Work in Progress

When we were pregnant with Easton, we didn't find out his gender ahead of time. We'd always planned a "neutral" nursery: yellow with duckies. White furniture. Unfortunately, Easton needed to arrive before we'd done anything to create a nursery, we didn't even have a crib when he came home from his month in the hospital!

So, clearly we knew he was a boy but we also knew we'd hoped to have other children and continued with our yellow nursery plans...used the same room when Dalton was born...and of course when Autumn came along. Very very slowly we've done things to make it a smidge more girly now that she's a she and no one else will use that room.

You may remember the curtains I made for her. We put them up last June:

(See little 10 month old Autumn there?)



The boys only ever had a plain white sheer on the window when it was their nursery.

They also only ever had a standard-issue light fixture. But last June we also installed a girly ceiling fan for Miss Miss:


For Christmas (5 months ago) Gramoo got her a precious pink and purple plush (that's a lot of "p"s!) rocking elephant:

She loves this thing, by the way, especially when she's fresh from a bath.

And we've s-l-o-w-l-y added a few more things.

Yesterday (yes, I know she's 21 months already) we finally hung her name on her wall:


You can see the message board I made just for her back there behind the crib:


And the pomander (flower ball) I started a bazillion years ago but didn't finish until this morning:


She still nurses a couple of times a day and only ever in that rocking chair in her room.

The cushions are blue and white striped but I bought that pink blanket at a post-Valentine's clearance sale and just tucked it around the cushions. I don't want to bother sewing something at this point because she won't be nursing for much longer so the chair won't need to stay in there.

Here's the view from the crib corner of her room:



You can see her Disney princess calendar on the wall in the above shot.


There's her sweet little Disney princess CD player from G-Ma and July and the Hello Kitty humidifier Santa brought for her first Christmas (sad, huh?) plus the super-special Cricut-ed and découpaged box Andrea gave Autumn for her 1st birthday.

There's a few more things I'd like to do in there...I want to hang more pictures. I need to add more space for her hair stuff. Perhaps some more decorative touches I haven't thought of yet as well. :) As this post's title says...her room is a work in progress. I don't want to invest too much time and effort into it at this point because she'll get a "big girl" room before too long. I'm thinking we'll turn her crib into the toddler bed version sometime between 2 and 2 1/2...then maybe her "big girl" stuff right around 3. I've already started thinking a bit about that room and hopefully it won't take 21 months to even get as far as her current room is.

We shall see...

Dolly Daycare

Autumn and Dalton set up their baby gear in Autumn's room the other morning.

They have a few things to remedy before they get licensed...see how they've piled all the babies in the play yard back there?

I'm pretty sure that's against regulations.

And Autumn sneaks some of the dollies' food for herself which is frowned upon:










But they take otherwise decent care of the babes:






And they've got the most important part down: LOVE!


She gets good practice with "cousin":


She's never snuck a sip of his bottle...although he's a bit heavier than her dollies. When she started to feed him this bottle, she soon told me "Stuck! Stuck!" like she couldn't get out from under him. :)


We're gonna miss having him here all to ourselves every Friday. Today was Jessica's last day of school for the summer.

Last Day of School!--Easton

Easton's school had a night a couple of weeks ago where we went to his classroom and he showed us a few things he'd been working on, showed us around the room, and they had some little "learning" games set up.


We went to check it out and it was rather lame and low-key but oh well. He read some books to Dalton in the reading corner:


Autumn hung with me:


Jason couldn't come because he was having to schmooze at a work thing...the grand opening of their new building.

He's had some other end-of-the-year festivities as well. Like, their Kindergarten program the other night with all 4 of the kindergarten classes. Easton's class and the other a.m. class acted out nursery rhymes. There were no words just them "miming" and some sound effects with musical instruments. The parents were supposed to guess. It was a smidge harder than it sounds! :) We got maybe 4 of the 6. I'll let you try to guess which one Easton helped to act out. Apparently they had jumper try outs and Easton says his was the best:

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

But wasn't he lookin' snazzy for the event?






