Category Archives: Kids
Ila and Sam
I just thought these pictures were too cute not to post. This is Ila and her second cousin, Sam. Ila is 7 weeks older than Sam, but obviously the smaller of the two, just look at those arms and legs!
They were delivered by the same Doctor at the same hospital (their mothers were scheduled to be induced on a Friday and they came naturally on the preceding Tuesday). 
They each have a first name composed only of three letters. They also each have a darker spot of pigment (birthmark) in a similar spot.
This is completely unrelated, but I absolutely love Ila’s smile in this picture:
Ila’s talented feet video
I wrote about Ila’s feet awhile ago, but she continues to amuse me with the way she manipulates objects with her feet so hopefully you’ll excuse a second post (third if you count mentioning them in a post about my mother’s visit) on the same topic. I imagine myself telling her about her silly feet antics when she’s older, maybe I’ll show her these videos too.
In this one you can hear Nicole singing in the background:
A lady at the gym commented on her talent this week and said that several of the other gals at the gym found her skills amusing. This woman has also started telling me each time I pick the kids up that she’d be willing to take Ila home with her. It brings me much joy to know that the people who take care of my kids while I exercise actually like them.
A Visit From my Mom
My mom came down to Tennessee to help while Zach recovered from his surgery. She 
arrived on Friday night and was able to stay with the kids while I picked up Zach from the hospital and then got his perscriptions. Zach was miserable all week and barely emerged from our room. He ate almost nothing and mostly just wanted to sleep the week away (perhaps he will post more details about his torturous recovery). His reclusive recovery meant that my mother and I spent the entire week taking care of the kids together.
Charlotte really enjoyed lots of one-one time with her grandmother. They played games and read together and Charlotte invented several new kinds of hugs just for Grandma. On Thursday when I asked her if she wanted to go to the library with me for some one-on-one time she said “no, I like grandma Bunny more than you, mom.†Charlotte is generally always eager for time with me, so I could tell that she was loving every minute with her Grandma (and I wasn’t worried, I know deep down she loves me more).
Nicole was charming and cute, as always, and she took to her grandma right away. Nicole gave her Grandma great hugs and Grandma enjoyed hearing her cute funny vocabulary. When I took Isaac to school in the morning, Nicole came with me a few mornings and was very worried when Grandma didn’t get in the car too. She’d start to cry and call out “Grandma, where are you?†On Friday Grandma followed us to the gym in her car instead of riding with us. Nicole fell to pieces when she saw Grandma get into her own car. She screamed and cried and called out “Grandma, where are you?†and didn’t calm down the whole drive.
Ila is still mostly a mommas girl, but on Thursday when I went to Isaac’s school, Ila finally let Grandma hold her and play with her without crying and was good the whole time I was gone. She even ate the green beans that Grandma fed her. Grandma was especially impressed with Ila’s great skill in playing with toys with her feet.
Isaac really enjoyed reading with Grandma. He read some books to her and listened as she read to him. Grandma remarked on how neat it was to read with him because he asked such thoughtful and intelligent questions and he really seemed to be enthralled with every topic they read about. Grandma’s visit also gave me the opportunity to spend some time with Isaac at school which he was very excited about.
For Grandma
Because we miss you a lot and wish you were here.
Charlotte and Nicole Dancing:
Informative little Nicole:
Ila eats, claps, and “talksâ€:
Sorry, no Isaac video, I’ll have to capture one of him afterschool sometime for you.
Just for Fun
First Grade
I assume most of my readers do not want every particular about Isaac’s school experience, but in the interest of family history, I will be more complete than I would be if I were just writing this post for casual blog readers.
The first day of school was August 17th. We met his teacher the night before at a back to school night. Her name is Mrs. Rader. She has taught school for 37 years and this is her second time teaching first grade (she taught 2nd grade last year). She seems like the kind motherly type which I think is a good fit for Isaac since he tends to be shy and scared.
School Bullies?
The first day was a half day so we picked Isaac up at 11:15. He got in the van and started complaining right away that the van smelled like “stinky†(poo). When he got home, he was convinced that the whole house stunk and he only calmed down after I let him spray air freshener all over. I asked him lots of questions about his day and he had no complaints. He said Anne and Emma were at his table along with some kids he didn’t know and that his seat was on the end. He said that he enjoyed his first day. Later he complained that a boy was holding him and trying to hurt his head at recess. I emailed his teacher.
