Preschool

Yesterday Rachel had her last day of preschool for the year. She had a great time this year and loved her class and her teacher, Mrs. Caffrey (who also I also happen to visit teach, and she's the primary president). 

 They had a party for the last day and sang a couple of songs to us, including Yankee Doodle, complete with hats with a feather stuck in it. 

They got to wear cute graduation hats and were presented with a class photo and a packet of some of the work they've done throughout the year.

 

Comparing Rachel's work from the beginning of the year (ABC) and the end of the year (XYZ) you an tell she did improve and got apparently got faster, since she had time to doodle or color rainbows or whatever when she finished the letter practice.

 

Her end of the year evaluation (I'm not good at keeping things, or scrapbooking or anything, and I figure our blog book is the only documentation we'll probably have of Rachel's preschool accomplishments in the long term):

Her teacher wrote "Rachel did so great this year! It's fun to see her reading! She is a great friend to others, and is always very kind and good at sharing. She is a hard worker, and tries hard to do her best. I have loved teaching Rachel!"

And I'm glad we farmed her out to a teacher rather than doing a co-op preschool with other moms around here because Rachel takes direction and correction much better from other people than from me and tries to do her best for her teacher, whereas with me it's more of a power struggle. We're proud of Rachel and glad she loved preschool!

"Hats" and haircuts

I got the girls new buckets to play with, since their last one broke. But they promptly put them to good use as hats rather than buckets. Annie's head is small enough that it fits completely over her head, and she loves walking around not being able to see anything. No injuries to report quite yet....

 

In the spirit of head coverings, Rachel made a mask out of the paper bag that held our Thai take-out.

Sunday Rachel was sitting next to me talking, and Ryan was sitting on my lap facing outward, but once he saw Rachel was there he did his best to twist his whole body around to get a good look at her and her silly faces that he loves to look at.

This up-closer picture is probably the best picture of the little guy's new haircut:

Last Saturday I decided to finally do what I'd been contemplating for a couple of weeks and give Ryan a haircut. Two months old seems ridiculously young for a haircut, but it was getting shaggy around the ears (as shaggy as newborn hair can be). Of course when I think of doing these kinds of things I don't use common sense and wait until I have help. Jake was gone on a campout with the scouts and Annie was sick that morning (though sleeping at the time), so I pulled out the clippers and did it mostly one handed, holding him in one arm and the clippers in the other hand. I meant to only trim his little mohawk a tiny bit, but lacked some control being one-handed and all, so he ended up getting it cut down to one inch, since the #8 guard was on (the biggest one we had). He looks like a handsome little man, and his cowlicks in the back still create a mini mohawk, but not quite as pronounced as it used to be.

As Jake was packing to abandon us go on a business trip for the week, Ryan was in a very happy mood, laying on our bed cooing at me and making some fun faces.

I love how wide his eyes are in this next one. I think it was blowing raspberries, or maybe just sticking my tongue out at him that was the cause of such amazement.

 

He's such a happy kid. :)

 

And we are (kind of) surviving Jacob being gone. I've decided that working hours have evolved to what they are because the most critical hours of the day to have help with the kids is from 5pm to bedtime. Something I didn't really appreciate until I've had to juggle (sometimes literally, it feels like) a baby who needs help falling asleep, or won't stay asleep anywhere but my arms, a toddler who needs a diaper change, or help getting into or out of her highchair, and a 4-year-old who needs a bedtime snack or some milk poured to have with dinner, or whatever the situation may be. 

Someone commented to me recently that it would be so nice if every time we gave birth, we also grew another arm. So true!! But I suppose Heavenly Father's solution to the need for extra arms was a husband. And a good solution it was. I so appreciate Jacob and all his help in the daddy department. And with his absence I am realizing more and more how much I rely on him to keep me sane and functioning. I'm grateful for friends and my parents helping out to make it manageable, but still, I am glad it's only a 4 day trip, and then I'll have my extra hands back to help juggle the children.

