We have had a very busy few weeks. The first weekend in September we had two fun festivals. One was at the YMCA and one was at Kaiser. Here is a picture of Phoenix with face painting from the Y. We went directly to the Kaiser festival and the face paintings were professional and not from volunteers. She really wanted to wait in line again, because the face paintings were so intricate, but there was no room left on her face!
After the two festivals we had a play date at the pool. I had the privilege of getting some studying done while doing "gate watch", and the kids had fun playing with friends. I was able to capture one picture. If you look closely you can see Daddy, Rubix, Selena, Phoenix and Axel. I am not sure where Kristin is in this picture. They all had a great time.
We had back to school night on Sept. 12th for Axel. Here is one of his projects that was displayed. We were surprised that he had so many misspelled words. Keith actually had a conference with his teacher, Mr. Murphy, at how we can help Axel learn how to edit and review his work. Axel can read and comprehend books at nearly a high school level, but then misspells words and has poor sentence structure. We think it is mostly out of laziness and we really want him to get out of these bad habits. His teacher says it is age appropriate and is willing to help Axel bridge the gap as many of his classmates appear to be checking their work and looking up words that they think might be misspelled. This is a big goal for Axel this year.
Over the past couple of months we have had a few orthodontist appointments for Axel. We finally decided which orthodontist we want to use and Axel has officially started phase 1 of his treatment. That means Axel will be wearing a head gear for the next 18 months! In about 12 months they will decide if he also needs the mouth widener, if the head gear is not making enough room for his permanent teeth to come in. Axel currently has 3 loose teeth and a permanent tooth that came in as a second row on the bottom again. Unfortunately, there is no permanent tooth that has a path to make that baby tooth become loose so that tooth may have to be pulled in the coming months. For now it will just hang out with the hopes that the cuspids will eventually push on the roots of that baby tooth. I forgot to get a picture of Axel in his head gear, but I will make sure to include it on my next post.
Phoenix and Rubix have grown closer over the past 6 months and can play together well, at times. Rubix gave Phoenix a hug and she asked me to quickly try to capture the moment. I love when I see her motherly instincts kick in.
You can see how much fun they have together.
Here she is being a bit bossy trying to trace his hand, but Rubix is so gentle and patient he doesn't seem to mind.
We finally purchased a bike rack for the Tuscon. It was a very long process to get the proper hitch installed and to find the proper bike rack as not many bike racks fit smaller bikes. The kids had fun helping Daddy put together the rack and install it. Afterwards, they had a great time building a fort from the boxes. I love the windows, door and shelves they installed. I also love how they made it look like a kitten. If you look closely you can see the black lines down the center of both windows and Rubix is looking at the nose that Phoenix drew.
I have only had Fridays to spend with Rubix as I have been working at Stanford on Thursdays for my movement fellowship. He looks forward to park time and makes the most of mommy/ me time regardless if other kids are around. Yesterday he started pumping his legs while swinging. You can see his legs are extended and he is about to bend them in the picture below.
He continues to love to play ball. I love watching him play throw and catch, whether I am playing with him or if he is playing by himself, like he is doing in the picture below.
Yesterday I had the privilege of going to Phoenix's classroom for a class party. I had a lot of fun meeting some of her new friends and watching her participate in class.
She absolutely loves school.
You can see her being her silly self in the picture below.
We received really fun news this week about both children. First, we found out that Axel is getting moved up to P3 math. That means he is skipping 5th grade math and starting 6th grade math. He did really well on his ERB testing at the end of last year and kicked butt on his pretest at the beginning of this year. Because he demonstrated that he already knew most of the 5th grade material his teacher decided he really ought to be more challenged. Axel is the first student that Mrs. Torres has moved up in her 5 years of teaching at Harker. Monday Axel starts in Mrs. Vojvodic's class. He is very excited. Daddy has been getting him caught up on the first month of school concepts. He has a test next week that he needs to be prepared for so they are doing a month of work in 3 days!
The other exciting news is that Phoenix was placed in P3 math and P3 language arts. She did really well in her 4 weeks of assessment. This means she will be doing 2nd grade work for these two subjects. She will have Mrs. Smith and Mrs Anderson for these classes. That means she will start multiplication soon! She was really excited to have her first homework assignment this weekend. We studied for her first spelling test which consisted of box, sock, duck, shut, sun, gum, pond and rock. I quizzed her yesterday and today. I believe she will have her first test this week! She also had to draw a picture of an ocean animal and write a few sentences about it. She drew a picture of a dolphin and wrote, "Dolphins can talk. Dolphins live in the ocean. Dolphins swim and play." I am so very proud of her embracing school and loving it so much. I am so proud of Axel for trying his hardest and checking his work in math as that was the most important thing he learned last year. Now, if we can only get him to check his grammar and spelling in English!
The kids hardly ever take a bath together as Axel usually showers. He wanted to use one of his oatmeal bath bombs for his skin and the other two wanted to take their baths at the same time. We ended up with some fun laughter and tears. Here is a picture of the fun laughter that occurred after the tears of learning to share tub space with big brother Axel.
We will continue to be busy over the coming weeks. I will be in Sacramento tomorrow attending Kendra's memorial service, Axel will be at a birthday party. We have Phoenix's back to school night on Tuesday. My mom arrives late Wednesday night. I take off for St. Louis Thursday. Axel has his first Harker swim meet on Thursday and they have a weekend full of fun plans. I arrive back very late Tuesday night. We have Harker's annual family picnic on the 7th and then Keith leaves for Japan for 8 days. The coming month should bring loads of fun and growing. I will try to post in a few weeks!
