1st day of pre-K

Blake has his first day of pre-k today. In Florida, all 4 year olds can go to pre-k for 3 hours a day for free. As a teacher this law made total sense to me. There are a lot of academic expectations put on kindergartners, so if you can get a year of pre-k for all children then the adjustment to full day kindergarten should be less. For Blake, it is just a continuation of the schooling he's had the last year and a half.

He was very excited to get in and interact with the new friends in his class.


I know he will do great this year. He loves to learn and going to school just fits into his life naturally. Colby is a bit bummed out that he isn't going to school too, but he will adjust as soon as we start going to the Y every day while Blake is at school.

Hope your kiddos have/had a great first day of school.

Next chapter

Blake starts pre-K on Monday. He will be going to school every day for 3 hours a day. We had meet the teacher last night. He is so excited. When we talked about it yesterday morning, he ran in his room and put on his school uniform.

We found out that he will be in the same classroom he was in last year (it was the 3 year old room and now is a pre-k room). He has the teacher that he has been with all summer. She is working on her degree at UCF to become an elementary teacher, which is good because she should be willing to push him in the classroom. There aren't any children in his class from last year, but that's fine with me. Blake very easily interacted with the other children in the room last night and seemed very comfortable.

Hard to believe that in a few months he will be turning 5. In a lot of ways I already treat him like he is 5. I'm often told he acts a lot older than his age, which I think is a good thing. But, at the same time it seems like he was just learning to walk, talk and read. Now he is on the education path. I am so excited to watch him learn and grow.

I know many parents want to keep their children young, but in many ways I'm the opposite. I can't wait to see the next challenge that lays in front of them. I've watched them bloom into learners already. Blake is already pretty athletic and soon Colby will be playing sports too. Both boys love to learn, play with others and go and do. I know they will excel at a lot in their lifetime and I can't wait to be there to cheer them on. And just as much I look forward to seeing them learn from their mistakes and grow from that too.

On Monday we turn the page on a new chapter of life, and I'm excited to see what this chapter holds.

Are you ready for your child's school year to start? Who is more excited you or your child(ren)?

Busy month of April!

Do you ever look at your calendar and think... wow life gets busy? I know that the older the boys get the busier life will get. I realize that because we encourage them to participate in sports and other activities they will have a lot going on over the weekends.

I was just looking at our calendar for April. Blake starts soccer on Wednesday. He has practice every Wednesday and games every Saturday until June (then we will start t-ball).

April 2nd we are taking the boys to Thomas. Colby is a huge Thomas fan right now. We took them last year because it was Blake's big thing last year. I know they will have a blast riding on the train and playing on the inflatable playground.

April 8th-10th we are heading to a hot air balloon festival. I'm psyched about this myself. I hope the weather cooperates so the balloons can fly. They are also having an air show, car show and kids fun area. I'm really looking forward to seeing the night flight of the hot air balloons and taking pictures of them.

April 16th is UCF's spring football game. We are taking the boys to this since Blake has been talking about watching UCF football a lot lately. This is a short game and will be a shorter tailgating too. I'm sure they will have a blast.

April 24th is Easter

April 30th our neighborhood is having a yard sale. We have a lot of items we are going to sell and hope to make some great sales.

Guess it will be a fun and busy month for us. At least I'll have a lot to photograph.

Another milestone in our lives

Well, I just got home from Blake's IEP meeting for speech at the local elementary school. The meeting was his annual review, but it was also to put him on consultation. What does this mean? It means that Blake will no longer be receiving speech services. It means that my little boys who was barely speaking last year, now is speaking so well that he doesn't need services anymore. It means he is on/above age level in his articulation skills. At this point he only has two goals to work on: clearly speaking multi-syllabic words in sentences and clearly speaking in longer and longer sentences. A lot of this has more to do with him thinking faster than he can talk than actual articulation issues.