Then, last night was Skate City night for his school. They've had others but with Autumn and Dalton and Jason's worship banding, somehow it's never worked out that we could go before. Actually, I take that back, we had planned to go a couple of months ago but Easton was on his worst behavior that afternoon and I threatened to take skate night away thinking that would do the trick but nope. So I had to follow through. But last night we went and had so much fun. I have never seen Easton be so positive and non-frustrated when learning something new. Because, he was not good right off the bat. :) But he thought he was and kept saying how he's really getting the hang of it. He fell a lot and I thought his bum would be so sore but the dude would pop right back up. Never once was he discouraged or wanting to take a break or anything even when an older boy went the wrong way and flat out knocked Easton down. :( So out of character for our little perfectionist to not experience any frustration. We had a good ol' time and even got pizza!



He was exhausted when we got home! :)

***WARNING: Brilliant Child Brag Ahead***

Anyway, now that the school year is over, we're still disappointed with all of it. We were bummed with all the teacher switching at the beginning of the year and we feel he hasn't been challenged appropriately. As I said before, it's like they were just trying to get all the other kids caught up to where he already was. We wanted to like the school, we really did, but various instances along the way have left us feeling rather let down.

We decided we'd try to make a change.

Last year, Jason pushed to have Easton IQ tested to see about getting him in to a "better" school for kindergarten. I resisted, however, and J ended up going along with it. Plus Mrs. M (from preschool) was on "my side" and agreed, "Just let him be a kid." I wanted Easton to have the chance to be a "smart kid at a regular school" than a "regular kid at a smart school." I didn't want the competitive pressure so many of those schools seem to have. Plus, I wanted to just keep on believing my kid was a genius, I didn't want an official number telling me how smart he was (or wasn't!). I think I was afraid! :) However, with all the issues we've had with his school and his needs really weren't being met, I agreed that something needed to change. I wanted a better fit for him. There are charter school options in our district that cater to the more advanced children--but those schools require IQ testing.

So, we set up official testing with a psychologist who does such things. This was right before Christmas. Within a week or so, she mailed us the results and they blew me away! I knew Easton was "advanced"...that was clear from how ahead of his peers he's been. But I assumed that could largely be due to the private Montessori preschool he'd been in for two years. However, the dude is actually gifted--got the IQ scores to prove it!

At that point, with his high scores in hand and a recommendation from the tester that he would be ideally suited for a gifted school or program, we set about applying to the various GT schools in the area and other charter schools that seemed like a better fit (a STEM school, being one even though it's not specifically for "gifted" children). We went to parent info nights and took tours. I was kicking myself for not having agreed to testing last year. One school was so amazing on my tour that I actually cried (yup, right on the tour!) that I hadn't looked into it before! You see, the spots are limited...nearly all the kindergartners would be continuing on to 1st grade, why didn't we apply when there were 70 openings for kindergartners instead of, like, 2 from the kids that move away?!? One school requires an IQ of 125 or above to even apply, so Easton did get on to their waiting list but the only spots that opened up went to siblings (who get priority).

But there was another school that really caught our eye...Jason and I really enjoyed their info night presentation. It became our first choice school. But, we'd take anything, really, because it was all such a long shot for 1st grade. I didn't want to get my hopes up and we just started praying that God would work it all out...that if he should stay at his current school, then we'd keep him there but that we were giving it to Him.

Well, what do you know? The time that they were sending out seat offers came around. We got word that he was on the wait list for a few schools as expected. But one night Jason was sitting in front of his laptop and was like, "Come here! Come here now!!" The subject in his email was, "1st Grade Seat Offer" at our first choice school! We took that as a sign from God that we should move him, for sure!

