Home Schooling

I have a couple of friends who home school their children. I quite admire them, I don't think I could do it. There are wonderful things about home schooling that make the idea very tempting, flexibility being a big draw. Flexibility in how things are taught and when. On Avery's last day at school before maternity leave Teacher Alma handed me a folder with Avery's first 13 or so letters as well as cut out letters and pictures for the remaining letters. Each week at school Blue Group has a letter of the day. They have a project where they glue the cutout letter onto a paper along with say apples cut out from construction paper for the letter A. They encouraged me to finish up the alphabet by the time we got back to school in late April.
I am definitely not cut out to be a preschool or elementary teacher and here are some prime examples of why:

My moon looks like a banana and how about that mouth with teeth. The mountains are okay. Lastly my mailbox, if she had properly glued the mailbox it would have looked much better but instead it's on it's side and the flag is on the opposite side of the paper.

Is that the saddest one-eyed octopus you ever saw? I don't even know what those green things are... Diamond doesn't start with O, neither does leaf... I have no idea.

I think this one speaks for itself. Crazy pig.

Anyway we made it all the way through the letter U. Thankfully they sent home some umbrellas in the folder for Avery to glue on the paper so I didn't have to torture myself trying to cut out umbrellas or ukuleles. Avery went back to school April 26 and she was so happy to be there, it made me so happy. I was a bit disappointed to see the letter Z project posted all over the walls of Blue Group. We almost made it to the end, only 5 letters shy. Let's see how these last ones turn out, I am sure my zebra will be comparable to Teacher Edna's zebra.

Redondo Beach Pier

April 22 our new neighbors were kind enough to offer to babysit for the kids so Jon and I could go out to dinner for my birthday (35!) and our anniversary (7!). We went to Baleen, a restaurant near the Redondo Beach Pier, and we saw a bunch of sea lions out on the rock jetty. We talked about how Avery would like to see this so the next day we took a little family trip to Fisherman's wharf. It is an interesting place, kind of old school marina people, bars, restaurants, boats to see. We happened upon an arcade, played a little air hockey, let Avery play a bean bag toss game and ride a pretend pony.
She did so well at the bean toss game that she got to pick a prize. She picked a blow-up, 4 foot tall giraffe that she named Lucy. I told her if Quincy got a hold of Lucy that he would pop her, so now Lucy lives in Avery's closet. Lucy is a very happy giraffe.

Santa Barbara

My best friend since junior high, Jenny, and her family recently bought a house in Santa Barbara. They were amongst our few friends who waited out the housing bubble with us, renting while the prices of real estate sky-rocketed, waiting until the prices dropped to make our move into home ownership. We drove up this weekend to see their beautiful new house and had such a nice visit. We enjoyed each others company, a yummy lunch, a walk across the creek to go feed the horses, and exploring the outdoors and all the neat features inside the house. James was born 3 months before Landon and the girls always enjoy their time together. And it goes without saying that I enjoy catching up with Jenny anytime, anywhere. We look forward to making more memories together in both of our new houses.

A Lesson in Sleep Training

Last night Landon decided to give us a little lesson in sleep training. At age 5 months I finally broke down and we sleep trained Avery in order to survive my commute and workdays. Waking up 2-3 times per night was not an option. It was not an easy process, letting her cry herself to sleep. In the end she became a great sleeper after only 9 nights and each night got easier but it was kind of painful. So, fast forward to now. This boy. He had been sort of sleeping well the past few nights but I was waking him up around 10 or 11 to feed him. Last night, I decided to see what would happen if I just put him to bed after the 8 pm feed. And holy moly, he slept until 630 this morning. He is saying "hello, let me sleep". After all this big boy doubled his birth weight at 9 weeks, exactly 12 lb 14 oz at his 2 month appt. Sweet chunky boy.

Really?!?

Last night Avery woke (us) up 4 times (what?!?!) because there were (non-existent) bugs in her room. I nearly wanted to scream every time but I refrained, eventually sending Jon in to deal with the later bug freak-outs. Then around 4 am Quincy puked all over our new carpet in our bedroom. And of course that's the night that Landon slept all (all!!!) night long. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry so I did neither, or maybe I did cry a little.