His speech teacher will be in contact with me monthly to check in on his progress, but for the most part we do not see a need for him to receive speech services anymore. Can you believe it? Last year at this time, I was worries that he would be speaking clearly when he entered kindergarten, and he is being released a few weeks before he turns 4.

I'm so proud of his progress!

Proud Momma!

When Blake was beginning to focus on clearing up his speech issues we started by focusing on the letter sounds in isolation. The teacher in me said that the best way to do this was to teach him this in a way that would help him later with reading. At the time, he already knew most of the letters names by sight so I decided to teach him the sign for each letter. We focused on correctly articulating the letter sound when I showed him the sign. We then began adding a word that began with that sound. Blake learned this quickly and has been fascinated with letters and sounds since.

In the last few weeks he has really be focusing on seeing words and trying to sounds them out. He says each letter sound and tries hard to figure out what it says. Sadly our language makes this hard unless you are looking at simple words, but it doesn't stop him from trying!

Last night the boys and I got out markers and paper and decided to draw some pictures. I was drawing a picture of a flower and Blake asked to help. He colored in some of the petals and I was actually surprised at how well he did at coloring in the lines (ok almost in the lines). Blake doesn't color very often so I didn't know he was working on mastering that skill all on his own. When we were done I asked him what flower started with. He then told me "F says /f/ for flower". He then wrote the F on the paper. I asked him what other sounds do you hear... he told me /a/ and /r/ that is the word you see at the top of the picture. He then spelled and wrote "Mommy" (I helped him write the lower case "m"'s and the "y").

Blake then decided to draw a picture of his own. He decided to draw a picture of Henry, from Thomas the Tank Engine. He told me that the wheels were circles and that the body was like a rectangle. He then went on to add the smoke stack, whistle and face. He asked me to help him write Henry. I decided to see how much he could do on his own so I just said the word slowly, the same way I would when teaching my kindergartners to use inventive spelling. The word at the top of his paper is "Hnre". He then decided to write Thomas at the bottom and as you can see with the exception of the "h" he got the whole word.

I can honestly say I was very proud and a bit surprised. I knew he knew his letter sounds but I had kindergartners who struggled with this concept. I am continually amazed at what he can do and the fact that he does this because he wants to not because I'm forcing him to do school things.

We interupt your regularly scheduled blog posts...

to show you a cute video!



I finally captured Colby's walking on video. He is officially walking (I define officially walking: when I get tired of counting the number of steps taken each time). He still crawls more than he walks, but I think he just can't bother crawling over to something to stand up, then walk.... when he could just crawl there faster. And trust me... he crawls FAST!

Next step... RUNNING!

Now back to your regularly scheduled blogging... lol

Guess what...

Colby took his first two steps yesterday!!

No, I didn't get it on video or even a picture, but I know it will be the beginning of many more steps to come!

on the move

Well Colby is officially a crawler now! See...


He is more fascinated with pulling himself up on anything and everything that is low enough for him to get his hands on. He has also begun to cruise a bit... not officially cruising yet, more like 2 steps and stop or 2 steps and fall, but trust me it is in his very near future!! Seems like just yesterday I was telling you that he was pulling himself up on his knees and now he's pulling himself up on furniture.







This is so exciting, but scary too... how am I ever going to keep up with the two of them going in opposite directions? I'm already dealing with the whole... he's touching me, he's taking my toy, he's sitting too close, he's looking at me... ok so neither one of them say any of those things, but trust me they are so thinking it!

A big milestone.... my first taste of food

My first bite... what is this stuff??

Too much Mommy!

Here let me show you how to do this

Chillin' out eating my dinner

Ahhh that was enjoyable

It took a bit for him to warm up to the taste/texture, but he ate the whole tablespoon of food and I probably could have given him more! I have thought for probably a month that he was ready. Richard and I decided to give it a whirl to see if it would help him feel fuller at night... well... he didn't wake up 2 times, and slept until 3:50 which is progress over the last few nights!