Easton was so excited when we told him about the school. They definitely do things differently there. When we went to register last week, Easton got a little tour and is already looking forward to next year:


Easton does well in a traditional setting. But this school is a little more non-traditional and hands-on and we love that about it (we think E will still do just fine). Each kid has their own laptop while at school! They can sit on bean bag chairs or balance balls (or a regular ol' desk and chair). They can lay on the floor to work. As long as they're not being a distraction, they could wear costumes to school. Or pajamas. They can wear a hat. With sports team logos, even! Sure, they won't let people be totally inappropriate with their boobs or bellies hanging out all willy nilly but at this school, none of this stuff has been a problem so far. They want kids to be their most comfortable. At the info night they were all, "You don't sit reading at home in your most uncomfortable chair...you curl up with your book. If you had a late night at Grandma's and need a little extra sleep instead of waking up earlier to get dressed, you could show up in pajamas." However, I'm not thinking many kids actually do this, nor do I see us encouraging Easton in that direction. :) We considered schools with uniforms too, we're not anti-dress code at all and I think making all kids look the same can do a lot for the educational environment as well, it's just an example of how this school does things their own way. The whole school (which goes through 8th grade) has core classes at the exact same time. So, if Easton needed to, he could go to a different class/grade for math or reading. They group the classes by ability and sub-group each classroom by ability as well. This is what we wanted with his current school. There has been nothing catering to his need to be challenged a bit more. What we most want is for him (and the other two) to be lifelong learners...where learning isn't so boring and tedious and you can't wait to finish your schooling. Where you'll want to pursue things that interest you (in addition to learning the basics, of course) your entire life.

They'll spend the first two weeks of school evaluating the children and where they're at and their learning styles etc. So, a visual learner is going to be placed with a visual teacher, if possible. That kind of thing. I'm so so excited about all of this. Easton's all for doing things differently!


This summer they'll do a big picnic event in a park and the kids are supposed to wear shirts color-coded depending on which grade they'll be entering. So they can meet one another ahead of time. I cannot tell you how much I love this idea and how much I wish the other schools we've been in would have done something like this. Easton loves to have a familiar face ahead of time going into something new like this. Who wouldn't? Anyway...

Thanks for letting me brag! We are so stinkin' proud of this kid!


Not only was today his last day of Kindergarten...but his last day at S______ Elementary altogether! Hooray!

Let the 87 days of summer vacation (and no alarm setting) begin!!!

Long Time No Zoo

We haven't been to the zoo in probably a year. We let our membership expire when Easton was now in school every morning, Autumn needs to nap every afternoon, and we depise weekend crowds.

But today was Dalton's school's annual zoo day so we got in for very very cheap. I pulled Easton out of school about 45 minutes early because if we were late then we'd have to pay full price. Tomorrow's his last day, he's not missin' anything important. ;)

So the 3 kids and I headed down to the zoo for the chilly morning.



See? Jacket weather.

Every once in awhile we'd see our friends but mostly it was just us this year. Tabor and Easton go to different schools now so she has her own group of friends on the field trip but she did pause to consult a map with E:


We took pictures with Dalton and his two favorite animals: zebras and giraffes:




I didn't know Autumn knew the word "giraffe" but she did and shouted it when we saw them:


She enjoyed some graham crackers while she rode:


We took in the sea lion show and then headed into the indoor "tropical discovery" area where we had to abandon the stroller. Autumn proved to be a bit of a challenge in there because she'd go one way while the boys went another:






On occasion they'd all 3 be in the same place:


Luckily the boys are good and don't try to leave like Autumn does, but it's still challenging to keep an eye on them and Little Miss Wanderer at the same time. Or not rush them along just because Autumn wants to move.

So, back to the stroller it was...we saw a squirrel in someone else's stroller!


And you know what? Our graham crackers up and disappeared out of our stroller while we were in the building. Hairy little theifs. Hope the plastic bag they were in doesn't choke anyone. :(

Speaking of theifs...Miss Miss was a bit of a pick pocket herself:


We got Autumn settled back in the stroller and checked out the peacock who'd been struttin' his stuff near the exit of the building:




The boys asked to pose for a picture on the polar bear cub statue:

I am certain I have a near identical picture (grey hoodies and all!) from a past visit but didn't want to take the time to hunt it down just now.

Autumn pretending to sleep:


All 3 kids fitting on the double jogger just like I wanted:


Finally it was off to the monkeys. We got a kick out of this gorilla hiding under a sheet:


We stopped for lunch with our school group and hit the carousel before leaving. Autumn was afraid of the carousel animals so she didn't ride like last year. I had to hold her on my hip while the boys rode:




It started warming up then and it was nearing time for Autumn to nap. We'd seen pretty much all there was we wanted to see so we were on our way!