half way there and learning toys!

I thought I would post a little update on how school is going for us. In short, we love it! Yesterday as we were driving around with a friend, he and Ian were talking about how when they would miss a day of school even for a doctors visit it was so cool to them. They would think, 'wow! Is this what people do during the day??' It was surreal to them that life went on outside the school building. I remember thinking things like that too! One of the positive things about homeschooling is that my kids will always know that there is life beyond school. And they will have practice every day learning how to live the way they will some day when they make families/lives of their own. This is an aspect of homeschooling that I expected, but there have been a few positives recently that I did not expect.

The main one is the freedom that it brings! I've always tried to maintain a decent sleeping routine for my kids. I like them to be well rested:) So it's nice to not have something else during the week that we have to be at. I really like just being able to take each day at a time. If we're feeling tired or cranky or sick we can just hang out and do nothing that day. Or if we're really needing some friend time we can schedule a play date. Then we can do some letter activity or readings later in the day. Another thing is how little time it takes. I have seen her learn so much in the past few months and we really only spend about 20 concentrated minutes 4-5 days a week on learning activities. Although, to be fair, a lot of her toys and tv shows and computer times are probably also learning time too!

Those are just a couple things we love. I am loving homeschooling and have been so grateful for the way it fits with our family. God lead us here and it's cool to see how he's provided. I thought I would share a couple things Mary got for Christmas that I've really loved so far for homeschooling:
The LeapFrog Tag Reading system. This thing is awesome. It reads words individually or it will read the whole page. It is easy to figure out, even for a 3 year old. And there are some pages that have little games on them. She will sit and play with it for close to an hour. It is a great activity for the time between when Noah's nap starts and when hers does. That way I can get some stuff done too!

Crayola's Dry Erase Activity Center. This is my second most loved gift. She isn't great at writing yet, but I know she will get there some day and this thing means I don't have to laminate pages to make them dry erase-able! She is mostly doing pre-writing stuff like tracing lines and connect the dots. You just slide your paper underneath the glass/plastic part and then you can write. So awesome.

This is Melissa and Doug's pattern blocks and boards and you can't really go wrong with that. I love this because we don't have much in the way of patterns and spacial reasoning skills. This fits the bill! She also is getting better at doing jig saw puzzles so that works too. This set helps us work on shapes and colors. Although she already knows all of these shapes and colors it's a good way to review.

Around the house

I used to take pictures all the time just while we were hanging around the house. If one of the kids did something cute I would grab the camera and beg them to do it again. Maybe I just got bored of waiting...I don't know. But I decided I want to start capturing some "boring" moments around the house again. Lately they really like to sit in this chair together:
One day last week Noah woke up really early from his nap and I wasn't quite ready to give up my free time of watching Parks and Rec and crocheting. So I grabbed him a snack and had him sit on my bed with me. He was super happy about that so I had to grab the camera and capture the cuteness:
Enjoying the chair, and each other:
Thanks to a present from our kids team at church we spent one morning building a gingerbread train! Mary had lots of fun eating the candy, and I had fun building.

Hide and Seek

Here is how awesome Mary is at hide and seek:

Not only does she say, "I'm right here!" But she also likes to tell you what room she will hide in before she goes to hide. And we now take Noah to hide too otherwise he will stand right next to wherever the others are hiding and point.

17 months

Noah is 17 months old! It's kind of hard to believe. We have just started really working with him on a couple things like coming to us when we call him, looking at us when we say his name, and staying where we put him. He's doing pretty well with these things, but he also likes to laugh and run away:) He is putting words together now and talking so well. Today he said his longest sentence yet of, "Vacuum on mommy!" Yes, he still loves vacuums and brooms. The way he says vacuum is super cute too. It sounds like daaacuum. He is still a champion eater and sleeper. He's had some ear troubles in the past couple months but I think right now he's ok. It's hard to tell with a toddler. We've been trying some home remedies which I think are going well!



Hello ladies...

He has a love-love relationship with Mary. As in he loves her and she loves him. He LOVES chasing her around. Sometimes she will go get blankets for each of them and then they will run around the house dragging their blankets. He wakes up asking for her (well, after he says mommy eat!). He never wants to go into alone time because he just wants to play with her. He will say Mary randomly in alone time. She loves to give him kisses and look after him. He kept dropping his toys today after breakfast and in her usual fashion she was picking them up for him. Finally I told her not to pick them up any more and that if he dropped them he would just have to sit without a toy. This was very distressing for her because he of course dropped his toys right away. She asked me to please pick them up for him, but I reminded her that he is not supposed to drop his toys and if we keep picking them up for him he will keep dropping them. She didn't really care for that answer, but I think she understood.
Another cute story happened today. He was super whiny after his morning nap so I put him back in his crib and told him I'd be back when he was happy. Mary came upstairs and asked where Noah was and I said he was getting happy. She said he sounded happy and asked if she could go get him. I told her she could not go into his room, as she was already headed back there, because I wanted him to stay happy before I got him. I went back to fixing lunch, but I could hear her in the back so I figured she went in even though I told her not to. When I walked back I saw that she was standing right outside the door whispering through the crack, "Noah come on, get happy so you can come play with me." SO CUTE! I told her to go on in because I was about to cry over the cuteness.
Here is a pretty typical scene. Noah being pushed in the swing and Mary stopping him for a kiss on the head:

And finally, Mary really wanted me to take a picture of her today while I was trying to get some of Noah. So here's the best we got:

The rest of brown county

Here are some pictures that really captured what we did: relax! We found this pottery studio off this country lane back by our cabin so we went to visit. They couple that owned it was super friendly. We talked for a bit and bought some pottery from them. It was really just a perfect fit for us. We love the outdoors, and my mom and I love pottery:) We met Bob, the friendly neighborhood dog. He took walks with us almost daily and the kids called him bobbers (well Ian did, but then the kids started calling him that too)

We played outside a lot:



And lastly, we played with toys:

Blankets

Noah is all about blankets lately. He wants them on his head and he wants to walk around. If it falls off he flips out and says, "on mommy!!!" Until I put it on...

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day was a great one this year. We sat around, took a really long walk in the morning, cooked, and ate. And we had turkey! Usually we go to my dad's for thanksgiving and we have themed thanksgivings. This year's theme was New Orleans, to give you an idea of the themes:) So we don't usually get the standard thanksgiving foods. Here are a couple pics:

If the kids could articulate this thought they would ask why the grown ups are messing around and when they get to eat!

Vacation

We went to Brown County Indiana for a few days over thanksgiving and it was amazing! Such a relaxing and enjoyable few days:) Since I don't have pictures on my computer yet I will post a couple videos. Noah kept doing this thing where he'd put his mouth up on the couch...It's weird, but funny:

We spent a lot of time around the cabin just enjoying some time to relax and taking walks. Here is something Noah found amusing during the times we were all just laying around:

And finally, here is a video of what the kids have been doing a ton lately. Mostly right before bed time. I don't get it, but they seem to think that's the time to chase each other, and everyone else, around the house:

Scans

Here are two of the pictures I got at my last appointment, which was at 13 weeks. Profile shot:

And here is a front shot. It seems pretty clear to me, but my mom couldn't figure it out, so good luck!

Happy Thanksgiving!

For those of you who don't know, we have a little thanksgiving treat for you:


Next May our lives will go from a little crazy to pure chaos:) Going from one to two kids made our lives exponentially crazier. Not just like adding a little to the m ix, but seriously throwing a loop. I've heard going from two to three is a little easier than that though so I'll get back to you on that!

We're super excited to add to the Lubbers family! Ultrasound pictures to come soon!

Habakkuk

I've been reading Habakkuk lately. I read it a long time ago and thought it was really boring...but now I think it's awesome! I've been listening to Matt Chandler's sermons along with my reading and they have been so good, so I highly recommend that series which you can find here.

One thing that I've really liked is the Discipline or Wrath talk. It's affected me in two ways: as a daughter of God and as a mom. Chandler says all the time that when bad things happen to him it is not God's wrath. He had brain cancer and is always told that it could come back at any time, so he isn't talking as one who has never suffered. During this current season of my life I feel like we've been suffering a bit. Sickness, worries, etc. have been hard. It's easy to say, well at least we don't have brain cancer, but Chandler even points out that suffering is suffering and it can be good to know that it could always be worse, but it's still suffering in your life for today. What I took from this series is that God has a vision for my future and that means that pressure may need to be applied today so that I can grow into who He wants me to be.

That is how Chandler defines discipline: a vision for the future that enacts things today. And that is always how I've thought of it with my kids. How can I spank Mary for the smallest disobedience even though I don't like doing it? How can I stick to my guns with Noah when I've told him to do something, even if it might not seem like a big deal to others? Because I have a vision for their future. My vision is that one day they would be SLAVES of Christ and live for the glory of God. One day when God tells them to jump, I want them to immediately respond, "How high???" They shouldn't need to hesitate or waver because they've come to trust their heavenly father. One day they will have wisdom that comes from the fear of the Lord. And to me that means that they hold our God in such high esteem and admire Him so much that they would be terrified to do anything against Him. They wouldn't want to be outside His will because they love Him so much and more importantly they recognize His incredible love for them. This is my vision for their future, so it gives me the motivation to continue on with disciplining (training, teaching, etc.) them.