Within a few days he started reporting more incidents of kids picking on him. He said a kid was biting him on his arms and legs and that another kid told all his friends to hit him and that someone tried to steal his lunch. I became very concerned and called the school to set up a meeting with his teacher. She called me back a few hours later and said that she had talked to the boys and that it seemed to be a misunderstanding and that she didn’t see anyone giving him a hard time, but she’d keep an eye on him. Not knowing if he was making things up, I tried not to put any ideas into his head and I avoided questions about if other kids were mean to him that day. He had a few days where he reported nothing unusual, but before long he started telling stories that made no sense. He told me in a very heated voice that a boy in his class was trying to give him more math to do because the boy wanted him to stay at school for 100 years! I asked if someone tried to get him to do their math and said no. He said someone took his lunch bag, ate his lunch, then returned the bag. His stories have become so outrageous that I can’t believe them, however, I am concerned about why he’s telling me these obviously untrue stories. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to spend some time in his class when my mom comes to visit so that I can get a first hand view of what’s going on.
Reading
I went into the school to pick up Isaac for a Dr. Appointment on Monday. 
The teacher said she was really glad to see me because she was excited about Isaac’s reading and wanted to talk to me about it. She had screened kids by having them read a list of words. Isaac was one of six kids who could read all the words. Those six took a test that gave them a reading level. Isaac’s level fell somewhere between 1.7 and 2.7 (first grade, 7th month and second grade 7th month). Without seeing the test, I assume that he was able to read some words at both levels, but did not read every word within that range perfectly. Because his scores are sufficiently high, he has started reading books at school and then taking quizzes on the books he’s read so that he can earn points towards rewards at school.
This doesn’t really relate to school, but a few weeks ago I had sent him to his room to get dressed and when I went in to check on him, he was standing in his underwear reading a book. I was very excited that he was enjoying reading enough to get distracted by it!
I’m also starting to wonder how he does in math since it sounds like the worst fate he can think of is having more math to do. Perhaps I should spend some time working on first grade math concepts with him.
Out of the mouths of Isaac and Charlotte:
Charlotte announced one morning that she had three dreams last night. One was good and two were bad. The bad dream was that ants would turn her socks into “sticky socks.†The good dreams were (1) watching something change colors that is not sticky and (2) sleeping in a downstairs room.
One day Isaac excitedly proclaimed “My reading skills almost go the whole way!â€
Charlotte has been telling me that she’s growing up. One day she was so convinced that her growth was obvious that she told me Dad would say “Oh Charlotte, you’re growing up.†when he saw her after work. The other day she said “Mom, you’re growing up. You’re growing up to be a grandma!â€
Charlotte announced: “When I grow up, I will be a mommy and I will have 4 kids. I will name the first one Isaac and I will name one Charlotte and Charlotte will be first, but not very first.â€
Nicole’s Artwork
Nicole loves to color, but for some reason her favorite thing to color on is words. This means that every-time I write her name on one of her drawings, she scribbles all over her name. Here is an example of her Art:
While scribbling some of the red scribbles she kept saying “oh, no Bunny.†I don’t know if she was referring to an actual bunny or her Grandma Bunny. She also calls squirrels bunny for some unknown reason so she may have even been drawing a squirrel.
Isaac’s Summer Journal
I started tutoring the kids this summer at the gym. Isaac has done really well at reading so I tried to focus more on his writing. I asked him write a sentence everyday and while he wrote, I worked with Charlotte. I had him to compose the sentence, then I’d write it out so that he could copy it.
Click Read more to read his Journal entries
Charlotte Reads
I’ve been tutoring Charlotte in reading and she’s making good progress. I’ve been using a book I bought as part of my teaching program at BYU (Teaching Children to Read by Grant Von Harrison). It teaches a variety of skills including blending, sight words, and reading for comprehension. She is doing quite well with each skill. Blending has been the most challenging of the lot. Her tendency is to sound out individual letters, but just in the last week or two she has started really blending the sounds much better. Her reading fluency is good and continues to improve.
Here is a sample of her reading skills. I post this with the idea that this is the sort of thing that grandparents would be really interested in watching, but friends and casual blog readers may want to skip the video
“Wide Seat for Passengersâ€
Isaac doesn’t always take the time to add much detail to his drawings, or at least he hadn’t in the past, so when he came home from school with this drawing, I was impressed and decided it was worth hanging on the wall. I asked him the name of the picture and he said “wide seat for passengers†thus the title of this post.
