To everything, turn, turn, turn....

There is a season, turn, turn, turn. It seems like I titled another post that once. Oh well.

We are seeing our family in a new season of life right now, and loving every second of it. When we had Isaac we were so worried about how our life was going to change. It scarcely seemed to change. We hung out with our best friends and their little boy who was a few weeks older, all the time. We stayed up late, we forced that little guy to be flexible and sleep wherever he was.

I remember one night we were driving home from the Kirks house at 1:00 am. We got pulled over by a policeman. Dave had forgotten to use a turn signal. Lame, right? The police looked in our car, saw the carseat in the back and said, "I was looking for drunk drivers and you turned out by the bar without a turn signal. I don't think you've been drinking, have you?" No, sir, but you can ticket us for being irresponsible parents and keeping our infant out until 1:00 am if you would like.

Every vacation we took, we declared our last. We hung out with friends and contemplated at what point we might grow up. 2 kids, 3 kids? Every time we got pregnant again we waited for life to really change. Well, it hardly seemed like it changed right up until this August when our kids were still frequently up at 10:00 pm.

Then school started. If Isaac is even up until 8:30 I have a hard time waking him up in the morning. It's terrible. "I ALWAYS have to go to school. FOREVER! Every single day I go to school. How come DAWSON doesn't have to go to school? School's not that fun." Those are some of the things I hear.

The whole morning goes differently if he goes to bed early. We try now to get him to bed at 7:00. Then he wakes up around 12 hours later. He plays for awhile and then he easily gets ready for school and leaves. He comes home from school, does homework, and reads for 20 minutes.

I feel like a grownup now. It's a new stage of life, one that I have to take a little more seriously. I have responsibility towards a schedule. I can't just disappear for the day, I have a little boy coming home at 12:30. I am enjoying myself so much though, I'm loving the change.

Isaac is handling school like a champ. His reading has really improved once he started the Book-it program of reading 20 minutes a day. It was amazing to me. Here is an example of a book he soars through.

Bats, Bats, Bats,

Bats have wings. Bats can fly.
Bats have fur.
Bats can live in a tree.
Bats can live in a cave.
Bats sleep all day.
Bats eat at night.

Not bad right? I sometimes have to remind him about the silent "e"s but he read that book right through without hesitation. (This was one of the books from my friend's store. We are LOVING all these new books)

Isaac was extremely upset with me about the 20 minutes of reading at first, but he improved so much and as it got easier, he enjoyed it more. The other day he told me he had a secret for me. He whispered in my ear that he loves to read. That made my day! I can't wait to see him keep improving, I think he'll be great.

Isaac's homework has around 7-10 pages in it for the week. I try to make him finish all the pages in 2-3 days because I don't like procrastination. Then I would know it was done by Wednesday or Thursday and it didn't stress me out. We have now decided that the math in Kindergarten (practically non-existant so far. Just grouping and counting and stuff.) isn't stimulating enough for him, so after his homework is finished he will do supplemental math homework that I print out.

If you google "addition worksheet" or subtraction, there are all kinds of printouts. I printed one out that was pretty hard, it had equations such as 9+7, that have double digit answers. Isaac has never done those before. He took quite awhile to finish the worksheet, but he did it with only 2 problems he needed to fix. It looked really messy. I looked a little closer and saw erased tick marks. I asked him what those were, and he sheepishly told me that he counted them. I was very impressed that he came up with that idea, and I'm sure in time he will memorize the answers so he won't need to do that anymore. I just need to keep him doing this supplemental math, and maybe he'll love math like me!

Another thing that was a big change was Dawson going to preschool. He has to leave early like Isaac, which was hard at first. I'm really pleased with his schooling though. He is really excelling in him tumbling and swimming. The swimming teacher even said he was the best floater in the class. He comes home with fantastic tumbling skills, and can even do a cartwheel.(Well, for a 3 year old BOY it is a great cartwheel, KWIM?) As far as academic, well preschool isn't exactly rigorous. I've spent a lot of time comparing it to the joy school that I did with Isaac. I don't think the curriculum is any better than joy school at all. I do think Dawson's preschool is outstandingly creative (which impresses mom way more than student and probably doesn't matter that much). The biggest differences that I see in the Sports Academy experience is the independence that they learn and the structure. This is really important for Dawson. They have a perfected little schedule and they do require them to do a lot of things on their own. I'm sure it's a little different for Dawson's class than the class that I teach (4-5 year olds), but I just see this as such good training for Kindergarten, and of all my kids so far, Dawson will benefit the very most from this.

Wow, that became a long post. I'm just fascinated by the changes and new things we are experiencing. The only thing that is constant is change. Or so they say....