Now when I apply this back to myself it is so helpful in this time. God has a vision for my future. So if I get no sleep tonight because Noah has a toothache and can't sleep either, then I'm cranky the whole next day even though I've been PRAYING for God to remove this pain from him (mostly so I can get sleep)... I wont see that as God's punishment (wrath) on me. I know that God has a plan for me and I want to trust that what I'm going through is going to facilitate that plan.

Family Pics

Well the day we had planned for family pictures turned out to be kind of a bust. Rainy, but not super cold so that was nice! We ended up at the covered shelter at harbin park which worked out well. I got a couple pictures of the kiddos:

He looks like such a man in that picture. Until you see him in the background of the next picture clutching his baby doll. And to be honest, Ian took the baby doll away and gave him the stick instead:)

And after much photoshopping we have a picture of everyone smiling! Well, besides Noah, but he literally didn't smile the entire time. He just kept saying, "down!"

Sickness

Everyone has been sick around here. I'm going on 3 weeks but today I feel slightly better than yesterday, so maybe I'm over the hump. Mary and Noah both had pink eye and ear infections, but they are looking much better now on their 4th day of antibiotics.

It's been about a month and a half of sickness, so it's easy for me to complain and whine in my head. Which always slaps me in the face because I'm constantly telling Mary that we need to do everything without whining or complaining. Anyway, instead of complain about it (more than I just did), I'd like to say what's been awesome about being sick...

1. I watched all the Harry Potter movies again in preparation for this Friday when the last one comes out!

2. While doing that I finally finished Mary's blanket (that I started in June). I promise it's not because I'm lazy. This blanket is the most time consuming project I've ever done. And I used the most time consuming stitch to put all the squares together. I'm hoping that it will last a long time and some day when I teach her to crochet she will really appreciate this blanket!



3. The kids both sleep more when they're sick. That is a plus because I've been sick at the same time so it means I get to sleep more too:)

4. I've cleaned the entire house top to bottom. Yesterday and today I've sanitized everything I can. I've been meaning to do that for a while but it just hasn't happened. The pediatrician gave me another good idea for limiting germs in our house: switching out hand towels daily. I don't have enough bathroom towels to do that...maybe once a week. But I have lots of kitchen towels so I've been switching them everyday.

That's my list. There are things to be thankful for in sickness:)

halloween

Here it is folks.

Playdough

The kids are really into playdough lately. Just thought I would share a cute interaction. I gave Mary some playdough and went into the other room. I then heard Ian yell in disbelief: "Megan, I gave Noah some playdough and he ate it!"

My response was, "Well, what did you think he would do with it?" And Ian said, "Build something."

Haha. I think I responded with something like, "So you thought you'd turn back around and see the taj mahal??" I thought it was cute that Ian really though Noah would just put something together! Since then we've worked with Noah on NOT eating the play dough and he now likes to smoosh it into the containers we take it out of. I still don't turn my back on him though:)

14 months

I'm a little behind seeing as how Noah is 15 months now. But here are some 14 month pictures of him that will go in his book:


And here is a picture of how I found him when I went to get him from his nap the other day.

He's been randomly getting his feet caught in the crib, but it's usually between the wall and the crib. He is funny.

mommy take a picture!

I was in the kitchen the other day making lunch and I heard Mary yelling, "Mommy come take a picture of us!!" No need to think twice. I grabbed the camera and this is what I found:
This is usually how it goes. Mary is smothering him with love and he takes it. Although today he walked up to her and held his arms out for a hug:)

More wedding fun

This wedding actually happened last month, but I just got pictures from the photographer. Although I had my camera in the bag I only took one picture. It's a good thing the photographer was a friend of mine! Here is my sweet princess wearing her borrowed dress and hair clip I made for her. Have I mentioned I'm cheap??

Mary and the handsome little ring bearer (who happens to be one of her BFF's)


Yes, I put lip gloss on my daughter. She saw me putting some on and asked for it. I can't say no to those big beautiful blue eyes:)
Here she is with the wonderful bride who loves her so much

Wedding

Ian's sister got married a couple weekends ago. It was a really fun weekend! Mostly because grandma and grandpa watched the kids so it was very relaxing. Plus, we got hooked up with a free hotel room at the Westin downtown! For any of you people watchers out there, that is the place to go. Our window faced fountain square so we got to witness the protest and all the festivities of the night. Here are a couple pictures from the wedding...
Noah getting tickled by grandpa Hank:

Oh, guess who found the smallest little gap in the wall and tried to squeeze into it???

Yeah, he still does that. Here are some fun family pics

New wall decal

I finished up this thing for Ian's office a few weeks ago. We got the decal at a very reasonable price from this shop on etsy. Very happy with how it turned out:

This picture is exemplifying Mary's personality lately. She's been super fun:)