Here is a copy with labels to help you decipher the drawing
First Grade Fears
Tomorrow is the first day of first grade for Isaac. He wasn’t very excited about going 
back to school as we talked he told me that he was worried that in the first grade they would skip playtime and lunch and do math all day. He later said that he thought they would just get one minute of playtime.
We met his teacher at the open house tonight and asked her questions about first grade. He was very excited when he learned that in first grade he’ll get 25 minutes of playtime which is 5 more minutes than Kindergarten. He thought the kindergarteners would be sad that they weren’t getting as much time to play.
Ila’s talented feet
Ila does this funny thing where she transfers items back and forth between her hands and her feet. Sometimes she just transfers them to her feet and then holds them with her feet while her hands play with them. She does it with every toy she picks up. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this here before, but it continues to amuse and astound me at times. All of the following pictures were taken over the course of about a half an hour, but she does this all day long.
Matching
Charlotte has a few favorite things to wear and unfortunately they don’t really match each other. We have been discussing what matches and what doesn’t match lately. Here’s the transcript of a recent conversation on that topic:
(Charlotte comes out wearing a brown shirt that says “I heart Chocolate†and a pair of colorful Hawaiian shorts.
)
Me: Charlotte, those clothes don’t match each other, you can wear either the shirt or the shorts
Charlotte: The word Chocolate is white and there’s white right here on my shorts.
Me: It doesn’t match. You can wear your blue shirt with those shorts or jeans with that shirt, Jeans match everything.
<<Charlotte runs off and comes back wearing pink pants>>
Me: Charlotte, those pants don’t match
Charlotte: They’re my pink jeans.
Me: Only blue jeans match everything.
Pre-Crawling
Ila is not quite crawling yet, but she has developed her own way to get to where she wants to go. Also listen for Nicole saying Ila’s name in the background.
Our Vacation, Day Three
Remembering how much fun everyone had at the beach on Day 2, we just assumed the next trip to the beach would go just as well. We made plans to go to the beach with my cousin Brent’s wife Natalie and their kids at the beach next to my Aunt and Uncle’s condo. Unfortunately, both of the little girls started to cry almost immediately and wanted nothing to do with either the sand or the ocean. My aunt Dee and I took the little girls to he pool while Zach and Natalie played with the big kids on the beach.
Poor Nicole must not have been feeling well, because she didn’t leave my Aunt’s arms to play in the pool. She clung to her and even fell asleep in her arms in the water.
Zach brought the big kids over to play in the pool and wash all the sand off their bodies. He reported that they built a nice castle and a canal system, but we have no pictures since my camera was with me at the pool.
We went back to our room and decided to get ready and drive home since the kids were kinda sick and the last two nights of sleep in our room were less than restful. Everyone showered and got dressed. Zach went to fill the tank with gas and fetch some lunch (shrimp from “The Sea Shackâ€) with one of our remaining food vouchers while I packed up all of our things.
We drove home by way of Charlotte, North Carolina. It added an hour to our trip, but we really wanted to be able to take our Charlotte to Charlotte. We arrived around 8:00 PM and had a late dinner at IHOP in Charlotte. Everyone enjoyed chocolate milk, pancakes, bacon, sausage, crêpes, and coloring.
By the time we were done with dinner, the sun was setting and it was starting to rain. We drove to downtown Charlotte to see the skyline and look for buildings and signs with Charlotte’s name on them. Unfortunately our van’s wipers were terrible and it was pouring rain. By the time we pulled into a parking lot so that we could get a picture of Charlotte in Charlotte it was completely dark and pouring rain. Zach hoped out with his umbrella and the two big kids and they all came back soaking wet.
Before we could drive out of Charlotte, the rain poured down so hard that it was almost impossible to see the road so we pulled over to wait out the storm. After about 15 minutes, the storm died down enough for us to drive on and we were soon out of the storm and on our way home. We arrived home in the wee hours of the morning.
Our Vacation, Day Two
The highlight of day two was an absolutely perfect trip to the beach. All 4 kids enjoyed themselves. Isaac and Charlotte played in the water and in the sand. Zach and I each got to take a turn out with the big kids in the water. 
We taught them to “ride the waves.†At one point a wave crashed down on Isaac, hitting him squarely on the bottom and he announced that the wave had “spanked†his bottom (see video).
All the kids enjoyed playing in the sand. Ila and Nicole didn’t like the water much, but they both enjoyed the sand. 
