Bye-bye thumb!

The first day of her life, Eden found her thumb. I noticed her sucking it while I was taking some pictures of her. I was so glad to have been taking pictures because she sucked for all of 30 seconds and that was it. It wasn't until Eden was just 3.5 months when she started sucking her thumb again. I was SO excited... I grabbed my camera as fast as I could, just in case it was another one time thing. It wasn't a one time thing. She was attached. I researched online to see if it was a habit I should discourage. My findings, and my instinct told me to let her be. More than that though, I just simply thought it was SO CUTE! It seriously melted my heart every time she put it her in mouth. She loved tugging my shirt with one hand and then popping her thumb in with the opposite.
She's had a series of colds over the last month and couldn't suck it with a stuffy nose. And now that her cold is over, she's still not sucking it! She keeps putting it near her mouth out of habit.



I know it's the best thing. I'm glad that I don't have an eight year old sucking her thumb. But I'm so sad that she's growing up and changing.

Maybe it's because she's my last baby.

Or because she looked darn cute with a thumb in her mouth.

But I am so sad.

Bye-bye thumb.

Fun with modeling clay!

When my parents were here yesterday, they took the kids to the dollar store. I was proud of the kids for choosing modeling clay instead of a silly toy. Modeling clay keeps them busy for hours! After they make their little creations, they play with them for days! I love the googly eyes:)







Eden was sick in the night again last night. Strange that she hadn't thrown up for two full days and a night prior to this episode. I can tell she's not herself though. She's been so clingy... and nursing around the clock like a newborn. Yep, I said nursing. My goal was to make it to age two. Now I have to start a plan for weaning her... not looking forward to that!

Homeschooling went well today. One of my recent purchases was English for a Thoughtful Child. We're really enjoying the lessons from it. It's a Charlotte Mason approach, using poetry, art, etc. originally published in 1900. Today's lesson was to memorize, "The Moon" by Robert Louis Stevenson. We learned the first stanza. We've been doing so much memorizing lately! The kids are now in Awana, memorizing lots of scriptures. They did so well with their verses the first week. When it was time to learn the next week's verses, Elijah said, "I can't learn a new one, then I'll forget the one I know!". He was relieved when I explained to him that our brains have the capacity to memorize lots!



Well, now that homeschooling is over for the day, I should get out of my pj's and tidy up this messy house of mine!

Eden's birthday: Part Two!

Today my parents came over to celebrate Eden's birthday. Everyone had the flu (including Eden- and my parents, siblings and their families) over the last few days... we finally felt that our stomachs could handle cake! Mom went to Dairy Queen and picked up an ice cream cake for us.

Eden got a new snowsuit from my mom and dad. I can't wait to go sledding with the kids. Can't believe we haven't had much snow here this winter. Usually Kitchener has so much! Eden also got some beautiful board books (mom knows what I love!) and new pjs today.
Well, I'm going to go snack on some Dutch cheese that my mom brought... bye for now:)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY....

Happy birthday to YOU
Can't believe you are TWO!
And we're sorry to say
That your present is THE FLU!



Poor Eden is spending her second birthday sick with the flu:( All three kids were up all night long. Ronny stayed with Evie and Elijah in their room and I was with Eden in our bed. Ronny had his hands full, they both were throwing up every half an hour. Eden was sick about 5 times, but she didn't start until 3 am.
Craziness.
Happy birthday Eden, we'll celebrate tomorrow. We love you soooooooo much!!!

Lately...

Eden has been sick with a cold pretty much non stop since we moved to Kitchener. I could tell that she was feeling better when she started sucking her thumb again: her nose wasn't stuffed anymore! That lasted for a few days and she got a new cold. Maybe this cold thing will rid her of her thumb sucking habit! That would be great if she quits at such a young age... I must admit I'd feel sad though. I think she's so irresistible with her 'tum' in her mouth. She readily shares her free thumb too!

As usual, Eden is right with us while we home school. Elijah was always nearby too when he was little. He learned almost everything from just hearing Evie home schooling. He's an eager learner, it's music to my ears to have him ask me to let him read. This week he moved onto learning long vowels. Cap - cape, Jan - Jane. He was giddy with excitement over learning something new.

Evie now loves every subject we do, with the exception of reading. I sure hope that changes! She loves being read to, and we do lots of that. I'm thrilled that she's enjoying everything else though. For the first time ever, she doesn't complain or cry when it's time to home school! Why the change? We changed our style. Completely. We started out a few years ago with a "school in a box" type of curriculum. From day one, Evie complained and was hesitant to learn. I realized it wasn't working so I gathered my courage to switch to a different math curriculum. Math U See is now what we use for math and it's been a lifesaver! She loved it instantly. We then started picking up novels and doing our own unit studies. Success again. Recently I came upon a website called Simply Charlotte Mason. I'd heard so much about Charlotte Mason from my sister in law and friends knew immediately when I came across this site that this was what I was looking for. I've been implementing all the ideas from this site into our home school and it's worked wonders!

Anyhow, currently we are reading "A Little Princess" by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It's such a lovely book set in 19th century England. A recent chapter described Sara Crewe painting pictures of diamonds under the earth. I gave the kids an assignment to paint a similar scene to what Sara would've painted.






Another assignment was to pretend they were "Lavinia" a student from the boarding school that Sarah Crewe attended. Lavinia was not to fond of Sarah, seeing her as competition. Lavinia was to write home to her parents about her new classmate, Sarah.
We made our own quill and ink. My parents came and brought us black walnuts from the farm, along with some feathers that my mom had. Ronny's mom helped us on another day with making the ink.



Here's Evie's finished letter. She composed it completely on her own. I corrected her spelling and wrote it out for her. She traced my writing underneath her paper.

I SPY!

I spy a VERY cute four year old boy!
Elijah spent a good part of his Sunday afternoon trying to recreate the picture he found in his I Spy book. It was quite the ordeal for him...I think the biggest effort was trying to keep baby sister Eden from knocking it down!

Charlotte's Web

We recently did a unit study on Charlotte's Web. The kids wrote poetry about country and city life. We had fun studying spiders while reading the book. Evie caught a little spider and we observed it in their microscope...


Here's Evie with a spider she caught. She loves spiders. This one is very little but she'll hold and play with HUGE ones! She doesn't take after me that way!


When we wrap up a unit study, we finish off with a party! We did the same thing when we finished Charlie and Chocolate Factory. We watch the movie the day of the party. Of course it's never as good as the book but it's something fun to look forward to. I had a copy of "Charlotte's Web" with Dakota Fanning so we watched the movie and had lots of treats! My mom was so sweet... she heard about the party and came by with this delicious peanut butter pie/cookie treat!


Here they all are with the paper mache spiders that they made! The boy in the middle is my nephew, Dominik. I had fun homeschooling him for a few months.


The kids decorated their own spider cupcakes.