Soccer camp has begun!

All is well

All is well at the Chaffin house. We spent 3 straight weeks at the lake which was a wonderful way to finish the summer, but it is good to be back home and begin to get into some sort of rhythm again. But we ALL love the lake!

We ran out of swim diapers... I think this diaper is at capacity.

Joseay continues to be a joy and is all over everywhere. Up and down and making noises and just generally having a good time. She is cruising along furniture and just yesterday stood up from a sitting position. Of course she was immediately back down, but her day is coming. Or rather our day is coming. Not sure.

Brown is enjoying school. Still “eating all his snack” in case you have been following along. He is doing all those things that to us are amazing and fun, but to the rest of the world are just normal kid stuff. He has begun to play under his bed somewhat. The other night, I went in to check on him after he had been asleep an hour or two, and all I could see was two feet sticking out from under the bed. He was asleep on the wooden floor. Not sure why we spend money on sheets and mattresses.

The Joseay/Brown interaction is also taking a fairly predictable course as Joseay is more mobile and just wants to be doing whatever Brown is doing which of course is exactly opposite of what Brown wants her to do. Sharing hasn’t entered the mental vocabulary yet but we are working on it. This may explain Brown’s new love of running – it is the only way to outpace her right now. But again, the day is coming…

But the boy loves to run. Put him in a big yard and he just takes off. And does circles. Last week, he even finished a run by lying in the grass and rolling around he was so happy. (yes like a dog)

Now that I think of it, this may simply be the beginning of a trend. We built him a sandbox the other day. When we showed it to him for the first time, he played for a few seconds, then laid himself facedown in the sand and sort of made a sand angel. I think he likes it.

Personal Swimming Pool

Well, to keep the swimming pool theme going and divert attention from our bruiser mugshot of Joseay, lets talk about Brown and his recent water experiences. He is getting into the routine of school and all its strange protocols ("well, Brown still likes throwing his lessons on the floor" says his teacher) but all in all it is good. One of the "life skills" at this age is to figure out the toilet. I can see why it would be strange to a two year old to begin using the toilet when they can just poop in their pants. But hey, that thing has a lever that makes a big whoosh, and it involves water, so Brown is in! So they are basically just trying to introduce him to the toilet. Evidently, Brown got a bit to into it as you can see from his daily report:
Now, focus on this part of the report:

So evidently, he really is getting personal with the toilet at school. Nice.

The other thing we are learning about the reports is that sometimes, they are just not that relevant for what is going on with your child. For instance, this line:

This line is completely irrelevant for Brown. He always will eat everything. There is never a time when the "I wasn't hungry" box will be checked. If it is, please call an ambulance. He is a snack eating machine. His first day, while I was there observing, they gave him one cheese stick off of a huge pile, I mean a pile of 30 or more cheese sticks. So after the 2 seconds it took to cram the whole thing in his mouth, he was back at the basket grabbing more cheese sticks with both hands causing much consternation. "wasn't hungry," ha! give me a break.

Terrible mommying

We were up on the dock at the lake enjoying a beautiful day this morning. Joseay was crawling around and I didn't want her to get a splinter so... I had a brilliant idea. The big inflatable pool was empty so I thought she would enjoy crawling around in there for a few minutes - splinter free. About three minutes into this great adventure, the wind picked up quite a bit. Suddenly, as I turned around, I saw the pool take flight with a huge gust of wind, flipping it over in mid air with Joseay being tossed up and over and flat down - face first onto the wooden deck - with the big pool on top of her. Holy cow!!! It was unreal. Poor thing was scared to death, crying hysterically. Scared me, too. She looks like she got beat up pretty good. But she's tough. She shook it off after a few minutes. But she's looking kind of rough right now.

Montessori update

Ok... So the first 2 days were rough, but this video is when I was observing him the third day behind the one way glass. I felt so much better after watching him this day. He had a great week and seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself.
Hmmmmmm

Montessori

Well, this certainly feels like the first day of school for Brown. He did a day of mothers day out each week last spring, but this is his first 5 day a week outing. I think he is really going to love it and thrive here over the next few months, but of course I am a bit nervous for him. He has been saying " 'cool" (school) for a long time which is what he called his old mothers day out program. We took him by his new school yesterday and of course he saw all the playground equipment and didn't really even want to leave. Hopefully, the new playground will ease the transition. Hope to post a picture of him later this morning. -curt
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And now... this is Chris chiming in later... the boys just left for school. Curt gets to go with Brown to help phase him in today, and I get to go tomorrow, and then Wednesday, he's on his own. I'm not worried about him at all - he's going to love it. Absolutely. But when I woke up this morning, I wanted to cry and throw up - I feel so sad. What are we doing!?! Sending our 2 1/2 year old off to school already? What in the world!? If I could make the decision today (which probably wouldn't be smart), I would definitely not do this. A lot of people HAVE to send their kids to school this early because of their work schedules. But we don't have to do that. I wanted to do this sometime last year when I was overwhelmed with 2 little ones and our friends who have their kids in Montessori could all work for their marketing team - they LOVE this place. So I was convinced that it would be best for Brown. But... I'm having massive second thoughts. We are going to ride it out for a couple of months and see how he responds. I really think he is going to love it. But I'm just not sure the timing is right... we'll see. And as Curt told me when they were pulling away this morning, it's not like we are locked into this decision for the rest of our lives. We can change our minds. So I'm trying to have more of an open mind. But I am sad. Brown looks sad in these pictures, but he isn't. He was just annoyed with my camera. The second to last picture is of him running out to the car. I made him come back and give me a hug, but he couldn't have cared less.

She's Crawling

I haven't posted any videos lately, and this one is a few weeks old, but this was one of the first days she had figured out how to get up in the official crawl position. Now she is crawling around the house like nobody's business, and pulling up on everything and everyone. We knew she was going to be quick! I'll post more pics and videos soon, but I thought I should at least get these up there...