By the end of the season she was getting her serves over the net and returning volley. She can't wait to play again.

Grace has developed some really great friends in her class. Many of them have been in the same class for three years now- a result of the APEX program she has been a part of. It has been a treat getting to know these kids and their families. Grace's friend, Geneva, who came to Grace's baptism, invited our family to join in her family's celebration of Chinese New Year. They made an incredible amount of delicious food, and hosted quite a lot of people. We were so glad to be there. Geneva's dad and Grandpa made the rounds and gave all the children these beautiful embossed envelopes. Our kids were shocked to discover that the envelopes were stuffed with one dollar bills. (Grant's eyes were seriously so enormous... "That's, like, 20 extra chores Dad!!") Geneva was eating with us and said, with a smile, that Chinese New Year was better than Christmas.

We just love the little person Grace is becoming. Her free spirit is tempered only by her extreme concern for fairness and the happiness of others. She could care less about her hair and her clothes (something that at times frustrates me- Cori is often encouraging me to lay off...). Her handwriting is as messy as her room (which is messy, by the way). She is constantly starting projects and leaving chaos in her wake. She worries herself to tears about the way her friends treat each other. She loves to hold and care for JJ. The projects she makes are almost always for others (she made rainbow loom bracelets for her whole volleyball team). She is a peacemaker. She has unshakable confidence that she uses for good - most of the time. She is a cheerful collaborator in all the work and play we do around here.