We dug out a little hole in the sand in front of Ila and let it fill with water so that Ila could splash around in it. 
Unfortunately as you can see in the video below, she also sampled some of the sand.
Before long the water started washing further up the beach enough to cover Ila’s legs with each wave. 
Ila started to yawn so I scooped her up and wrapped her in a towel. I put her in the stroller and turned the stroller so that her face was not in the sun. She watched everyone play for a little while before falling asleep.
A collection of fountains between the beach and the car helped the kids to rinse most of the sand off of their bodies.
Back at our room, everyone got showered and dressed. We ate lunch before attending a timeshare sales pitch that not only paid for most of our room, but also provided us with some food vouchers. After another stop at our room and a little down time for the kids, we choose a nice restaurant off of the list of places that accepted our vouchers. The name of the restaurant was “Robert Irvine’s eat.â€
It was a very nice restaurant that wasn’t accustomed to serving children. They only had one high chair and no kids’ menu. I have to admit to being a little nervous about taking the kids there. Every table had these fragile looking water glasses and the atmosphere was very pleasant and peaceful. I must not have been the only one who was nervous because as we left the restaurant, we got many relieved compliments on how well our children behaved. My favorite dish was the fried green tomatoes with feta and sprouts (pictured above). At one point, Ila dropped her pacifier and a waiter washed it off and returned it to us on a dish.
Day two ended with movie night in our hotel room. Ila fell to sleep easily and although Nicole still required extra attention to stay in bed and fall to sleep, she did seem to fall to sleep quicker than the night before. 
Unfortunately she also woke up in the middle of the night and threw up all over the bed.
Our Vacation, Day One
We had an opportunity this summer to go to Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. It’s a resort town with lots of beautiful beaches. Our trips started out with a 7 hour drive. The kids did well, as always. 
For most of the trip, they entertained themselves looking out the windows and at books. We had no snacks in the car and stopped off for lunch at McDonalds about halfway through the trip. Also about half way there, we hooked up a portable DVD player to the van’s little TV screen and let the kids watch a few episodes of Curious George to pass the time.
Ila didn’t cry much. She did practice her trick of transferring toys back and forth between her hands and feet.
All of the kids took a nap in the car
We checked in, got unloaded and then headed out for dinner at Fat Baby Pizza. We ate peppers stuffed with prosciutto and cheese and a delicious thin crust pepperoni pizza. The kids were not fans of the peppers, but they tried them.
After giving Ila a bath in the hotel sink and feeding her, I put her to bed in our pack and play to let her cry herself to sleep. 
She was very distracted by everyone in the room so I took the other three kids out on a walk to acquire more pillows and ice. She was still crying when we got back so I decided to take the kids on a bedtime swim at the hotel pool. 
Our pool trip was cut short unexpectedly for reasons I won’t detail here, but our rush back into the room and the changing of all three kids out of swimsuits and into PJs awaked Ila just after she had finally fallen asleep. The rest of the night was difficult as Ila and Nicole both had some trouble falling asleep and as a result, Zach and I also got very little sleep.
The Un-Casting
She went from crying in pain all though the day and night, to getting her cast put on, but not knowing how to move. She learned to crawl, climb, and walk. She cried over not being able to bathe, she hated having her hair washed in the sink. The cast cover was a bear to put on and take off, but it allowed her finally to bathe and swim and enjoy the beach. In some ways it’s been a long 4 weeks, yet it also seems to have flown by.
Zach and I both wanted to go with her and we thought Isaac and Charlotte would want to see it come off. Ila came along for the ride.
The nurse said that her mother makes these bears for the little children when they have their casts removed. Nicole liked the bear and hugged it right away. She cried in the van when she dropped it and couldn’t reach it. 
She cried and thrashed as the nurse tried to remove the cast. Zach did his best to hold her down, but she was panicked. 
I was pleased to see that there were no toys or pennies inside. Her leg was covered in dead and pealing skin, but not terribly dirty and the muscle had atrophied so that her right leg looked skinnier than her left. The sore on her foot looked worse than I expected, but after a bath the blood and dried skin washed away and I could see that it was healing ok.
She was quite grumpy for the rest of the morning and cried when she tried to bear weight on her weakened leg and ankle. By the end of the day she was limping around the house, mostly walking on her toes like she did with the cast on but starting to try a little flat footed walking. Hopefully tomorrow brings more healing and more mobility.