New skills

When I was working on painting the baby's room we reversed the lock so I could lock Blake out of the room (since you know he can open the doors on his own). Well... since he has been playing in there all the time we began locking the door for his nap time and bed time... yeah well that doesn't work anymore... he figured out how to unlock the door.

So now in our house unless the door has a baby-proof lock on it... he can open it! (well he hasn't figured out the dead bolts, but I think that is because they are too high up) He has also figured out how to open the slider door if it is unlocked. At least the handles for the patio doors are high (they are over my head) so we don't have to worry about that for a longggggg time!

oh and the other day he figure out how to get one type of the baby proof outlet covers off... so much for baby proofing!

oh the joys!

Toddler bed take 2

Ok well I was going to skip a day posting about the toddler bed, buttttt...

First let me update you on yesterday. After about 2 hours I put him in the crib and he still only slept for about 30 min. Needless to say he went to bed early last night... and CRASHED!

Today he went down for his nap at 11 and fussed for what felt like a nanosecond! I found him like this at 11:30

So, I guess he figured out what that thing was for!

As I said I would do.... here are a few other pics of his bed

toddler bed take 1

Well we put Blake's toddler bed in his room last night. Richard, Blake and I played and read stories on/next to it before he went to sleep last night. Then this morning Blake and I played with the felt cars for the headboard. I managed to get him to skip his morning rest time so he'd be tired for his afternoon nap. I brought him in and put him on the toddler bed and he got very upset. So I stayed with him for a bit and rubbed his stomach and sang with him to calm him down. Then the phone rang so I told him I had to go answer it and he should close his eyes and get some rest. Yeah well that wasn't in his plans, but in less than 5 min he was quiet. I check on him and found him like this...

yes that is on the floor next to his closet... sort of near the toddler bed! so being the good mommy I am I first went and go my camera to take a picture of him. Then I tried to move him... oops that didn't work.

I got him back on the bed and settled down again and told him to lay down and rest. I'm sure he was off the bed before I even left the room. He was upset for less than 3 min. But, he didn't sleep... I could hear him playing and talking away. Then he got quiet... ok I'm going to go check in a min... nope he began screaming at that time.

So I go back in again and he's fine. I tell him to get up on the bed and lay down and he did without hesitation, but he wanted to read. So we read a book and I sat with him a minute or two and then said... ok you rest. I'll see you when you wake up. He fussed that time for less than a minute, but as of now still hasn't gone to sleep.

We will see!!

(I'll try to remember to take a pic of the bed in the room when he's awake to show you later)

New skills

As a kindergarten teacher I used to joke that the first two weeks of school I taught the kids to sit, stand and clean up. I was known for having saying that I used OVER and OVER and OVER again with my class. (consistency is a big thing with 5 year olds) Well with cleaning I used to say "Everything has a place, everything in it's place". When asked what this meant I would remind them that if they put things away where they found them thennnn when they went to use it the next time they would be able to find it (simple isn't it?).

Well for the first 16 months of Blake's life Richard and I were the ones where were putting everything in it's place. I felt that cleaning up was the next step after learning to play. Yes, I had/have every intention of getting him to clean up his own toys and be responsible, but I figured it was "the next step". Well, I guess Blake has decided to take that next step (sort of!).

The last few days he has been going out of his way to help clean up when I pick up his toys, andddd he often does it on his own too. Now let me tell you that means out of 20 legos he will put away maybe 2, but hey it is a start!! He loves to put things in other things so as long as the item is going inside something else there is a chance he will put it away.

I was over joyed at this... I thought this was a skill I'd have to start really working on with him when he was closer to 2, but if he wants to start cleaning up after himself I say whooo hooo!

Next step toward being a "big boy"

It's funny how the little milestones mean so much sometimes. You forget how a little thing like where you sit can mean so much to someone so little!


My mom got Blake a booster seat for the table. He was so proud to be able to sit closer to the table and eat right at the table (not on a tray).

He then found a new use for his old space saver high chair!