March

We had all kinds of crazy fun things happen in March.  Connor turned eight, and our homeschooling group went to a physics class at the California Science Center on the morning of his birthday.  They learned about air, it was pretty cool.
  

Connor continues to claim he doesn't like cake, so he had a brownie with ice cream for his birthday celebration.  He also got to officially join Cub Scouts with Ryan as his wolf den leader.  He was super excited, even though he had already been a few times illegally.
  

 
One thing happened around this time that was not fun.  Our friends from church suffered the death of their baby girl, Chloe, from unknown causes while she was in a carrier at Disneyland.  Chloe had Down Syndrome, along with several other medical problems, and was only a month older than Corinne.  It affected me a lot, and I went through a sort of depression for many weeks afterward. (It didn't help that I was extremely sleep deprived and feeling overwhelmed in other areas.)  The older kids and I attended Chloe's funeral, which was amazingly uplifting and tender.  It concluded with a balloon release and a party to celebrate her life.  Interacting with Chloe and her family has had a profound influence on how I feel about those with disabilities.  I feel like I'm a better person for having known her.  http://celebratechloe.blogspot.com/
 

Chloe

  

  
Uncle Kevin came to visit!  He had a training seminar all week for work, but he snuck out one evening to play with us down by the beach.  We ate fish tacos and watched the planes come in at LAX, it was awesome.
   

  
For Saint Patrick's Day, we did our "secret leprechaun" thing with families from church.  I keep promising myself I won't do it again, though.  I feel like our secret gifts are always so lame compared to the ones we get, and it stresses me out.  But, the kids love to doorbell ditch, and get so excited when they find surprises at our doorstep.  One of the baskets we got this year included this puppet/washcloth.  It was obviously meant for Corinne, but when we showed it to her, she stared at it for a moment, then did a huge startle, throwing her arms out and everything, and started to cry and turn away.  We tried it again a day or two later, just to see if it was a coincidence, and she did the exact same thing.  Long stare - jump of surprise - terrified crying.
  

Pop Rocks

  
One of the girls in Elise's kindergarten class held a 100th Day of School party at her house.  They made crafts that involved the number 100, and did a "100 Snack", where they took ten each of ten different treats and combined them in a bag.  My kids decided not to stop at one hundred, of course, and ended up with something more like a "500 Snack".
  

  
Most of those same girls are in a girl scout troop that meets during the homeschool park day.  I thought it might be nice for Elise to get to know them better, so we went one day to check it out.  Elise was so impressed with these girls, she couldn't stop talking about how nice they were.  "As nice as a kitty!" she told me.  So, we signed her up.  This is her right before her first Daisy meeting.
  

  
We finally (almost) finished our little yard landscaping project and set up our swing set.  It still needs to be anchored, and we need to buy wood chips, but the kids are already having fun with it.  Corinne was especially impressed with the baby swing.
  

  

Lasts, Firsts, and Lots of Randomness

We'll start with the "last" thing.  At the end of February, my kids went to their last Celebration of Learning at the charter school.  I'd been looking for a solution to our over-scheduled life, and decided that doing two school programs was too much.  We didn't have time for any fun family activities, which were supposedly the reason we were homeschooling in the first place!  Since Connor and Elise were gone two days a week, our together time was just me trying to cram in academics.  We decided to keep the private school because it requires a lot less volunteer and paperwork time, and because it is more academic, and covers stuff I'd have a hard time doing at home.

One thing I will really miss, though, are the Passion Projects the kids display at Celebration of Learning.  They've been a great vehicle for my kids to explore stuff they're interested in, and then teach it to others.  We're going to keep this a part of our kids' educations by getting together with our friends for presentations every few months.

This semester Connor decided to study Crystals and Gems.  We visited the display at the Natural History Museum, read books, and went digging for Tourmaline in Orange County.
   

  

   Elise wanted to learn about the body.  We got her a cool squishy visible man, also read a lot of books, and went to see the Bodies exhibit in Vegas.
  

I hand-drew all those internal organs.  It took every speck of artistic ability I have.

