merry post christmas.

i hope you all had a merry christmas

sweater song

while in attendance at Whitney and Sam's ugly sweater party, a friend asked us if we would like her to take our picture as a family...here are 3 of the 10 pictures that were taken, these are the best ones...

 nice, huh? but i cant complain, as you can see i was participating in the wackiness.

Natalie won the ugliest sweater contest, here she is with her "trophy" a coffee mug that Sam picked out at Goodwill.

Hilary and Laura show off their ugly sweaters, personally, i think Laura's is pretty cute, i would wear that. Hilary worked the hardest on making her ugly sweater, but since there was no second prize, she walked away empty handed  but jingling all the way.

the early birds

early does not begin to describe when my day started, in fact , most days i would consider right now (5:31 am) early.

i woke up at 3. i could hear dominic moving around in his room. he had to go to the bathroom...he had turned on 3 lights.
after being blinded by the light, i went back to bed...and laid there...and laid there.
finally 4am decided to get up, dominic had all the living room lights on and was finishing up The Wonderful Wizard of OZ on his Kindle.

we ate breakfast and decided that there was no time like the present to start lessons for the day, also that there was no sense in changing out of our PJs, it is 4:45am.

with any luck we will be done with school lessons by time everyone else wakes up.

so i guess we are early birds this morning.

O' tannenbaum.

this is what christmas would look like at my house if i had my way

this is the tree this year, the kids decorated it.

my way: a color scheme
Their way : COLORS

my way: a single color of lights
Their way: COLOR

my way: a nice shiny bead garland
Their way: COLOR

you get the idea, its not that i dont like color...its that i like controlled color. and they like COLORS!!!!!!!

side note: i started this blog as a personal life journal that i agreed to share with everyone. i stopped blogging when life wasnt as "pretty" as it had been, im going to try to start blogging again, because even when life isnt pretty, it is a story, and whats a great story without some not so pretty parts.

pajama day

these photos pretty much sum up my afternoon

 now you see him

now you dont, at least that is what he thinks.


Dominic earned a pajama day by getting his sticker card filled, apparently pajama day = crazy good times. when lessons were done a game of solitary balloon baseball was had while i tried to keep the baby's attention away from the balloon, not easy when big brother is leaping around the living room in hot pursuit of said balloon.

my baby viking

When we first started sitting Miles in his high chair and feeding him pureed veggies, i noticed quickly how voracious his appetite was. i was not prepared for the "eating style" that would follow when he started self feeding. a few weeks ago i started giving him canned green beans to feed to himself, he had green beans before but i fed them to him. he showed his true viking nature right off the bat by squealing , grabbing a fistful of food and SHOVING it toward his mouth, allowing green bean shrapnel to fall where it may.
in addition Miles will not tolerate cheerios when the rest of the family is enjoying chicken, or waffles, or chili or anything really, he would love to dive in and feed himself but unfortunately for him i learned my lesson when he crammed a half of a yeast roll in his mouth and therefore couldnt breathe, facilitating the prompt removal of said yeast roll. theres nothing like a wet soggy, chewed up yeast roll to rouse my appetite. my dinner was over at that point as i spent the rest of "dinner time" feeding my baby viking bits of food from my plate, which has become a running theme, he eats at least half of my dinner on any given night. i tell people that this is how i got back into my pre baby jeans.

Dominic's new school adventure

this picture is by now about 3 weeks old but the last month has gone SUPER fast.
this was Dominic's last week at EO Muncie. during his parent teacher conference it became VERY clear to us that despite his teacher's best efforts,  dominic was not doing well in the area of classroom behavior  so after much deliberation we decided that an on line charter school recomended by his former principal would be a good alternative to the traditional class room.

i have to say that in the last 3 weeks i have learned SO much about why Dominic was not doing well in school behavior wise.

i learned that he hates review, he gets it, he wants to move on.
i learned that he gets hungry at about 10 am, lunch isnt until 11:15.
i learned that the reason he refused for three months to willingly make a journal entry is because he is not good at handwriting.

three key things that directly contributed to his less than stellar behavior.

my goal is to teach him to better discipline himself and control his impulses.
become more comfortable asking for help and communicating.
and of course help him become more comfortable with his handwriting, because school is going to be rough if he refuses to do his work due to bad handwriting.

i know that there are those who disagree with our decision to remove him from a traditional class room for a year and who subtly criticize by asking us about his social development but at this time we believe that this is the best option available to maintain a love of learning and avoid ending up with a kid who hates going to school.