2 months old

Today is Ryan's 2 month birthday. It seems like he's been a part of our family for so much longer than just 2 months, but the time has also flown by. I love that he is a smiley baby. As long as he's fed and not too sleepy he'll smile and talk to whoever pays him a little attention.

He puts up with his sisters' antics pretty good naturedly so far. Annie is anything but gentle with her favorite baby, but he rarely cries when she sits on his legs, or pats (with a lot of force) his head or tummy. He even puts up with her stealing his binky if it's in his mouth, or trying to force it into his mouth if it's not already there. Rachel gets in on the fun, too, though in general she is much more gentle than Annie. She loves talking to him and showing off to him to make him smile, and LOVES dressing him up, even with a kleenex hat and blanket robe:

Rachel insists that she can't wear her big sister shirt unless Annie is wearing hers, and Ryan has on his little brother shirt, so today they were all decked out, and we snapped a few pictures of the happy siblings.

 

I think this picture captures how Ryan really looks most of the time (babies faces change so fast, and it seems to me that pictures rarely seem to capture the real look).

Here's a smiley picture I managed to capture:

And one last Ryan picture. This one totally reminds me of Justin's baby pictures. Just when I was thinking that Ryan was starting to look like Jake's baby pictures. Hmmm.

He's a cutie and we love having him in our family. For his 2 month stats, he has almost caught up to his cousin that is a week older than him. At least where she was when she was born. :) He's 10 lbs 9 oz. (she was 10 lbs 10 oz.) which is 30th percentile, and 23 inches long (60th percentile). He's running about a pound lighter than his sisters were at this point, but I'm not complaining. Percentile-wise, he's right on par with where Annie is and has been since she was about 6 months old (and Rachel, too, I think, though I don't have her last doctor printout handy at the moment). Annie had her 18 month checkup at the same appointment as Ryan's 2 month, and she is 33 in. (82%), and 23 lbs (31%). So we've got tallish, skinny babies. 

As for one quick update for Annie, since she turned 18 months a couple of weeks ago, she gets to go to NURSERY!!!! Woohoo! The last 6 months or so have been killer, trying to keep her from disrupting church for everyone in the room during Sunday School and Relief Society (trying to contain her to one area would have resulted in a much louder disruption than her general disruption resulting from wandering around, visiting people and finding hymn books to look through). She's gone to nursery twice without even noticing that we were gone. She sees the puzzles on the table, and walks away from us without a care in the world. And I actually listened to a Sunday School lesson last week! The whole thing! (Except what we missed at the beginning because we were watching Rachel give a talk in primary.) Yay for nursery!

And now that reminds me, Rachel got to give her very first talk in primary last week. It was about how we can follow Jesus Christ's example and be baptized. It was kind of a struggle to get her to practice it, but we tricked her into practicing several times, showing Dad, then Grandpa Knight, and Grandma Campbell over the phone. She really surprised me with how well she could read it. There were some words she struggled with, but for the most part, after I helped her with those words once she got them (though there were some words she got stuck on every time). So on Saturday I said something about how well she was going to do since she could read it all by herself, and she got all upset and said, "But I want you to whisper it in my ear! That's what everyone does!" I tried to explain to her that she didn't need me to whisper it because she could read it just fine on her own, but she wouldn't have any of it. I didn't argue much with her and hoped she'd forget about it. On Sunday she got up and just read it all with me holding the pictures for her, and helping her on the few words she stumbled on. She did such a great job! It was a nice mother's day moment, getting to see my oldest growing up and reading all on her own and stuff. I'm a proud mama. :)

Cooing baby

Ryan has started cooing and it is so cute. When he's in a good mood he'll talk for a good long while. Combine that with Rachel's love of the camera, and you get this video. I asked her to bring the camera over for me, and of course she wanted to be the one to run it. I especially like her surprise appearance in the middle of it all. :)