 

Elise's "Do One Thing" (D.O.T.) to make her community better.  She was too shy to say it, though.

   
On March second, we gave Corinne her first solid food.  I decided to go with sweet potatoes since my other kids all loved them, and it was a good choice.  She meekly let me put a little on her tongue, tasted it for a minute, then lunged forward for more.  It was the fastest I ever saw a baby latch on to a new food!  

   

After about a month of vegetables, I tried her on oatmeal with disastrous results.  She screamed for half the night (while our friends were babysitting her, of course,) then had an upset stomach the next day.  I tried a couple weeks later - same thing.  The third time I tried oatmeal was in mid-April, and it made her puke like crazy.  I guess she doesn't do oats, poor girl!
  
On a related note, Elise has been breaking out in these horrible itchy rashes every couple of weeks.  We took her for allergy testing, but she came back negative on everything, including the most common food allergies (milk, eggs, wheat, peanuts..)  A visit to a fourth doctor suggested that it might be an allergy to a less common food, and we suspect strawberries, since she had a bowl of these right before the most recent flare-up.  Three weeks without strawberries saw no rashes, but when I gave her a berry yesterday she had no reaction.  I guess we'll just have to watch and wait, and keep track of what she eats.  Or maybe try lots of strawberries . . .
   

Allergy Test.  Surprisingly, the red dots are still considered negative results.

    

So now to Evan's food issues:  I came outside one day to see him eating this.  I started racking my brain to figure out where he had gotten such a huge cheese stick (his favorite snack.)  Then I realized it wasn't cheese.  He threw up in the car later that afternoon.
  

Mmmm, buttery.

In January of last year (2012), Connor set a goal to read the Book of Mormon by the time he turned eight.  A couple of kids he knew had done it, and (with encouragement from Ryan and I,) he decided to give it a try.  For over a year, off and on, he worked at it, coloring each page he read in a little chart-book I found online.  The day before his birthday, he read the last page.  We were pretty proud of him.  I'm actually amazed at what a fast reader he is.  He kind of gulps pages (just like Ryan does), so I don't think his retention is that good, but he absorbed enough to mention things he had read to me.  I'm still jealous, though.  I'm the slowest reader ever.
    

   

The rest of these pictures are just random stuff we did with the kids at home or wherever.  I like them.  They're cute.
   

Elise Reaches 601 on her Adding Game

My son.  He got a moustache tattoo in a valentine, but it broke.  So he completed it in pen.

Rocketship (Connor)

Evan never gets tired of the fountains at the Americana.

Making Candy Cards for Each Other (Connor ate his.)

Jump-Jump

Happy Birthday Evan!

My sweet baby boy turned three in February!  I can't believe he's so big.  I didn't have time to make him a birthday cake, so we got him an awesome strawberry shortcake from Porto's.  Evan liked it, but decided halfway through his slice that it was more fun to "cut" it, which meant smashing it into goo with his fork. He's done this with almost every type of dessert we've given him since then.

 

He opened cards and presents from far and wide, and we took him to Target to spend his birthday money (he chose another football, a Woody and Buzz Lightyear action figure set, and a stuffed Mickey Mouse.)
    

Presents (Connor is helping, of course.)

 

Singing Kittens e-card from Grandma

   
I had been promising him that "when he was three" he could go to gymnastics class like Connor and Elise, so the weekend after his birthday I took him to a trial class.  He was so excited he couldn't stand still.  Elise and I hung around and watched him through the window.  
    

Before Class

   
He had tons of fun, but didn't really understand the concept of doing one activity or area of the gym at a time.   He just kept wandering off to do whatever looked interesting.  If the class hadn't been so full, I wouldn't have minded, but the Saturday morning class was way overwhelmed with kids (the picture is only a third of who was in there).  I still think we'll sign him up eventually, but for now we're just doing a Mommy and Me music class during the week.  He thinks that's awesome, too!
  
The morning after his birthday, Evan brought this Lego creation to me saying, "Look, Mom!  I made it!"  The expression on his face was so proud I had to get a picture.  What a sweetie he is.
   

I love you, Evan!